THE COMPLETE WOKKS OF
JOHN RUSKIN VOLUME XVII FORS CLAVIGERA VOLUMES
I-II
THE DRAWING-ROOM, BRANTWOOD
FORS CLAVIG...
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THE COMPLETE WOKKS OF
JOHN RUSKIN VOLUME XVII FORS CLAVIGERA VOLUMES
I-II
THE DRAWING-ROOM, BRANTWOOD
FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTERS TO THE
nORKME^ AND LABORERS Olf
GREAT BRITAIN.
Vol.
I.
Containing Letters I-XII.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME 1871
I.
I
LIST OF PLATES TO
Giotto's "
Hope "
VOLUME
I
HOPE. Drawn
thus by
Giotto in
the
Chapel of the Arena
at
Padua.
FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTER
I.
Denmark 1**
Feiends,
We
Hill, January, 1871.
«
begin to-day another group of ten years, not in
Although, for the time, exempted happy circumstances. from the direct calamities which have fallen on neighboring states, believe me, we have not escaped them because of our better deservings, nor by our better wisdom; but only for one or two bad reasons, or for both: either that we have not sense enough to determine in a great national quarrel which side is right, or that we have not courage to defend the right,
when we have
discerned
I believe that both these
our own
that
it.
bad reasons
political divisions
exist in full force;
prevent us from understand-
ing the laws of international justice; and that, even did,
we
if
we
should not dare to defend, perhaps not even to assert
them, being on fear; that
is
this first of
January, 1871, in
much
bodily
to say, afraid of the Russians; afraid of the
Prussians; afraid of the Americans; afraid of the Hindoos; afraid of the Chinese; afraid of the Japanese; afraid of the
New
Zealanders; and afraid of the Caff res: and very justly being conscious that our only real desire respecting any of these nations has been to get as much out of them as we
so,
could.
They have no right to complain of us, notwithstanding, we have all, lately, lived ourselves in the daily endeavor to get as much out of our neighbors and friends as we since
could; and having by this means, indeed, got a good deal out
of each other, and put nothing into each other, the actually
FOES CLAVIGEBA.
2
is a state of emptiness in purse and stomach, for the solace of which our boasted " insular position " is ineffectual.
obtained result, this day,
many ingenious persons, who say we are now than ever we were before. I do not know off we were before; but I know positively that many
I have listened to better off
how well
my
acquaintance have great difimproved circumstances: also, ficulty in living under these that my desk is full of begging letters, eloquently written either by distressed or dishonest people; and that we cannot be called, as a nation, well off, while so many of us are either
very deserving persons of
living in honest or in villainous beggary.
For
my
owti part, I will put
up with
this state of things,
hour longer. I am not an unselfish person, nor an Evangelical one; T have no particular pleasure in doing good; neither do I dislike doing it so much as to expect to be rewarded for it in another world. But I simply cannot paint, nor read, nor look at minerals, nor do anything else that I like, and the very light of the morning sky, when there is any which is seldom, nowadays, near London has become hateful to me, because of the misery that I know of, and see signs of, where I know it not, which no imagination can interpret too bitterly. Therefore, as I have said, I will endure it no longer quietly; but henceforward, with any few or many who will passively, not an
—
help, do
my
my
—
poor best to abate this misery.
But
that I
may
must not be miserable myself any longer; for no man who is wretched in his own heart, and feeble in his do
best, I
own work, can rightly help others. Now my own special pleasure has
lately been connected with a given duty. I have been ordered to endeavor to make our English youth care somewhat for the arts; and
must put my uttermost strength into that business. To which end I must clear myself from all sense of responsibility for the material distress around me, by explaining to you, once for all, in the shortest English I can, what I know of its causes; by pointing out to you some of the methods by
FOES CLAVIGERA.
which it might be relieved; and bj setting aside regularly some small percentage of my income, to assist, as one of yourselves, in what one and all we shall have to do; each of us laying by something, according to our means, for the common service; and having amongst us, at last, be it ever so small, a National Store instead of a National Debt.
Store
which, once securely founded, will fast increase, provided
only you take the pains to understand, and have perseverance to maintain, the elementary principles of Human Economy, which have, of late, not only been lost sight of, but willfully
and formally entombed under pyramids of falsehood. And first I beg you most solemnly to convince yourselves of the partly comfortable, partly formidable fact, that your That only in a remote deprosperity is in your own hands. gree does it depend on external matters, and least of all on forms of government. In all times of trouble the first thing to be done is to make the most of whatever forms of government you have got, by setting honest men to work them (the trouble, in all probability, having arisen only from the want of such;) and for the rest, you must in no wise concern yourselves about them more particularly it would be lost time to do so at this moment, when whatever is popularly said about governments cannot but be absurd, for want of definition ;
;
of terms. division
Consider, for instance, the ridiculousness of the of parties into " Liberal " and " Conservative."
There is no opposition whatever between those two kinds of men. There is opposition between Liberals and Illiberals; that is to say, between people who desire liberty, and who dislike
that I
it.
I
am
a violent Illiberal; but
must be a Conservative.
who wishes
A
it
does not follow
Conservative
is
a person
keep things as they are; and he is opposed to a Destructive, who wishes to destroy them, or to an Innovator, who wishes to alter them. Now, though I am an to
Illiberal, there are
many
things I should like to destroy.
I
should like to destroy most of the railroads in England, and all
the railroads in Wales.
I should like to destroy and re-
build the Houses of Parliament, the National Gallery, and
;
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
4
the East end of London; and to destroy, without rebuilding, the
new town
and the
of Edinburgh, the north suburb of Geneva,
city of
New
York,
Thus
in
many
things I
am
the
some long-established things which I hope to see changed before I die; but I want still to keep the fields of England green, and her cheeks red and that girls should be taught to curtsey, and boys to take reverse of Conservative; nay, there are
their hats
off,
when
a Professor or otherwise dignified per-
son passes by; and that Kings should keep their crowns on their heads,
and Bishops their
crosiers in their hands;
should duly recognize the significance of the
cro"«Ti,
and
and the
use of the crook.
As you would
find
it
thus impossible to class
me
justly in
you would find it impossible to class any person whatever, who had clear and developed political opinions, and who could define them accurately. Men only associate in parties by sacrificing their opinions, or by having none worth sacrificing; and the efi'ect of party government is always to develop hostilities and hypocrisies, and to extinguish either party, so
ideas.
Thus the so-called Monarchic and Republican parties have thrown Europe into conflagration and shame, merely for want of clear conception of the things they imagine themselves to fight for. The moment a Republic was proclaimed in France, Garibaldi came to fight for it as a " Holy Republic." But Garibaldi could not know, ^no mortal creature could know, whether it was going to be a Holy ar Profane Republic. You cannot evoke any form of government by beat of drum. The proclamation of a government implies the considerate acceptance of a code of laws, and the appointment of means for their execution, neither of which things can be done in an instant. You may overthrow a government, and announce yourselves lawless, in the twinkling of an eye, as you can blow up a ship, or upset and sink one. But you can no more create a government with a word, than an ironclad. No; nor can you even define its character in few words;
—
—
rORS CLAVIGERA.
5
depending on degrees of justice which are often independent of form altogether. Generally speaking, the community of thieves in London or Paris have adopted Republican Institutions, and live at this day without any acknowledged Captain or Head but under Robin Hood, brigandage in England, and under Sir John Hawkwood, brigandage in Italy, became Theft could not, merely by that dignistrictly monarchical. fied form of government, be made a holy manner of life but it was made both dexterous and decorous. The pages of the English knights under Sir John Hawkwood spent nearly all their spare time in burnishing the knights' armor, and made '' The White Comit always so bright, that they were called pany." And the notary of Tortona, Azario, tells us of them, that these foragers {furatoi'es) " were more expert than any plunderers in Lombardy. They for the most part sleep by day, and watch by night, and have such plans and artifices for taking towns, that never were the like or equal of them the measure of sanctity in
it
in the administration of law,
;
;
witnessed." *
The actual Prussian expedition into France merely differs from Sir John's in Italy by being more generally savage, much less enjoyable, and by its clumsier devices for taking towns; for Sir John had no occasion to burn their libraries. In neither case does the monarchical form of government bestow any Divine right of theft; but it puts the available forces into a convenient form.
venience only,
it is
Even with
respect to con-
not yet determinable by the evidence of
what
is absolutely the best form of government to There are indeed said to be republican villages (towns?) in America, where everybody is civil, honest, and substantially comfortable; but these villages have several unfair advantages there are no lawyers in them, no town councils, and no parliaments. Such republicanism, if possible on a large scale, would be worth fighting for; though,
history,
live under.
—
* Communicated to me by my friend Mr. Eawdon Brown, of Venice, from his yet unpublished work, " The English in Italy in the 14th Century."
FOES CLAVIGERA.
6 in
my own
private mind, I confess I should like to keep a
few lawyers, for the sake of their wigs, and the faces under them ^generally very grand when they are really good law^ yers and for their (unprofessional) talk. Also I should like to have a Parliament, into v/hich people might be elected on condition of their never saying anything about politics, that one might still feel sometimes that one was acquainted In the meantime Parliament is a luxury to with an M.P. British squire, and an honor to the British manufacthe turer, which you may leave them to enjoy in their own way; provided only you make them always clearly explain, when they tax you, what they want with your money and that you understand yourselves, what money is, and how it is got, and what it is good for, and bad for. These matters I hope to explain to you in this and some following letters which, among various other reasons, it is necessary that I should write in order that you may make no mistake as to the real economical results of Art teachI will ing, whether in the Universities or elsewhere. begin by directing your attention particularly to that
— —
;
;
point.
The first
first
object of all
and necessarv one
work
—
—not the
principal one, but the
to get food, clothes, lodging,
is
and
fuel.
much of all these filings. know a great many gentlemen, who eat too large dinners; I know great many ladies, who have too many clothes. It
I a
there
is
is
quite possible to have too
lodging to spare in London, for I have several houses
there myself, which I can't
let.
to spare ever^nvhere, since
we
roads with, while our stand, idle, or
men
And
I
know
there
is
fuel
get up steam to pound the
stand idle; or drink
till
they can't
any otherwise.
Notwithstanding, there is agonizing distress even in this highly favored England, in some classes, for want of food, And it has become a popular idea clothes, lodging, and fuel.
among
the benevolent and ingenious, that you
part remedy these deficiencies
by teaching,
may
in great
to these starving
— FOES CLAVIGEKA.
7
—
and shivering persons, Science and Art. In their way as I do not doubt you will believe I am very fond of both; I sure will it beneficial for the British nation to and am be the merits of Michael Angelo, and the nodes be lectured upon of the moon. But I should strongly object myself to being lectured on either, while I was hungry and cold; and I suppose the same view of the matter would be taken by the
—
greater
So
number
that, I
am
of British citizens in those predicaments.
convinced, their present eagerness for instruc-
and astronomy proceeds from an impression somehow, they may paint or star-gaze themselves into clothes and victuals. Now it is perfectly true that you may sometimes sell a picture for a thousand pounds; but the chances are greatly against your doing so much more than the chances of a lottery. In the first place, you must paint a very clever picture; and the chances are greatly against your doing that. In the second place, you must meet with an amiable picture-dealer; and the chances are somewhat against your doing that. In the third place, the amiable picture-dealer must meet with a fool; and the chances are not always in favor even of his doing that though, as I gave exactly the sum in question for a picture Asmyself, only the other day, it is not for me to say so. sume, however, to put the case most favorably, that what with the practical results of the energies of Mr. Cole, at Kensington, and the aesthetic impressions produced by various lectures at Cambridge and Oxford, the profits of art employment might be counted on as a ratable income. Suppose even that the ladies of the richer classes should come to delight no less in new pictures than in new dresses and that picture-making should thus become as constant and lucrative an occupation as dress-making. Still, you know, they can't buy pictures and dresses too. If they buy two pictures a day, they can't buy two dresses a day; or if they do, they must save in something else. They have but a certain income, be it never so large. They spend that now; and you can't get more out of them. Even if they lay by money, the tion in painting in their
minds
that,
;
FOES CLAVIGERA.
8
when somebody must spend it. You will find they do verily spend now all they have, neither more nor
time comes that less.
If ever they seem to spend more,
in debt, and not paying;
if
it is
only by running
they for a time spend
less,
some
day the overplus must come into circulation. All they have, they spend; more than that, they cannot at any time; less than that, they can only for a short time. Whenever, therefore, any new industry, such as this of picture-making, is invented, of which the profits depend on patronage, it merely means that you have effected a diversion of the current of money in your own favor, and to somebody else's loss. Nothing, really, has been gained by the nation, though probably much time and wit, as well as sundry Before such a diversion can people's senses, have been lost. be effected, a great many kind things must have been done, a great deal of excellent advice given; and an immense quantity of ingenious trouble taken: the arithmetical course of
the business throughout being, that for every penny you are yourself better,
somebody
else
is
a
penny the worse; and
the net result of the whole, precisely zero. Zero, of course, I mean, so far as
may
money
is
concerned.
It
be more dignified for working women to paint than to it may be a very charming piece of self-de-
embroider; and nial, in a
young
lady, to order a high art fresco instead of a
ball-dress; but as far as cakes
the same,
—there
is
but so
and
ale are concerned,
much money
to
it is all
be got by you, or
spent by her, and not one farthing more, usually a great deal less,
by high
art than
by low.
Zero, also, observe, I
mean
work executed. If least you have done no
partly in a complimentary sense to the
you have done no good by painting, at serious mischief. A bad picture is indeed a dull thing to have in a house, and in a certain sense a mischievous thing; but it won't blow the roof off. Whereas, of most things which the English, French, and Germans are paid for making nowadays,-—cartridges, cannon, and the like, you know the best thing we can possibly hope is that they may be useless, and the net result of them, zero.
—
9
FORS CLAVIGERA.
The
you have to ascertain approximately, in order to determine on some consistent organization, is the maximum of wages-fund you have to depend on to start wath, that is to say, virtually the sum of the income of the gentlemen of England. Do not trouble yourselves at first about France or Germany, or any other foreign country. The principle of free trade is, that French gentlemen should employ English workmen, for whatever the English can do better than the French; and that English gentlemen should employ French workmen, for whatever the French can do better than the English. It is a very right principle, but merely extends the question to a wider field. Suppose, for the present, that France, and every other country but your own, were what I suppose you would, if you had your way, like them to be sunk under water, and Then, that England were the only country in the world. how would you live in it most comfortably? Find out that, and you will then easily find how two countries can exist together; or more, not only without need for fighting, but to thing, therefore, that
—
—
each other's advantage. For, indeed, the laws by which two next-door neighbors
—the one not being the better for but the worse, and the better for neighbor's prosperity— are those by which
might
live
most happily
his neighbor's poverty,
his
also
it is
con-
venient and wise for two parishes, two provinces, or two
kingdoms, to live side by side. And the nature of every commercial and military operation which takes place in Europe, or in the world, may always be best investigated by supposing
it
limited to the districts of a single countiy.
Kent and ^Northumberland exchange hops and coals on precisely the same economical principles as Italy and England exchange oil for iron; and the essential character of the war between Germany and France may be best understood by between Lancaster and Yorkshire for Suppose that Lancashire, having absorbed Cumberland and Cheshire, and been much insulted and troubled by Yorkshire in consequence, and at last at-
supposing
it
a dispute
the line of the Ribble.
10
FOES CLAVIGEKA.
tacked; and having victoriously repulsed the attack, and retaining old grudges against Yorkshire, about the color of roses,
from the
fifteenth century, declares that
it
cannot
possibly be safe against the attacks of Yorkshire any longer,
unless
it
gets the townships of Giggleswick and Wiggles-
worth, and a fortress on Pen-y-gent. that this
is
Yorkshire replying
and that it will eat its last Yorkshireman, rather than part
totally inadmissible,
horse, and perish to its last with a stone of Giggleswick, a crag of Pen-y-gent, or a ripple Lancashire with its Cumbrian and Cheshire of Ribble, contingents invades Yorkshire, and meeting with much Divine assistance, ravages the West Riding, and besieges York on Christmas Day. That is the actual gist of the whole business; and in the same manner you may see the downright
—
common
—
—
if any is to be seen of other human proby taking them first under narrow and homely conditions. So, for the present, we wall fancy ourselves, what you tell me you all want to be, independent we will take no account of any other country but Britain; and on that condition I will begin to show you in my next paper how we
sense
ceedings,
:
ought to
after ascertaining the utmost limits of the
live,
w^ages-fund, which is
means the income of our gentlemen; that
to say, essentially, the
income of those who have command
of the land, and therefore of
What you
call "
all food.
is the quantity of food which the possessor of the land gives you, to work for hun. There is, finally, no " capital " but that. If all the
money
wages," practically,
of all the capitalists in the whole world were de-
stroyed, the notes
buried, and
all
and
bills
burnt, the gold irrecoverably
the machines and apparatus of manufactures
crushed, by a mistake in signals, in one catastrophe
ing remained but the land, with
—
its
;
and noth-
animals and vegetables,
and buildings for shelter, the poorer population would be very little worse off than they are at this instant; and their labor, instead of being " limited " by the destruction, would be greatly stimulated. They would feed themselves from the animals and growing crops; heap here and there a few
11
FORS CLAVIGERA.
them to wonld have iron tools
tons of ironstone together, build rough walls round
get a blast, and in a fortnight, they
and be plowing and fighting, just as usual. It is only we who had the capital who would suffer; we should not be able to live idle, as we do now, and many of us I, for inshould starve at once: but you, though little the stance worse, would none of you be the better eventually, for our The removal of superfluous mouths or starvation. loss would indeed benefit you somewhat, for a time; but you would soon replace them with hungrier ones; and there are many of us who are quite worth our meat to you in different ways, which I will explain in due place also I will show you that our money is really likely to be useful to you in its accumulated form, (besides that, in the instances when it has been won by work, it justly belongs to us,) so only that you are careful never to let us persuade you into borrowing it, and paying us interest for it. You will find a very amusing story, explaining your position in that case, at the ll7th page of the " Manual of Political Economy," published this year at Cambridge, for your early instruction, in an almost devotionally catechetical form, by Messrs. Macagain,
—
—
—
:
millan.
Perhaps I had better quote it to you entire the author " from the French."
:
it is
taken by
There was once in a village a poor carpenter, who worked hard from morning to night. One day James thought to himself, " With my hatchet, saw, and hammer, I can only make coarse furniture, and can only get the pay for such. If I had a plane, I should please my customers more, and they would pay me more. Yes, I am resolved, I will make myself a plane." At the end of ten days, James had in his possession an admirable plane which he valued all the more "Whilst he was reckoning all for having made it himself. the profits which he expected to derive from the use of it, he was interrupted by William, a carpenter in the neighboring village. AVilliam, having admired the plane, was struck
— FOES CLAVIGERA.
12
with the advantages which might be gained from
James " You must do me
He
it.
said to
As might be
me the plane for a year." cried out, " How can you think
a service; lend
expected,
James
Well, if I do you this service, you do for me in return ? " W. Xothing. Don't you know that a loan ought to be
of such a thing, William?
what
will
gratuitous ? /. I
were
know nothing
to lend
to you.
To
of the sort; but I do
you
my
tell
you the
truth,
know
that
if
I
would be giving it that was not what I made
plane for a year,
it
it for.
W. Very service do
well, then; I ask
you ask
me
you
to do
me
a service;
what
in return?
/. First, then, in a year the plane will be done for.
You
must therefore give me another exactly like it. W. That is perfectly just. I submit to these conditions. I think you must be satisfied with this, and can require nothing further. J. I think otherwise.
not for you.
I
made
the plane for myself, and
I expected to gain some advantage from
it.
I
have made the plane for the purpose of improving my work and my condition; if you merely return it to me in a year, it is you who will gain the profit of it during the whole of I am not bound to do you such a service without that time. receiving anything in return. Therefore, if you wish for my plane, besides the restoration already bargained for, you
must give me a new plank as a compensation for the advantages of which I shall be deprived. These terms were agreed to, but the singular part of it is that at the end of the year, when the plane came into James's possession, he lent it again; recovered it, and lent it a third and fourth time. It has passed into the hands of his son, who still lends it. Let us examine this little story. The plane is the symbol of all capital, and the plank is the symbol of all interest.
13
FORS CLAVTGEBA.
If this be an abridgment, what a graceful piece of highly wrought literature the original story must be! I take the liberty of abridging
it
a
little
more.
it to William on 1st January William gives him a plank for the loan of it. wears it out, and makes another for James, which he gives him on 31st December. On 1st January he again borrows the new one; and the arrangement is repeated continuously. The position of William therefore is, that he makes a plane every 31st of December; lends it to James till the next day, and pays James a plank annually for the privilege of lending This, in future investigations of it to him on that evening. capital and interest, we will call, if you please, " the Position
James makes
a plane, lends
for a year.
of William."
You may
not at the
first
glance see where the fallacy
lies
(the writer of the story evidently counts on your not seeing it
at all).
If
James did not lend the plane
to William,
get his gain of a plank by working with
ing
it
out himself.
When
he had worn
the year, he would, therefore, have to self.
it
William, working with
it
he could only
himself, and wear-
it
out at the end of
make another
for him-
instead, gets the advantage
which he must, therefore, pay James his plank for; and return to James, what James would, if he had not lent but the wornnot a new plane his plane, then have had James must make a new one for himself, as he out one. would have had to do if no William had existed; and if William likes to borrow it again for another plank all is
instead,
—
—
—
fair.
That is to James makes its
say, clearing the story of its nonsense, that
a plane annually, and sells
proper price, which, in kind,
is
a
new
it
to
William for
plank.
But
this
arrangement has nothing whatever to do with principal or with interest. There are, indeed, many very subtle conditions involved in any sale; one among which is the value of ideas; I will explain that value to you in the course of time; (the article is not one which modern political economists
14
FOKS CLAVIGERA.
have any familiarity with dealings
somewhat
in;)
and I
will tell
you
you
will
also of the real nature of interest; but if
only get, for the present, a quite clear idea of " the Position of William,"
it is all
I
want of you.
I remain, your faithful friend,
JOHN RUSKIN.
LETTEK
iL Denmark
Fkiends — ought
why
Hill,
^'* Fehruary, 1871.
Before going farther, you may like to know, and know, what I mean by the title of these Letters and
to
it is
;
in Latin.
I can only tell
you
in part, for the Letters
will be on many things, if I am able to carry out my plan in them; and that title means many things, and is in Latin, because I could not have given an English one that meant so many. We, indeed, were not till lately a loquacious people, nor a useless one; but the Romans did more, and said less, than any other nation that ever lived; and their language is the most heroic ever spoken by men. Therefore I wish 3'ou to know, at least, some words of it, and to recognize what thoughts they stand for. Some day, I hope you may know and that European workmen may know many words of it but even a few will
—
—
;
be useful. Do not smile at
my saying so. Of Arithmetic, Geometry, and Chemistry, you can know but little, at the utmost; but And a little Latin, that little, well learnt, serves you well. well learnt, will serve you also, and in a higher way than any of these. " Fors "
is
the best part of three good English words,
I wish you to know the meaning of those three words accurately. " Force " (in humanity), means power of doing good work. A fool, or a corpse, can do any quantity of mischief; but only a wise and strong man, or, with what true vital force there is in him, a weak one, can do good. " Fortitude " means the power of bearing necessary pain, or trial of patience, whether by time, or temptation. "Force,
Fortitude, and Fortune.
15
FORS CLAVIGEEA.
16
" Fortune " means the necessary fate of a life which cannot be changed.
ordinance of his
man To
"
the
:
make
your Fortune " is to rule that appointed fate to the best ends of which it is capable, Fors is a feminine word; and Clavigera is, therefore, the feminine of " Claviger." Clava means a club. Clavis, a key. Clavus, a nail, or a rudder.
Gero means " I carry," It is the root of our word " gesture " (the way you carry yourself) and, in a curious by;
way, of "
jest,"
Clavigera
may mean,
therefore, either Club-bearer,
Key-
bearer, or Nail-bearer.
Each of these three possible meanings of Clavigera corresponds to one of the three meanings of Fors. Fors, the Club-bearer, means the strength of Hercules, or of Deed.
means the strength of Ulysses, or of
Fors, the Key-bearer,
Patience, Fors, the Nail-bearer,
means the strength of Lycurgus, or
of Law.
I will
tell
you what you may usefully know of those three
Greek persons
in a little time.
the three powers:
1.
At
deed, not misdeed; and that his club also, of
present, note only of
That the strength of Hercules
—
is
for
the favorite weapon,
the Athenian hero Theseus, whose form
is
the best
inheritance left to us by the greatest of Greek sculptors,
(it
room of the British Museum, and I shall have much to tell you of him especially how he helped Hercules in his utmost need, and how he invented mixed vegetable soup) was for subduing monsters and cruel persons, and was 2, That the Second Fors Clavigera is porof olive-wood, tress at a gate which she cannot open till you have waited
is
in the Elgin
—
—
long; and that her robe 3.
is
of the color of ashes, or dry earth,*
That the Third Fors Clavigera, the power of Lycurgus, * See Carey's translation of
tory," line 105.
tlie
ninth book of Dante's " Purga-
17
FOES CLAVIGERA. is
Royal
and that the notablest crown yet Europe of any that have been worn by Christian
as well as Legal;
existing in
—
—
was people say made of a ]^ail. That is enough about my title, for this time; now to our work, I told you, and you will find it true, that, practically, all wages mean the food and lodging given you by the poskings,
sessors of the land. It begins to
be asked on
many
sides
how
the possessors of
and why they should still possess it, more than you or I and Ricardo's " Theory " of Rent, though, for an economist, a very creditably ingenious work of fiction, will not much longer be imagined to explain the land became possessed of
it,
;
the " Practice " of Rent.
The best.
true answer, in this matter, as in
all others, is
Some land has been bought; some, won by
tion: but the greater part, in
the
cultiva-
Europe, seized originally by
force of hand.
You may
think, in that case,
you would be
justified in
trying to seize some yourselves, in the same way. If you could, you, and your children, would only hold it by the same title as its present holders. If it is a bad one, you had better not so hold it; if a good one, you had better let the
And
present holders alone. in
any
case,
the present holders,
it is
expedient that you should do
whom we may
so, for " generally call " Squires
(a title having three meanings, like Fors, and all good; namely. Rider, Shield-bearer, and Carver), are quite the best men you can now look to for leading: it is too true that they have much demoralized themselves lately by horse-racing, bird-shooting, and vermin-hunting; and most of all by living in London, instead of on their estates; but they are still (without exception) brave; nearly without exception, goodnatured; honest, so far as they understand honesty; and much to be depended on, if once you and they understand
each other.
Which you are far enough now from doing; and it is imminently needful that you should: so we will have an
:
FORS CLAVIGERA.
18 accurate talk of first is
them
whom you
The needfulest thing
soon.
that you should
know
of all
the functions of the persons
are being taught to think of as your protectors
against the Squires;
—your "Employers," namely;
Supporters of Labor. " Employers." It is a noble
or Capi-
talist
title. If, indeed, they have found you idle, and given you employment, wisely, let us no more call them mere " Men " of Business, but rather "Angels" of Business: quite the best sort of Guardian
—
Angel,
Yet are you sure superior natures for
it
is
necessary, absolutely, to look to
employment?
—yourselves
you should employ
?
Is
it
inconceivable that
I ask the question, because
Seraphic beings, undertaking also to be Seraphic Teachers or Doctors, have theories about emplojniient which may perhaps be true in their own celestial regions, but are inapplicable under worldly conditions. To one of these principles, announced by themselves as highly important, I must call your attention closely, because it has of late been the cause of much embarrassment among these
persons in a sub-seraphic
life.
I take
its
statement verbatim,
from the 25th page of the Cambridge catechism before quoted " This brings us to a most important proposition respecting one which it is essential that the student should
capital,
thoroughly understand. " The proposition is this
—A
demand
for commodities
is
not a demand for labor. " The demand for labor depends upon the amount of capital: the
what "
demand
for commodities simply determines in
direction labor shall be employed.
An
example.
—The truth
of these assertions can best be
Let us suppose that a manufacturer of woolen cloth is in the habit of spending £50 annually in lace. What does it matter, say some, whether he spends this £50
shown by examples.
in lace or
whether he uses
it
to
employ more laborers
in his
— 19
FORS CLAVIGERA.
owu
business?
Does not the £50 spent
in lace
maintain the
who make the lace, just the same as it would mainthe laborers who make cloth, if the manufacturer used money in extending his own business? If he ceased
laborers tain
the
buying the lace, for the sake of employing more clothmakers, would there not be simply a transfer of the £50 from the lace-makers to the cloth-makers? In order to find the right answer to these questions, let us imagine what would actually take place if the manufacturer ceased buying the lace, and employed the £50 in paying the wages of an additional number of cloth-makers. The lace manufacturer, in consequence of the diminished demand for lace, would diminish the production, and would withdraw from his business an amount of capital corresponding to the diminished demand. As there is no reason to suppose that the lacemaker wouldj on losing some of his custom, become more extravagant, or would cease to desire to derive income from the capital which the diminished demand has caused him to withdraw from his own business, it may be assumed that he would invest this capital in some other industry. This capital is not the same as that which his former customer, the woolen cloth manufacturer, is now paying his o^vn laborers with it is a second capital and in the place of £50 employed in maintaining labor, there is now £100 so employed. There is no transfer from lace-makers to cloth-makers. There is fresh employment for the cloth-makers, and a transfer from the lace-makers to some other laborers." Principles of Political Economy, vol. i., p. 102. ;
This
:
is
very
fine
;
and
it is
clear that
we may
carry forward
the improvement in our commercial arrangements by recom-
mending all the other customers of the lace-maker to treat him as the cloth-maker has done. Wliereupon he of course leaves the lace business entirely, and uses all his capital in
" some other industry." Having thus established the lacemaker with a complete " second capital," in the other industry, we will next proceed to develop a capital out of the
— FOES CLAVIGEEA.
20
cloth-maker, by recommending all his customers to leave him. "Whereupon, he will also invest his capital in " some other industry," and
we have
a Third capital, employed in the
IS^ational benefit.
We will now proceed in the round of all possible businesses, developing a correspondent number of new capitals, till we come back to our friend the lace-maker again, and find him employed in whatever his new industry was. By now taking
away again
all his
new
customers,
we begin
the development
of another order of Capitals in a higher Seraphic circle
an Infinite Capital! would be difficult to matcli this for simplicity it is more comic even than the fable of James and William, though you
and
so develop at last
It
;
may
find
it
obscurity
is
it is
easy to detect the fallacy here; but the
less
not because the error
threefold.
Fallacy 1st
is
is less
gross,
but because
the assumption that a cloth-
maker may employ any number
of men, whether he has
customers or not; while a lace-maker must dismiss his men Fallacy 2nd: That when a laceif he has not customers. maker can no longer find customers for lace, he can always Fallacy 3rd (the essential find customers for something else. one): That the funds provided
by these new customers, pro-
duced seraphically from the clouds, are a " second capital." Those customers, if they exist now, existed before the lacemaker adopted his new business and were the employers of the people in that business. If the lace-maker gets them, he merely diverts their fifty pounds from the tradesmen they were before employing, to himself; and that is Mr. Mill'f ;
" second capital."
Underlying these three
mind
fallacies,
however, there
is,
in the
of " the greatest thinker in England,"
ness of a partial truth,
—
some consciouswhich he has never yet been able to
The real still less to explain to others. them is his conviction that it is beneficial and profitable to make broadcloth; and unbeneficial and unprofitable to make lace; * so that the trade of cloth-making should be
define for himself
root of
* I
assume the Cambridge quotation
to be correct:
in
my
old
FOES CLAVIGERA.
and that of lace-making
infinitely extended,
"Which
pressed.
is,
be well made,
21
indeed, partially true.
infinitely re-
Making
cloth,
good industry; and if you had sense enough to read your Walter Scott thoroughly, I should invite you to join me in sincere hope that Glasgow might in that industry long flourish; and the chief hostelry at Aberfoil be if it
is
a
at the sign of the " Nicol Jarvie."
Also, of lace-makers,
often true that they had better be doing something
it is
else.
I
with no goodwill, for I know a most kind lady, a clerg-jTuan's wife, who devotes her life to the benefit of her country by employing lace-makers; and all her friends make
admit
it,
presents of collars and cuffs to each other, for the sake of charity; and as, if they did not, the poor girl lace-makers would probably indeed be " diverted " into some other less diverting industry, in due assertion of the rights of women, (cartridge-filling, or percussion-cap making, most likely,) I even go the length, sometimes, of furnishing my friend with a pattern, and never say a word to disturb her young customers in their conviction that it is an act of Christian charity to be married in more than ordinarily expensive veils. But there is one kind of lace for which I should be glad that the demand ceased. Iron lace. If we must even doubt whether ornamental thread-work may be, wisely, made on cushions in the sunshine, by dexterous fingers for fair shoulders, how we are to think of Ornamental Iron-work, made with deadly sweat of men, and steady waste, all summer through, of the coals that Earth gave us for winter fuel? What shall we say of labor spent on lace such as that? N"ay, says the Cambridge catechism, " the demand for
—
commodities
is
not a
demand
for labor."
Doubtless, in the economist's
new
earth, cast iron will be
had for asking: the hapless and brave Parisians rain occasionally out of the edition
(1848),
the
distinction
makers" and "journeymen
find
new economical Heavens, is
it
between "weavers and
bricklayers; " and
making
even
without lace-
velvet is
considered to be the production of a " commodity," but building a house only doing a " service."
! ;
FORS CLAVIGEEA.
22
Gold
asking.
will also
one day, perhaps, be begotten of gold,
until the supply of that, as well as of iron,
equal to the demand.
be, at least,
it is
not so yet.
iron-lace,
nor
stone-lace,
gold-lace,
thread-lace,
ISTeither
may
But, in this world,
whether they be commodities or incommodities, can be had How much, think you, did the gilded flourishes for nothing. cost round the gas-lamps on AVestminster Bridge? or the stone-lace of the pinnacles of the temple of Parliament at the end of it, (incommodious enough, as I hear;) or the point-lace of the park-railings which you so improperly pulled do\vn, when you wanted to be Parliamentary yourselves; (much good you would have got of that!) or the "openwork" of
—the
iron railings generally
special glories of English design?
you count the cost, in labor and coals, of the blank bars ranged along all the melancholy miles of our suburban
"Will
streets, saying with their rusty tongues, as plainly as iron tongues can speak, " Thieves outside, and nothing to steal beautiful wealth they are! and a productive within." " "Well, but," you answer, " the making them was capital!
A
work
for us."
am
Of
course
Work
it
was;
is
not that the very thing
was; and too much. But will you be good enough to make up your minds, once for all, whether it is really work that you want, or rest? I thought you rather objected to your quantity of work; that you I
telling
you?
it
—
were
all
for having eight hours of
may have If
it is
it
twelve instead of ten, easily,
only occupation you want,
instead of ten?
—
why
sixteen, if
you
You like
do you cast the iron?
on a workman's anvil; make ironlace like this of Verona, every link of it swinging loose like a knight's chain mail then you may have some joy of it afterwards, and pride and say you knew the cunning of a man's
Forge
it
in the fresh air,
:
;
But I think it is pay that you want, not work and it is very true that pretty iron-work like that does not pay ; but it is pretty, and it might even be entertaining, if you right hand.
made see, all
those leaves at the top of
it
(which
are, as far as I
can
only artichoke, and not very well done) in the likeness of
the beautiful leaves
you could
find, till
you knew them
all
;
FOES CLAVIGERA.
bj
23
" Wasted time and hammer-strokes," say you
heart.
?
A wise people like the
English will have nothing but spikes and, besides, the spikes are highly needful, so many of the ''
wise people being thieves."
Yes, that
is
so; and, therefore, in
calculating the annual cost of keeping your thieves,
you must
always reckon, not only the cost of the spikes that keep them in, but of the spikes that keep them out. But how if, instead of flat rough spikes, you put triangular polished ones,
commonly
called bayonets; and instead of the perpendicular put perpendicular men ? What is the cost to you then, of your railing, of which you must feed the idle bars daily? Costly enough, if it stays quiet. But how, if it begin to
bars,
march and countermarch? and apply
And now note
this that follows ;
its
it is
spikes horizontally?
of vital importance to
you.
There
are, practically,
labor going on
two absolutely opposite kinds of
among men,
forever.*
* I do not mean that there are no other kinds, nor that well-paid labor must necessarily be nnprodiictive. I hope to see much done, some day, for j^ISt pay, and wholly productive. But these, named in the text, are the two opposite extremes; and, in actual life, hitherto, the largest means have been usually spent in mischief,
and the most useful work done for the worst pay.
FOES CLAVIGERA.
24
The
first,
labor supported by Capital, producing noth-
ing.
The
second, labor unsupported
by
Capital, producing all
things.
Take two simple and
A
little
precise instances on a small scale.
while since, I was paying a
visit in Ireland,
and
chanced to hear an account of the pleasures of a picnic party, who had gone to see a waterfall. There was of course ample lunch, feasting on the grass, and basketsful of fragments taken up afterwards. Then the company, feeling themselves dull, gave the fragments that remained to the attendant ragged boys, on condition that they should " pull each other's hair." Here, you see, is, in the most accurate sense, employment of food, or capital, in the support of entirely unproductive labor.
Next, for the second kind. I live at the top of a short but rather steep hill; at the bottom of which, every day, all the year round, but especially in frost, coal-wagons get stranded, being economically provided with the smallest
num-
ber of horses that can get them along on level ground. The other day, when the road, frozen after thaw, was at the worst,
my
assistant, the
engraver of that bit of iron-
work on the 23d page, was coming up
here, and found three
coal-wagons at a lock, helpless; the drivers, as usual, explaining Political
Economy
to the horses,
by beating them
over the heads.
There were half a dozen fellows besides, out of work, or My enstanding by, looking on. not caring to be in it
—
graver put his shoulder to a wheel, (at least his hand to a They didn't spoke,) and called on the idlers to do as much. seem to have thought of such a thing, but were ready enough
when
called on.
"
And we went up
screaming," said Mr.
Burgess.
Do you
suppose that was one whit less proper
human work
than going up a hill against a battery, merely because, in that case, half of the men would have gone down, screaming,
FOES CLAVIGEEA. instead of up; and those
who
25
got up would have done no good
at the top?
But observe the two opposite kinds of labor. The first by Capital, and producing ^Nothing. The not having second, unsupported by any Capital whatsoever, goodwill, tool, called, mere but by so much as a stick for a
lavishly supported
—
—
out of the vast void of the world's Idleness, and producing the
moving a weight of fuel some where it was wanted, and sparing
definitely profitable result of
distance towards the place
the strength of overloaded creatures.
Observe further. The labor producing no useful result was demoralizing. All such labor is. The labor producing useful result was educational in its influence on the temper.
And
the
first
crying out for,
And little
it is
All such labor
is.
condition of education, the thing you are all is
being put to wholesome and useful work. it, too; you need very
nearly the last condition of
more;
but, as things go, there will yet be difficulty in
getting that.
As
things have hitherto gone, the difficulty
has been to avoid getting the reverse of that. For, during the last eight hundred years, the upper classes of Europe have been one large Picnic Party.
Most of them
have been religious also; and in sitting down, by companies, upon the green grass, in parks, gardens, and the like, have considered themselves commanded into that position by Divine authority, and fed with bread from Heaven: of which they duly considered it proper to bestow the fragments in support, and the tithes in tuition, of the poor. But, without even such small cost, they might have taught the poor many beneficial things. In some places they have taught them manners, which is already much. They might have cheaply taught them merriment also: dancing and
—
singing, for instance.
The young English
ladies
who
sit
nightly to be instructed, themselves, at some cost, in melodies
consumption of La Traviata, and the damJuan, might have taught every girl peasant in
illustrative of the
nation of
Don
England
to join in costless choirs of innocent song.
Here
— FORS CLAVIGERA.
26
and there, perhaps, a gentleman might have been found able to teach his peasantry some science and art. Science and fine art don't pay; but they cost little.
Tithes
— not of the
come of the country, but of the income, say, of nay, probably the vide drugs for the
founded lovely
And
village.
its
in-
brewers
sum devoted annually by England to proadulteration of its own beer, would have
—
museums, and perfect libraries, in every here and there an English churchman had
little if
been found (such
as
Dean
Stanley) willing to explain to
own cathedral, and to them and, on warm Sundays, when they were too sleepy to attend to anything more proper to tell them a story about some of the people who had built it, or lay buried in it we perhaps might have been quite as religious as we are, and yet need not now have been
peasants the sculpture of his and their
read
its
black-letter inscriptions for
—
;
—
offering prizes for competition in art schools, nor lecturing with tender sentiment on the inimitableness of the v;orks of
Era Angelico. These things the great Picnic Party might have taught One without cost, and with amusement to themselves. amused thing, at least, they were bound to teach, whether it them or not; how, day by day, the daily bread they expected their village children to pray to God for, might be earned in accordance with the laws of God. This they might have taught, not only without cost, but with great gain. One thing only they have taught, and at considerable cost. They have spent four hundred millions * of pounds here in England within the last twenty years how much in Erance and Germany, I will take some pains to ascertain for you, and with this initial outlay of capital, have taught the peasants of Europe to pull each other's hair. "With this result, I7th January, 1871, at and around the
—
I
—
—
* £992,740,328, in seveBteen years, say the working men of Burnley, in their address just issued an excellent address in its way, and full of very fair arithmetic if its facts are all right; only I don't see, myself, how, " from fifteen to twenty-five millions per annum," make nine hundred and ninety-two millions in seven-
— —
teen years.
— 27
FORS CLAVIGERA. chief palace of their
own
pleasures,
and the chief
city of
their delights:
" Each demolished house has
its
own legend
of sorrow, of
and horror; each vacant doorway speaks to the eye, and almost to the ear, of hasty flight, as armies or fire came of weeping women and trembling children running away in awful fear, abandoning the home that saw their birth, the of startled men seizing quickly under old house they loved pain,
—
—
each arm their most valued goods, and rushing, heavily laden, after their wives and babes, leaving to hostile hands "When evening falls, the the task of burning all the rest.
wretched outcasts, worn wuth fatigue and tears, reach VerGermain, or some other place outside the range of fire, and there they beg for bread and shelter, homeless, And this, remember, has foodless, broken with despair. been the fate of something like a hundred thousand people during the last four months. Versailles alone has about fifteen thousand such fugitives to keep alive, all ruined, all hopeless, all vaguely asking the grim future what still worse Daily Telegraph, Jan. fate it may have in store for them." sailles, St.
17th, 1871.
That
is
the result round their pleasant city, and this within and practical one: let us keep, for the
their industrious
reference of future ages, a picture of domestic
life,
out of
the streets of London in her commercial prosperity, founded on the eternal laws of Supply and Demand, as applied by the
modern "
A
Capitalist:
father in the last stage of consumption
—two daugh-
ters nearly marriageable with hardly sufficient rotting cloth-
ing to
'
cover their shame.'
The rags
that
hang around
naked upon which they can sit. They have in the room.
their attenuated frames flutter in strips against their legs.
They have no
stool or chair
Their father occupies the only stool no employment by which they can earn even a pittance.
— rORS CLAVIGEEA.
28
They are at home starving on a half-chance meal a day, and The walls are bare, hiding their raggedness from the world. there is one bed in the room, and a bundle of dirty rags are The dying father will shortly follow the dead it. mother; and when the parish coffin incloses his wasted form, and a pauper's grave closes above him, what shall be his daughters' lot? This is but a type of many other homes in the district: dirt, misery, and disease alone flourish in that Fever and smallpox rage,' as the wretched neighborhood. inhabitants say, next door, and next door, and over the way, upon
'
'
and next door to that, and further down.' The living, dying, and dead are all huddled together. The houses have no ventilation, the back yards are receptacles for all sorts of filth and rubbish, the old barrels or vessels that contain the supply of water are thickly coated on the sides with slime, and there is an undisturbed .deposit of mud at the bottom. There is no mortuary house the dead lie in the dogholes where they breathed their last, and add to the contagion which spreads through the neighborhood." Pall Mall Gazette, January Tth, 1871, quoting the Builder.
—
As
I was revising this sheet,
of last month,
One
— two
slips
—on the evening
of the 20th
of paper were brought to me.
contained, in consecutive paragraphs, an extract from
the speech of one of the. best and kindest of our public men to the " Liberal Association " at Portsmouth; and an account of the performances of the 35-ton
gun
called the "
Wooland 130
wich infant," which is fed with 700-pound shot, pounds of gunpowder at one mouthful; not at all like the Wapping infants, starving on a half-chance meal a day. " The gun was fired with the most satisfactory result," nobody being hurt, and nothing damaged but the platform, while the shot passed through the screens in front at the rate of 1,303 feet per second: and it seems, also, that the Woolwich infant has not seen the light too soon. For Mr. Cowper-Temple, in the preceding paragraph, informs the Liberals of Portsmouth, that in consequence of our amiable
29
FORS CLAVIGERA. neutrality "
we must contemplate the contingency of a comcoming from the ports of Prussia, Russia, and America, and making an attack on England." Contemplating myself these relations of Russia, Prussia, Woolwich, and Wapping, it seems to my uncommercial mind merely like another case of iron railings thieves outside, and nothing to steal within. But the second slip of paper announced approaching help in a peaceful direction. It was the prospectus of the Boardmen's and General Advertising Co-operative Society, which invites, from the " generosity of the public, a necessary small preliminary sum," and, " in bined
fleet
—
sum
addition to the above, a small
members
of
money by way
of
up in the profitable business of walking about London between two boards. Here is at last found for us, then, it appears, a line of life! At the West End, lounging about the streets, with a wellmade back to one's coat, and front to one's shirt, is usually capital," to set the
of the society
thought of as not much in the way of business; but, doubtless, to lounge at the East End about the streets, with one Lie pinned to the front of you, and another to the back of you, will pay, in time, only with proper preliminary expendi-
My
ture of capital.
friends, I repeat
not think you could contrive some
—yourselves?
little
my
question: Do you method of employing
for truly I think the Seraphic Doctors are
(if ever their wits had a beginning). Tradesmen are beginning to find it difficult to live by lies of their own and workmen will not find it much easier to live, by walking about, flattened between other people's. Think over it. On the first of March, I hope to ask you
nearly at their wits' end
;
to read a little history
with
world's time, seen truly,
is
me
;
perhaps
also,
but one long and
because the
fitful April, in
—
which every day is All Pools' day, we may continue our studies in that month; but on the first of May, you shall consider with me what you can do, or let me, if still living, those of you, at least, who tell you what I know you can do
—
will
promise
—
three things:
(with the help of the three strong Fates), these
FOES CLAVIGERA.
30 1.
To do your own work
well,
whether
it
be for
life
or
death. 2.
To help
other people at theirs,
when you
can,
and seek
avenge no injury. 3. To be sure you can obev scood laws before you seek to alter bad ones. _lelieve me,
to
Your
faithful friend,
JOTIX
KUSKIK
LETTER
in. ;
My
ENMAKK Hill, ^'* ^^''^^' ^«^^-
Friends,
We are to read—with your leave—some
history to-day;
the leave, however, will perhaps not willingly be given, for
you may think that of late you have read enough history, or too much, in Gazettes of morning and evening. No; you have read, and can read, no history in these. Reports of and if any journal would limit itself daily events, yes; to statements of well-sifted fact, making itself not a " news "paper, but an "olds "paper, and giving its statements tested and true, like old wine, as soon as things could be
—
known
accurately; choosing also, of the
many
things that
might be known, those which it was most vital to know, and summing thein in few words of pure English, I cannot say whether it would ever pay well to sell it; but I am sure it would pay well to read it, and to read no other. But even so, to know only what was happening day by day, would not be to read history. What happens now is but the momentary scene of a great play, of which you can understand nothing without some knowledge of the former action. And of that, so great a play is it, you can at best understand little; yet of history, as of science, a little, well known, will serve you much, and a little, ill known, will do you fatally
—
the contrary of service.
Eor instance, all your journals will be full of talk, for months to come, about whose fault the war was; and you yourselves, as you begin to feel its deadly recoil on your own interests, or as you comprehend better the misery it has brought on others, will be looking about more and more restlessly for someone to accuse of it. That is because you don't
know
the law of Fate, nor the course of history. 31
It
is
the
— FOES CLAVIGEEA.
32
law of Fate that we shall live, in part, by our own efforts, but in the greater part, by the help of others; and that we shall also die, in part, for our
own
faults; but in the greater
Do you
part for the faults of others.
suppose (to take the
thing on the small scale in which you can
test it) that those
seven children torn into pieces out of their sleep, in the last night of the siege of Paris,* had sinned above all the children in Paris, or above yours? or that their parents had sinned
more than you?
Do you
think the thousands of soldiers,
German and French, who have died in agony, and of women who have died of grief, had sinned above all other soldiers, or mothers, or girls, there and here?
The thing apBut you think it was at Or Count least the Emperor Napoleon's fault, if not theirs ? Bismarck's? 'No; not at all. The Emperor Napoleon had no more to do with it than a cork on the top of a wave has Count Bismarck had very little with the toss of the sea. Count sent for my waiter, last with When the do it. to It
was not their
fault,
but their Fate.
pointed to them by the Third Fors.
July, in the village of Lauterbrunnen,
among
the Alps,
knapsack and dethat the waiter then and there packed parted, to be shot, if need were, leaving my dinner unserved (as has been the case with many other people's dinners since) depended on things much anterior to Count Bismarck. his
—
The two men who had most
to
answer for in the mischief of
the matter were St. Louis and his brother,
who
lived in the
middle of the thirteenth century. One, among the very best of men; and the other, of all that I ever read of, the worst. The good man, living in mistaken effort, and dying miserably, to the ruin of his country; the
umphant good
bad man living
in tri-
fortune, and dying peaceably, to the ruin of
Such were their Fates, and ours. I am not you of them, nor anything about the French war to-day; and you have been told, long ago, (only you would not listen, nor believe,) the root of the modern German power in that rough father of Frederick, who " yearly
many
countries.
going to
tell
—
* Daily Telegraph, 30tli January, 1871.
FOES CLAVIGERA.
made is
his
33
country richer, and this not in money alone (which
of very uncertain value, and sometimes has no value at
all,
and even
veracity,
less),
but in frugality, diligence, punctuality,
—the grand fountains from which money,
real values
and
valors, spring for
band, he seeks his fellow
Happy
As
men.
among Kings,
and
a l^ation's
all
Hus-
ancient and modern.
the nation which gets such a Husband, once in the
The Nation,
half thousand years.
as
foolish
wives and
Nations do, repines and grudges a good deal, its weak whims and will being thwarted very often but it advances steadily, ;
with consciousness or not, in the way of well-doing; and, after long times, the harvest of this diligent sowing becomes manifest to the Nation, and to all Nations." * No such harvest is sowing for you, Freemen and In-
—
dependent Electors of Parliamentary representatives,
as
you
think yourselves.
Freemen, indeed!
You
are slaves, not to masters of any
strength or honor; but to the idlest talkers at that floral end
Nay, to countless meaner masters than they. For though, indeed, as early as the year 1102, it was decreed in a council at St. Peter's, Westminster, " that no man for the future should presume to carry on the wicked of Westminster bridge.
trade of selling
men
in the markets, like brute beasts,
hitherto hath been the
no
which
common custom of England," under-seWing men in markets
the
wicked trade of has lasted to this day; producing conditions of slavery differing from the ancient ones only in being starved instead of fullfed: and besides this, a state of slavery unheard of among the nations till now, has arisen vnth us. In all former slaveries, Egyptian, Algerine, Saxon, and American, the slave's complaint has been of compulsory wor'k. But the modern Politico-Economic slave is a new and far more less
injured species, condemned to Compulsory Idleness, for fear
he should spoil other people's trade; the beautifully logical condition of the national Theory of Economy in this matter being that,
if
you are a shoemaker,
* Carlyle's Frederick,
Book
it is
a
IV., chap.
law of Heaven iii.
!
34
FORS CLAVIGERA.
must
that you
sell
your goods under their
price, in order to
destroy the trade of other shoemakers; but
if
shoemaker, and are going shoeless and lame,
Heaven
you are not a a law of
it is
must not cut yourself a bit of cowhide, to put between your foot and the stones, because that would that you
interfere with the total trade of shoemaking.
Which
theory, of
the wonderful
all
—
We will wait a note I
till April to consider of it meantime, here is have received from Mr. Alsager A. Hill, who having ;
been unfortunately active
in organizing that
the
designed,
advertising
business,
loveliest principle of doing
—
new
effort in
on this nothing that will be perilously as
it
seems,
^was hurt by my manner of mention of it in the number of Fors. I offered accordingly to print any form of remonstrance he would furnish me with, if laconic enough and he writes to me, " The intention of the Board-
productive last
;
men's Society to
'
is
not, as the writer of
find a line of life
by means of
'
Fors Clavigera suggests,
for able-bodied laborers, but simply,
co-operation, to give
them the
remunerative
calling.
See Rule 12.
to start the organization ships,
and
is
fullest benefit of
humble but
their labor whilst they continue a very
The
still
capital asked for
essential in all industrial partner-
in so poor a class of labor as that of street board-
carrying could not be supplied by the respect to the
'
lies
'
men
themselves.
With
alleged to be carried in front and be-
it is rather hard measure to say that mere announcements of public meetings or places of entertainments (of which street notices chiefly consist) are necessarily false-
hind,
hoods."
To which, found
I have only to reply that I never said the newly-
was meant for able-bodied persons. The between able and unable-bodied men is entirely indefinite. There are all degrees of ability for all things; and a man who can do anything, however little, should be made to do that little usefully. If you can carry about a board with a bill on it, you can carry, not about, but where line of life
distinction
35
FOES CLAVIGERA. it is
wanted, a board without a bill on it; which is a much exercise of your ability. Respecting the general
more useful
probity, and historical or descriptive accuracy, of advertise-
ments, and their function in modern economy, I will inquire
You see I use none for this book, and shall none for any of my books; having grave objection even to the very small minority of advertisements which I am correcting this sheet in the are approximately true. " Crown and Thistle " inn at Abingdon, and under my winin another place.
in future use
dow
is a shrill-voiced person, slowly progressive, crying, " Soles, three pair for a shillin'." In a market regulated by
reason and order, instead of demand and supply, the soles would neither have been kept long enough to render such
advertisement of them necessary, nor permitted, after their inexpedient preservation, to be advertised.
Of
all
attainable liberties, then, be sure
leave to be useful.
for
first to strive
Independence you had better cease to
you are dependent not only on every act of people whom you never heard of, who are living round you, but on every past act of what has been dust for a thousand years. So also, does the course of a thousand years to come, depend upon the little perishing strength that is in you. Little enough, and perishing, often without reward, howUnderstand that. Virtue does not conever well spent. sist in doing what will be presently paid, or even paid at all, talk of, for
to you, the virtuous person. It will be paid, virtue, is that
it
may
so chance; or
it, if
may
vital condition of
shall be content in its
rather that the pay of it is
It
some day; but the
own
not.
it,
as
deed, and desirous
any, should be for others; just as
also the vital condition of vice to be content in its
deed, and desirous that the pay thereof,
if
own
any, should be to
others.
You have
probably heard of
St.
Louis before now: and
perhaps also that he built the Sainte Chapelle of Paris, of
which you
may have
seen that I wrote the other day to the
Telegraph, as being the most precious piece of Gothic in !N'ortliern
Europe; but you are not likely
to
have knox\Ti that
— FOES CLAVIGEBA.
36 the spire of
it
was Tenterden steeple over again, and the
cause of fatal sands many, quick, and slow, and above all, of the running of these in the last hour-glass of France for that ;
spire,
and others
like
it,
subordinate, have acted ever since as
lightning-rods, in a reverse
heaven innocently
to
manner; carrying, not the
fire
of
earth, but electric fire of earth in-
nocently to heaven, leaving us
all,
down
here, cold.
The
best virtue and heart-fire of France (not to say of England,
who
building her towers for the most part with four pinna-
cles instead of one, in a
them
somewhat quadrumanous type,
finds
have spent themselves for these past six centuries in running up those steeples and off them, nobody knows where, leaving a " holy Republic " as residue at the bottom; helpless, clay-cold, and croaking, a habitation of frogs, which poor Garibaldi fights for, vainly raging less apt as conductors),
against the ghost of St. Louis. It is of English ghosts, however, that I would fain tell you somewhat to-day; of them, and of the land they haunt, and know still for theirs. For hear this to begin with " While a map of France or Germany in the eleventh century is useless for modern purposes, and looks like the picture of another region, a map of England proper in the reign of Victoria hardly differs at all from a map of England proper So says, very in the reign of William " (the Conqueror). Are truly, Mr. Freeman in his History of the Conquest. there any of you who care for this old England, of which the map has remained unchanged for so long? I believe you would care more for her, and less for yourselves, except as her faithful children, if you knew a little more about her; and especially more of what she has been. The difficulty, indeed, at any time, is in finding out what she has been; for that which people usually call her history is not hers at all; but that of her Kings, or the tax-gatherers employed by them, which is as if people were to call Mr. Gladstone's history, or Mr. Lowe's, yours and mine. But the history even of her Kings is worth reading. You remember, I said, that sometimes in church it might keep :
37
FORS CLAVIGERA.
you awake to be told a little of it. For a simple instance, you have heard probably of Absalom's rebellion against his father, and of David's agony at his death, until from very weariness you have ceased to feel the power of the story. You would not feel it less vividly if you knew that a far more fearful sorrow, of the like kind, had happened to one of your
own Kings, perhaps the best we have in all. Not one only, but three of his
had, take
him
for all
sons, rebelled against
The who should have been King after him, was pardoned, not once, but many times pardoned wholly, with rejoicing him, and were urged into rebellion by their mother. Prince,
—
over him as over the dead alive, and set at his father's right
hand
in the
kingdom but ;
all in vain.
Hard and
treacherous
nothing wins him, nothing warns, nothing to France, and wars at last alike against
to the heart's core,
binds.
He
flies
till, falling sick through mingled giiilt, and shame, and rage, he repents idly as the fever-fire withers His father sends him the signet ring from his finger him.
father and brother,
The Prince lies down in token of one more forgiveness. upon a heap of ashes with a halter round his neck, and so dies. When his father heard it he fainted away three times, and then broke out into bitterest crying and tears. This, you would have thought enough for the Third dark Fate to have appointed for a man's sorrows. It was little to that which was to come. His second son, who was now his Prince of England, conspired against him, and pursued his father from At last, even his youngest city to city, in I^orman France. son, best beloved of all, abandoned him, and went over to his enemies.
This was enough.
commanded
its
own
Between him and peace.
He
his children
Heaven
sickened and died of grief
on the 6th of July, 1189. The son who had killed him, " repented " now; but there Perhaps the dead do could be no signet ring sent to him. Men say, as he stood by his father's corpse, not forgive. One child only had that the blood burst from his nostrils. been faithful to him, but he was the son of a girl whom he
— FOES CLAVIGEEA.
38
had loved much, and being a
much
as
he should not; his Queen, therefore, and strict upon proprieties,
older person,
poisoned her; nevertheless poor Rosamond's son never failed
him; won a battle for him in England, which, in all human kingdom; and was made a bishop, and turned out a bishop of the best. You know already a little about the Prince who stood unforgiven (as it seemed) by his father's body. He, also, had to forgive, in his time; but only a stranger's arrow shot not those reversed " arrows in the hand of the giant," by which probability, saA^ed his
—
Men
his father died.
called
him
" Lion-heart," not untruly;
and the English, as a people, have prided themselves somewhat ever since on having, every man of them, the heart of a lion; without inquiring particularly either what sort of heart a lion has, or whether to have the heart of a lamb might not sometimes be more to the purpose. But it so happens that the name was very justly given to this prince and I want you to study his character somewliat, with me, because in all our history there is no truer representative of one great species of the British squire, under all the three significances of the name; for this Bichard of ours was beyond most of his fellows, a Bider and a Shieldbearer; and beyond all men of his day, a Carver; and in disposition and wn-reasonable exercise ;
of intellectual power, typically a Squire altogether. E^ote of
him
first,
his people (provided
then, that he verily desired the good of it
could be contrived without any check
own humor), and
that he saw his way to it a great deal any of your squires do now. Here are some of his laws for you " E[aving set forth the great inconveniences arising from the diversity of weights and measures in different parts of the kingdom, he, by a law, commanded all measures of corn, and other dry goods, as also of liquors, to be exactly the same in all his dominions; and that the rim of each of these measures of his
clearer than
:
should be a circle of iron. all cloth to
By
another law, he
commanded
be woven two yards in breadth within the
and of equal goodness
in all parts;
and that
all
cloth
lists,
which
— 39
FOES CLAVIGERA.
did not answer this description should be seized and burnt.
He
enacted, further, that
be
exactly
all the coin of the kingdom should same weight and fineness; that no Christian should take any interest for money lent; and, to
of
—
the
prevent the extortions of the Jews, he commanded that
all
compacts between Christians and Jews should be made in the presence of witnesses, and the conditions of them put in So, you see, in Coeur-de-Lion's day, it was not writing." esteemed of absolute necessity to put agreements between Christians in writing! Which if it were not now, you know we might save a great deal of money, and discharge some of our workmen round Temple Bar, as well as from Woolwich Dockyards. Note that bit about interest of money also for In the next place observe that this King future reference. had great objection to thieves at least to any person whom
—
he clearly comprehended to be a thief. He was the inventor of a mode of treatment which I believe the Americans among whom it has not fallen altogether into disuse do not gratefully enough recognize as a Monarchical institution. By the last of the laws for the government of his fleet in " That whosoever his expedition to Palestine, it is decreed, is convicted of theft shall have his head shaved, melted pitch poured upon it, and the feathers from a pillow shaken over it, that he may be known; and shall be put on shore on the first land which the ship touches." And not only so; he even objected to any theft by misrepresentation or deception, for being evidently particularly interested, like Mr. Mill, in that cloth manufacture, and having made the above law about the breadth of the web, which has caused it to be spoken of ever since as " Broad Cloth," and besides, for better preserva-
—
—
tion of its breadth, enacted that the Ell shall be of the
length iron
ail
over the kingdom, and that
— —that every shop-boy should
fenses
it
shall be
same
made
of
(so that Mr. Tennyson's provision for National de-
strike with his cheating
yard-wand home, would be mended much by the substitution of King Richard's honest ell-wand, and for once with advisKing Richard finally able encouragement to the iron trade)
—
— FOBS CLAVIGEBA.
40
— " That
same goodness in the and that no merchant in any part of the kingdom of England shall stretch before his shop or booth a red or black cloth, or any other thing by which the sight of buyers is frequently deceived in the choice of good cloth." These being Richard's rough and unreasonable, chancing declares
middle as at the
it
shall be of the
sides,
nevertheless, being wholly honest, to be wholly right, notions
of business, the next point you are to note in him is his unreasonable good humor; an eminent character of English Squires; a very lovable one; and available to himself and
others in
many
many
think
it.
ways, but not altogether so exemplary as If you are unscrupulously resolved, when-
own way,
you are in a position of life wherein you can get a good deal of it, and if you have pugnacity enough to enjoy fighting wdth anybody who will not give it to you, there is little reason why you should ever be out of humor, unless indeed your way is a broad one, wherein you are like to be opposed in force. To be first in battle, Richard's way was a very narrow one. (generally obtaining that main piece of his will without question; once only worsted, by a French knight, and then, not ever you can get your
at all
good-humoredly;) to be
to take it; if
first in
therefore contending with his father,
recognized command who was both in wisdom
and acknowledged place superior; but scarcely contending at all with his brother John, who was as definitely and deeply beneath him; good-humored unreasonably, while he was killing his father, the best of kings, and letting his brother rule unresisted, who was among the worst; and only proposing for his object in life to enjoy himself everywhere in a chivalrous, poetical, and pleasantly animal manner, as a strong man always may. What should he have been out of humor for? That he brightly and bravely lived through his captivity is much indeed to his honor; but it was his point of honor to be A bright and brave not at all to take care of his kingdom. king who cared for that, would have got thinner and sadder ;
in prison.
And
it
remains true of the English squire to this day, that,
— 41
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
kingdom is given him and not at all that the sunshine or valor in him is meant to be of use to his kingdom. But the next point you have to note in Richard is indeed a very noble quality, and true English; he always does as much of his work as he can with his own hands. He was not in any wise a king who would sit by a windmill to watch his son and his men at work, though brave kings have done so. As much as might be, of whatever had to be done, he would steadfastly do from his own shoulder; his main tool being an old Greek one, and the working God Vulcan's the clearing ax. ^Yhen that was no longer needful, and nothing would serve but spade and trowel, still the king was foremost; and after the weary retreat to Ascalon, when he found the place " so completely ruined and deserted, that it afforded neither food, lodging nor protection," nor any other sort of capital, forthwith, 20th January, 1192 his army and he set to work to repair it; a three months' business, of incessant toil, " from which the king himself was not exempted, but wrought with greater ardor than any common laborer." The next point of his character is very English also, but less honorably so. I said but now that he had a great objection to anybody whom he clearly comprehended to be a thief. But he had great difficulty in reaching anything like an abstract definition of thieving, such as would include every method of it, and every culprit, which is an incapacity very common to many of us to this day. For instance, he carried off a great deal of treasure which belonged to his father, from Chinon (the royal treasury-town in France), and fortified his owti castles in Poitou with it; and when he wanted money to go crusading with, sold the royal castles, manors, woods, and forests, and even the superiority of the Crown of England over the kingdom of Scotland, which his father had wrought hard for, for about a hundred thousand pounds. ISTay, the highest honors and most important offices become venal under him, and from a Princess's dowry to a for the most part, he thinks that his
that he
may
be bright and brave
;
—
—
Saracen caravan, nothing comes
much
amiss; not but that he
— FOES CLAVIGEEA.
42 gives generously also,
—whole
main
when he
ships at a time
is
in
getting and spending,
the humor; but never saving; which covetousness is at last the death of him. For hearing that a considerable treasure of ancient coins and medals has been found in the lands of Vidomar, Viscount of Limoges, King Richard sends forthwith to claim this waif The Viscount offers him part only, presumably for himself. his
practice
is
having an antiquarian turn of mind. Whereupon Richard loses his temper, and marches forthwith with some Brabant men, mercenaries, to besiege the Viscount in his castle of Chains; proposing, first, to possess himself of the antique and otherwise interesting coin in the castle, and then, on his general principle of objection to thieves, to hang the garrison.
The
up the
garrison, on this, offer to give
may march
off
will serve but
antiquities if they
themselves; but Richard declares that nothing
they must
all
"Whereon the siege
be hanged.
proceeding by rule, and Richard looking, as usual, into mat-
own eyes, and going too near the walls, an arrow well meant, though half spent, pierces the strong,
ters with his
white shoulder,
—the shield-bearing
one, carelessly forward,
above instead of under shield; or perhaps, rather, when he was afoot, shieldless, engineering. He finishes his work, however, though the scratch teases him carries his castle,
whom
archer, of, for
and duly hangs
the well-spent arrow. it
plans his assault,
his garrison, all
in his royal, unreasoning
and the head of
;
But he
way he
pulls
it
but the
thinks better
out impatiently,
stays in the fair flesh; a little surgery fol-
lows not so skillful as the archery of those days, and the lion ;
heart
is
appeased
Sixth April, 1199.
We will pursue our historical studies, if you please, in that month
of the present year. But I wish, in the meantime, you would observe, and meditate on, the quite Anglican
character of Richard, to his death. It tlie
might have been remarked to him, on
his projecting
expedition to Chains, that there were not a few
coins,
and other
antiquities, to be
found
in his
Roman
own kingdom
— 43
FOKS CLAVIGEBA. of England, without fighting for them, bnt
labor and other innocuous means;
new money was
by mere spade
— that even the brightest
obtainable from his loyal people in almost
any quantity for civil asking; and that the same loyal people, encouraged and protected, and above all, kept clean-handed, in the arts, by their king, might produce treasures more covetable than any antiquities. " ISTo; " Richard would have answered, " that is all hypothetical and visionary; here is a pot of coin presently to be had no doubt about it inside the walls here: let me once get hold of that, and then,"
—
—
—
That
is
what we English
—
call
being " Practical."
Believe me, Faithfully yours,
JOHN RUSKIK
—
LETTER
lY.
Denmark
My
It cannot but be pleasing to us to
we
Hill,
^'* ^p'^'"'- i^^^-
Friends,
reflect, this dav, that if
are often foolish enough to talk English without under-
standing it, we are often mse enough to talk Latin without knowing it. For this month retains its pretty Roman name, and means the month of Opening; of the light in the davs, and the life in the leaves, and of the voices of birds, and of the hearts of men. And being the month of Manifestation, it is pre-eminently the month of Fools, for under the beatific influences of moral sunshine, or Education, the Fools always come out
—
first.
But what
upon, this spring mornsome kinds of education which may be described, not as moral sunshine, but as moral moonshine; and that, under these. Fools come out both First and Last. ing,
is,
is
less pleasing to reflect
that there are
We
have, it seems, now set our opening hearts much on one point, that we will have education for all men and women now, and for all boys and girls that are to be. l^othing, indeed, can be more desirable, if only we determine also what kind of education we are to have. It is taken for this
—
granted that any education must be good; that the more of it we get, the better; that bad education only means little education; and that the worst thing we have to fear is getting none, Alas, that is not at all so. Getting no education is by no means the worst thing that can happen to us. One of the pleasantest friends I ever had in my life was a Savoyard guide, who could only read with difficulty, and write scarcely intelligibly, and by great effort. He knew no language but 44
— 45
FORS CLAVIGERA. his
own
—no
science, except as
served him to
till
much
practical agriculture as
But he was, without exception,
his iields.
one of the happiest persons, and, on the whole, one of the
have ever known: and after lunch, when he had had Savoy wine, he would generally, as we walked up some quiet valley in the afternoon light, give me a little lecture on philosophy; and after I had fatigued and provoked him with less cheerful views of the world than his own, he would fall back to my servant behind me, and console himself with a shrug of the shoulders, and a whispered " Le pauvre enfant, il ne sait pas vivre! " (" The poor child, he best, I
his half bottle of
—
know how
doesn't ISTo,
my
to live.")
friends, believe
education at
all
to be feared
is
that
me,
it
we have most
is
not the going without
The
to dread.
getting a bad one.
There are
real thing
all
sorts
The children
good, and very good; bad, and very bad.
rich people often get the worst education that
is
to
of
be had for
money; the children of the poor often get the best for nothing. And you have really these two things now to decide for yourselves in England before you can take one quite safe practical step in the matter, namely, first, what a good education is; and, secondly,
What
it
is?
who
is
likely to give
it
you.
"Everybody knows that," I suppose you you answer. " Of course to be taught to
—
would most of read, and write, and cast accounts; and to learn geography, and geology, and astronomy, and chemistry, and German, and French, and Italian, and Latin, and Greek and the ab-
Aryan language." Well, when you had learned all that, what would you do next? "ISText? Why then we should be perfectly happy, original
and make as much money
as ever
we
turn out our toes before any company."
liked,
I
and we would
am
not sure my-
you can be, of any one of these three things. At least, as to making you very happy, I know something, myself, of nearly all these matters not much, but still quite as much as most men, under the ordinary self, and I don't think
—
chances of
life,
with a fair education, are likely to get
to-
46
rORS CLAYIGEEA.
gether
—and I assure you the knowledge does not make me "When I was
boj I used to like seeing the were any spots on the sun; now I do, and am always frightened lest any more should come. When I was a boy, I used to care about pretty stones. I got some Bristol diamonds at Bristol, and some dog-tooth spar in Derbyshire; my whole collection had cost, perhaps, three half-crowns, and was worth considerably less; and I knew nothing whatever, rightly, about any single stone in it; could not even spell their names: but words cannot tell the joy they used to give me. ISTow, I have a collection of minerals worth perhaps from two to three thousand pounds; and I know more about some of them than most other people. But I am not a whit happier, either for my liappv at
sun
all.
a
I didn't know, then, there
rise.
—
knowledge, or possessions; for other geologists dispute theories,
to
am
and I
my
my
grievous indignation and discontentment;
miserable about
all
my
best specimens, because
Museum. No, I assure you, knowledge by itself will not make you happy; still less will it make you rich. Perhaps you thought I was writing carelessly when I told you, last month, " science did not pay." But you don't know what science is. You fancy it means mechanical art and so you have put a statue there are better in the British
;
of Science on the Holborn Viaduct, with a steam-engine regulator in
more
its
My
hands.
ingenious friends, science has no
making steam-engines than with making breeches; though she condescends to help you a little in such to do with
necessary (or
it
may
be, conceivably, in
times unnecessary) businesses.
both cases, some-
Science lives only in quiet
and with odd people, mostly poor. Mr. John Kepler, who is found by Sir Henry Wotton " in the picturesque green country by the shores of the Donau, in a
places,
for instance,
little
black tent in a
field,
convertible, like a windmill, to all
quarters, a camera-obscura, in fact.
]\[r.
John invents rude
toys, writes almanacs, practices medicine, for
good reasons, encouragement from the Holy Koman Empire and mankind being a pension of £18 a year, and that hardly ever his
FORS CLAVIGEKA. paid." *
That
is
what one gets by
47
star-gazing,
my
friends.
And yon got
my
cannot be simple enongh, even in April, to think I three thousand pounds'-worth of minerals by study-
Not
ing mineralogy? labor;
my
me by hard and many a sun-burnt vine-
they were earned for
so;
father's in England,
yard-dresser's in Spain. " What business had you, in your idleness, with their earnings then ? " you will perhaps ask. ISTone, it may be I will ;
tell
you
in a little while
to the point
But
now.
how you may it is
find that out;
to the point that
it is
not
you should ob-
serve I have not kept their earnings, the portion of them, at
That part of their gone to feed the miners in Cornwall, or on the Hartz mountains, and I have only got for myself a few pieces of glittering (not always that, but often unseemly) stone, which neither vine-dressers nor miners cared for which you yourselves would have to learn many hard words, much cramp mathematics, and useless chemistry, in order to care for; which, if ever you did care for, as I do, would most likely only make you envious of the British Museum, and occasionally uncomfortable if any harm happened to your dear stones. I have a piece of red oxide of copper, for instance, which grieves me poignantly by losing its color; and a crystal of sulphide of lead, with a chip in it, which causes me a great deal of concern in April because I see it then by the fresh least,
with which I bought minerals.
earnings
is all
;
—
;
sunshine.
My
oxide of copper and sulphide of lead you will not then
wisely envy me.
i^either,
probably, would you covet a
handful of hard brown gravel, with a rough pebble in it, whitish, and about the size of a pea; nor a few grains of apI was parently brass filings, with which the gravel is mixed. but a fool to give good money for such things, you think ? It may well be. I gave thirty pounds for that handful of gravel, and the miners who found it were ill-paid then and ;
it is
not clear to
best possible.
me
Shall
that this produce of their labor
we
consider of
* Carlyle, Frederick, vol.
i.
it,
p. 321
was the
with the help of the (first edition).
— FOES CLAVIGERA.
48
Cambridge Catechism? at the tenth page of which you will that Mr. Mill's definition of productive labor is " That which produces utilities fixed and embodied in ma-
find
terial objects."
This
is
very
fine
—indeed, superfine—English; but I
can,
make the meaning of the Greatest Thinker in Englittle more lucid for you by vulgarizing his terms.
perhaps,
land a " Object," you must always remember, is fine English for " Thing." It is a semi-Latin word, and properly means a thing " thrown in your way; " so that if you put " ion " to
We
the end of it, it becomes Objection. will rather say " Thing," if you have no objection " Mayou and I. terial " thing, then, of course, signifies something solid and
—
tangible.
It
is
A
very necessary for Political Economists
al-
word " material," lest people should suppose that there was any use or value in Thought or Knowledge, and other such immaterial objects.
ways
to insert this
"Embodied"
word; but superwould not be possible that a Utility should be disembodied, as long as it was in a material But when you wish to express yourself as thinking object. in a great manner, you may say as, for instance, when you are supping vegetable soup that your power of doing so conveniently and gracefully is " Embodied " in a spoon. " Fixed " is, I am afraid, rashly, as well as superfluously, It is conceivable introduced into his definition by Mr. Mill. that some Utilities may be also volatile, or planetary, even when embodied. But at last we come to the great word in fluous, because
is
a particular]}^ elegant
you know
it
—
the great definition
And
this
word, I
—" am
—
Utility."
sorry to say, puzzles
me most
of all;
for I never myself saw a Utility, either out of the body, or
in it, and should be much embarrassed one in either state.
But
it is
fortunate for us that
if
ordered to produce
all this
seraphic language,
reduced to the vulgar tongue, will become,
though fallen
and reduced in dimension, perfectly intelligible. The Greatest Thinker in England means by these beautiful
in dignity
— 49
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
jou that Productive labor is labor that proWhich, indeed, perhaps, you knew or, without the assistance of great thinkers, might have But if Mr. Mill had said so much, kno^vn, before now. " What simply, you might have been tempted to ask farther And as Mr. Mill things are useful, and what are not ? " does not know, nor any other Political Economist going, and as they therefore particularly wish nobody to ask them, words
to tell
duces a Useful Thing.
—
—
—
it is
convenient to say instead of " useful things," "
utili-
ties fixed and embodied in material objects," because that sounds so very like complete and satisfactory information, that one is ashamed, after getting it, to ask for any more.
But
it is
not, therefore, less discouraging that for the pres-
ent I have got no help towards discovering whether ful of gravel with the white pebble in
it
was worth
my handmy thirty
I am afraid it is not a useful thing to me. back of a drawer, locked up all the year round. I never look at it now, for I know all about it the only satisfaction I have for my money is knowing that nobody else can look at it; and if nobody else wanted to, I shouldn't even. have that. " What did you buy it for, then? " you will ask. Well, Fool, and wanted if you must have the truth, because I was a it. Other people have bought such things before me. The
pounds or
not.
It lies at the
:
white stone
is
a diamond, and the apparent brass filings are
gold dust; but, I admit, nobody ever yet wanted such things
who was
Only now, as I have candidly your questions, will you answer one of mine? If I hadn't bought it, what would you have had me do with my money? Keep that in the drawer instead? or at my banker's, till it grew out of thirty pounds into sixty and a hundred, in fulfillment of the law respecting seed sown in good ground? Doubtless, that would have been more meritorious for the time. But when I had got the sixty or the hundred pounds ^what should I have done with ihem? The question only all doubly and trebly serious; and the more, to me, becomes answered
in his right senses. all
—
—
50
FORS CLAVIGEKA.
because
when
I told yon last January
tliat
I had bought a
picture for a thousand pounds, permitting myself in that folly for
your advantage, as I thought, hearing that many
of you wanted art Patronage, and wished to live by painting,
—one ier,
of your own popular organs, the Liverpool Daily Courof February 9th, said, " it showed want of taste, of
—
and was " something like a mockery," to tell you so! I am not to buy pictures, therefore, it seems; you like to be kept in mines and tunnels, and occasionally blown hither and thither, or crushed flat, rather than live by painting, in good light, and with the chance of remaining all day in a whole and unextended skin? But what shall I buy, then, tact,"
—
with the next thirty pieces of gold I can scrape together? Precious things have been bought, indeed, and sold, before
now
for thirty pieces, even of silver, but with doubtful issue.
The
over-charitable person who,
was bought
to be killed at
but you won't have alms, I suppose, you are so independent, nor go into almshouses (and, truW, I did not much wonder, as I walked by the old church of Abingdon, a Sunday or two since, where the almshouses are set round the churchyard, and under the level of it, and with a cheerful view of it, except that the tombstones slightly block the light of the lattice-windows; with beautiful texts from Scripture over the doors, to remind the paupers still more emphatically that, highly blessed as they were, they were yet mortal) you won't go into almshouses; and all the clergy in London have been shrieking against almsgiving to the lower poor this whole winter long, till I am obliged, whenever I want to give anybody a penny, to look up and down the street first, to see if a clergyman's coming. Of course, I know I might buy as many iron railings as I please, and be praised; but Pve no room for them. I can't well burn more coals than I do, because of the blacks, which spoil my books; and the Americans won't let me buy &Tiy blacks alive, or else I would have some black dwarfs with parrots, such as one sees in the pictures of Paul Veronese. I should, of course, like myself. that price, indeed, advised the giving of alms
;
—
—
51
FORS CLAVIGERA.
above
buy a pretty white
all tilings, to
girl,
—
—
with a title only I haven't
and I could get great praise for doing that White girls come dear, even when one buys
money enough. them only like
The Duke of Bedford, inArc from the French, to burn, for only
coals, for fuel.
deed, bought Joan of
ten thousand pounds, and a pension of three hundred a year to the
Bastard of
—and
Vendome
would have
I could and
given that for her, and not burnt her; but one hasn't such a Will you, any of you, have the goodness
chance every day.
Mr. —beggars, clergymen, workmen, seraphic Mr. Fawcett, my own the Politico-Economic Professor University— challenge you, beseech you, and doctors,
or
I
I
to tell
me what
I
am
to
May; though
thought of doing
much a fool as any money or
so,
all
my money. my own poor
singly,
do with
I mean, indeed, to give
subject in
Mill,
of
you
opinion on the
I feel the more embarrassed in the
because, in this present April, I
know
am
so
whether I have got not. I know, indeed, that things go on at present as if I had; but it seems to me that there must be a mistake somewhere, and that some day it will be found out. For instance, I have seven thousand pounds in what we call the Funds or Founded things; but I am not comfortable about the Founding of them. All that I can see of them is a square bit of paper, with some ugly printing on it, and all that I know of them is that this bit of paper gives me a right to tax you every year, and make you pay me two hundred pounds out of your wages; which is very pleasant for me: but how long will you be pleased to do so? Suppose it should occur to you, any summer's day, that you had better not? AVhere would my seven thousand pounds be? In fact, where are they now? We call ourselves a rich people; but you see this seven thousand pounds of mine has no real exnot even to
clearly
—
istence; it only means that you, the workers, are poorer by two hundred pounds a year than you would be if I hadn't
got
it.
And
this is surely a
country to boast
of.
very odd kind of money for a
Well, then, besides
this,
I have a bit
of low land at Greenwich, which, as far as I see anything of
FOES CLAVIGERA.
52
all, but only mud and would be of as little handful of gravel in the drawer, if it were not that an ingenious person has found out that he can make chimney-pots of it; and, every quarter, he brings me fifteen pounds off the price of his chimney-pots, so that I am always sympathetically glad when there's a high wind, because then it, is
not
use to
I
money
me
as
at
;
my
know my ingenious friend's business is thriving. But supit should come into his head, in any less windy month
pose
than
he had better bring me none of the price even though he should go on, as I patiently, (and I always give him a glass of
this April, that
And
of his chimneys?
hope he will, wine when he brings
—
me
the fifteen pounds,)
—
is
this really
money of mine? And is the country any richer when anybody's chimney-pot is blown down in
to be called
because,
Greenwich, he must pay something extra, to me, before he can put it on again? Then, also, I have some houses in Marylebone, which though indeed very ugly and miserable, yet, so far as they are
beams and brick-bats put
might have you know, Mr. Mill says that people who build houses don't produce a commodity, but only do us a service. So I suppose my houses are not " utilities embodied in material objects " (and indeed they don't look much like it) but I know I have the right to keep anybody from living in them unless they pay me; only suppose some day the Irish faith, that people ought to be lodged for nothing, should become an English one also where would my monej^ be? AVhere is it now, except as a chronic abstraction from other people's earnings? So again, I have some land in Yorkshire some Bank " Stock " (I don't in the least know what that is) and the like; but whenever I examine into these possessions, I find they melt into one or another form of future taxation, and that I am always sitting (if I were w^orking I shouldn't mind, but I am only sitting) at the receipt of Custom, and a Pubactual
imagined
into shape, I
to be real property; only,
;
—
—
lican as well as a sinner.
ness further yet, I
am
And
—
then, to embarrass the busi-
quite at variance with other people
— FOES CLAVIGEEA.
53
about the place where this money, whatever
it is,
comes from.
The
Spectator, for instance, in its article of 25th June of last year, on Mr. Goschen's " lucid and forcible speech of Fridayweek," says that " the country is once more getting rich,
and the money is filtering downwards to the actual workers." But whence, then, did it filter down to us, the actual idlers? This is really a question very appropriate for April. For such golden rain raineth not every day, but in a showery and capricious manner, out of heaven, upon us mostly, as far as I can judge, rather pouring down than filtering upon idle persons, and running in thinner driblets, but I hope purer for the filtering process, to the " actual workers." But where does it come from? and in the times of drought between the " The country is getting rich showers, where does it go to? again," saj^s the Spectator; but then, if the April clouds fail, ;
may
it
get poor again?
when, last 25th of June, become, of the money?
And when it
it
was poor,
Was
it
again becomes poor,
—what becomes, or had
verily lost, or only torpid in
the winter of our discontent? or was
it
sown and buried
When we
corruption, to be raised in a multifold power?
in
are
money, what do we think is going to Can no economist teach us to keep it safe
in a panic about our
happen after
to it?"
we have once
got
as I read the late Sir
—guard even our
it ?
nor any " beloved physician "
James Simpson
is
called in
Edinburgh
solid gold against death, or at least, fits of
an apoplectic character, alarming to the family? All these questions trouble me greatly; but still to me the strangest point in the whole matter is, that though we idlers always speak as if we were enriched by Heaven, and became its bounty to you; if ever you think the ministry and take to definite pillage of us, no good ever comes of it to you but the sources of wealth seem to be stopped instantly, and you are reduced to the small gain of making
ministers of slack,
;
gloves of our skins; while, on the contrary, as long as
we
continue pillaging you, there seems no end to the profitableness of the business; but always, however bare presently, more, to be had.
For instance
—
we
strip you,
just read this
— FOKS CLAVIGERA.
54 little bit
out of Froissart
—about the English army
in
France
before the battle of Crecy: " AVe will
now
return to the expedition of the
King
of
Godfrey de Harcourt, as marshal, advanced before the King, with the vanguard of five hundred armed men and two thousand archers, and rode on for six or seven leagues' distance from the main army, burning and destroyThey found it rich and plentiful, abounding the country. ing in all things the barns full of every sort of corn, and the houses with riches the inhabitants at their ease, having cars, carts, horses, swine, sheep, and everything in abundance They seized whatever they which the country afforded. chose of all these good things, and brought them to the King's army; but the soldiers did not give any account to their officers, or to those appointed by the King, of the gold and When they silver they took, which they kept to themselves. were come back, -with all their booty safely packed in wagons, the Earl of Warwick, the Earl of Suffolk, the Lord Thomas Holland, and the Lord Reginald Cobham, took their march, with their battalion on the right, burning and destroying the country in the same way that Sir Godfrey de Harcourt was doing. The King marched, with the main body, between these two battalions; and every night they all encamped together. The King of England and Prince of Wales had, in their battalion, about three thousand menat-arms, six thousand archers, ten thousand infantry, without counting those that were under the marshals; and they marched on in the manner I have before mentioned, burning and destroying the country, but without breaking their line
England.
Sir
;
:
of battle. They did not turn towards Coutances, but advanced to St. Lo, in Coutantin, which in those days was a very rich and commercial town, and worth three such towns as Coutances. In the town of St. Lo was much drapery, and many wealthy inhabitants; among them you might count When eight or nine score that were engaged in commerce. the King of England was come near to the town, he en-
55
FOES CLAVIGERA.
camped; he would not lodge in it for fear of fire. He sent, therefore, his advanced guard forward, who soon conquered ISTo one it, at a trifling loss, and completely plundered it. can imagine the quantity of riches they found in it, nor the number of bales of cloth. If there had been any purchasers, they might have bought enough at a very cheap rate. " The English tlien advanced towards Caen, which is a much larger town, stronger, and fuller of draperies and all other sorts of merchandise, rich citizens, noble dames and damsels, and fine churches. "
On
day (Froissart does not say what day) the English rose very early, and made themselves ready to march to Caen: the King heard mass before sunrise, and afterwards mounting his horse, with the Prince of Wales, and Sir Godfrey de Harcourt (who was marshal and director of the The battalion army), marched forward in order of battle. of the marshals led the van, and came near to the handsome town of Caen. " When the townsmen, who had taken the field, perceived the English advancing, with banners and pennons flying in abundance, and saw those archers whom they had not been accustomed to, they were so frightened that they betook themselves to flight, and ran for the town in great disorder. " The English, who were after the runaways, made great havoc; for they spared none. " Those inhabitants who had taken refuge in the garrets, flung down from them, in these narrow streets, stones, benches, and whatever they could lay hands on; so that they killed and wounded upwards of five hundred of the English, which so enraged the King of England, when he received the reports in the evening, that he ordered the remainder of the inhabitants to be put to the sword, and the town burnt. But Sir Godfrey de Harcourt said to him Dear sir, assuage somewhat of your anger, and be satisfied with what has already been done. You have a long journey yet to make before you arrive at Calais, whither it is your intention to go: this
'
:
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
56
and there are in this town a great number of inhabitants, who will defend themselves obstinately in their houses, if you force them to it: besides, it will cost you many lives before the town can be destroyed, which may put a stop to your expedition to Calais, and it will not redound to your honor: therefore be sparing of your men, for in a month's time you will have call for them.' The King replied: Sir Godfrey, you are our marshal; therefore order as you please; for this '
time we wish not to interfere.' " Sir Godfrey then rode through the streets, his banner displayed before him, and ordered, in the King's name, that
no one should dare, under pain of immediate death, to insult or hurt man or woman of the town, or attempt to set Several of the inhabitants, on hearing fire to any part of it. this proclamation,
received the English into their houses;
and others 'opened their coffers to them, giving up their all, However, there were, since they were assured of their lives. in spite of these orders, many atrocious thefts and murders committed. The English continued masters of the town for three days; in this time, they amassed great wealth, which they sent in barges down the river of Estreham, to St. SauThe Earl of veur, two leagues off, where their fleet was. Huntingdon made preparation therefore, with the two hundred men-at-arms and his four hundred archers, to carry over England their riches and prisoners. The King purchased, from Sir Thomas Holland and his companions, the constable of France and the Earl of Tancarville, and paid down twenty to
thousand nobles for them. "
When
the
King had
finished his business in Caen,
and
sent his fleet to England, loaded with cloths, jewels, gold
and
silver plate,
and a quantity of other
riches,
and upwards
of sixty knights, with three hundred able citizens, prison-
he then left his quarters and continued his march as betwo marshals on his right and left, burning and destroying all the flat country. He took the road to Evreux, ers;
fore, his
but found he could not gain anything there, as it was well fortified. He went on towards another town called Lou-
— ;
57
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
which was in JSTonnandv, and where there were many The manufactories of cloth: it was rich and commerciaL English won it easily, as it was not inclosed; and having entered the town, it was plundered without opposition. They collected much wealth there; and, after they had done what they pleased, they marched on into the county of Evreux, where they burnt everything except the fortified towns and castles, which the King left unattacked, as he was He therefore desirous of sparing his men and artillery. made for the banks of the Seine, in his approach to Rouen, where there were plenty of men-at-arms from ISTormandy, under the command of the Earl of Harcourt, brother to Sir Godfrey, and the Earl of Dreux. " The English did not march direct towards Rouen, but went to Gisors, which has a strong castle, and burnt the town. After this, they destroyed Vernon, and all the country between Rouen and Pont-de-1' Arche they then came to Mantes and Meulan, which they treated in the same manner, and ravaged all the country round about. " They passed by the strong castle of Roulleboise, and everywhere found the bridges on the Seine broken down. They pushed forward until they came to Poissy, where the bridge was also destroyed; but the beams and other parts of viers,
:
were lying in the river. " The King of England remained at the nunnery of Poissy to the middle in August, and celebrated there the feast of the Virgin Mary." it
you see, just like a piece out of the month but there are material differences,
It all reads at first,
newspapers of
last
notwithstanding.
;
We
fight inelegantly as well as
expen-
sively, with machines instead of bow and spear we kill about a thousand now to the score then, in settling any quarrel (Agincourt was won with the loss of less than a hundred men only 25,000 English altogether were engaged at Crecy; and 12,000, some say only 8,000, at Poictiers); we kill with far ghastlier wounds, crashing bones and flesh together; we leave ;
58
FOES CLAYIGEEA.
our wounded necessarily for days and nights in heaps on the of battle; we pillage districts twenty times as large, and with completer destruction of more valuable property; and fields
with a destruction as irreparable as
French or English burnt
it is
complete; for
if
the
a church one day, they could build
a prettier one the next; but the
modern Prussians couldn't
even build so much as an imitation of one; we rob on credit, by requisition, with ingenious mercantile prolongations of claim; and we improve contention of arms with contention of tongues, and are able to multiply the rancor of cowardice,
and mischief of
lying, in universal and permanent print; and tempers as well as our money, and become indecent in behavior as in raggedness; for, whereas, in old times, two nations separated by a little pebbly stream like the Tweed, or even the two halves of one nation, separated by thirty fathoms' depth of salt water (for most of the English knights and all the English kings were French by race, and the best of them by birth also) would go on pillaging and killing each other century after century, without the slightest ill-feeling towards, or disrespect for, one another, we can neither give anybody a beating courteously, nor take one in good part, or \vithout screaming and lying about it: and finally, we add to these perfected Follies of Action more finely perfected Follies of Inaction; and contrive hitherto unheard-of ways of being wretched through the very abundance of peace; our workmen, here, vowing themselves to idleness, lest they should lower Wages, and there, being condemned by their parishes to idleness lest they should lower Prices; while outside the workhouse all the parishioners are buying anything nasty, so that it be cheap; and, in a word, under the seraphic teaching of Mr. Mill, we have determined at last that it is not Destruction, but Production, that is the cause of human distress; and the "Mutual and Co-operative Colonization Company " declares, ungramso
we
lose our
—
—
its circular sent to me on the month, as a matter universally admitted, even
matically, but distinctly, in
13th of
last
among Cabinet
Ministers
—"
that
it is
in the greater increas-
— 59
FOES CLAVIGERA.
ing power of production and distribution as compared with
demand, enabling the few
to
do the work of manv, that the among the produc-
active cause of the wide-spread poverty
ing and lower-middle classes lay, which entails such enor-
mous burdens on the
l^ation, and exhibits our boasted progmonstrous Sham." Nevertheless, however much we have magnified and multiplied the follies of the past, the primal and essential principles of pillage have always been accepted; and from the days when England lay so waste under that worthy and economical King who '' called his tailor lown," that " whole ress in the light of a
families, after sustaining life as long as they could
by
eating-
horses, at last died of hunger,
and the flesh of dogs and and you might see many pleasant
roots,
inhabitant of either sex," while
villages without a single
little
Harry Switch-of -Broom
sate learning to spell in Bristol Castle, (taught, I think, prop-
by his good uncle the preceptorial use of his name-plant, though they say the first Harry was the finer clerk,) and his mother, dressed all in white, escaped from Oxford over the snow in the moonlight, through Bagley Wood here to Abingdon; and under the snows, by Woodstock, the buds were growing for the bower of his Hose, from that day to this, when the villages round Paris, and food-supply, are, by the Kings blessing of God, as they then were round London erly
—
—
have for the most part desired to win that pretty name of " Switch-of -Broom " rather by habit of growing in waste places; or even emulating the Vision of Dion in "sweeping
by attaining the other virtue of the Planta Genista, set forth by Virgil and Pliny, that it is pliant, and rich in honey; the Lion-hearts of them seldom diligently sweeping," than
much
as the stomach of enigma in our Israel, that " out of the eater came forth meat; " nor has it been only your Kings who have thus made you pay for their guidance through the world, but your ecclesiastics have also made you pay for guidance out of it particularly when it grew dark, and the signpost was illegible where the upper and
proving profitable to you, even so
Samson's Lion, or rendering
it
a soluble
—
60
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
lower roads divided;
—
so that, as far as I can read or calcudying has been even more expensive to you than living; and then, to finish the business, as your virtues have been made costly to you by the clergyman, so your vices have been late,
made
you by the lawyers and you have one entire sins, and the other on your repentance. So that it is no wonder that, things having gone on thus for a long time, you begin to think that you would rather live as sheep without any shepherd, and that having paid so dearly for your instruction in religion and law, you costly to
;
learned profession living on your
now set your hope on a state of instruction in Irreand Liberty, which is, indeed, a form of education to be had for nothing, alike by the children of the Eich and Poor; the saplings of the tree that was to be desired to make us wise, growing now in copsewood on the hills, or even by the roadsides, in a Eepublican-Plantagenet manner, blossoming into cheapest gold, either for coins, which of course you should
ligion
Republicans will call, not ISTobles, but Ignobles; or crowns, second and third hand (head, I should say) supplied punctually on demand, with liberal reduction on quantity;
—
—
FOES CLAVIGEKA.
61
the roads themselves beautifully public
haps
—and with
— tramwayed,
gates set open enough for
free, outer, better world,
all
men
per-
to the
your chosen guide preceding you
merrily, thus' with music and dancing.
You have
always danced too willingly, poor friends, to that
player on the
viol.
We
will try to hear, far away, a faint
note or two from a more chief masician on stringed instru-
ments, in May,
when the time
of the Singing of Birds
is
come.
Faithfully yours,
JOHN EUSKD^. *
Alluding to illustration on preceding page.
LETTER **
For
the winter
lo,
is
V. past,
The rain is over and gone, The flowers appear on the earth, The time of the singing of birds is come, Arise, O my And come."
My
Feiends
fair one,
my
dove,
Denmark
—
^'*
It has been asked of me, very justlv, hitherto written to you of things yon were for, in
words which
it
was
difficult for
Hill,
^«^'
why
i^^i-
I have
little likely to
you
care
to understand.
I have no fear but that you will one day understand
my poor words, —the
all
them perhaps too well. But you may never come to understand
saddest of
I have great fear that
these written above, which are part of a king's love-song, in one sweet May, of many long since gone. I fear that for you the wild winter's rain may never pass, the flowers never appear on the earth; that for you no bird may ever sing; for you no perfect Love arise, and fulfill your life in peace. " And why not for us, as for others? " will you answer me
—
so,
—
—
and take
my
fear for you as an insult?
—
am I happier
than you. For me, But they would, for you, if you cared to have it so. When I told you that you would never understand that love-song, I meant only that you would not desire to understand it. Are you again indignant with me? Do you think, though you should labor, and grieve, and be trodden down in dishonor all your days, at least you can keep that one joy of Love, and that one honor of Home? Had you, indeed, kept ISTay, it is
no insult;
^nor
the birds do not sing, nor ever
62
will.
CflAkiiV. Drawn
thus by Giotto, in the Chapel of the
Arena
at
Padua.
— 63
FOES CLAVIGEEA. that,
you had kept alL
But no men
yet, in the history of
In many a country, and many an age, women have been compelled to labor for their husband's wealth, or bread; but never until now were they so homeless as to say, like the poor Samaritan, " I have no husband," Women of every country and people have sustained without complaint the labor of fellowship: for the women of the latter days in England it has been reserved to the race, have lost
it
so piteously.
claim the privilege of isolation. is the end of your universal education and and contempt of the ignorance of the Middle Ages, and of their chivalry. Not only do you declare yourselves too indolent to labor for daughters and wives, and too poor to support them; but you have made the neglected and distracted creatures hold it for an honor to be independent of you, and shriek for some hold of the mattock for themselves. Believe it or not, as you may, there has not been so low a level of thought reached by any race, since they grew to be male and female out of star-fish, or chickweed, or whatever else they have been made from, by natural selection,
This, then,
civilization,
according to modern science.
That modern science
also. Economic and of other kinds, climax at last. For it seems to be the appointed function of the nineteenth century to exhibit in all
has reached
its
things the elect pattern of perfect Folly, for a warning to the
Thus the statement of principle which I quoted to you in my last letter, from the circular of the Emigration Society, that it is over-production which is the farthest future.
cause of distress,
is
accurately the most foolish thing, not
only hitherto ever said by men, but which
men
ever to say, respecting their
own
it is
business.
possible for It
is
a kind
acme of mortal stupidity) to Newton's discovery of gravitation as an acme of mortal wisdom: as no wise being on earth will ever be able to make of opposite pole (or negative
—
such another wise discovery, so no foolish being on earth will ever be capable of saying such another foolish thing, through all
the ages.
—
— FOES CLAVIGEKA.
64
And
tlie
same
crisis
has been exactly reached by our art. It has several times chanced
natural science and by our
me, since I began these papers,
to
to
have the exact thing
shown or brought to me that I wanted for illustration, just in time * and it happened that on the very day on which I published my last letter, I had to go to the Kensington Museum; and there I saw the most perfectly and roundly illdone thing which, as yet, in my whole life I ever saw produced by art. It had a tablet in front of it, bearing this
—
inscription,
" Statue in black and white marble, a !N^ewfoundland
Dog
standing on a Serpent, which rests on a marble cushion, the pedestal ornamented with pietra dura fruits in relief.
English.
Xo. I."
Present Century.
It was so very right for me, the Kensington people having been good enough to number it " I.," the thing itself being
almost incredible in accent
its
oneness; and, indeed, such a punctual
over the iota of Miscreation,
exquisitely miscreant, that I
ceiving a
Number
am
—
so
absolutely
and
not myself capable of con-
two, or three, or any rivalship or associa-
The extremity of its unvirtue conmainly in the quantity of instruction which was abused in it. It showed that the persons who produced it had seen everything, and practiced everything; and misunderstood everything they saw, and misapplied everything they did. They had seen Roman work, and Florentine work, and Byzantine work, and Gothic work and misunderstanding of everything had passed through them as the mud does tion with
it
whatsoever.
sisted, observe,
;
*
Here
I have but a minute ago and take up the Times of this morning, April 21st, and find in it the suggestion by the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the removal of exemption from taxation, of Agricultural horses and carts, in the very nick of time to connect it, as a proposal for economic practice, with the statement of economic jjrinciple respecting Production, quoted on last page. is
another curious instance
finished correcting these
sheets,
:
FORS CLAVIGERA.
through earthworms, and here at
last
65
was their worm-cast
of a Production.
But the second chance
From
significant stilL
that
came
to
me that day, was more Museum I went to an
the Kensington
afternoon tea, at a house where I was sure to meet some
And among the first I met was an old friend who had been hearing some lectures on botany at the Kensington Museum, and been delighted by them. She is the kind of person who gets good out of everything, and she was nice people.
quite right in being delighted; besides that, as I found
by
her account of them, the lectures were really interesting, and
She had expected botany to be dull, and and " had learned so much." On hearing this, I proceeded naturally to inquire what; for my idea of her was that before she went to the lectures at all, she had known more botany than she was likely to learn by them. So she told me that she had learned first of all that " there were seven sorts of leaves." N^ow I have always a great suspicion of the number Seven; because when I wrote the Seven Lamps of Architecture, it required all the ingenuity I was master of to prevent them from becoming Eight, or even Nine, on my hands. So I thought to myself that it would be very charming if there were only seven sorts of leaves; but that, perhaps, if one looked the woods and forests of the world carefully through, it was just possible that one might discover as many as eight sorts; and then where would my friend's new knowledge of Botany be? So I said, " That was very pretty; but what more? " Then my friend told me that she had no idea, before, that petals were leaves. On which, I thought to myself tliat it would not have been any great harm to her if she had remained under her old impression that petals were petals. But I said, " That was very pretty, too; and what more? " So then my friend told me that the lecturer said, " the object of his lectures would be entirely accomplished if he could convince his hearers that there was no such thing as a flower." IsTow, in that sentence you have the most perfect and admirable summary pleasantly given.
had not found
it so,
o
FOES CLAVIGERA.
66 given you of
tlie
general temper and purposes of modern
on Botany, of which the object is show that there is no such thing as a flower; on Humanity, to show that there is no such thing as a Man; and on Tlieology, to show there is no such thing as a God. Xo such thiiiTj as a Man, but only a Mechanism; no such thing as a Gorl, but only a series of forces. The two faiths are essentially one if you feel yourself to be only a machine, constructed to be a Regulator of minor machinery, you will put your statu of such science on your Holborn Viaduct, and necessarily recognize only major machinery as regulating you. I must explain the real meaning to you, however, of that science.
It gives lectures
to
:
saying of the Botanical lecturer, for
Some
fifty
it
has a wide bearing.
years ago the poet Goethe discovered that
parts of plants had a kind of
common
all
the
nature, and would
change into each other. ISTow this was a true discovery, and a notable one; and 3'ou will find that, in fact, all plants are composed of essentially two parts the leaf and root one loving the light, the other darkness; one liking to be clean, the other to be dirty; one liking to grow for the most part up, the other for the most part down; and each having faculties and purposes of its own. But the pure one which loves the light has, above all things, the purpose of being married to another leaf, and having child-leaves, and children's children
—
of leaves, to
make
—
And when
the earth fair forever.
the
they put on wedding-robes, and are more glorious than Solomon in all his glory, and they have feasts of honey, and we call them " Flowers." In a certain sense, therefore, you see the Botanical lecturer
leaves marry,
was quite
right.
are only leaves.
There are no such things ISTay,
farther than
as
this,
Flowers
there
—there
may
dignity in the less happy, but unwithering leaf, which
—
be a is,
in
than the brief lily of its bloom; which the Chaucer, before Goethe; great poets always knew,—well; The and the writer of the first Psalm, before Chaucer. Botanical lecturer was, in a deeper sense than he knew,
some
right.
sort, better
—
67
FOES CLAVIGEKA.
But
in the deepest sense of
all,
the Botanical lecturer was,
to the extremity of wrongness, wrong for leaf, and root, and fruit, exist, all of them, only that there may be flowers. ;
—
He
disregarded the
life
and passion of the creature, which
Had
he looked for these, he would have recognized that in the thought of Mature herself, there is, in a plant, nothing else but its flowers.
were
its
Now
essence.
in exactly the sense that
modern Science
declares
no such thing as a Flower, it has declared there is no such thing as a Man, but only a transitional form of Ascidians and apes. It may, or may not be true it is not of the smallest consequence whether it be or not. The real fact is, that, seen with human eyes, there is nothing else but man; that all animals and beings beside. him are only made that they may change into him; that the world truly exists there
is
—
only in the presence of Man, acts only in the passion of Man.
The essence soul,
—
of light
is
in his eyes,
—the center
of Force in his
the pertinence of action in his deeds.
—
which my Savoyard guide rightly thought I had not, all true science is " savoir vivre." But all your modern science is the contrary of that. It is " savoir mourir." And of its very discoveries, such as they are, it cannot
And
scorned
make
all
true science
me when he
—
use.
That telegraphic signaling was a discovery; and conceivably, some day, may be a useful one. And there was some excuse for your being a little proud when, about last sixth of April (Coeur de Lion's death-day, and Albert Diirer's),you knotted a copper wire all the way to Bombay, and flashed a message along it, and back. But what was the message, and what the answer? Is India the better for what you said to her? Are you the better for what she replied? If not, you have only wasted an all-round-the-world's length of copper wire, which is, indeed, about the sum of your doing. If you had had, perchance, two words of common sense to say, though you had taken wearisome time and
—
— 68
FOES CLAVIGERA.
trouble to send them;
—
though you had written them slowly and sealed them with a hundred seals, and sent a squadron of ships of the line to carry the scroll, and the squadron had fought its way round the Cape of Good Hope, through a year of storms, with loss of all its ships but one, the two words of common sense would have been worth the carriage, and more. But you have not anything like so much as that to say, either to India, or to any other place. You think it a great triumph to make the sun draw brown landscapes for you. That was also a discovery, and some day mav be useful. But the sun had drawn landscapes before for you, not in brown, but in green, and blue, and all imaginable colors, here in England. Xot one of you ever looked at them then; not one of you cares for the loss of them now, when you have shut the sun out with smoke, so that he can draw nothing more, except brown blots through There was a rocky valley between Buxton a hole in a box. and Bakewell, once upon a time, divine as the Vale of Tempe; you might have seen the Gods there morning and evening Apollo and all the sweet Muses of the light walking in fair procession on the lawns of it, and to and fro in gold,
—
among
the pinnacles of
Gods nor to
its
crags.
You
cared neither for
you did not know the way get); you thought you could get it by what the Times grass, but for cash (which
calls "
Kailroad Enterprise." You Enterprised a Eailroad through the valley you blasted its rocks away, heaped thou-
—
sands of tons of shale into gone, and the Gods with
its
lovely stream.
The
valley
and now, every fool in Buxton can be at Bakewell in half an hour, and every fool in Bakewell at Buxton; which you think a lucrative process of exchange you Fools Evervwhere. To talk at a distance, when you have nothing to say, though you were ever so near; to go fast from this place to that, with nothing to do either at one or the other: these are powers certainly. Much more, power of increased Production, if you, indeed, had got it, would be something to boast of. But are you so entirely sure that you have got it is
—
it
;
— 69
FOES CLAVIGERA.
that the mortal disease of plenty, and afflictive affluence of good things, are all you have to dread? Observe. A man and a woman, with their children, properly trained, are able easily to cultivate as much ground as will feed them; to build as much wall and roof as will lodge them, and to build and weave as much cloth as will They can all be perfectly happy and healthy clothe them. Supposing that they invent machinery which in doing this. will build, plow, thresh, cook, and weave, and that they
have none of these things any more to do, but may read, or play croquet, or cricket, all day long, I believe myself that they will neither be so good nor so happy as without the But I waive my belief in this matter for the machines. I will assume that they become more refined and time. moral persons, and that idleness is in future to be the mother But observe, I repeat, the power of your of all good. It will not is only in enabling them to be idle. enable them to live better than they did before, nor to live
machine
in greater
numbers.
Out
matter.
of so
Get your heads quite
much ground,
be got, with or without machinery. of steam plows to work on an acre, acre only a given or scorch
it
as
number
you
will.
clear on this
much living is to You may set a million
only so
if
you
like
—out
of that
of grains of corn will grow, scratch
So that the question
is
not at all
whether, by having more machines, more of you can 1^0 machines will increase the possibilities of
only increase the possibilities of idleness.
life.
live,
They
Suppose, for
instance, you could get the oxen in your plow driven by a goblin, who would ask for no pay, not even a cream bowl, (you have nearly managed to get it driven by an iron goblin, "Well, your furrow will take no more seeds than as it is;) But, instead of holding if you had held the stilts yourself. them, you sit, I presume, on a bank beside the field, under an eglantine; watch the goblin at his work, and read
—
—
poetry.
goblin to
Meantime, your wife in the house has also got a weave and wash for her. And she is lying on the
sofa reading poetry.
— FOES CLAVIGERA.
70
Now,
would be happier so, yon are already but I am one or two places snch brave mechanists, show me at least where you are happier. Let me see one small example of approach to this seraphic condition. I can show you examples, millions of them, of happy people, made happy by Farm after farm I can show you, in their own industry. Bavaria, Switzerland, the Tyrol, and such other places, where men and women are perfectly happy and good, withShow me, therefore, some English out any iron servants. as I said, I don't believe voii
willing to believe
family, with
me,
—
for I
bring
me
its fiery
am
it;
only, since
familiar, happier than these.
Or bring
not inconvincible by any kind of evidence,
the testimony of an English family or two to their
Or if you cannot do so much as that, can They are perhaps you convince even themselves of it? happy, if only they knew how happy they were; Virgil thought so, long ago, of simple rustics; but you hear at present your steam-propelled rustics are crying out that they are anything else than happy, and that they regard their boasted progress " in the light of. a monstrous Sham." I must tell you one little thing, however, which greatly perincreased felicity.
plexes
under
my
imagination
of
the
before indeed, but I forget where. festivity,
things,
relieved
his rose bower, reading poetry.
plowman
I have told
There was really
sitting it
you
a great
and expression of satisfaction in the new order of in Cumberland, a little while ago; some first of
down
May, I think
it
was, a country festival, such as the old
who had no
iron servants, used to keep with piping and dancing. So I thought, from the liberated country peowe should ple their work all done for them by goblins have some extraordinary piping and dancing. But there was no dancing at all, and they could not even provide their own piping. They had their goblin to pipe for them. They walked in procession after their steam plow, and their steam plow whistled to them occasionally in the most melodious manner it could. "Which seemed to me, indeed, a return to more than Arcadian simplicity; for in old
heathens,
—
—
71
rORS CLAVIGEEA.
Arcadia, plowboys truly whistled as they went, for want of thought; whereas, here was verily a large
company walk-
ing without thought, but not having any more even the capacity of doing their
But
own
whistling.
Before you got your power-looms, a woman could alwaj's make herself a chemise and petticoat of bright and pretty appearance. I have seen a Bavarian peasant-woman at church in Munich, looking a much grander creature, and more beautifully dressed, than any of the crossed and embroidered angels in Hesse's high-art frescoes; (which happened to be just above AVell, here her, so that I could look from one to the other). you are, in England, served by household demons, with five hundred fingers, at least, weaving, for one that used to weave in the days of ]\[inerva. You ought to be able to show me five hundred dresses for one that used to be; tidiness ought to have become five hundred-fold tidier; tapestry should be increased into cinque-cento-fold iridesISTot only your peasant-girl ought to be cence of tapestry. lying on the sofa reading poetry, but she ought to have in next, as to the inside of the house.
her wardrobe that,
crooked It
five
hundred petticoats instead of one. Is you only on a curiously
indeed, your issue? or are
is
way
to it?
just possible, indeed, that
you may not have been
—
allowed to get the use of the goblin's work that other people may have got the use of it, and you none; because, perhaps, you have not been able to evoke goblins wholly for your own personal service: but have been borrowing goblins
from the capitalist, and paying interest, in the " position of William," on ghostly self -going planes but suppose you had laid by capital enough, yourselves, to hire all the demons in ;
the world, sure you
—nay, —
all
that are inside of
know what you might
best set
it;
are you quite
them
to
work
at?
and what " useful things " you should command them to make for you? I told you, last month, that no economist going (whether by steam or ghost) knew what are useful Very few of you know, yourthings and what are not.
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
72
except by bitter experience of the want of them. no demons, either of iron or spirit, can ever make
selves,
And them.
There are three Material things, not only useful, but No one " knows how to live " till he has
essential to Life.
got them.
These are. Pure Air, Water, and Earth. There are three Immaterial things, not only useful but essential to Life. Xo one knows how to live till he has got them. These are. Admiration, Hope, and Love.* Admiration the power of discerning and taking delight in what is beautiful in visible Form, and lovely in human Character; and, necessarily, striving to produce what is beautiful in form, and to become what is lovely in character. Hope the recognition, by true Foresight, of better things to be reached hereafter, whether by ourselves or others; necessarily issuing in the straightforward and undisappoint-
—
—
able effort to advance, according to our proper power, the
gaining of them.
Love, both of family and neighbor, faithful, and
These are the
six chiefly useful things to
satisfied.
be got by Politi-
Economy, when it has become a science. I will briefly tell you what modern Political Economy the great " savoir cal
mourir "
—
—
doing with them.
is
The first three, I said, are Pure Air, Water, and Earth. Heaven gives you the main elements of these. You can destroy them at your pleasure, or increase, almost without them. can vitiate the air by your manner of
limit, the available qualities of
You
death, to any extent.
You might
life,
easily vitiate
it
and of so as to
bring such a pestilence on the globe as would end all of you. You or your fellows, German and French, are at present
busy
in vitiating
it
your power in every direccorpses, and animal and war: changing men, horses, and gardento the best of
tion; chiefly at this
vegetable ruin in *
moment with
Wordsworth,
" Excursion,"
Book
4th.
73
FORS CLAVIGERA.
But everywhere, and all day long, stuff into noxious gas. you are vitiating it with foul chemical exhalations; and the horrible nests, which you call towns, are little more than laboratories for the distillation into heaven of venomous smokes and smells, mixed with effluvia from decaying animal matter, and infectious miasmata from purulent disease. On the other hand, your power of purifying the air, by dealing properly and swiftly with all substances in corruption; by absolutely forbidding noxious manufactures; and by planting in all soils the trees which cleanse and invigorate You might earth and atmosphere, is literally infinite. make every breath of air you draw, food. Secondly, your power over the rain and river-waters of You can bring rain where you will, the earth is infinite. by planting wisely and tending carefully; drought where you will, by ravage of woods and neglect of the soil. You might have the rivers of England as pure as the crystal of
—
—
the rock
;
beautiful in falls, in lakes, in living pools
;
so full
them out with your hands instead of nets. Or you may do always as you have done now, turn every river of England into a common sewer, so that you cannot so much as baptize an English baby but with filth, unless you hold its face out in the rain; and even that falls
of fish that you might take
dirty.
Then
for the third. Earth,
you, and blossoming.
You
—meant
to
be nourishing for
have learned,
about
it,
that
there is no such thing as a flower; and as far as your scientific hands and scientific brains, inventive of explosive and deathf ul, instead of blossoming and life giving, Dust, can contrive, you have turned the Mother-Earth, Demeter, into the Avenger-Earth, Tisiphone with the voice of your brother's blood crying out of it, in one wild harmony round all its
—
murderous sphere. This is what you have done for the Three Material Useful Things.
Then
for the Three Immaterial Useful Things.
miration, you have learnt contempt and conceit.
For AdThere is
— FORS CLAVIGEEA.
74
no lovely tiling ever vet done by man that you care for, or can understand; but you are persuaded you are able to do much finer things yourselves. You gather, and exhibit together, as if equally instructive, what is infinitely bad, with what is infinitely good. You do not know which is which; you instinctively prefer the Bad, and do more of it. You instinctively hate the Good, and destroy it.* Then, secondly, for Hope. You have not so much spirit of it in you as to begin any plan which "^^^ll not pay for ten years; nor so much intelligence of it in you, (either politicians or workmen), as to be able to form one clear idea of what you would like your country to become. Then, thirdly, for Love. You were ordered by the Founder of your religion to love your neighbor as yourselves.
You have founded an entire Science of Political Economy, on what you have stated to be the constant instinct of man the desire to defraud his neighbor. And you have driven your women mad, so that they ask no more for Love, nor for fellowship with you; but stand against you, and ask for " justice." Are there any of you who are tired of all this? Any of you. Landlords or Tenants? Employers or Workmen? Are there any landlords, any masters, who would like better to be served by men than by iron devils? Any tenants, any workmen, who can be true to their leaders and to each other? who can vow to work and to live faithfully, for the sake of the joy of their homes?
—
* Last night (I
am
—
writing this on the 18th of April) I got a the, I believe, too well-grounded, report that the Venetians have requested permission from the government of Italy to pull down their Ducal Palace, and " rebuild " it. Put up a horrible model of it, in its place, that is to say, for which their architects may charge a commission. Meantime, all their canals are choked with human dung, which they are too poor to cart away, but throw out at their windows. And all the great thirteenth-century cathedrals in France have been destroyed, within my own memory, only that architects might charge commission for putting up false models of them in their place. letter
from Venice, bringing me
— TS
rORS CLAVIG BEA-
Will any such give the tenth of what they have, and of what they earn, not to emigrate with, but to stay in England with; and do what is in their hands and hearts to make her a happy England? I am not rich, (as people now estimate riches,) and great part of what I have is already engaged in maintaining artworkmen, or for other objects more or less of public utility. The tenth of whatever is left to me, estimated as accurately
—
as I can, (you shall see the accounts,) I will
you
can give, on Christmas to
make over
to
law engagement
in perpetuity, with the best security that English
Day
of this year,
mth
add the tithe of whatever I earn afterwards.
will heir), with little or
to begin,
and gradually
much?
Who
else
the object of such fund being,
—no matter how slowly—
to increase,
the buying and securing of land in England, which shall not
be built upon, but cultivated by Englishmen, with their
own
hands, and such help of force as they can find in wind and
wave. I do not care with how many, or how few, this thing is begun, nor on what inconsiderable scale, if it be but in
—
two or three poor men's gardens. So much, at least, I can buy, m^'self, and give them. If no help come, I have done and said what I could, and there will be an end. If any help come to me, it is to be on the following conditions: We will try to take some small piece of English ground, beautiful, peaceful, and fruitful. We will have no steamengines upon it, and no railroads; we will have no untended or unthought-of creatures on it; none wretched, but the sick; none idle, but the dead. W^e will have no liberty upon it; but instant obedience to known law, and appointed persons: no equality upon it; but recognition of every betterness that we can find, and reprobation of every worseness. W^hen we want to go anywhere, we will go there quietly and safely, not at forty miles an hour in the risk of our lives; when we want to carry anything anywhere, we will carry it either on the backs of beasts, or on our own, or in carts, or boats; we will have plenty of flowers and vegetables in
— rORS CLAVIGEBA.
76
—
our gardens, plenty of corn and grass in our fields, and few bricks. We will have some music and poetry; the children perhaps some of the shall learn to dance to it and sing it;
—
old people, in time,
moreover; we will
may
also.
at least try
if,
AVe will have some like the Greeks,
we
art,
can't
The Greeks used to paint pictures of gods pots. on their pots; we, probably, cannot do as much, but we may put some pictures of insects on them, and reptiles; ^butterThere was an excellent flies, and frogs, if nothing better. old potter in France who used to put frogs and vipers into his dishes, to the admiration of mankind; we can surely put something nicer than that. Little by little, some higher art and imagination may manifest themselves among us and Botany, though feeble rays of science may dawn for us. and history, of flowers; existence the dull dispute to too men; of nay nativity question the though too simple to as of wisdom, uncovetous and even perhaps an uncalculating and of gold gifts rude Magi, presenting, at such nativity,
make some
—
;
—
frankincense.
Faithfully yours,
JOHIS^
RUSKIK
.
E N Drawn
thus
by Giotto
in
the
\
V
Chapel
of
the
Arena
at
Padua.
LETTER VL Denmakk
My Tjr
Feiends,
The main purpose in the last
Hill,
Isf June, 1871.*
T-t
of them,
it is
of these letters having been stated
needful that I should
approach the discussion of
it
you why I way, writing
tell
in this so desultory
must continue to write,) " of things care for, in words that you cannot easily
(as it is too true that I
that you
little
understand." I write of things you care
you
least care for
is,
little for,
knowing that what
at this juncture, of the greatest
moment
to you.
And I write in words you are little likely to understand, because I have no wish (rather the contrary) to tell you anything that you can understand without taking trouble. You usually read so fast that you can catch nothing but the echo of your
own
to see in print.
opinions, which, of course,
you are pleased
I neither wish to please, nor displease you;
but to provoke you to think; to lead you to think accurately; and help you to form, perhaps, some different opinions from those you have now.
Therefore, I choose that you shall pay
me
pots of beer, twelve times in the year, for
the price of two
my
advice, each of
* I think it best to publish this letter as it was prepared for press on the morning- of the 25th of last month, at Abing-don, before the papers of that day had reached me. You may misinterpret its tone, and think it is written without feeling; but I will endeavor to give you, in my next letter, a brief statement of the meaning, to the French and to all other nations, of this war, and its results: in the meantime, trust me, there is probably no other
man
living to whom, in the abstract, and irrespective of loss of family and property, the ruin of Paris is so great a sorrow as it is to me.
77
— 78
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
YOU who wants it.* If jou like to think of me as a quack doctor, you are welcome; and you may consider the large margins, and thick paper, and ugly pictures of my book, as my caravan, drum, and skeleton. You would probably, if invited in that m^anner, buy my pills; and I should make a great deal of money out of you; but being an honest doctor, I still mean you to pay me what you ought. You fancy, doubtless, that I write as most other political writers do my ''opinions"; and that one man's opinion is as good as
—
another's.
You
are
my
much
mistaken.
When
I only opine
tongue and work till I more than opine until I know them. If the things prove unknowable, I, with final perseverance, hold my tongue about them, and things, I hold
;
recommend
a like practice to other people. If the things prove knowable, as soon as I know them, I am ready to write about them, if need be; not till then. That is what people call my " arrogance." They write and talk themselves, habitually, of
what they know nothing about; they
cannot in am^vise conceive the state of mind of a person who will not speak till he knows; and then tells them, serenely, " This
is so; you may find it out for yourselves, if you choose; however little you may choose it, the thing is still so." l!^ow it has cost me twenty years of thought, and of hard reading, to learn what I have to tell you in these pamphlets; and you will find, if you choose to find, it is true; and may prove, if 3' ou choose to prove, that it is useful and I am not in the least minded to compete for your audience with the " opinions " in your damp journals, morning and evening, the black of them coming off on your fingers, and beyond all washing into your brains. It is no affair of mine whether you attend to me or not; but yours wholly; my hand is weary
but,
:
—
—
of pen-holding
—my heart
is
sick of thinking; for
my own
would not write you these pamphlets though you would give me a barrel of beer, instead of two pints, for them I write them wholly for your sake I choose that you part, I
:
[*
—
;
This passage, and another on a similar subject in Letter
refer to the original issue of these Letters in
monthly
parts.]
XL
79
FOES CLAVIGERA.
have them decently printed on cream-colored paper, and with a margin underneath, which you can write on, if you like. That is also for your sake: it is a proper form of book for any man to have who can keep his books clean; and if he cannot, he has no business with books at all. It costs me ten pounds to print a thousand copies, and five more to give you a picture; and a penny oif my sevenpence to send you the book; a thousand sixpences are tv/enty-five pounds; when you have bought a thousand Fors of me, I shall therefore have five pounds for my trouble and my single shopman, Mr. Allen, five poimds for his; we won't work for less^ either of us; not that we would not, were it good for you; but it would be by no means good. And I mean to sell all my large books, henceforward, in the same way; well printed, well bound, and at a fixed price; and the trade may charge a proper and acknowledged profit for their trouble in retailing the book. Then the public will know what they are about, and so will tradesmen; I, the first producer, shall
—
—
answer, to the best of
book;
—
my
power, for the quality of the
paper, binding, eloquence, and
the retail dealer
all:
charges what he ought to charge, openly; and
do not choose to give
what I
Then
it,
call legitimate business.
as for this
if
they can't get the book.
misunderstanding of
me
the public
That
is
—remember that
which you have complex subject; also, it is quite easy to misunderstand things that you are hearing every day which seem to you of the intelligiblest sort. But I can only write of things in my own way and as they come into my head; and of the things I care for, whether you care for them or not, as yet. I will answer for it, you must care for some of them, in time. To take an instance close to my hand: you would of course think it little conducive to your interests that I should give you any account of the wild hyacinths which are opening in flakes of blue fire, this day, within a couple of miles of me, in the glades of Bagley wood through which the Empress it is
really not easy to understand anything,
not heard before,
—
if it
relates to a
— 80
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
Maud
fled in the
snow, (and which, by the way, I slink
through, myself, in some discomfort, lest the gamekeeper of the college of the gracious Apostle St. John should catch sight of
me; not that he would ultimately decline to make a between a poacher and a professor, but that I dis-
distinction
like the trouble of giving an account of myself). Or, if even you would bear with a scientific sentence or two about them, explaining to you that they were only green leaves turned blue, and that it was of no consequence whether they
were either; and
that, as flowers,
be considered as not in existence,
my
letter,
even though
it
they were
—you
scientifically to
will,
I fear, throw
has cost you sevenpence, aside at
once, when I remark to you that these wood hyacinths of Bagley have something to do with the battle of Marathon, and if you knew it, are of more vital interest to you than even the Match Tax. Nevertheless, as I shall feel it my duty, some day, to speak to you of Theseus and his vegetable soup, so, to-day, I think it necessary to tell you that the wood-hyacinth is the best English representative of the tribe of flowers which the Greeks called " Asphodel," and which they thought the heroes who had fallen in the battle of Marathon, or in any other battle, fought in just quarrel, were to be rewarded, and enough rewarded, by living in fieldsfull of; fields called^ by them, Elysian, or the Fields of Coming, as you and I talk of the good time " Coming," though with perhaps different
views as to the nature of the to be expected goodness. Now what the Chancellor of the Exchequer said the other
Engineer (see Saturday Review, April namely, that in any of our colliery or cartridge-manufactory explosions, we send as many men (or women) into Elj'sium as were likely to get there after the battle of Marathon; * and that is, indeed, like the rest of our
day
to
29th,)
is
the
Civil
en-tirely triie;
* Of course this was written, and in type, before the late catastrophe in Paris; and the one at Dunkirk is, I suppose, long- since forgotten, much more our own good beginning at Birmingham was it? I forget, myself, now.
—
81
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
economic arrangements, very fine, and pleasant to think upon; neither may it be doubted, on modern principles of religion and equality, that every collier and cartridge-filler is as fit for Elysium as any heathen could be; and that in all these respects the battle of Marathon is no more deserving of English notice. But what I want you to reflect upon, as of moment to you, is whether you really care for the hyacinthine Elysium you are going to? and if you do, why you should not live a little while in Elysium here, instead of waiting so patiently, and working so hardly, to be blown or flattened into it? The hyacinths will grow well enough on the top of the ground, if you will leave off digging away the bottom of it; and another plant of the asphodel species, which the Greeks thought of more importance even than hyacinths onions; though, indeed, one dead hero is represented by Lucian as finding something to complain of even in Elysium, because he got nothing but onions there to eat. But it is simply, I assure you, because the French did not understand that hyacinths and onions were the principal things to fill their existing Elysian Fields, or Champs Elysees, with, but chose to have carriages, and roundabouts, instead, that a tax on matches in those fields would be, nowadays, so much more productive than one on Asphodel; and I see that only a day or two since even a poor Punch's show could not play out its play in Elysian peace, but had its corner knocked off by a shell from Mont Yalerien, and the dog Toby " seriously alarmed."
—
One more
instance of the things
In
my
you don't care
for, that
may
be better told now than hereafter. plan for our practical work, in last number, you
are vital to you,
I said, we must try and make some pottery, and have some music, and that we would have no steam engines.
remember
On this I received a singular letter from a resident at Birmingham, advising me that the colors for my pottery must be ground by steam, and my musical instruments constructed by it. To this, as my correspondent was an educated person,
and knew Latin, I ventured
to
answer that porcelain
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
82
had been painted before the time of James Watt; that even music was not entirely a recent invention; that my poor company, I feared, would deserve no better colors than Apelles and Titian made shift with, or even the Chinese; and that I could not find an}^ notice of musical instruments in the time of David, for instance, having been made by steam.
To
this
David's
''
my
correspondent again replied that he supposed
twangling upon the harp " would have been un-
satisfactory to
modern
taste
which sentiment I concurred
in
;
with him, (thinking of the Cumberland procession, without dancing, after
its
"We
sacred, cylindrical Ark).
shall
have
to be content, however, for our part, with a little " twangling " on such roughly-made harps, or even shells, as the
Jews and Greeks got deed be
little
their
melody out
conceivable in a
of, though it must inmodern manufacturing town
that a nation could ever have existed which imaginarily
made harps of the near But to keep to our crockery, you know I told you that for some time we should not be able to put any pictures of Gods on it; and you might think dined on onions in Heaven, and
relations of turtles on Earth.
that would be of small consequence: but
we should
—
it is
of
moment
that
French potter, France, or England Palissy, was nearly the last of potters in either, who could have done so, if anybody had wanted Gods. But nobody in his time did they only wanted Goddesses, at least try
for indeed that old
;
—
of a demi-divine-monde pattern; Palissy, not well able to
produce such, took to molding innocent frogs and vipers instead, in his dishes; but at Sevres
and other places for
shaping of courtly clay, the charmingest things were done, as
you probably saw
at the great peace-promoting Exhibition
of 1851; and not only the
first
rough potter's
fields, tileries,
as they called them, or Tuileries, but the little
den where
Palissy long after worked under the Louvre, were effaced
and forgotten in the glory of the House of France; until the House of France forgot also that to it, no less than the House of Israel, the words were spoken, not by a painted
—
— 83
FOES CLAVIGEKA.
God, " As the clay is in the hands of the potter, so are ye in mine; " and thus the stained and vitrified show of it lasted, as you have seen, until the Tuileries again became the Potter's field, to bury, not strangers in, but their own souls, no more ashamed of Traitorhood, but invoking Traitorhood, as if it covered, instead of constituting, uttermost shame; until, of the kingdom and its glory there is not a shard left, to take fire out of the hearth.
—
men's eyes, I should have written. To their left yet much; for true kingdoms and true What France has had of such, glories cannot pass away. remain to her. What any of us can find of such, will remain AVill you look back, for an instant, again to the end to us. of my last Letter, and consider the state of life described " No liberty, but instant obedience to known law there and appointed persons; no equality, but recognition of every betterness and reprobation of every worseness; and none idle Left
thoughts,
to
is
:
but the dead." I beg 3'ou to observe that last condition especially.
many
You
day to come the causes that have brought this misery upon France, and there are many; but one is chief chief cause, now and always, of evil everywhere; and I see it at this moment, in its deadliest form, out will debate for
a
—
It is the 21st of of the window of my quiet English inn. May, and a bright morning, and the sun shines, for once, warmly on the wall opposite, a low one, of ornamental pattern, imitative in brick of wood-work (as if it had been of
would, doubtless, have been painted to look Against this low decorative edifice leans a ruddy-faced English boy of seventeen or eighteen, in a white blouse and brown corduroy trousers, and a domical felt hat;
wood-work, like
it
brick).
with the sun, as
and
his
at play.
much
hands in
He
is
as
a good boy, evidently, and does not care to
turn the play into a fight * This
was
half-past nine.
can get under the rim, on his face, watching two dogs
his pockets; listlessly
;
*
still it is
at seven in the morning;
not interesting enough he had them fighting- at
84
FORS CLAVIGEEA.
to him, as play, to relieve the ness,
and he occasionally takes
extreme distress of his idlehands out of his pockets, startle them.
his
and claps them at the dogs, to The ornamental wall he leans against surrounds the county police-office, and the residence at the end of it, apJail Lodge." proi^riately called This county jail, policeoffice, and a large gasometer, have been built by the good '*'
people of Abingdon to adorn the principal entrance to their to-uTi
from the
south.
It
was once quite one of the
as well as historically interesting, scenes in England.
down
cottages and their gardens, sloping still left,
loveliest,
A few
to the river-side, are
and an arch or two of the great monastery; but the from the road is now the jail, and from the
principal object
river the gasometer.
It is curious that since the
English
have believed (as you M'ill find the editor of the Liverpool Daily Post, quoting to you from Macaulay, in his leader of the 9th of this month), " the only cure for Liberty is more liberty," (which is true enough, for when you have got all you can, you will be past physic,) they always make their jails conspicuous and ornamental, l^ow I have no objection, myself, detesting, as I do, every approach to liberty, to a distinct manifestation of
proper quarters; nay, in
jail, in
the highest, and in the close neighborhood of palaces; perhaps, even, with a convenient passage, and Ponte de' Sospiri, from one to the other, or, at least, a pleasant access by watergate and do^^^l the river but I do not see why in these days ;
of " incurable " liberty, the prospect in approaching a quiet
English county town should be a jail, and nothing else. That being so, however, the country boy, in his white blouse, leans placidly against the prison wall this bright Sun-
day morning, little thinking what a luminous sign-post he is making of himself, and living gnomon of sun-dial, of which the shadow points sharply to the subtlest cause of the fall of France, and of England, as
Your hands
is
too likely, after her.
your own pockets, in the morning. That is the beginning of the last day; your hands in other people's pockets at noon; that is the height of the last day; and the in
FOES CLAVIGERA.
85
ornamented or otherwise (assuredly the great jail of That is the history of nations under judgment. Don't think I say this to any single class; least of all specially to you; the rich are continually, nowadays, reproaching you ^\dth your wish to be idle. It is very wrong of you but, do they want to work all day, themselves ? All mouths are very properly open now against the Paris Communists because they fight that they may get wages for marching about with flags. What do the upper classes fight for, then? What have they fought for since the world became upper and lower, but that they also might have wages It for walking about with flags, and that mischievously? is very wrong of the Communists to steal church-plate and candlesticks. Very wrong indeed; and much good may they get of their pawnbrokers' tickets. Have you any notion (I mean that you shall have some soon) how much the fathers and fathers' fathers of these men, for a thousand years back, have paid their priests, to keep them in plate and candlesticks? You need not think I am a republican, or that I like to see priests ill-treated, and their candlesticks carried off. I have many friends among priests, and should have had more had I not long been trying to make them see that they have long trusted too much in candlesticks, not quite enough in candles; not at all enough in the sun, and least of all enough in the sun's Maker. Scientific people indeed of late opine the sun to have been produced by collision, and to be a splendidly permanent railroad accident, or explosive Elysium: also I noticed, only yesterday, that gravitation itself is announced to the members of the Royal Institution as the result of vibratory motion. Some day, perhaps, the members of the Royal Institution will jail,
the grave), for the night.
;
—
proceed to inquire after the cause of vibratory motion. that as it may, the Beginning, or Prince of Vibration, as modern science has it, Prince of Peace, as old science had
Be
— continues
—
through all scientific analysis. His own arrangements about the sun, as also about other lights, lately hidden or burning low. And these are primarily, that He it,
FOBS CLAVIGERA.
86
has appointed a great power to rise and set in heaven, which
and warmth, and motion, to the bodies of men, and flowers; and which also causes light and color in the eyes of things that have eyes. And He has set above the sonls of men, on earth, a great law or Sun of Justice or Righteousness, which brings also life and health in the daily strength and spreading of it, being spoken of in the priests' language, (which they never explained to anybody, and now wonder that nobody understands,) as having " healing in its wings: " and the obedience gives
and
life,
beasts, creeping things,
to this law, as
it
gives strength to the heart, so
to the eyes of souls that have got
any
it
gives light
eyes, so that they be-
gin to see each other as lovely, and to love each other. is
the final law respecting the sun, and
all
manner
That
of minor
and candles, down to nishlights; and I once got it two years ago, to an intelligent and obliging wax-and-tallow chandler at Abbeville, in whose shop I used to sit sketching in raim^ days; and watching the cartloads of ornamental candles which he used to supply for the church at the far east end of the to'wn, (I forget what saint it belongs to, but it is opposite the late Emperor's large new cavalry barracks,) where the young ladies of the better class in Abbeville had just got up a beautiful evening service, with a pyramid of candles which it took at least half an hour to light, and as long to put out again, and which, when lighted up to the top of the church, were only to be looked at themselves, and sung to, and not to light anybody or anything. I got the tallow-chandler to calculate vaguely the probable cost of the candles lighted in this manner, every day, in all the churches of France; and then I asked him how many cottagers' wives he knew round Abbeville itself who could afford, without pinching, either dip or mold in the evening to make their children's clothes by, and whether, if the pink and green beeswax of the district were divided every afternoon among them, it might not be quite as honorable to God, and as good for the candle trade? Which he admitted readily enough; but what I should have lights
fairly explained,
— FORS CLAVIGEEA.
87
tried to convince the young ladies themselves of, at the evening service, would probably not have been admitted so readily; that they themselves were nothing more than an extremely graceful kind of wax-tapers which had got into their heads that they were only to be looked at, for the honor
—
of God, and not to light anybody.
Which
is
much
indeed too
the notion of even the mascu-
Europe at this day. One can imagine them, indeed, modest in the matter of their own luminousness, and more timid of the tax on agricultural horses and carts, than of that on lueifers; but it would be well if they were content, here in England, however dimly phosphorescent themselves, to bask in the sunshine of May at the end of Westminster Bridge, (as my boy on Abingdon Bridge,) with their backs against the large edifice they have built there, an edifice, by the way, to my own poor judgment, less contributing to the adornment of London, than the new policeoffice to that of Abingdon. But the English squire, after line aristocracy of
his fashion, sends himself to that highly decorated jail all
spring-time; and cannot be content with his hands in his
own
pockets, nor even in yours and mine; but claps and laughs, semi-idiot that he
which,
if
is,
he knew
at dog-fights
it,
on the
floor of the
House,
are indeed dog-fights of the Stars in
Sirius against Procyon; and of the havoc and loosed dogs of war, makes, as the Times correspondent says they make, at Versailles, of the siege of Paris, " the Entertainment of the Hour."
their courses,
You
think that, perhaps, an unjust saying of him, as he
He would
will, assuredly, himself.
wild work,
My
if
fain put an end to this
he could, he thinks.
friends, I tell
you solemnly, the
sin of
this last night's doing, or undoing, (for it
I waited before finishing
Chapelle would follow the it,
I
tell
you,
is
my
letter,
it all,
is
down
to
Monday now,
to see if the
Vendome Column;)
Sainte
the sin of
not that poor rabble's, spade and pickax in
hand among the dead noise like a dog by the
;
nor yet the blasphemer's, making defiled altars of our
Lady
of Victo-
88
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
ries
;
and round
tlie
barricades, and the ruins, of the Street of
Peace.
This cruelty has been done by the kindest of us, and the most honorable; by the delicate women, by the nobly-nur-
who through their happy and, as they thought, have sought, and still seek, only " the entertainment of the hour." And this robbery has been taught to the hands, this blasphemy to the lips, of the lost poor, by the False Prophets who have taken the name of Christ in vain, and leagued themselves with His chief enemy, " Covetousness, which is idolatry." Covetousness, lady of Competition and of deadly Care; idol above the altars of Ignoble Victory; builder of streets, tured men,
holy
lives,
—
—
in cities of Ignoble Peace.
I have given you the picture of and only Hope as Giotto saw her; dominant in prosperous Italy as- in prosperous England, and having her hands clawed then, as now, so that she can only clutch, not work; also you shall read next month with me what one of Giotto's friends says of her a rude versifier,
—
—
her
^your goddess
—
one of the twangling harpers; as Giotto was a poor painter for low price, and with colours
ground by hand; but such cheap work must serve our turn for this time; also, here, is portrayed for you * one of the ministering angels of the goddess; for she herself, having ears set wide to the wind, is
careful to have wind-instruments provided by her ser-
vants for other people's ears.
This servant of hers was drawn by the court portraitand was a councilor at poor-law boards,
painter, Holbein;
in his day; counseling then, as some of us have, since, " Bread of Affliction and Water of Affliction " for the va-
grant as such,
—which
is,
indeed, good advice, if
quite sure the vagrant has, or
may
you are
have, a home; not other-
* Engraved, as also the woodcut in the April number, carefully after Holbein, by my coal-wagon-assisting assistant: but he has
missed his mark somewhat, here; the imp's abortive hands, hooked processes onlj^ like Envy's, and pterodactylous, are scarcely seen in their clutch of the bellows, and there are other faults. do it tatter for you, afterwards.
We
will
89
FOES CLAVIGEEA. wise.
But we
will talk further of this next month, taking into
council one of Holbein's prosaic friends, as well as that
singing friend of Giotto's
—an English lawyer and country
gentleman, living on his farm, at Chelsea (somewhere near Cheyne Row, I believe) and not unf requently visited there
—
by the King of England, who Avould ask himself unexpectedly to dinner at the little Thames-side farm, though the It was burnt floor of it was only strewn with green rushes. at last, rushes, ricks, and all; some said because bread of
and water of affliction had been served to heretics master being a stout Catholic; and, singularly enough, also a Communist; so that because of the fire, and
afiliction
there,
its
other matters, the
King
at last ceased to dine at Chelsea.
AVe will have some talk, however, with the farmer, ourselves, some day soon; meantime and always, believe me, Faithfully yours,
JOHN RUSKIN.
FOES CLAVIGERA.
90
POSTSCRIPT. 25th the
May
Echo of
(early morning).
ries are in flames, the
petroleum,"
—Peuter's
last night, being, "
it is
final telegram, in
The Louvre and
Federals having set
fire to
the Tuile-
them with
interesting to observe how, in fulfillment
of the Mechanical Glories of our age,
its
ingenious Gomor-
rah manufactures, and supplies to demand, her
own brim-
stone; achieving also a quite scientific, instead of miraculous,
descent of it from Heaven; and ascent of it, where required, without any need of cleaving or quaking of earth, except in a superficially " vibratory " manner. Nor can it be less encouraging to you to see how, with a sufficiently curative quantity of Liberty, you may defend
danger of over-production, especially in art; but, in case you should ever wish to re-" produce " any of the combustibles (as oil, or canvas) used in these Parisian Economies, you will do well to inquire of the author of the
yourselves against
all
" Essay on Liberty " whether he considers
oil
of linseed, or
petroleum, as best fulfilling his definition, " and embodied in material objects."
utilities fixed
INJUSTICE. Drawn
thus by Giotto, in the Chapel of the Arena
at
Padl'A.
—
LETTER
VII.
Denmark
My
Hill,
^'* '^"'^' ^^^^-
Friends, It seldom chances,
my work
lying chiefly
among
am
brought into any freedom of intercourse with my fellow-creatures; but since the fighting in Paris I have dined out several times, and spoken stones, clouds,
and
flowers, that I
who sat next me, and to others when I went and done the best I could to find out what people thought about the fighting, or thought they ought to think about it, or thought they ought to say. I had, of course, no hope of finding anj'one thinking what they ought to do. But I have not yet, a little to my surprise, met with anyone to the persons
upstairs;
who
either appeared to be sadder, or professed himself wiser,
for anything that has happened. It it,
is
am
true that I
But then
myself.
make me
was
so sad before, that nothing could
sadder; and getting wiser has always been to
very slow process,
— —
my way
at once,
Paris has given
The newest
me
a
(sometimes even quite stopping for
whole days together), in
neither sadder nor wiser, because of
I
it
so that if
two or three new ideas
fall
only puzzles me: and the fighting in
me more
than two or three.
of all these
new
ones, and, in fact, quite a
glistering
and freshly minted idea
notion of
Communism,
to me, is the Parisian understand it, (which I don't profess to do altogether, yet, or I should be wiser than I was, with a vengeance). For, indeed, I am myself a Communist of the old school reddest also of the red; and was on the very point of saying so at the end of my last letter; only the telegram about the Louvre's being on fire stopped me, because I thought the Communists of the new school, as I could not at all underas far as I
91
FOBS CLAVIGERA.
92
stand them, miglit not quite understand me. For we Communists of the old school think that our property belongs to everybody,
and everybody's property
I thought the Louvre belonged to
me
as
to us; so of course
much
as to the
Pa-
risians, and expected they would have sent word over to me, being an Art Professor, to ask whether I wanted it burnt down. But no message or intimation to that effect ever
reached me.
Then
the next bit of
new
coinage in the
way
of notion
which I have picked up in Paris streets, is the present meaning of the French word " Ouvrier," which in my time the dictionaries used to give as " Workman," or " Working-
For again, I have spent many days, not to say years, with the working-men of our English school myself; and I know that, with the more advanced of them, the gathering word is that which I gave yoU at the end of my second num-
man."
ber
—" To do good work, whether we
live or die."
Whereas
I perceive the gathering, or rather scattering, word of the French " ouvrier " is, " To undo good work, whether we live or die."
And
this
present, of
that
is
the third, and the
my new
ideas,
last,
I will
tell
you for the
but a troublesome one: namely,
are henceforward to have a duplicate power of poeconomy; and that the new Parisian expression for
we
litical
principle
its first
is
not to be " laissez faire," but
''
laissez
refaire."
I cannot, however,
fashions of thought little; so
make anything till
of these
new French
I have looked at them quietly a
to-day I will content myself with telling you what
we Communists
of the old school
meant by Commimism;
—
worth your hearing, for I tell you simply in " way we know, and have known, what Com" arrogant my our fathers knew it, and told us, three thoufor munism is sand years ago; while you baby Communists do not so much as know what the name means, in your own English or
and
it
will be
—
—
—
whether a House of Commons implies, or does not imply, also a House of TJncommons;
French
no, not so
much
as
93
FORS CLAVIGEKA.
Commune, which Garibaldi had any relation to the Holiness of the Communion " which he came to fight against. Will you be at the pains, now, however, to learn rightly, and once for all, what Communism is? First, it means that everybody must work in common, and do common or simple work for his dinner; and that if any man will not do it, he must not have his dinner. That much, perhaps, you thought you knew ? but you did not think we Communists of the old You shall have it, then, in the words of school knew it also ? the Chelsea farmer and stout Catholic, I was telling you of, in last number. He was born in Milk Street, London, three hundred and ninety-one years ago, (1480, a year I have just been telling my Oxford pupils to remember for manifold reasons,) and he planned a Commune flowing with milk and honey, and otherwise Elysian; and called it the " Place of Wellbeing," or Utopia; which is a word you perhaps have
nor whether the Holiness of the
came
to fight for,
''
—
occasionally used before now, like others, without under-
standing
it;
—
(in the
before referred shall use
it
to, it
article of the Liverpool
Daily Post
occurs felicitously seven times).
in that stupid
way no more, if I can are managed there.
You
help
it.
Listen how matters really " The chief, and almost the only business of the govern-
ment,* is to take care that no man may live idle, but that everyone may follow his trade diligently: yet they do not wear themselves out with perpetual toil from morning till night, as if they were beasts of burden, which, as it is indeed a heavy slavery, so it is ever^nvhere the common course of life amongst all mechanics except the Utopians; but they, dividing the day and night into twenty-four hours, appoint six of these for work, three of which are before dinner and three after; they then sup, and, at eight o'clock, counting
from noon, go
bed and sleep eight hours: the rest of their time, besides that taken up in work, eating, and sleeping, is to
* I spare you, for once, a worcl for " government " used by this which would have been unintelligible to you, and is so,
old author,
except in
its
general sense, to me, too.
FORS CLAVIGEEA.
94
every man's discretion; yet tliej are not to abuse that interval to luxury and idleness, but must employ it in some left to
proper exercise, according to their various inclinations, which is,
for the most part, reading. " But the time appointed for labor
is to be narrowly examined, otherwise, you may imagine that, since there are only six hours appointed for work, they may fall under a scarcity of necessary provisions: but it is so far from being
true that this time
plenty of
rather too
not sufficient for supplying
is
all things,
them with
either necessary or convenient, that
much; and
this
you
it is
will easily apprehend, if
you
how great a part of all other nations is quite idle. women generally do little, who are the half of manand, if some few women are diligent, their husbands
consider First,
kind;
are idle: then,
What
We
—
"
then?
will stop a minute, friends, if
you
aware that sternest
farmer who
this
Roman
is
want more made fully you is one of the
please, for I
you, before you read what then, to be once
speaking to
Catholics of his stern time; and at the fall
of Cardinal Wolsey,
became Lord High Chancellor of Eng-
land in his stead. "
—then, consider the great company
those that are called religious
of idle priests, and of
men; add
to these, all rich
men, chiefly those that have estates in land, Avho are called noblemen and gentlemen, together with their families, made up of idle persons, that are kept more for show than use add to these, all those strong and lusty beggars that go about, pretending some disease in excuse for their begging; and, upon the whole account, you will find that the number of those by whose labors mankind is supplied is much less than you, perhaps, imagined: then, consider how few of those that work are employed in labors that are of real service! for we, who measure all things by money, give rise to many trades that are both vain and superfluous, and serve only to support riot and luxury: for if those who work were ;
employed only
in such things as the conveniences of life re-
95
FOBS CLAVIGERA.
would be such an abundance of them, tJmt the them would so sink that tradesmen could not he maintained by their gains; " (italics mine Fair and softly, Sir Thomas we must have a shop round the corner, and a peddler or two on fair-days, yet;) " if all those who labor about useless things were set to more profitable employments, and if all that languish out their lives in sloth and idleness (every one of whom consumes as much as any two of the men that are at work) were forced to labor, you may easily imagine that a small proportion of time would quire, there
prices of
—
—
—
!
serve for doing
all
that
is
either necessary, profitable, or
pleasant to mankind, especially while pleasure
due bounds:
its
is
kept within
appears very plainly in Utopia; for
this
and in all the territory that lies round you can scarce find five hundred, either men or women, by their age and strength capable of labor, that are not engaged in it! even the heads of government, though excused by the law, yet do not excuse themselves, but work, that, by their examples, they may excite the industry of the rest there, in a great city, it,
of the people."
You
see, therefore, that there is
never any fear, among us
of the old school, of being out of work; but there
among many
fear,
we should not do the work set we thorough-going Communists make duty to consider how common we are;
of us, lest
us well; for, indeed, it
a part of our daily
and how few of us have any brains or of,
or
fit
to trust to;
ceptionable lot of selves,
(still
less,
—that
human we
souls
being the,
creatures.
call ourselves
erable sinners, for
ISTot
we know
]i\^os,
we
we
so,)
mis-
and sober
our power, since last Sunday; (on which to
be informed, drunk;) but
common creatures enough, the most we may be gathered up in St. Peter's
are of course if
think our-
are not sinners,
of; but are leading godly, righteous,
to the best of
and thankful
that
are not in anvwise miserable, but
day some of us were, we regret
we
worth speaking almost unex-
alas,
without thinking
quite comfortable for the most part; and
that
great
is
of us, sheet,
so as not to be uncivilly or unjustly called unclean too.
FOES CLAVIGEKA.
96
And
therefore our chief concern
wiser and of better
make than
is
to find out
any among us
the rest, and to get them,
if
they will for any persuasion take the trouble, to rule over us, and teach us how to behave, and make the most of what little good is in us. So much for the first law of old Communism, respecting Then the second respects property, and it is that the work.
common, wealth,
public, or its
(to
shall be
more and
statelier in all
substance than private or singular wealth; that
come
to
my own
special business for a
there shall be only cheap and
few
is
to say
moment)
that
pictures, if any, in the
where nobody but the owner can see them; but costly pictures, and many, on the outsides of houses, where the people can see them: also that the H6tel-de-Yille, or Hotel of the whole Town, for the transaction of its common insides of houses,
business, shall be a magnificent building,
by the people, and with
its
much
rejoiced in
towers seen far away through
the clear air; but that the hotels for private business or pleasure, cafes, taverns, and the like, shall be low, few, plain,
and
in
singular and
back
streets;
uncommon
more
especially such as furnish
drinks and refreshments; but that
the fountains which furnish the people's
common
drink shall
be very lovely and stately, marbles, and the
like.
and adorned with precious Then farther, according to old Com'
—
munism, the private dwellings of uncommon persons dukea and lords are to be very simple, and roughly put together,
—
—such persons being supposed
to
be above
all
care for things
that please the commonalty; but the buildings for public oi
common
ser^^ce,
more
especially schools,
almshouses, and
workhouses, are to be externally of a majestic character, as being for noble purposes and charities; and in their interiors And, furnished with many luxuries for the poor and sick. finally
and
chiefly, it is
an absolute law of old
Communism
that the fortunes of private persons should be small, and of
little
account in the State; but the
common
treasure of
the whole nation should be of superb and precious things in
redundant quantity, as pictures, statues, precious books;
— FORS CLAVIGERA.
97
gold and silver vessels, preserved from ancient times; gold
and silver bullion laid up for use, in case of any chance need of buying anything suddenly from foreign nations; noble horses, cattle, and sheep, on the public lands; and vast spaces of land for culture, exercise, and garden, round the cities, full of flowers, which, being everybody's property, nobody could gather; and of birds which, being everybody's property, nobody could shoot. And, in a word, that instead of a
common
poverty, or national debt,
which every poor person in the nation fulfill
his part of,
is
taxed annually to
common
there should be a
wealth, or
national reverse of debt, consisting of pleasant things, which
every poor person in the nation should be summoned to receive his dole of, annually; and of pretty things, which every
person capable of admiration, foreigners as well as natives, should unf eignedly admire, in an aesthetic, and not a covetous
manner (though it is
that I
am
for
taxed
my own now
part I can't understand what
to defend, or
are supposed to covet, here).
But
what foreign nations
truly, a nation that has
got anything to defend of real public interest, can usually
hold
it;
and a fat Latin communist gave for sign of the
strength of his commonalty, in " Privatus
illis
its
strongest time,
census erat brevis,
Commune magnum;
"
which you may get any of your boys or girls to translate for you, and remember; remembering, also, that the commonalty or publicity depends for its goodness on the nature of the thing that is common, and that is public. When the French cried, "Vive la Republique! " after the battle of Sedan, they were thinking only of the Publique, in the word, and not of the R'e in it. But that is the essential part of it, for that " Re " is not like the mischievous Re in Reform, and Refaire, which the words had better be without; but it and when you cry, is short for res, which means " thing " ;
" Live the Republic," the question
is
mainly, what thing
you wish to be publicly alive, and whether you are striving for a Common-Wealth, and Public-Thing; or, as too
it is
—
— rORS CLAVIGERA.
98
l^lainlj in Paris, for a
Common-IUth, and Public-]^othing,
Common
or even Piiblic-Less-than-nothing and
Now
Deficit.
these laws respecting public and private property,
all
are accepted in the same terms by the entire body of us
Communists of the old
school; but with respect to the
agement of both, we old Reds
not indeed in color of redness, but in
one class being, as
man-
two classes, differing, depth of tint of it
fall into
were, only of a delicatelv pink, peach-
it
blossom, or dog-rose redness; but the other, to which I myself
do partly, and desire wholly, to belong, as I told you, reddest of the red
—
that
the Spaniards call
Greeks color:
blue, instead of red,
it
this not
and which the
being an intense phoenix or flamingo
call ^otvtVcos,
and
even dark crimdeep color of the blood which made
to say, full crimson, or
is
son, passing into that
merely, as in the flamingo feathers, a
color on the outside, but going ihrough
and through, ruby-
one of the few people who have ever beheld our queen full in the face, says of her that, if
who
wise; so that Dante,
she had been in a
fire,
fire-color she was, all
And between
is
he could not have seen her at
these two sects or shades of us, there
difference in our
way
neighbor's property
all,
so
through.* of holding our
is
ours,
common
and ours,
his,)
is
this
our namely, that the faith, (that
rose-red division of us are content in their diligence of care to preserve or
guard from injury or
loss their neighbors'
property, as their own; so that they may be called, not merely dog-rose red, but even " watch-dog-rose " red being, ;
indeed,
more careful and anxious
for the safety of the pos-
sessions of other people, (especially their masters,) than for
any of their own; and also more sorrowful for any wound harm suffered by any creature in their sight, than for hurt to themselves. So that they are Communists, even less in their ha^dng part in all common well-being of their or
neighbors, than part in all
common
whole, infinite gainers; for there * "
Tanto rossa,
xxix. 122.
ch'
is
pain: being yet, on the in this world infinitely
appena fora dentro
al f uoco
nota."
Pitrg.,
99
FOKS CLAVIGERA.
more joj
tlian pain to
be shared,
if
you
will only take
your
when it is set for you. The vermilion, or Tyrian-red
share
sect of us, however, are not content merely with this carefulness and watchfulness over our neighbors' good, but we cannot rest unless we are giv-
we can spare of our own; and the more precious it more we want to divide it with somebody. So that above all things, in what we value most of possessions, pleasant sights, and true Imowledge, we cannot relish seeing any pretty things unless other people see them also; neither can we be content to know anything for ourselves, but must contrive, somehow, to make it known to others. And as thus especially we like to give knowledge away, ing what is,
the
it good to give, (for, as for selling knowlby the Spirit of Heaven, we hold comes edge, thinking it only a v»^ay of selling God again, and the selling of it to be also, we know that the knowledge utterly Iscariot's business;) made up for sale is apt to be watered and dusted, or even
so
we
itself
like to
have
good for nothhig; and we
and give
try, for
our part, to get it, is to be given av/ay
pure: the mere fact that it anybody who asks to have it, and immediately For instance, use it, is a continual check upon us. it,
at once to
wants
to
in the House of Commons, on the 20th of last month, (as reported in the Times,) " would simply observe, in conclusion, that it was impossible to tell how many thousands of the young men who were to be embarked for India next September, would be marched, not to the hills, but to their graves " any of us Tyrian-reds " would simply observe " that the young men themselves
when Colonel Xorth,
;
ought to be constantly, and on principle, informed of their destination before embarking; and that this pleasant communicativeness of what knowledge on the subject w^-as to be got, would soon render quite possible the attainment of more.
So
also,
in
abstract science,
the instant habit of
property, cures us of a bad
making true discoveries common trick which one may notice to have much hindered persons lately, of rather spending their time
scientific
in hiding their
100
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
neighbors' discoveries, than improving their own: whereas,
among
us, scientific flamingoes are
not only openly graced
for discoveries, but openly disgraced for coveries; and that
sharply and permanently; so that there
is
rarely a hint or
thought among them of each other's being wrong, but quick confession of whatever is found out rightly.*
But the point in which we dark-red Communists differ most from other people is, that we dread, above all things, getting miserly of virtue and if there be any in us, or among us, we try forthwith to get it made common, and would fain hear the mob crying for some of that treasure, where it seems to have accumulated. I say, " seems," only: for though, at first, all the finest virtue looks as if it were laid up with the rich, (so that, generally, a millionaire would be much surprised at hearing that his daughter had made a petroleuse of herself, or that his son had murdered anybody for the sake of their watch and cravat), it is not at all ;
—
clear to us dark-reds that this virtue, proportionate to in-
and we believe that even if it were, all to themselves, and leave the so-called canaille without any, vitiate what they keep by keeping it, so that it is like manna laid up through the night, which breeds worms in the morning. You see, also, that we dark-red Communists, since we exist only in giving, must, on the contrary, hate with a perfect hatred all manner of thieving: even to Cceur-de-Lion's tar-and-feather extreme; and of all thieving, we dislike thieving on trust most, (so that, if we ever get to be strong enough to do what we want, and chance to catch hold of come,
is
of the right sort
the people
who keep
it
;
thus
* Confession always a little painful, however; being the most difficult of all to conquer. I find justice to the botanical lecturer, as well as to
scientific
my
envy
much
in-
friend, in
my
I did
much
at the time; but having vain of, I wanted the lecturer's to be wrong, and stopped cross-examining my friend as soon as I had got what suited me. Nevertheless, the general last letter; and, indeed, suspected as
some botanical notions myself, which
I
am
statement that follows, remember, rests on no tea-table chat; and the tea-table chat itself is accurate, as far as it goes.
101
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
any failed bankers, their necks hour's purchase). in the honor
So
and force of
it
will not be
we think
as
also,
worth half an
virtue diminishes
in proportion to income,
think vice increases in the force and shame of
we
and is worse in kings and rich people than in poor; and worse on a large scale than on a narrow one and worse when deliberate So that we can understand one man's coveting than hastj. a piece of vineyard-ground for a garden of herbs, and stonand yet ing the master of it, (both of them being Jews;) the dogs ate queen's flesh for that, and licked king's blood! but for two nations both Christians to covet their neighbor's vineyards, all down beside the River of their border, and slay until the River itself runs red! The little pool of Samaria! shall all the snows of the Alps, or the salt pool of the Great Sea, wash their armor, for these? I promised in my last letter that I would tell you the main meaning and bearing of the war, and its results to this day: now that you know what Communism is, I can tell you these briefly, and, what is more to the purpose, how to it,
;
—
—
—
—
—
bear yourself in the midst of them.
The
first
reason for
all
wars, and for the necessity of
and European nations, are Thieves^ and, in their hearts, greedy of their neighbors' goods, land, and fame. But besides being Thieves, they are also fools, and have never yet been able to understand that if Cornish men want that the pippins cheap, they must not ravage Devonshire national defenses,
is
that the majority of persons, high
low, in all
—
prosperity of their neighbors
is,
in the end, their
own
also;
and the poverty of their neighbors, by the communism of God, becomes also in the end their own. " Invidia," jealousy of your neighbor's good, has been, since dust was first made flesh, the curse of man; and " Charitas," the desire to do your neighbor grace, the one source of all human glory, power, and material Blessing. But war between nations (fools and thieves though they I gave you that be,) is not necessarily in all respects evil. long extract from Froissart to show you, mainly, that Theft
102 in
rOKS CLAVIGEKA.
—however sharp and —does not corrupt men's
simplicity
its
rnde, yet
done, and bravely
can, in a foolish, but quite vital
feast of the Virgin
Mary
But Occult Theft,
if
frankly
and they and faithful way, keep the
in the midst of
—Theft
souls;
it.
which hides itself even from itself, and is legal, respectable, and cowardly, corrupts the body and soul of man, to the last fiber of them. And the
—
guilty Thieves of Europe, the real sources of in
it,
are the Capitalists
—that
is
all
to say, people
deadly war
who
live
by
percentages on the labor of others; instead of by fair wages for their own. The Real war in Europe, of which this fighting in Paris
is
the Inauguration,
the workmen, such as these have
is
between these and They have
made him.
kept him poor, ignorant, and sinful, that they might, without his knowledge, gather for themselves the produce of his toil. At last, a dim insight into the fact of this da^^^ls on him; and such as they have made him he meets them, and
will meet.
Nay, the time
even come when he will study that Meby the Spectator, formerly quoted, of the Eiltration of ^Mouey from above downwards. " It was one of the man}- delusions of the Commune," (says to-day's Telegraph, 24th June,) ^' that it could do without rich consumers." Well, such unconsumed existence would be very wonderful Yet it is, to me also, conceivable. is
teorological question, suggested
!
Without the possibly!
It
riches, is
— no;
but without the consumers?
occurring to the minds of the
workmen
—
that
these Golden Fleeces must get their dew from somewhere. " Shall there be dew upon the fleece only? " they ask: and
—
will
be answered.
purses, say you?
They cannot do without these long No; but they want to find where the long
filled. Nay, eveii their trying to burn the Louvre, without reference to Art Professors, had a ray of meaning
purses are in
it ''
—quite If
Spectatorial.
we must choose between
a Titian and a Lancashire
cotton-mill," (wrote the Spectator of
instructing
me
in political
August
economy, just
as
Gtli.
the
last year,
war was
.
103
FOES CLAVIGERA. beginning,) " in the
name
manhood and
of
morality, give ns
the cotton-mill."
So thinks the French workman his mill
only
also, energetically;
Both French and
not to be in Lancashire.
is
English agree to have no more Titians, is to have the Cotton-Mill?
—
it
well,
is
—but
which
Do you see in the Times of yesterday and the day before, 22nd and 23rd June, that the Minister of France dares not, even in this her utmost need, put on an income tax; and do you see why he dares not? Observe, such a tax
because
the only honest and just one;
on the rich in true proportion to the poor,
tells
it
is
and because it meets necessity in the shortest and bravest way, and without interfering with any commercial operation. they like All rich people object to income tax, of course to pay as much as a poor man pays on their tea, sugar, and ;
tobacco,
—nothing
Whereas,
—
on their incomes.
in true justice, the only honest
and wholly right
one not merely on income, but property; increasing And the main in percentage as the property is greater. tax
is
is that it makes publicly known what and how he gets it. For every kind of Vagabonds, high and low, agree in their dislike to give an account of the way they get their living; still less, of how much they have got sewn up in
virtue of such a tax
every
man
has,
It does not,
their breeches.
country that
but
it is
however, matter
to a
know how its poor Vagabonds moment that it should know how its rich and that much of knowledge, it seems to me,
should
it
live;
of vital
Vagabonds
live
;
in the present state of our education,
But
much
that,
when you have
wisely, the first need
is
attained
it,
is
quite attainable.
you may
act
that you should be sure
living honestly yourselves.
That
is
why
on
it
you are
I told you, in
my
second letter, you must learn to obey good laws before you I will amplify now a little the three seek to alter bad ones :
—
promises I want you to make. I.
You
Look back at them. you live or
are to do good work, whether
die.
It
—
— 104
FORS CLAVIGEEA.
may
—
be you will have to die; well, men have died for their country often, yet doing her no good; be ready to die for her in doing her assured good: her, and all other countries
Mind your own
with her.
and
business with your absolute heart
That it is gunpowder and arsenic. And be sure of this, literally: you must simply rather die than mahe any destroying mechanism or compound. You are to be literally employed in cultivating the ground, or making useful things, and carrying them where they are wanted. Stand in the streets, and say to all who pass by: Have you any vineyard we can work in, 7iot Naboth's ? In your powder and petroleum manufactory, we work no more. I have said little to you yet of any of the pictures engraved ^you perhaps think, tiot to the ornament of my soul; but see that
it is
a good business
corn and sweet pease you are producing,
first.
—not
—
book.
Be time.
You
will find them better than ornaments in however, in the one I give you with this the " Charity " of Giotto the Red Queen of Dante, so.
it
K^otice,
—
letter
and ours
also,
common
one.
—how
Usually she thinks there
is
—
different his thought of her
is
from the
nursing children, or giving money. Giotto charity in nursing children; bears and
—
is little
wolves do that for their
little
ones; and less
still
in giving
money. His Charity tramples upon bags of gold has no use for them. She gives only corn and flowers; and God's angel gives her, not even these but a Heart.
—
—
Giotto
Your
is
love
quite literal in his meaning, as well as figurative.
is
to give food
and
flowers,
and
to labor for
them
only.
But what are we
powder and petroleum, what poisonous beasts may. If a wretch spit in your face, will you answer by spitting in his? if he throw vitriol at you, will you go to the apothethen?
to do against
What men may
—
cary for a bigger bottle?
do; not
— 105
FOES CLAVIGERA.
There pardon,
is
—
no physical crime
at this day, so far
so without parallel in its
untempted
beyond
guilt, as the
making of war-machinery, and invention of mischievous subTwo nations may go mad, and fight like harlots stance. God have mercy on them; you, who hand them carvingknives off the table, for leave to pick up a dropped sixpence, what mercy is there for you? We are so humane, forsooth, and so wise; and our ancestors had tar-barrels for witches; we will have them for everybody else, and drive the witches' trade ourselves, by daylight; we will have our caldrons, please Hecate, cooled (according to the Darwinian theory,) with baboon's blood, and enough of it, and sell hell-fire in
—
the open street.
Seek to revenge no injury.
II.
you
—
a little
more
clearly
why
You
see
—do
now
not
I wrote that? what strain
on the untaught masses of you to revenge themeven with insane fire? have Alas, the Taught masses are strained enough also; you not just seen a great religious and reformed nation, with there
is
selves,
its
—
— —^angelical-minded
goodly Captains,
philosophical, sentimental,
domestic,
and with its come and take its vital it, to Lord's Prayer really quite " Pay me that thou neighbor nation by the throat, saying, evangelical,
altogether,
—
owest " ?
revenge no injury: I do not say, seek to punish no crime look what I hinted about failed bankers. Of that
Seek
to :
hereafter.
obey good laws; and in a little while you how to obey good Men, who are living, breathing, unblinded law; and to subdue base and disloyal ones, recognizing in these the light, and ruling over those in the power, of the Lord of Light and Peace, whose Dominion is an everlasting Dominion, and His King' III.
Learn
to
will reach the better learning
dom from
—
generation to generation.
Ever faithfully yours, JOHiq"
KUSKIN.
LETTER Vm.
My
Friekds,
—
I BEGIN this letter a montli before
my mind
several matters in at once.
It
is
the
first
it is
wanted, having
that I would fain put into words
of July, and I
sit
down
to write
by
the dismalest light that ever yet I wrote by; namely, the light of this
midsummer morning,
lock, Derbyshire), in the
For the sky
is
in
mid-England, (Mat-
year 1871,
covered with gray cloud
;
—not
rain-cloud,
which no ray of sunshine can pierce; partly diifused in mist, feeble mist, enough to make distant objects unintelligible, yet without any substance, or wreathing, or color of its own. And everywhere the leaves of the but a dry black
veil,
trees are shaking fitfully, as they do before a thunder-storm;
only not violently, but enough to show the passing to and fro of a strange, bitter, blighting wind. Dismal enough, had it been the first morning of its kind that summer had sent. But during all this spring, in London, and at Oxford, through meager March, through changelessly sullen April, through despondent May, and darkened June, morning after morning has come gray-shrouded thus. And it is a new thing to me, and a very dreadful one, I am fifty years old, and more; and since I was five, have gleaned the best hours of my life in the sun of spring and summer mornings and I never saw such as these, till now. And the scientific men are busy as ants, examining the sun, and the moon, and the seven stars, and can tell me all about them, I believe, by this time; and how they move, and what they are made of. And I do not care, for my part, two copper spangles how they move, nor what they are made of. I can't move them any other way than they go, nor make them of anything else, ;
106
!
107
FOES CLAVIGEEA. better than they are made.
give much,
if
I could be told
from, and what For,
it is
science, one
made
with
perhaps,
might make
But I would care much and where this bitter wind comes
of.
forethought, it
and
fine
laboratory
of something else.
were made of poisonous smoke; very possibly it may be: there are at least two hundred furnace chimneys in a square of two miles on every side of me. But mere smoke would not blow to and fro in that wild way. It looks more to me as if it were made of dead men's souls such of them as are not gone yet where they have to go, and may be flitting hither and thither, doubting, It looks partly as if
it
—
themselves, of the
You know,
if
fittest
place for them.
there are such things as souls, and
if
ever
any of them haunt places where they have been hurt, there must be many about us, just now, displeased enough You may laugh, if you like. I don't believe any one of you would like to live in a room with a murdered man in tlie even with cupboard, however well preserved chemically; a sunflower growing out at the top of his head. And I don't, myself, like living in a world with such a multitude of murdered men in the ground of it though we are making heliotropes of them, and scientiflc flowers, that
—
—
study the sun.
men would let me and other people with our own eyes, and neither through telescopes nor heliotropes. You shall, at all events, study the rain a little, if not the sun, to-day, and settle that question we have I wish the scientific
study
it
been upon so long All France,
and pride into debt;
it
as to Avhere
seems,
is
it
comes from.
in a state of enthusiastic delight
unexpected facility with which she has got and Monsieur Thiers is congratulated by all our
at the
wisest papers on his beautiful statesmanship of borrowing. it, having suffered a good deal from that kind of statesmanship in private persons but I dare say it is as clever as anything else thaf states-
I don't myself see the cleverness of
:
men
do,
nowadays; only
it
happens
to
be more mischievous
•
108
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
than most of their other doings, and I want you to understand the bearings of
Everybody lend
it
to
in
it.
France who has got any money
M. Thiers
is
eager to
doubt; but who is to be " raised " by duties on
at five per cent.
ISTo
pay the five per cent. ? It is and that. Then certainly the persons who get the five per cent, will have to pay some part of these duties themselves, on their own tea and sugar, or whatever else is taxed; and this taxing will be on the whole of their trade, and on whatever they buy with the rest of their fortunes; but the five per cent, only on what they lend M. Thiers. It is a low estimate to say the payment of duties will take to
this
off
one per cent, of their
five.
arrangement is that they get four per cent, for their money, and have all the trouble of customs duties, to take from them another extra one per cent., and give it them back again. Four per cent., however, Practically, therefore, the
is
But who pays that? The people who have got no money
not to be despised.
to
lend,
pay
it;
the daily worker and producer pays it. Unfortunate " William," who has borrowed, in this instance, not a plane
he could make planks with, but mitrailleuses and gunpowder, with which he has planed away his own farmsteads, and forests,
desolate,
and
fair fields
now
of corn,
and having
left
himself
has to pay for the loan of this useful instru-
ment, five per cent. So says the gently commercial James to him: " iS^ot only the price of your plane, but five per cent, to me for lending it, O sweetest of Williams." Sweet William, carrying generally more absinthe in his brains than wit, has little to say for himself, having, indeed, wasted too much of his sweetness lately, tainted disagreeably with petroleum, on the desert air of Paris. And the people
who
are to get their five per cent, out of him, and roll
and suck him,
—
the sugar-cane of a William that he
how should they but
him is,
—
think the arrangement a glorious one
for the- nation?
So there
is
great acclaim and triumphal procession of
109
rORS CLAVIGEEA.
and the arrangement is made; namely, that all the poor laboring persons in France are to pay the rich idle
financiers!
ones five per cent, annually, on the
sum
of eighty millions
of sterling pounds, until further notice.
But
Sweet William
this is not all, observe.
is
not alto-
him without machinery: you must have your army in good
gether so soft in his rind that you can crush
some
sufficient
order, " to justify public confidence
;
" and you must get the
expense of that, beside your five per cent., out of ambrosial William. He must pay the cost of his own roller.
Now,
what it all comes to. you spend eighty millions of money in fireworks, doing no end of damage in letting them off. Then you borrow money, to pay the firework-maker's bill, from any gain-loving persons who have got it. And then, dressing your bailiff's men in new red coats and cocked hats, you send them drumming and trumpeting into the fields, to take the peasants by the throat, and make them pay the interest on what you have borrowed; and the extherefore, see briefly
First,
pense of the cocked hats besides.
That is " financiering," my friends, as the mob of the money-makers understand it. And they understand it well. For that is what it always comes to, finally; taking the peasant by the throat. He must pay for he only can. Food can only be got out of the ground, and all these devices of soldiership, and law, and arithmetic, are but ways of getting at last do\vn to him, the furrow-driver, and snatching the roots from him as he digs. And they have got him down, now, they think, well, for a while, poor "William, after his fit of fury and petroleum: and can make their money out of him, for years to come,
—
in the old ways.
Did you chance, my number
day, the 83rd
friends,
any of you,
to see, the other
of the Graphic, with the picture of
All the fine ladies sitting so trimly, and looking so sweet, and doing the whole duty of woman wearing their fine clothes gracefully; and the the Queen's concert in
—
it?
— 110
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
pretty singer, wliite-tliroated, warbling " Home, sweet home " to them, so morally, and melodiously! Here was yet
be our ideal of virtuous life, thought the Graphic! we are safe back with our virtues in satin slippers and lace veils; and our Kingdom of Heaven is come again, with observation, and crown diamonds of the dazzlingest. C^herubim and Seraphim in toilettes de Paris, (bleu-deto
Surely,
ciel
—
—vert
dancing to
—mauve
—
de
colombe-fusillee,)
Coote and Tinney's band;
and vulgar Hell Vulgar Hell shall (see page 17,)
d'olivier-de-Xoe
reserved for the canaille, as heretofore!
be didactically portrayed, accordingly; Wickedness going its way to its poor Home bitter-sweet. Ouvrier and petroleuse prisoners at last glaring wild on
—
—
their
way
—
to die.
whom one was appointed which has indeed simied the unteaching, or the untaught? which now are
Alas! of these divided races, of to
teach
deepest
and guide the
— —
guiltiest
who
these,
other,
perish, or those
—
—
^who forget?
—
Ouvrier and petroleuse; they are gone their way to their But for these, the Virgin of France shall yet unfold the oriflamme above their graves, and lay her blanched lilief on their smirched dust. Yes, and for these, great Charles shall rouse his Roland, and bid him put ghostly trump to lip, and breathe a point of war; and the helmed Pucelle shall answer with a wood-note of Domremy; yes, and for these death.
—
the Louis they mocked, like his master, shall raise his holy hands, and pray God's peace. " Not as the world giveth."
Everlasting shame only, and
unrest, are the world's gifts.
These Swine of the
cent, shall share "
them
five
per
duly.
La sconoscente
Ad
vita, che i fe' sozzi ogni conopcenza or li fa bruni.
*
Che tutto
E
*
.
*
*
I'oro, ch'e sotto la luna,
che gia fu, di queste anime stanche poterebbe fame posar una."
Non
"Ad
ogni conoscenza bruni:"
Dark
to all recognition?
— Ill
FOKS CLAVIGERA.
So they would have it indeed, true of instinct. " Ce serait I'inquisition," screamed the Senate of France, threatened with income-tax and inquiry into their ways and means. Well, what better thing could it be? Had they not been blind long enough, under their mole-hillocks, that they should shriek at the first spark of "Inquisition"? A few things might be " inquired," one should think, and answered, among honest men, now, to advantage, and openly? " Ah no for God's sake," shrieks the Senate, " no Inquisition. If ever anybody should come to know how we live, we were disgraced forever, honest gentlemen that we are." !Now, my friends, the first condition of all bravery is to keep out of this loathsomeness. If you do live by rapine, stand up like a man for the old law of bow and spear; but don't fall whimpering down on your belly, like Autolycus, " groveling on the ground," when another human creature asks you how you get your daily bread, with an " Oh, that ever I was born, here is inquisition come on me! " The Inquisition must come. Into men's consciences, no; not now: there is little worth looking into there. But into their pockets yes; a most practicable and beneficial inquisition, to be made thoroughly and purgatorially, once for all, and rendered unnecessary hereafter, by furnishing the relieved marsupialia with glass pockets, for the future. You know, at least, that we, in our ovm society, are to have glass pockets, as we are all to give the tenth of what we have, to buy land with, so that we must everyone know
—
—
—
—
each other's property, to a farthing. And this month I begin making up my o^\ti accounts for you, as I said I would: I could not, sooner, though I set matters in train as soon as
my
first letter was out, and effected (as I supposed!), in February, a sale of £14,000 worth of houses, at the West
End,
and
to Messrs.
But from then
of business settled,
been
,
of
Row.
now, I've been trying to get that piece and until yesterday, 19th July, I have not
till
able.
For,
first
there was a mistake
made by my lawyer
in the
112
of the houses: No. 7 ought to have been No.
list
a
FORS CLAVIGEEA. It
1.
was
sheer piece of stupidity, and ought to have been corrected
by
a dash of the pen; but all sorts of deeds
had
to
be made it took
out again, merely that they might be paid for; and
about three months to change 7 into 1. At last all was declared smooth again, and I thought I should get my money; but Messrs. never stirred. My people kept sending them letters, saying I really did want
Whether they it. thought it or not, they took no notice of any such informal communications. I thought they were going to back out
the money, though they mightn't think
of their bargain; but my man of business at last got their guarantee for its completion. " If they've guaranteed the payment, why don't they I; but still I couldn't get any money. At found the lawyers on both sides were quarreling over Nobody knew, of the whole pack of the stamp-duties! them, whether this stamp or that was the right one! and my lawyers wouldn't give an eighty-pound stamp, and theirs wouldn't be content with a twenty-pound one. Now, you know, all this stamp business itself is merely Mr. Gladstone's * way of coming in for Ms share of the I can't be allowed to sell my houses in peace, but booty. Mr. Gladstone must have his three hundred pounds out of me, to feed his Woolwich infant with, and fire it off " with the most satisfactory result," " nothing damaged but the
pay?" thought last I
platform."
am
come and say what he and get out of my sight. But not to know what he does want! and to keep me from getting my money at all, while his lawyers are asking which is the right stamp? I think he had better be clear on that point next I
content, if only he would
wants, and take
it,
time.
But
here, at last, are six
stamp question
is
—not
months come and gone, and the
settled, indeed,
but I've undertaken
* Of course the Prime Minister is always the real tax-gatherer; the Chancellor of the Exchequer is only the cat's-paw.
!
113
FOES CLAVIGERA. to keep
my man
of business free of harm,
won't do; and so at last he says I'm to have I really believe, by the time this letter will
have paid
me my
Now you know free
is
if
the stamps
my money;
and
out, Messrs.
£14,000.
I promised you the tenth of
all
from incumbrances already existing on
when
I had,
This
it.
first
want part of it Art ProfessorDrawing under the to found a Mastership of for less than £5,000. ship at Oxford; which I can't do rightly But I'll count the sum left as £10,000 instead of £9,000, and that will be clear for our society, and so, you shall have a thousand pounds down, as the -tenth of that, which will installment of £14,000
is
not
all clear,
for I
my pledge thus far. thousand down, I say; but down where?
quit me, observe, of
A I put
it
to be safe for us ?
You
Where can
will find presently, as others
and we get something worth taking care becomes a very curious question indeed, where we can put our money to be safe In the meantime, I've told my man of business to buy £1,000 consols in the names of two men of honor; the names cannot yet be certain. "What remains of the round thousand shall be kept to add to next installment. And thus begins the fund, which I think we may advisably call And although the interest on the " St. George's " fund. consols is, as I told you before, only the taxation on the
come
in to help us,
of, that it
British peasant continued since the J^apoleon wars, little
still this
portion of his labor, the interest on our St. George's
fund, will at last be saved for him, and brought back to him.
And
now,
if
you
do with this money, as
you a it
little
more
it
is
of
increases.
whoever gives us any, be clear It is not an Investment. a Gift.
First, let
that
end of my what we are to
will read over once again the
fifth letter, I will tell
in their It
and simple gift to the British people nothing of back to the giver. :
But
also,
nothing of
it is
to be lost.
is
it is
minds
a frank to
The money
come is
not
114
FOKS CLAVIGERA.
be spent in feeding Woolwich infants with gunpowder. to be spent in dressing the earth and keeping it, in feeding human lips, in clothing human bodies, in kinto
It
is
—
—
dling
human
First of
—
souls.
all,
I say, in dressing the earth.
As
soon as the
fund reaches any sufficient amount, the Trustees shall buy with it any kind of land offered them at just price in Britain. Rock, moor, marsh, or sea-shore it matters not what, so it be British ground, and secured to us. Then, we will ascertain the absolute best that can be made of every acre. We will first examine what flowers and herbs it naturally bears; every wholesome flower that it will grow shall be sown in its wild places, and every kind of fruit-tree that can prosper; and arable and pasture land extended by every expedient of tillage, with humble and simple cottage dwellings under faultless sanitary regulation. "Whatever piece of land we begin to work upon, we shall treat thoroughly at once, putting unlimited manual labor on it, until we have every foot of it under as strict care as a flower-garden: and the laborers shall be paid sufficient, imchanging wages; and their children educated compulsorily in agricultural schools inland, and naval schools by the sea,
—
the indispensable
first
condition of such education being that
the boys learn either to ride or to
sail;
the girls to spin,
weave, and sew, and at a proper age to cook all ordinary food exquisitely; the youth of both sexes to be disciplined daily in the strictest practice of vocal music; and for morality, to
to
—
be taught gentleness to all brute creatures, finished to speak truth mth rigid care, and
courtesy to each other,
—
obey orders with the precision of
slaves.
Then, as they
get older, they are to learn the natural history of the place they live in, to know Latin, boys and girls both, and the
—
—
history of five cities: Athens,
Rome, Venice, Flortoce, and
London. I^ow, as I told you in
may
my
fifth letter, to
what extent I
be able to carry this plan into execution, I know not; but to some visible extent, with my own single hand, I can
— 115
FOES CLAVIGERA.
and will, if I live. Xor do I doubt but tliat I shall find liclp enough, as soon as the full action of the system is seen, and ever so
a space of rightly cultivated ground in perfect
little
beauty, with inhabitants in peace of heart, of " Doluit
Such
a life
whom
miserans inopem, aut invidit liabenti."
we have
lately
been taught by
vile persons to
think impossible; so far from being impossible, the actual "
none
life of all glorious
human
it
has been
states in their origin.
Hanc olim veteres vitam coluere Sabini; Hanc Remus et frater; sic fortis Etruria crevit; Scilicet et rerum facta est pulcherrima Eoma."
But, had
it
never been endeavored until now, we might its unimagined good by considering
yet learn to hope for
has been possible for us to reach of unimagined evil. and its benediction are probable and simple things, Utopia compared to the Kakotopia and its curse, which we have seen actually fulfilled. We have seen the city of Paris (what miracle can be thought of beyond this?) with her own forts raining ruin on her palaces, and her young children casting fire into the streets in which they had been born; but we have not faith enough in heaven to imagine the reverse of this, or the building of any city whose streets shall be full of innocent boys and girls playing in the midst thereof. My friends, you have trusted, in your time, too many idle words. Read now these following, not idle ones; and remember them; and trust them, for they are true: '' Oh, thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I ^Yl[\ lay thy stones with fair colors, and
what
it
lay thy foundations with sapphires.
"And
thy children shall be taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace of thy children. " In righteousness shalt thou be established: thou shalt be far from oppression; for thou shalt not fear: and from terror ; for it shall not come near thee. all
.
.
.
116 "
FOES CLAVIGEKA.
Whosoever
shall gather together against thee shall fall
for thy sake. " Xo weapon that .
.
.
is formed against thee shall prosper; and every tongue that shall rise against thee in judgment thou shalt condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord; and their righteousness is of me, saith the
Lord."
Kemember only that in this now antiquated translation, " righteousness " means, accurately and simply, " justice," and is the eternal law of right, obeyed alike in the great times of each state, by Jew, Greek, and Roman. In my next letter,
of
its
we
will
examine into the nature of this justice, and Governments that deserve the name.
relation to
And
so believe
me
Faithfullv yours,
JOHi^ RUSKIN.
LETTER
My
Fkiends,
As
Denmark
—
Hill,
1st September, 1871.
when I began many a year before, in the germ and first now fairly afoot, and in slow, but deter-
the design which I had in view
these letters (and outlines of
IX.
it)
is
mined, beginning of realization, I will endeavor in this and the next following letter to set its main features completely before you; though, remember, the design would certainly be a shallow and vain one, if its bearings could be either shortly explained, or quickly understood.
my own
hope, which I
know
I have
much
in
you are as yet incapable of
hoping, but which your enemies are dexterous in discouraging, and eager to discourage. riously and earnestly the greater
Have you noticed how cunumber of public journals
that have yet quoted these papers, allege, for their part,
nothing but the diiRculties in our way; and that with as No editor as they can venture to express?
much contempt
could say to your face that the endeavor to give you fresh
wholesome employment, and high education, was repreThe worst he can venture to say is, that it is ridiculous, which you observe is, by most, declared as wittily as they may. Some must, indeed, candidly think, as well as say so. Education of any noble kind has of late been so constantly
air,
hensible or dangerous.
—
given only to the idle classes, or, at least, to those who conceive it a privilege to be idle,* that it is difficult for any is talked about the " work done " by the have done a little myself, in my day, of the kind of work they boast of; but mine, at least, has been all play. Even
* Infinite nonsense
upper
classes.
I
which is, on the whole, the hardest, you may observe to be essentially grim play, made more jovial for themselves by conditions which make it somewhat dismal to other people. Here and
lawyer's,
U7
118
FOES CLAVIGERA.
person, trained in
modern
habits of thought, to imagine a
true and refined scholarship, of which the essential founda-
Time and trial will tion is to be skill in some useful labor. show which of the two conceptions of education is indeed and liave shown, many and many a day the ridiculous one Such before this, if anyone would look at the showing. trial, however, I mean anew to make, with what life is left to me, and help given to me: and the manner of it is to be this, that, few or many, as our company may be, we will
—
secure for the people of Britain as wide spaces of British
ground
as
we
can; and on such spaces of freehold land
will cause to be trained as
many
in healthy, brave, and kindly-
British children as
life,
to
we
every one of
we
can,
whom
there shall be done true justice, and dealt fair opportunity of " advancement," or what else may, indeed, be good for
them, " True justice " I might more shortly have written " justice," only you are all now so much in the way of asking for what you think " rights," which, if you could get them, !
—
would turn out to be the deadliest wrongs; and you suffer so much from an external mechanism of justice, which for centuries back has abetted, or, at best, resulted
conceivable
manner
of injustice
—that
say " True justice," to distinguish
it
commonly imagined by the populace,
I
am
in,
every
compelled to
from that which
is
or attainable under
the existing laws, of civilized nations.
—
This true justice (not to spend time, which I am apt to be too fond of doing, in verbal definition), consists mainly in the granting to every human being due aid in the devel-
opment of such faculties as it possesses for action and enjoyment; primarily, for useful action, because all enjoyment worth having (nay, all enjo^^nent not harmful) must in some way arise out of that, either in happy energy, or rightly complacent and exulting rest. we have a real worker among soldiers, or no soldiering would long be possible; nevertheless young men don't go into the Guards with any primal or essential idea of work.
there
;
119
FOES CLAVIGERA. "
One
" aid, jou see, I liave written.
Due
of the first statements I
domain of ours was " there
made
to
N'ot " equal " aid.
you respecting
this
no equality in it." In education especially, true justice is curiously unequal if you choose to give it a hard name, iniquitous. The right law of it is that you are to take most pains with the best
Many
material.
shall be
—
conscientious masters will plead for the
exactly contrary iniquity, and say you should take the most pains with the dullest boys. But that is not so (only you must be very careful that you know which are the dull boys
I^ever waste remain rough, though properly looked after and cared for; it will be of best service so; but spare no labor on the good, or on what has in it the capacity of good. The tendency of modern help and care is quite morbidly and madly in reverse of this great principle. Benevolent persons are always, by preference, busy on the essentially bad and exhaust themselves in efforts to get maximum intellect from cretins, and maximum virtue from criminals. Meantime, they take no care to ascertain (and for the most part when ascertained, obstinately refuse to remove) the continuous sources of cretinism and crime^ and suffer the most splendid material in child-nature to wander neglected about the streets, until it has become rotten to the degree N'ow in which they feel prompted to take an interest in it. I have not the slightest intention understand this, I beg of you, very clearly of setting myself to mend or reform people; when they are once out of form they may stay so. for me.* But of what unspoiled stuff I can find to my hand for the cleverest look often very like them).
pains on bad ground; let
it
;
—
I will cut the best shapes there able, if
it
may
—
is
room
for; shapes unalter-
be, forever.
* I speak in the first person, not insolently, but necessarily, being yet alone in this design: and for some time to come the responsibility of carrying it on must rest with me, nor do I ask or desire
any present help, except from those who understand what I have written in the course of the last ten j'ears, and who can trust me, therefore. But the continuance of the scheme must depend on the finding men stanch and prudent for the heads of each department
— 120 "
FOES CLAVIGERA.
The
best shapes there
is
room
for," since, according to
the conditions around them, men's natures must expand or
remain contracted; and, yet more " the best shapes that there
we must
is
distinctly,
;
condition of right education to
most of that
all
make manifest
say,
it is
the
first
to all persons
to the persons chiefly concerned.
know their measure, is, they should know it themselves, should
"By
me
accept contentedly infinite difference in the original
nature and capacity, even at their purest which
men
let
substance for," seeing that
That other
indeed, desirable; but is
wholly necessary.
competitive examination of course?"
Sternly, no!
but under absolute prohibition of all violent and strained effort most of all envious or anxious effort in every ex-
—
—
body and mind; and by enforcing on every scholar's heart, from the first to the last stage of his instruction, the ercise of
irrevocable ordinance of the, third Fors Clavigera, that his
mental rank among men is fixed from the hour he was born, that by no temporary or violent effort can he train, though he may seriously injure the faculties he has that by no manner of effort can he increase them; and that his best happiness is to consist in the admiration of powers by him forever unattainable, and of arts, and deeds, by him ever inimitable. Some ten or twelve years ago, when I was first actively engaged in Art teaching, a young Scottish student came up to London to put himself under me, having taken many prizes (justly, with respect to the qualities looked for by the He worked under me judges) in various schools of Art. very earnestly and patiently for some time; and I was able to praise his doings in what I thought very high terms: nevertheless, there remained always a look of mortification on his face, after he had been praised, however unqualifiedly. At last, he could hold no longer, but one day, when I had been more than usually complimentary, turned to me
—
;
of the practical work, consenting', Indeed, with each other as to certain great principles of that work, but left wholly to their own judgment as to the manner and degree in which they are to be carried into effect.
121
FOES CLAVIGERA. /
with an anxious, yet not unconfident expression, and asked: '' Do you think, sir, that I shall ever draw as well as Turner?
"
I paused for a second or two, being much taken aback; and then answered,* " It is far more likely you should be
made Emperor
of All the Kussias.
There
a
is
new Emperor
every fifteen or twenty years, on the average and by strange hap, and fortunate cabal, anybody might be made Emperor. ;
But there
is
only one Turner in five hundred years, and
decides, without
any admission of auxiliary
of clay His soul
is
It
was the
collision
first
cabal,
God
what piece
to be put in." time that I had been brought into direct
with the modern system of prize-giving and compe-
and the mischief of it w^as, in the sequel, clearly shown This youth had the finest powers of to me, and tragically. I have ever met with, but was quite execution mechanical strong intellectual effort of any invention, or incapable of
tition
;
he been taught early and thoroughly to know his place, and be content with his faculty, he would have been one of the happiest and most serviceable of men. But, at the Art schools, he got prize after prize for his neat han-
Had
kind.
dling
;
and having, in
his restricted imagination,
discerning the qualities of great work,
all
no power of
the vanity of his
nature was brought out unchecked; so that, being intensely industrious and conscientious, as well as vain,
(it is
a Scottish
combination of character not unfrequent,t) he naturally expected to become one of the greatest of men. My answer not only mortified, but angered him, and made him suspicious of me; he thought I wanted to keep his talents from being fairly displayed, and soon afterwards asked leave (he was then in
my employment
as well as
under
my
mean that I answered in these words, but to the them, at greater length. in a harmonious way, f We English are usually bad altogether and only quite insolent when we are quite good-for-nothing; the least good in us shows itself in a measure of modesty; but many Scotch natures, of fine capacity otherwise, are rendered entirely abortive by conceit. * I do not
effect of
— 122
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
teaching) to put himself under another master. I gave him leave at once, telling him, " if he found the other master no
come back to me whenever he The other master giving him no more hope of advancement than I did, he came back to me; I sent him into
better to his mind, he might chose."
Switzerland, to draw Swiss architecture; but instead of do-
ing what I bid him, quietly, and nothing
else, he set himself, with furious industry, to draw snowy mountains and clouds, that he might show me he could draw like Albert Diirer, or
Turner;
—spent
in agony of vain effort; and died. How many actual deaths are now annually caused by the strain and anxiety of competitive examination, it would startle us all if we could know: but the mischief done to the best faculties of the brain in all cases, and the miserable confusion and absurdity involved in the system itself, 'which offers every place, not to the man who is indeed fitted for it, but to the one who, on a given day, chances to have bodily strength enough to stand the crudest strain, are evils infinite in their consequences, and more lamentable than many deaths. This, then, shall be the first condition of what education it may become possible for us to give, that the strength of the youths shall never be strained; and that their best powers shall be developed in each, without competition, though they shall have to pass crucial, but not severe, examinations, attesting clearly to themselves and to other people, not the utmost they can do, but Ijiat at least they can do some things accurately and well their own certainty of this being accompanied with the quite as clear and much happier certainty, that there are many other things which they will never be able to do at all. "The happier certainty?" Yes. A man's happiness consists infinitely more in admiration of the faculties of others than in confidence in his own. That reverent admiration is the perfect human gift in him; all lower animals are happy and noble in the degree they can share it. dog reverences you, a fly does not; the capacity of parti j^
caught cold,
strength
his
fell into decline,
:
A
123
FORS CLAVIGERA.
understanding a creature above him,
human
Increase such reverence in
daily their happiness, peace,
is
the dog's nobility.
you increase it away, and But for fifty
beings, and
and dignity; take
you make them wretched as well as vile. years back modern education has devoted itself simply to the teaching of impudence; and then we complain that we can no more manage our mobs " Look at Mr. Robert Stephenson," (we tell a boy,) " and at Mr. James Watt, and Mr. WilYou know you are every bit as good as liam Shakespeare! they; you have only to work in the same way, and you will Most boys believe infallibly arrive at the same eminence." the ^' you are every bit as good as they," without any painful !
experiment: but the better-minded ones really take the advised measures; and as, at the end of all things, there can be but one Mr. James Watt or Mr. William Shakespeare, the rest of the candidates for distinction, finding themselves, after all their work, still indistinct, think it must be the fault of the police, and are riotous accordingly.
the fault of the police, truly enough, considering as the police of Europe, or teachers of politeness and civic manners, its higher classes, higher either by race
To some extent
it is
—
Police they are, or else are nothing: bound to keep order, both by clear teaching of the duty and delight
or faculty.
Respect,
of
and,
much more, by being themselves
—Re-
spectable; whether as priests, or kings, or lords, or generals, if they will only take care to be verily that, or admirals;
—
the Respect will be forthcoming, with
little
pains
Obedience, inconceivable to modern free souls as
we
shall get again, as soon as there
:
nay, even it
may
be,
anybody worth obey-
is
and who can keep us out of shoal water. but that those two admirals and their captains have been sorely, though needfully, dealt with. It was, doubting,
jSTot
—
not a scene of the brightest in our naval history that Agincourt, entomologically, as it were, pinned to her wrong
less,
place, off Gibraltar; but in truth, fault,
than the irom-monger's.
it
was
You need
ever have seamen in iron ships;
it is
less the captain's not think you can^
not in flesh and blood
124
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
be vigilant when vigilance
to
seaman born
is
so slightly necessary: the best
will lose his qualities,
when he knows he can
steam against wind and tide,* and has
them you want
large that the care of
many
persons.
If
is
to
handle ships so
necessarily divided
among
sea-captains indeed, like Sir
Richard Grenville or Lord Dundonald, you must give them small ships, and wooden ones, ^nothing but oak, pine, and hemp to trust to, above or below, and those, trustworthy. You little know how much is implied in the two conditions of boys' education that I gave you in my last letter, that they shall all learn either to ride or sail; nor by what constancy of law the power of highest discipline and honor is vested by Nature in the two chivalries of the Horse and the Wave. Both are significative of the right command of man over his own passions; but they teach, farther, the strange mystery of relation that exists between his soul and the wild natural elements on the one hand, and The sea-riding gave the wild lower animals on the other. their chief strength of temper to the Athenian, Xorman, Pisan, and Venetian, masters of the arts of the world: but the gentleness of chivalry, properly so called, depends on the recognition of the order and awe of lower and loftier animal-life, first clearly taught in the myth of Chiron, and in his bringing up of Jason, ^sculapius, and Achilles, but most j)erfectly by Homer in the fable of the horses of Achilles, and the part assigned to them, in relation to the death of his friend, and in prophecy of his own. There is, perhaps, in all the " Hiad " nothing more deep in significance there is nothing in all literature more perfect in human tenderness, and honor for the mystery of inferior life,t than the verses that describe the sorrow of the divine horses at
—
—
—
—
—
—
* " Steam has, of course, utterly extirpated seamanship," says Admiral Kous, in his letter to the Times (which I had, of course, not seen when I wrote this). Read the whole letter and the article on it in the Times of the 17th, which is entirely temperate and
conclusive. f
the
The myth first King
of
Balaam; the cause assigned for the journey of from his father's house; and the manner
of Israel
— 125
FOES CLAVIGEEA. the death of Patroclus, and the comfort given
You
greatest of the gods.
does not give you the gives
them by the
shall read Pope's translation; it
manner
of the original, but
it
entirely
you the passion: " Meantime, at distance from the scene of blood, The pensive steeds of great Achilles stood; Their godlike master slain before their eyes They wept, and shared in human miseries.
In vain Automedon now shakes the rein, Now plies the lash, and soothes and threats in vain; Nor to the fight nor Hellesjwnt they go, Restive they stood, and obstinate in woe; Still as a tombstone, never to be moved. On some good man or woman iinreproved Lays its eternal weight; or fix'd as stands A marble courser by the sculiJtor's hands, Placed on the hero's grave. Along their face. The big round drops coursed down with silent pace, Conglobing on the dust. Their manes, that late Circled their arched necks, and waved in state, Trail'd on the dust, beneath the yoke were spread, An>^ prone to earth was hung their languid head: Nor Jove disdain'd to cast a pitying look. While thus relenting to the steeds he spoke: 'Unhappy coursers of immortal strain! Exempt from age, and deathless now in vain! Did we your race on mortal man bestow, Only, alas! to share in mortal woe? For ah! what is there, of inferior birth, That breathes or creeps ujion the dust of earth; What wretched creature of what wretched kind, Than man more Aveak, calamitous and blind? A miserable race! But cease to mourn! For not by you shall Priam's son be borne High on the splendid car; one glorious prize He rashly boasts; the rest our will denies. Ourself will swiftness to your nerves impart, Ourself with rising spirits swell your heart. Automedon your rapid flight shall bear .' Safe to the navy through the storm of war. .
.
of the triumphal entry of the greatest King of Judah into His capital, are symbolic of the same truths; but in a yet more strange
humility.
"
126
He
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
and, breathing in th' immortal horse urged them to the course; From their high manes they shake the dust, and bear The kindling chariot through the parted war." said;
Excessive
spirit,
Is not that a prettier notion of horses than you will get from your betting English chivalry on the Derby day ? * We will have, please heaven, some riding, not as jockeys ride, and some sailing, not as pots and kettles sail, once more
on English land and sea; and out of both, kindled yet again, the chivalry of heart of the Knight of Athens, and Eques of Rome, and Hitter of Germany, and Chevalier of France, and Cavalier of England chivalry gentle always and lowly, among those who deserved their name of knight; showing mercy to whom mercy was due, and honor to whom honor. It exists yet, and out of La Mancha, too (or none of us could exist), whatever you may think in these days of unIt exists secretly, to the full, gentleness and Dishonor. among you yourselves, and the recovery of it again would be to you as the opening of a well in the desert. You remember what I told 3'ou were the three spiritual treasures of your life Admiration, Hope, and Love. Admiration is It is the best word we have the Faculty of giving Honor. for the various feelings of wonder, reverence, awe, and humility, which are needful for all lovely work, and which constitute the habitual temper of all noble and clear-sighted persons, as opposed to the " impudence " of base and blind
—
—
The Latins called this great virtue " pudor," of which our "impudence" is the negative; the Greeks iiad ones.
a better word, "aiSws;" too Avide
me
to explain to
before
you
taught for
you
to-day, even if
recovered fifty
man, and that est existence,
the
feeling;
*
Compare "
it
could be explained
—which,
years that impudence
is
after
being
the chief duty of
living in coal-holes and ash-heaps is his proudand that the methods of generation of vermin
are his loftiest subject of science,
Macaulay's
in the bearings of it for
—
it
will not be easy for
also Black Auster at the Battle of the Lake, in Lays of Eome."
FORS CLAVIGEKA.
127
you to do; but voiir children may, and you will see that it In the history of the fiye cities I named, is good for them. learn, far as they can understand, what has shall so they been beautifully and brayely done; and they shall know the liyes of the heroes and heroines in truth and naturalness; and shall be taught to remember the greatest of them on the days of their birth and death so that the year shall have its And on eyery day, part full calendar of reyerent Memory. of their morning service shall be a song in honor of the hero whose birthday it is: and part of their evening service, a song of triumph for the fair death of one whose death-day it is: and in their first learning of notes they shall be taught ;
you and never be taught to sing what they don't mean. be able to sing merrily when they are happy, and
the great purpose of music, which
mean
they shall
They
is
to say a thing that
deeply, in the strongest and clearest possible way;
shall
when they are sad; but they shall find no mirth mockery, nor in obscenity; neither shall they waste and profane their hearts with artificial and lascivious sorrow. Kegulations which will bring about some curious changes in piano-playing, and several other things. earnestly
in
"
Which will bring." They are bold words, considering how many schemes have failed disastrously, (as your able editors gladly point out,) which seemed much more plausBut, as far as I know history, good designs ible than this. have not failed except when they were too narrow in their final
aim, and too obstinately and eagerly pushed in the Prosperous Fortune only grants an al-
beginning of them.
and demands invincible good men have failed in haste; more in egotism, and desire to keep everything in their own hands; and some by mistaking the signs of their
most
invisible slowness of success,
patience in pursuing
it.
Many
times; but others, and those generally the boldest in imagiand their successors, true knights
nation, have not failed;
or monks, have bettered the fate and raised the thoughts of men for centuries; nay, for decades of centuries. And
there
is
assuredly nothing in this purpose I lay before you,
rOKS CLAVIGEKA.
128 SO
far
as
It
reaches hitherto,
which
will
require
either
knightly courage or monkish enthusiasm to carry out.
To
divert a little of the large current of English charity and
from watching disease
justice
to
guarding health, and from
the punishment of crime to the reward of virtue lish,
to estab-
;
here and there, exercise grounds instead of hospitals,
and training schools instead of penitentiaries, will slowly take
it
is
not, if
to heart, a frantic imagination.
farther hope I liave of getting some honest
men
you
What
to serve,
each in his safe and useful trade, faithfully, as a good soldier serves in his dangerous, and too often very wide of useful one,
may
seem, for the moment, vain enough; for indeed,
sermon I heard out of an English pulpit, the clergyman said it was now acknowledged to be impossible From which for any honest man to live by trade in England. the conclusion he drew was, not that the manner of trade in England should be amended, but that his hearers should be thankful they were going to heaven. It never seemed to occur to him that perhaps it might be only through amendment of their ways in trade that some of them could
in the last
ever get there.
Such madness, therefore, as may be implied in this ultimate hope of seeing some honest work and traffic done in
my own my power,
faithful fellowship, I confess to you: but what, for part, I if
my
of
it is
am
about to endeavor,
is
certainly within
few years more, and the compass as I told you at the beginning of these Letters, I must do my own proper work as well as I can nothing else must come in the way of that; and for some time to come, it will be heavy, because, after carefully considering the operation of tlie Kensington system of Artteaching throughout the country, and watching for two years its effect on various classes of students at Oxford, I became finally convinced that it fell short of its objects in more than one vital particular: and I have, therefore, obtained permission to found a separate Mastership of Drawing in connection with the Art Professorship at Oxford; and elemenlife
and health
soon definable.
—
—
last a
First,
—
129
FOES CLAVIGERA.
tary schools will be opened in the University galleries, next
October, in which the methods of teaching will be calculated
meet requirements which have not been contemplated Kensington system. But how far what these, not new, but very ancient, disciplines teach, may be by modern to
in the
students, either required or endured, remains to be seen.
The
organization of the system of teaching, and preparation
of examples, in this school,
work,
—no
dinate to
But
in
light one,
— and
is,
however, at present
my
chief
everything else must be subor-
it.
my
first series
of lectures at Oxford, I stated (and
cannot too often or too firmly state) that no great arts were practicable by any people, unless they were living contented
pure air, out of the way of unsightly objects, and emancipated from unnecessary mechanical occupation. It is simply one part of the practical work I have to do in Artteaching, to bring, somewhere, such conditions into existI know also ence, and to show the working of them. assuredly that the conditions necessary for the Arts of men,
lives, in
are the best for their souls and bodies; and
knowing
this,
I
may
be with due pains, to some material extent, convincingly shown; and I am now ready do not doubt but that
it
to receive help, little or much, from anyone who cares to forward the showing of it. Sir Tliomas Dyke Acland, and the Right Hon. William Cowper-Temple, have consented to be the Trustees of the fund; it being distinctly understood that in that office they accept no responsibility for tbe conduct of the scheme, and They refrain from expressing any opinion of its principles. simply undertake the charge of the money and land given
to the St. George's
Fund;
certify to the public that
it
is
spent or treated, for the purposes of that fund, in the manner stated in my accounts of it; and, in the event of my it for such fulfillment of then find possible.
death, hold
may
But
it is
its
purposes as they
evidently necessary for the right working of the
scheme that the Trustees should
not, except only in that
— 130
I
FOES CLAVIGERA.
office,
be at present concerned with or involved in
and
it;
that no ambiguous responsibility should fall on tliem.
know
too
much
of the
manner
I
of law to hope that I can get
the arrangement put into proper form before the end of the
year; but, I hope, at latest, on the eve of Christmas
named
(the day I
first) to
Fors with the legal terms or land I
may
all clear:
receive will be simply paid to the Trustees,
or secured in their name, for the St. George's I
may attempt
Day
December number of until then, whatever sums
publish the
Fund; what
afterwards will be, in any case, scarcely no-
est of the
some time; for I shall only work with the interfund; * and as I have strength and leisure:
have
enough of the one; and am
ticeable for
little
—
the other, for years to come,
if
like to
have
little
of
these drawing-schools become
But what I may do myself is of small Long before it can come to any convincing
useful, as I hope.
consequence.
result, I believe some of the gentlemen of England will have taken up the matter, and seen that, for their own sake, no less than the country's, they must now live on their estates, not in shooting-time only, but all the year; and be themselves farmers, or " shepherd lords," and make the field gain on the street, not the street on the field; and bid the light break into the smoke-clouds, and bear in their hands, up to those loathsome city walls, the gifts of Giotto's Charity, com and flowers. Did you notice the lovely inIt is time, too, I think. stances of chivalry, modesty, and musical taste recorded in those letters in the Times, giving description of the " civilizing " influence of our progressive age on the rural district of Margate? They are of some documentary value, and worth pre-
serving, for several reasons.
Here they
are:
was published I have sold some more property, which has brought me in another ten thousand to tithe; so that I have bought a second thousand Consols in the names of the Trustees and have received a pretty little gift of seven acres of woodland, in Worcestershire, for you, already so you see there is * Since last Fors
—
at least a beginning.
—
131
FOES CLAVIGERA.
L—A To
TKIP TO MAKGATE.
the Editor of the Times.
— On Monday
had the misfortune of taking a The sea was rough, the ship crowded, and therefore most of the Cockney excursionists j)rostrate with sea-sickness. On landing on Margate pier I must confess I thought that, instead of landing in an English seaport, I had been transported by magic to a land inhabited by savages and lunatics. The scene that ensued when the unhappy passengers had to pass between the double line of a Margate mob on the pier must be seen to be believed possiSiR^
last I
trip per steamer to Margate.
ble in a civilized country.
Shouts, yells, howls of delight
greeted every pale-looking passenger, as he or she got on the
accompanied by a running comment of the lowest, foulest But the most insulted victims were a young lady, who, having had a fit of hysterics on board, had to be assisted up the steps, and a venerable-looking old gentleman with a long gray beard, who, by-the-by, was not sick at pier,
language imaginable.
all, but being crippled and very old, feebly tottered up the " Here's a guy " slippery steps leaning on two sticks. " Hallo you old thief, you won't get dro^vned, because you !
!
know
that you are to be hung," etc., and worse than that, were the greetings of that poor old man. All this while a very much silver-bestriped policeman stood calmly by, without interfering by word or deed and myself, having several ladies to take care of, could do nothing except telling the ruffianly mob some hard words, with, of course, no other effect This is not an excepthan to draw all the abuse on myself. tional exhibition of Margate ruffianism, but, as I have been told, is of daily occurrence, only varying in intensity with the ;
roughness of the
sea.
Public exposure
is
the only likely thing to put a stop to
and now it is no longer a wonder to me why so many people are ashamed of confessing that they have been such ruffianism to
;
Margate. I remain. Sir, yours obediently,
London, August
16.
C
L. S.
132
FOES CLAVTGEEA.
II.—MAEGATE. To SiK,
the Editor of the Times.
—From personal experience obtained from an enforced
residence at ]\rargate, I can confirm all that your correspondent " C. L. S." states of the behavior of the mob on the
and in addition I will venture
jetty;
in England, or, so far as
no to^vn
to say that in
my experience goes, on the
Continent,
can such utterly indecent exhibitions be daily witnessed as at Margate during bathing hours. Nothing can be more revolting to persons having the least feelings of modesty than the promiscuous mixing of the bathers;
swimming, or
floating with
women
The machines
but with scant clothing.
nude men dancing,
not quite nude, certainly, for males
and females
are not kept apart, and the latter do not apparently care to
keep within the ''
The
aA\niings.
authorities post notices as to
indecent bathing," but that appears to be
ought
all
they think they
to do.
I am, Sir, yours obediently,
B.
To SiK^
the Editor of the Times.
—The account
of the scenes
which occur
at the
landing
of passengers at the Margate jetty, given by your correspondent to-day,
The
is
by no means overcharged. But seem bent on doing
rulers of the place
that
is
nothing.
their utmost to
keep respectable people away, or, doubtless, long before this The seathis class of visitors would have greatly improved. fronts of the town, which in the summer would be otherwise enjoyable, are abandoned to the noisy rule of the lowest kinds of itinerant mountebanks, organ-grinders, and niggers and from early morn till long after nightfall the place is one hopeless, hideous din. There is yet another grievance. The whole ;
of the drainage
is
discharged upon the rocks to the east of the
harbor, considerably above low-water
where much building been laid into the
is
mark; and
to the west,
contemplated, drains have already
sea, and,
when
these
new houses
are built
133
FOES CLAVIGERA.
and inhabited, bathing must cease forever.
at
Margate,
now
its
greatest attraction,
Yours obediently, Maegate, August
PhakOS.
18.
I have printed these letters for several reasons.
In the
read after them this account of the town of Margate, given in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica," in 1797: first place,
" Margate, a seaport town of Kent, on the north side of the Isle of Tlianet,
near the
jSTorth
Foreland.
shipping vast quantities of corn (most,
if
not
It all,
is
noted for
the product
of that island) for London, and has a salt-water bath at the
Post-house, which has performed great cures in nervous
and paralytic cases." jSTow this Isle of Thanet, please to observe,
which
is
an
elevated (200 to 400 feet) mass of chalk, separated from the
Kent by
and marshy lands, ought to be it was the first bit of ground ever possessed in this greater island by your Saxon ancestors, when they came over, some six or seven hundred of them only, in three ships, and contented themselves for a while with no more territory than that white island. Also, the Xorth Foreland, you ought, I think, to know, is taken for the terminal point of the two sides of Britain, east and south, in the first geographical account of our dwelling-place, definitely given by a learned person. But you ought, beyond all question, to know, that the cures of the nervous and paralytic cases, attributed seventy years ago to the " salt-water bath at the Post-house," were much more probably to be laid to account of the freshest and changefulest sea-air to be breathed in England, bending the rich corn over that white dry ground, and g'iving to sight, above the northern and eastern sweep of sea, the loveliest skies that can be seen, not in England only, but perhaps in rest of
little rivers
respected by you (as Englishmen), because
all the world; able, at least, to challenge the fairest in Europe, to the far south of Italy. So it was said, I doubt not rightly, by the man who of all
rOKS CLAVIGEKA.
134 others
knew
best;
the once in five hundred years given
painter, whose chief work, as separate
painting of skies. the sea, from the
He knew Bay
from
others,
was the
the colors of the clouds over
of Xaples to the Hebrides; and being
once asked where, in Europe, were to be seen the loveliest answered instantly, " In the Isle of Thanet." AVhere,
skies,
therefore, and in this veiy town of Margate, he lived, when he chose to be quit of London, and yet not to travel. And I can myself give this much confirmatory evidence that though I never stay in Thanet, the two of his saying; loveliest skies I have myself ever seen (and next to Turner,
—
I suppose few men of fifty have kept record of so many), were, one at Boulogne, and the other at Abbeville that is to ;
say, in precisely the correspondent
French
districts of corn-
bearing chalk, on the other side of the Channel.
And what are pretty skies to us? " perhaps you will ask me: ''or what have they to do with the behavior of that crowd on Margate Pier? " Well, my friends, the final result of the education I want you to give your children will be, in a few words, this. They They will know what it will know what it is to see the sky. And they will know, best of all, what it is is to breathe it. to behave under it, as in the presence of a Father who is in "
heaven. Faithfully yours, J.
RUSKIK.
:
LETTEK
My
Fkiei^S
For
X.
Denmark
—
Hill,
'^^ September, 1871.
the last two or three days, the papers have been
on a speech of Lord Derby's, which,
full of articles
it
seems,
has set the public mind on considering the land question.
My own mind having long ago been both set, and entirely made up, on that question, I have read neither the speech nor the articles on
but
it;
my
eye being caught this morning,
fortunately, by the words "
Doomsday Book
" in
my
Daily
Telegraph, and presently, looking up the column, by "
stal-
wart arms and heroic souls of free resolute Englishmen/' I glanced down the space between, and found this, to me, remarkable passage "
The upshot
is,
that, looking at the question
from
a purely
mechanical point of view, we should seek the hcau ideal in a landowner cultivating huge farms for himself, with abundant
machinery and a few well-paid laborers
to
manage
the mech-
anism, or delegating the task to the smallest possible number
But when we bear in mind the
of tenants with capital.
origin of landlordism, of our national needs, and the real interests of the great
advisable
it
body of English tenantry, we
retain intelligent
is to
means of cultivating the This
is all,
say for you?
men
then, It
is
in the island.
Telegraph: I think deals fairly; which
is it,
yeomen
see
how
as part of our
soil."
that your Liberal paper ventures to
advisable to retain a feiv intelligent yeo-
I don't it
is
mean
to find fault
with the Daily
always means well on the whole, and more than can be said for its highly
toned and delicately perfumed opponent, the Pall Mall 135
FOES CLAVIGEKA.
136
Gazette. But I think a " Liberal " paper might have said more for the " stalwart arms and heroic souls " than this. I am going myself to say a great deal more for them, though
I
am
not a Liberal
—
quite the jDolar contrary of that.
Yon, perhaps, have been provoked, in the course of these It is letters, by not being able to make out what I was. I should know, I will tell plainly. am, time you and you the old and my father was before me, a violent Tory of school; Walter Scott's school, that is to say, and Homer's, I name these two out of the numberless great Tory I had writers, because they were my own two masters. Walter Scott's novels, and the Iliad, (Pope's translation,) for my only reading when I was a child, on week-days: on Sundays their effect was tempered by " Robinson Crusoe " and the " Pilgrim's Progress ''; my mother having it deeply in her heart to make an evangelical clergyman of me. Fortunately, I had an aunt more evangelical than my mother; and my aunt gave me cold mutton for Sunday's dinner, which greatly diminas I much preferred it hot ished the influence of the " Pilgrim's Progress," and the end of the matter was, that I got all the noble imaginative teaching of Defoe and Bunyan, and yet am not an evangelical
—
—
—
—
—
clergyman. I had, however,
still
better teaching than theirs, and that
compulsorily, and every day of the week.
with
me
in this egotism;
that you should
it
know what
is
(Have patience
necessary for
many
influences have brought
reasons
me
into
the temper in which I write to you.)
Walter ScOtt and Pope's Homer were reading of my own my mother forced me, by steady daily toil, to learn long chapters of the Bible by heart; as well as to read it every syllable through, aloud, hard names and all, from Genesis to the Apocalypse, about once a year; and to that discipline patient, accurate, and resolute I owe, not only a knowledge of the book, which I find occasionally serviceable, but much of my general power of taking pains, and the From Walter Scott's best part of my taste in literature. election, but
—
—
13Y
FORS CLAVIGEEA.
novels I might easily, as I grew older, have fallen to other people's novels; and
Pope might, perhaps, have led me
to
take Johnson's English, or Gibbon's, as types of language; but, once knowing the 32nd of Deuteronomy, the 119th Psalm, the 15th of 1st Corinthians, the Sermon on the Mount, and most of the Apocalypse, every syllable by heart, and having always a way of thinking with myself what words meant, it was not possible for me, even in the foolishest times of youth, to write entirely superficial or formal English, and the affectation of trying to write like Hooker and George
Herbert was the most innocent I could have fallen into. From my own masters, then, Scott and Homer, I learned the Toryism which my best after-thought has only served to confirm.
That is to say a most sincere love of kings, and dislike of everybody who attempted to disobey them. Only, both by Homer and Scott, I was taught strange ideas about kings, which I find, for the present, much obsolete for, I perceived that both the author of the Iliad and the author of Waverley made their kings, or king-loving persons, do harder work than anybody else. Tydides or Idomeneus always killed twenty Trojans to other people's one, and Redgauntlet speared more salmon than any of the Solway fishermen, and which was particularly a subject of admiration to me, I observed that they not only did more, but in proportion nay, that the to their doings, got less, than other people best of them were even ready to govern for nothing, and let Of their followers divide any quantity of spoil or profit. late it has seemed to me that the idea of a king has become exactly the contrary of this, and that it has been supposed the duty of superior persons generally to do less, and to get ;
—
—
—
more than anybody
else
;
so that
it
was, perhaps, quite as well
my
contemplation of existent kingship was a very distant one, and my childish eyes wholly unacquainted with the splendor of courts.
that in those early days
The aunt who gave me
cold
mutton on Sundays was
my
father's sister: she lived at Bridge-end, in the to^^Ti of Perth,
FOBS CLAVIGERA.
138 and had a garden
full of gooseberry-bushes, sloping
down
to
the Taj, with a door opening to the water, which ran past
it
clear-brown over the pebbles three or four feet deep; an thing for a child to look
infinite
Mj
down
into.
father began business as a wine-merchant, with no
capital, and a considerable amount of debts bequeathed him by my grandfather. He accepted the bequest, and paid them all before he began to lay by anything for himself, for which his best friends called him a fool, and I, without expressing any opinion as to his wisdom, which I knew in such
matters to be at least equal to mine, have written on the granite slab over his grave that he was " an entirely honest
merchant."
As days went on he was
able to take a house
Brunswick Square, Xo. 54 (the windows fortunately of it, for me, commanded a view of a marvelous iron post, out of which the water-carts were filled through beautiful little trap-doors, by pipes like boa-constrictors and I was never weary of contemplating that mystery, and the delicious dripping consequent); and as years went on, and in
Hunter
Street,
;
I came to be four or
five
years old, he could
command
postchaise and pair for two months in the summer,
a
by help
my mother and me, he went the round of his country customers (who liked to see the principal of the
of which, with
house his own traveler); so that, at a jog-trot pace, and through the panoramic opening of the four windows of a postchaise, made more panoramic still to me because my seat
was
we used to hire the chaise Long Acre, and so could bracketed and pocketed as we liked), I saw all the
a little bracket in front, (for
regularly for the two months out of
have
it
highroads,
and most of the cross ones, of
England and
Wales, and great part of lowland Scotland, as far as Perth, where every other year we spent the whole summer; and I " used to read the " Abbot " at Kinross, and the " Monastery in Glen Farg, which I confused with " Glendearg," and thought that the White Lady had as certainly lived by the
streamlet in that glen of the Ochils, as the in the island of
Loch Leven.
Queen
of Scots
139
rORS CLAVIGERA. It
of
happened
my
after
also,
life,
which was the real cause of the bias
that 1113' father had a rare love of pictures. " rare " advisedly, having never met with
I use the word another instance of so innate a faculty for the discernment of true art, up to the point possible without actual practice.
Accordingly, wherever there was a gallery to be seen, we stopped at the nearest town for the night and in reverentest ;
manner
I
thus saw nearly
all
the noblemen's houses in
England; not indeed myself at that age caring for the much for castles and ruins, feeling more and more, as I grew older, the healthy delight of uncovetous admiration, and perceiving, as soon as I could perceive any political truth at all, that it was probably much happier to live in a small house, and have Warwick Castle to be astonished at, than to live in Warwick Castle, and have nothing to be astonished at; but that, at all events, it would not pictures, but
make Brunswick Square in the least more pleasantly habitaAnd, at this day, though ble, to pull Warwick Castle down. enough to visit America, I could not, even for a couple of months, live in a country so miserable as to possess no castles. Nevertheless, having formed my notion of king-hcod chiefly from the FitzJames of the " Lady of the Lake," and of noblesse from the Douglas there, and the Douglas in
I have kind invitations
my
child-mind,
now be always empty.
Tantallon
" Marmion," a painful wonder soon arose in
why
the castles should
—
was there; but no Archibald of Angus: Stirling, but no Knight of Snowdoun. The galleries and gardens of England were beautiful to see but his Lordship and her Ladyship were always in town, said the housekeepers and gardeners.
—
Deep yearning took hold which I began slowly
of
me
for a kind of " Restoration,"
to feel that Charles the
Second had
not altogether effected, though I always wore a gilded oak-
my button-hole on the 29th of May. seemed to me that Charles the Second's Restoration had been, as compared with the Restoration I wanted, much as And as I grew older, that gilded oak-apple to a real apple. apple very reverently in
It
140
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
the desire for red pippins instead of brown ones, and Living
Kings instead of dead ones, appeared to me rational as well and gradually it has become the main purpose of my life to grow pippins, and its chief hope, to see Kings. Hope, this last, for others much more than for myself. I can always behave as if I had a King, whether I have one or not; but it is otherwise with some unfortunate persons. l!^othing has ever impressed me so much with the power of kingship, and the need of it, as the declamation of the French as romantic;
Republicans against the Emperor before his
fall.
Tory notion of a King; He did not, indeed, meet my and in my o^vn business of architecture he was doing, I saw, nothing but mischief; pulling down lovely buildings, and putting up frightful ones carved all over with L. jST.'s: but the intense need of France for a governor of some kind was made chiefly evident to me by the way the Republicans confessed themselves paralyzed by him. Nothing could be done in France, it seemed, because of the Emperor: they old
could not drive an honest trade; they could not keep their
houses in order; they could not study the sun and moon; they could not eat a comfortable dejeuner a la fourchette;
they could not sail in the Gulf of Lyons, nor climb on the Mont d'Or; they could not, in fine, (so they said,) so much as walk straight, nor speak plain, because of the Emperor. On this side of the water, moreover, the Republicans were all in the same tale. Their opinions, it appeared, were not their minds in the Paris journals, and the world printed to must come to an end therefore. So that, in fact, here was all the Republican force of France and England, confessing itself paralyzed, not so much by a real King, as by the
shadow of one.
All the
harm
the extant and visible
King
did was, to encourage the dressmakers and stone-masons in Paris,
—
to
pay some
idle people
make some, perhaps agreeably tongues.
That, I repeat, was
—
salaries,
—and
to
all
the
harm he
did, or could
what was voluntarily corrupticrushed nothing but what was essentially not solid:
do; he corrupted nothing but ble,
very large
talkative, people hold their
— 141
FOES CLAVIGEKA.
it remained open to these Republican gentlemen to do anything they chose that was useful to France, or honorable print to themselves, between earth and heaven, except only violent abuse of this shortish man, with a long nose, v/ho stood, as they would have it, between them and heaven. But there they stood, spell-bound; the one thing suggesting itself to their frantic impotence as feasible, being to get this one shortish man assassinated. Their children would not
and
—
grow, their corn would not ripen, and the stars would not roll, till
they had got this one short
man blown
into shorter
pieces.
King can thus hold (how many?) milmen, by their own confession, helpless for terror of it, what power must there be in the substance of one? But this mass of republicans vociferous, terrified, and If the shadow of a
lions of
—
mischievous,
is
the least part, as
European populace who are
it is
lost for
the vilest, of the great
want of true
kings.
It
who stand idle, gibbering at a shadow, whom we have to mourn over; they would have been good for little, even governed; ^but those who work and do not gibber, is
not these
—
—
the quiet peasants in the fields of Europe, sad-browed, hon-
and courtesy, who have none to help them, and none to teach; who have no kings, except those who rob them while they live, no tutors, est-hearted, full of natural tenderness
except those
who
teach
them
—how
to die.
I had an impatient remonstrance sent
me
the other day,
by a country clergyman's wife, against that saying in my former letter, " Dying has been more expensive to you than living." Did I know, she asked, what a country clergyman's life was, and that he was the poor man's only friend? What can be said of more Alas, I know it, and too well. deadly and ghastly blame against the clergy of England, or any other country, than that they are the poor man's only friends ?
Have they, then, so betrayed their Master's charge and mind, in their preaching to the rich; so smoothed their that, after twelve hunwords, and so sold their authority,
—
—
;
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
142
dred years intrusting of the gospel to in
England
who
will
tlieni;
(this is their chief plea for
there
is
no
man
themselves forsooth)
have mercy on the poor, but they; and so they must
leave the word of God, and serve tables? I would not myself have said so much against English clergymen, whether of country or town. Three and one dead makes four of my dear friends (and I have not many dear friends) are country clergymen and I know the ways of
—
—
;
every sort of them; my architectural tastes necessarily bringing me into near relations with the sort who like pointed arches and painted glass; and my old religious breeding having given
me an
unconquerable habit of taking up with any
traveling tinker of evangelical principles I
may come
across;
and even of reading, not without awe, the prophetic warnings of any persons belonging to that peculiarly well-informed " persuasion," such, for instance, as those of Mr. Zion Ward " concerning the fall of Lucifer, in a letter to a friend, Mr. William Dick, of Glasgow, price twopence," * in which I read (as aforesaid, with unfeigned feelings of concern,) that " the slain of the Lord shall be man-y that is, man, in whom " death is, with all the works of carnality shall be burnt up! ;
But I was not thinking
either of English clergy, or of
any
other group of clergy, specially, when I wrote that sentence but of the entire Clerkly or Learned Company, from the first priest of Egypt to the last ordained Belgravian curate, and of all the talk they have talked, and all the quarreling they
have caused, and this day,
when
the gold they have had given them, to " they are the poor man's only friends "
all
still
though them —and by no means been superintending Manchester the Bishop — beg pardon, Bishops don't superintend—looking —the recreations of I should have all
of
I
or over,
that, heartily!
of
I see
has, of late,
on,
his
his flock at
said
the seaside; and "the thought struck
him"
that railroads
were an advantage to them in taking them for their holiday The thought may, perhaps, strike him, out of Manchester. [* See Letter XI., p. 159.]
— 143
FOES CLAVIGERA. next, that a working
man
ought to be able to find " boly
days " in his home, as well as out of
A still,
year or two ago, a important
of the country,
official
it.*
man who had
authority over
at the time,
much
was speaking anxiously
to
and has
of the business
me
of the misery
increasing in the suburbs and back streets of London, and debating, with the good help of the Oxford Regius Professor of Medicine
—who was second
moral remedy could be found.
in council
—
^what sanitary or
The debate languished, howminds of
ever, because of the strong conviction in the
all
three of us that the misery was inevitable in the suburbs of
At
so vast a city.
forget
which,
either the minister or physician, I " Well," I anmust not have large cities." " That,"
last,
expressed the conviction,
swered, " then you
—
answered the minister, " is an unpractical saying you know we must have them, under existing circumstances." I made no reply, feeling that it was vain to assure any man actively concerned in modern parliamentary business, that no measures were " practical " except those which touched All systems of government the source of the evil opposed. all
efforts of benevolence, are vain to repress the natural
consequences of radical error.
who had
But any man
of influence
the sense and courage to refuse himself and his
family one London season
—
to stay
on his estate, and em-
ploy the shopkeepers in his own village, instead of those in Bond Street would be " practically " dealing with, and
—
conquering, this
evil, so
far as in
him
lay;
with his whole might to the thorough and
and contributing
final
conquest of
it.
Not but that I know how to meet it directly also, if any London landlords choose so to attack it. You are beginning to hear something of what Miss Hill has done in Marylebone, and of the change brought about by her energy and good sense in the center of one of the worst districts of London. It
is difficult
enough, I admit, to find a
woman
of average
sense and tenderness enough to be able for such work; but
there are, indeed, other such in the world, only three-fourths * See
§
159,
(written seven years ago,) in "
Munera
Pulveris."
FOES CLAVTGEKA.
144 of tliem
now
get lost in pious lecturing, or altar-cloth sewing;
and the wisest remaining fourth stay at home as quiet housewives, not seeing their way to wider action; nevertheless, any London landlord who will content himself with moderate and fixed rent, (I get five per cent, from Miss Hill, which is surely enough!), assuring his tenants of secure possession
if
need not fear having their rent raised, if they improve their houses; and who will secure also a quiet bit of ground for their children to play in, in-
that
is
paid, so that they
stead of the street, tions of success ;
—has
established
all
the necessary condi-
and I doubt not that Miss Hill herself could
find co-workers able to extend the system of
management
she has originated, and shown to be so effective.
But the
best that can be done in this
way
will be useless
ultimately, unless the deep source of the misery be cut
off.
"While Miss Hill, with intense effort and noble power, has partially moralized a couple of acres in Marylebon"e, at least fifty
square miles of lovely country have been Demoralized
outside London,
of the upper classes to
live
in their idleness,
by the increasing itch where they can get some gossip
and
show That life of theirs must come to an end soon, both here and in Paris, but to what end, it is, I trust, in their own power still to decide. If they resolve to maintain to the last the present system of spending the rent taken from the each other their dresses.
rural districts in the dissipation of the capitals, they will not
always find they can secure a quiet time, as the other day in Dublin, by withdrawing the police, nor that park-railings are the only thing which (police being duly withdraA^Ti) will go
down.
Those favorite castle battlements of mine, their internal " police " withdrawn, will go down also; and I should be sorry to see
it;
—the
lords
and
ladies, houseless at least in
shooting season, perhaps sorrier, though they did find the
gray turrets dismal in winter time. If they would yet have them for autumn, they must have them for winter. Consider, fair lords and ladies, by the time you marry, and choose your dwelling-places, there are for you but forty or
145
FOES CLAVIGEEA. winters more in whose dark days you
fifty fall
and wreathe.
sume
—
still less
There
may
see
tlie
snow
no snow in Heaven, I prelords and ladies ever miss of
will be
elsewhere,
(if
Heaven).
And that some may, is perhaps conceivable, for there are more than a few things to be managed on an English estate, and to be " faithful " in those few cannot be interpreted as merely abstracting the rent of them. Nay, even the Telegraph's beau ideal of the landowner, from a mechanical point " Cultivating huge of view, may come short, somewhat.
—
farms for himself with abundant machinery; " Is that Lord Derby's ideal also, may it be asked? The Scott-reading of my youth haunts me, and I seem still listening to the (perhaps a little too long) speeches of the Black Countess who appears terrifically through the sliding panel in " Peveril "Would Saint of the Peak," about " her sainted Derby." ordinance for of due Derby's ideal, or his Black Countess's, their castle and estate of Man, have been a minimum of Man In fact, only the therein, and an abundance of machinery? Trinacrian Legs of Man, transposed into many spokes of no use for " stalwart arms " any more and less than none for inconveniently " heroic " souls?
wheels
—
—
" Cultivating
huge farms for himself! "
I don't even
put myself into a mechanFor himself? Is he to be done. Surely such a beau ideal is more
see, after the sincerest efforts to ical point of view,
how
it is
to eat the cornricks then?
Utopian than any of mine ? Indeed, whether it be praise- or blame-worthy, it is not so easy to cultivate anything wholly for one's self, nor to consume, one's self, the products of cultivation. I have, indeed, before now, hinted to you that per" haps the consumer " was not so necessary a person economically, as has been supposed; nevertheless, it is not in his own mere eating and drinking, or even his picture-collecting, It is in his bidding and that a false lord injures the poor. I have forbidding or worse still, in ceasing to do either. given you another of Giotto's pictures, this month, his imagination of Injustice, which he has seen done in his
—
FORS CLAVIGEEA.
146
we
time, as
in ours;
and I
am
sorry to observe that his
Injustice lives in a battlemented castle and in a mountain
country,
it
appears; the gates of
it
between
rocks,
and
in the
midst of a wood; but in Giotto's time, woods were too many, and towns too few. Also, Injustice has indeed very ugly
Envy; and an ugly quadruple hook and other ominous resemblances to the '' hooked bird," the falcon, which both knights and ladies too much talons to his fingers, like
to his lance,
ISTevertheless Giotto's main idea about him is, he " sits in the gate " pacifically, with a cloak thrown over his chain-armor (you can just see the links of it appear at his throat), and a plain citizen's cap for a helmet, and his sword sheathed, while all robbery and violence have way in the wild places round him, he heedless.
delighted
in.
clearly, that
—
Which you
is,
indeed, the depth of Injustice: not the
—
harm
you permit to be done, hooking perhaps here and there something to you wnth your clawed weapon do, but that
meanwhile.
The
baronial type exists
still,
I fear, in such
manner, here and there, in spite of improving centuries. My friends, we have been thinking, perhaps, to-day, more than we ought of our masters' faults, scarcely enough of our own. If you would have the upper classes do their duty, see that you also do yours. See that you can obey good laws, and good lords, or law-wards, if you once get them that you A believe in goodness enough to know what a good law is. good law is one that holds, whether you recognize and pronounce it or not; a bad law is one that cannot hold, however much you ordain and pronounce it. That is the mighty truth which Carlyle has been telling you for a quarter of a century once for all he told it you, and the landowners, and all whom it concerns, in the third book of " Past and Present " (1845, buy Chapman and Hall's second edition if you can, it is good print, and read it till you know it by heart), and from that day to this, whatever there is in England of dullest and iusolentest may be always known by the natural instinct it has to howl against Carlyle. Of late, matters coming more and more to crisis, the liberty men seeing their
—
—
—
;
147
FORS CLAVIGERA.
way, as they tliink, more and more broad and bright before them, and still this too legible and steady old sign-post saying. That it is not the way, lovely as it looks, the outcry against it becomes deafening. Now, I tell you once for all, Carlyle
is
the only living writer
who
has spoken the absolute
and perpetual truth about yourselves, and your business; and exactly in proportion to the inherent weakness of brain in your h^ing guides, will be their animosity against Carlyle. Your lying guides, observe, I say not meaning that they lie willfully but that their nature is to do nothing else. For in the modern Liberal there is a new and wonderful form of misguidance. Of old, it was bad enough that the blind should lead the blind; still, with dog and stick, or even timid w^alking with recognized need of dog and stick, if not to be had, such leadership might come to good end enough; but now a worse disorder has come upon you, that the squinting
—
—
should lead the squinting.
may be worse may be
Now
the nature of bat, or mole,
undesirable, at least in the day-time, but
or owl,
imagined.
The modern Liberal
economist of the Stuart Mill school of a flat-fish
—one
eyeless side of
is
politico-
essentially of the type
him always
in the
mud, and
one eye, on the side that lias eyes, down in the corner of his mouth, not a desirable guide for man or beast. Read your Carlyle, then, with all your heart, and with the
—
best of brain
you can give; and you
will learn
from him
first,
the eternity of good law, and the need of obedience to then,
it:
concerning your own immediate business, you will
all good law, and two ordinances, that every man shall do good work for his bread: and secondly, that every man shall have good bread for his work. But the first If you are of these is the only one you have to think of. resolved that the work shall be good, the bread will be sure if not, ^believe me, there is neither steam plow nor steam mill, go they never so glibly, that will win it from the earth
learn farther this, that the beginning of
nearly the end of
it, is
—
in these
—
long, either for you, or the Ideal
Landed Proprietor.
Faithfully yours, J.
EUSKIN.
—
LETTER
My
Feieitos,
XL.
Denmark
—
Hill,
15tJi October, 1871.
A DAY seldom passes,
now that people begin to notice without my receiving a remonstrance on the absurdity of writing " so much above the level " of these Letters a
those
whom
little,
I address.
I have said, however, that eventually you shall under-
you care to understand, every word in these pages. Through all this year I have only been putting questions; some of them such as have puzzled the wisest, and which may, for a long time yet, prove too hard for you and me but, stand, if
:
next year, I will go over questions,
all
where I know of any answers; or making them
plain for your examination,
But, in the meantime, be
way
that this
the ground again, answering the
when it
know
I
of writing, which
is
easy to me, and which most
educated persons can easily understand, I want to
of none.
admitted, for argument's sake,
know why
is
very
much above
assumed so quietly Is it esthat your brains must always be at a low level? sential to the doing of the work by which England exists,
your
that
level.
its
workmen should not be
it is
able to understand scholar's
English, (remember, I only assume mine to be so for argu-
ment's sake), but only newspaper's English? deed, to take
up
a
number
I chanced, in-
of Belgravia, the other day,
which
enemy
Black-
contained a violent attack on an old
of
mine
wood's Magazine; and I enjoyed the attack mightily, until
Belgravia declared, by
way
of coup-de-grace to Blackwood,
that something which Blackwood had spoken of as settled
—
ixi
one way had been irrevocably settled the other way, " settled," said triumphant Belgravia, " in seventy-two newspapers." 148
JUSTICE. Drawn
thus by Giotto, in the Chapel of the Arena at
Padua.
149
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
Seventy-two newspapers, then, say ninety-two
— — are enough
it
seems
—
or,
perhaps, to be perfectly safe,
gin, eighty-two,
land of ours, for the present.
to settle
anything in
better
this
Eng-
But, irrevocably, I doubt.
workmen should reach
perchance, you
with a mar-
we had
If,
the level of under-
standing scholar's English instead of newspaper's English, things might a
little
unsettle themselves again; and;, in the
end, might even get into positions uncontemplated by the
—
contemplated only by the laws of Heaven, and settled by them, some time since, as positions which, if things ever got out of, they would need to get into
ninety-two newspapers,
again.
And, for
my own
part, I cannot at all
well-educated people should as
beneath their
level,
understand
why
so habitually speak of
still
and needing
to
you
be written down
to,
with condescending simplicity, as ilat-foreheaded creatures of another race, unredeemable by any Darwinism. I was waiting last Saturday afternoon on the platform of the railway station at Furness Abbey; (the station itself tastefully placed so that it,
you can
see
it,
and nothing
else
is
but
through the east window of the Abbot's Chapel, over the workmen employed on
ruined altar;) and a party of the
another line, wanted for the swiftly progressive neighborhood of Dalton, were taking Sabbatical refreshment at the tavern recently established at the south side of the said
Abbot's Chapel.
Presently, the train whistling for them,
they came out in a highly refreshed state, and made for it as fast as they could by the tunnel under the line, taking
very long steps to keep their balance in the direction of motion, and securing themselves, laterally, by hustling the wall, They were dressed universally or any chance passengers. in brown rags, which, perhaps, they felt to be the comfortablest kind of dress; they had, most of them, pipes, which I really believe to be more enjoyable than cigars; they got themselves adjusted in their carriages by the aid of snatches
— had charge —with supreme
of vocal music, and looked at us,
and her two young daughters),
(I
of a lady
indifferencQ.
— 150
FOKS CLAVIGEEA.
as indeed at creatures of another race; pitiable, perhaps,
certainly disagreeable and objectionable despicable,
and not
to
—
but, on the whole,
We, on
be minded.
our part, had
the insolence to pity them for being dressed in rags, and for being packed so close in the third-class carriages
:
the two
young girls bore being run against patiently; and when a thin boy of fourteen or fifteen, the most drunk of the company, was sent back staggering to the tavern for a forgotten pickax,
we would, any
fetched
it
am
have gone and For we were all in a yery virtuous and charitable temper: we had had an excellent dinner at the new inn, and had earned that portion of our daily bread by admiring the Abbey all the morning. So we pitied the poor workmen doubly first, for being so wicked as to get drunk at four in the afternoon; and, secondly, for being employed in work so disgraceful as throwing up clods of earth into an embankment, instead of spending the day, like us, in admiring the Abbey: and I, who am for him, if he
of us, I
had asked
sure,
us.
—
always making myself a nuisance to people with my political economy, inquired timidly of my friend whether she thought And she said, certainly not; but what it all quite right. could be done? It was of no use trying to make such men admire the Abbey, or to keep them from getting drunk. They wouldn't do the one, and they would do the other they were quite an unmanageable sort of people, and had been so for generations.
Which, indeed, I knew to be partly the truth, but it only the thing seem to me more wrong than it did before, since here were not only the actual two or three dozen of unmanageable persons, with much taste for beer, and none
made
for architecture; but these implied the existence of
—
many
unmanageable persons before and after them, nay, a long They were a Fallen ancestral and filial unmanageableness. Race, every way incapable, as I acutely felt, of appreciating the beauty of '' Modern Painters," or fathoming the significance of " Fors Clavigera."
But what they had done
to deserve their fall, or
what I
had done
FORS CLAVIGERA.
151
to deserve the privilege of
being the author of
me; and indeed, whatever the deservings may have been on either side, in this and other cases of the kind, it is always a marvel to me that the arrangement and its consequences are accepted so For observe what, in brief terms, the arrangepatiently. ment is. Virtually, the entire business of the world turns on the clear necessity of getting on table, hot or cold, if posat some hour of the sible, meat but, at least, vegetables, day, for all of us for you laborers, we will say at noon for us those valuable books, remained obscure to
—
—
;
:
sesthetical persons,
we
we
will say at eight in the evening; for
have done our eight hours' work of admiring we dine. But, at some time of day, the mutton and turnips, or, since mutton itself is only a transformed like
to
abbeys before
state of turnips,
we may
say, as sufficiently typical of every-
must absolutely be got for us both. And nearly every problem of State policy and economy, as at present understood, and practiced, consists in some device for persuading you laborers to go and dig up dinner for us reflective and sesthetical persons, who like to sit still, and think, or admire. So that when we get to the bottom of the thing,
matter,
turnips only,
we
find the inhabitants of this earth broadly divided
—
—
two great masses; the peasant paymasters spade in hand, original and imperial producers of turnips; and, waiting on them all round, a crowd of polite persons, modestly expectant of turnips, for some too often theoretical service. There is, first, the clerical person, whom the peasant ])ays in turnips for giving him moral advice; then the legal person, whom the peasant pays in turnips for telling him, in black letter, that his house is his own; there is, thirdly, the
into
—
—
courtly person,
whom
the peasant pays in turnips for present-
ing a celestial appearance to him; there literary person,
whom
fourthly, the
the peasant pays in turnips for talk-
ing daintily to him; and there
whom
is,
is,
lastly, the
military person,
the peasant pays in turnips for standing, with a
cocked hat on, in the middle of the moral influence upon the neighbors.
field,
Nor
and exercising a is
the peasant to
;
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
152 be pitied
if
these arrangements are
all f aitlifullv
carried out.
If he really gets moral advice from his moral adviser; if his house is, indeed, maintained to be his own, bv his legal adviser; if courtly persons, indeed, present a celestial appear-
ance to him; and literary persons, indeed, talk beautiful words: if, finally, his scarecrow do, indeed, stand quiet, as with a stick through the middle of it, producing, if not always a wholesome terror, at least, a picturesque effect, and color-contrast of scarlet with green,
—they
are
all
of
them
worth their daily turnips. But if, perchance, it happen that he get tmmoral advice from his moralist, or if his lawyer advise him that his house is not his o^\ti; and his bard, storyteller, or other literary charmer, begin to charm him unwisely, not with beautiful words, but with obscene and ugly words and he be readier with his response in vegetable produce for these than for any other sort; finally, if his quiet scarecrow become disquiet, and seem likely to bring upon him a whole flight of scarecrows out of his neighbors' fields, the combined fleets of Russia, Prussia, etc., as my friend, and your trustee, Mr. Cowper-Temple, has it, (see above,
—
—
Letter II., pp. 28, 29,)
it is
time to look into such arrange-
ments under their several heads. Well looked after, however, all these arrangements have their advantages, and a certain basis of reason and propriety. But there are two other arrangements which have no basis on either, and which are very widely adopted, nevertheless, among mankind, to their great misery. I must expand a little the type of my primitive peasant You observe, I have not named before defining these.
among
the polite persons giving theoretical service in ex-
change for vegetable
diet,
ceedingly polite, class of
the large, and lately become ex-
artists.
For a true
beautiful development of tailor or carpenter.
artist is
As
only a
the peas-
ant provides the dinner, so the artist provides the clothes and house: in the tailoring and tapestry-producing function, the
when Maude
best of artists ought to be the peasant's wife herself,
properly emulative of Queens Penelope, Bertha, and
—
—
153
FORS CLAVIGEEA.
and in the liouse-producing-and-painting function, though concluding itself in such painted chambers as those of the Vatican, the artist is still tvpicallj and essentially a carpenter or mason; first carving wood and stone, then painting the same for preservation; if ornamentally, all the better. And, accordingly, you see these letters of mine are addressed that is to say, to the " workmen and laborers " of England, to the providers of houses and dinners, for themselves, and for all men, in this country, as in all others. Considering these two sorts of Providers, then, as one great class, surrounded by the suppliant persons for whom, together with themselves, they have to make provision, it is evident that they both have need originally of two things land, and tools. Clay to be subdued; and plow, or potter's wheel, wherewith to subdue it.
—
—
Now,
as aforesaid, so long as the polite
surrounding per-
sonages are content to offer their salutary advice, their legal information, etc., to the peasant, for what these articles are verily worth in vegetable produce, all if
any of the
is
perfectly fair; but
polite persons contrive to get hold of the peas-
ant's land, or of his tools,
" position of
"William," and
first
wood
and put him into the make him pay annual interest,
for the
that he planes, and then for the plane he planes
—my
it
two arrangements cannot be considered as settled yet, even by the ninety-two newspapers, with all Belgravia to back them. E^ot by the newspapers, nor by Belgravia, nor even by the Cambridge Catechism, or the Cambridge Professor of Polit-
with!
friends, polite or otherwise, these
Economy. Look to the beginning
ical
of the second chapter in the last
edition of Professor Fawcett's
Manual
of Political
Economy,
The chapter purports to treat (Macmillan, 1869, p. 105). And of the " Classes among whom wealth is distributed." thus "
it
begins:
We
three
:
have described the requisites of production
land, labor,
and
capital.
to
be
Since, therefore, land, labor,
"
rOKS CLAVIGEKA.
154 and capital are
essential to the production of wealth,
ural to suppose that the wealth which
it is
nat-
produced ought to be possessed bj those who own the land, labor, and capital which have respectively contributed to its production. The share of wealth which is thus allotted to the possessor of the land is termed rent; the portion allotted to the laborer is termed wages, and the remuneration of the capitalist is termed profit."
You
is
observe that in this very meritoriously clear sentence
both the possessor of the land and the possessor of the capital are assumed to be absolutely idle persons.
If they con-
tributed any labor to the business, and so confused themselves with the laborer, the problem of triple division would become complicated directly; in point of fact, they do occasionally employ themselves somewhat, and become deserv-
—
ing, therefore, of a share, not of rent only,
but of wages
my
also.
And
last letter, there is
every
now and
nor of profit only,
then, as I noted in
an outburst of admiration in some one
of the ninety-two newspapers, at the
amount
of "
work
done by persons of the superior classes; respecting which, however, you remember that I also advised you that a great deal of
it
was only a form of competitive play. In the main, Cambridge Professor may be
therefore, the statement of the
admitted to be correct as to the existing facts; the Holders of land and capital being virtually in a state of Dignified Repose, as the Laborer is in a state of (at least, I hear it
—
always so announced in the ninety-two newspapers) fied Labor.
—Digni-
But Professor Fawcett's sentence, though,
as I have just comparison with most writings on the subject, meritoriously clear, yet is not as clear as it might be, still less
said, in
—
as scientific as
it
might
be.
It
is,
indeed, gracefully orna-
mental, in the use, in its last clause, of the three words, " share," " portion," and " remuneration," for the same thing; but this
is
not the clearest imaginable language.
sentence, strictly put, should run thus:
wealth which
is
—"The
The
portion of
thus allotted to the possessor of the land
18
FOKS CLAVIGEKA.
155
termed rent; the portion allotted to the laborer wages; and the portion allotted to the capitalist
is
is
termed termed
profit."
And you may
at once see the
advantage of reducing the
sentence to these more simple terms
;
for Professor Fawcett's
ornamental language has this danger in it, that " Remuneration," being so much grander a word than " Portion," in the very roll of it seems to imply rather a thousand poimds a day than three-and-sixpence. And until there be scientific reason shown for anticipating the portions to be thus proportioned,
we have no
right to suggest their being so,
dis-
by
ornamental variety of language. Again, Professor Fawcett's sentence scientific.
He
the phrase "
it
is, I said, not entirely founds the entire principle of allotment on
is
natural to suppose."
of any other science founded on pose.
Do
what
it
But
I never heard
was natural
to sup-
the Cambridge mathematicians, then, in these ad-
vanced days,
tell their
pupils that
it is
natural to suppose the
three angles of a triangle are equal to two right ones? in the present case, I regret to say
it
Nay,
has sometimes been
thought wholly wnnatural to suppose any such thing; and so exceedingly unnatural, that to receive either a " remuneration," or a " portion," or a " share," for the loan of anything,
without personally working, was held by Dante and other such simple persons in the middle ages to be one of the worst of the sins that could be committed against nature: and the receivers of such interest were put in the same circle of Hell with the people of Sodom and Gomorrah.
And it is greatly to be apprehended that if ever our workmen, under the influences of Mr. Scott and Mr. Street, come indeed to admire the Abbot's Chapel at Furness more than the railroad station, they may become possessed of a taste for Gothic opinions as well as Gothic arches, and think it " natural to suppose " that a workman's tools should be his own property. Which I, myself, having been always given ions,
to Gothic opindo indeed suppose, very strongly; and intend to try with
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
166
all my might to bring about that arrangement wherever I have any influence; the arrangement itself being feasible enough, if we can only begin by not leaving our pickaxes behind us after taking Sabbatical refreshment. But let me again, and yet again, warn you, that only by beginning so, that is to say, by doing what is in your own power to achieve of plain right, can you ever bring about any of your wishes or, indeed, can you, to any practical purOnly by quiet and decent exaltation of pose, begin to wish. your own habits can you qualify yourselves to discern what I hear you are, is just, or to define even what is possible. at last, beginning to draw up your wishes in a definite manner; (I challenged you to do so, in Tiine and Tide, four years ago, in vain,) and you mean to have them at last " represented in Parliament;" but -I hear of small question yet among you, whether they be just wishes, and can be represented to the power of everlasting Justice, as things not only For she natural to be supposed, but necessary to be done. accepts no representation of things in beautiful language, but takes her own view of them, with her own eyes. I did, indeed, cut out a slip from the Birmingliam Morn-
—
—
—
;
News
last September, (12th,) containing a letter written signing himself " Justice " in person, and gentleman by a himself professing an engineer, who talked very grandly about the "individual and social laws of our nature: " but he had arrived at the inconvenient conclusions that " no in-
ing
dividual has a natural right to hold property in land,"
and that "
all
property."
I call this an inconvenient conclusion, because
land sooner or later must become public
I really think you would find yourselves greatly inconven-
ienced
if
your wives couldn't go into the garden
cabbage, without getting leave from the Lord
to cut a
Mayor and
and if the same principle is to be carried out as beg to state to Mr. Justice-in-Person, that if anybody and everybody is to use my own particular palette and brushes, I resign my office of Professor of Fine Art. Perhaps, when we become really acquainted with the true Corporation
regards
;
tools, I
— 157
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
Justice in Person, not professing herself an engineer, she
may
suggest to us, as a ISTatural Supposition,
—
"
That land
should be given to those who can use it, and tools to those who can use them; " and I have a notion you will find this a
very tenable supposition also. I have given you, this month, the
—
last of the pictures
I
want you to see from Padua; Giotto's Image of Justice which, you observe, differs somewhat from the Image of Justice we used to set up in England, above insurance offices, and the like. Bandaged close about the eyes, our English Justice was wont to be, with a pair of grocers' scales in her hand, wherewith, doubtless, she was accustomed to weigh out accurately their shares to the landlords, and portions to the But Giotto's laborers, and remunerations to the capitalists. Justice has no bandage about her eyes, (Albert Diirer's has
them round open, and flames
from them,) and
flashing
weighs, not with scales, but with her
own hands; and weighs
not merely the shares, or remunerations of men, but the
worth of them; and finding them worth
them what they deserve
—death,
this or that, gives
Those are her forms of " Remuneration." Are you sure that you are ready to accept the decrees of this true goddess, and to be chastised or rewarded by her, as is your due, being seen through and through to your hearts' core? Or will you still abide by the level balance of the or honor.
blind Justice of old time; or rather, by the oblique balance of
the squinting Justice of our
modern
becoming —the mud, under the — beg pardon, the — Period?
at present,
feet
I
geological
also
belly
Mud-
more slippery
of squinting Jus-
than was once expected; beeoming, indeed, (as it is announced, even by Mr. W. P. Price, M.P., chairman at the tice,
last half-yearly
meeting of the Midland Railway Company,)
quite " delicate ground."
The said chairman, you will find, by referring to the Pall Mall Gazette of August 17th, 1871, having received a letter from Mr. Bass on the subject of the length of time that the servants of the company were engaged in labor, and their
— FOES CLAVIGEEA.
158
inadequate remuneration, made the following remarks: " He (Mr. Bass) is treading on very delicate ground. The
remuneration of labor, the value of which, like the value of itself, depends altogether on the one great universal law of supply and demand, is a question on which there is very
gold
room for sentiment. He, as a very successful tradesman, knows very well how much the success of commercial operations depends on the observance of that law; and we, little
your representatives, cannot altogether close our eyes to it." N"ow it is quite worth your while to hunt out that number of the Pall Mall Gazette in any of your free libraries, because sitting here as
a quaint chance in the placing of the type has produced a
comment on
W.
P. Price, M.P. under the words, " Great Universal Law of Supply and Demand," and read the line it marks off in the other column of the same page. It marks off this, " In Khorassan one-third of the whole population has perished from starvation, and at Ispahan no less than 27,000 souls." Of course you will think it no business of yours if people are starved in Persia. But the Great " Universal " Law of Supply and Demand may some day operate in the same manner over here; and even in the Mud-and-Flat-fish period, John Bull may not like to have his belly flattened for him lateral
these remarks of Mr.
Take your carpenter's
rule, apply
it
level
to that extent.
You have heard it It may
cal person.
said occasionally that I
contrary, that this whole plan of mine practical notion" of
not a practi-
is
founded on the very
making you round persons instead of
And my instead of flat and sulky. not taken from " a mechanical point of view,"
Bound and merry,
flat.
beau ideal but
am
be satisfactory to you to know, on the
is
is
one already realized.
I
saw
last
summer,
in the flesh,
He was green velveteen; not in brown rags, but he wore a jaunty hat, with a feather in it, a little on one side; he was not drunk, but the effervescence of his shrewd as
round and merry a person
tidily dressed
—
as I ever desire to see. in
FOBS CLAVIGEEA.
good-humor
filled tlie
like a robin.
159
room
You may
all about him; and he could sing say " like a nightingale," if you like,
but I think robin's singing the best, myself; only I hardly ever hear it now, for the young ladies of England have had nearly
all
the robins shot, to wear in their hats, and the bird-
stuffers are exporting the
few remaining
to
America.
This merry round person was a Tyrolese peasant; and I hold
it
an entirely practical proceeding, since I find
my
idea
of felicity actually produced in the Tyrol, to set about the
production of
it,
here, on Tyrolese principles; which,
you
will find, on inquiry, have not hitherto implied the employ-
ment
of steam, nor submission to the great Universal
Supply and Demand, nor even of a " Liberal " government. all
hands on pure earth and
Demand
Law
of
for the local Supply
But they do imply labor of in fresh air.
They do imply
obedience to government which endeavors to be just, and And they faith in a religion which endeavors to be moral. result in strength of limbs, clearness of throats, roundness
of waists, and pretty jackets, and
still
prettier corsets to
fit
them. I must pass, disjointedly, to matters which, in a written
would have been put
but I do not care, gap in the type. First, the reference in page 142 to the works of Mr. Zion Ward, is incorrect. The passage I quoted is not in the " Letter to a letter,
in a postscript
;
in a printed one, to leave a useless
Friend," price twopence, but in the " Origin of Evil Dis-
(John Bolton, Steel House And, by the way, I wish that booksellers would save themselves, and me, some (now steadily enlarging) trouble, by noting that the price of these Letters to friends of mine, as supplied by me, the original inditer, to all and sundry, through my only shopman, Mr. Allen, is sevenpence per epistle, and not fivepence half-penny; * and that the trade profit on the sale of them is intended to be, and must eventually be, as I intend, a quite honestly concovered,"
price
fourpence.
Lane, Birmingham.)
[* Referring to the original issue: see Letter VI,]
160
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
fessed profit, charged to the customer, not compressed out of the author; which object
may
be easily achieved by the
he will resolvedly charge the symmetrical sum of Tenpence per epistle over his counter, as it is my
retail bookseller, if
purpose he should. tion of
my
But
to return to
Mr. Ward; the correc-
me by
one of his disciples, in
reference was sent
a very earnest and courteous letter, written chiefly to complain that
my
opinions.
I regret that
quotation totally misrepresented Mr. Ward's it
should have done
so,
but gave the
quotation neither to represent nor misrepresent Mr. Ward's opinions; but to show, which the sentence, though brief,
quite sufficiently shows, that he had no right to have any.
I have before noted to you, indeed, that, in a broad sense, nobody has a right to have opinions; but only knowledges: and, in a practical and large sense, nobody has a right even to make experiments, but only to act in a way which they And this I ask certainly know will be productive of good. you to observe again, because I begin now to receive some earnest inquiries respecting the plan I have in hand, the inquiries very naturally assuming it to be an " experiment," which may possibly be successful, and much more possibly may fail. But it is not an experiment at all. It will be merely the carrying out of what has been done already in some places, to the best of my narrow power, in other places: and so far as it can be carried, it must be productive of some kind of good. For example; I have round me here at Denmark Hill seven acres of leasehold ground. I pay £50 a year groundrent, and £250 a year in wages to my gardeners; besides expenses in fuel for hothouses, and the like. And for this sum of three hundred odd pounds a year I have some pease and strawberries in summer; some camellias and azaleas in winter; and good cream, and a quiet place to walk in, all the year round. Of the strawberries, cream, and pease, I eat more than is good for me sometimes, of course, obliging my friends with a sui^erfluous pottle or pint. The camellias and azaleas stand in the anteroom of my library; and every;
161
FORS CLAVIGEEA.
body
savK,
when they come
in,
"
How pretty
!
" and
my young
lady friends have leave to gather what they like to put in their hair,
of
my
when they
—owing
great universal law of supply and ple are starving;
many told
Meantime, outside
are going to balls.
fenced seven acres
to the operation of the
demand
many more, dying
—numbers of
of too
much
gin;
peo-
and
of their children dying of too little milk; and, as I
you
in
my
first
Letter, for
my own
part, I won't stand
any longer. N^ow it is evidently open to me to say to my gardeners, " I want no more azaleas or camellias; and no more strawberries and pease than are good for me. Make these seven acres everywhere as productive of good corn, vegetables, or milk, as you can; I will have no steam used upon them, for nobody on my ground shall be blown to pieces; nor any fuel wasted this sort of thing
in
making plants blossom
in winter, for I believe
we
shall,
without such unseasonable blossoms, enjoy the spring twice as much as now; but, in any part of the ground that is not good for eatable vegetables, you are to sow such wild flowers as it seems to like, and you are to keep all trim and orderly. The produce of the land, after I have had my limited and salutary portion of pease, shall be your own; but if you sell any of it, part of the price you get for it shall be deducted from your wages." Now observe, there would be no experiment whatever in any one feature of this proceeding. My gardeners might be stimulated to some extra exertion by it; but in any event
I should retain exactly the same
had before.
command
over them that I
I might save something out of
my
£250 of
wages, but I should pay no more than I do now, and in return for the gift of the produce I should certainly be able to exact compliance
fancies of
mine
from
my people
as that they should
with any such capricious wear velveteen jackets,
or send their children to learn to sing; and, indeed, I could
grind them, generally, under the iron heel of Despotism, as the ninety-two newspapers would declare, to an extent un-
heard of before in
this free country.
And, assuredly, some
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
162
who
children would get milk, strawberries, and wild flowers
do not get them now; and I
am
firm in
my
belief,
my
young lady friends would still, look pretty enough at their balls,
even without the camellias or azaleas. I
am
not going to do this with
my
seven acres here;
first,
because they are only leasehold; secondly, because they are too near London for wild flowers to grow brightly in. But I
have bought, instead, twice as
many
freehold acres, where
wild flowers are growing now, and shall continue to grow;
and there I mean to
live: and,
with the tenth part of
my
buy other bits of freehold land, and employ gardeners on them in this above-stated matter. I may as well tell you at once that my tithe will be, roughly, available fortune, I will
about seven thousand pounds altogether, (a
than more). witli this;
money
but
little less
rather
If I get no help, I can show what I mean, even if
anyone cares
to help
or land, they will find that
me
with gifts of either
what they give
is
applied
honestly, and does a perfectly definite service: they might,
more good with it in other ways; but good in this way and that is all I assert they will do, And the longer they certainly, and not experimentally. take to think of this matter the better I shall like it, for my work at Oxford is more than enough for me just now, and I shall not practically bestir myself in this land-scheme for a year to come, at least; nor then, except as a rest from my main business: but the money and land will always be safe in the hands of your trustees for you, and you need not doubt, though I show no petulant haste about the matter, that I remain for aught I know, do
S(mie
—
—
Faithfully yours, J.
EUSKIK
LETTEE
My
Fkiends
You
XII.
Denmark
—
^^'"'^
Hill, December, 1871.
anything I have to say wholly pleascome, next days to of delightful ant, as I hope; and prospect know that I week. At least, however, you will be glad to have really made you the Christmas gift I promised £7,000 to
you
this
will scarcely care to read
—having much
evening
to think of,
—
Consols, in
much
all,
clear; a fair tithe of
what I had: and
perpetuity as the law will allow me.
the dead to have their
own way,
long,
whatever license
grants the living in their humors: and this seems to
kind to those helpless ones
;
to as
It will not allow
—very certainly
it is
me
it
un-
inexpedient
For the wisest men are wise to the full in death; and if you would give them, instead of stately tombs, only so much honor as to do their will, when they themselves can no more contend for it, you would find it good memorial of them, such as the best of them would desire, and full of blessing to all men for all time. English law needs mending in many respects; in none more than in this. As it stands, I can only vest my gift in trustees, desiring them, in the case of my death, immediately to appoint their own successors, and in such continued sucfor the survivors.
cession, to apply the proceeds of the St. George's
Fund
to
the purchase of land in England ftnd Scotland, which shall
be
cultivated
to
the
beauty by the labor of beasts receiving at the
utmost attainable fruitfulness and beast thereon, such men and
man and
same time the best education
attain-
able by the trustees for laboring creatures, according to the
terms stated in this book, Fors Clavigera. These terms, and the arrangement of the whole matter, will become clearer to you as you read on with me, and here is the money, at any cannot be clear at all, till you do ;
163
—
FOES CLAVIGERA.
164 rate, to help you,
care to give
one day, to make merry with, only,
me any
thanks, will you pause
—
if
you
now for a moment whom, as Fortune
from your merrymaking, to tell me, to has ordered it, no merrymaking is possible at this time, (nor, indeed, much at any time;) to me, therefore, standing as it were astonished in the midst of this gayety of yours, will you tell what it is all about? Your little children would answer, doubtless, fearlessly, " Because the Child Christ was born to-day " but you, wiser
—
—
:
it
may
He
was?
than your children,
you
also sure that
And
if
He
was, what
is
be,
—
at least,
it
should be,
—are
that to you?
He was? I mean, with real happening of the strange things you have been told, that the Heavens opened near Him, showing their hosts, and that one of their stars stood still over His head? You are sure of that, you say? I am glad; and wish it were so with me; but I have been so puzzled lately by many matters that once seemed clear to me, that I seldom now feel sure of anything. Still seldomer, however, do J feel sure of the contrary of anything. That people say they saw it, may not prove that it was visible; but that I never saw it cannot prove that it was invisible: and this is a story which I more envy the people who believe on the weakest grounds^ than who deny on the strongest. The people whom I envy not at all are those who imagine they believe it, and do not. For one of two things this story of the Nativity is certainly, and without any manner of doubt. It relates either a fact full of power, or a dream full of meaning. It is, at the least, not a cunningly devised fable, but the record of an impression made, by some strange spiritual cause, on the minds of the human race, at the most critical period of their existence; an impression which has produced, in past ages, the greatest effect on mankind ever yet achieved by an intellectual conception; and which is yet to guide, by the determination of its truth or falsehood, the absolute destiny of I repeat, are
—
ages to come.
you indeed sure
— FORS CLAVIGERA.
Will you give some
me
little
165
time therefore, to think of
you
it
me, sure of its truth? me is then, let ask you, its truth The Cliild What, to you? for whose birth you are rejoicing was born, you are told, to save His people from their sins; but I have never noticed that you were particularly conscious of any sins to be saved If I were to tax you with any one in particular from. lying, or thieving, or the like my belief is you would say directly I had no business to do anything of the kind. Nay, but, you may perhaps answer me " That is because we have been saved from our sins ; and we are making merry, with
to-day, being, as
tell
—
—
we
because
are so perfectly good."
Well; there would be some reason in such an answer. There is much goodness in you to be thankful for: far more than you know, or have learned to trust. Still, I don't believe you will tell me seriously that you eat your pudding and go to your pantomimes only to express your satisfaction that you are so very good.
What Shall
is,
we
people of
what "
it
or
may
its
little,
time; and so
might be
And
be, this Nativity, to you, then, I repeat?
consider, a
what, at
make
We
to us?
all
events,
ourselves
it
more
was
to the
clear as to
will read slowly.
there were, in that country, shepherds, staying out
watch over their flocks by night." Watching night and day, that means; not going home. The staying out in the field is the translation of a word from which a Greek nymph has her name Agraulos, " the stayer in the field, keeping
out in fields," of
whom
I shall have something to tell you,
soon.
"
And
behold, the Messenger of the Lord stood above
them, and the glory of the Lord lightened round them, and they feared a great fear." " Messenger." You must remember that, when this was written, the word " angel " had only the effect of our word " messenger " Our translators say on men's minds.
—
—
and " messenger " when they like; but the Bible, messenger only, or angel only, as you please. " angel "
when they
like,
"
rORS CLAVIGEBA.
166
For
instance, "
when
Was
not
Rahab
the harlot justified by works,
she had received the angels, and sent
them forth
another way?
Would
not you fain
know what
I
this angel looked like?
have always grievously wanted, from childhood upwards, to know that; and gleaned diligently every word written by people who said they had seen angels but none of them ever tell me what their eyes are like, or hair, or even what dress they have on. We dress them, in pictures, conjecturally, in :
long robes, falling gracefully; but
we
only continue to think
young girls, in and wish to look only human, give their dresses flounces. AVhen I was a child, I used to be satisfied by hearing that angels had always two wings, and sometimes that kind of dress angelic, because religious
their modesty,
six;
for
but
my
now nothing
dissatisfies-
business compels
wings; and
me
now they never
me
so
much
as hearing that;
continually into close drawing of
me
give
the notion of anything
And, worse still, when I see a picture of an angel, I know positively where he got his wings from not at all from any heavenly vision, but from the worshiped hawk and ibis, down through Assyrian flying bulls, and Greek flying horses, and Byzantine flying evangelists, but a swift or a gannct.
—
till
we
get a brass eagle, (of
all
creatures in the world, to
choose!) to have the gospel of peace read
from the back
Therefore, do the best I can, no idea of an angel to
me.
And when
I ask
my
is
of
it.
possible
religious friends, they tell
me
My
not to wish to be wise above that which is written. religious friends, let me write a few words of this letter, not to
my
going
formed
poor puzzled workmen, but to you, who will all be This messenger, serenely to church to-morrow. as
we know
not, stood above the shepherds,
and the
glory of the Lord lightened round them.
You would lave
liked
to
have
seen
it,
you think!
Brighter than the sun; perhaps twenty-one colored, instead of seven-colored, and you would have liked
You
tell
me
as bright as the lime-light: doubtless to see
it,
at midnight, in Judiea.
not to be wise above that which
is v^'ritten;
;
FOES CLAVIGERA.
167
why, therefore, should you be desirous, above that which
is
You
cannot see the glory of God as bright as the lime-light at midnight; but you may see it as bright as the sun, at eight in the morning, if you choose. You might, at given?
least, forty
Christmases since
You know I must am actually writing
antedate
:
but not now.
my
I on the second December, at ten in the morning, with the feeblest possible gleam of sun on my paper; and for the last three weeks the days have been one long drift of ragged gloom, with only sometimes five minutes' gleam of the glory of God, between the gusts, which no one regarded. letters for special days.
this sentence
God in vain, you think? ISTo, my For completed forty years, I have been striving to consider the blue heavens, the work of His fingers, and the moon and the stars which He hath ordained: but you have left me nothing now to consider here at Denmark Hill, but these black heavens, the work of your fingers, and the blotting of moon and stars which you have ordained you, taking the name of God in vain every Sunday, and His work and His mercy in vain all the week through. " You have nothing to do with it you are very sorry for it and Baron Liebig says that the power of England is I
am
taking the
name
of
religious friends, not I.
—
—
—
coal?"
You have
everything to do with it. Were you not told come out and be separate from all evil? You take whatever advantage you can of the evil work and gain of this world, and yet expect the people you share with, to be damned, out of your way, in the next. If you would begin by putting them out of your way here, you would perhaps carry some of them with you there. But return to your night vision, and explain to me, if not what the angel was like, at least what you understand him to have said, he, and those with him. With his own lips he told the shepherds there was born a Saviour for them but more was to be told: " And suddenly there was with him a multitude of the to
—
;
heavenly host,"
— FOES CLAVIGEKA.
168
means only that came more to sing, in the manner of a chorus; but it means far another thing than that. If you look back to Genesis you find creation summed thus: " So the heavens and earth were finished, and all the host of them." "Whatever living powers of any order, great or small, were to inhabit either, are included in the word. The host of earth includes the ants and the worms People generally think that
this verse
after one angel had spoken, there
—
of
it;
—we know not what; which —the creatures that are the — the space which we cannot imagine;
the host of heaven includes,
how should we? we cannot count, some of them
in
stars
in
low that they can become flying we live on; others having missions, doubtless, to larger grains of sand, and wiser creatures on them. But the vision of their multitude means at least this; that all the powers of the outer world which have any concern with ours became in some way visible now having interest so little
and
so
pursuivants to this grain of sand
:
they, in the praise, this Child,
—
as all the hosts of earth in the life, of
born in David's town.
And
peace to the lowest of the two hosts
—
their
hymn was
peace on earth;
of
—and
praise in the highest of the two hosts; and, better than peace, praise, Love, among men. The men in question, ambitious of praising God after the manner of the hosts of heaven, have written something
and sweeter than
which they suppose this Song of Peace to have been like; and sing it themselves, in state, after successful battles. But you hear it, those of you who go to church in orthodox quarters, every Sunday; and will understand the terms of it better by recollecting that the Lordship, which you begin the Te Deum by ascribing to God, is this, over all creatures, In the Apocalypse it is " Lord, All or over the two Hosts. " we weakly translate governing Pantocrator which " Almighty but the Americans still understand the " original sense, and apply it so to their god, the dollar, praying that the will may be done of their Father which is in Earth. Farther on in the hymn, the word " Sabaoth ''
— ;
—
,
— ;
169
FOES CLAVIGERA. again means
all
" hosts " or creatures; and
an important
it is
word for workmen to recollect, because the saying of St. James is coming true, and that fast, that the cries of the reapers whose wages have been kept back by fraud, have entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth; that is to say, Lord of all creatures, as much of the men at St. Catherine's Docks as of Saint Catherine herself, though they live only under Tower-Hill, and she lived close under Sinai. You see, farther, I have written above, not " good will towards men," but " love among men." It is nearer right so;
but the word
means
is
not easy to translate at
may —youThis
precisely,
Christ's baptism
"
is
conjecture best from
my
What
all.
beloved Son, in
its
it
use at
whom
I
am
For, in precisely the same words, the angels say, there is to be " well-pleasing in men," iN'ow, my religious friends, I continually hear you talk of well-'pleased"
acting for God's glory, and giving
God
Might you
praise.
and more of pleasHe can, perhaps, dispense with your praise; ing Him? your opinions of His character, even when they come to be held by a large body of the religious press, are. not of mateHe has the hosts of heaven to rial importance to Him. praise Him, who see more of His ways, it is likely, than you
not, for the present, think less of praising,
but you hear that you
may
be pleasing to Him,
if
you try: in you and
He expected, then, to have some satisfaction might have even great satisfaction Avell-pleasing, as in His own Son, if you tried. The sparrows and the robins, if you give them leave to nest as they choose about your garden, will have their own opinions about your garden; some of
that
them
;
—
will think
it
well laid out,
—others
ill.
You
are not
but you like them to love each other; to build their nests without stealing each other's sticks, and to trust you to take care of them. Perhaps, in like manner, if in this garden of the world
solicitous about their opinions
;
Master your opinions of Him, quarreling about your opinions of your and, much more, Him; but would simply trust Him, and mind your own busi-
you would leave
off telling its
— rOES CLAVIGEEA.
170
He
ness modestly,
He
might have more satisfaction
in
you than
has had yet these eighteen hundred and seventy-one
He
seems likely to have in the eighteen hunFor first, instead of behaving like sparrows and robins, you want to behave like those birds you read the Gospel from the backs of, eagles. Xow the Lord of the garden made the claws of eagles for them, and your fingers for you and if you would do the work of fingers, with the fingers He made, would, without doubt, have satisfaction in you. But, instead of fingers, you want to have claws years, or than
dred and seventy-second.
—
;
not mere short claws, at the finger-ends, as Giotto's Injustice
has them; but long claws that will reach leagues away; so
you
the sky
—
work
— —
make
faryourselves manifold claws, smoke, which hides the sun and chokes this Egyptian darkness that may be felt manu-
set to
scratching;
—and
to
this
factured by you, singular modern children of Israel, that you
may have
light in
7io
your dwellings,
is
none the
fairer,
because cast forth by the furnaces, in which you forge your weapons of war.
A very singular children of Israel! Your Father, Abraham, indeed, once saw the smoke of a country go up as the smoke of a furnace; but not with envy of the country. Your English power is coal ? "Well also the power of the Vale of Siddim was in slime, petroleum of the best; yet the Kings of the five cities fell there; and the end was no well-pleasing of God among men. Emmanuel! God with us! how often, you tenderlyminded Christians, have you desired to see this great sight, this Babe lying in a manger? Yet, you have so contrived it, once more, this year, for many a farm in France, that if He were born again, in that neighborhood, there would be found no manger for Him to lie in; only ashes of mangers. Our clergy and lawyers dispute, indeed, whether He may not be ;
—
—
yet
among
corn.
An
other day
us
;
if
not in mangers, in the straw of them, or the
English lawyer spoke twenty-six hours but the the other four days, I mean before the Lords
—
—
of her Majesty's most Honorable Privy Council, to prove
— FOBS CLAVIGERA.
171
that an English clergyman had used a proper quantity of
equivocation in his statement that Christ was in Bread. there
is
no harm in anybody thinking that
He
is
Yet
in Bread,
The harm is, in their expectation of His or even in Flour! Presence in gunpowder. Present, however, you believe He was, that night, in flesh, to anyone who might be warned to go and see Him. The inn was quite full; but we do not hear that any traveler chanced to look into the cow-house; and most. likely, even if they had, none of them would have been much interested in the workman's young wife, lying there.
They probably
would have thought of the Madonna, with Mr. John Stuart Mill, (" Principles of Political Economy," 8vo, Parker, 1848, vol. ii., page 321,) that there was scarcely " any means open to her of gaining a livelihood, except as a wife and mother; " and that " women who prefer that occupation might justifi' ably adopt it but, that there should be no option, no other carriere possible, for the great majority of women, except in the humbler dei:)artments of life, is one of those social injustices which call loudest for remedy." The poor girl of Nazareth had less option than most; and
—
with her w^eak " be it unto me as Thou wilt," fell so far below the modern type of independent womanhood, that one cannot wonder at any degree of contempt felt for her by British Protestants. Some few people, nevertheless, were meant, at the time, to think otherwise of her. And now, my working friends, I would ask you to read with me, carefully, for however often you may have read this before, I -know there are points in the story which you have not thought of. The shepherds were told that their Saviour was that day born to them " in David's village." We are apt to think that this was told, as of special interest to them, because David was a King. N'ot so. It was told them because David was in youth not " To you, shepa King; but a Shepherd like themselves. herds, is born this day a Saviour in the shepherd's town; "
FOES CLAVIGERA.
172
that would be the deep sound of the message in their ears.
For the great interest to them in the story of David himself must have been always, not that he had saved the monarchy, or subdued Syria, or written Psalms, but that he had kept sheep in those very fields they were watching in; and that his grandmother * Ruth had gone gleaning, hard by. And they said hastily, " Let us go and see." Will you note carefully that they only think of seeing, not
Even when they do see the Child, it is not They were simple people, and said that they worshiped. had not much faculty of worship; even though the heavens of worshiping?
had opened for them, and the hosts of heaven had sung. at first only frightened; then curious, and communicative to the bystanders: they do not think even of making any offering, which would have been a natural thought enough, as it was to the first of shepherds: but they brought no firstlings of their flock (it is only in pictures, and those chiefly painted for the sake of the picturesque, that the shepherds are seen bringing lambs, and baskets of eggs). It is not said here that they brought anything, but they looked, and talked, and went away praising God, as simple people, yet taking nothing to heart only the mother
They had been
-
—
—
did that.
They went away:
;
—" returned,"
it is
said,
—
to their busi-
and never seem to have left it again. Which is strange, if you think of it. It is a good business truly, and one much to be commended, not only in itself, but as having great
ness,
—
as in the case of Jethro the
Jew shepherd and
the herdsman of Tekoa; be-
chances of " advancement " Midianite's
keeper of the few sheep in the wilderness, when his brethren were under arms afield. But why are they not sides that
seeking for some advancement now, after opening of the heavens to them? or, at least, why not called to it afterwards, being, one would have thought, as fit for ministry under a
shepherd king, as fishermen, or custom-takers?
Can
it
be that the work * Great;
is
itself
—father's father's
the best that can be mother.
— 173
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
done bj simple men; that the shepherd Lord Clifford, or Michael of the Green-head ghjll, are ministering better in the wilderness than any lords or commoners are likelj to do in Parliament, or other apostleship; so that even the professed Fishers of
Men
are wise in calling themselves Pastors
Yet
seems not less strange that one never hears of any of these shepherds any more. The boy who made the pictures in this book for you could only fancy the o^ativity, yet left his sheep, that he might preach of it, in his way, all his life. But they, who saw it, went back to their sheep. Some days later, another kind of persons came. On that first day, the simplest people of His own land; twelve days rather than Piscators?
it
—
after, the wisest people of other lands, far
away: persons who
had received, what you are all so exceedingly desirous to receive, a good education; the result of which, to you, according to Mr. John Stuart Mill, in the page of the chapter on the probable future of the laboring classes, opposite to that from which I have just quoted his opinions about the " From this Madonna's line of life will be as follows
—
—
increase of intelligence, several effects
:
may
be confidently
become even less willing than at present to be led, and governed, and directed into the way they should go, by the mere authority and prestige anticipated.
First: that they will
If they have not now, still less will they have any deferential awe, or religious principle of obedience, holding them in mental subjection to a class above them."
of superiors. hereafter,
It
is
curious that, in this old story of the Xativity, the
greater wisdom of these educated persons appears to have
produced upon them an effect exactly contrary to that which you hear Mr. Stuart Mill would have " confidently anticipated." The uneducated people came only to see, but these highly trained ones to worship; and they have allowed themselves to be led, and governed, and directed into the way which they should go, (and that a long one,) by the mere authority and prestige of a superior person, whom they
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
174
clearly recognize as a born king, thoiigli not of their people.
" Tell uSj where
is he that is born King of the Jews, for we have come to worship him." Yon may perhaps, however, think that these Magi had received a different kind of education from that which Mr. Mill would recommend, or even the book which I observe is the favorite of the Chancellor of the Exchequer " Cassell's Educator." It is possible; for they were looked on in their own country as themselves the best sort of Educators which And the Cassell of their day could provide, even for Kings. as you are so much interested in education, you will, perhaps, have patience with me while I translate for you a wise
—
Greek's account of the education of the princes of Persia; account given three hundred years, and more, before these
came
]\[agi
When
" all
to
Bethlehem.
the boy
is
seven years old he has to go and learn
about horses, and
and begins
ship,
to
fourteen years old,
is taught by the masters of horsemango against wild beasts; and when he is they give him the masters \vhom they
the Kingly Child-Guiders
and these are four, chosen are then in the prime of life to wit, the most wise man they can find, and the most just, and the most temperate, and the most brave; of whom the first, the wisest, teaches the prince the magic of Zoroaster; and that magic is the service of the Gods: also, he call
the best out of
all
:
who
the Persians
—
teaches
him the
duties that belong to a king.
second, the justest, teaches
through.
Then the
him
all
much
as
as a single one of the
be exercised in freedom, and verily things within himself, not slave to them.
the fourth, the bravest, teaches
things,
all his life
may
a king, master of all
And
speak truth
most temperate, teaches him
third, the
not to be conquered by even so pleasures, that he
to
Then the
knowing
that
him
to
whenever he
be dreadless of fears, he is a
slave."
Three hundred and some odd years before that carpenter, with his tired wife, asked for room in the inn, and found none, these words had been written, my enlightened friends;
FOES CI.AVIGERA.
175
and much longer than that, these things had been done. And the three hundred and odd years (more than from Elizabeth's time till now) passed by, and much fine philosophy "was talked in the interval, and many fine things found out but it seems that when God wanted tutors for His little Prince, at least, persons who would have been tutors to any other little prince, but could only worship this one, He :
—
—
could find nothing better than those quaint-minded masters
And
of the old Persian school.
since then, six times over,
three hundred years have gone by, and
—
them not a ing administered; sundry Academies deal of theology talked in
assembled,
—Paduan,
;
we have had little
a good
popular preach-
studious persons
of
Parisian, Oxonian, and the like; per-
sons of erroneous views carefully collected and burnt; Eton, and other grammars, diligently digested; and the most exable, quisite and indubitable physical science obtained, there is now no doubt, to extinguish gases of every sort, and
—
explain the reasons of their smell. last,
finding
Educator,
—patent
And
here
we
are, at
necessary to treat ourselves by Cassell's
it still
filter
of
human
faculty.
Pass yourselves
through that, my intelligent working friends, and see how clear you will come out on the other side. Have a moment's patience yet with me, first, while I note for you one or two of the wa3'S of that older tutorship. Four masters, you see, there were for the Persian Prince. One had no other business than to teach him to speak truth; so difiicult a ter,
did
—we. it
matter the Persians thought
You heard how
last year,
it.
We know
bet-
perfectly the French gazettes
without any tutor, by their Holy Republican tutor had to teach the Prince to
Then the second
instincts.
That tutor both the French and you have had for some time back; but the Persian and Parisian dialects are not similar in their use of the word " freedom " of that
be free.
;
hereafter.
Then another master has
to teach the Prince to
fear nothing; him, I admit, you want for your
God,
modern
less;
but
little
teaching from,
Republicans fear even the devil little,
may
I observe that you are occasionally
and still
rORS CLAVIGEEA.
176
afraid of thieves, though as I said some time since, I never
can make out what you have got to be stolen. For instance, niuch as we suppose ourselves desirous of beholding this Bethlehem Nativity, or getting any idea of jt, I know an English gentleman who was offered the other
—
—
day a picture of it, by a good master, Raphael, for fiveand-twenty pounds; aild said it was too dear: yet had paid, only a day or two before, five hundred pounds for a pocketpistol that shot people out of
both ends, so afraid of thieves
was he.*
None
of these three masters, however, the masters of justemperance, or fortitude, were sent to the little Prince Young as He was. He had already been in at Bethlehem. some practice of these but there was yet the fourth cardinal virtue, of which, so far as we -can understand. He had to learn a new manner for His new reign and the masters of tice,
;
:
— the masters of Obedience. For He become obedient unto Death. had And the most wise —says the Greek —the most wise masthat were sent to
Him
to
ter of
all,
teaches the boy magic; and this magic
is
the ser-
vice of the gods.
My
skilled
your
magic
lately.
(you
working friends, I have heard much of Sleight of hand, and better than that, Leger-de-main, improved say,) sleight of machine. leger-de-mecanique. From the AVest, as from the East,
into
now,
your American and Arabian magicians attend you; vociferously crying their new lamps for the old stable lantern of And for the oil of the trees of Gethscapegoat's horn. semane, your American friends have struck oil more finely Let Aaron look to it, how he lets any run inflammable. down his beard; and the wise virgins trim their wicks cautiously, and Madelaine la Petroleuse, with her improved spikenard, take good heed how she breaks her alabaster,
and completes the worship of her Christ. this it that several gentlemen concurred in but they put the Nativity at five-and-twenty thousand, and the Agincourt, or whatever the explosive protector was called, at five hundred thousand.
*
The papers had
piece of business;
FOES CLAVIGERA.
177
Christmas, the mass of the Lord's anointed;
—you
will
hear of devices enough to make it merry to you this year, I doubt not. The increase in the quantity of disposable malt liquor and tobacco is one great fact, better than all devices. Mr. Lowe has, indeed, says the Times of June 5th, " done the country good service, by placing before it, in a compendious form, the statistics of its own prosperity. The twenty.
.
.
two millions of people of 1825 drank barely nine millions of barrels of beer in the twelve months: our thirty-two millions
now
living drink all but twenty-six millions of barrels.
consumption of like
The
though in nothing the same proportion; but whereas sixteen million pounds spirits
has increased
of tobacco sufficed for us in 1825, as
also,
many
as forty-one mil-
pounds are wanted now. By every kind of measure, therefore, and on every principle of calculation, the growth lion
of our prosperity
is
established." *
and tobacco, are thus more than ever at your besides, of lantern, and harlequin's wand; nay, necromancy if you will, the Witch of Endor at number so and so round the corner, and raising of the dead, But of this one if you roll away the tables from off them. sort of magic, this magic of Zoroaster, which is the service In one sense, indeed, of God, you are not likely to hear. you have heard enough of becoming God's servants; to wit, servants dressed in His court livery, to stand behind His Plenty of people will adchariot, with gold-headed sticks. vise you to apply to Him for that sort of position and many will urge you to assist Him in carrying out His intentions, and be what the Americans call helps, instead of servants. Well! that may be, some day, truly enough; but before you can be allowed to help Him, you must be quite sure that you can see Him. It is a question now, whether you can Beer,
spirits,
command; and magic
:
* This last clause does not, you are however to observe, refer in the great Temporal Mind, merely to the merciful Dispensation of beer and tobacco, but to the general state of things, afterwards thus summed with exultation: "We doubt if there is a household in the kingdom which would now be contented with the conditions of living cheerfully accepted in 1825."
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
178
—
even see any creature of His or the least thing that He has made, see it, so as to ascribe due worth, or worship to it,
—
—
-
—how much
less to its
Maker?
those of you who have been brought up in any habit of reverence, that every time w^ien in this letter I have used an American expression, or aught like one, there came upon you a sense of sudden wrong I meant you to the darting through you of acute cold.
You have
felt, doubtless, at least
—
feel that
us
:
for
it is
all feel that.
the essential function of
It
is
the
new
skill
America
to
make
they have found there;
—
they have, which other nahad before them, from whom they have learned all they know, and among whom they must travel, still, to see any human work worth seeing. But this is their speciality, to show men how not to this their one gift to their race, worship, how never to be ashamed in the presence of anything. But the magic of Zoroaster is the exact reverse of this, to find out the worth of all things and do them reverthis skill of degradation; others
tions
—
—
ence.
Therefore, the
Magi bring
treasures, as being discerners
knowing wdiat is intrinsically worthy, and worthless; what is best in brightness, best in sweetness, best Finders gold, and frankincense, and myrrh. in bitterness of treasure hid in fields, and goodliness in strange pearls, of
treasures,
—
such as produce no effect whatever on the public mind, bent passionately on its own fashion of pearl-diving at Gennesaret.
And you
will find that the essence of the misteaching, of
your day, concerning wealth of any kind, is in this denial of What anything is worth, or not worth, it cannot tell 3-ou: all that it can tell is the exchange value. What Judas, in the present state of Demand and Supply, can
intrinsic value.
get for the article he has to
value of his article of his bargain.
:
Xo
sell,
in a given market, that
—Yet you do not Christmas,
is
the
Judas had joy Easter, holidays, com-
find that
still less
Whereas, the Zoroastrians, ing to him with merrymaking. who " take star^ for money," rejoice with exceeding great
— 179
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
—
joy at seeing something, which they cannot put in their " pockets. For, the vital principle of their religion is the
God
recognition of one supreme power; the
every sense of the word
and rules
it,
—the
and defends
it
of Light
—
in
Spirit who creates the world, against the power of evil." *
I repeat to you, now, the question I put at the beginning of is
my
What
Light
there, for your eyes, also, pausing yet over the place
where
What
letter.
this
is
Christmas to you?
the Child lay? I will
tell
you, briefly, what Light there should be
lessons and promise are in this story, at the least.
may
be infinitely more than 1 know; but there
is
;
—what There
certainly,
this.
The Child
born to bring you the promise of new life. no matter; pure and redeemed, at least.
is
Eternal or not,
He the
is
life
is
born tvnce on your earth; of
To His
toil
;
then,
first,
from the grave,
He
from the womb,
to
to that of rest.
born in a cattle-shed, the supposed son of a carpenter; and afterwards brought up to a carpenfirst life
is
ter's craft.
But the circumstances
of His second life are, in great part,
hidden from us only note this much of it. The three principal appearances to His disciples are accompanied by giving or receiving of food. He is known at Emmaus in breaking :
of bread; at Jerusalem
"
when
He
He
Himself eats
fish
and honey to
not a spirit; and His charge to Peter is they had dined," the food having been obtained un-
show that
is
der His direction.
His first showing Himself to the person who loved Him best, and to whom He had forgiven most, there is a Observe circumstance more singular and significant still. assuming the accepted belief to be true, this was the first time when the Maker of men showed Himself to human eyes, You risen from the dead, to assure them of immortality. might have thought He would have shown Himself in some
But
in
—
*
Max Muller:
"
Genesis and the Zend-Avesta."
FOES CLAVIGEKA.
180
brightly glorified form,
—
in
some sacred and before un-
imaginable beauty.
He shows Himself in so simple aspect, and dress, that she, who, of all people on the earth, should have known Him best, glancing quickly back through her tears, does not know Him. Takes Him for " the gardener." Now, unless absolute orders had been given to us, such as would have rendered error impossible, (which would have altered the entire temper of Christian probation); could we possibly have had more distinct indication of the purpose of the Master born first by witness of shepherds, in a cattleshed, then by witness of the person for whom He had done most, and who loved Him best, in the garden, and in gardener's guise, and not known even by His familiar friends till He gave them bread—could it be told us, I repeat, more definitely by any sig^l or indication whatsoever, that the noblest human life was appointed to be by the cattle-fold and in the garden; and to be known as noble in breaking of bread? Now, but a few words more. You will constantly hear foolish and ignoble persons conceitedly proclaiming the text, that " not many wise and not many noble are called." Nevertheless, of those who are truly wise, and truly noble, And to sight of this Nativity, you all are called that exist. find that, together with the simple persons, near at hand, there were called precisely the wisest men that could be found on earth at that moment. And these men, for their own part, came I beg you very earnestly again to note this not to see, nor talk but to do reverence. They are neither curious nor talkative, but
—
—
—
—
submissive.
And,
so far as
they came to teach, they came as teachers For of this child, at once
of one virtue only: Obedience.
Prince and Servant, Shepherd and Lamb, " See, mine elect, in
not strive, nor cry, Victory."
whom my
till
it
was written:
soul delighteth.
He
shall
he shall bring forth Judgment unto
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
My
181
Black country, you may have wondered you so often, I tell you nevertheless, once more, in bidding you farewell this year, that one main purpose of the education I want you to seek is, that you may see the sky, with the stars of it again; and be enabled, in their at
friends, of the
my
material light
But,
—
telling
—
—
" riveder le stelle."
much more,
out of this blackness of the smoke of the
which the children of Disobeother, heaven grant to you the vision of that sacred light, at pause over the place where the young Child was laid and ordain that more and more in each coming Christmas it may be said of you, " When they saw the Star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy." Believe me your faithful servant, Pit, the blindness of heart, in
dience blaspheme
God and each ;
JOHK EUSKIN.
FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTERS TO THE
WORKMEN AND LABORERS OB
GREAT BRITAIN.
Vol.
II.
Containing Letters XIII-XXIV.
LIST OF PLATES TO
VOLUME
II
Facing Page
Robert, Coi;nt of Flanders
Part of the Chapel of
Theseus
"We
.
have seen His
St.
.
Mary
.
star in the
.
.
of the Thorn, Pisa .
East
"
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.28 .
104
.149 .173
FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTEK
XIII.
-
^'' ^""""'•^' ^''^-
My
Friends
my
wishes likely to be of the least use.
I
WOULD wish you
a
happy
ISTew
Year,
if
I thought
Perhaps, indeed,
your cap of liberty were what you always take it for, a wishing cap, I might borrow it of you, for once; and be so much cheered by the chime of its bells, as to wish you a happy ]^ew Year, whether you deserved one or not: which would be the worst thing I could possibly bring to pass for But wishing cap, belled or silent, you can lend me you. none; and my wishes having proved, for the most part, vain for myself, except in making me wretched till I got rid of them, I will not present you with anything which I have if
found to be of so little worth. But if you trust more to anyone else's than mine, let me advise your requesting them to wish that j^ou may deserve a happy Xew Year, whether you get one or not.
To some extent, indeed, that way, you are sure to get it: and it will much help you towards the seeing such way if you would make it a practice in your talk always to say you " deserve " things, instead of that you " have a right " to " deserve " so them. Say that you " deserve " a vote, " right to " a vote, a much a day, instead of that you have The expression is both more accurate and more genetc. but it might eral; for if it chanced, which Heaven forbid, that you deserved a whipping, you would never think be, of expressing that fact by saying you " had a right to " a
—
—
—
whipping; and
if
you deserve anything better than
that,
why
— FORS CLAVIGEEA,
a
conceal your deserving under the neutral term, " rights "
;
you never meant to claim more than might be claimed also by entirely nugatory and worthless persons? Besides, such accurate use of language will lead you sometimes into reflection on the fact, that what you deserve, it is not only well for you to get, but certain that you ultimately will. get; and neither less nor more. Ever since Carlyle w^ote that sentence about rights and mights, in his " French Revolution," all blockheads of a benevolent class have been declaiming against him, as a worshiper of force. What else, in the name of the three Magi, is to be worshiped? Force of brains. Force of heart. Force will you dethrone these, and worship apoplexy? of hand; despise the spirit of Heaven, and worship phthisis? Every as if
—
condition of idolatry
is
summed
in the one broad wickedness
of refusing to worship Force, and resolving to worship
Force;
—denying
the Almighty, and bowing
down
ISTo-
to four-
and-twopence with a stamp on it. But Carlyle never meant in that place final truth.
He meant
but to
pute about what you should get, first
what
is
to
AVhich briefly
be gotten.
at last, their deserts,
to refer you to such you that before you disyou would do well to find out
tell
is,
for everybody,
and no more.
I did not choose, in beginning this book a year since, to tell
you what I meant mean, that
things, I
—
become.
This, for one of several
it
to
it
shall put before
you
so
much
of the
past history of the world, in an intelligible manner, as may enable you to see the laws of Fortune or Destiny, " Clavigera," Nail bearing; or, in the full idea, nail-and-hammer
bearing; driving the iron
home with hammer-stroke,
so that
nothing shall be moved; and fastening each of us at last to Nor do I doubt being the Cross we have chosen to carry.
show you that this irresistible power is also just; appointing measured return for every act and thought, such as able to
men deserve. And that being
so, foolish
whenever you do wrong you
moral writers will tell you that and whenever
will be punished,
— FORS CLAVIGEEA.
6
you do right rewarded: which is true, but only half the truth. And foolish immoral writers will tell you that if you do right, you will get no good and if you do wrong dexterously, no harm. "Which, in their sense of good and harm, is true ;
even in that sense, only half the truth. The joined and four-square truth is, that every right is exactly rewarded, and every wrong exactly punished; but that, in the also, but,
midst of this subtle, and, to our impatience, slow, retribution, there
a startlingly separate or counter ordinance of
is
—one
—
good
man, and the other to that, one at this hour of our lives, and the other at that, ordinance which is entirely beyond our control and of which the proviand
evil,
to this
—
;
dential law, hitherto, defies investigation.
To take an example near at hand, which I can answer for. Throughout the year which ended this morning, I have been endeavoring, more than hitherto in any equal period, to act for others more than for myself: and looking back on the twelve months, am satisfied that in some measure I have done right.
So far as I
am
sure of that, I see also, even
already, definitely proportioned fruit, and clear results fol-
lowing from that course;
— consequences
ance with the unfailing and undeceivable
That have
it
simply in accord-
Law
of Nature.
has chanced to me, in the course of the same year,
to to sustain the most acute mental pain yet inflicted on my life to pass through the most nearly mortal illness and to write your Christmas letter beside my mother's dead body, are appointments merely of the hidden Fors, or Destiny, whose power I mean to trace for you in past history, be;
;
ing hitherto, in the reasons of
it,
indecipherable, yet palpably
following certain laws of storm, which are in the last degree
wonderful and majestic. Setting this Destiny, over which you have no control whatsoever, for the time, out of your thoughts, there remains the
symmetrical destiny, over which you have control absolute namely, that you are ultimately to get exactly what you
—
—
are worth.
And
your control over
this
destiny consists, therefore.
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
4
simplv in being worth more or
and not at all in voting Nay, though you should that you are worth more or less. leave voting, and come to fighting, which I see is next proposed, you will not, even that way, arrive any nearer to your admitting that you have an object, which is much object I hear, indeed, that you mean to fight for a to be doubted. Republic, in consequence of having been informed by Mr. less,
—
and others, that a number of utilities are AVe will inquire into the nature of this object presently, going over the ground of my last January's letter again; but first, may I suggest to you that it would be more prudent, instead of fighting to make us all to make the most of the rerepublicans against our Avill, There are many, you tell me, in have got? publicans you and nosprinkling in Italy, England, more in France, a for, fight you body else in the United States. What should
John Stuart embodied
Mill,
in that object.
—
—
—
Fighting is unpleasant, nowadays, however glorious, what with mitrailleuses, torAnd what, I repeat, pedoes, and mismanaged commissariat. should you fight for? All the fighting in the world cannot make us Tories change our old opinions, any more than it It cannot make us will make you change your new ones. Lord this, and leave off calling each other names if we like
being already in such prevalence?
—
Duke
whether you republicans like it or not. After a great deal of trouble on both sides, it might, indeed, end in abolishing our property; but without any trouble on either side, why cannot your friends begin by abolishing their own? Or even abolishing a tithe of their own? Ask them to do merely as much as I, an objectionable old Tory, have done for you. Make them send you in an account of their little properties, and strike you off a tenth, for what purposes you see good; and for the remaining nine-tenths, you will find clew to what should be done in the Republican of the
of that,
November, wherein Mr. W. Riddle, C.E., " fearlessly states " that all property must be taken under control; which is, indeed, precisely what Mr. Carlyle has been telling you these last thirty years, only he seems to have been under an
last
FOES CLAVIGERA.
O
impression, which I certainly shared with him, that you re-
publicans objected to control of any description.
Whereas
anybody put your property under control, you will find practically he has a good deal of hold upon you, also. You are not all agreed upon that point perhaps? But you Though England are all agreed that you want a Republic. is a rich country, having worked herself literally black in the face to become so, she finds she cannot afford to keep a Queen any longer; is doubtful even whether she would not get on better Queenless; and I see with consternation that even one of my own personal friends, Mr. Auberon Herbert, rising the other day at jSTottingham, in the midst of great cheering, declares that, though he is not in favor of any immediate change, yet, " if we asked ourselves what form of government was the most reasonable, the most in harmony with ideas of self-government and self-responsibility, and what Government was most likely to save us from unnecessary divisions of party, and to weld us into one compact mass_, he had no hesitation in saying the weight of argument was if
you
let
—
in favor of a Eepublic." * AVell, suppose we were all welded into a compact mass. Might it not still be questionable what sort of a mass we were? After any quantity of puddling, iron is still nothing better than iron in any rarity of dispersion, gold-dust is still gold. Mr. Auberon Herbert thinks it desirable that you should be stuck together. Be it so; but what is there to stick? At this time of year, doubtless, some of your children, interested ;
—
generally in production of puddings, delight themselves, to
your great annoyance, with idealization of pudding in the gutter; and inclose, between unctuous tops and bottoms, imaginary mince. But none of them, I suppose, deliberately
come
in to their mothers, at cooking-time, with materials
for a treat on Republican principles.
—
Mud
for suet
—gravel
droppings of what heaven may send, for flavor; Please, mother, a towel, to knot it tight " (or, to use Mr. Herbert's expression, " weld it into a compact mass ") for plums
—
''
—
* See Fall Mall Gazette, Dec. 5th, 1871.
—
— FOES CLAVIGEEA.
b
"'Now cloth!
My
for the old saucepan, mother; "
—and jou
just lay the
friends, I quoted to
you last year the foolishest tiling, yet said, according to extant history, by lips of mankind— namely, that the cause of starvation is quantity of meat.* But one can yet see what the course of foolish thought was which achieved that saying: whereas, though it is not absurd to quite the
same extent
more
difficult to
depends for government, it is
to believe that a nation
happiness and virtue on the form of
its
understand how so large a number of other-
wise rational persons have been beguiled into thinking
The
stuff of
which the nation
is
made
is
so.
developed by the
and the fate of ages: according to that material, such and such government becomes possible to it, or impossible. What other form of government you try upon it than the one it is fit for, necessarily comes to nothing; and a nation wholly worthless is capable of none. effort
carefully Mr. Herbert's expression compact mass." The phrase would be likely enough to occur to anyone's mind, in a midland district; and meant, perhaps, no more than if the speaker had said " melted," or " blended " into a mass. But whether Mr. Herbert meant more or not, his words meant more. You may melt glass or glue into a mass, but you can only weld, or wield, metal. And are you sure that, if you would have a Republic, you are capable of being welded into one? Granted that you are no better than iron, are you as good? Have you the toughness in you? and can you bear the hammering? Or, would your fusion together jour literal confusion, be as of glass only, blown thin with nitrogen, and N^otice,
" welded
therefore,
into
a
—
shattered before
it
got cold?
AVelded Republics there indeed have been, ere now, but they ask first for bronze, then for a hammerer, and mainly, for patience on the anvil.
Have you any
of the three at
* Fors, Vol. I., Letter IV. p. 44. Compare Letter V. p. 62, and observe, in future references of this kind I shall merely say IV., v., etc.
— FOES CLAVIGERA.
command,
—
patience, above all things, the most needed, yet
not one of jour prominent virtues? cost of such smith's work,
mend
7
—My good
And
finally,
friends, let
me
for the
recom-
you, in that point of view, to keep your Queen.
Therefore, for your
first bit
of history this ^^ear, I will
give you one pertinent to the matter, which will show you
how
a monarchy, and such a Republic as
you are now cap-
able of producing, have verily acted on special occasion^ so
may compare
that you
The
their function accurately.
I choose shall be the most solemn of all conceivable acts of Government; the adjudging and execution of the punishment of Death. The two examples of it shall be, one under an absolutely despotic Monarchy, acting through ministers trained in principles of absolute despotism; and the other in a completely free Republic, acting by its collective wisdom, and in association of its
occasion that
special
practical energies.
The example
of despotism shall be taken from the book calls " the prose epic of the
which Mr. Froude most justly
English nation," the records compiled by Richard Hakluyt, Preacher, and sometime Student of Christchurch in Oxford,
imprinted at London by Ralph Newberie, anno 1599, and
then in
five
volumes, quarto, in 1811, two hundred and sev-
enty copies only of this
last edition
being printed.
—
These volumes contain the original usually personal, narratives of the earliest voyages of the great seamen of all countries, the chief part of them English who " first went
—
out across the
;
unknown
seas, fighting, discovering, coloniz-
and graved out the channels, paving them at last with which the commerce and enterprise of England has flowed out over all the world." * I mean to give you many pieces to read out of this book, which Mr. Froude tells you truly is your English Homer; this piece, to our present purpose, is already quoted by him in his essay on England's forgotten worthies; among whom, far-forgotten ing;
their bones, through
* J. A. Froude, " Short Studies on Great Subjects." 1867;
Page
297.
Longmans,
FOES CLAVIGERA.
8
though thej be, most of you must have heard named Sir Francis Drake. And of him, it now imports you to know this much that he was the son of a clergyman, who fled into Devonshire to escape the persecution of Henry VIII. (abetted by our old friend. Sir Thomas of Utopia) that the little Frank was apprenticed by his father to the master of a small :
—
vessel trading to the Low Countries; and that as apprentice, he behaved so well that his master, dying, left him his vessel, and he begins his independent life with that capital. Tiring of aifairs with the Low Countries, he sells his little ship, and
invests his substance in the
new
trade to the
West
Indies.
In the course of his business there, the Spaniards attack him, and carry off his goods. AVhereupon, ]\Iaster Francis Drake,
making John to
his
way back
to
England, and getting his brother
join with him, after due deliberation,
fits
out two
Passover of 70 tons, and the Sivan of 24, and boys (both crews, all told,) and a year's
ships, to wit, the
with 73
men
Frank in command John in command of the Sim^i, weigh anchor from Plymouth on the 24th of May, 1572, to
provision; and, thus appointed. Master
of the Passover, and Master
make
on the most powerful nation of the then his way in this manner over the Atlantic, and walking with his men across the Isthmus of Panama, he beholds " from the top of a very high hill, the great South Sea, on which no English ship had ever sailed. world.
reprisals
And making
Whereupon, he lifted up his hands to God, and implored His blessing on the resolution which he then formed, of sailing in an English ship on that sea." In the meantime, building some light fighting pinnaces, of which he had brought out the material in the Passover, and boarding what Spanish ships he can, transferring his men to such as he most convenient to fight in, he keeps the entire coast of
finds
Spanish America in hot water for several months; and having taken and
rifled, between Carthagena and jSTombre de Dios (ISTame of God) more than two hundred ships of all
cheerfully for England, arriving at Plymouth on the 9th of August, 1573, on Sunda^^, in the afternoon;
sizes, sets sail
FOKS CLAVIGEKA.
9
were the people delighted with the news of and ran in crowds to the quay, with shouts and congratulations. He passes four years in England, explaining American affairs to Queen Elizabeth and various persons at court; and at last in mid-life, in the year 1577, he obtains a commission from the Queen, by which he is constituted Captain-general of a fleet of five ships: the Pelican, admiral, 100 tons, his own ship; the Elizabeth, vice-admiral, 80 tons; the Swan, 50 tons; Marigold, 30; and Christopher (Christbearer) 15; the collective burden of the entire fleet being thus 275 tons; its united crews 164 men, all told: and it carries whatever Sir Erancis thought " might contribute to raise in those nations, with whom he should have any intercourse, the highest ideas of the politeness and magnificence of his native country. He, therefore, not only procured a complete service of silver for his own table, and furnished the cook-room with many vessels of the same metal, but engaged several musicians to accompany him." I quote from Johnson's life of him, you do not know if Always in earnest, believe me, good in jest or earnest? friends. If there be jest in the nature of things, or of men, I try to set them before you as they it is no fault of mine. And Sir Erancis and his crew, musicians and all, truly are. were in uttermost earnest, as in the quiet course of their narFor arriving on the 20th of June, 1578, rative you will find. " in a very good harborough, called by Magellan Port St. Julian, where we found a gibbet standing upon the maine, which we supposed to be the place where Magellan did execution upon his disobedient and rebellious company; ....
and
so miicli
their arrival, that they left the preacher,
—
in this port our Generall actions of
began
to inquire diligently of the
M. Thomas Doughtie, and found them not
to
be
such as he looked for, but tending rather to contention or mutinie, or some other disorder, whereby (without redresse)
the successe of the voyage might greatly have bene haz-
arded whereupon the company was called together and made acquainted with the particulars of the cause, which were ;
10
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
found, partly by Master Doughtie's owne confession, and partly by the evidence of the fact, to be true; which
our Generall saw,
Doughtie
(as
although
his
private
affection
hee then in the presence of us
when M.
to
sacredly
all
protested) was great, yet the care he had of the state of the
voyage, of the expectation of her Maiestie, and of the honour of his countrey, did more touch him (as, indeede, it ought) than the private respect of one man: so that, the cause being thoroughly heard, and all things done in good order, as neere as
might be
to the course of
our lawes in England,
it
was con-
cluded that M. Doughtie should receive punishment according to the qualitie of the offence: and he, seeing no remedie
but patience for himselfe, desired before his death to receive
Communion, which he
the
did at the hands of
M.
Fletcher,
our Minister, and our Generall 'himselfe accompanied him in that holy action: which being done, and the place of execution
made
ready, hee having embraced our Generall, and
taken his leave of
all
the companie, with prayer for the
Queen's Maiestie and our realme, in quiet sort laid his head This being done, our to the bloeke, where he ended his life. Generall made divers speaches to the whole company, persuading us to unitie, obedience, love, and regard of our voyage and for the better confirmation thereof, willed evry man ;
the next Sunday following to prepare himselfe to receive the
Communion, as Christian brethren and friends ought to doe, which was done in very reverent sort, and so with good contentment every man went about his businesse." Thus pass judgment and execution, under a despotic Government and despotic Admiral, by religious, or, it may be, superstitious laws.
You
shall next see
how judgment and
execution pass on
the purest republican principles; every man's opinion being
held as good as his neighbor's; and no superstitious belief whatsoever interfering with the wisdom of popular decision, or the liberty of popular action.
The republicanism
shall
also be that of this enlightened nineteenth century: in other
respects the circumstances are similar; for the event takes
— FOES CLAVIGERA. place during an expedition of British
but
quite
unsubjected
Queen nor Admiral, silver, in
America,
—
persons,
—
11
—not
subjects, indeed,
acknowledging
neither
in search, nevertheless, of gold
And
like Sir Francis himself.
to
and
make
more precisely illustrative, I am able to take the account from the very paper which contained Mr. Auberon Herbert's speech, the Pall Mall Gazette of 5th Decemall
of the matter
ber
In another column, a
last.
little
before the addresses
members for Nottingham, you will therein find, quoted from the New York Tribune, the following account of some of the
executions which took place at " the Angels " (Los Angeles), California, on the 24th October.
"
The
victims were some unoffending Chinamen, the exe-
cutioners were some
warm-hearted and impulsive Irishmen, assisted by some Mexicans. It seems that owing to an impression
were
filled
that
the
'
'
houses
inhabited by
longing to one of
the
mob collected in front them named Yo Hing with
with gold, a
Chinamen
of a store be-
the object of
The Chinamen barricaded the building, shots were fired, and an American was killed. Then commenced the work of pillage and murder. The mob forced an entrance, four Chinamen were shot dead, seven or eight were wounded, and seventeen were taken and hanged. The folplundering
it.
lowing description of the hanging of the
first
victim will
show how the executions were conducted:
Weng Chin, a merchant, was the first victim of hanging. was led through the streets by two lusty Irishmen, who were cheered on by a crowd of men and boys, most of Irish and Mexican birth. Several times the unfortunate Chinaman faltered or attempted to extricate himself from the two brutes who were leading him, when a half -drunken Mexican in his immediate rear would plunge the point of a large "
He
dirk knife into his back.
This, of course, accelerated his
speed, but never a syllable fell
from
at the eastern gate of Tomlinson's old
mouth. Arri^^ng lumber yard, just out
his
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
12 of
Temple
Street, hasty preparations for launching the in-
man into eternity were followed by his being pulled up to the beam with a rope round his neck. He didn't seem to hang right/ and one of the Irishmen got upon his shoulders and jumped upon them, breaking his collarbone. What with shots, stabs, and strangulation, and other modes of civilized torture, the victim was hitched up for dead, and the crowd gave vent to their savage delight in demoniac
offensive
'
'
yells
'
and a jargon which too plainly denoted their Hibernian
nationality.
" One victim, a Chinese physician of some celebrity. Dr. Gnee Sing, offered his tormentors 4,000 dollars in gold to let him go. His pockets were immediately cut and ransacked, a pistol-shot mutilated one side of his face
he too was
man was
'
stretched up
with cheers.
'
'
dreadfully,' and
Another wretched
jerked up with great force against the beam, and
the operation repeated until his head was broken in a
way we
cannot describe. Three Chinese, one a youth of about fifteen years old, picked up at random, and innocent of even a
knowledge of the disturbance, were hanged in the same manner. Hardly a word escaped them, but the younger one said, as the rope was being placed round his neck, Me no 'f raid to die me velly good China boy me no hurt no man.' Three Chinese boys who were hanged on One the side of a wagon struggled hard for their lives. Irishmen which two upon lay hold of the rope, managed to beat his hands with clubs and pistols till he released his hold and fell into a hanging position.' The Irishmen then blazed away at him with bullets, and so put an end to his brutal
'
;
;
'
'
'
existence."
My
republican friends,
choose to have
it
—
you
—
parison of methods of magistracy is so.
All comparisons
you have made more.
—
you com-
or otherwise than friends, as
will say, I is
presume, that partial
as all experiments
More you
shall
this
and unfair?
—are unfair
It till
make with me; and
13
FOES CLAVIGERA.
I will tell yon, in as many as you like, on your own side. dne time, some tales of Tory gentlemen who lived, and would scarcely let anybody else live, at Padua and Milan, which Meantime, meditate a little over will do your hearts good. of capital justice, as done severally by these two instances monarchists and republicans in the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries; and meditate, not a little, on the capital justice which you have lately accomplished yourselves in FranceYou have had it all your own way there, since Sedan. No Emperor to paralyze your hands any more, or impede the Anything, since that fortunate flow of your conversation. anything to be said, that you liked; and hour, to be done, in the midst of you, found by sudden good fortune, two quiet, honest, and brave men; one old and one young, ready to serve you with all their strength, and evidently of supreme gifts in the way of service, Generals Trochu and Rossel. exiled one, other,* and, but that, as I told You have shot the you, my wishes are of no account that I know of, I should wish you joy of ycur " situation." Believe me, f aithf ullv vours,
—
—
JOILN RUSKIX. *
"You
did not shoot
him"?
No;
my
expression was hasty;
you only stood by, in a social manner, to see him shot; of you? and so finely organized as you say you are!
—
—how many
LETTEK XIV. Denmark
—
Hixl,
^'* February, 1872. Fkiends In going steadily over our ground again, roughly broken last year, you see that, after endeavoring, as I did last month, to make you see somewhat more clearly the absurdity of fighting for a Holy Republic before you are sure of having got so much as a single saint to make it of, I have
My
now
to illustrate farther the admission
made
in
Letter, that even the most courteous and perfect
cannot make an unsaintly
life into a saintly one,
my
first
Monarchy nor consti-
tute thieving, for instance, ah absolutely praiseworthy pro-
however glorious or delightful. It is indeed more show this in the course of past history than any other moral truth whatsoever. For, without doubt or exception, thieving has not only hitherto been the most respected of professions, but the most healthy, cheerful, and in the practical outcome of it, though not in theory, even the honestest, followed by men. Putting the higher traditional and romantic ideals, such as that of our Robin Hood, and the Scottish Red Robin, for the time, aside, and keeping to meager historical facts, could any of you help giving your heartiest sympathy to Master Francis Drake, setting out in his little Paschal Lamb to seek his fortune on the Spanish seas, and coming home, on that happy Sunday morning, to
fession,
difiicult to
the
unspeakable
Would you
delight
of
the
Cornish
like to efface the stories of
congregation?
Edward
III.,
and
his
whelp, from English history; and do you wish that instead of pillaging the northern half of France, as you read of them in the passages quoted in my fourth Letter, and
lion's
fighting the Battle of Cre9y to get
stayed at
home
upon the
fiute, as
all
home
again, they
had
we
say,
the time; and practiced, shall
I find
my
moral friends think Frederick of 14
— FOES CLAVIGEKA.
15
Or would you have chosen that your Prince Harry should never have played that set with his French tennis-balls which won him Harfleur, and Rouen, and Orleans, and other such counters, which we might have kept, to this day perhaps, in our pockets, but for the wood maid of Domremy? Are you ready, even now, in the height of your morality, to give back India to the Brahmins and their cows, and Australia to her aborigines and their apes? You are ready? "Well, my Christian friends, it does one's heart good to hear it, providing only you are " Let him that quite sure you know what you are about. stole steal no more; but rather let him labor." You are Prussia should have done?
I inquire anx-
verily willing to accept that alternative? iously, because I see that
India,
your Under Secretary of State for
Mr. Grant Duff, proposes
to you, in his speech at El-
your lives to be honest; and the second to be intelligent. Xow when you have all become rich and intelligent, how do you mean to live? Mr. Grant Duff, of course, means by being rich that you are each to have two powdered footmen; gin, not at all as the first object of
but, as the
first, to
be
rich,
but then who are to be the footmen, now that we mustn't have blacks? And granting you all the intelligence in the world on the most important subjects, the spots in the sun, will that help or the nodes of the moon, as aforesaidj, you to get your dinner, unless you steal it in the old fashion? The subject is indeed discussed with closer definition than by Mr. Grant Duff, by Mr. AVilliam Riddle, C.E., the authority I quoted to you for taking property " under control." You had better perhaps be put in complete possession of his views, as stated by himself in the Repuhlican, of December
—
last; the rather, as that periodical
Mr. Riddle, hitherto
—
has not had, according to
a world-wide circulation:
"THE SIMPLE AN^D OXLY REMEDY FOR THE
WANTS OF " It
is
i^ATIONS.
with great grief that I hear that your periodical
finds but a limited sale.
I ask you to insert a
few words
FOES CLAVIGEKA.
16
from me,
wliicli
important. Sir,
are,
1,
Cleanliness;
may
strike
These are
some of your readers
in
all
all.
Shelter: 2, Food; 6,
Health;
to be got in one way.
7,
Love;
3, 8,
I will state
What
Clothes; 4,
Beauty. 1.
it.
as
being
nations want,
all
Warmth;
5,
These are only
—An International
Congress must make a number of steam engines, or use those now made, and taking all property under its control (I fear-
and glass for buildings to 2. Must, by such engines, make steam apparatus to plow immense plains of wheat, where steam has elbow-room abroad; must make engines to grind it on an enormous scale, first fetching it in
must
lessly state it)
roll off iron
shelter hundreds of millions of people.
flat-bottomed ships,
made
—
of simple form, larger than the
and of simple form of plates, machine 3. fastened; must bake it by machine ovens commensurate. Machine looms must work unattended night and day, rolling off textile yarns and fabrics, and machines must make 4. Machinery clothes, just as envelopes are knocked off. mangling; and, in a ironing and laundress work, must do down in machinery, laid word, our labor must give place to gigantic factories on common-sense principles by an International leverage. This is the education you must inculcate. Great
Eastern,
—
—
Then man
will be at last emancipated.
bosh, and I will prove
means "
it
so
Wm.
to lecture.
South Lambeth, Nov.
Unfortunately,
till
All else
when and wherever
is
utter
I can get the
Riddle, C. E.
2."
those
means can be obtained (may
it
be
remains unriddled to us on what principles of " international leverage " the love and beauty are to be provided. soon),
it
But the point
I wish you mainly to notice
general emancipation, and elbow-room for
you are
still
is,
that for this
men and
steam, required to find " immense plains of wheat
abroad." Is it not probable that these immense plains may belong to somebody " abroad " already? And if not, instead of bringing home their produce in flat-bottomed ships, wliy not establish, on the plains themselves, your own flat-bot-
FOES CLAVIGERA.
17
—
—
I beg pardon, flat-bellied, persons Instead of living here in glass case^, which siirelv, even at the British Mu-
tomed^
seum, cannot be associated in your minda with the perfect manifestation of love and beauty?
It is true that love
is
to
be measured, in your perfected political economy, by rectangular area, as you will find on reference to the ingenious treatise of Mr. W. Stanley Jevons, M.A., Professor of Logic
and
Political
Economy
in
Owens
College, Manchester,
who
informs you, among other interesting facts, that pleasure
and pain " are the ultimate objects of the calculus of economy," and that a feeling, whether of pleasure or pain, may be regarded as having two dimensions namely, in duration and intensity, so that the feeling, say of a minute, " may be represented by a rectangle whose base corresponds to the duration of a minute, and whose height is proportioned to the
—
intensity." *
The collective area of the series of rectangles mark the " aggregate of feeling generated," But the Professor appears unconscious that there is a third
will
dimension of pleasure and pain to be considered, besides their duration and intensity; and that this third dimension is to
some persons, the most important of quality.
It
is
all
—namely,
their
possible to die of a rose in aromatic pain; and,
on the contrary, for reverse of aromatic. villain's pleasure,
fessor will find,
and rats, even pleasure may be the There is swine's pleasure, and dove's;
flies
and gentleman's, to be arranged, the Proby higher analysis, in eternally dissimilar
rectangles.
My
friends, the follies of
Modern
great though they be, are practically
Liberalism,
summed
many and
in this denial
or neglect of the quality and intrinsic value of things.
rectangular beatitudes, and spherical benevolences,
—
Its
theol-
ogy of universal indulgence, and jurisprudence which will hang no rogues mean, one and all of them, in the root, incapacity of discerning, or refusal to discern, worth and unworth in anything, and least of all in man; whereas I^ature and Heaven command you, at your peril, to discern worth
—
* I quote
from the Pall Mall Gazette
of
January
IGth.
FOES CLAVIGERA.
18
from unworth main problem
man?" and fiercest,
and most of all in man. that ancient and trite one, "
in everything, is
the Fates forgive much,
crudest experiments,
—
—forgive
if fairly
made
Who
Your is
best
the wildest,
for the deter-
Theft and blood-guiltiness are not pleasing in their sight; yet the favoring powers of the spiritual and material world will confirm to you your stolen goods; and their noblest voices applaud the lifting of your spear, and rehearse the sculpture of your shield, if only your robbing and slaying have been in fair arbitrament of that question, " Who is best man?" But if you refuse such inquiry, and maintain every man for his neighbor's match,* if you give vote to the simple, and liberty to the vile, the powers of those spiritual and material worlds in due time present you inevitably with the same problem, soluble now only wrong side upwards; and your robbing and slaying must be done then to find out " Who is worst man? " Which, in so wide an order of merit, is, indeed, not easy; but a complete Tammany Ring, and lowest circle in the Inferno of Worst, you are sure to find, and to be governed by. And you may note that the wars of men, in this winnowing mination of that.
—
—
or sifting function, separate themselves into three distinct stages.
best
In healthy times of early national development, the out to battle, and divide the spoil; in rare
men go
generosity, perhaps, giving as
the
stuff, as to
those
who have
much
to those
followed to the
who field.
tarry
by
In the
more ingenious stage, which is the one we have in England and America, the best men still go or, at all events, out to battle, and get themselves killed, well withdrawn from public affairs, and the worst stop at second, and
reached
now
—
—
* Every man as good as his neighbor! you extremely sagacious English persons; and forthwith you establish competitive examination, which drives your boys into idiocy, before you will give them a bit of bread to make their young muscles of! Every man as good as his neighbor and when I told you, seven years ago, that at least you should give every man his penny of wages, whether he was good or not, so only that he gave you the best that was in him, what did you answer to me? !
—I 19
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
home, manage the government, and make money out of the (See § 124 of " Mimera Pulveris," and my Then the third and note there on the last American War.) last stage, immediately preceding the dissolution of any stop at nation, is when its best men (such as they are) home too! and pay other people to fight for them. And this last stage, not wholly reached in England yet, is, however, within near prospect; at least, if we may again on this point refer to, and trust, the anticipations of Mr. Grant Duff, " who racks his brains, without success, to think of any probable combination of European events in which the assistance of our English force would be half so useful to our allies as money." Next month I will give you some farther account of the
commissariat.
—
—
operations in favor of their Italian allies in the fourteenth
century, effected by the AVhite
—(they however,) — not
Hawkwood; captain,
first
Company under
crossed the Alps with a at all consisting in
Sir
John
German
disbursements of
money; but such, on the contrary, as to obtain for them (as you read in my first Letter) the reputation, with good Italian judges, of being the best thieves It
is
in
many ways
known
at the time.
important for you to understand the
and various tendencies of mercenary, warfare; the power of which, in Christendom, dates, singularly enough, from the struggle of the free burghers of Italy with a Tory gentleman, a friend of Frederick II. of Germany; the quarrel, of which you shall hear the prettiest parts, being one of the most dramatic and vital passages of mediaeval history. Afterwards we shall be able to examine, more in-
origin
essential
telligently, the prospects in store for us according to the
trust not too painfully racked,
tary of State.
But
I
am
—brains
—
Under Secrefollowing modern
of our
tired to-day of
thought in these unexpectedly attenuated conditions; and I believe you will also be glad to rest, with me, by reading a few words of true history of such life as, in here and there a hollow of the rocks of Europe, just persons have sometimes lived, untracked by the hounds of war. And in laying them
FOKS CLAVIGEKA.
20
before you, I begin to give these letters the completed character I intend for them;
commenting on what
is
first,
as
it
may seem
to
me
needful,
passing at the time, with reference
always to the principles and plans of economy I have to set before you; and then collecting out of past literature, and in
what
occasional frontispieces of woodcuts, out of past art,
may
confirm or illustrate things that are forever true: choos-
ing the pieces of the series so that, both in art and literature,
they
may become
to
you
in the strictest sense, educational,
and familiarize you with the look and manner of
fine
work. I want you, accordingly, now to read attentively some pieces of agricultural economy, out of Marmontel's " Contes Moraux," (we too grandly translate the title into " Moral
—
Tales," for the French word -Moeurs does not in accuracy
correspond to our Morals) and I think it first desirable that you should know something about Marmontel himself. He ;
was a French gentleman of the old school; not noble, nor^ in French sense, even " gentilhomme " but a peasant's son, who made his way into Parisian society by gentleness, wit, and a dainty and candid literary power. He became one of ;
the humblest, yet honestest, placed scholars at the court of
Louis XV., and wrote pretty, yet wise, sentimental stories, in finished French, which I must render as I can in broken English; but, however rudely translated, the sayings and
thoughts in them deserve your extreme attention, for in their fine tremulous way, like the blossoming heads of grass in
May, they are have, to-day, his
For introduction then, you
perfect.
own
shall
description of his native place, Bort, in
central south France, and of the circumstances of his childlife.
You must
take
it
without
further
preamble
—my
pages running short. " Bort, situated on the river Dordogne, between Auvergne and the province of Limoges, is a frightful place enough, seen by the traveler descending suddenly on it; lying, as it does, at the bottom of a precipice and looking as if the storm torrents
would sweep
it
away, or as
if,
some day,
it
must be
!
FOKS CLAVIGEEA.
21
,
crushed under a chain of volcanic rocks, some planted like towers on the height which commands the town, and others already overhanging, or half uprooted: but, once in the valley,
and with the eye free
of smiles.
to
wander
Above the town, on
becomes full which the river
there, Bort
a green island
embraces with equal streams, there is a thicket peopled with birds, and animated also with the motion and noise of a mill. On each side of the river are orchards and fields, cultivated with laborious care. Below the village the valley opens on one side of the river, into a broad, flat meadow watered by springs; on the other, into sloping fields, crowned by a belt of hills whose soft slope contrasts with the opposing rocks, and is divided farther on, by a torrent which rolls and leaps through the forest, and falls into the Dordogne in one of the most beautiful cataracts on the Continent.
Near
that
Thomas, where I used to read Virgil under the blossoming trees that surrounded our bee-hives and where I made delicious lunches of their honey. On the other side of the town, above the mill, and on the slope to the river, w^as the inclosure where on fete days, my father took me to gather grapes from the vines he had himself planted, or cherries, plums, and apples, from the trees he had grafted. " But what in my memory is the chief charm of my native place is the impression of the affection which my family had for me, and with which my soul was penetrated in earliest infancy. If there is any goodness in my character, it is to these sweet emotions, and the perpetual happiness of loving and being loved that I believe it is owing. What a gift spot
is
situated the
little
farm of
St.
does Heaven bestow on us in the virtue of parents " I owed much also to a certain gentleness of manners
which reigned then in my native town; and truly the sweet and simple life that one led there must have had a strange attraction, for nothing was more unusual than that the children of Bort should ever go away from it. In their youth they were well educated, and in the neighboring colleges their colony distinguished itself; but they
came back
to their
22
FOES CLAVIGERA.
.
homes
swarm
as a
of bees comes back to the hive with
spoih " I learned to read in a
its
convent where the nuns Thence I passed to the school of a priest of the to"\\m, who gratnitouslv, and for his own pleasure, devoted himself to the instruction of children; he was the onlv son of a shoemaker, one of the honestest fellows in the world; and this churchman was a true model of filial piety. I can yet remember, as if I had seen it but a moment since, the air of quiet courtesy and mutual regard which the old man and his son maintained to each other; the
were friends of
my
little
mother.
one never losing sight of the dignity of the priesthood, nor the other of the sanctity of the paternal character."
my
I interrupt notice
how
translation for a
moment
to ask
this finished scholar -applies his words.
you
to
A vulgar
writer would most probably have said " the sanctity of the priesthood " and " the dignity of the paternal character."
But
it is
quite possible that a priest
may
(admitting the theory of priesthood at ofiice
are not, therefore, invalidated.
a father
may
not be a saint, yet
all) his
On
authority and
the other hand,
be entirely inferior to his son, incapable of ad-
vising him, and, if he be wise, claiming no strict authority
over him.
But the
relation
between the two
is
always
sacred.
" The
Vaissiere " (that was his name) '' after he had duty at the church divided the rest of his time between reading, and the lessons he gave to us. In fine weather, a little walk, and sometimes for exercise a game at mall in the meadow, were his only amusements. For all society he had two friends, people of esteem in our town. They lived together in the most peaceful intimacy, seeing each other every day, and every day with the same pleasure in their meeting; and for fulfillment of good fortune, they died within a very little while of each other. I have scarcely ever seen an example of so sweet and constant equality in the
Abbe
fulfilled his
course of human life. " At this school I had a comrade,
who was from my
23
FORS CLAVIGERA.
His deliberate and
infancy an object of emulation to me.
rational bearing, his industry in study, the care he took of
on which I never saw a stain; his fair hair always
his books,
so well combed, his dress always fresh in its simplicity, his
linen always white, were to
and
it is
me
a constantly visible
example;
rare that a child inspires another child with such
esteem as I had for him.
His father was a laborer in a
neighboring- village, and well
known
I used to to mine. home. How he used to receive us, the white-haired old man, the good cream! the good brown bread that he gave us! and what happy presages did he not please himself in making for my future life,
walk with
his son to see
because of
my
him
in his
—
Twenty years
respect for his old age.
after-
wards, his son and I met at Paris; I recognized in him the
same character of prudence and kindness which I had known in him at school, and it has been to me no slight pleasure to
name one "
of his children at baptism.
AVhen I was eleven years
me
judged
fit
old, just passed,
my
to enter the fourth class of students;
father consented, though unwillingly, to take
me
master and my the
to
I must His reluctance was wise. by giving some account of our household.
College of Mauriac.
justify it " I was the eldest of
many
children
;
my
father, a little
rigid, but entirely good under his severe manner, loved his I have never been able wnfe to idolatry; and well he might!
to understand how, with the simple education of our little
convent at Bort, she had attained so wit, so
much
so just, pure,
much
pleasantness in
elevation in heart, and a sentiment of propriety
and
often spoken to
subtle.
me
of the letters that
My
good Bishop of Limoges has with most tender interest,
since, at Paris,
my
mother wrote him recommending
me
to him.
" My father revered her as much as he loved; and blamed her only for her too great tenderness for me but my grandmother loved me no less. I think I see her yet the good ;
little
old
gayety!
woman!
—
the bright nature that she had! the gentle
Economist of the house, she presided over
its
man-
24
FOES CLAVIGERA.
agement, and was an example to us all of filial tenderness, had also her own mother and her husband's mother
for she
to take care of.
my
remember
to
I
am now
dating far back, being just able
great-grandmother drinking her
of wine at the corner of the hearth
;
cup whole of
little
but, during the
my grandmother and her three sisters lived and among all these women, and a swarm of children, my father stood alone, their support. With little means enough, all could live. a little Order, economy, and labor, commerce, but above all things frugality " (Note again the good scholar's accuracy of language: " Economy " the right arrangement of things, " Frugality " the careful and fitting use of them) The " these maintained us all in comfort. little garden produced vegetables enough for the need of the house; the orchard gave us fruit, and our quinces, apples, and pears, preserved in the honey of our bees, made, during the winter, for the children and old women, the most exmy
childhood,
with
us,
—
—
quisite breakfasts."
I interrupt again to explain to you, once for principle with
me
in translation.
children and good old
women."
Marmontel
Were
all,
a chief
says, " for the
I quoting the French,
I would give his exact words, but, in translating, I miss the word " good," of which I know you are not likely to see the application at the
women
moment.
should be called good,
You would when
not see
the question
why is
the old
only what
they had for breakfast. Marmontel means that if they had been bad old women they would have wanted gin and bitters for breakfast, instead of honey-candied quinces; but I can't
always stop to
tell you Marmontel's meaning, or other and therefore, if I think it not likely to strike you, and the word weakens the sentence in the direction I want you to follow, I omit it in translating, as I do also entire sentences, here and there; but never, as aforesaid, in actual
people's;
quotation. " The flock of the fold of St. Thomas, clothed, with
its
women, and now the children; my aunt spun it, and spun also the hemp which made our under-dress; the
wool,
now
the
25
FOES CLAVIGERA. children of our neighbors
came
to beat
it
with us in the
evening by lamplight, (our own walnut trees giving us the oil,)
little
The harvest of our wax and honey of
and formed a ravishing picture.
farm assured our
subsistence; the
mj
our bees, of which one of
aunts took extreme care, were
The
a revenue, with little capital.
oil
of our fresh walnuts
and smell, which we liked better than those of the oil-olive, and our cakes of buckwheat, hot, with the sweet butter of Mont Dor, were for us the most inviting of feasts. By the fireside, in the evening, while we heard the pot boiling with sweet chestnuts in it, our grandmother would roast a quince under the ashes and divide it among us children. The most sober of women made us all gourmands. Thus, in a household, where nothing was ever lost, very little expense supplied all our further wants; the dead wood of the neighboring forests was in abundance, the fresh mountain butter and most delicate cheese cost little; even -^dne was
had
flavor
not dear, and
That
my
father used
it
soberly."
much, I suppose, as you will care for at once. Insipid enough, you think? or perhaps in one way, too sapid; one's soul and affections mixed up so curiously with quince-marmalade? It is true, the French have a trick of doing that; but why not take it the other way, and say, We one's quince-marmalade mixed up with affection? is
as
—
adulterate our affections in England, nowadays, with a yellower, harder, baser thing than that; and there would surely
be no harm in our confectioners putting a their sugar,
But
—
if
little
as to the simplicity
—
or, shall
we
say, wateriness,
the style, I can answer you more confidently.
would be
a better word, only one does not use
This writing of Mannontel's
you are accustomed phrase in
it
soul into
they put in nothing worse?
to, in
—never
is
different
that there
is
—
of
IMilkiness it
of styles.
from the writing
never an exaggerating
a needlessly strained or metaphorical
word, and never a misapplied one. to show the author's power, vation, nor quaintly, to show
i!s^othing is said pithily,
diffusely,
his fancy.
to
show
He
is
his obser-
not think-
;
26
FOES CLAVIGEKA.
ing of himself as an author at
He
all;
but of lumself as a boy.
not remembering his native valley as a subject for fine writing, but as a beloved real place, about which he may is
be garrulous, perhaps, but not rhetorical. it,
or could
it
is it,
—you
or
was
will ask
Yes, real in the severest sense; with realities that are
next.
to last forever,
when
this
become a romance of the
yours, shall have incredible,
London and Manchester
life of
horrible, and, but on evidence, past.
Real, but only partially seen;
The
But
ever be, a real place indeed?
still
more
partially told.
rightnesses only perceived; the felicities only
bered; the landscape seen as
if
remem-
spring lasted always; the
trees in blossom or fruitage evermore: no shedding of leaf:
of winter, nothing
Yet not untrue. life;
remembered but its fireside. The landscape is indeed there, and the
seen through glass that dims them, but not distorts;
and which is only dim to Evil. But now supply, with your own undimmed insight and better knowledge of human nature; or invent, with imaginative malice, what evil you think necessary to make the picture true. Still make the worst of it you will it cannot but remain somewhat incredible to you, like the pastoral scene in a pantomime, more than a piece of history. Well; but the pastoral scene in a pantomime itself, tell me, is it meant to be a bright or a gloomy part of your Christmas spectacle? Do you mean it to exhibit, by con-
—
—
—
—
your own life, in the streets outside one fond and foolish half-hour, to recall the " ravish-
trast, the blessedness of or, for
ing picture" of days long lost?
"The
sheepfold of St.
Thomas," (you have at least, in him, an incredulous saint, and fit patron of a Republic at once holy and enlightened), the green island full of singing birds, the cascade in the
—
on the steep river-shore; the little Marmontel reading his Virgil in the shade, with murmur of bees round him in the sunshine; the fair-haired comrade, so gentle, so reasonable, and, marvel of marvels, beloved for being exemplary! Is all this incredible to you in its good. forest, the vines
—
FOES CLAVIGERA.
2^7
Those children rolling on the heaps of black its evil? and slimy ground, mixed with brickbats and broken plates and bottles, in the midst of Preston or Wigan, as edified travelers behold them when the station is blocked, and the train stops anywhere outside, the children themselves, black, and in rags evermore, and the only water near them either boiling, or gathered in unctuous pools, covered with or in
—
rancid clots of scum, in the lowest holes of the earth-heaps,
—why do you not
paint these for pastime?
Are they not
what your machine gods have produced for you? The mighty iron arms are visibly there at work; no St. Thomas
—
can be incredulous about the existence of gods such as they,
—day and night Why
—
at work, omnipotent, if not resplendent. do you not rejoice in these; appoint a new Christmas
for these, in
memory
of the Nativity of Boilers, and put
their realms of black bliss into
—
the harlequin
mask
all
new Arcadias
over?
Tell me,
of
Pantomime
my
practical
friends.
Believe me, faithfully yours,
JOHN RUSKIK
LETTER XV. Denmark
My Friends —
Hill,
^^^ ^«'-^''' i^^^'
The Tory gentleman whose
character I
have to
sketch for you, in due counterbalance of that story of republican justice in California, was, as I told you, the friend of
Friedrich 11. of Germany, another great Friedrich preceding the Prussian one by some centuries, and living quite as hard a life of
it.
But before
I can explain to
you anything either
about him, or his friend, I must develop the statement
made
above (XI. 148), of the complex modes of injustice respecting the means of maintenance, which have hitherto held in
among
the three great classes of soldiers, clergy, and I mean, by " peasants " the producers of food, out of land or water; by " clergy," men who live by teaching or exhibition of behavior; and by " soldiers," those who live by
all
ages
peasants.
•fighting, either
selves paid
by
by robbing wise peasants, or getting themInto these three classes the
foolish ones.
world's multitudes are essentially hitherto divided.
The
le-
gitimate merchant of course exists, and can exist, only on the
small percentage of pay obtainable for the transfer of goods;
and the manufacturer and
artist are, in
healthy society, de-
The morbid power of manuour own age is an accidental con-
veloped states of the peasant. facture and
commerce
in
dition of national decrepitude; the injustices connected with it are mainly those of the gambling-house, and quite unworthy of analytical inquiry; but the unjust relations of the soldier, clergyman, and peasant have hitherto been constant in all great nations they are full of mystery and beauty in their iniquity; they require the most subtle, and deserve the most reverent, analysis. The first root of distinction between the soldier and peas;
—
as
ROBERT. COrXT OF FLAXTJERS,
callefl
Thus drawn by John Baptist
"The Son of
Vrints, of
St.
Antwerp.
George."
29
FOES CLAVIGEKA.
is in barrenness and fruitfulness of possessed ground; " the inhabitant of sands and rocks " redeeming his share " Lady of the Lake ") from (see speech of Roderick in the
ant
The second root of the inhabitant of corn-bearing ground. delight in athletic exercise, resulting in beauty of person
it is
and perfectness of race, and causing men to be content, or even triumphant, in accepting continual risk of death, if by such risk they can escape the injury of servile toil. Again, the first root of distinction between clergyman and peasant is the greater intelligence, which instinctively desires
both to learn and teach, and
smallest maintenance,
if it
content to accept the
may remain
back to Marmontel's account of
The second
is
root of distinction
so occupied.
(Look
his tutor.) is
that which gives rise to
the word " clergy," properly signifying persons chosen by or in a
manner
elect, for the practice
lot,
and exhibition of good
behavior; the visionary or passionate anchorite being content to beg his bread, so only that he may have leave by undisturbed prayer or meditation, to bring himself into closer union with the spiritual world ; and the peasant being always content to feed him, on condition of his becoming venerable in that higher state, and, as a peculiarly blessed person, a
communicator of
Now, both
blessing.
these classes of
men remain
noble, as long as
they are content with daily bread, if they may be allowed to live in their own way; but the moment the one of them uses his strength, and the other his sanctity, to get riches with, or pride of elevation over other men, both of
come
tyrants,
and capable of any degree of
evil.
clerk's relation to the peasant, I will only tell you,
them
Of
be-
the
now, that,
you learn more of the history of Germany and Italy in the Middle Ages, and, indeed, almost to this day, you will find the soldiers of Germany are always trying to get mastery over the body of Italy, and the clerks of Italy are always trythis main ing to get mastery over the mind of Germany; struggle between Emperor and Pope, as the respective heads of the two parties, absorbing in its vortex, or attracting to
as
—
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
30
standards, all the minor disorders and dignities of war; and quartering itself in a quaintly heraldic fashion with the methods of encroachment on the peasant, separately invented by baron and priest. its
The
relation of the baron to the peasant, however,
is all
that I can touch upon to-day; and first, note that this word " baron " is the purest English you can use to denote the soldier, soldato, or " fighter, hired with pence, or soldi," as it meant the servant of a soldier, or, as clerk of Nero's time * tells us, (the literary antipathy thus early developing itself in its future nest,) " the extreme fool, who is a fool's servant; " but soon it came to
Originally
such.
a
Roman
be associated with a Greek word meaning " heavy " and so got to signify heavy-handed, or heavy-armed, or generally ;
prevailing in manhood.
For some time
was used
it
to sig-
nify the authority of a husband; a woman called herself her husband's f " ancilla," (handmaid), and him her " baron."
Finally the word got settled in the meaning of a strong fighter receiving regular pay.
who
" Mercenaries are persons
serve for a regularly received pay; the same are called
from the Greek, because they are strong in lais the definition given by an excellent clerk of the seventh century, Isidore, Bishop of Seville, and I wish you to recollect it, because it perfectly unites the economical '
Barones
'
This
bors."
idea of a Baron, as a person paid for fighting, with the physical idea of one, as prevailing in battle
by weight, not with-
out some attached idea of slight stupidity;
—the notion
ing so distinctly even to this day that Mr.
hold-
Matthew Arnold
thinks the entire class aptly describable under the term " barbarians."
At
all
events, the
word
is
the best general one for the dom-
inant rank of the Middle Ages, as distinguished from the pacific peasant, and so delighting in battle that one of the most courteous barons of the fourteenth century tells a * Cornutus, quoted f I
am
by Ducange under the word
told in the north such pleasant fiction
Teesdale district; the wife calling her husband
" Baro." still
holds in the
"my
masterman,"
— 31
FOES CLAVIGEKA.
young knight who comes to him for general advice, that the moment war fails in any country, he must go into another. "
Et
se la guerre est faillie,
Departie tost de cellui pais; N'arreste quoy que nul die."
Fay
"
And
if
the
war has ended,
Departure
Make quickly from that country; Do not stop, whatever anybody says
to you." *
But long before this class distinction was clearly established, the more radical one between pacific and warrior nations had shown itself cruelly in the history of Europe.
You
will find
greatly useful to fix in your minds these
it
following elementary ideas of that history:
The Roman Empire was already
in decline at the birth
hundred years afterwards. The wrecks of its civilization, mingled with the broken fury of the tribes which had destroyed it, were then gradually softened and purged by Christianity; and hammered into of Christ.
It
was ended
five
shape by three great warrior nations, on the north, south, and west, worshipers of the storms, of the sun, and of fate.
Three Christian kings, Henry the Eowler of Germany, Charlemagne in France, and Alfred in England, typically represent the justice of humanity, gradually forming the feudal system out of the ruined elements of Roman luxury and law, under the disciplining torment inflicted by the mountaineers of Scandinavia, India, and Arabia. This forging process takes another five hundred years. Christian feudalism
may
be considered as definitely organits political strength
ized at the end of the tenth century, and established, having for the
most part absorbed the soldiers
of the north^ and soon to be aggressive on those of
Imaus and Mount * "
The Book
them, soon.
Sinai.
of a
It lasts
Hundred
another
Ballads."
five
You
Mount
hundred years,
shall hear
more
of
FORS CLAVIGERA.
32
and then our own epoch, that of practically necessitated, eries of
—the
gunpowder and
atheistic liberalism, begins,
liberalism
printing,
by the two
— and the
discov-
atheism by the
"unfortunate persistence of the clerks in teaching children
what they cannot understand, and employing young consecrated persons to assert in pulpits what they do not know. That is enough generalization for you to-day. I want
now
to fix
—
your thoughts on one small point in all this; the gunpowder in promoting liberalism. operation was to destroy the power of the baron,
effect of the discovery of
Its first
by rendering it impossible for him to hold his castle, with a few men, against a mob. The fall of the Bastile is a typical fact in history of this kind; but, of course long previously, castellated architecture
had been
felt to
be useless.
other building of a noble kind- vanishes together with less
(which
is
a
much
Much it;
nor
greater loss than the building,) the
baronial habit of living in the country. iSText to his castle, the baron's armor becomes useless to him; and all the noble habits of life vanish which depend on the wearing of a distinctive dress, involving the constant exercise of accurately disciplined strength, and the public assertion of an exclusive occupation in life, involving expo-
sure to danger. ISText,
the baron's sword and spear become useless to him;
and encounter, no longer the determination of who is best man, but of who is best marksman, which is a very different question indeed.
more able to maintain his aukeep it by form; he reduces his own machinery, and obtains the command
Lastly, the baron being no
thority
by
force, seeks to
subordinates to a fine
by purchase or intrigue. The necessity of distinction is in war so absolute, and the tests of it are so many, that, in spite of every abuse, good officers get sometimes the command of squadrons or of ships; and one good officer in a hundred is enough to save the honor of an army, and the credit of a system; but generally speaking, our officers at this day do not know their business; and the result of
it
of character
— 33
FOES CLAVIGERA.
—
that, paying thirty millions a year for our army, we are informed by Mr. Grant Duff that the army we have bought is of no use, and we must pay still more iftoney to produce any effect upon foreign affairs. So, you see, this is the acand it is the perfection of liberalism, tual state of things, that first we cannot buy a Raphael for five-and-twenty pounds, because we have to pay five hundred for a pocket pistol; and next, we are coolly told that the pocket pistol won't go off, and that we must still pay foreign constables to keep the peace. In old times, under the pure baronial power, things used, as I told you, to be differently managed by us. We were, all of us, in some sense barons; and paid ourselves for fighting. We had no pocket pistols, nor Woolwich Infants nothing but bows and spears, good horses, (I hear, after twothirds of our existing barons have ruined their youth in horseis
—
—
and a good many of them their fortunes also, we in irremediable want of horses for our cavalry,) and bright armor. Its brightness, observe, was an essential matter with us. Last autumn I saw, even in modern England, something bright; low sunshine at seven o'clock of an October morning, glancing down a long bank of fern covered with hoarfrost, in Yewdale, at the head of Coniston Water. I noted it as more beautiful than anything I had ever seen, to my remembrance, in gladness and infinitude of light. Now, Scott uses this very image to describe the look of the racing,
are
now
chainmail of a soldier in one of these free * companies;
Le Balafre, Quentin Durward's uncle: "The
archer's gor-
and gauntlets were of the finest steel, curiously inlaid with silver, and his hauberk, or shirt of mail, was as clear and bright as the frost-work of a winter morning get, arm-pieces,
* This singular use of the
word
" free " in baronial times, corre-
sponding to our present singular use of it respecting trade, we will examine in due time. A soldier who tights only for his own hand, and a merchant who sells only for his own hand, are of course, in reality, equally the slaves of the persons who employ them. Only those soldiers and merchants are truly free, who fight and sell as their country needs, and bids them.
— ;
34
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
upon fern or briar." And Sir John Hawkwood's men, of whose proceedings in Italj I have now to give you some account, were naifted throughout Italy, as I told you in my first letter,
the
White Company
of English,
—
" Societas alba
Anglicorum," or generally, the Great White Company, mereW from the splendor of their arms. They crossed the Alps in 1361, and immediately caused a curious change in the Italian language. Azario lays great stress on their tall spears with a very long iron point at the extremity; this formidable weapon being for the most part wielded by two, and sometimes moreover by three individuals, being so heavy and huge, that whatever it came in contact with was pierced through and through. He says, that * " at their backs the mounted bowmen carried their bows; whilst those used by the infantry archers were so enormous that the long arrows discharged from them were shot with one end of the bow resting on the ground instead of being drawn in the air." Of the English bow you have probably heard before, though I shall have, both of it, and the much inferior Greek bow made of two goats' horns, to tell you some things that may not have come in your way; but the change these English caused in the Italian language, and afterwards generally in that of chivalry, was by their use of the spear; for " Filippo Villani tells us that, whereas, until the English company crossed the Alps, his countrymen numbered their military forces by " helmets " and color companies, (bandiere) thenceforth armies were reckoned by the spear, a weapon which, where handled by the White Company, proved no " less tremendous than the English bayonet of modern times.' It is worth noting as one of the tricks of the third Fors '
—
that the name of the chief poet of passionate Italy should have been " the bearer
the giver of names as well as fortunes
of the wing," and that of the chief poet of practical England,
the bearer or shaker of the spear.
Noteworthy
also that
Shakespeare himself gives a name to his type of the false * I "
always give Mr. Kawdon Brown's translation, from his work,
The English
in Italy," already quoted.
—
— 35
FOES CLAVIGEKA. soldier
from the
pistol;
but, in the future, doubtless
we
have a hero of culminating soldierly courage named from the torpedo, and a poet of the commercial period, singing the wars directed by Mr. Grant Duff, named Shake-purse. The White Company when they crossed the Alps were under a German captain. (Some years before, an entirely German troop was prettily defeated by the Apennine peasshall
ants.) til
Sir
1364,
John Hawkwood did not take the command un-
when
the Pisans hired the company, five thousand
hundred and fifty thousand golden months I think about fifty thousand pounds of our money a month, or ten pounds a man Sir John him-
strong, at the rate of a
—
florins for six
—
then described as a " great general," an Englishman of a vulpine nature, " and astute in their fashion." This English fashion of astuteness means, I am happy to say, self being
John saw
that Sir
far,
planned deeply, and was cunning in
military stratagem; but would neither poison his enemies
—
nor sell his friends the two words of course being always understood as for the time being; for, from this year 1364 for thirty years onward, he leads his gradually more and more powerful soldier's life, fighting first for one town and then for another; here for bishops, and there for barons, but mainly for those merchants of Florence, from whom that
narrow
street in
—
your city
is
named Lombard
Street,
and
interfering thus so decidedly with foreign affairs, that, at
the end of the thirty years, when he put off his armor, and had lain resting for a little while in Florence Cathedral, King Richard the Second begged his body from the Florentines, and laid it in his own land the Florentines granting it in the ;
terms of
this following letter:
"
To THE KixG OF England.
" Most serene and invincible Sovereign, most dread Lord,
and our very especial Benefactor devotion can deny nothing to your Highness' Eminence: there is nothing in our power which we would not "
Our
FOES CLAVIGERA.
36 strive
by
all
means
to accomplish, should
to you. " Wherefore, although
we should
it
consider
prove grateful
it
glorious for
us and our people to possess the dust and ashes of the late valiant knight, nay, most
renowned captain. Sir John Hawk-
wood, who fought most gloriously for of our armies, and to be
entombed
whom
us, as the
at the public
commander
expense we caused
Cathedral Church of our city; yet, not-
in the
withstanding, according to the form of the demand, that his
may
remains
be taken back to his country,
the permission, lest
it
we
freely concede
be said that your sublimity asked any-
thing in vain, or fruitlessly, of our reverential humility. " We, however, with due deference, and all possible ear-
recommend to your Highness' graciousness, the son and posterity of said Sir John, who acquired no mean repute, and glory for the English name in Italy, as also our merchants and citizens."
nestness,
It
chanced
b}^
the appointment of the third Fors,* to
am bound
which, you know, I
in these letters
uncomplain-
ingly to submit, that, just as I had looked out this letter for
you, given at Florence in the year 1396, I found in an old
bookshop two gazettes nearly three hundred years later, namely, Number 20 of the Mercurius Publicus, and Number 50 of the ParJimneyitary Intelligencer, the latter comprising the same " foraign intelligence, with the affairs now in agitation in England, Scotland, and Ireland, for information of the people. Publish'd by order, from Monday, December 3rd, to Monday, December 10th, 1660." This little gazette informs us in
November
its first
30th, 1660, was
advertisement, that in London,
about this city, a small paper book of accounts and receipts, with a red leather cover, with tv/o clasps on it; and that anybody that can give intelligence of it to the city crier at Bread Street end in Cheapside, " shall have five shillings for their pains, and more if they *
the
Kemember, first
Fors
is
lost, in or
till I can tell you more about it, that Courage, the second Patience, the third, Fortune.
briefly always,
— 37
FORS CLAVIGEEA. desire it."
And
urday (December
8),
concurred with the
up the
—
paragraph is as follows: " On Satthe Most Honourable House of Peers
its last
Commons
in the order for the digging
carkasses of Oliver Cromwell,
Henry
Ireton,
John
Bradshaw, and Thomas Pride, and carrying them on an Hurdle to Tyburn, where they are to be first hang'd up in their Coffins, and then buried under the Gallows." The Public Mercury is of date Thursday, June l-ith, to Thursday, June 21st, 1660, and contains a report of the proceeding at the House of Commons, on Saturday, the 16th, of which the first sentence is: " Resolved,
—That
his
Majesty be humbly moved to call John Goodwin's, and order them
in Milton's two books, and to be burnt
By
by the common hangman."
the final appointment of the third Fors, I chanced just
after finding these gazettes, to
sage in
my
Daily Telegraph:
—
come upon the following
" Every head was uncovered, and although
who were
among
pas-
those
farthest off there was a pressing forward and a
straining to catch sight of the coffin, there was nothing un-
seemly or rude.
The Catafalque was received
at the top of
the stairs by Col. Braine and other officers of the 9th, and placed in the centre of the vestibule on a rich velvet pall on
which rested crowns, crosses, and other devices, composed of tuberoses and camellias, while beautiful lilies were scattered over the corpse, which was clothed in full regimentals, the cap and sword resting on the body. The face, with the exception of its pallor, was unchanged, and no one, unless knowing the circumstances, would have believed that Fiske had died a violent death. The body was contained in a handsome rosewood casket, with gold-plated handles, and a splendid plate bearing the inscription,
uary
7th, 1872, in the
'James
Fiske, jun., died Jan-
37th year of his age.' "
38
FOBS CLAVIGEKA.
In the foregoing passages, you see, there is authentic account given you of the various honors rendered by the enlightened public of the fourteenth, seventeenth, and nineteenth centuries to the hero of their day or hour
;
the persons
thus reverenced in their burial, or unburial, being
all,
by
profession, soldiers; and holding rank in that profession, very
properly describable by the pretty modern English word " Colonel " leader, that is to say, of a Coronel, Coronella,
—
or daisy-like circlet of
before us, of the
You
men;
Tammany
as in the last case of the three " Ring."
are to observe, however, that the
Colonel Sir John
Hawkwood,
is
first
of the three.
a soldier both in heart
and
deed, every inch of him; and that the second, Colonel Oliver
Cromwell, was a soldier in deed, but not in heart; being by ^fitted rather for a Huntingdonshire farmer, and not at all caring to make any money
natural disposition and temper
by
his military business;
Fiske, jun.,
was
and
finally,
that Colonel
James
a soldier in heart, to the extent of being
willing to receive any quantity of soldi
from any paymaster, but no more a soldier in deed than you are yourselves, when you go piping and drumming past my gate at Denmark Hill
—
banging, than drumming, for T observe hard and straightforward to every tune; so that from a distance it sounds just like beating carpets), under the impression that you are defending your country as (I should rather say
you
hit equally
well as amusing yourselves.
Of
the various honors, deserved, or undeserved, done by
enlightened public opinion to these three soldiers, I leave
you to consider till next month, merely adding, to put you more entirely in command of the facts, that Sir John Hawkwood, (Acuto, the Italians called him, by happy adaptation of syllables,) whose entire subsistence was one 'of systematic military robbery, had, when he was first buried, the honor, rarely granted even to the citizens of Florence, of having
on the font of the House of his name-saint, that same font which Dante was accused of having impiously broken to save a child from drowning.
his coftin laid St.
John Baptist
—
39
FOES CLAVTGEEA. in "
mio bel San Giovanni."
myself to draw
I
am
soon going to Florence
San Giovanni for the beginning of my lectures on Architecture, at Oxford; and you shall have a print of the best sketch I can make, to assist your meditations on the honors of soldiership, and efficacy of baptism. Meantime, let me ask you to read an account of one funeral more, and to meditate also on that. It is given in the most exquisite and finished piece which I know of English Prose literature in the eighteenth century; and, however often you may have seen it already, I beg of you to read
it
this beautiful
now, both in connection with the funeral ceremonies
described hitherto and for the sake of
its
educational effect
on your own taste in writing: " AVe last night received a piece of ill news at our club, which very sensibly afflicted every one of us. I question not but my readers themselves will be troubled at the hearing of it. To keep them no longer in suspense. Sir Roger de Coverley is dead. He departed this life at his house in the country, after a few weeks' sickness. Sir Andrew Freeport has a letter from one of his correspondents in those parts, that informs him the old man caught a cold at the countysessions, as he was very warmly promoting an address of his own penning in which he succeeded according to his wishes. But this particular comes from a Whig justice of peace who was always Sir Roger's enemy and antagonist. I have letters both from the chaplain and Captain Sentry, which mention nothing of it, but are filled with many particulars to the honor of the good old man. I have likewise a letter from the butler,
who
took so
much
I was at the knight's house.
care of
me
As my
friend the butler men-
last
tions, in the simplicity of his heart, several
summer when circumstances
the others have passed over in silence, I shall give
my
reader
a copy of his letter, without any alteration or diminution.
—
" HoNOUEED SiE, ^Knowing that you was my old master's good friend, I could not forbear sending you the melancholy news of his death, which has afflicted the whole country, as '
40
FOES CLAVTGERA.
well as his poor servants,
who loved him, I may
than we did our
am
lives.
I
sav, better
afraid he caught his death the
where he would go to see justice done widow woman, and her fatherless children, that had been wronged by a neighbouring gentleman; for you know, Sir, my good master was always the poor man's friend. Upon his coming home, the first complaint he made was, that last count^'-sessions,
to a poor
he had
lost his roast-beef
a sirloin, which
stomach, not being able to touch
was served up according
to
custom: and you
know he used to take great delight in it. From that time forward he grew worse and worse, but still kept a good heart Indeed we were once in great hope of his reto the last. covery, upon a kind message that was sent him from the widow lady whom he had made love to the forty last years of his life;
He
but this only proved a lightning before death.
has bequeathed to this lady, as a token of his love, a great pearl necklace, and a couple of silver bracelets set with jewels, which belonged to my good old lady his mother. He has bequeathed the fine white gelding that he used to ride a hunting upon, to his chaplain, because he thought he would He has morebe kind to him, and has left you all his books. over bequeathed to the chaplain a very pretty tenement with good lands about it. It being a very cold day when he made his will, he left for mourning to every man in the parish, a great frize-coat, and to every woman a black riding-hood. It was a most moving sight to see him take leave of his poor servants, commending us all for our fidelity, whilst we were not able to speak a word for weeping. As we most of us are grown grey-headed in our dear master's service, he has left us pensions and legacies, which we may live very com-
fortably upon the remaining part of our days.
He
has be-
queathed a great deal more in charity, which is not yet come to my knowledge, and it is peremptorily said in the parish, that he has left money to build a steeple to the church for he was heard to say some time ago, that if he lived two years longer, Coverley church should have a steeple to it. The chaplain tells everybody that lie made a very good end. ;
41
FORS CLAVIGERA.
and never speaks of him without cording to his
own
directions,
He
tears.
among
was buried
ac-
the family of the CJov-
on the left hand of his father Sir Arthur. The coffin was carried by six of his tenants, and the pall held up by six of the quorum. The whole parish followed the corpse with heavy hearts, and in their mourning suits; the men in frize, and the women in riding-hoods. Captain Sentry, my master's nephew, has taken possession of the Hall-house, and When my old master saw him a little bethe whole estate. fore his death, he took him by the hand, and wished him joy of the estate which was falling to him, desiring him only to make a good use of it, and to pay the several legacies, and the gifts of charity, which he told him he had left as quitrents upon the estate. The captain truly seems a courteous man, though he says but little. He makes much of those whom my master loved, and shews great kindness to the old house-dog, that you know my poor master was so fond of. It would have gone to your heart to have heard the moans the dumb creature made on the day of my master's death. He has never enjoyed himself since; no more has any of us. It was the melancholiest day for the poor people that ever happened in Worcestershire. This is all from, erleys,
"
'
Honoured Sir, " Your most sorrowful '
"
"
'
P.S.
—My master
'
servant,
Edward
Biscuit.
some weeks before he died, you by the carrier, should be
desired,
that a book, which comes
up
to
given to Sir Andrew Freeport in his name.' " This letter, notwithstanding the poor butler's manner of writing it, gave us such an idea of our good old friend, that upon the reading of it there was not a dry eye in the club.
Andrew opening
the book, found
be a collection of There was in particular the Act of Uniacts of parliament. formity, with some passages in it marked by Sir Roger's own Sir Andrew found that they related to two or three hand. Sir
it
points which he had disputed with Sir
to
Roger the
last
time
42
FOKS CLAVIGERA.
he appeared at the club. Sir Andrew, who would have been merry at such an incident on another occasion, at the sight of the old man's hand-writing burst into tears, and put the
book into
his pocket.
Captain Sentry informs
me
that the
knight has left rings and mourning for everyone in the club."
I
am
obliged to give you this ideal of Addison's because
I can neither from
my own
knowledge, nor at this moment,
out of any domestic chronicles I remember, give you so perfect an account of the funeral of an English squire
lived an honorable life in peace.
But Addison
is
who has as true
So now, meditate over these four funerals, and the meaning and accuracy of the public opinions they express, till I can write again. And believe me, 6ver faithfully vours, as truth itself.
JOHk KUSKIK
—
;
LETTER
XVI. Denmark
,r
My
IS^/t
T-i
Hill, March, 1872.
JbEIElSTDS,
The
meditation I asked you to give to the facts put my last letter, if given, should have convinced
before you in
you for one thing, quite
sufficiently for all
of the unimportance of
momentary
the characters of
men and
for another thing, of the precious-
;
ness of confirmed public opinion,
— —
your future needs,
public opinion respecting
when
it
happens
to
be right;
preciousness both to the person opined of, and the opiners
Roger de Coverley, the opinion formed of him by his tenants and club: and for third thing, it might have properly led you to consider, though it was for instance, to Sir
as,
scarcely probable your thoughts should have turned that
human
it was to reserve even the examination of them, until the persons to be opined of are dead; and then to endeavor to put all right by setting their coffins on baptistery fonts or hanging them up at Tyburn. Let me very
way, what an
evil trick of
the expression of these opinions
creatures
—or
—
strongly advise you to
make up your minds concerning people
while they are with you; to honor and obey those consider good ones; to dishonor and disobey those
whom you whom you
consider bad ones; and when good and bad ones die, to make no violent or expressive demonstrations of the feelings which have now become entirely useless to the persons concerned, and are only, as they are true or false, serviceable, or the contrary, to yourselves; but to take care that some memorial
kept of men who deserve memory, in a distinct statement on the stone or brass of their tombs, either that they were
is
true
men
How might
or rascals,
beautiful be, in
—
the
^wise
men
variety
or fools. of
sepulchral
any extensive place of 43
architecture
burial, if the public
44
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
would meet the small expense of thus expressing its opinions, in a verily instructive manner; and if some of the tombstones accordingly terminated in fools' caps; and others, instead of crosses or cherubs, bore engravings of cats-of-nine-tails, as
typical of the probable
methods of entertainment,
next world, of the persons, not,
it is
to
in the
be hoped, reposing,
below.
But the particular subject led up to in my last letter, and which, in this special month of April, I think it appropriate for you to take to heart, is the way in which you spend your money, or allow it to be spent for you. Colonel Hawkwood and Colonel Fiske both passed their whole lives in getting possession, by various means, of other people's money; (in the final fact, of working-men's money, ^yours, that is to say), and everybody praise.^ and crowns them for doing so. Colonel Cromwell passes his life in fighting for, what in the gist of it meant, not freedom, but freedom from unjust taxation; and you hang his coffin up at Tyburn. " Not Freedom, but deliverance from unjust taxation." You call me unpractical. Suppose you became practical enough yourselves to take that for a watchword for a little while, and see how near you can come to its realization. For, I very positively can inform you, the considerablest part of the misery of the world comes of the tricks of unjust
—
—
taxation.
and sloth
All
its evil
—derive
passions
their
—
pride, lust, revenge, malice,
main deadliness from the
of getting hold of other people's
they influence. hut for his work,
Pay every man
—and
will find pride, lust,
money open
facilities
to the persons
for his work,
—pay nobody
work be sound; and you have little room left for them-
see that the
and
sloth
selves.
Observe, however, very carefully, that by unjust taxation,
mean merely Chancellor of Exchequer's business, but a great part of what really very wise and worthy gentleI do not
men, but, unfortunately, proud
also,
suppose to be their busi-
ness.
For instance, before beginning
my
letter to
you
this
morn-
— 45
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
from Denmark Hill,) I put under a large book, a legal docuby its barbarous black lettering.
ing, (the last I shall ever date
my
out of
sight, carefully,
me
ment, which disturbed This is an R
M
o
in
for
it,
how ugly
instance, is
which
ugly enough, as such
is
the significance of
it,
and reasons of
its
;
but
being
written that way, instead of in a properly intelligible way, there
is
hardly vituperation enough in language justly to This said document is to release the sole re-
express to you.
maining executor of sibility for the
need
for, of
follows I,
my
from further respon-
father's will
execution of
And
it.
all
that there
is
really
English scripture on the occasion, would be as
:
having received
this
15th of March, 1872, from A. B.,
my father left hereby release A. B., Esq., from future responsibility, respecting either
Esq., all the property
my
which
father's property, or mine, or
mine.
my
father's business, or
Signed, J. R., before such and such two witnesses.
This document, on properly cured calf-skin, (not cleaned by acids), and written as plainly as, after having contracted some careless literary habits, I could manage to write it, ought to answer the purpose required, before any court of law on earth. In order to effect it in a manner pleasing to the present legal mind of England, I receive eighty-seven lines of close writing, containing from fourteen to sixteen words each, (one thousand two hundred and eighteen words in all, at the
minimum);
thirteen of
them
in black letters of the lovely
kind above imitated, but produced with scrivener.
Of
the
manner
in
which
much
pains by the
this overplus of
thousand one hundred and seventy-eight words plished,
(my suggested form containing
is
one
accom-
forty only), the fol-
46
FOES CLAVIGERA.
lowing example
—the
document
last clause of the
—may
suf-
fice.
"
And
the said J. K. doth hereby for himself his heirs
executors and administrators covenant and agree with and to the said
A. B.
his executors
and administrators that he the
said J. R. his heirs executors administrators or assigns shall
and
will
from time
to time
and
at all times hereafter save
harmless and keep indemnified the said A. B. his heirs executors administrators and assigns
from and
claims and demands whatsoever which
him
or
them
or
any of them for or
in respect of all
may
be made upon
in respect of the real or
personal estate of the said J. R. and from
all
suits costs
charges and damages and expenses whatsoever which the said A. B. his heirs executors administrators or assigns shall
be involved in or put unto for' or in respect of the said real or personal estate or any part thereof."
Now, what reason do you suppose there is for all this barbarism and bad grammar, and tax upon my eyes and time, for very often one has actually to read these things, or hear them read, all through? The reason is simply and wholly that I may be charged so much per word, that the lawyer live. But do you not see how infinitely would be for me, (if only I could get the other sufferers under this black literature to be of my mind), to clap the lawyer and his clerk, once for all, fairly out of the way in a dignified almshouse, with parchment unlimited, and ink turned on at a tap, and maintenance for life, on the mere condition of their never troubling humanity more, with either their scriptures or opinions on any subject; and to have
and
his clerk
advantageous
may it
this release of mine, as
above worded, simply confirmed by
the signature of any person
whom
the
Queen might appoint
for that purpose, (say the squire of the parish), and there an
end?
How is
it,
do you think, that other sufferers under the my mind, which was
black literature, do not come to be of Cicero's
mind
also,
and has been the mind of every sane perso that we might in-
son before Cicero and since Cicero,
deed get
it
ended thus summarily?
—
"
47
FORS CLAVIGERA. "Well, at the root of all these follies
and
iniquities, there
but infinitely strong persuasion in the British mind, namely, that somehow money grows out of nothing, if one can only find some expedient to produce an
lies
always one
tacit,
must be paid for. " Here," the practical Englishman says to himself, " I produce, being capable of nothing better, an entirely worthless piece of parchment, with one thousand two hundred entirely foolish words upon it, written in an entirely abominable hand; and by this producarticle that
tion of mine, I conjure out of the vacant air, the substance of
What
an infinitely profitable trans-
to the world!
Creation, out of a chaos of
ten pounds, or the like. action to
me and
words, and a dead beast's hide, of this beautiful and omnip Do I not see with my own eyes that this otent ten pounds. is
very good?
is the real impression on the existing popular mind; That but deep, and for the present unconquerable. by due parchment, caligraphy, and ingenious stratagem, money may be conjured out of the vacant air. Alchemy is,
That
silent,
indeed, no longer included in our
proposed,
—
list
irrational science that
—gold nothing, —
of something;
of lead,
it
of sciences, for
was,
—
or the like.
to
alchemy
make money But to make
money of this appears to be manifoldly possible, to instructed by the modern Anglo-Saxon practical person,
—
Mr. John Stuart Mill. Sometimes, with rare intelligence, he is capable of carrying the inquiry one step farther. Pushed hard to assign a Providential cause for such legal documents as this we are talking of, an English gentleman would say: "Well, of course, where property needs legal, forms to transfer it, it must be in quantity enough to bear a moderate tax without inconvenience; and this tax on its transfer enables many well-educated and agreeable persons to live."
Yes, that
is so,
and I (speaking for the nonce in the name maker of property) am willing enough
of the working-man,
to be taxed, sb'aightforwardly, for the
maintenance of these
most agreeable persons; but not to be taxed obliquely for
it.
— ;
48
FOES CLAVIGERA.
nor teased, either obliquely or otherwise, for it. I greatly and truly admire (as aforesaid, in my first letter,) these educated persons in wigs; and when I go into my kitchengarden in springtime, to see the dew on my early sprouts, I often mentally acknowledge the fitness, yet singularity, of the arrangement by which I am appointed to grow mute All Broccoli for the maintenance of that talking Broccoli. that I want of it is to let itself be kept for a show, and not to tax my time as well as my money.
Kept
some better purpose, for
for a show, of heads; or, to
writing on fair parchment, with really well-trained hands,
what might be desirable of literature. Suppose every existing lawyer's clerk was trained, in a good drawing school, to write red and blue letters as well as black ones, in a loving and delicate manner; here for instance is an R and a number eleven, which begin the eleventh chapter of Job in
[^
one
my
of
There
is
number
thirteenth
Bibles.
and
good a
as good a letter
—every one
to every chapter,
as
different in designi,
and beautifully gilded beginning of books
and painted ones
to the
done for suppose the
and teasing nobody.
all
^}
century
love,
la-^^^^er's clerks,
to write decently,
Xow
thus instructed
were appointed
to write
for us, for their present pay, words really
Grimm's Popular
worth
setting
Stories,
and the
do^^m like,
— Xursery
we
Songs,
should have again,
cheap literature but at least an innocent one. Dante's words might then be taken up literally by relieved " Piii ridon le carte." " The papers smile more," "nankind. not, perhaps, a
;
they might say, of such transfigured legal documents. I^Tot a cheap literature, even then; nor pleasing to friend the Glasgow Herald,
but very is
civilly,
(and I
am
who
writes to
me
my
indignantly,
obliged to him,) to declare that he
a Herald and not a Chronicle.
I
am
delighted to hear
it;
49
FOES CLAVIGERA. for
my
lectures on heraldry are just beginning at Oxford,
to me, when I am Also my he tells me good leather may be had in Glasgow. Let Glasgow flourish, and I will assuredly make trial of the same: but touching this cheap literature question, I cannot speak much in this letter, for I must keep to our especial subject of April this Fools' Para-
and a Glaswegian opinion may be useful
not sure of
blazon.
—
dise of Cloud-begotten Gold.
Cloud-begotten it.
—and
self-begotten
—
as
some would have
But it is not so, friends. Do you remember the questioning
letter
R
The pretty to Job? Kesponse of Zophar; but the thirty-eighth chapter, and read down to the
stopped
look on to
me
just
now
at the
question concerning this April time:
—
—"Hath
the rain a
—
Father and who hath begotten the drops of dew, the hoary Frost of Heaven who hath gendered it? " That rain and frost of heaven; and the earth which they loose and bind: these, and the labor of your hands to divide them, and subdue, are your wealth, forever unincreasable. The fruit of Earth, and its waters, and its light such as the strength of the pure rock can grow such as the unthwarted
—
—
—
—
—
sun in his season brings these are your inheritance. You it, but cannot increase: that your barns should be filled with plenty- your presses burst with new wine, is your blessing; and every year when it is full it must be new; and every year, no more. And this money, which you think so multipliable, is only to be increased in the hands of some, by the loss of others. The sum of it, in the end, represents, and can represent, only can diminish
—
what
is
in the
—
—
barn and winepress.
It
may
represent
—
less,
but cannot more.
These ten pounds, for instance, which I am grumbling at having to pay my lawyer what are they? whence came
—
they?
They were once, (and could be nothing now, unless they had been) so many skins of Xeres wine gro^vn and mellowed by pure chalk rock end unaffiictcJ tunsliine. Wine
—
— 50
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
drunk, indeed, long ago
—
^but
the drinkers gave the vineyard
dressers these tokens, which ^\e call pounds, signifying, that
having had so much good from them they would return them And, indeed, for my ten pounds, as much, in future time. if my lawyer didn't take it, I could still get my Xeres if Xeres wine exists any^vhere. But, if not, what matters it
how many pounds
I have, or think I have, or you either ? It meat and drink we want not pounds. As you are beginning to discover I fancy too many of If you only would discover it a you, in this rich country. For little faster, and demand dinners, instead of Liberty! what possible liberty do you want, which does not depend on dinner ? Tell me, once for all, what is it you want to do, that you can't do? Dinner being provided, do you think the Queen will interfere with the way you choose to spend your afternoons, if only you knock nobody down, and break nobody's windows? But the need of dinner enslaves you to
—
is
—
purpose
The following
letter
represents
this
modern form
slavery with an unconscious clearness, which ing.
is
of
very interest-
I have, therefore, requested the writer's permission to
and with a passage or two omitted, and briefest comment, here it is in full type, for it is worth careful reading: print
it,
" Glasgow,
"
12th February, 1872.
gjjj
" You say in your ' Fors ' that you do not want anyone to buy your books who will not give a ' doctor's fee per volume, which you rate at 10s. Qd.; now, as the Herald re'
marks, you are clearly placing yourself in a wrong position, as you arbitrarily fix your doctor's fee far too high; indeed, while you express a desire, no doubt quite sincerely, to
ele-
vate the working-man, morally, mentally, and physically, you in the
meantime absolutely preclude him from purchasing
your books at all, and so almost completely bar his way from " the enjoyment and elevating influence of perhaps the most omitted]. [etc., complimentary terms
—
51
rORS CLAVIGERA.
" Permit
me
remark
a personal
—I
much
paid clerk, with a salary not
minimmn; now no
:
am
myself a poorly
over the income-tax
would ever think of and so you see it is as much out of my power to purchase your books as any working-man. While Mr. Carlyle is just now issuing a cheap edition of his Works at 2s. per volurfe, which I can purchase, here, quite ; easily for Is. Qd. " [Presumably, therefore, to be had, as far north as Inverness, for a shilling, and for sixpence in Orkney,] " I must say it is a great pity that a writer so much, and, in my poor opinion, justly appreciated as yourself, should as it were inaugurate with your own hands a system which thoroughly barriers your productions from the I take great majority of the middle and working classes. leave, however, to remark that I by no means shut my eyes charging
me
doctor, here at least,
a fee of 10s.
6c?.,
to the anomalies of the Bookselling Trade, but I can't see
that
it
can be remedied by an Author becoming his own.
Bookseller, and, at the same time, putting an unusually high
Of course, I would like to see an Author [You remunerated as highly as possible for his labors." ought not to like any such thing you ought to like an author to get what he deserves, like other people, not more, nor " I would also crave to remark, following up your less.]
price on his books.
:
unfortunate analogy of the doctor's fee, that doctors
who
have acquired, either professionally or otherwise, a competence, often, nay very often, give their advice gratis to nearly every class, except that which is really wealthy; at least, I speak from my own experience, having known, nay even been attended by such a benevolent physician in a little town in Kirkcudbrightshire, who when offered payment, and I was both quite able and willing to do so, and he was in no
way
indebted or obliged to
to receive
and " all
any
fee.
So
me
much
or mine, positively declined for the benevolent physician
his fees.
Here am
I,
possessed of a passionate love of nature in
crammed mass of which would naturally have
her aspects, cooped up in this fearfully
population, with
its filthy Clyde,
52
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
been a noble river, but, under the curse of our mucli belauded civilization, forsooth, turned into an almost stagnant loathsome ditch, pestilence-breathing, be-lorded over by hundreds upon hundreds of tall brick chimnev-stacks vomiting
up smoke unceasingly; and from the way I am situated, there are only one day and a half in the week in which I can manage a walk into the country; nof^^, if I wished to foster
my
taste for the beautiful in nature
and
art,
even while
living a life of almost servile red-taped routine beneath the
too frequently horror-breathing atmosphere of a
grown
Works for
huge over-
plutocratic city like Glasgow, I cannot have your " [complimentary terms again] " as, after providing
my
volume.
necessaries, I cannot indulge in books at 10s. Qd. a
Of
course, as
you may say " [My dear sir, the very "I can get them from a library.
last thing I should say],
Assuredly, but one (at least I would) wishes to have actual and ever-present possession of productions such as yours " " You will be aware, no doubt, that [more compliments] .
*
Geo. Eliot
new
has adopted a
'
novel by issuing
it
'
new system
in 5s.
'
parts,'
'
in publishing her
with the laudable view
buy the work for from some Mudie
of enabling and encouraging readers to
themselves, and not trusting to get
it
'
'
or another for a week, then galloping through the three
volumes
When
and
immediately forgetting
whole
the
matter.
I possess a book worth having I always recur to
and again.
Yonr
'
new
the real reading public
the wealthy classes
it
now
system,' however, tends to prevent
from ever possessing your books, and could afford to buy books at 10s.
who
6d. a volume, as a rule, I opine, don't drive themselves insane
by much reading of any kind. " I beg a last remark and I've done. Glasgow, for instance, has no splendid public buildings. She has increased in wealth till I believe there are some of the greatest merchants in the world trading in her Exchange but except her grand old Cathedral, founded by an almost-forgotten bisliop in the twelfth century, in what we in our vain follv are ;
pleased to call the dark ages,
when we
ourselves are about
53
FOBS CLAVIGERA.
dark as need be; having no ' high calling to strive for, except by hook or by crook to make money a fortune retire at thirty-five by some stroke of gambling of a highly qnestionable kind on the Share market or otherv^ise, to a as really
'
—
—
snbnrban or country villa with Turkey carpets, a wine-cellar and a carriage and pair as no man nowadays is ever contented with making a decent and honest livelihood. Truly a very 'high calling!' Our old Cathedral, thank God, was not built by contract or stock-jobbing: there was, surely, a higher calling of some sort in those quiet, old, unhurrying days. Our local plutocratic friends put their hands into their pockets to the extent of £150,000 to help to build our new University buildings after a design by G. Gilbert Scott, which has turned out a very imposing pile of masonry; at least, it is placed on an imposing and magnificent site. I am no prophet, but I should not wonder if old St. Mungo's Cathedral, erected nearly six hundred years ago to the honor and glory of God, will be standing a noble ruin when our new spick-and-span College is a total wreck after all. Such being the difference between the work of really earnest God-fearing meUj and that done by contract and Trades' Unions. The Steam Engine, one of the demons of our mad, restless, headlong civilization, is screaming its unearthly whistle in ;
now deserted, but still venerable our High Street, almost on the very spot
the very quadrangles of the
College buildings in
where the philosopliic Professors of that day, to their eternal honor, gave a harborage to James Watt, when the narrowminded guild-brethren of Glasgow expelled him from their town as a stranger craftsman hailing from Greenock. Such is the irony of events! Excuse the presumption of this rather rambling letter, and apologizing for addressing you at such length,
" I am, very faithfully yours." I have only time, just now, to remark on this letter that I don't believe any of Mr. Scott's or will
work
is
first,
badly done,
come dowTi soon; and that Trades' Unions are quite
FOKS CLAVIGEBA.
54
when honest and kind: but the frantic mistake of the Glaswegians, in thinking that they can import learning into their town safely in a Gothic case, and have 180,000 pounds' right
worth of
from
it
their
command, while they have banished forever eyes the sight of all that mankind have to learn at
—"Well—
anything about,
is,
public opinion.
They might
to
make
as well put a
pyx
into a pigsty,
the pigs pious.
In the second
my
as the rest of our enlightened
books, I
am
place, as to
my
correspondent's wish to read
entirely pleased
tion of fee aside for the nonce, I
by
it;
am
but, putting the ques-
not in the least minded,
my books for him. ^ay, so he shall neither read them, nor learn to trust in any such poor qualifications and partial comforts of the entirely wrong and dreadful condition of life he is in, with millions of others. If a child in a muddy ditch asked as matters stand, to prescribe
far as in
me for " Come
me
lies,
him; but say, out of that first or, if you cannot, I must go and get " help; but picture-books, there, you shall have none! Only a day and a half in the week on which one can get a walk in the country, (and how few have as much, or anything like it!) just bread enough earned to keep one alive, a picture-book, I should not give
it
;
—
one's daily work asking not so much as a worth of human intelligence; unwholesome one's chest, shoulders, and stomach getting hourly besides Smoke above for sky, mud beneath for more useless.
on those terms
—
lucifer match's
—
water; and the pleasant consciousness of spending one's
weary
life in
the pure service of the devil!
—
and are emancipated over the water there " call having your own way," /?ere, is it?
Very solemnly, my good
And
the blacks
this is
what you
something Do you to be done in this matter; not merely to be read. know any honest men who have a will of their own, among clerk-friend, there
is
your neighbors? If none, set yourself to seek for such; ix any, commune with them on this one subject, how a man may have sight of the Earth he was made of, and his bread and peace! And find out what it is out of the dust of it
—
55
FOES CLAVIGERA.
now from having these, and resolve that von and put end to it. If you cannot find out for yourselves, tell me your difiiculties, briefly, and I will deal with them for you, as the Second Fors may teach me. Bring you the First with you. and the Third will help us. And believe me, faithfully yours, that hinders you will fight
itj
JOHK KUSKDT.
TJETTEE XYIl.
My
Feiends
Florence,
—
^'*
Have you
^«^'
i^^^'
prayed you to think, during what things they are that will hinder you from being happy on this first of May? Be assured of it, you are meant, to-day, to be as happy as the birds, at least. If you are not, you, or somebody else, or something that you are one or other responsible for, is wrong; and your first tliought, as I
the days of April,
business
is
to set yourself,
them, or
it,
to rights.
Of
late
you have made that your last business; you have thought things would right themselves, or that it was God's business to right
them, not yours.
observe,
to
Peremptorily it is yours. Not, but to put things to rights. Some eleven in the dozen of the population of the world are occupied earnestly in putting things to wrongs, thinking to benefit themselves thereby. Is it any wonder, then, you are uncomfortable, when already the world, in our part of it,
is
get your rights,
over-populated, and eleven in the dozen of the over-
population doing diligently wrong expecting
;
and the remaining dozenth and consoling them-
do their work for them
;
?
things to rights Do you not know how refreshing even to put one's room to rights when it has got dusty
To put it is,
to
with buying two-shilling publications for eighteen-
selves
pence
God
!
and decomposed ? If no other happiness is to be had, the mere war with decomposition is a kind of happiness. But the war with the Lord of Decomposition, the old Dragon himself, St. George's war, with a princess to save and win are none of you, my poor friends, proud enough to hope for any part in that battle? Do you conceive no figure of any princess for May Queen; or is the definite dragon turned
—
—
56
— 57
FOES CLAVIGERA. into
indefinite
cuttle-fish,
vomiting black venom into the
waters of your life or has he multiplied himself into a host bug-dragons, insatiable as unclean, of pulicarious dragons ;
—
whose food you St.
are, daily.
George's war!
Giotto's
Hope
Here, since
last
May, when
I engraved
for you, have I been asking whether anyone
would volunteer for such battle?
ISTot
one
except a personal friend or two, for mere
human
creature,
love of me, has
answered.
my writing may be obscure or seem But it is the best I can do: it expresses the thoughts that come to me as they come and I have no time just now to put them into more intelligible words. And, whether you believe them or not, they are entirely faithful words: I have no interest at all to serve by writing Now,
it is
true, that
only half in earnest.
;
but yours.
And,
literally,
no one answers.
Nay, even those who whether the
read, read so carelessly that they don't notice
go on or not. Heaven knows: but it
book
is
to
dertook last May,
time left
me may
shall, if I
am
able,
and what I un-
be fulfilled, so far as the poor faculty or serve.
Kead over, now, the end " To talk at a distance."
of that letter for
May
last,
from
I have given you the tenth of all I have, as I promised. I cannot, because of those lawyers I was talking of last month, get it given you in a permanent and accumulative
form; besides that, among the various blockheadisms and rascalities of the day, the perversion of old
their appointed purposes being
now
endowments from
practiced with applause,
gives one little encouragement to think of the future.
How-
pounds are given, and wholly now and, as I said, only two or three my own power; of out for true love of justice also, and one love of me, friends, for joined with me. year, of the have, in the course
ever, the seven thousand
However, this is partly my own fault, for not saying more clearly what I want; and for expecting people to be moved
—
— FOES CLAVIGEEA.
58
by
writing, instead of
by personal
The more I
effort.
see of
do more with a man by getting ten words spoken with him face to face, than by the black lettering of a whole life's thonght. In parenthesis, just read this little bit of Plato and take writing the less I care for
it;
may
one
;
it
I
to heart.
know
of,
If the last sentence of
it
does not
some people
fit
no prophecy on lip of man. " I have heard indeed speaking.
there
is
—
but no one Socrates is can say now if it is true or not that near Xaucratis, in Egypt, there was born one of the old gods, the one to whom the bird is sacred which they call the ibis; and this god or Second parenthesis demigod's name was Theuth." (Theuth, or Thoth: he always has the head of an ibis with a beautiful long bill, in Egyptian sculpture and you may see him at the British Museum on stone and papyrus infinite, especially attending at judgments after death, when people's sins are to be weighed in scales; for he is the Egyptian account-keeper, and adds up, and takes note of, things, as you will hear presently from Plato. He became the god of mer-
—
;
and a rogue, among the Romans, and is one now among And this demigod found out first, they say, arithmetic, and logic, and geometry, and astronomy, and gambling, and the art of writing. " And there was then a king over all Egypt, in the great And Theuth, going city which the Greeks called Thebes. to Thebes, showed the king all the arts he had invented, and But the king said they should be taught to the Egyptians. said: What was the good of them? And Theuth telling him, at length, of each, the king blamed some things, and praised others. But when they came to writing Xow, this chants, us).
"
—
'
'
'
:
piece of learning,
O
king,'
says Theuth,
Egyptians more wise and more
'
will
make
the
remembering; for this
is
But tlie king most artful Theuth, it is one sort of person's business to invent arts, and quite another sort of person's And business to know what mischief or good is in them. you, the father of letters, are yet so simple-minded that you
physic for the memory, and for wisdom.'
answered
:
'
O
— 59
FORS CLAVIGEKA.
fancy their power just the contrary of what
it
really
is:
for
this art of writing will bring forgetfulness into the souls of
those who learn it, because, trusting to the external power of the scripture, and stamp * of other men's minds, and not
themselves putting themselves in mind, within themselves, it is not medicine of divine memory, but a drug of memoran-
dum, that you have discovered, and you will only give the reputation and semblance of wisdom, not the truth of wisdom, to the learners: for,' " (now do listen to this, you cheap education-mongers), '' for becoming hearers of many things, yet without instruction, they will seem to have manifold opinions, but be in truth without any opinions and the most of them incapable of living together in any good understand" ing; having become seeming-wise, instead of mse.' '
;
So much for cheap literature: not that I like cheap talk mind you; but I wish I could get a word or two with For I have called a few honest people, now, face to face. the fund I have established The St. George's Fund, because I hope to find, here and there, someone who will join in a White Company, like Sir John Hawkwood's, to be called the Company of St. George; which shall have for its end the wise better,
creating and bestowing,
instead of the wise
stealing,
of
happened that before the White there was an Italian Company into Italy, went Company " which was afterwards incorporated of St. George," called with Sir John's of the burnished armor; and another company, called " of the Rose," which was a very wicked and And within my St. George's Company, destructive one. money.
ISTow
it
literally
which shall be of persons still following their own business, wherever they are, but who will give the tenth of what they have, or make, for the purchase of land in England, to be cultivated by hand, as aforesaid, in my last May number, shall be another company, not destructive, called of " Monte Eosa," or " Mont Rose," because Monte Rosa is the central mountain of the range between north and south Europe, which
And the motto, or keeps the gift of the rain of heaven. * "Type," the actual word in the Greek.
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
60
watchword of
And
joie."
tliis
company
is
to be the old
French " Mont-
they are to be entirely devoted, according to
manual labor of cultivating pure and guiding of pure streams and rain to the places where they are needed: and secondly, together with this manual labor, and much by its means, they are to carry on the thoughtful labor of true education, in themselves, and of others. And they are not to be monks nor nuns but are to learn, and teach all fair arts, and sweet order and obedience of life and to educate the children intrusted to their schools in such practical arts and patient obedience; but not at all, their power, first to the
land,
;
;
necessarily, in either arithmetic, writing, or reading.
That
is
my
design, romantic enough, and at this day
cult enough: yet not so romantic, nor so difficult as
now widely and openly proclaimed words " obedience " and " loyalty "
diffi-
your
making the from the English
design, of
to cease
tongue.
That same number of the Republican which announced all property must be taken under control, was graced by a frontispiece, representing, figuratively, " Royalty in extremis; " the joyful end of Rule, and of every strength of Kingship; Britannia, having, perhaps, found her waves of late unruly, declaring there shall be no rule over the land neither. Some day I may let you compare this piece of figurative English art with Giotto's; but, meantime, since, before you look so fondly for the end of Royalty, it is well that you should know somewhat of its beginnings, I have given you a picture of one of the companions in the St. that
George's
Company
of all time, out of a pretty book, pub-
Antwerp, by John Baptist Vrints, cutter of figures in copper, on the 16th April, 1598; and giving briefly the stories, and, in no unworthy imagination, the pictures also, of the first " foresters " (rulers of woods and waves *) in
lished at
* " Davantage, ilz se nommoyent Forestiers, non que leur charge et governement fust seulemeut sur la terre, qui estoit lors occupee et empeschee de la forest Charbonniere, mais la garde de la mer leur estoit aussi commise. Convient ici entendre, que ce terme,
—
•
61
FORS CLAVIGERA. Flanders, where the waves once needed, and received,
much
and of the Counts of Flanders who succeeded them, this one, Robert, surnamed " of Jerusalem," was the eleventh, and began to reign in 1077, being " a virtuous, prudent, and brave prince," who, having first taken good order in his money affairs, and ended some unjust claims his predecessors had made on church property; and established a perpetual chancellorship, and legal superintendence over his methods of revenue; took the cross against the infidels, and got the name, in Syria, for his prowess, of the " Son of St. George." So he stands, leaning on his long sword a man desirous of setting the world to rights, if it might be; but not knowing the way of it, nor recognizing that the steel with which it can be done, must take another shape than that double-edged ruling;
of
whom
—
one.
And from and
the eleventh century to this dull nineteenth, less
men have known their weapon. So we from beating sword into plowshare, that now sword is set to undo the plow's work when it has been less the rulers of
far, yet, are
the
done and at this hour the ghastliest ruin of all that molder from the fire, pierced through black rents by the unnatural sunlight above the ashamed streets of Paris, is the long, skeleton, and roofless hollow of the " Grenier d'Abondance." Such Agriculture have we contrived here, in Europe, and plowing of new furrows for graves. Will you hear how Agriculture is now contrived in America? where, since you spend your time here in burning corn, you must send to buy ;
—
it;
trusting, however,
still
to
your serviceable friend the
Fire, as here to consume, so there, to sow and reap, for
I have just received a letter which I trust the writer will not blame me
repairing of consumption.
from
California,
for printing:
forest, en vieil bas
aux
Aleman, convenoit aussi bien aux eaux comme
—
boys, ainsi qu'il est narre es memoires de Jean du Tillet." " Les Genealogies des Forestiers et Comtes de Flandres," Antp. 1598.
62
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
" SlE
March "
hand
'
You have it may
that
so strongly
urged
1st, 1872.
agriculture by the
'
know
he of some interest to you to
the
by machinery, in California. address you on this subject from
result thus far of agriculture
I
am
the
more willing
the fact that I State,
which
to
may have
to
do with a
new Colony
in this
will, I trust, adopt, as far as practicable, 3'our
ideas as to agriculture by the hand. Such thoughts as you might choose to give regarding the conduct of such a Colony here would be particularly acceptable; and should you deem it expedient to comply with this earnest and sincere request, the following facts may be of service to you in forming just conclusions. " have a genial climate
We
farms
('
ranches
')
and
a productive
frequently embrace
acres, while the rule
is,
many
soil.
Our
thousands of
scarcely ever less than hundreds of
by no means uncommon, and not a few of above 40,000 acres are known. To cultivate these extensive tracts much machinery is used, such as steam-plows, gang-plows, reaping, mowing, sowing, acres.
AVheat-fields of 5,000 acres are
and thrashing machines; and seemingly to the utter extermination of the spirit of home, and rural life. Gangs of laborers are hired during the emergency of harvesting; and they are left for the most part unhoused, and are also fed more like animals than men. Harvesting over, they are discharged, and thus are left near the beginning of our long and rainy winters to shift for themselves. Consequently the larger towns and cities are infested for months with idle men and boys. Housebreaking and highway robbery are of almost daily occurrence. As to the farmers themselves, they live in a dreamy, comfortless way, and are mostly without education or refinement. To show them how to live better and cleaner; to give them nobler aims than merely to raise wheat for the English market; to teach them the history of those five cities, and their girls to cook exquisitely,' etc., is '
surely a mission for earnest
men
in this country,
no
less
than
in England, to say nothing of the various accomplishmenta
rORS CLAVIGERA.
63
which yoii have alluded. I have caused to be published some of our farming districts many of the more important of your thoughts bearing on these subjects, and I trust with to
in
beneficial results. ''
I trust I shall not intrude on Mr. Ruskin's patience if I
now say something by way
of thankfulness for
received from your works.*
I
know not
what I have
certainly if this
If it does, it may in some small way will ever reach you. gladden you to know that I owe to your teaching almost all the good I have thus attained. large portion of my life has been spent at sea, and in roaming in Mexico, Central and
A
South America, and in the Malaysian and Pol^mesian IslI have been a sailor before and abaft the mast. Years ago I found on a remote island of the Pacific the Modern Painters '; after them the Seven Lamps of Architecture '; and finally your complete works. Ignorant and uncultivated, I began earnestly to follow certain of your ands.
'
'
I read most of the books
teachings.
you recommended,
simply because you seemed to be my teacher; and so in the course of these years I have come to believe in you about as faithfully as one
man
ing no fixed object in
something
ever believes in another. life
From
hav-
I have finally found that I have
and
Avill ultimately, I trust, have something something that has not, I think, hitherto been said if God ever permits me the necessary leisure from hard railway work, the most hopeless and depressing of all work I have hitherto done. " Your most thankful servant,
to do,
to say about sea-life,
—
With
the account given in the
first
part of this letter of the
you shall now by Marmontel of the peasant life, not
results of mechanical agriculture in California,
compare
a little sketch
* I accept the
blame of vanity in printing- the end of this letter, showing more perfectly the temper of its writer, I have answered privately; in case my letter may not reach should be grateful if he would send me again his addresjj.
for the sake of
whom him, I
' :
:
64
FOES CLAVIGERA.
own province. It is given, altering only of the river, in the " Contes Moreaux," in the professing to continue that of Moliere's " Misan-
mechanical, in his the
name
story,
thrope " " Alceste, discontented as you know, both with his mistress
and with
his judges, decided
retired very far
from Paris
to the
flying from men, and banks of the Vologne this
upon
;
which the shells inclose pearl, is yet more precious by* the fertility which it causes to spring on its borders the valley that it waters is one beautiful meadow. On one side of it rise smiling hills, scattered all over with woods and villages, on the other extends a vast level of fields covered with corn. It was there that Alceste went to live, forgotten by all, free from cares, and from irksome duties; entirely his o^vn, and finally delivered from the odious spectacle of the world, he breathed freely, and praised heaven for having broken all river, in
;
A little study, much exercise, pleasures not vivid,
his chains.
but untroubled
him from
;
in a word, a life peacefully active, preserved
the ennui of solitude: he desired nothing,
One
gretted nothing.
of the pleasures of his retreat
the cultivated and fertile ground all about
thrope
who
re-
see
him nourishing
him happy.
a peasantry, which appeared to
and was to
For a misan-
has become so by his virtue, only thinks that he
hates men, because he loves them.
Alceste felt a strange
softening of the heart mingled with joy at the sight of his
by the labor of their hand. Those people,' said he, are very happy to be still half savage. They would soon be corrupted if they were more civilized.' As he was walking in the country, he chanced upon a laborer who was plowing, and singing as he plowed. God have a care of you, my good man said he you are very gay ? I mostly am,' replied the peasant. I am happy to hear it that proves that you are content with your condition.' Until now, I have good cause to be.' Are you married ? Yes, thank heaven.' Have you any children? I I had five. fellow-creatures rich
'
'
'
!
'
;
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
have
lost one,
but that
'
is
a mischief that
'
'
may
be mended.'
—
'
65
FOES CLAVIGERA.
Is your wife young? She is twenty- five years old.' ? She is, for me, but she is better than pretty, she is good.' And you love her ? Who If 1 love her would not love her I wonder ? And she loves you also, without doubt.' Oh for that matter, with all her heart just the same as before marriage.' Then you loved each Without that, should we have let other before marriage ? And your children are they ourselves be caught ? ^
Is
'
'
she pretty
'
'
'
'
'
'
!
'
'
!
'
!
'
'
'
'
healthy
only
?
'
'
Ah
!
it's
a pleasure to see
my two girls,
and for
ing
be ill-luck indeed
It'll
youngest
is
strong.
Would you
if
believe
it
him from
little
The
—he —
fellow will be stout and
he's
the breast.'
when
beats his sisters
? !
'
always afraid of anyAll that is, then, very
—
Happy I should think so you should see the You would there is when I come back from my work! I don't know which to they hadn't seen me for a year.
happy
?
arms
'
'
attend to
!
first.
—my boy
My
wife
is
himself
and
kiss all at once
off the
bid
—
round
my
gets hold of
roll
it,
eldest is
never was anything so charm-
sucking yet, but the
body's taking
say
The
!
they don't get husbands.
they want to kiss their mother
joy
them
years old, and he's already a great deal cleverer than
five
his father, !
—
'
to get to
me
indeed/ said Alceste.
neck
— —and
legs
for all that '
my
—^my
little I,
it,
is
my
like to
I laugh, and cry,
makes me cry
You know
girls in
Jeannot
sir,
' !
'I believe
I suppose, for
you are doubtless a father?' *I have not that happiness.' There's nothing in the world So much the worse for you Very And how do you live ? worth having, but that.' well we have excellent bread, good milk, and the fruit of our orchard. My wife, with a little bacon, makes a cabbage soup Then we have eggs from that the King would be glad to eat the poultry-yard and on Sunday we have a feast, and drink Yes, but when the year is bad ? a little cup of wine.' expects the year to be bad, sometimes, and one Well, one Then saved from the good years.' lives on what one has rain, and and the the cold there's the rigor of the weather Well one gets used to that you have to bear.' the heat it; and if you only knew the pleasure that one has in the '
!
'
'
'
:
!
;
'
'
'
—
—
'
!
— FORS CLAVIGEEA.
66
summer
evening, in getting the cool breeze after a da v of in winter,
warming
or,
;
one's hands at the blaze of a good fagot,
between one's wife and children and then one snps with good appetite, and one goes to bed and think jou, that one rememSometimes my wife says to me, bers the bad weather? " My good man, do you hear the wind and the storm ? Ah, '' " But I'm not in the fields, suppose you were in the fields ? :
;
I'm here," I say the taxes
work
to
—
in
'
people in
Well
but
!
—and well we should and judges our be us what we with us — they do the them what they — and every
We
'
'
many
sir! there are
don't live as content as we.'
pay them merrily
country can't
all the
come
?
Ah,
to her.
who
the fine world,
can't
squires
noble,
for
fields
business, as can't we do for one says, has its pains.' WJiat equity! said the misanthrope there, in two words, is all the economy of primitive society. Ah, ISTature there is nothing just but thee and the healthiest reason is in thy untaught simplicity. But, in paying the taxes so willingly, don't you run some risk of getting more put on you ? We used to be afraid of that but, thank
can't
'
'
'
;
!
!
'
'
;
God, the lord of the place has relieved us from this anxiety. He plays the part of our good king to us. He imposes and receives himself, and, in case of need,
He
is as
who
this
is
gallant
knowTi enough, in his chateau ^
And
him.'
'
'
'
'
?
'
'
the country respects him.'
all
?
the rest
company ? then,
m*kes advances for
we were his owti children.' man ? The Viscount Laval
careful of us as if
'
He
us.
And
—he
Does he
is
live
passes eight months of the year there.'
'At Paris, I
The
'
'
believe.'
'
Does he
towTispeople of Bruyeres, and
see
any
now and
some of our old men go to taste his soup and chat Avith And from Paris does he bring nobody ? ISTobody '
'
but his daughter.'
'
He
is
much
in the right.
'
And how
—
does
'In judging between us in making quarrels marrying up our in our children in maintaining peace in our families in helping them when the times are bad.' You must take me to see his village,' said Alceste, * that must be interesting.' " He was surprised to find the roads, even the cross-roads,
he employ himself
—
'
?
'
—
—
—
—
67
FOES CLAVIGERA.
bordered with hedges, and kept with care; but, coming on a party of
men
occupied in mending them,
Forced
Ah
'
!
'
he said,
'
so
answered an old man who presided over the work. We know nothing of that here, sir all these men are paid, we constrain nobody only, if there comes to the village a vagrant, or a do-nothing, they send him to me, and if he wants bread he can gain it or, he you've got forced labor here
?
'
'
^
?
'
;
;
;
must go to seek happy police ?
it
'
all
of us.'
'
elsewhere.' '
Our good
And where
the commonalty
;
and, as
And who
'
lord
has established this
— our father—the father
do the funds come from it
imposes the tax on
?
'
'
to
From
itself, it
does
not happen here, as too often elsewhere, that the rich are ex-
empted "
at the
expense of the poor.'
The esteem
country.
'
How
moment for the who governed all this little
of Alceste increased every
wise and benevolent master
powerful would a king be
!
'
he said to him-
and how happy a state if all the great proprietors followed the example of this one but Paris absorbs both property and men, it robs all, and swallows up everything.' " The first glance at the village showed him the image of confidence and comfort. He entered a building which had the appearance of a public edifice, and found there a crowd of children, women, and old men occupied in useful labor; Childidleness was only permitted to the extremely feeble. self
'
!
;
hood, almost at
its
first steps
habit and the taste for
tomb,
still
exercised
out of the cradle, caught the
work and old
its
;
age, at the borders of the
trembling hands
the earth rests brought every vigorous
—and then
the lathe, the saw,
;
which workshops
the season in
arm
to the
and the hatchet gave new value
to products of nature. "'
'
I
am
not surprised,' said Alceste,
'
that this people is
pure from vice, and relieved from discontent. It is laborious, and occupied without ceasing.' He asked how the workshop Our good lord,' was the reply, adhad been established. vanced the first funds for it. It was a very little place at first, and all that was done was at his expense, at his risk, and to his profit; but, once convinced that there was solid advan'
'
68
FOES CLAVIGERA.
\\s, and now and every year he gives to the village the instruments of some one of our arts. It is the present that he makes at the first wedding which is celebrated in the
tage to be gained, he yielded the enterprise to interferes only to protect
year.'
;
"
Thus wrote, and
Frenchman of the old school, beBut worldly-wise Paris went on her
taught, a
fore the Revolution.
absorbing property and men and has attained, this May, what means and manner of festival you see in
own way first
of
;
her Grenier d'Abondance.
Glance back now to
my
proposal for the keeping of the
May, in the letter on " Rose Gardens " in Time and Tide, and discern which state is best for you ^modern " civilifirst
of
—
zation," or Marmontel's rusticity, and mine.
Ever faithfully yours,
JOHK RUSKIK
LETTER
XVIII.
—
My
Pisa, 29/ft April, 1872. Feiends, You would pity me, if von knew how seldom I see a newspaper, just now; but I chanced on one yesterday, and found that all the world was astir about the marriage of the Marquis of B. and that the Pope had sent him, on that oc;
casion, a telegraphic blessing of superfine quality.
I
wonder what the Marquis of B. has done
to deserve to
be
blessed to that special extent, and whether a little mild beatitude, sent here to Pisa,
might not have been better spent?
For, indeed, before getting hold of the papers, I had been greatly troubled, while drawing the east end of the Duomo, by three fellows who were leaning against the Leaning Tower, and expectorating loudly and copiously, at intervals of half a minute each, over the white marble base of it, which they
evidently conceived to have been constructed only to be spit
They were
upon.
main
all
in rags, and obviously proposed to re-
what leisure of life There was a boy with them, in rags also, and not less expectorant but having some remains of human activity in him still, being not more than twelve years old and he was even a little interested in my brushes and colors, but rewarded himself, after the effort of some attention to these, by revolving slowly round the iron railing in This operation at last front of me like a pensive squirrel. disturbed me so much, that I asked him if there were no other in rags all their days, and pass
they could obtain, in spitting.
;
;
railings in Pisa he could turn upside down over, but these? " Sono cascato, Signor " " I tumbled over them, please,
—
Sir," said he, apologetically, with infinite satisfaction in his
black eyes.
Now
it
seemed
to
me
that these three moist-throated 69
men
70
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
and the squirreline boy stood mucli more in need of a paternal Marquis of B. a blessing, of course, with as much of the bloom off it as would make it consistent with the jjosition in which Providence had placed them but enougli, in its moderate way, to bring the good out of them instead of the evil. For there was all manner of good in them, deep and pure yet forever to be dormant and all manner of evil, shallow and superficial, yet forever to be active and practical, as matters stood that day, under the Leaning Tower.
—
blessing than the
;
—
;
Lucca, 1th May. hard, and looking ing,
—Eight days
my
caref ulest
;
gone, and I've been working
and seem
to
have done noth-
nor begun to see these places, though I've known them
and though Mr. Murray's Guide says one may and its Ducal Palace and Piazza, the Cathedral,
thirty years, see Lucca,
the Baptistery, nine churches, and the
Poman
amphitheater,
and take a drive round the ramparts, in the time between the stopping of one train and the starting of the next. I wonder how much time Mr. Murray would allow for the view I had to-day, from the tower of the Cathedral, up the valley called of " jS^ievole,"
—now one tufted
springing leaves, far as the eye can reach.
thing of the produce of the
hills that
softness of fresh
You know
some-
bound it, and perhaps Fine Lucca Oil " often
own: at least, one used to see enough in the grocers' windows (petroleum has, I suppose, now taken its place), and the staple of Spitalfields was, I believe, first woven with Lucca thread. The actual manner of production of these good things is thus The Val di I^ievole is some five miles wide by thirty long, and is simply one field of corn or rich grass-land, undivided by hedges the corn two feet high, and more, to-day. Quite Lord Derby's style of agriculture, you think? No; not quite. Undivided by hedges, the fields are yet meshed across and across hy an intricate network of posts and chains. The posts are maple-trees, and the chains, garlands of vine. The meshes of this net each inclose two or three acres of the corn-land, with a row of mulberry-trees up the middle of it. of
''
its
:
—
;
71
FOES CLAVIGERA.
silk. There are jjoppies, and bright ones too, about the banks and roadsides; but the corn of Val di Nievole is too proud to grow with poppies, and is set with wild gladiolus, in-
for
stead, deep violet.
of the
field,
Here and
there a
crested with stone-pine,
mound
of crag rises out
and studded
the large stars of the white rock-cistus.
all
over with
Quiet streams,
filled
with close crowds of the golden waterflag, wind beside meadows painted with purple orchis. On each side of the great plain is a wilderness of hills, veiled at their feet with a gray cloud of olive wood; above, sweet with glades of chestnut; peaks of more distant blue, still, to-day, embroidered with snow, are rather to be thought of as vast precious stones
than mountains, for been
all
the state of the world's palaces has
he^^^l out of their marble.
was looking over
from under the rim of a large upon it, and some lovely thin-edged laurel leaves, and an inscription sayI
all this
beautifully embossed, with a St. Sebastian
bell,
ing that the people should be
filled
with the fat of the land,
if
The bell-founder
of
they listened to the voice of the Lord.
course meant, by the voice of the Lord, the sound of his bell
;
and
all
own
over the plain, one could see towers rising above
the vines voiced in the same manner.
Also
much trumpeting
and fiddling goes on below, to help the bells, on holy days; and, assuredly, here is fat enough of land to be filled with, if listening to these scrapings and tinklings were indeed the way to be filled.
laurel leaves on the bell were so finely hammered that bound to have a ladder set against the lip of it, that I might examine them more closely and the sacristan and bellringer were so interested in this proceeding that they got up, themselves, on the cross-beams, and sat like two jackdaws, looking on, one on each side for which expression of sympathy I was deeply grateful, and offered the bell-ringer, on But they were the spot, two bank-notes for tenpence each. so rotten with age, and so brittle and black with tobacco, that, having unadvisedly folded them up small in my purse, the patches on their backs had run their corners through them,
The
I
felt
;
;
— 72
FOES CLAVIGEKA.
and they came out tattered
like so
much
ringer looked at them hopelessly, and gave
tinder.
The
me them
back.
bell-
I
promised him some better patched ones, and folded the remnants of tinder up carefully, to be kept at Coniston, (where we have still a tenpence-worth or so of copper, though no olive oil) for specimens of the currency of the
—
new Kingdom
of Italy.
Such are the monuments of financial art, attained by a nation which has lived in the fattest of lands for at least three thousand years, and for the last twelve hundred of them has had at least some measure of Christian benediction, with help from bell, book, candle, and, recently, even from gas. Yet you must not despise the benediction, though it has not provided them with clean bank-jiotes. The peasant race, at least, of the Val di JSTievole are not unblessed if honesty, kindness, food sufficient for them, and peace of heart, can anywise make up for poverty in current coin. Only the evening before last, I was up among the hills to the south of Lucca, close ;
to the
remains of the country-house of Castruccio Castracani,
who was Lord
Val 1328
of the
besides, in the year
and much good land (and whose sword, you perhaps
di Nievole, ;
remember, was presented to the King of Sardinia, now King of Italy, when first he visited the Lucchese after driving out the old Duke of Tuscany; and Mrs. Browning wrote a poem upon the presentation;) a Neapolitan Duchess has got his country-house now, and has restored it to her taste. Well, I was up among the hills, that way, in places where no English, nor Neapolitans either, ever dream of going, being altogether lovely and at rest, and the country life in them unchanged; and I had several friends with me, and among them one of the young girls, who were at Furness Abbey last year, and, scrambling about
among
Florentine work.
the vines, she lost a pretty
Luckily, she had
made
little
cross of
acquaintance, only
the day before, with the peasant mistress of a cottage close by,
and with her two youngest children, Adam and Eve. Eve was still tied up tight in swaddling clothes, down to the toes, and carried about as a bundle but Adam was old enough to ;
;
73
FORS CLAVIGERA.
run about; and found the
cross,
and his mother gave
it
us
back next day.
Not
human
unblessed, such a people, though with some
care and kindness you might bless
them a
common
little
more.
If only you would not curse them; but the curse of your
modern
life
is
fatally
near,
and only for a few years driving their tawny kine,
more, perhaps, they will be seen
— —
or with their sheep following them,
to pass, like pictures in
enchanted motion, among their glades of vine.
R 07716, inn,
—
12th May. I am writing at the window of a new whence I have a view of a large green gas-lamp, and of a
pond, in rustic rock-work, with four large black ducks in
it
Pantheon; sundry ruined walls; tiled roofs innumerable; and a palace about a quarter of a mile long, and the height, as near as I can guess, of Folkestone cliffs under the ISTew Parade all which I see to advantage over a balustrade veneered with an inch of marble over four inches of cheap stone, carried by balusters of cast-iron, painted and sanded, but with the rust coming through, this being the proper modern recipe in Italy for balustrades which may meet the increasing demand of travelers for splendor of abode. (By the way, I see I can get a pretty little long vignette view of the roof of the Pantheon, and some neighboring churches, through a chink between the veneering and the freestone.) Standing in this balcony, I am within three hundred yards of the gTeater Church of St. Mary, from which Castruccio Castracani walked to St. Peter's on 17th January, 1328, carrying the sword of the German Empire, with which he was appointed to gird its Emperor, on his taking possession of Rome, by Castruccio's help, in spite of the Pope. The Lord of the Val di Nievole wore a dress of superb damask silk, doubtless the best that the worms of Lucca mulberry -trees could spin; and across his breast an embroidered scroll, inscribed, " He is what God made him," and across his shoulders, behind, another scroll, inscribed, " And he shall be what God will make." also of the top of the
;
—
74
FOES CLAVIGERxV.
On the 3rd of August, that same year, he recovered Pistoja from the Florentines, and rode home to his o\\ti Lucca in triumph, being then the greatest war-captain in Europe, and Lord of Pisa, Pistoja, Lucca, half the coast of Genoa, and three hundred fortified castles in the Apennines on the third " Crushed beof September he lay dead in Lucca, of fever. fore the moth " as the silkworms also, who were boiled before even they became so much as moths to make his embroidered coat for him. And, humanly speaking, because he had worked too hard in the trenches of Pistoja, in the dog-days, with his armor on, and with his own hands on the mattock, ;
;
good knight he was. sword was no gift for the King of Italy, if the Lucchese had thought better of it. Por those three hundred castles of his were all Robber-castles, and he, in fact, only the chief captain of the three hundred thieves who lived in them. In the beginning of his career these " towers of the Lunigiana belonged to gentlemen who had made brigandage in the mountains, or piracy on the sea, the sole occupation of their youth. Castruccio united them round him, and called to his little court all the exiles and adventurers who were wandering from town to to^\^l, in search of war or pleasures."* And, indeed, to Professors of Art, the Apennine between like the
IsTevertheless, his
Lucca and Pistoja
is
singularly delightful to this day, because
of the ruins of these robber-castles on every mound, and of the pretty monasteries and arcades of cloister beside them.
how
little
we
esque objects
!
The homes of Baron and
established on the
hills.
ant driving his oxen. ant,
But
usually estimate the real relation of these picturClerk, side by side,
Underneath, in the plain, the peasThe Baron lives by robbing the peas-
and the Clerk by blessing the Baron.
Blessing and absolving, though the Barons of grandest type
without absolution. Old StrawMattress of Evilstone,t at ninety-six, sent his son from beside
could
live,
and resolutely
die,
* SiSMONDi: "History of Italian Eepublics," Vol. " Saccone of Pietra-mala." f
III.
Chap.
ii.
75
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
his death-mattress to attack the castle of the Bishop of Arezzo, off his guard, news having gone abroad that the gray-haired Knight of Evilstone could sit his But, usually, the absolution was felt to be horse no more. needful towards the end of life and if one thinks of it, the
thinking the Bishop woukl be
;
on the hill-tops may be shortly described and Pardoner, or Pardonere, ChauPillager the of those as in spelling, and the best general one classical being word cer's great Evangelical and Papal sects. the two for the clergy of Only a year or two ago, close to the Crystal Palace, I heard the announce from his pulpit that there was no Rev. Mr. thief, nor devourer of widows' houses, nor any manner of sinner, in his congregation that day, who might not leave the church an entirely pardoned and entirely respectable person, was about to if he would only believe what the Rev. Mr.
two kinds of
edifices
announce
him.
to
Strange, too,
how
these two great pardoning religions agree
in the accompaniment of physical
filth.
I have never been
hindered from drawing street subjects by pure
—
human
stench,
but in two cities, Edinburgh and Rome. There are some things, however, which Edinburgh and PenLondon pardon, nowadays, which Rome would not. itent thieves, by all means, but not impenitent; still less impenitent peculators.
Have patience a little, for I must tell you one or two things more about Lucca: they are all connected with the history of Florence, which is to be one of the five cities you are to be able to give account of and, by the way, remember at once, ;
that her florin in the 14th century Avas of such pure gold that when in Chaucer's " Pardonere's Tale " Death puts himself it is into a heap of " floreines and bright." He has chosen another form at Lucca and when I had folded up my two bits of refuse tinder, I walked into the Cathedral to look at the golden lamp which hangs betwenty-four pounds of pure gold in fore the Sacred Face the lamp: Face of wood: the oath of kings, since William Rufus' days carved eighteen hundred years ago, if one would
into the daintiest dress he can, f aire
;
—
;
;
FORS CLAVIGEEA.
76 believe,
and very
full of
pardon
to faithful
Lucchese
yet, to
;
some, helpless.
There are, I suppose, no educated persons in Italy, and few in England, who do not profess to admire Dante; and, perhaps, out of every hundred of these admirers, three or four
may
have read the bit about Francesca di Rimini, the death
of IJgolino, and the description of the Venetian Arsenal.
But
we should
rarely
even of these honestly studious three or four find one,
You
who knew why
shall hear, if
you
the Venetian Arsenal
was described.
will.
" As, in the Venetian Arsenal, the pitch boils in the winter time, wherewith to calk their rotten ships .... so, not by fire, but divine art, a thick pitch boiled there, beneath, which had plastered itself all up over the banks on either side.
But
in
it
I could see nothing, except
ing raised, which from time to time
tlie
bubbles that
made
it all
its boil-
up over
swell
whole surface, and presently fell back again depressed. And as I looked at it fixedly, and wondered, my guide drew
its
And when I turned, back hastily, saying, Look, look I saw behind us, a black devil come running along the rocks. Ah, how wild his face ah, how bitter his action as he came
me
'
'
!
!
with his wings wide, light upon his feet On his shoulder he bore a sinner, gTasped by both haunches; and when he Here's came to the bridge foot, he cried down into the pit an ancient from Lucca put him under, that I may fetch more, !
'
:
;
for the laud " ISTo " into "
back,
is
full of such
Yes "
;
—never mastiff
there, for
And
quickly.'
money, they make
he cast him in and turned
fiercer after his prey.
The thrown
sin-
ner plunged in the pitch, and curled himself up but the devils from under the bridge cried out, There's no holy face here ;
'
here one swims
otherwise than in the Serchio.'
caught him with their hooks and pulled him the
meat in broth crying,
they
'
;
may
filch in secret, if
And
People play here hidden they can.'
they
under, as cooks do ;
so that
"
Doubtless, you consider all this extremely absurd, and are
of opinion that such things are not likely to happen in the
next world.
Perhaps not nor ;
is it
clear that
Dante believed
77
rORS CLAVIGEBA.
you would tell me what In the meantime, please to observe Dante's figurative meaning, which is by no means Every one of his scenes has symbolic purpose, down absurd. This lake of pitch is money, which, in our to the least detail.
they would but I you think is likely ;
sliould be glad if
to
happen
there.
owTi vulgar English phrase, " sticks to people's fingers
;
"
it
and plasters its margin all over, because tlie mind of a man bent on dishonest gain makes everything within its reach dirty; it bubbles up and down, because underhand gains nearly always involve alternate excitement and depression; and it is haunted by the most cruel and indecent of all the devils, because there is nothing so mean, and nothing so cruel, but a peculator will do it. So you may read every line figuratively, if you choose: all that I want is, that you should be acquainted with the opinions of Dante concerning peculation. Eor with the history of the five cities, I Avish you to know also the opinions, on all subjects personally interesting to you, of five people who lived in them namely, of Plato, Virgil, Dante, Victor Carpaccio (whose opinions I must gather for you from his paintings, for painting is the way Venetians write), and Shakespeare. If, after knowing these five men's opinions on practical matters (these five, as you will find, being all of the same mind), you prefer to hold Mr. J. S. Mill's and Mr. Fawcett's And indeed I may as well end opinions, you are welcome. this by at once examining some of Mr. Fawcett's statements on the subject of Interest, that being one of our chief modern modes of peculation; but before we put aside Dante for today, just note farther this, that while he has sharp punishment for thieves, forgers, and peculators, the thieves being changed into serpents, the forgers covered with leprosy, and he has no punishment for bad the peculators boiled in pitch, workmen no Tuscan mind at that day being able to conceive such a ghastly sin as a man's doing bad work willfully and, indeed, I think the Tuscan mind, and in some degree the Piedmontese, retain some vestige of this old temper; for though, not a fortnight since (on 3rd May), the cross of clogs
;
—
—
;
;
—
:
FOES CLAVIGEKA.
V8
marble
in the arcli-spandrel next the east
Thorn
of the
at
I was drawing
Pisa was dashed for
it
my
end of the Chapel
to pieces before
class in heraldry at
my
eyes, as
Oxford, by a
stone-mason, that his master might be paid for making a
new
no doubt the new one will be as honestly like the master and man can make it and Mr. Murray's Guide old as will call it a judicious restoration. So also, though here, the new Govermnent is digging through the earliest rampart of Rome {agger of Servius Tullius), to build a new Finance Office, which will doubtless issue tenpenny notes in Latin, with the dignity of denarii (the " pence " of your New Testament), I have every reason to suppose the new Finance Office will be substantially built, and creditable to its masons (the veneering and cast-iron work being, I believe, done mostly one, I have
;
;
at the instigation of British building companies).
me
But
it
coming to Rome for quite other reasons, I should be permitted by the Third Fors to see the agger of Tullius cut through, for the site of a Finance Office, and his Mons Justitise (Mount of Justice), presumably the most venerable piece of earth in Italy, carted away, to make room for a railroad-station of Piccola Velocita. For Servius Tullius was the first king who stamped money with the figures of animals, and introduced a word among the Romans with the sound of which Englishmen are also now acquainted, seems strange
" pecunia."
to
that,
Moreover,
in speaking of this very agger
it is
of Tullius that Livy explains in what reverence the Ro-
mans held the space between the outer and inner walls of their cities, which modern Italy delights to turn into a Boulevard.
Xow At
then, for Mr. Fawcett: the 146th page of the edition of his "
viously quoted, you will find
money
it
Manual "
pre-
stated that the interest of
consists of three distinct parts 1.
Reward
2.
Compensation for the risk of
3.
Wages
for abstinence. loss.
for the labor of superintendence.
I will reverse this order in examining the statements; for
;
79
FOES CLAVIGERA. the only real question
3.
By
Wages
as to the
is
once clear the other two
first,
away from
and we had better
at
it.
for the labor of superintendence.
giving the capitalist wages at
all,
we put him
at
once
which in my iJs^ovember letter I is partly right; but, by Mr. Fawcett's definition, showed you and in the broad results of business, he is not a laborer. So far as he is one, of course, like any other, he is to be paid for There is no question but that the partner who his work. superintends any business should be paid for superintendence but the question before us is only respecting payment for doing nothing. I have, for instance, at this moment £15,000 of Bank Stock, and receive £1,200 odd, a year, from the Bank, but I have never received the slightest intimation from into the class of laborers,
the directors that they wished for
intendence of that establishment;
But even
my
—
assistance in the super-
(more shame for them.)
where the partners are active, it does not follow that the one who has most money in the business is either it is indeed probfittest to superintend it, or likely to do so in cases
;
able that a to
man who
make more; and
has
it is
made money already
will
know how
necessary to attach some importance
but your business is to choose and pay your superintendent for his sense, and not for his money. Which is exactly what Mr. Carlyle has been telling you for some time and both he and all his disciples entirely approve of interest, if you are indeed prepared to define that term as payment for the exercise of common sense spent in to property as the sign of sense
:
;
the service of the person awhile, however,
what
is to
who pays
for
it.
be said, as hinted in
I reserve yet
my first letter,
about the sale of ideas. 2. Compensation for riskDoes Mr. Fawcett mean by compensation for risk, protecEvery business intion from it, or reward for running it ? quantity risk, of which is properly covered volves a certain by every prudent merchant, but he does not expect to make a profit out of his risks, nor calculate on a percentage on his insurance. If he prefer not to insure, does Professor Faw-
;
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
80 cett
mean
anxiety ;
that his customers ought to compensate
and that while the definition of the
est is extra
payment for prudence, the
part of interest
is
interest for
money
is
for his
definition of the second
extra pajanent for twiprudence
Professor Fawcett mean, what
may
first
him
part of inter-
?
indeed often the
Or, does fact, that
represents such reward for risk as people
get across the green cloth at
Homburg
cause so far as what used to be business
is,
Monaco ? Bemodern political
or
in
economy, gambling, Professor Fawcett will please to observe that what one gamester gains another loses. You cannot get anything out of K^ature, or from God, by gambling; only out of your neighbor and to the quantity of interest of money
—
:
thus gained, you are mathematically to oj)pose a precisely
equal
cZis-interest
of somebody else's money.
These second and third reasons for interest then, assigned by Professor Fawcett, have evidently nothing whatever to do with the question. "What I want to know is, why the Bank of England is paying me £1,200 a year. It certainly does not pay me for superintendence. And so far from receiving
my
dividend as compensation for
the bank because I thought it in.
it
risk, I
put
my money
into
exactly the safest place to put
But nobody can be more anxious than I
proper that I should have £1,200 a year.
to find it
Finding two of
Mr. Fawcett's reasons fail me utterly, I cling with tenacity to the third, and hope the best from it. The third, or first, and now too sorrowfully the last of
—
—
the Professor's reasons, is this, that my £1,200 are given me as " the reward of abstinence." It strikes me, upon this, that if I had not my £15,000 of Bank Stock I should be a good deal more abstinent than I am, and that nobody would then talk of rewarding me for it. It might be possible to find even cases of very prolonged and painful abstinence, for which no reward has yet been adjudged by less abstinent England. Abstinence may, indeed, have its reward, nevertheless but not by increase of what we abstain from, unless there be a law of growth for it, unconnected with our abstinence. "You cannot have your cake and eat it." Of course not;
81
FORS CLAVIGEEA.
and if you don't eat it, you have your cake but not a cake Imagine the complex trial of schoolboy minds, and a half if the law of nature about cakes were, that if you ate none of your cake to-day, you would have ever so much bigger a cake to-morrow which is Mr. Fawcett's notion of the law of nature about money and, alas, many a man's beside, it being no law of nature whatever, but absolutely contrary to all her laws, and not to be enacted by the whole force of united man;
!
!
—
—
;
kind.
Not
a cake and a quarter to-morrow, dunce, however ab-
stinent
get at
—only
you are
it
the cake
Interest, then, is not,
not reward for risk
What is it? One of two in
my
you have,
—
the mice don't
if
in the night.
next
it is
;
things
letter.
appears,
it
payment
for labor;
it is
not reward for abstinence.
it is
;
—
taxation, or usury.
Meantime
believe
Of which
me
Faithfully yours, J.
RUSKIN.
!
LETTER XIX.
My
Verona,
Fkiends
What ments
an age of progress
Xo wonder you put some
!
it is,
18th June, 1872.
by help of advertiseIn
faith in them, friends.
summer
one's work is necessarily much before breakfast; so, coming home tired to-day, I order a steak, with which is served to me a bottle of " Moutarde Diaphane," from Bor-
deaux.
What
a beautiful arrangement have
we
here
!
Fancy the
appropriate mixture of manufactures of cold and hot at
—
and diaphanous mustard Then the quanand proclamation necessary to make people in Verona understand that diaphanous mustard is desirable, and may be had at Bordeaux. Fancy, then, the packing, and peeping into the packages, and porterages, and percentages on porterages and the engineering, and the tunneling, and the bridge-building, and the steam whistling, and the grinding of iron, and raising of dust in the Limousin (Marmontel's country), and in Burgundy, and in Savoy, and under the Mont Cenis, and in Piedmont, and in Lombardy, and at last
Bordeaux
claret
!
tity of printing
;
over the field of Solferino, to fetch
me my bottle
of diaphanous
mustard
And
paying the railway officers all and the custom-house officers at the frontier, and the original expenses of advertisement, and the profits of its proprietors, my diaphanous mustard paid a dividend to somebody or other, all the way here I wonder it is not more diaphanous by this time An age of progress, indeed, in which the founding of my poor St. George's Company, growing its own mustard, and desiring no dividends, may well seem difficult. I have scarcely had courage yet to insist on that second particular, but will try to find it, on this Waterloo day. to think that, besides
along the
line^
!
!
82
;
83
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
to be a company for AlmsFor I still believe in Almsmost people nowadays do not, but think the
Observe, then, once for
all, it is
giving, not for dividend-getting. giving, tliongli
only hopeful out of him. fulest
way
way I
of serving their neighbor
am
is
to
make
a profit
of opinion, on the contrary, that the hope-
of serving
him
is
to let
me, and I only ask the help of in that mind. Alms-giving, therefore,
is to
him make
peojDle
who
a profit out of
are at one with
be our function
;
me
yet alms only
For there are bedesmen and bedesmen, and
of a certain sort.
our charities must be as discriminate as possible. For instance, those two steely and stalwart horsemen, who sit, by the hour, under the two arches opposite Whitehall, from ten to four per diem, to receive the public alms. It is their singular and w^ell-bred manner of begging, indeed, to keep their helmets on their heads, and sit erect on horseback but one may, with slight effort of imagination, conceive the two helmets held in a reversed manner, each in the mouth of a well-bred and politely-behaving dog, Irish greyhound, or
the like
;
paws in air, with the brass mouth, plume downwards, for
sitting erect, it also,
in-
pan in
re-
stead of copper
its
ception of pence. " Ready to fight for us, they are, on occasional ISths of
June." Doubtless, and able-bodied;
—barons
of truest
I thought your idea of discriminate charity was to the sick than the able-bodied
?
affairs
to give rather
and that you have no hope
of interfering henceforward, except by
any foreign
make: but
money payments,
in
?
" But the Guards are necessary to keep order in the Park." The two breastYes, certainly, and farther than the Park. plated figures, glittering in transfixed attitudes on each side of the authoritative clock, are, indeed, very precious time-piece ISTo watchmaker's window in Paris or Ge-
ornamentation.
neva can show the
like.
Finished
to the toes of their boots,
—
of the British Constitution
!
little figures,
perfect
down
the enameled clasp on the girdle
—You think the
security of that
84
FOES CLAVIGERA.
depends on the freedom of your press, and elections
Do
but unclasp
metal of
it to
purity of your
tliis
They
piece of dainty jewelry
send the
;
the melting-pot, and see where your British Con-
stitution will be in a clock.
tlie
?
few turns of the hands of the
faultless
are precious statues, these, good friend
there to keep you and
me from
;
set
having too much of our o^vn
I joyfully and gTatefully drop my penny into each helmet as I pass by, though I expect no other dividend from that investment than good order, picturesque effect, and an
way; and
occasional flourish on the kettle-drum.
Likewise, from their contributed pence, the St. George's
Company must be good enough
to expect
order and picturesque effect of another of discriminate charity people's,
the giving to
is
dividend only in good
by no means,
Ten
make and from ;
like
;
notion
most other
unable-bodied paupers.
people are to be the ablest bodied I can find
I can
my
For
sort.
]\Iy
alms-
minded
the ablest
ten to four every day will be on duty.
to four, nine to three, or
time those two gilded figures
perhaps six sit
to
with their
twelve
;
—
tools idle
just the
on their
shoulders, (being fortunately without employment,) gilded, but not unstately,
alms-men
my
un-
shall stand with tools at
work, mattock or flail, ax or hammer. And I do not doubt but in little time, they will be able to thresh or hew rations for their day out of the ground, and that our help to them need only be in giving them that to hew them out of. AYhich, you observe, is just what I ask may be bought for them. " May be bought,' but by whom ? and for whom, how distributed, in whom vested ? " and much more you have to ask. As soon as I am sure you understand what needs to be done, I will satisfy you as to the way of doing it. But I will not let you know my plans, till you acknowledge my principles, which I have no expectation of your doing, yet '
awhile.
June 22nd.
" Bought for them "
—
for
whom
?
How
should I
know ?
:;;
85
FORS CLAVIGERA.
The
make, as chance may send them it. Surely it cannot matter the thing helps, so long as you are quite
best people I can find, or
the Third Fors
must look
to
much, to you, whom and quite content, that it won't help you? That last sentence is wonderfully awkward English, not to say ungrammatical but I must write such English as may come to-day, for there's something wrong with the Post, or the railroads, and I have no revise of what I wrote for you so that must be left for the at Florence, a fortnight since August Letter, and meanwhile I must write something quickly
sure,
;
;
in
its place,
or be too late for the
things I have to say to you,
it
first
matters
Of
of July. little
the
which comes
many first
indeed, I rather like the Third Fors to take the order of
them
into her hands, out of mine.
my
you you are content that it won't, But are you content so? For that is or can't, help you? condition essential of the whole business I will not the give work ? speak of it in terms of money are you content to Will you build a bit of wall, suppose to serve your neighbor, If so, you must be expecting no good of the wall yourself ? satisfied to build the wall for the man who wants it built you must not be resolved first to be sure that he is the best man in the village. Help anyone, anyhow you can so, in order, I repeat
whom
question.
It surely cannot matter to
the thing helps, so long as
—
—
—
;
:
the gTeatest possible
perhaps, you
may
number
get
some
charitable wall yourself
;
will be helped
shelter
;
nay, in the end,
from the wind under your it, nor lean on any
but do not expect
promise that you shall find your bread again, once cast away I can only say that of what I have chosen to cast fairly on the waters myself, I have never yet, after any number of days,
found a crumb. Keep what you want cast what you can, and expect nothing back, once lost, or once given. But for the actual detail of the way in which benefit might thus begin, and diffuse itself, here is an instance close at hand. Yesterday a thunder-shower broke over Verona in the early afternoon; and in a quarter of an hour the streets were an inch deep in water over large spaces, and had little rivers at ;
86
FORS CLAVIGERA.
each side of them. large river
—
All these
little
of Verona, writhing itself in strong rage said bridges,
—
lock-gate
The
little
from
all
away
rivers ran
into the
the Adige, which plunges do^\Ti under the bridges
is
a kind of lock-gate
on the ebbing rain of
rivers ran into
it,
upon
all
:
for Verona, with its the Adige, half open
the South Tjrolese Alps.
not out of the streets only, but
the hillsides; millions of sudden streams.
If you
look at Charles Dickens's letter about the rain in Glencoe, in
Mr. Forster's Life of him,
ii
will give
the kind of thing than I can, for
my
you a better idea of
forte is really not de-
economy. Two hours afterwards the sky was clear, the streets dry, the whole thunder-shower was scription, but political
in the Adige, ten miles below Verona,
way
to the sea, after swelling the
Po
making
veniently high already), and I went out with
sun set clear, as Tyrolese mountains. see tlie
The five
it
was
likely to do,
place fittest for such purpose
miles nearer the
hills,
the best of
a little (which
is
my
and
is
its
incon-
friends to
did, over the
a limestone crag about
rising out of the bed of a torrent,
which, as usual, I found a bed only; a little washing of the sand into moist masses here and there being the only evidence of the past rain.
Above or to look
it, ;
where the rocks were dry, we
sat
down,
to
draw,
but I was too tired to draw, and cannot any more
look at a sunset with comfort, because,
now
that I
am
fifty-
sun seems to me to set so horribly fast when one was young, it took its time but now it always drops like a shell, and before I can get any image of it, is gone, and another day with it.
three, the
;
;
So, instead of looking at the sun, T got thinking about the
Ugly enough it was cut by occasional inundation irregularly out of the thick masses of old Alpine shingle, nearly every stone of it the size of an And, by the way, the average size of shingle in ostrich-egg. given localities is worth your thinking about, geologically. All through this Veronese plain the stones are mostly of ostrich-egg size and shape some forty times as big as the pebbles
dry bed of the stream, just beneath.
;
;
87
FORS CLAVTGERA. of English shingle (say of the Addington Hills), and not
nor round
Xow
flat
no reason, that I know of, why large mountains should break into large pebbles, and small ones into small and indeed the consistent reduction of our own masses of flint, as big as a cauliflower, leaves and all, into the flattish rounded pebble, seldom wider across than half a crown, of the banks of Addington, is just ;
but resolvedly oval.
there
is
;
as strange a piece of systematic reduction as the grinding of
Monte Baldo
into sculpture of ostrich-eggs
processes, observe,
method of
:
—neither of the
depending upon questions of time, but of
fracture.
The evening drew
on,
ting hay on a terrace of
and two peasants who had been
meadow among
cut-
the rocks, left their
work, and came to look at the sketchers, and make out,
if
they
what we wanted on their ground. They did not speak to us, but bright light came into the face of one, evidently the master, on being spoken to, and excvise asked of him for our presence among his rocks, by which he courteously expressed himself as pleased, no less than (though this he did not say)
could,
puzzled.
Some
talk followed, of cold
one knew the Italian for (Veronese being
for, or
more
and
heat,
and anything
else
could understand the Veronese
like
Spanish than Italian)
;
and I
praised the country, as was just, or at least as I could, and
Whereupon he connnended and said the wine was good. " But the water ? " I asked, pointing to the dry river-bed. The water was bitter, he said, and little wholesome. " Why, then, have you let all that thunder-shower go down the Adige, " That was the way the showers came." three hours ago ? " " Yes, but not the way they ought to go." (We were standing by the side of a cleft in the limestone which ran down through ledge after ledge, from the top of the cliff, mostly barren but my farmer's man had led two of his gray oxen to make what they could of supper from the tufts "of grass on " If you had ever been the sides of it, half an hour before.) pains throwing of lialf a dozen yards of wall here, at the little said I should like to live there.
it
also,
;
in
measured terms
;
— POES CLAVIGEEA.
88
from rock
to rock,
you would have had,
moment, a
at this
pool of standing water as big as a mill-pond, kept out of that
thunder-shower, which very water, to-morrow morning, will
probably be washing away somebody's hay-stack into the Po."
The above was what
wanted
I
know
to say; but didn't
I got enough out to
Italian for hay-stack.
make
the
the farmer
understand what I meant. Yes, he said, that would be very good, but " la spesa ? " " The expense What would be the expense to you of gathering a few stones from this hillside ? And the idle min!
utes,
gathered out of a week,
neighbor or two joined in
if a
the work, could do all the building." the idea of neighbors joining in tirely abortive,
and untenable by
indeed, throughout Christendonr,
He
paused at this
work appearing
to
a rational being. it
at present
is,
him enWhich
—thanks
to
the beautiful instructions and orthodox catechisms impressed
by the two great sects of Evangelical and Papal pardoneres on the minds of their respective flocks (and on their lips also, early enough in the lives of the little bleating things.
—
" Che cosa e la fede
" I heard impetuously interrogated of
?
gown
a seven years' old one, by a conscientious lady in a black
and white cap, in
St.
Michael's at Lucca, and answered in a
minute long).
glib speech a quarter of a
thought
of,
jSTeither
have I ever
far less seriously proposed, such a monstrous thing
as that neighbors should help one another; but I have pro-
posed, and do solemnly
still
propose, that people
who have
got no neighbors, but are outcasts and Samaritans, as
it
were,
should put whatever twopenny charity they can afford into useful unity of action and that, caring personally for no one, " practically for everyone, they should undertake '' la spesa ;
of
work
that will
will both produce
pay no dividend on their twopences; but and pour oil and wine where they are most
wanted.
And
Company
in England, and (please the University of
a St. Anthony's bits of
I do solemnly propose that the St. George's
Company
barren ground as this farmer's at
the most of
them
Padua) buy such Verona, and make
in Italy, should positively
that agriculture
and engineerino;
can.
FORS CLAVIGEEA.
89 Venice, 23rd June.
My
letter will
be a day or two
late,
I fear, after
all
;
for I
can't write this morning, because of the accursed whistling
of the dirty steam-engine of the omnibus for Lido, waiting at the
quay of the Ducal Palace for the dirty population of
Venice, which
fisherman;
is
now
—cannot
sense enough to
row
neither fish nor flesh, neither noble nor
afford to be rowed, nor has strength nor itself
;
but smokes and spits up and
down
the piazzetta all day, and gets itself dragged by a screaming kettle to
more Yet I
for
Lido next morning,
to sea-bathe itself into capacity
tobacco.
am
grateful to the Third Fors for stopping
my
re-
was passing by Padua yesterday I chanced upon this fact, which I had forgotten (do me the grace to believe that I knew it twenty years ago), in Antonio Caccianiga's Vita Campestre.' * " The Venetian Repub" lic founded in Padua (wait a minute; for the pigeons are come to my window-sill and I must give them some breakfast) " founded in Padua, 17G5, the first chair of rural economy appointed in Italy, annexed to it a piece of ground destined for the study, and called Peter Ardouin, a Veronese botanist, vise; because just as I
'
—
— to
honor the school with his lectures."
Yes that ;
is all
very fine
;
nevertheless, I
am
not quite sure
1760 years previous, had not done pretty well without a chair, and on its own legs. For,
that rural economy, during the
indeed, since the beginning of those philosophies in the eighteenth century, the Venetian aristocracy has so ill prospered that instead of being any more able to give land at Padua, it
cannot so
own Ducal
much
as
keep a poor acre of it decent before its nor hinder this miserable mob,
Palace, in Venice
;
which has not brains enough to know so much as what o'clock it is, nor sense enough so much as to go aboard a boat without being whistled for like dogs, from choking the sweet sea air with pitch-black smoke, and filling it with entirely devilish noise, which no properly bred human being could endure within a quarter of a mile of them that so they may be suf-
—
* Second edition, Milan, 1870.
(Fratelli Keciiiadei),
p.
86,
FOES CLAVIGERA.
90 ficiently assisted
and persuaded
embark, for the washing
to
of themselves, at the Palace quay.
under politic and learned professors but the policy and learning became useless, through the same kind of mistake on both It is a strange pass for things to have reached,
aristocracies
The
sides.
;
professors of botany forgot that botany, in
original Greek,
pursued
it
meant a science of things
to be eaten;
only as a science of things to be named.
politic aristocracy forgot that their
essentially in their being
fit
—
in a
its
they
And
the
own "bestness" consisted figurative manner to be
—
and fancied rather that their superiority was of a titular character, and that the beauty and power of their order named. lay wholly in being fit to be I must go back to my wall-building, however, for a minute or two more, because you might probably think that my answer to the farmer's objection about expense, (even if I had possessed Italian enough to make it intelligible,) would have been an insufiicient one and that the operation of embanking hill sides so as to stay the rain-flow, is a work of enormous cost and difficulty. Indeed, a work productive of good so infinite as this would be, and contending for rule over the grandest forces of nature,
eaten
:
—
;
cannot be altogether cheap, nor altogether
facile.
But spend
annually one-tenth of the sum you now give to build embankments against imaginary enemies, in building embankments
whom you may easily make your real whether your budget does not become more
for the help of people friends,
—and
see
satisfactory, so; and, above
all,
learn a
little
hydraulics.
I wasted some good time, a year or two since, over a sensa-
which I thought would what the public were thinking about strikes than I could learn elsewhere. But it spent itself in dramatic effects with lucifer matches, and I learned nothing from it, and the public mislearned much. It ended, (no, I believe it tional novel in one of our magazines, tell
me more
—
of
but I read no farther,) with the bursting of a and the floating away of a village. The hero, as far as I recollect, was in the half of a house which was just going didn't end,
reservoir,
91
FOES CLAVIGERA.
and the anti-hero was opposite him, in was just going to be torn up and the heroine was floating between them down the stream, and one wasn't to know, till next month, which would catch her. But the hydraulics were the essentiall}^ bad part of the book, for the author made great play with the tremendous weight of it never having occurred to water against his embankment him that the gate of a Liverpool dry dock can keep out and could justly as easily for that matter keep in the Atlantic Ocean, to the necessary depth in feet and inches; the depth to be waslied do\vn;
the half of a tree which
;
;
—
—
—
giving the pressure, not the superficies, ISTay, you may see, not unfrequently, on Margate sands, your own six-years-old engineers of children keep out the At-
lantic
Ocean quite
favorite hole
successfully, for a little while,
the difficulty being not at
;
all
from a
in keeping the
Atlantic well out at the side, but from surreptitiously finding its
way
in at the bottom.
old engineers
;
And
that
is
properly the only one
;
the real difficulty for
you must not
let the
Atlantic begin to run surreptitiously either in or out, else
soon becomes
difficult to stoj)
wide, not deep,
when they
;
and
all reservoirs
it
ought to be
are artificial, and should not be
immediately above villages (though they might always be
made
them by walls, so that But when reservoirs are not artificial, when the natural rocks, with adamantine wall, and embankment built up from the earth's center, are ready to catch the rain for you, and render it back as pure as their own crystal, if you will only here and there throw an iron valve across a cleft, believe me if you choose to have a dividend out of Heaven, and sell the Rain, you may get it a good deal more easily and at a figure or two higher per cent, than you can on diaphanous mustard. There are certainly few men of my age who have watched the ways of Alpine torrents so closely as I have, (and you need not think my knowing something of art prevents me from understanding them, for the first good canal-engineer in Italy was Lionardo da Vinci, and more drawings of water-wheels and waterperfectly safe merely by dividing
the contents could not run out
—
all at
—
once).
—
92
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
eddies exist of his, by far, than studies of hair and eyes) the one strong impression I have respecting docility
and passiveness,
if
;
is
;
and
their utter
you will educate them young.
But our wise engineers invariably stead of sticks
them
try to
manage
fagots in-
and, leaving the rivulets of the Viso without
what bridle is to be put in the mouth of the Which, by the way, is a running reservoir, considerably above the level of the plain of Lombardy and if the bank of tliat one should break, any summer's day, there will be news of it, and more cities than Venice with water in their streets. training, debate
Po
!
;
June
You must
24th.
be content with a short letter (I wish I could
myself you would like a longer one) this month; but you will jDrobably see some news of the weather here, yesterday afternoon, which will give some emphasis to what I have been saying, not for the first time by any means; and so I leave you to think of it, and remain flatter
Faithfully yours, J.
ruski:n".
I have received from Wells, in Somersetshire, thirty pounds
Fund, the first money sent me by a For what has been given me by my personal friends I will account to them privately; and, henceforward, will accept no more given in their courteous prejudice, lest for the St. George's stranger.
other friends,
who do not
believe in
my
made uncomfortable. I am not quite this money from Somersetshire would pear in so wide solitude
;
crotchets, should be
sure if the sender of like his
name
to ap-
and therefore content myself with
thus thanking him, and formally opening
my
accounts.
LETTEE XX.
Mt Friends, — You
Venice, 3rd July,
probably tbougbt I had lost
written inconsiderately,
when
my
1872.
temper, and
I called the whistling of the
Lido steamer " accursed." I never wrote more considerately; using the longer and weaker word '' accursed " instead of the simple and proper one, " cursed," to take away, as far as I could, the appearance of unseemly haste; and using the expression itself on set purpose, not merely as the
fittest
for the occasion, but because
you respecting the general benediction bell of Lucca, and the particular benediction bestowed on the Marquis of B. several things more, indeed, of importance for you to know, about blessing and cursing. Some of you may perhaps remember the saying of St. James about the tongue " Therewith bless we God, and therewith curse we men out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be." It is not clear whether St. James means that there should be no cursing at all, (which I suppose he does), or merely that the blessing and cursing should not be uttered by the same I have more to engraved on the
tell
;
:
;
But his meaning, whatever it was, did not, in the issue, matter; for the Church of Christendom has always ignored this text altogether, and appointed the same persons in au-
lips.
thority to deliver, on all needful occasions, benediction or
malediction, as either might appear to them due; while our
own most
learned sect, wielding State power, has not only appointed a formal service of malediction in Lent, but com-
manded
Psalms of David, in which the blessing and cursing are inlaid as closely as the black and white in a mosaic floor, to be solemnly sung through once a month. I do not wish, however, to-day to speak to you of the practhe
93
— ;
9$
FOES CLAVIGERA.
tice of the cbiirches
;
but of your own, which, observe, is in one All the churches, of late years,
respect singularly different.
paying
less
and
less attention to the discipline of their people,
have felt an increasing compunction in cursing them when they did wrong; while also, the wrong doing, through such neglect of discipline, becoming every day more complex, ecclesiastical authorities perceived that, if delivered
partiality, the cursing
defined,
as
give
to
must be their
with im-
and the blessing so an entirely unpopular
so general,
services
character.
Now,
there
deck, an
senger
;
is
a little screw steamer just passing, with no
omnibus cabin, she
a flag at both ends,
and a
single pas-
not twelve yards long, yet the beating of her
is
screw has been so loud across the lagoon for the minutes, that I thought in from the sea, and left
last five
must be a large new steamer coming my work to go and look.
it
Before I had finished writing that
last sentence, the
cry
of a boy selling something black out of a basket on the quay
became
so sharply distinguished above the voices of the always
debating gondoliers, that I must needs stop again, and go
down
to see what he had got to sell. They were shaken do^vn, untimely, by the midsummer his cry of " Fighiaie " scarcely ceased, being de-
to the
half-rotten
storms
:
quay
figs,
between his legs, when an eatable portion of the black mess His to serve a customer with, as when he was standing up. face brought the tears into my eyes, so open, and sweet, and capable it was and so' sad. I gave him three very small halfpence, but took no figs, to his surprise he little thought how cheap the sight of him and his basket was to me, at the money nor what this fruit, " that could not be eaten, it was so evil," sold cheap before the palace of the Dukes of Venice, meant, to anyone who could read signs, either in earth, or her heaven and sea.* livered, as I observed, just as clearly
he was stooping
to find
;
:
* " And the stars of heaven fell unto the earth, even as a fig-tree wasteth her untimely fig-s, when she is shaken of a mighty wind." Kev. vi. 13; compare Jerem. xxiv. 8, and Amos viii. 1 and 2.
;
95
FOES CLAVIGERA.
Well; the blessing, as I said, not being now often legitimately applicable to particular people by Christian priests, they gradually fell into the habit of giving it of pure grace
and courtesy
to their congregations; or
poor persons, instead of money, or for it, or generally to anyone to
—
more
especially to
exchange
to rich ones, in
whom
they wished to be
while, on the contrary, the cursing, having now become widely applicable, and even necessary, was left to be understood, but not expressed and at last, to all practical purpose, abandoned altogether, (the rather that it had become very polite
:
;
disputable whether
it
ever did anyone the least mischief)
so that, at this time being, the Pope, in his charmingest ner, blesses the bride-cake of the it
Marquis of
B.,
;
man-
making, as
were, an ornamental confectionery figure of himself on the
top of
it
but has not, in am^Avise, courage to curse the
;
of Italy, although that penniless
King
monarch has confiscated the
revenues of every time-honored religious institution in Italy
and
is
about, doubtless, to commission
some of the Raphaels
in attendance at his court, (though, I believe, grooms are more in request there,) to paint an opposition fresco in the Vatican,
representing the Sardinian instead of the Syrian Heliodorus, successfully
abstracting the
treasures
of
the
temple,
and
triumphantly putting its angels to flight. I^ow the curious difference between your practice, and the Church's, to which I wish to-day to direct your attention, is, that while thus the clergy, in what efforts they make to retain their influence over human mind, use cursing little, and blessing much, you working-men more and more frankly every day adopt the exactly contrary practice of using benediction little,
and cursing much
among
versation so
much
as
:
so that even in the ordinary course of con-
yourselves,
you very rarely
bless,
audibly,
one of your o^vn children; but not unfrequently
damn, audibly, them, yourselves, and your friends. I wish you to think over the meaning of this habit of yours very carefully with me.
I call
it
a habit of yours, observe,
only with reference to your recent adoption of learned
it
it.
from your superiors; but they, partly
You
have
in conse-
—
:
FOES CLAVIGERA.
96
quence of your too eager imitation of them, are beginning
mend their manners; and it would excite much surprise, nowadays, in any European court, to hear the reigning monarch address the heir-apparent on an occasion of state festivity, as a Venetian ambassador heard our James the First " Devil take you, why don't you address Prince Charles,
to
dance? "
among
But, strictly speaking, the prevalence of the habit
all classes
of
laymen
is
the point in question. 4tft
And
first,
it
July.
necessary that you should understand ac-
is
curately the difference between swearing and cursing, vulgarly so often confounded. first is
They
are entirely different things
:
the
invoking the witness of a Spirit to an assertion you
wish to make; the second is invoking the assistance of a When ill-educated Spirit, in a mischief you wish to inflict. confuse the two invocaclamorously people ill-tempered and swearing but cursing or in either reality, tions, they are not, merely vomiting empty words indecently. True swearing ;
and solemn; here is an old Latin oath, for instance, which, though borrowed from a stronger Greek one, and much diluted, is still grand " I take to witness the Earth, and the stars, and the sea; the two lights of heaven; the falling and rising of the year the dark power of the gods of sorrow the sacredness of unbending Death and may the Father of all things hear me, who sanctifies covenants with his lightning. For I lay my hand on the altar, and by the fires thereon, and the gods to whom they burn, I swear that no future day shall break this peace for Italy, nor violate the covenant she has made." That is old swearing but the lengthy forms of it appearing partly burdensome to the celerity, and partly superstitious to in the wisdom, of modern minds, have been abridged, " By England, for the most part, into the extremely simple God " in France into "' Sacred name of God " (often the first word of the sentence only pronounced) and in Italy into " Christ " or " Bacchus " the superiority of the former Deity and cursing must always be
distinct
;
;
;
:
—
;
,
;
—
;
97
FORS CLAVTGERA.
being indicated bj omitting the preposition before the name. The oaths are " Christ," never " by Christ " and '' by
Bacchus,"
—
—never
;
" Bacchus."
Observe also that swearing
only by extremely ignorant
is
persons supposed to be an infringement of the Third
Com-
mandment. It is disobedience to the teaching of Christ but the Third Commandment has nothing to do with the matter. ;
People do not take the name of God in vain when they swear they use it, on the contrary, very earnestly and energetically to attest
cert at ''
The
what they wish to say. But when the Monster ConBoston begins^ on the English day, with the hymn,
will of
God
well that there
ing to do unless
God
it
is
be done," while the audience
who would have was his own will too, it,
or
it
done
that
is
if
he could help
it,
name
of
taking the
in vain, with a vengeance.
Cursing, on the other hand, to a
know perfectly who is try-
not one in a thousand of them
harm you wish
to see
is
invoking the aid of a Spirit
accomplished, but which
is
too great
immediate power and to-day I wish to point out to you what intensity of faith in the existence and activity of a spiritual world is evinced by the curse which is character-
for your
o"\\ti
:
istic o"f the English tongue.
For, observe, habitual as
much
it
has become, there
is still
so
and sincerity in the expression, that we all feel our passion partly appeased in its use and the more serious the occasion, the more practical and effective the cursing becomes. In Mr. Kinglake's " History of the Crimean "War," you will find the th Regiment at Alma is stated to have been materially assisted in maintaining position quite vital to the battle by the steady imprecation delivered at it by its colonel for half an hour on end. Xo quantity of benediction would have answered the purpose the colonel might have said, " Bless you, my children," in the tenderest tones, as often as he pleased, yet not have helped his men to keep their ground. I want you therefore, first, to consider how it happens that cursing seems at present the most effectual means for encouraging human work; and whether it may not be conceivable life
;
—
;
—
FOES CLAVIGERA.
98
work itself is of a kind which any form of effectual would hinder instead of help. Then, secondly, I want you to consider what faith in a spiritual world is incliat
the
blessing
volved in the teruis of the curse
we
usually employ.
It has
two principal forms one complete and unqualified, " God damn your soul," implying that the soul is there, and that we ;
cannot be satisfied with qualified,
less
than
its
destruction: the other, " God damn your ;
and on the bodily members only
eyes and limbs."
It is this last
form I wish especially
to
examine.
For how do you suppose that
damned ? What is Not merely the blinding be
either eye, or ear, or limb, can
the spiritual mischief
you invoke
of the eye, nor palsy of the limb
;
And remember
the condemnation or judgment of them.
?
but that
though you are for the most part unconscious of the spiritual meaning of what you say, the instinctive satisfaction you have in saying it is as much a real movement of the spirit within you, as the beating of your heart
is
a real
movement
of the
you put the upon speak, hand it. hand also, so to your on Put your this curse and source of the satisfaction with which you use ascertain the law of it. Now this you may best do by considering what it is which will make the eyes and the limbs blessed. For the precise contrary of that must be their damnation. What do you think was the meaning of that saying of Christ's, " Blessed For to be are the eyes which see the things that ye see " ? made evermore incapable of seeing such things, must be the condemnation of the eyes. It is not merely the capacity of seeing sunshine, which is their blessing but of seeing certain things under the sunshine nay, perhaps, even without sunshine, the eye itself becoming a Sun. Therefore, on the other hand, the curse upon the eyes will not be mere blindness to the daylight, but blindness to particular things under the daybody, though you are unconscious of that
also, till
;
;
;
light; so that,
when
directed towards these, the eye itself be-
comes as the Night. Again, with regard
to the limbs, or general jDowers of the
—
)
99
FOKS CLAVIGERA.
Do you lame man shall
body.
sing "
promised that " the leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb suppose that when
— (Steam-whistle
Istria,
which
is
interrupts
lying in front of
it is
me from
my window
Capo
the
d'
with her black
nose pointed at the red nose of another steamer at the next
—
There are nine large ones at this instant, half-past lying between the Church of the Redeemer and the Canal of the Arsenal one of them an ironEnglish and half clad, five smoking fiercely, and the biggest, blowing steam from all manner of a quarter of a mile long, pipes in her sides, and with such a roar through her funnel whistle number two from Capo d' Istria that I could not make anyone hear me speak in this room without an effort,) do you suppose, I say, that such a form of benediction is just the same as saying that the lame man shall leap as a lion, and the tongue of the dumb mourn ? Xot so, but a special manner of action of the members is meant in both cases: (whistle number three from Capo d' Istria; I am writing on, steadily, so that you will be able to form an accurate idea, from this page, of the intervals of time in modern music. The roaring from the English boat goes on all the while, for bass to the Capo d' Istria's treble, and a tenth steamer comes in sight round the Armenian Monastery) a particular kind of activity is meant, I repeat, in both cases. The lame man is to leap, (whistle fourth from Capo d* Istria, this time at high pressure, going through my head like a knife,) as an innocent and joyful creature leaps, and the lips of the dumb pier. six,
morning, 4th July,
—
;
—
—
—
—
—
—
to
move melodiously they :
unblessed even in silence
;
are to be blessed, so
;
may
not be
but are the absolute contrary of
(Fifth whistle, a double one, from and it is seven o'clock, nearly and here's my coffee, and I must stop writing. Sixth whistle the Capo d' Istria is off, with her crew of morning bathers. Seventh, from I don't know which of the boats outside and I count no blest, in evil utterance.
Capo
d* Istria,
;
—
—
more. 5th Jul\f.
Yesterday, in these broken sentences, I tried to
make you
;
rOKS CLAVIGERA.
100 understand three
tliat
separate
for all liiiman creatures there are necessarily states:
negative, under curse,
under blessing,
jDositive,
life
—and
—
life
death, neutral between these
and, henceforward, take due note of the quite true assumption
you make in your ordinary malediction, that the state of condemnation may begin in this world, and separately affect every living
member
You assume
of the body.
the fact of these two opposite states, then
;
but
you have no idea whatever of the meaning of your words, nor of the nature of the blessedness or condemnation you admit. I will try to
In
make your conception
clearer.
the year 1869, just before leaving Venice, I
had been
carefully looking at a picture by Victor Carpaccio, represent-
ing the dream of a young princess.
much
Carpaccio has taken
pains to explain to us, as far as he can, the kind of life
she leads, by completely painting her
little
bedroom in the
dawn, so that you can see everything in it. It is lighted by two doubly-arched windows, the arches being painted crimson round their edges, and the capitals of the light of
They
shafts that bear them, gilded.
with small round panes of glass
;
are filled at the top
but beneath, are open to the
blue morning sky, with a low lattice across them: and in the
one at the back of the room are vases with a plant in each
;
set
two beautiful white Greek
one having rich dark and pointed
green leaves, the other crimson flowers, but not of any species kno^^Ti to me, each at the end of a branch like a spray of heath.
These flower-pots stand on a shelf which runs all round the room, and beneath the window, at about the height of the elbow, and serves to put things on anywhere: beneath it,
down
to the floor, the walls are covered
above, are bare and white.
opposite the bed, and in front of table,
some
with green cloth
The second window it is
is
;
but
nearly
the princess's reading
two feet and a half square, covered by a red cloth
with a white border and dainty fringe and beside it her seat, not at all like a reading chair in Oxford, but a very small three-legged stool like a music-stool, covered with crimson ;
—
;
101
rOKS CLAVIGEEA. cloth.
On
the table are a book set
reading, and an hour-glass.
books, I
am
The door
up
at a slope fittest for
the shelf, near the table,
by the outstretched arm,
so as to be easily reached full of books.
Under
is
a press
of this has been left open, and the
grieved to say, are rather in disorder, having been
pulled about before the princess went to bed, and one left
standing on
its side.
Opposite this vpindow, on the white wall, is a small shrine or picture, (I can't see which, for it is in sharp retiring perspective, ) with a lamp 'before it, and a silver vessel hung from the lamp, looking like one for holding incense.
The bed is a broad four-poster, the posts being beautifully wrought golden or gilded rods, variously wreathed and The princess's branched, carrying a canopy of warm red. shield is at the head of it, and the feet are raised entirely above the floor of the room, on a dais which projects at the lower end so as to form a seat, on which the child has laid her crown.
Her
little
blue slippers
her white dog beside them.
The
lie at
the side of the bed,
coverlid
is scarlet,
the white
sheet folded half-way back over it the young girl lies straight, bending neither at waist nor knee, the sheet rising and falling over her in a narrow unbroken wave, like the shape of the She coverlid of the last sleep, when the turf scarcely rises. ;
some seventeen or eighteen years old, her head is turned towards us on the pillow, the cheek resting on her hand, as if she were thinking, yet utterly calm in sleep, and almost colorHer hair is tied with a narrow ribbon, and divided into less. two wreaths, which encircle her head like a double crown. is
The white nightgo^\Ti hides the arm raised on the pillow, down to the wrist. At the door of the room an angel enters; (the little dog,
He is a very awake, vigilant, takes no notice.) small angel, his head just rises a little above the shelf round the room, and would only reach as high as the princess's chin, He has soft gray wings, lusterless if she were standing up.
though
and
lying-
his dress, of
subdued blue, has
violet sleeves,
the elbow, and showing white sleeves below.
open above comes in
He
102
FOES CLAVIGERA.
without haste, his body, like a mortal one, casting shadow from the light through the door behind, his face perfectly
—
a palm-branch in his right hand a scroll in his left. So dreams the princess, with blessed eyes, that need no
quiet
;
It is very pretty of Carpaccio to
earthly da^vn.
dream out the slashed sleeves doll angel,
But
to
dream
so little
—very nearly a
the evident delight of
is
Royal power over
life.
her flowers,
an angel
the branch of palm, and message.
the lovely characteristic of all
her continual in
and
;
—bringing her
make her
and notice the
angel's dress so particularly,
and happiness
herself,
her books, her sleeping and waking,
her
prayers, her dreams, her earth, her heaven.
After I had spent
my
morning over
had to In the carriage with with their father and mother, this picture, I
go to Verona by the afternoon train.
me were two American
girls
people of the class which has lately
know what
made
so
much money
and these two girls of about fifteen and eighteen, had evidently been indulged in everything (since they had had the means) which suddenly, and does not
do with
to
western civilization could imagine.
it
And here
:
they were, speci-
mens of the utmost which the money and invention of the nineteenth century could produce in maidenhood, children of its most progressive race, enjoying the full advantages of
—
—
political liberty, of enlightened pliilosophical education, of
cheap pilfered literature, and of luxury at any cost. Whatever money, machinery, or freedom of thought could do for
No superstition had deno restraint degraded them types, they could not but be, of maidenly wisdom and felicity, as conceived by the forwardest intellects of our time. And they were traveling through a district which, if any in the world, should touch the hearts and delight the eyes of Portia's villa young girls. Between Venice and Verona perhaps in sight upon the Brenta, Juliet's tomb to be visited these two children, had been done. ceived,
:
—
!
in the evening,
—blue
Petrarch's home.
—
against the southern sky, the hills of
Exquisite
midsummer
rays, glanced through the vine-leaves
;
all
sunshine, with low
the Alps were clear,
.
!
103
FOES CLAVIGERA.
from the lake of Garda
What
to
Cadore, and to farthest Tyrol.
a princess's chamber, this, if these are princesses,
what dreams might they not dream, therein But the two American girls were neither
and
princesses, nor
nor dreamers. By infinite self-indulgence, they had reduced themselves simply to two pieces of white putty that seers,
The flies and the dust stuck to them as to and they perceived, between Venice and Verona, nothing They pulled down the blinds the but the flies and the dust. moment they entered the carriage, and then sprawled, and could feel pain.
clay,
writhed, and tossed
among
the cushions of
it,
in vain contest,
during the whole fifty miles, with every miserable sensation of bodily affliction that could
make time
They
intolerable.
were dressed in thin white frocks, coming vaguely open at the backs as they stretched or wriggled they had French novels, ;
lemons, and lumps of sugar, to beguile their state with; the novels hanging together by the ends of string that had once stitched them, or adhering at the corners in densely bruised
dog's ears, out of which the girls, wetting their fingers, oc-
casionally extricated a gluey leaf a lemon open, ground a
:
From
time to time they cut
lump of sugar backwards and in a treacly pulp
for-
then
it till every fiber was sucked the pulp, and gnawed the white skin into leathery Only one sentence was exstrings for the sake of its bitter.
wards over
;
changed, in the fifty miles, on the subject of things outside the carriage (the Alps being once visible from a station where
they had drawn up the blinds) " Don't those snow-caps make you cool " I wish they did."
" ?
Ko—
And
went their way, with sealed eyes and tormented numbered miles of pain.
so they
limbs, their
There are the two Blessed, and Accursed.
states for you, in clearest opposition;
The happy
industry, and eyes full of
sacred imagination of things that are not. (such sweet cosa, e la fede,) and the tortured indolence, and infidel eyes, blind
even to the things that "
How
do T
know
are.
the princess
is
industrious
" ?
— 104
FOES CLAVIGERA.
Partly by the trim state of her room,
on the
table,
—by
—by
the hour-glass
the evident use of all the books she has,
(well bound, every one of them, in stoutest leather or velvet,
and with no
dog's-ears,)
but more distinctly from another
picture of her, not asleep.
In that one, a prince of England and her father, little liking
has sent to ask her in marriage to part
would
with her, sends for her
He
do.
sits,
:
to his
room
to
moody and sorrowful
;
ask her what she she, standing be-
him in a plain housewifely dress, talks quietly, going on with her needlework all the time. A work-woman, friends, she, no less than a princess; and fore
princess most in being
Florentine, whose
In
so.
mind
what, as well as Carpaccio's
who
is to
like
manner, in
a picture
I would fain have you
—Sandro
Botticelli
when he
be the wife of Moses,
by a
know some-
first sees
—
the girl
her at the
desert-well, has fruit in her left hand, but a distaff in her
right* "
To do good work, whether you
entrance to
all
come, and that infallibly,
live or die," it is the
and if not done, the day will when you must labor for evil instead
Princedoms
;
of good.
was some comfort
It
to
me, that second of
May
last,
at
old marble cross to pieces.
ashamed face, as he struck the Stolidly and languidly he dealt
the blows,
so far as in
Pisa, to watch the workman's
— ashamed, — and
do^^^l-looking,
—
well he might be. was a wonderful thing to see done.
It
anywise sensitive, This Pisan chapel,
then called the Oracle, or Oratory, " Oraculum, vel Oratorium " of the Blessed Mary of the built in 1230,
first
New
Bridge,
—
afterwards called the Sea-bridge,
(Ponte-a-
Mare,) was a shrine like that of ours on the Bridge of Wakefield a boatman's praying-place you may still see, or might, ten years since, have seen, the use of such a thing at the mouth of Boulogne Harbor, when the mackerel boats went out in a ;
;
* More accurately a rod cloven into three at the top, and so holding the wool. The fruit is a branch of apples; she has golden san dais, and a wreath of mjrtle round her hair.
Part of the Chapel of
St.
Mary of the Thorn, PISA,
Now
in Euins.
as
it
was
27 years ago.
FORS CLAVIGEKA.
105
There used to be a little shrine at the early da^^Ti. end of the longest pier and as the Bonne Esperance, or Gracede-Dieu, or Vierge Marie, or Xotre Dame des Dunes, or Reine des Anges, rose on the first surge of the open sea, their crews bared their heads, and prayed for a few seconds. So also the Pisan oarsmen looked back to their shrine, manypinnacled, standing out from the quay above the river, as they dropped down Arno under their sea bridge, bound for the Later, in the fifteenth century, " there was Isles of Greece. fleet at
;
up in it a little branch of the Crown of Thorns of the Redeemer, which a merchant had brought home, inclosed in a little urn of Beyond-sea," (ultramarine), and its name was changed to " St. Mary's of the Thorn." In the year 1840 I first drew it, then as perfect as when it was built. Six hundred and ten years had only given the laid
marble of it a tempered glow, or touched its sculpture here and there with softer shade. I daguerreotyped the eastern end of it some years later, (photography being then unknown,) and copied the daguerreotype, that people might not be plagued in looking, by the letter is
luster.
The
frontispiece to this
engraved from the drawing, and will show you what
the building
was
like.
But the last quarter of a century has brought changes, and made the Italians wiser. British Protestant missionaries explained to tliem that they had only got a piece of blackberry stem in their ultramarine box. German philosophical mis-
them that the Crown of Thorns itself French republican miswas only a graceful metaphor. sionaries explained to them that chapels were inconsistent with liberty on the quay; and their o\^ti Engineering missionaries of civilization explained to them that steam-power was independent of the Madonna. And now in 1872, rowing by steam, digging by steam, driving by steam, here, behold, are a troublesome pair of human arms out of employ. So the Engineering missionaries fit them with hammer and chisel, sionaries explained to
and
A
set
to break up the Spina Chapel. kind of stone-breaking, this, for Italian parishes
them
costly
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
106 to set
paupers on
!
Are
there not rocks enough of Apennine,
For truly, the would rather see
think you, thej could break do^vn instead?
God
of their Fathers, and of their land,
them mar His own work, than His
children's.
Believe me, faithfully yours,
VOHN EUSKIK
LETTER XXL DULWICH,
My Friends, — I
^^*^ August, 1872.
HAVE not
my
yet fully treated the subject of
last
I must show you how things, as well as people, may be blessed, or cursed; and to show you that, I must explain to you the story of Achan the son of Carmi, which, too prob-
letter, for
any special interest in as well more about steam-engines and steam-whistling but, in the meantime, here is my lost bit of letter from Florence, written in continuation of the June nimiber and it ably,
you don't
feel at present
;
as several matters :
;
is
well that
it
should be put into place at once, (I see that
might with advantage cease) since of two aggrieved readers.
it
answers the complaints
Florence,
The
first is
respects
;
and
postulation
in a letter
from
a
workman,
10^7i
ing either these
June, 1872.
interesting in
besides, sufficiently representing the
now
it
some of the noises in Florence, which
notices, incidentally,
constantly
made with me, on my not
letters, or
any other of
my
remonstrances, founded as they always are,
who
the assumption that everyone
reads
many
kind of exadvertis-
These very politely, on
writings.
my
books derives
extraordinary benefit from them, require from me, at least, the courtesy of
more
found time to give. In the first place,
—
answer than I have hitherto
definite
my
correspondents write under the con-
—
that no individual practice can have the smallest power to change or check the vast system of modern commerce, or the methods of its transaction. I, on the contrary, am convinced that it is by his personal conduct that any man of ordinary power will do the greatest viction,
a very natural one,
amount of good
that
is
in
him
to
107
do ; and when I consider the
F0E3 CLAVIGERA.
108
quantity of wise talking which has passed in at one long ear of the world, and out at the other, without
making the
smallest
mind, I am sometimes tempted for the rest of mj life to try and do what seems to me rational, silently and to speak no more. But were it only for the exciting of earnest talk, action is highly desirable, and is, in itself, advertisement of the best. impression upon
its
;
I had only written in these letters that I
If, for instance,
dis-
approved of advertisements, and had gone on advertising the
you would have passed by
letters themselves,
my
statement
contemptuously, as one in which I did not believe myself.
But now, most dispute
say in
it
its
my
of
eagerly,
readers are interested in the opinion,
and are ready
For main defense of
it,
hear patiently what I can
you take medicine, by
my
I reply (now definitely to
respondent of the Black Country) as
to
defense.
advice,
:
—You ought
to
cor-
read books,
and not advertisement.
Per-
haps, however, you do take medicine by advertisement, but
you will not, I suppose, venture to call that a wise proceeding ? Every good physician, at all events, knows it to be an unwise one, and will by no means consent to proclaim even his favorite pills bj^ the to^vn-crier. But perhaps you have no literary physician, no friend to whom you can go and say, *' I want to learn what is true on such a subject what book must I read ? " You prefer exercising your independent judgment, and you expect me to appeal to it, by paying for the insertion in all the penny papers of a paragraph that may win your confidence. As, for instance, '" Just published, the th number of Fors Clavigera,' containing the most important information on the existing state of trade in Europe and on all subjects interesting to the British Operative. Thousandth
—
—
—
'
;
thousand.
Price Id.
on large orders.
No
7 for
3.s.
intelligent
Qd.
Proportional abatement
workman should
pass a day
without acquainting himself with the entirely original views contained in these pages."
You say
?
don't
want
but only to
to
be advised in that manner, do you
kiiovr that
such a book
exists.
What good
;
109
FOES CLAVIGERA.
would its existence do joii^ if you did not know whether it was worth reading? Were you as rich as Croesus, you have no business to spend such a sum as Id. unless you are sure of your money's worth. Ask someone who knows good books from bad ones to tell you what to buy, and be content. You will hear of " Fors," so, in time; if it be worth hearing of. acquaintance, have no you say, among people who But you know good books from bad ones ? Possibly not and yet, half the poor gentlemen of England are fain nowadays to live by selling their opinions on this subject. It is a bad trade, let me tell them. Whatever judgment they have, likely to be useful to the human beings about them, may be expressed in few words and those words of sacred advice ought not to be
—
;
;
articles
of commerce.
Least of
all
ought they to be so
ingeniously concocted that idle readers
may remain
content
with reading their eloquent account of a book, instead of the book itself. It is an evil trade, and in our company of Mont Rose,
we
will have
no reviewers
;
we
will have, once for
all,
our book Gazette, issued every 1st of January, naming, under alphabetical
list
of authors and of
titles,
whatever serviceable
or worthy writings have been published during the past year
and
if,
in the space of the year following,
we have become
acquainted with the same thoroughly, our time will not have
been
ill-spent,
though we hear of no new book for twelve
And
the choice of the books to be named, as well
months.
as the brief accounts of
them given
in our Gazette, will be
persons not paid for their opinions, and
who
by
will not, there-
fore, express themselves voluminously.
Meantime, your newspapers being your present advisers, I beg you to observe that a number of " Fors " is duly sent to all the principal ones, whose editors may notice it if they choose but I will not pay for their notice, nor for any man's. These, then, are my immediate reasons for not advertising. Indirect ones, I have, which weigh with me no less. I write this morning, wearily, and without spirit, being nearly deaf with the bell-ringing and bawling which goes on here, at Florence, ceaselessly, in advertisement of prayers, and wares j ;
:
110
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
as if people could not wait
God had and till
to ring for
on God for what
the need
was suggested
to
painting of the bill-sticker the principal fine art of
them by bellowing
now
is likely,
at their doors,
Indeed, the fresco-
so far as I see, to
modern Europe
become
here, at all events,
:
the principal source of street effect.
is past, like
wanted, but
He
wanted were in need of
as if they could think of nothing they
or bill-posting on their house-corners.
it is
tliey
them, like waiters, for what
Giotto's time
Oderigi's; but the bill-poster succeeds: and the
Ponte Vecchio, the principal thoroughfare across the Arno, is on one side plastered over with bills in the exact center, while the other side, for various reasons not to be specified, is little
The operas
available to passengers. bills
;
on the bridge are
but religious
,
theatrical,
announcing cheap
inviting to ecclesiastical festivities,
bills,
are similarly plastered over the front of the church once called " the Bride " for its beauty ; and the pious bill-stickers paste
them ingeniously
in and out
upon
the sculptured bearings
of the shields of the old Florentine knights.
Political bills,
in various stages of decomposition, decorate the street-corners
and sheds of the markets these one
may
"
or Death."
Eome
!
still
;
and among the
last year's rags of
read here and there the heroic apostrophe,
was clear to me, until now, what the desperatelyminded persons who found themselves in that dilemma wanted with Rome and now it is quite clear to me that they never did want it, but only the gTOund it was once built on, for finance offices and railroad stations: or, it may be, for new graves, when Death, to young Italy, as to old, comes without alternative. For, indeed, young Italy has just chosen the most precious piece of ground above Florence, and It never
;
—
bury itself in, loathsome and pestif-
a twelfth-century church in the midst of
to
it,
and make the summer air from San Miniato to Arcetri. ISTo Rome, I repeat, did young Italy want but only the site of Rome. Three days before I left it, I went to see a piece
at its leisure
;
erous,
;
not merely of the rampart, but of the actual wall^ of Tullius,
—
;•
Ill
FOES CLAVIGEKA.
which zealous Mr. Parker with fortunate excavation has just laid open on the Aventine. Fifty feet of blocks of massy not one shifted a wall which was just stone, duly laid eighteen hundred years old when Westminster Abbey was begun building. I went to see it mainly for your sakes, for after I have got past Theseus and his vegetable soup, I shall have to tell you something of the constitutions of Servius Tullius and besides, from the sweet slope of vineyard beneath this king's wall, one looks across the fields where Cincinnatus was found plowing, according to Livy though, you will find, in Smith's Dictionary, that Mr. jSTiebuhr " has pointed out " all the inconsistencies and impossibilities in this legend and that he is " inclined to regard it as altogether fabulous." ;
;
;
;
;
Very I attach it is
(not that, for my own poor part, importance to l^iebuhr's " inclinations,") but
possibly
much
it
may be
fatally certain that
so,
whenever you begin
to seek the real
authority for legends you will generally find that the ugly
ones have good foundation, and the beautiful ones none.
Be
prepared for this; and remember that a lovely legend is all the more precious when it has no foundation. Cincinnatus
might actually have been found plowing beside the Tiber fifty times over; and it might have signified little to anyone; least of all to you or me. But if Cincinnatus never was so found nor ever existed at all in flesh and blood but the great Roman nation, in its strength of conviction that manual labor in tilling the ground was good and honorable, invented a quite bodiless Cincinnatus and set him, according to its fancy, in furrows of the field, and put its own words into his mouth, and gave the honor of its ancient deeds into his ghostly hand this fable, which has no foundation, this precious coinage of the brain and conscience of a mighty people, you and I believe me had better read, and know, and take to heart, ;
;
—
—
—
diligently.
Of which
at another time: the point in question just
now
being that this same slope of the Aventine, under the wall of Tullius, falling to the shore of Tiber just where the galleys used to be moored, (the marbles
worn by
Roman
the cables
112
rORS CLAVIGEEA.
,
it tliere,) and opposite the farm of commands, as you may suppose, fresh air and a and has just been sold on " building leases." fine view, Sold, I heard, to an English company; but more probably to the agents of the society which is gradually superseding,
are
still
in the bank of
Cincinnatiis,
—
with of "
its
splendid bills at
Roma,
o morte,"
—
all the street corners, the last vestiges the " Societa Anonima," for providing
company in Rome. Xow this anonymous society, which is about to occupy itself in rebuilding Rome, is of course comj^osed of persons who know nothing whatever about building. They also care about it as little as they know; but they take to building, because they expect to get interest for their money by such operation. Some of them, doubtless, are benevolent persons, who expect to benefit Italy by building, and think that, the more the lodgings for
Generally the public
benefit, the larger will be the dividend.
was getting interest by doing useful work, and that Roman comfort and Italian prosperity would be largely promoted by it. But observe in what its dividends will consist. Knowing
notion of such a society would be that for
its
money
in a most legitimate way,
nothing about architecture, nor caring,
nor will desire its
it
to choose,
business to the person
it
neither can choose,
an architect of merit.
whom
it
It will give
supposes able to build the
most attractive mansions at the least cost. Practically, the person who can and will do so, is the architect who knows where to find the worst bricks, the worst iron, and the worst workmen, and who has mastered the cleverest tricks by which He will turn them to account by to turn these to account. giving the external effect to his edifices which he finds likely to be attractive to the majority of the public in search of
lodging.
He
will have stucco moldings, veneered balconies,
and cast-iron pillars but, as his own commission will be paid on the outlay, he will assuredly make the building costly in some way or other; and he can make it costly with least trouble to himself by putting into it, somewhere, vast masses of merely squared stone, chiseled so as to employ handicrafts:
113
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
men on whose wages commission can be cliarged, and who all the year round may be doing the same thing, without giving Hence there will be the new buildings an immense mass of merely
any trouble by asking for assuredly in
directions.
squared or rusticated stones the public mind,
—need no
;
for these appear magnificent to
trouble in designing,
—and pay
a
vast commission on the execution.
The
interior apartments will, of course, be
rious as possible
;
for the taste of the
present practically directed by
made
as luxu-
European public
women
is
at
of the town; these
having the government of the richest of our youth at the time when they spend most freely. And at the very time when the last vestiges of the heroic works of the
Roman Monarchy
are being destroyed, the base- fresco-painting of the worst
times of the Empire is being faithfully copied, with perfectly true lascivious instinct, for interior decoration.
Of such the most
it
architecture the
can
;
and
advertise and extend after
its
manner,
all
lease
it
anonymous
society will produce
at the highest rents it
can
itself, so as, if possible, at last to
the gTeat cities of. Italy.
;
and
rebuild,
iSTow the real
moving^ powers at the bottom of all this are essentially the vanity and lust of the middle classes, all of them seeking to live, if it may be, in a cheap palace, with as much cheap pleas-
By it, and the airs of gTeat people. " cheap " pleasure, I mean, as I will show you in explaining
ure as they can have in
which has not been won by attention, or deserved by toil, but is snatched or forced by wanton passion. But the mechanical power which gives effect to this vanity and lust, is the instinct of the anonymous society, and of other such, to get a dividend by catering for
the nature of cursed things, pleasure
them. It has chanced, by help of the Third Fors, (as again and again in the course of these letters the thing to my purpose has been brought before me just when I needed it,) that hav-
ing to speak of interest of money, and part of
it
first
of the important
consisting in rents, I should be able to lay
on the point of land in
all
my
finger
Europe where the principle of
it is,
;
114
FOES CLAVIGERA.
moment, doing the most mischief. But, of course, all is now carried on in the same way nor will any architecture, properly so called, be now possible For true architecture is a thing for many years in Europe. builders its to cost not which pays them diviwhich puts dends. If a society chose to organize itself to build the most beautiful houses, and the strongest that it could, either for at this
our great building work
—
art's sake, or love's
poor
;
;
either palaces for itself, or houses for the
such a society would build something worth looking
True architecture
but not get dividends.
built
is
at,
man
by the
who wants a house for himself, and builds it to his o^\ti liking, at his own cost not for his own gain, to the liking of other ;
people.
All orders of houses
by their master me, at this moment,
built
corner stones of thick
—
may
to his is
Three
liking.
are thus
streets
from
The
one of the sixteenth century.
are ten feet long
it
when they
be beautiful
own
fifty courses of such,
by three broad, and two
and the cornice
;
flawless stones,
become one mass of unalterable rock, four gray cliffs set square in mid-Florence, some hundred and twenty feet from cornice The man who meant to live in it built it so and to ground.
laid as level as a sea-horizon, so that the walls
—
solid
;
Titian painted his
little
grand-daughter for him.
—no
He
got
on his picture. House and picture, absolutely untouched by time, remain to this day.
n.0
dividend by his building
On
the hills about
me
at
profit
Coniston there are also houses
by their owners, according to their means, and pleasure. A few loose stones gathered out of the fields, set one above another to a man's height from the gi'ound a branch or two of larch, set gable-wise across them,-^on these some turf, cut from the next peat moss. It is enough the OAvner gets no dividend on his building; but he has covert from wind and rain, and is honorable among the sons of Earth. He has built
;
:
built as best he could, to his o^\ti mind.
You tation
:
think that there ought to be no such differences in habithat
nobody should
a heap of turf
?
But
if
live in a palace,
and nobody under
ever you become educated enough
115
FORS CLAVIGERA. to
know something about
the arts,
manner; and
built in noble
you
will like to see a palace
ever you become educated
if
enough to know something about men, you will love some of them so well as to desire that at least they should live in palBut it will be long now before you aces, though you cannot. much, can know either about arts or men. The one point you may be assured of is, that your happiness does not at all depend on the size of your house (or, if it does, rather on its smallness than largeness) but depends entirely on your having peaceful and safe possession of it on your habits of keeping it clean and in order on the materials of it being trustworthy, if they are no more than stone and turf and on your contentment with it, so that gradually you may mend it to your mind, day by day, and leave it to your children a better
—
;
—
—
house than
To your
it
—
was.
children, and to theirs, desiring for
them that they you have lived and not strive to forget you, and stammer when anyone asks who you were, because, forsooth, they have become fine folks by your help.
may
live as
;
EusTON Hotel,
Thus
far I had written at Florence.
18*7i
August.
To-day I received is always serviceshow me that I had
a severe lesson from a friend whose teaching
able to me, of which the main effect was to been wrong in allowing myself so far in the habit of jesting,
any other of my books, on grave and that although what little play I had permitted, rose, as I told you before, out of the nature of the things spoken of, it prevented many readers from understanding me rightly, and was an offense to others. The second effect of the lesson was to show me how vain it was, in the present state of English literature and mind, to expect anybody to attend to the real force of the words I wrote and that it would be better either in these letters, or in
subjects
;
;
to spare
and try
myself to get
cision, or, if I
much
of the trouble I took in choosing them,
things explained by reiteration instead of pre-
was
and only urge your
too
proud
to
do that, to write
attention, or aid
it,
less
myself,
to other people's hap-
116
FOES CLAVIGERA.
meant to do, as " Fors " went on; for I have always thought that more true force of persuasion might be obtained by rightly choosing and arranging what others have said, than by painfully saying it again in one's own way. And since as to the matter which I have to teach you, all the great writers and thinkers of the world are agreed, without any exception whatsoever, it is certain I can teach you better in other men's words than my own, if I can lay my hand at once on what I want of them. And the upshot of the lesson, and of my meditation upon it, is, that henceforward to the end of the year I will try very seriously to explain, as I promised, step by step, the things put questionably in last year's letters. We will conclude therefore first, and pier sayings.
as fast as
Avhich
An
we
Which indeed
I
can, the debate respecting interest of
was opened in
my
letter
money
of January, 1871.
impatient correspondent of mine,
]\Ir.
W.
C. Sillar,
M'ho has long been hotly engaged in testifying publicly against
the wickedness of taking interest, writes to is
mysterious, that I
am bound
to
me
that all I say
speak plainly, and, above
everything, if I think taking interest sinful, not to hold bank stock.
Once for
all,
then,
]\Ir.
Sillar is wholly right as to the ab-
stract fact that lending for gain is sinful
;
and he
has, in vari-
ous pamphlets, shown unanswerably that whatever
is
said
any other good and ancient book, respecting usury, is intended by the writers to apply to the receiving of interest, be it ever so little. But Mr. Sillar has allowed this idea to take possession of him, body and soul *
either in the Bible, or in
;
* I have not time to ask Mr. Sillar's permission, but hope his pardon for assuming- it, to print the following portion of a letter I have had very great pleasure in receiving from him:
—
You wrong me
have entirely given myself up to occupied in saving our lovely streams from pollution, and endeavoring (no easy task, I assure you,) to piit in dailj'^ practice, the principles you teach. I wish j'ou could see our '*
this question.
I
in saying I
am
works at Crossness. " The reason why
I exclusively attack this vice is
because
it
is
117
FOES CLAYIGEKA.
and is just as fondly enthusiastic about abolition of usury as some other people are about the liquor laws. !N^ow of course drunkenness is mischievous, and usury is mischievous, and whoredom is mischievous, and idleness is mischievous. But we cannot reform the world by preaching temperance only, nor refusal of interest only, nor chastity only, nor industry only. I am myself more set on teaching healthful industry than anything else, as the beginning of all redemption then, purity of heart and body; if I can get these taught, I know ;
that nobody so taught will either get drunk, or, in any unjust manner, " either a borrower or a lender be." But I expect also far higlier results than either of these, on which, being utterly bent, I am very careless about such minor matters as the I present conditions either of English brewing or banking. hold bank stock simply because I suppose it to be safer than any other stock, and I take the interest of it, because though
taking interest
is,
fabric of society
and war, that
in the abstract, as is at
it is
wrong
as war, the entire
present so connected with both usury
not possible violently to withdraw, nor
wisely to set example of withdrawing, from either
evil.
I
war yet have the profoundest sympathy with Colonel Yea and his fusiliers at Alma, and only wish I had been there with them. I have by no means equal sympathy either with bankers or landlords; entirely, in the abstract, disapprove of
;
but
am
my
dividends as usual, and that Miss Hill should continue to
collect
certain that for the present
my
it is
better that I receive
rents in ]\Iarylebone.
" Ananias over again, or worse,"' Mr. Sillar will probably exclaim,
when he
reads this, and invoke lightning against me,
him to modern denunciations of interest, that they are much beside the mark unless they are accompanied with some explanation of the manner in which I will abide the issue of his invocation, and only beg
observe respecting either ancient or
the only one which is not attacked from the pnlpit. 'Slen do not know even that it is a vice. I have such confidence in the integrity of Englishmen that I believe they would at once discountenance it if they had the least idea of its character and mischievous nature."
— ;
1]S
FOES CLAVIGERA.
borrowing and lending, when necessary, can be carried on without it. jSTeither are often necessary in healthy states of society but they always must remain so to some extent and the name " ]\Iount of Pity," * given still in French and ;
from a time when work of mercy as giving to
Italian to the pa^vnbroker's shop, descends
lending to the poor was as
them.
And
much
a
when how much
both lending and borrowing are virtuous,
the borrowing
is
prudent, and the lending kind
otherwise than kind lending at interest usually pose, do not need to be told; but
how much
;
is,
you, I sup-
otherwise than
prudent nearly all borrowing is, and above everything, trade on a large scale on borrowed capital, it is very necessary for us all to be told. And for a beginning of other people's words, here are some quoted by Mr. Sillar from a work on the Labor question recently published in Canada, which, though com-
monplace, and evidently the expressions of a person imperfectly educated, are true, earnest,
and worth your reading
:
" These Scripture usury laws, then, are for no particular race and for no particular time.
They
lie at
the very founda-
and wealth. They form the only great safeguards of labor, and are the security of civil society, and the strength and protection of commerce itself. Let us beware, for our o'wn sakes, how we lay our hand upon the barriers which God has reared around the humble dwelling of the laboring man. " Business itself is a pleasure, but it is the anxieties and burdens of business arising all out of this debt system, which tions of national progress
.
.
.
* The " Mount " is the heap of money in store for lending' without interest. You shall hare a picture of it in next number, as drawn by a brave landscape painter four hundred years ago; and it will ultimatel,y be one of the crags of our own Mont Kose; and well should be, for it was first raised among the rocks of Italy by a Franciscan monk, for refuge to the poor against the usury of the Lombard merchants who gave name to our Lombard Street, and perished by their usury, as their successors are like enough to do also. But the story goes back to Friedrich II. of Germany again, and is too long for this letter.
119
FOES CLAVIGERA.
have caused so
What
hearts.
many
aching pillows and so
many broken
countless multitudes, during the last three hun-
dred years, have gone
dovtTi to
—
—what —what happy homes
bankruptcy and shame
fair prospects have been forever blighted
—
what peace destroyed what ruin and destruction have ever marched hand in hand with this system of debt, paper, and usury Verily its sins have reached unto heaven and its iniquities are very great. " What shall the end of these things be ? God only knowdesolated
!
eth.
is beyond a cure. All the gTeat inhumanity are overborne by it, and nothing can
I fear the system
terests of
flourish as it ought
till it is
tains within itself, as
we have
taken out of the way. at times witnessed,
elements of destruction which in one hour
may
It con-
most potent bring
all its
riches to naught."
Here lastly for this month, is another piece of Marmontel for you, describing an ideal landlord's mode of " investing " his money losing, as it appears, half his income ;
annually by such investment, yet by no means with " aching pillows " or broken hearts for the result. a lesson in writing, observe that I
know
the
(By the way, for Canada author to
be imiDerfectly educated merely by one such phrase as " aching pillow " for pillows don't ache and again, by his thinking it religious and impressive to say " knoweth " instead of " knows.") But listen to Marmontel.
—
—
" In the neighborhood of this country-house lived a kind of Philosopher, not an old one, but in the prime of
life,
who,
after having enjoyed everything that he could during six
months of the year in town, was in the habit of coming to enjoy six months of his own company in a voluptuous solitude. You have the repuHe presently came to call upon Elise. tation of a wise man, sir,' she said tell me, what is your plan of life ? My plan, madame ? I have never had any,' I answered the count. I do everything that amuses me. seek everything that I like, and I avoid with care everything Do you live alone, or do you that annoys or displeases me.'
—
'
'
'
'
'
'
— 120 see people?
asked Elise.
'
'
I lecture on morals.
informed than
all
I see sometimes our clergyman, I chat with laborers,
our servants.
for them, of laces and ribbons.'
manv
we
?
Better than
'
'
a Iiundred times
—they make me wish
little vil-
little lotteries
What?
'
do those sort of people know
what
love is
are bet-
(Wrong, Mr. Philosopher:
said Elise, with great surprise,
fess,
I arrange
ribbons as you please; but no lotteries.) '
we do
who
I give balls to
lage girls, the prettiest in the world.
as
'
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
whom ter
—
do,
madame
—
better than
they love each other like turtle-doves
;
married myself.' You will conhowever,' said Elise, that they love without any delito be
'
'
cacy.'
'
Nay, madame, delicacy
is
a refinement of art
—they
have only the instincts of nature but, indeed, they have in feeling what we have only in fancy. I have tried, like another, to love, and to be beloved, in the town, there, caprice and fashion arrange everything, or derange it: here, there is true liking, and true choice. You will see in the course ;
—
how
these simple and tender knowing what they are doing.'
of the gayeties I give them, hearts seek each other, without '
You
—
give me,' replied Elise,
'
a picture of the country I
everybody says those sort of people are so much to be pitied.' They were so, madame, some years since but I have f oiuid the secret of rendering their condition expected
little
;
'
;
more happy.'
^
Oh you must !
rupted Elise, with vivacity. '
tice.'
'
tell
me your
secret
I wish also to put
it
]^o thing can be easier,' replied the count,
!
'
inter-
in prac'
this is
what I do I have about two thousand a year of income I spend five hundred in Paris, in the two visits that I make there during the year, five hundred more in my country-house, and I have a thousand to spare, which I spend on my exchanges.' And what exchanges do you make ? Well,' said the count, I have fields well cultivated, meadows well watered, orchards delicately hedged, and plaiwted with care.' Well what then ? Why, Lucas, Blaise, and l^icholas, my neighbors, and my good friends, have pieces of land neglected or worn out they have no money to cultivate them. I give them a bit of mine instead, acre for acre and the same :
;
—
'
'
'
'
'
!
'
;
;
'
;;
FOKS CLAVIGERA.
121
^
space of land whicli hardly fed tliem, enriches them in two harvests; the earth which
is
becomes
I choose the seed for
fertile in
in good state,
amusements.'
ungrateful under their hands,
manure .which
of digging, the is
mine.
'
it,
the
way
and as soon as it I think of another exchange. Those are my That is charming cried Elise you know suits it best,
!
then the art of agriculture
?
'
'I learn a
'
;
little
of
'
it,
madame
every day, I oppose the theories of the savants to the experience of the peasants.
I try to correct what I find wrong in
the reasonings of the one, and in the practice of the other.'
That
'
is
an amusing study; but how you ought to be adored these poor laborers must regard you as
then in these cantons their father
' !
'
!
On each
side,
we
love each other very
much,
madame.' " This read at
very pretty, but falsely romantic, and not to be with the unqualified respect due to the natural
is all
all
truth of the passages I before quoted to you from Marmontel.
He
wrote this partly in the hope of beguiling foolish and
ish persons to the unheard-of to their fellow-creatures
sentiment, his
own
;
self-
amusement of doing some good
but partly also in really erroneous
character having suffered
much
deteriora-
manners of the Court in the period immediately preceding the French Kevolution. Many of the false relations between the rich and poor, which could not but end in such catastrophe, are indicated in the above-quoted passage. There is no recognition of duty on either side the landlord enjoys himself benevolently, and the tion by his compliance with the
:
laborers receive his benefits in placid gratitude, without being either provoked or instructed to help themselves.
assumed
Their ma-
wretched unless continually relieved; while their household virtue and honor
terial condition is
to be necessarily
are represented (truly) as purer than those of their masters.
The Revolution could not do away with
this fatal anomaly day the French peasant is a better man than his lord and no government will be possible in France until she has learned that all authority, before it can be honored, must be
to this
honorr.ble.
-FOES CLAVIGEKA.
122
But, putting the romantic method of operation aside, the question remains whether Marmontel
is
right in his
main idea
that a landlord should rather take £2,000 in rents, and return
£1,000 in help State,
to his tenants,
To which
at once.
and
than remit the £1,000 of rents it is primarily better for the
I reply, that
iiltimately
for the tenant,
that administrative
power should be increased in the landlord's hands; but that ought not to be by rents which he can change at his own Of which, in pleasure, but by fixed duties under State law. it
due time
;
—I do not say
in
my
next
letter, for that
would be
mere defiance of the Third Fors. Ever faithfully yours,
JOH^ KUSKIK
THE MOUNT OF COMPASSION, AND CORONATION OF Drawn
Uius by
ITS BUILDER.
Sandko Botticelli.
LETTEK
XXII. Brastwood,
Hy
I
AM
my own
of
to-daj to begin explaining to you the meaning
books, wliicb, some people will
of the matter
and impertinent
—
to
is,
that
it is
yon,
tell
and impertinent thing for an anthor
egotistical
own view
September, 1872.
^^^'*
Feiexbs
to do.
is
an
My
generally more egotistical
explain the meaning of other people's
which, nevertheless, at this day in England, many young and inexperienced persons are paid for pretending to
books,
What intents I have had, myself, therefore, in this " Fors Clavigera," and some other lately published writings,
do.
I will take on
And page.
first,
It
is
me
without more preamble.
to tell you,
for their little vignette stamp of roses on
copied from
petticoat of Spring,
title-
the clearest bit of the pattern of the
where
it is
drawn
tight over her thigh,
I drew it in Sandro Botticelli's picture of her, at Florence. on the wood myself, and ]\Ir. ]3urgess cut it and it is on all my title-pages, because whatever I now write is meant to help " see the in founding the society called of " Monte Rosa ;
;
—
Such reference hereafter, observe, is only thus printed, (XVII. 59). And I copied this vignette from Sandro Botticelli, for two reasons: first, that no man has ever yet dra^vn, and none is likely to draw for many a day, roses as well as Sandro has drawn them; secondly, because he was the only painter of Italy who thoroughly felt and understood Dante; and the only one also who understood the thoughts of Heathens and Christians equally, and could in a measure paint both Aphrodite and the Madonna. So that he is, on the whole, the most seventeenth of these letters,
p.
imiversal of painters; and, take
Florentine
59.
him
workman: and I wish you 124
all in all,
to
the greatest
know with Dante's
125
FOES CLAVIGEKA.
opinions, his, also, on all subjects of importance to you, of
which Florentines could judge.
And
much
thus it
of his
life, it is
proper for you immediately to
much when he was
or at least, that so
:
in Vasari's time,
—
that
know
was current gossip about a boy, he obstinately
refused to learn either to read, write, or sum; (and I heartily
wish
all
boys would and could do the same,
till
they were at
whereupon
least as old as the illiterate Alfred,
his father,
" disturbed by these eccentric habits of his son, turned
over in despair to a gossip of his, called Botticello,
him who was a
goldsmith."
And on
this,
note two things
:
the
first,
that all the great
early Italian masters of painting and sculpture, without ex-
by being goldsmiths' apprentices the second, to, and formed by the disciplined their fingers, mainly had master-craftsman who conpractically they whether in work on gold or marble, that their sidered him their father, and took h is name rather than own; so that most of the gTeat Italian workmen are now known, not by their o^vq names, but by those of their masters,* the master being himself often entirely forgotten by the pubbut immortal in his pupil, and lic, and eclipsed by his pupil ception, began
;
that they all felt themselves so indebted
;
Thus, our Sandro, Alessandro, or Alexander's own name was Filipepi which name you never heard of, I suppose, till now: nor I, often, but his master's was Botticello; of which master we nevertheless know only that
named
in his name.
;
he so formed, and informed, this boy, that thenceforward the boy thought it right to be called " Botticello's Sandro," and nobody else's. Which in Italian is Sandro di Botticello and So, Francesco that is abbreviated into Sandro Botticelli. " Francia's or Francia is short for Francesco di Francia, Francis," though nobody ever heard, except thus, of his mas;
But
ter the goldsmith, Francia.
So, Philip Brimelleschi
is
his
nellesco being his father's Christian *
Or
of their native
masters, also.
own name was
Raibolini.
short for Brimellesco's Philip, Bru-
towns or
villages,
name,
—
to
show how much
these being recognized as
126
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
he owed to was Lippo
his father's careful training;
and, which
name
(the family
the prettiest instance of all, " Piero della Francesca," means " Francesca's Peter " be;
)
is
;
cause he was
chiefly trained
by
his mother, Francesca.
All of
which I beg you to take to heart, and meditate on, concerning Mastership and Pupilage.
But to return to Sandro. Having learned prosperously how to manage gold, he takes a fancy to know how to manage color; and is put by his good father under, as
it
chanced, the best master in Florence, or
the world, at that time finest,
—the Monk Lippi, whose work
out and out, that ever
monk
did
;
which I
is
the
attribute,
—
myself, to what
is usually considered faultful in him, his having run away with a pretty novice out of a convent. I am not jesting, I assure you, 'in the least but how can I possibly help the nature of things, when that chances to be ;
laughable it so
be a fact)
Be
K^ay, if
?
you think of
it,
perhaps you will not find
laughable that Lippi should be the only ,
who
that as
it
monk
(if this
ever did good painter's work.
may, Lippi and
his pupil
were happy in each
other; and the boy soon became a smiter of color, or colorsmith, no less than a gold-smith
ander the Coppersmith," for
whom
also,
Christian people
;
and eventually an
Alex-
^'
not inimical to St. Paul, and
may
wish, not revengefully, " the
Lord reward him according to his works," though he was fain, Demetrius-like, sometimes to shrine Diana. And he painted, for a beginning, a figure of Fortitude and then, one of St. Jerome, and then, one of our Lady, and then, one of Pallas, and then^ one of Venus with the Graces and Zephyrs, and especially the Spring aforesaid with flowery petticoats and, finally, the Assumption of our Lady, with the Patriarchs, the Prophets, the Apostles, the Evangelists, the Martyrs, the Confessors, the Doctors, the Virgins, and the Hierarchies. It is to be presumed that by this time he had learned to read, though we hear nothing of it, (rather the contrary, for he is taunted late in life with rude scholarship,) and then paints under notable circumstances, of which presently, the calling ;
;
—
—
;
127
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
•
of Moses, and of Aaron, and of Christ,
—
all
well preserved
which no person now ever thinks of looking at, though they are the best works of pictorial divinity And having thus obtained great honor and extant in Europe. reputation, and considerable sums of money, he squandered all the last away and then, returning to Florence, set himself to comment upon and illustrate Dante, engraving some plates for that purpose which I will try to give you a notion of, some day. And at this time, Savonarola beginning to make himself heard, and founding in Florence the company of the Piagnoni, (Mourners, or Grumblers, as opposed to the men of pleasure,) Sandro made a Grumbler of himself, being then some forty years old and, his new master being burned in
and wonderful
pieces,
;
—
;
the great square of Florence, a year afterwards (1498),
—
be-
and doing what he could to show " che cosa e la fede," namely, in engraving Savonarola's " Triumph of Faith," fell sadder, wiser, and poorer, day by day until he became a poor bedesman of Lorenzo de' Medici and having gone some time on crutches, being unable to stand upright, and received his due share of what I hope we may
came
a
Grumbler
to
purpose
;
;
call discriminate charity,
died peacefully in his fifty-eighth
year, having lived a glorious life
in the
Church of All
;
and was buried at Florence, hundred and fifty-seven
Saints, three
years ago.
So much for my vignette. For my title, see 11. 16, and XIII. 2. I mean it, as you will see by the latter passage, to be read, in English, as " Fortune the ISTailbearer," and that the book itself should
show you how
Fortune, see the sixth sentence
compare
And
down
to
form, or make, this
the page, in II. 16; and
III. 32, 33.
in the course of the first year's letters, I tried gradually
you certain general propositions, which, if I had set them down in form at once, might have seemed to you So too startling, or disputable, to be discussed with patience. I tried to lead you into some discussion of them first, and now hope that you may endure the clearer statement of them, as
to illustrate to
follows
:
;
128
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
•
—
Proposition I. (I. 1, 2). The Englisli nation is beginning another gTOup of ten years, empty in purse, empty in stomach, and in a state of terrified hostility, to every other nation under the sun. I assert this very firmly and seriously. But in the course of these papers every important assertion on the opposite side shall be fairly inserted ; so that you may consider of them at
your leisure. Here is one, for instance, from the Morning Post of Saturday, August 31, of this year: " The country is
—
moment
unexampled prosfrom the very superabundance of its riches. Coals and meat are at famine prices, we are threatened with a strike among the bakers, and there is hardly a single department of industry in which the cost of at the jDresent
perity that
it is
in a state of such
actually suffering .
.
.
production has not been enhanced." This is exceedingly true the Morning Post ought to have congratulated you further on the fact that the things pro;
duced by
Hear on
this greater cost are
this head,
now
back as 1856 (and we have made "
then).
in
tlie
usually good for nothing:
what Mr. Emerson said of
England
is
much
us,
even so far
inferior articles since
aghast at the disclosure of her fraud
adulteration of food, of drugs, and of almost every
fabric in her mills and shops; finding that milk will not
nourish, nor sugar sweeten, nor bread satisfy, nor pepper bite
In true England all is false and merchant who knows why a crisis occurs in trade, why prices rise or fall, or who knows the mischief of paper money.* In the culmination of Nathe tongue, nor glue stick. forged.
...
It is rare to find a
—
tional Prosperity, in the annexation of countries ships, depots,
amid
towns
;
the chuckle of chancellors and financiers,
that bread rose to to sell his
cow and
;
building of
in the influx of tons of gold and silver
famine
prices, that the
pig, his tools,
it
was found
yeoman was forced
and his acre of land and the ;
dreadful barometer of the poor-rates was touching the point of ruin."
t
* Or the use of it, Mr. Emerson should have added. f "English Traits," (Eoutledge, 185G), p. 95.
129
FOES CLAVIGEKA.
—
Of sucli prosperity I, for one, Proposition II. (I. 2). have seen enoiigbj and will endure it no longer quietly but will set aside some part of my income to help, if anybody else ;
forming a
will join me, in
jSTational store instead of a
^I^Ta-
you as I have time and power, how to avoid such distress in future, by adhering to the elementary principles of Human Economy, which have been of late willfully entombed under pyramids of falsehood.
tional
Debt and
will explain to
;
" note this grave word in my second propoand invest a shilling in the purchase of " Bishop Berkeley on Money," being extracts from his '^ Querist," by James Harvey, Liverpool.* At the bottom of the twenty-first page you wnll find this query, " Whether the continuous efforts on the part of the Times, the Telegrap]i,'f the Economist, the Daily News, and the daily newspaper press, and also of moneyed men generally, to confound money and capital, be
" Willfully
sition
;
;
the result of ignorance or design."
Of ignorance
in great part, doubtless, for "
moneyed men,
generally," are ignorant enough to believe and assert any-
thing their
;
but
own
it is
side
;
noticeable that their ignorance always tells on :{:
and the Times and Economist are now noth-
ing more than passive instruments in their hands.
But
neither they, nor their organs, would long be able to assert untruths in Political Economy, if the nominal professors of the Of whom science would do their duty in investigation of it.
I
now
choose, for direct personal challenge, the Professor at
Cambridge and, being a Doctor of Laws of his o^vti L^niversity, and a Fellow of two colleges in mine, I charge him with ;
having insufiiciently investigated the principles of the science I charge him with having advanced he is appointed to teach, in defense of the theory of Interest on Money, four arguments, every one of them false, and false with such fallacy as * Provost, Henrietta Street, Covent Garden. f
The Telegraph has always seemed to me The words " daily newspaper press
the rest. general. J
Compare
"
Munera
Pulveris,"
§
140.
to play fairer than " are, of course, too
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
130
a child ought to have been able to detect. of these fallacies at page 11 of the
I have exposed one
first letter,
and the
tliree
others at page 78 to 81, of the eighteenth letter, in this book, and I
now
publicly call on Professor Fawcett either to
defend, or retract, the statements so impugned.
And
this
open challenge cannot be ignored bj Professor Fawcett, on the plea that Political Economy is his province, and not mine. If any man holding definite position as a scholar in either University, challenge me publicly and gTavely with having falsely defined an elementary principle of Art, I should hold myself bound to answer him, and I think public opinion would
ratify
my
decision.
—Your
redemption from the distress into which you have fallen is in your own hands, and in nowise depends on forms of government or modes of Pkoposition III.
(I,
3).
election.
But you must make the most of what forms of government you have got, by choosing honest men to work them (if you choose at all), and preparatorily, by honestly obeying them, and in all possible ways, making honest men of yourselves; and if it be indeed, now impossible as I heard the clergyman declare at Matlock (IX. 117) for any honest man to live by trade in England, amending the methods of English trade in
—
—
the necessary particulars, until
men
to live
by
it
becomes possible for honest
In the meantime resolving that you, do good work, whether you live by it or
again.
for your part, will
die— (II.
it
30).
—
Of present parliaments and (I. 7-10). governments you have mainly to inquire what they want with your money when they demand it. And that you may do this Proposition IY.
you are to remember that only a certain quantity any given time, and that your first business must be to ascertain the available amount of it, and what it is available for. Because you do not put more money into rich people's hands, when you succeed in putting into rich people's heads that they want something to-day which they had no occasion for yesterday. \Yhat they pay for one thing, they intelligently,
of
money
exists at
;
131
FORS CLxlVIGERA. cannot for another
can spend no more.
;
if tliej now spend their incomes, tliey Which you will find they do, and always
and
—
have done, and can, in fact, neither spend more, nor less this income being indeed the quantity of food their land produces, by which all art and all manufacture must be supported, and of which no art or manufacture, except such as are directly and wisely employed on the land, can produce a morsel. Proposition V. (II. 17). You had better take care of your squires. Their land, indeed, only belongs to them, or
—
is
said to belong, because they seized
it
long since by force of
hand, (compare the quotation from Professor Fawcett at p. xiv. of the preface to " Munera Pulveris,") and you may think you have precisely the same right to seize
it
now, for
—
you can.
So you have, precisely the same right, that is to say, none. As they had no right to seize it then, neither have you now. The land, by divine right, can be neither theirs nor yours, except under conditions which you will not ascertain by fighting. In the meantime, by the law of England, the land is theirs and your first duty as Englishmen is to obey the law of England, be it just or unjust, until it is by due and peaceful deliberation altered, if alteration of it be needful; and to be sure that you are able and willing to obey good laws, before you seek to alter unjust ones (II. 29). For you cannot know whether they are unjust Also, your race of or not until you are just yourselves. squires, considered merely as an animal one, is very precious and you had better see what use you can make of it, before you let it fall extinct, like the Dodo's. For none other such exists in any part of this round little world and, once destroyed, it will be long before it develops itself again from Mr. Darwin's yourselves, if
—
;
:
germ-cells.
—
Proposition VI. (V. 62-64). But, if you can, you had better become minute squires yourselves.
estly,
hon-
The
law of England nowise forbids your buying any land which the squires are willing to part with, for such savings as you may have ready. And the main proposal made to you in this book is that you should so economize till you can indeed be-
— 132
—
'
FORS CLAVIGEEA.
come diminutive
aud develop accordingly into some
squires,
proportionate fineness of race.
YII.
Proposition
13).
(II.
—But
perhaps
is
it
not
equally necessary to take care of your capitalists, or so-called " Employers." For your real employer is the public and the ;
employer is only a mediator between the public and mediation is perhaps more costly than need be, to whose you, you both. So that it will be well for you to consider how far, without such intervention, you may succeed in employing so-called
yourselves; and
my
some of you, and
all,
seventh proposition
capitalists, as well as
condition, as follows
accordingly that
is
some proportion, should be diminutive diminutive squires, yet under a novel
in
:
Peoposition VIII.
— Observe,
first,
that in the ancient
hitherto existent condition of things, the squire
an
who
idle person
does not use
who has
it
;
is
has possession of land, and lends
and the
capitalist is essentially
and
essentially it,
but
an idle person,
possession of tools, and lends them, but does not use
them while the laborer, by definition, is a laborious person, and by presumption, a penniless one, who is obliged to borrow both land and tools and paying, for rent on the one, and profit on the other, what wall maintain the squire and capitalist, digs finally a remnant of roots, wherewith to maintain himself. These may, in so brief form, sound to you very radical and ;
;
international definitions.
I
am
glad, therefore, that (though
entirely accurate) they are not mine, but Professor Fawcett's.
You will Economy
find
them quoted from
" in
my
his " ]\Ianual of Political
eleventh letter
(p.
148).
He
does not,
indeed, in the passage there quoted, define the capitalist as the possessor of tools, but he does so quite clearly at the end
of the fable quoted in all capital,"
I.
12,
^'
The plane
and the paragraph given
in
XL
is
the symbol of
118,
is,
indeed, a
most faithful statement of the present condition of things, which is, practically, that rich people are paid for being rich, and idle people are paid for being idle, and busy people taxed for being busy. ters
much
Which
does not appear to
me
a state of mat-
longer tenable; but rather, aud this
is
my
8th
;
133
FORS CLAVIGEKA. Proposition (XI. 150), that land should belong to those
can use
it,
and
tools to those
who can
who
use them; or, as a less
revolutionary, and instantly practicable, proposal, that those
who have land and
tools
—should use them. —
Proposition IX. and last: To know the " use " either of land or tools, you must know what useful things can be grown from the one^ and made with the other. And therefore to know what is useful, and what useless, and be skillful to provide the one, and wise to scorn the other, is the first need for Wherefore, I propose that schools all industrious men. should be established, wherein the use of land and tools shall be taught conclusively
:
—
in
other words,
the
of
sciences
agTiculture (with associated river and sea-culture)
;
and the
noble arts and exercises of humanity.
Now you
cannot but see
how
impossible
it
would have been
for me, in beginning these letters, to have started with a
formal announcement of these their proj^osed contents, even
now
startling enough, probably, to
some of
my
readers, after
how
nearly two years' preparatory talk.
You must
in speaking of so wide a subject,
not possible to complete
it is
and set that little and head by but it is necessary to touch on each have been enYet in the course of desultory talk, I
the conversation respecting each part of aside little.
;
see also
it
at once,
deavoring to exhibit to you, essentially, these six following things, namely, A, the general character and use of squires
—
B, the general character and mischievousness of capitalists C, the nature of money D, the nature of useful things E, ;
;
the methods of finance which obtain money; and F, the
methods of work which obtain useful things. To these " six points " I have indeed directed my own thoughts, and endeavored to direct yours, perseveringly, throughout these letters, though to each point as the Third Fors might dictate that is to say, as light was thro^\^l upon ;
my mind
by what might be publicly taking place at the Only time, or by any incident happening to me personally. it
in
it
chanced that in the course of the
which publicly took
place,
first
namely the
year, 1871, one thing siege
and burning of
— 134
FOES CLAVIGEKA.
Paris, was of interest so unexpected that it necessarily broke up what little consistency of plan I had formed, besides putting me into a humor in which I could only write incoherently deep domestic vexation occurring to me at the same time, till I fell ill, and my letters and vexations had like to have ended together. So I must now patch the torn web as giving best I can, by you reference to what bears on each of ;
the above six heads in the detached talk of these twenty months, (and I hope also a serviceable index at the two years' end) and, if the work goes on, But I had better keep all
—
;
If s out of
it.
Meantime, with respect to point A, the general character and use of squires, you will find the meaning of the word " Squire " given in II. 13, as being threefold, like that of Fors.
First, it
sense, a
means
a rider; or in
master or governor of beasts
has fine svmpathy with
all
:
more
full
beasts of the field,
and understand-
ing of their natures complete enough to enable
them
for their good,
and be king over
and perfect
signifying that a squire
him
all creatures,
the noxious ones, and cherishing the virtuous ones.
the primal
meaning of
to
govern
subduing
Which
is
chivalry, the horse, as the noblest, be-
cause trainablest of wild creatures, being taken for a type of
them see
Read on this point, IX. 117-120, and if you can larger books, at your library, § 205 of " Aratra Pen" and the last lecture in " Eagle's Xest." * x^nd ob-
all.
my
telici
;
serve farther that
it
as well as those of
what is noted in those places, must have the instincts of animals
follows from
that to be a good squire, one
men
;
but that the typical squire
somewhat on the lower
is
apt to
and occasionally to have the instincts of animals instead of those of men. Secondly. The word " Squire " means a Shield-bearer properly, the bearer of some superior person's shield but at all events, the declarer, by legend, of good deserving and good intention, either others' or his o'wn with accompanying stateerr
side,
;
;
;
*
Compare
also
!Mr.
Maurice's sermon for the fourth Sunday (Smith, Elder & Co., no
after Trinity in Vol. II. of third series. date.)
135
FOES CLAVIGERA.
ment of
and maintain the same
his resolution to defend
;
that so persistently that, rather than lose his shield, he
make
it
his death-bed
;
and
so honorably
and is to
and without thought
of vulgar gain, that it is the last blame of base governments to become " shield-sellers " (compare " Munera Pulveris," ;
§
127).
On
this part of the Squire's character I
yet been able to insist at any length
suggestion of the
manner
in
selves shield-bearers, in "
shall soon
;
have not
but you will find partial
may thus become
which you
Time and Tide,"
your-
§§ 72, 73, and I
have the elementary copies in my Oxford schools may then learn, if you will, somewhat of
published, and you
shield-drawing and painting.
And
thirdly, the
word
''
Squire " means a Carver, properly
a carver at some one else's feast
and
;
typically, has reference
men's feasts, being Lord in which function his Food giver of therefore Land, and of enough, (first from now often heard lady, as you have -giver; her duty being, howCarlyle,) is properly styled Loaf
to the Squire's
duty as a Carver at
all
;
come from for, quite retaining his character in the other two respects, the typical squire is apt to fail in this, and to become rather a loaf -eater, or consumer, than giver, (compare X. 135, and X. ever, first of all to find out
where
all
loaves
;
137); though even in that capacity the enlightened press of your day thinks you cannot do without him. (VII. 91.) Therefore, for analysis of what he has been, and may be, I have already specified to you certain squires, whose history I wish you to know and think over (with many others in due ;
course: but,
for
the
present,
those
already specified
are
enough,) namely, the Theseus of the Elgin Marbles and ]\Iidsummer Night's Dream, (II. 12); the best and unfortunatest* of the Kings of France, "St. Louis" (III. 36); the best and unfortunatest of the Kings of England, Henry * In calling- a man pre-eminently unfortunate, I do not mean that, as. comi^ared with others, he is absolutely less prosperous; but that he is one who has met with the least help or the greatest hostility, from the Third Fors, in proportion to the wisdom of his
purposes, and virtue of his character.
— 136
;
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
II. (III. 37); the Lion-lieart of
England
(III. 38);
Edward
England and his lion's whelp, (IV. 44); again and again the two Second Friedrichs, of Germany and Prussia; Sir John Hawk wood, (I. 5, and XV. 35); Sir Thomas More, (VII. 95); Sir Francis Drake, (XIII. 8); and Sir Eichard Grenville, (IX. 124). ISTow all these squires are alike in their high quality of captainship over man and beast III. of
they were pre-eminently the best men of their surrounding groups of men; and the guides of their people, faithfully recognized for such; unless when their people got drunk,
(which sometimes happened, with sorrowful
and all (Compare
issue,)
equality with them seen to be divinely impossible.
And that most of them lived by thieving does 17.) under the conditions of that day, in any wise detract from their virtue, or impair their delightfulness, (any more than it does that of your, on the whole I suppose, favorite. Englishman, and nomadic Squire of Sherwood, Robin Hode or Hoode) the theft, or piracy, as it might happen, being always effected with a good conscience, and in an open, honorable, and merciful manner. Thus, in the account of Sir Francis's third voyage, which was faithfully taken out of the reports of Mr. Christofer Ceely, Ellis Hixon, and others who were in the same voyage with him, by Philip Xichols, preacher^ revised and annotated by Sir Francis himself, and set forth by his nephew, what I told you about his proceedings on the coast of Spanish America (XIII. 8) is thus summed: XIV.
not,
;
" There were at this time belonging to Carthagene, IN^ombre de Dios, Eio Grand, Santa Martha, Rio de Hacha, Vera
Cruz, Veragua, Nicaragua, the Honduras, Jamaica, &c., about two hundred frigates,* some of a hundred and twenty tunnes, other but of tenne or twelve tunne, but the most of thirty or forty tunne, which all had entercourse betweene Carthagene and Xombre de Dios, the most of which, during our abode in those parts, wee tooke, and some of them twice or thrice each, * Italian " fregata," I believe " polished-sided " ship, for swiftness, "fricata; " but the derivation is uncertain.
:
137
FOES CLAVIGERA. yet never burnt nor suncke any, unless they were
men-of-warre against
us.
.
.
.
Many
made out
strange birds, beastes,
and fishes, besides fruits, trees, plants and the like were seene and observed of us in this journey, which, willingly, wee pretermit, as hastening to the end of our voyage, which from this Cape of St. Anthony wee intended to finish by sayling the directest and speediest way homeward, and accordingly even beyonde our owne expectation most happily performed. For whereas our captaine had proposed to touch at New-foundland, and there to have watered, which would have been some let unto us, though wee stood in great want of water, yet God Almighty so provided for us, by giving us good store of raine water, that wee were sufiiciently furnished; and witliin twenty-three dayes wee past from the Cape of Florida to the lies of Silley, and so arrived at Plimouth on Sunday, about sermon-time, August the Ninth, 1573, at what time the newes of our captaine's returne brought unto his " (people so speedily pass over all the church,
?)
" did
and surpass their mindes
with desire and delight to see him, that very fewe or none remained with the preacher, all hastening to see the evidence of God's love and blessing towards our gracious Queene and countrey, by the fruite of our captaine's labor and successe. Soli
I
Deo
am
gloria."
curious to know, and hope to find, that the deserted
preacher was Mr. Philip Nichols, the compiler afterwards of this log-book of Sir Francis.
Putting out of the question, then, this mode of their hood, you will find
all these
liveli-
squires essentially " captaines,"
head, or chief persons, occupied in maintaining good order,
and putting things to rights, so that they naturally become Lawyers without AVigs, (otherwise called Kings,) in the districts accessible to them. Of whom I have named first, the Athenian Theseus, " setter to rights," or " settler," his name means he being both the founder of the first city whose history you are to know, and the first true Ruler of beasts for his mystic contest with the Minotaur is the fable through chief
;
FOES CLAVIGERA.
138
which the Greeks tanght what they knew of the more terrible and mysterious relations betAveen the lower creatures and man; and the desertion of him by Ariadne, (for indeed he never deserted her, but she
maid,
—Death
him by
stroke against
Of
him,— involimtarily,
calling her in Diana's name,)
the Third Fors.
this great squire, then,
count in next
you
sliall
really have
I have only further time
letter.
poor sweet
the conclusive
is
that this letter's frontispiece
is
now
a facsimile of
some
to tell
ac-
you
two separate
parts of an engraving originally executed by Sandro Botti-
An
celli.
impression of Sandro's
own
plate
is
said to exist in
The ordinarily extant
the Vatican; I have never seen one.
impressions are assuredly from an inferior plate, a copy of Botticelli's.
But
by the copyist
his
manner
of engraving has been imitated
as far as he understood
it,
and the important
qualities of the design are so entirely preserved that the
work
has often been assigned to the master himself.
works of Mercy, as completed by an all; namely, lending without interest, from the Mount of Pity accumulated by generous alms. In the upper part of the design are seen the shores of Italy, with the cities which first built Mounts of Pity: Venice, chief of all then Florence, Genoa, and Castruccio's Lucca in the distance prays the monk of Ancona, who first thought inspired of heaven of such war with usurers and an angel crowns him, as you see. The little dashes, which form the dark background, represent waves of the Adriatic; and they, as well as all the rest, are rightly and manfully engraved, though you may not think it but I have no time today to give you a lecture on engraving, nor to tell you the story of IMounts of Pity, which is too pretty to be spoiled by haste but I hope to get something of Theseus and Frederick It represents the seven
eighth work in the center of
;
—
;
—
—
;
;
;
the Second, preparatorily, into next letter. close this to
me
Meantime I must
one by answering two requests, which, though made
privately, I think
it
right to state
my
reasons for re-
fusing publicly.
The
first
was indeed rather the
offer of
an honor
to
me, than
139
FOES CLAVIGERA.
a request, in the proposal that I should contribute to the
Maurice Memorial Fund. I loved
under
his
]\Ir. Maurice, learned much from him, worked guidance and authority, and have deep regard and
respect for some persons whose
names I
see
on the Memorial
Committee.
But
must decline joining them first, because I dislike all thinking that no man who deserves them, needs them: and secondly, because, though I affectionately remember and honor Mr. ]\laurice, I have no mind to put his bust in Westminster Abbey. For I do not think of him as one of the great, or even one of the leading, men of the England of his day; but only as the center of a group of students whom his amiable sentimental! sm at once exalted and stimulated, while it relieved them from any painful necessities of exact scholarship in divinity. And as he was always honest, (at least in intention,) and unfailingly earnest and kind, he was harmless and soothing in error, and vividly helpful when unerring. I have above referred you, and most thankfully, to his sermon on the relations of man to inferior creatures and I can quite understand how pleasant it was for a disciple panic-struck by the literal aspect of the doctrine of justification by faith, to be told, in an earlier discourse, that " We speak of an anticipation as justified by the event. Supposing I
;
memorials, as such
;
;
that anticipation to be something so inward, so essential to
me, that
by
it."
my oa\ti very existence
is
involved in
But consolatory equivocations
it,
I
am justified
of this kind have no
enduring place in literature nor has Mr. Maurice more real right to a niche in Westminster Abbey than any other tenderhearted Christian gentleman, who has successfully, for a time, promoted the charities of his faith, and parried its discussion. I have been also asked to contribute to the purchase of the Alexandra Park and I will not and beg you, my working ;
;
:
that I wish your homes and refined; and that I vvdll resist, to the utmost of my power, all schemes founded on the vile modern notion that you are to be crowded in kennels till you are nearly readers, to understand, once for to be comfortable,
all,
140
FOES CLAVIGERA.
dead, that other people
may make money by your
work, and
then taken out in squads by tramway and railway, to be revived and refined by science and to
make your homes healthy and
wives and children there, and
let
art.
Your
first
business
is
delightful: then, keep your
your return
to
them be your
daily " holy day."
Ever faithfully yours,
JOHN EUSKIK
LETTEE
XXIII. BSANTWOOD,
My
October 2ith, 1872.
Eeiexds
At
ily,
breakfast this morning, which I was eating sulkbecause I had final press-corrections to do on " Fors,"
(and the ance,)
last are
always worst to do, being without repent-
I took up the Pall Mall Gazette for the 21st, and
chanced on two things, of which one much interested, the
much pleased me, and both are to our present purpose. What interested me was the statement in the column of This Evening's Xews," made by a gentleman much ac-
other
"
quainted with naval business, that " Mr. Goschen
man
to
whom^ and
even for permission
Whether
to
whom
to retain
alone,
we can
is
the one
as a nation look
our power at sea."
entirely, or, as I apprehend, but partially, true,
appear in the journals of lately chiefly on the subject of its liberties and I cannot but wonder what Sir Francis Drake would have thought of such a piece of Evening's Xews,
this statement is a
remarkable one
a nation which has occupied
its
to
mind
;
communicated in form to him? What he would have thought if you can fancy it would be very proper for you also to think, and much to our eventual purpose. But the part of the contents of the Pall Mall which I found to bear on the subject of this letter, was the The address by a mangled convict to a benevolent gentleman. Third Fors must assuredly have determined that this letter should be pleasing to the Touchstone mind, the gods will have it poetical it ends already with rhyme, and must begin in like manner, for these first twelve verses of the address are much too precious to be lost among " news," whether of morn-
—
—
—
;
ing or evening. 141
— 142
FOES CLAVIGERA. " Mr. P. Taylor, honnered Sir, Accept these verses I indict, Thanks to a gentle mother dear Which taught these infant hands to
rite.
"And
thanks unto the Chaplin here, heminent relidjous xn^n. As kind a one as ever dipt A beke into the flowing can.
A
*'
pointed out to me most clear sad and sinfull is my ways, And numerous is the briney tear Which for that man I nigtly prays.
He
How
" '
Cohen,' he ses, in sech a voice!
'Your lot is hard, your stripes is sore; But Cohen,' he ses, 'rejoice! rejoice!
And
never never steale no more!
" His langwidge It
I
works
is
so kind
so strong on
woold not do it I coold not do
if
'
and good,
me
inside,
I coold,
it if I
tryed.
"Ah, wence this moisteur in my eye? Whot makes me turn agin my food? O, Mister Taylor, arsk not why, Ime so cut up with gratitood. "
Fansy a gentleman
like you, paultry Beak, but a M.P., riggling in your heasy chair The riggles they put onto me.
No
A
" I see thee shudderin ore thy wine, You hardly know what you are at,
Whenere you think of iJs emplyin The bloody and unhenglish Cat. "Well may your indigernation rise! I call it !Manley what you feeled At seein Briton's n-k-d-b-cks By brutial jalors acked and weald.
143
FOES CLAVIGEEA. "Habolish. these yere torchiers! Dont have no horgies any more Of arf a dozen orficers All wallerin in a fellers gear. " Imprisonment alone
A Add
thing of whitch
is
not
we would complane;
ill-conwenience to our
lot,
But do not give the convick "
pain.
well you know that's not the wust, Not if you went and biled us whole; The Lash's degeradation! that's What cuts us to the wery soul! "
And
—
The questions respecting punishment and reformation, which these verses incidentally propose, are } 3ciselj the same which had to be determined three thousand years ago in the city of Athens (the only difference' of any importance being that the instrument of execution discussed was club instead of cat) and their determination gave rise to the peculiar form in v.'hich the history of the great Athenian Squire, Theseus, our to-day's subject was presented to mankind. The story is a difficult one to tell, and a more difficult one still to understand. The likeness, or imagined likeness, of the hero himself, as the Greeks fancied him, you may see, when you care to do so, at the British Museum, in simple
—
;
—
—
guise enough.
Miss Edgeworth, in her noble last novel, " Helen," makes fly into a passion at even being suspected of wishing
her hero
to quote the too trite
valet-de-chambre." triteness only,
proverb that "
ISTo
man
is
a hero to his
But Mr. Beauclerk disclaims
when he ought
it
for
rather to have disclaimed
it
its
for
Every truly great man that ever I heard of, was a principal hero to his servants, and most heroic to those most intimate with him. At all events, the Greeks meant its
untruth.
all
the world to be to their hero as valets-de-chambre, for he
sits
mother-naked.
Under which primitive
aspect, indeed,
I would fain show you, mentally as well as bodily, every hero I give you account
of.
It is the
modern method,
in order to
— 144
FORS CLAVIGEEA.
give you more inviting pictures of people, to dress
often very correctly clothes as the
aim
is to strij)
flesh,
—
them
in the costume of the time, with such old
masquerade shops keep. But my own steady them for you, that you may see if they are of
indeed, or dust.
Similarly, I shall try to strip theories
and facts, such as you need to know. Mother-naked sits Theseus and around about him, not much more veiled, ride his Athenians, in Pan-Athenaic procession, honoring their Queen-Goddess. Admired, beyond all other marble shapes in tlie world for which reason, the gentlemen of my literary club here in London, professing devotion to the same goddess, decorate their very comfortable corner house in Pall Mall with a copy of this Attic sculpture. Being therein, themselves, Attic in no wise, but essentially barbarous, pilfering what they cannot imitate: for a truly Attic mind would have induced them to portray themselves, as they appear in their o^vn Pan-Christian procession, whenpresumably, to Epsom do^^^ls ever and wherever it may be on the Derby day. You may see, I said, the statue of Theseus whenever you I do not in the least know why you sJtould care to do so. But for years back, you, or your foolish friends, have care. been making a mighty fuss to get yourselves into the British Museum on Sundays: so I suppose you want to see the Theseus, or the stuffed birds, or the crabs and spiders, or the skeleton of the gorilla, or the parched alligator-skins and you imagine these contemplations likely to improve, and sanctify, that is to say, recreate, your minds. But are you quite sure you have got any minds yet to be Before you expect edification from that long galrecreated ? lery full of long-legged inconceivable spiders, and colossal blotchy crabs, did you ever think of looking with any mind, or bare,
:
;
:
—
;
mindfulness, at the only too easily conceivable short-legged
own English acquaintance ? or did you ever so why the crabs on Margate sands were minded to go sideways instead of straightforward ? Have you so much as watched a sjiider making Ids cobweb, or, if j'ou spider of your
much
as consider
145
FOES CLAVIGERA.
have not yet had leisure to do that, in the toil of joiir own cobweb-making, did you ever think how he threw his first thread across the corner
?
need for you to go to the British Museum yet, my friends, either on Sundays or any other day. "Well, but the Greek sculpture? "We can't see tliat at
No
home
room corners." is Greek sculpture, or any sculpture, to you? Are your own legs and arms not handsome enough for you to look at, but you must go and stare at chipped and smashed bits of stone in the likenesses of legs and arms that ended their walks and work two thousand years ago ? " Your own legs and arms are not as handsome as ^you suppose they ought to be," say you? ISTo; I fancy not: and you will not make them handsomer by sauntering with your hands in your pockets through the British Museum. I suppose you will have an agitation, next, for leave to smoke in it. Go and walk in the fields on Sunday, making sure, first, therefore, that you have fields to walk in: look at living birds, not at stuffed ones; and make your own breasts and shoulders better worth seeing than the Elgin in our
And what
—
Marbles.
Which thought
remember, there are several matters to be The shoulders will get strong by exercise. So
to effect,
of.
indeed will the breast. inside of
it
But
the breast chiefly needs exercise
— of the lungs, namely, and of the heart
last exercise is
very curiously inconsistent with
;
and
many
athletic exercises of the present day.
And
want you, for
Museum, and
once, to go to the British
this
of the
the reason I do to look
broad chest of Theseus, is that the Greeks imagined it to have something better than a Lion's Heart beneath its breadth a hero's heart, d\ily trained in every pulse. at that
—
They imagined
it so.
Your modern extremely wise and
—
you it never was so that no real Theseus ever existed then; and that none can exist now, or, rather, that everybody is himself a Theseus and a little more. liberal historians will tell
All the more strange then,
:
all
the
more
instructive, as the
;
146
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
tlie Roman, so this disembodied Theseus of the Ionian; though certainly Mr. Stuart Mill could not consider him, even in that ponderous block of marble imagery, a " utility fixed and embodied in a material object." I^ot even a disembodied utility not even a ghost if he never
disembodied Ciiicinnatus of
—
An
—
yet one that has ruled all minds of men from the hour of its first being born, a dream, into this practical and solid world. Ruled, and still rules, in a thousand ways, which you know no more than the paths by which the winds have come that blow in your face. But you never pass a day without being brought, somehow, under the power of Theseus. You cannot pass a cbina-shop, for instance, nor an upholsterer's, without seeing, on some mug or plate, or curtain, or chair, the pattern known as the " Greek fret," simple or complex. I once held it in especial dislike, as the chief means which by bad architects tried to make their buildings look classical; and as ugly in itself. Which it is: and it has an ugly meaning also but a deep one, which I did not then know lived.
idea only
;
to this hour,
;
having been obliged
to write too
young, when I knew only half
and was eager to set them forth by what I thought fine words. People used to call me a good writer then now they truths,
;
say I can't write at
all
;
because, for instance, if I think anyI only say, " Sir, your house is on
body's house is on fire, fire " whereas formerly I used to say, " Sir, the abode in ;
which you probably passed the delightful days of youth is in a state of inflammation," and everybody used to like the effect of the two p's in " probably passed," and of the two d's in ''
delightful days.
'
Well, that Greek fret, ugly in
itself,
has yet definite and
noble service in decorative work, as black has
much more, has it a significance, very solemn, when you can read it. There is so much in it, indeed, that I
among
colors;
precious, though very
don't well
know where
Perhaps it will be best to go back to our cathedral For as, after door at Lucca, where we ha^e been already. examining the sculpture on the bell, with the help of the sym-
to begin.
—
— 147
FOES CLAVIGERA.
pathetic ringer, I was going in to look at the golden lamp, my eyes fell on a slightly traced piece of sculpture and legend on the southern wall of the porch, which, partly feeling it out
with
my
finger, it
being worn away by the friction of
many
passing shoulders, broad and narrow, these six hundred years and more, I drew for you, and Mr. Burgess has engraved.
The
straggling letters at the side, read straight, and with
separating of the words, run thus:
QVEM CRETICVS EDIT DEDALVS EST I^ABERINTHVS. DE QVO NVLLV8 VADERE QVIVIT Q\T PVIT INTV8 HIC
NI THESEVS GRATIS ADRIANE STAJIINE JVTVS.
which
is
in English
:
This is the labyrinth which the Cretan Dedalus built, Out of which nobody could get who Avas inside, Except Theseus; nor could he have done it, unless he had been helped with a thread by Adriane, all for love.
Upon which you ment, " This
are to note,
first,
that the grave announce-
which the Cretan Dedalus built," may possibly be made interesting even to some of your children, if reduced from mediaeval sublimity, into your more popular legend " This is the house that Jack built." The cow with the crumpled horn will then remind them of the creature who, in the midst of this labyrinth, lived as a spider in the center of his web and the " maiden all forlorn " may (either name is given her by stand for Ariadne, or Adriane while Chaucer, as he chooses to have three syllables or two) the gradual involution of the ballad, and necessity of clearmindedness as well as clear utterance on the part of its singer, is a pretty vocal imitation of the deepening labyrinth. Theseus, being a pious hero, and the first Athenian knight who cut his hair short in front, may not inajDtly be represented by the priest all shaven and shorn; the cock that crew in the morn is the proper Athenian symbol of a pugnacious mind and the malt that lay in the house fortunately indicates the connection of Theseus and the Athenian power with the mysteries of is
the labyrinth
—
;
—
—
;
"
148
!
FOES CLAVIGERA.
where corn first, it is said, grew in Greece. And by am more and more struck every day, by the singuGrecism in Shakespeare's mind, contrary in many respects
Eleiisis,
the way, I lar
"^^^^,
yet compelling him to associate Engwith the great Duke of Athens, and to use the most familiar of all English words for land, " acre," in the Greek or Eleusinian sense, not the English one
to the rest of his nature
;
lish fairyland
Between the acres of the
rye,
These pretty country-folks do
—
lie
THESEUS. "^ith the SjTnboI of his Life-problem.
rhus drawn bv a
Master of the Mint
in
CRETE.
149
FOES CLAVIGERA.
—
and again " seareli every acre in the high grown field," meaning " ridge," or " crest," not " ager," the root of " agriLastly, in our nursery rhyme, observe that the culture."
name
of Jack, the builder, stands excellently for Dsedalus, him down to tlie phrase, " Jack-of-all-
retaining the idea of
Of
Trades." at the
end of
Greek builder you will find some account " Aratra Pentelici " to-day I can only tell
this
my
:
human, as opposed workmanship or craftsmanship. Whatever good there is, and whatever evil, in the labor of the hands, separated from that of the soul, is exemplified by his history and performance. In the deepest sense, he was to the Greeks, Jack of all trades, yet Master of none the real Master of every His own special work or craft trade being always a God. was inlaying or dove-tailing, and especially of black in white. And this house which he built was his finest piece of involution, or cunning workmanship; and the memory of it is kept by the Greeks forever afterwards, in that running border you he
is
distinctively the
power of
finest
to Divine,
;
of theirs, involved in and repeating fret,
itself, called
the
Greek
of which you will at once recogiiize the cliaracter in these
two pictures of the labyrinth of Da?dalus itself, on the coins of the place where it was built, Cnossus, in the island of Crete; and which you see, in the frontispiece, surrounding the head of Theseus, himself, on a coin of the same city. Of course frets and returning lines were used in ornamentation when there were no labyrinths probably long before labyrinths. A symbol is scarcely ever invented just when it is needed. Some already recognized and accepted form or thing becomes symbolic at a particular time. Horses had
—
—
— 150
!
FOES CLAVIGEBA.
and the moon quarters, long before there were Turks;
tails,
but the horse-tail and crescent are not less definitely symbolic to the
Ottoman.
alike,
among
all
So,
tlie
early forms of ornament are nearly
nations of any capacity for design
they put
:
meaning into them afterwards, if they ever come themselves Vibrate but the point of a tool against to have any meaning. an unbaked vase, as it revolves, set on the wheel, you have The vase revolves once the ends of a wavy or zigzag line. line tally when they meet; you get wavy do not exactly the
—
;
over the blunder by turning one into a head, the other into a tail,
—and
have a symbol of eternity
—
first,
if,
which
is
wholly needful, you have an idea of eternity Again, the free sweep of a pen at the finish of a large has a tendency to throw itself into a spiral.
There
is
letter
no par-
ticular intelligence, or spiritual emotion, in the production of
A worm draws it with his coil, a fern with its bud, and a periwinkle with his shell. Yet, completed in the Ionic capital, and arrested in the bending point of the acanthus leaf in the Corinthian one, it has become the primal element of beautiful architecture and ornament in all the ages and is eloquent with endless sjonbolism, representing the power of the winds and waves in Atlienian work, and of the old serpent, which is the Devil, and Satan, in Gothic work: or, indeed, often enough, of both, the Devil being held prince of the power of the air as in the story of Job, and the lovely story of Buonconte of Montefeltro, in Dante nay, in this very tale of Theseus, as Chaucer tells it, having got hold, by ill luck, only of the later and calumnious notion that Theseus deserted this line.
;
—
:
—
his
savior-mistress,
he wishes him Devil-speed instead of
God-speed, and that energetically "
A
twenty-divel
way
the wind
him
drive."
For which, indeed, Chaucer somewhat deserved
(for he ought
not to have believed such things of Theseus,) the God of I will write Love's anger at his drawing too near the daisy. the pretty lines partly in
may
get the sense better
:
modern
spelling for you, that
you
;
151
FORS CLAVIGEEA. "
I, kneeling bj' this flower, in good intent, Abode, to know what all the people meant,
As still as any stone; till at the last The God of Love on me his eyen cast
And
said,
Unto
Who
'
kneeleth there?
'
And
I
answered
his asking.
And And
said,
'
Sir, it
salued him.
am
I,'
— Quoth
and came him near he, What dost thou here '
So nigh mine own flower, so boldly? It were better worthy, truly, A worm to nighen near my flower than thou.' 'And why, Sir,' quoth I, an it like you? * For thou,' quoth he, art nothing thereto able, It is my relike, digne, and delitable. And thou my foe, and all my folk worriest.* And of mine old servants thou missayest.' " '
'
'
But
it is
only for evil speaking of ladies that Chaucer felt
his conscience thus pricked,
—
chiefly of Cressida; whereas,
I have written the lines for you because of this age that all
that
we speak
made them
it is
evil alike of ladies
noble in past days
;
the very curse
and knights, and
—nay, of
saints also
what I can for our own St. George, against the enlightened modern American view of him, that he was nothing better than a swindling bacon-seller (good enough, indeed, so, for us, now!) But to come back to the house that Jack built. You will want to know, next, whether Jack ever did build it. I beno; in veritable limelieve, in veritable bricks and mortar stone and cave-catacomb, perhaps, yes; it is no matter how; somehow, you see. Jack must have built it, for there is the and I have, for
first
business, next January, to say
—
on the coin of the town. He built it, just as St. George killed the dragon; so that you put a picture of him also on the coin of your town. N"ot but that the real and artful labyrinth might have been, A very real one, indeed, was built by twelve for all we know.
picture of
it
* Chaucer's real
was
word means
" warrest with, all my folk; " but it weary " and " worry " in associa-
so closely connected with "
tion of sound, in his days, that I take the last as nearest the sense.
;
152
FOES CLAVIGERA.
brotherly kings in Egypt, in two stories, one for in, the
other for crocodiles
;
— and
the upper story
men
to live
was
visible
and wonderful to all eyes, in authentic times: whereas, we of no one who ever saw Jack's labyrinth and yet, cu-
know
:
riously enough, the real labyrinth set the pattern of nothing
while Jack's ghostly labyrinth has set the pattern of almost everything linear and complex, since and the pretty specter of it blooms at this hour, in vital hawthorn for you, every ;
spring, at
Now,
Hampton
Court.
in the pictures of this imaginary maze,
you are to note that both the Cretan and Lucchese designs agree in being composed of a single path or track, coiled, and recoiled, on itself.
Take a piece of
ing the chain it
flexible
itself as the
chain and lay
path
:
it do\\Ti,
consider-
and, without an interruption,
any of the three figures. (The two Cretan ones same in design, except in being, one square,
will trace
are indeed the
And recollect, upon this, that the word " Labyrinth " properly means " rope-walk," or " coil-of-rope-
and the other round. )
walk," its first syllable being probably also the same as our English name " Laura," " the path," and its method perfectly given by Chaucer in the single line " And, for the house is
—
And on this, note farther, first, that had the walls been real, instead of ghostly, there would have been no difficulty whatever in getting either out or in, for you could go no other way. But if the walls were spectral, and yet the transgression of them made your final entrance or return impossible, Ariadne's clew was needful indeed. crenkled to and fro."
x^ote, secondly, that the question
seems not
been about getting in but getting out again. ;
events, could be hel]3ful only after if
at all to
The
have
clew, at all
you had carried
it
in;
and
the spider, or other monster in midweb, ate you, the help in
your clew, for return, would be insignificant. So that this thread of Ariadne's implied that even victory over the monster would be vain, unless you could disentangle yourself from his
web
also.
So much you may gather from coin or carving next, we try :
tradition.
Theseus, as I said before,
is
the great settler or
153
FOBS CLAVIGERA. law-giver of the Athenian state
but he is so eminently as the Peace-Maker, causing men to live in fellowship who before lived separate, and making roads passable that were infested by robbers or wild beasts. lie is the exterminator of every bestial and savage element, and the type of human, or hmnane power, which power you will find in this, and all my other books on policy, summed in the terms, " Gentleness and Justice."
The Greeks dwelt
;
chiefly in their thoughts
and Theseus, representing the
first,
on the
has therefore most
last, diffi-
culty in dealing with questions of punishment, and criminal justice.
Now
the justice of the Greeks
was enforced by three great
^-Eacus, who lived in the island of ^gina, is the administrator of distributive, or " dividing " justice which relates chiefly to property, and his sub-
judges,
who
lived in three islands.
;
jects, as
being people of industrious temper, were once ants;
afterwards called Ant-people, or " Myrmidons." Secondly,
]\[inos,
who
lived in the island of Crete,
whom presently by Homer " golden,"
judge who punished crime, of
manthus, called always
;
finally,
was the Rhada-
" or " glowing
Rhadamanthus, was the judge who rewarded virtue and he which eye of man hath not yet seen, nor has any living ear heard lisp of wave on that shore. For the very essence and primal condition of virtue is that it shall not know of, nor believe in, any blessed islands, till it find them, it may be, in due time. And of these three judges, two were architects, but the third ;
lived in a blessed island covered with flowers, but
only a gardener.
xEacus helped the gods to build the walls
Minos appointed the labyrinth in coils round the Minotaur; but Rhadamanthus only set trees, with golden fruit on them, beside waters of comfort, and overlaid the calm waves with lilies. of Troy.
They did these things, I tell you, in very truth, cloud-hidden indeed; but the things themselves are with us to this day. No town on earth is more real than that town of Troy. Her prince, long ago, was dragged dead round the walls that ^Eacus
;
154
FORS CLAVIGERA.
built; but her princedom did not die with him. Only a few weeks since, I was actually standing, as I told you, with my good friend Mr. Parker, watching the lizards play among the chinks in the walls built by J^acus, for his wandering Trojans, by Tiber side. And, perhaps within memory of man, some of you may have walked up or douTi Tower Street, little thinking that its tower was also built by ^Eacus, for his wandering Trojans and their Caesar, by Thames side: and on Tower Hill itself where I had my pocket picked only the other day by some of the modern ^Eacida3 stands the English Mint, " dividing " gold and silver which xEacus, first of all Greeks, divided in his island of ^gina, and struck into intelligible money-stamp and form,' that men might render to Caesar the things which are Csesar's.
—
—
Minos labyrinth is more more real for us. And what it was, and is, as you have seen at Lucca, you shall hear at Elorence, where you are to learn Dante's opinion upon it, and Sandro Botticelli shall draw it for us. That Hell, which so many people think the only place Dante gives any
But
the
real yet; at all events,
account
of,
(yet seldom
know
his ac-
count even of that,) was, he tells you, divided into upper, midmost, and nether lose sight of this
main
division of
it,
in
of the nine circles; but remember,
diminishing proportion
:
six of
You
usually
the more complex one these
are
divided in
them are the upper
two, the midmost; one, the lowest* *
pits.
You
hell
will find this a
are briefly The deepening orders of sin, in the nine 4. Avarice; 3. Gluttony; 2. Lust; 1. Unredeemed nature; 5. Discontent; 6. Heresy; 7. Open violence; 8. Fraudful violence; 9. Treachery. But they are curiously aove-tailed tog'ether, — serpent-tailed, I should say, by closer coil, not expanding- plume. You shall understand the joiner's work next month.
these,
circles,
—
—
155
FOBS CLAVIGEEA.
Here it is in labyvery pretty and curious proportion. rinthine form, putting the three dimensions at right angles to I show each other, and drawing a spiral round them. you
in a spiral line, because the idea of descent
it
Dante's mind, spiral
throughout discende sinner
even
;
(as
to the
in
mode
of Geryon's flight, " ruota e
" and Minos accordingly indicates which circle any
;
to be sent to, in a
is
manner, by twisting his necessarily thus
tail
marking the
The uppermost and circles, is the hell
most graphically labyrinthine round himself so many times, level.
least dreadful hell, divided into six
of those
who cannot
rightly govern them-
but have no mind to do mischief to anyone
selves,
is
of a worm's or serpent's coil)
else.
In
same walls with the whose stench even comes up and reaches to them, are people who have not rightly governed their thoughts: and these are buried forever in fiery tombs, and their thoughts thus governed to purpose which you, my friends, who are so fond of freedom of thought, and freedom the lowest circle of this, and within the
more
terrible
mid-hell,
;
of the press,
Then
may
wisely meditate on.
the two lower hells are for those
And
done mischief to other people.
who have
willfully
of these, some do open
and some, deceitful injury, and of these the rogues
injury,
are put the lower; but there
manner
of sin,
than
its
is
a greater distinction in the
simplicity or
roguery:
—namely,
whether it be done in hot blood or cold blood. The injurious that is to say, under the influence of sins, done in hot blood passion are in the midmost hell but the sins done in cold blood, without passion, or, more accurately, contrary to pas-
—
—
sion, far
hell
:
down below
the freezing point, are put in the lowest
the ninth circle.
N'ow,
who
;
little as
you may think
it,
or as the friend thought
it,
me of jesting the other day, I should not upon me to write this " Fors," if I had not, in
tried to cure
have taken
some degree, been cured of jesting long ago and in the same way that Dante was, for in my poor and faltering path I have myself been taken far enough do^vn among the dirain;
—
— 156
!
FOES CLAVIGERA.
—
the hell of Traitors and know, what people do not usually know of treachery, that it is not the fraud, but the cold-heartedness, which is chiefly Therefore, this nether Hell is of ice, not dreadful in it. fire and of ice that nothing can break.
ished circles to see this nether bell
;
to
;
" Oh, ill-starred folk, others wretched, who abide In such a mansion as scarce thought finds words To speak of, better had ye here on earth
Beyond
all
*****
Been
flocks or
mountain goats.
and underneath my feet, whose frozen surface liker seemed To glass than water. Not so thick a veil In winter e'er hath Austrian Danube spread I saw, before,
A
lake,
O'er his
still
Under the
course, nor Tan^is, far remote
Rolled o'er that mass or Pietrapana fallen Not even its rim had creaked. As peeps the frog, Croaking above the wave, what time in dreams The village gleaner oft pursues her toil, Blue-pinched, and shrined in ice, the spirits stood. Moving their teeth in shrill note, like the stork." chilling sky.
Had Taberniche
—
Xo more
wandering of the
feet in labyrinth like this,
the eyes, once cruelly tearless,
But
the
midmost
—
hell, for
now
and
blind with frozen tears.
hot-blooded sinners, has other sort
you saw a little while ago, of hot which one bathes otherwise than in Serchio (the Serchio is the river at Lucca, and Pietrapana a Lucchese mountain) But observe, for here we get to our main work again, the great boiling lake on the Phlegethon of this upper hell country is red, not black; and its source, as well as that of the river which freezes beneath, is in this island of Crete in the Mount Ida, " joyous once with leaves and streams." You must look to the passage yourselves " Inferno," XIV. The (line 120 in Carey) for I have not room for it now. " a little brook, whose crimfirst sight of it, to Dante, is as Virgil makes soned wave Yet lifts my hair with horror." of lakes,
as, for instance,
—
pitch, in
—
.
—
—
—
—
—
:
157
FOKS CLAVIGEKA.
look at this spring as the notablest thing seen by him in he entered its gate but the great lake of it is imder
him
hell, since
;
a ruinous mountain, like the fallen Alp through which the and on the crest of this ruin Adige foams do^vn to Verona ;
lies
couched the
enemy
—
of Theseus
—
the Minotaur
" x\nd there,
At point of the disparted ridge, lay stretclied The infamy of Crete at sight of us It gnawed itself, as one icith rage distract. To him my guide exclaimed, Perchance thou deem'st The King of Athens here.' "
—
'
Of whom and
of his enemy, I have time to
—except only
to-day
ment of the two
that this
Minotaur
is
essentially bestial sins of
that both these are in the
human
tell
you no more
the type or embodi-
Anger and Lust
;
nature, interwoven inextrica-
Dante makes this very ruin of the Rocks of hell, on which the Minotaur is couched, to be ^^Tought on them at the instant when " the Universe was bly with
thrilled
chief virtue. Love, so that
its
with love,"
—
(the last
moment
of the Crucifixion)
and that the labyrinth of these passions
is
one not fabulous,
nor only pictured on coins of Crete. And the right interweaving of Anger with Love, in criminal justice, is the main question in earthly law, which the Athenian lawgiver had to deal with. Look, if you can, at my introductory Lectures at Oxford, § 89
next
letter,
—
in and so I must leave Theseus for this time which will be chiefly on Christmas cheer, I must ;
;
really try to get as far as his vegetable soup.
As
for xEacus, and his coining business,
them alone now, readers
who have
till
we must even
next year; only T have to
written to
me on
let
thank some
the subject of interest of
money, (one or two complaining that I had dismissed it too summarily, when, alas I am only at the threshold of it !), and, !
reader for the press, who has referred me to a delightful Italian book, " Teoremi di Politica Cristiana," (jSTaples, 1830,) and copied out ever so much of it for me;
especially,
my
and Mr. Sillar, for farther most useful day I can only quote this postscript :
letters,
of which to-
— 158
: !
:
'
FOES CLAVIGEKA.
" Please note that your next
number
Fors Clavigera hands of your readers on Friday, the 1st, or Saturday, the 2nd, of Xovember. The following day being Sunday, the 3rd, there will be read in every church in Eng-
ought
of
'
to be in the
land, or in the world,
where the Church Service
is
used, the
15th Psalm, which distinctly declares the man who shall ascend to God's holy hill to be him who, amongst other things, has not put forth his money upon usury; a verse impiously ignored in most of the metrical versions of the Psalms; those adapted to popular tunes or popular prejudices." I think, accordingly, that
my
some of
may
readers
be glad
have a sounder version of that Psalm and as the 14th is much connected with it, and will be variously useful to us to
;
afterwards, here they both are, done into verse by an English squire,
—
or his sister, for they alike could
what her brother having early put seal on his lips. finished singing
PSALM
XIV.
left
rhyme and ;
the last
unsung, the Third Fors
(Dixit insipiens.)
The
foolish man by flesh and fancy ledd. His guilty hart with this fond thought hath fed There is noe God that raigneth.
And so thereafter he and all his mates Do workes, which earth corrupt, and Heaven Xot one
Even God himself
hates
that good remaineth.
sent do^\Ti his piercing ey,
If of this clayy race he could espy
One, that his wisdome learneth.
And
loe,
he findes that
all a
All plung'd in stincking
Xot one
O maddnes of these
strayeng went
filth,
that
God
not one well bent, discerneth.
folkes, thus loosly ledd
These caniballs, who, as
if
they were bread,
Gods people do devower:
—
:
:
;
:
:
159
rOKS CLAVIGERA. !Nor ever call on God but they shall quake More than they now do bragg, when he shall The just into his power. ;
take
Indeede the poore, opprest by you, you mock Their councells are your common jesting stock: But God is their recomfort
Ah, when from Syon shall the Saver come, That Jacob, freed by thee, may glad become
And
PSALM XV. In tabernacle
thine,
Lord, of thy holy
Ev'n
?
{Domine, quis habitahit.) Lord,
who
shall
remaine
?
wlio shall the rest obtaine
?
he that leades a life of uncorrupted traine
Whose deedes
Who
O
hill,
Israel full of comfort
of righteous hart, whose harty wordes be plain ;
with deceitf ull tongue hath never us'd to f aine
Xor neighboure hurtes by deede, nor doth with slander Whose eyes a person vile doth hold in vile disdaine, But
stain
doth, with honour greate, the godly entertaine
Who
othe and promise given doth faithfully maintain, Although some worldly losse thereby he may sustain; From bityng usury who ever doth ref raine
Who Who
sells
not guiltlesse cause for filthy love of gain,
thus proceedes for ay, in sacred
You may
mount
not like this old English at
first
shall raign.
;
but
if
you can
anybody to read it to you who has an ear, its cadence is massy and grand, more than that of most verse I know, and never a word is lost. Whether you like it or not, the sense of it is true, and the way to the sacred mount, (of which mounts, whether of Pity, or of Roses, are but shadows,) told you for once, straightforwardly, on which road I wish you Godfind
—
speed.
Ever
faithfully yours,
JOHJsT
EUSKIN.
LETTEE XXIV. Corpus Christi Coll.,
My
FeIENDS,—
mas
;
I
mvemUr
SHALL not
so
any more, after
this Christ-
late, which anybody secondly,
because things have chanced to me, of
first,
have made
you
call
7th, 1872.
me
too sulky to be friends with
;
because in the two years during which I have been writing
you has sent me a friendly word of if you were my friends, it would Xor shall I sign be waste print to call you so, once a month. myself " faithfully yours " any more being very far from faithfully my own, and having found most other people anything but faithfully mine. Xor shall I sign my name, for I these letters, not one of
answer
;
lastly, because,
even
;
never like the look of it; being, I apprehend, only short for " Rough Skin," in the sense of '' Pigskin " (and indeed, the ;
planet under which I was born, Saturn, has supreme power
—
nor can I find historical mention of any other form of the name, except one I made no reference to when it
over pigs,)
occurred, as that of the leading devil of four,
Blue-skin
—and
—Red-skin, —who
I forget the skins of the other two
per-
formed in a religious play, of the fourteenth century, which was nearly as comic as the religious earnest of our own century. So that the letters will begin henceforward without You will probaddress; and close without signature. ably know whom they come from, and I don't in the least care
whom
they go
to.
all day yesterday, where the weather was wont and, returning here by the evening
I was in London, as dismal as
is its
;
with astonishment, the stars extricate themselves from the fog, and the moon glow for a little while in her setting, over the southern Berkshire hills, as I breathed on the (for there were six people platform at the Reading station;
train, saw,
—
in the carriage, and they had shut both the windows). 160
161
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
was entirely clear the Great ground under the pole, and the Charioteer
"Wlien I got to Oxford, the sky
Bear was near
the
;
high overhead, the principal star of him as bright as a gaslamp. It is a curious default in the stars, to
a Charioteer
among them without
my mind,
that there
a chariot; and a
is
Wagon
with no wagoner; nor any wagon, for that matter, except but I have always wanted to know the
the Bear's stomach
;
history of the absent Charles,
who must have
stopped, I sup-
pose to drink, while his cart went on, and so never got to be stellified himself.
I wish I knew; but I can
about him than even about Theseus.
—he gave
The
tell
you
less
Charioteer's story
and did not would be a dainty tale to tell you under the mistletoe perhaps I may have time next year: to-day it is of the stars of Ariadne's crown I want to is
pretty,
get
however:
got
it
;
made
his life for a kiss,
into stars instead.
It
:
speak.
But
that giving one's life for a kiss, and not getting
it,
is
indeed a general abstract of the Greek notion of heroism, and its
reward
;
and, by the way, does
it
not seem to you a grave
defect in the stars, at Christmas time, that all their stories are
Greek
—not one Christian
there
is
In all the east, and all the west, not a space of heaven with a Christian story in it; the star of the Wise Men having risen but once, and set; it seems, forever: and the stars of Foolish men innumerable, ?
—
but unintelligible, forming, I suppose,
broad way of Asses' milk
;
all
across the sky that
while a few Greek heroes and
hunters, a monster or two^ and some crustaceous animals,
occupy, here in the north, our heaven's compass,
very margin of the illuminated book.
A
dovm
to the
sky quite good
enough for us, nevertheless, for all the use we make of it, either by night or day or any hope we have of getting into it or any inclination we have, while still out of it, to " take stars for money." Yet, with all deference to George Herbert, I will take them for nothing of the sort. Money is an entirely pleasant and proper thing to have, itself; and the first shilling I ever got in
—
—
— 162
my
FORS CLAVIGEEA.
I put in a pill-box, and put
life,
couldn't sleep
all
it
under
night for satisfaction.
my
pillow,
and
I couldn't have done
that with a star; though truly the pretty system of usury
makes the
stars
drop
something
do^^^l
else
than dew.
I got a
note from an arithmetical friend the other day, speaking of the death of
"an
found
lation, I
mine— who —£200,000.
old lady, a cousin of
because she could not take
it
this old lady,
a year, was accumulating
with her
left
left,
On
calcu-
who has been lying bedridden for money (i.e. the results of other
people's labor,) at the rate of 4d. a minute; in other words,
she awoke in the morning ten pounds richer than she went to
At which, doubtless, and the like miracles throughout the world, " the stars with deep amaze, stand fixed with steadfast gaze ; " for this is, indeed, a Xativity of an adverse god bed."
to the one
you profess
to honor, ,with
them, and the angels, at
Christmas, by over-eating yourselves. I suppose that
is
the quite essential part of the religion of
Christmas; and, indeed,
you do in the year; and
it is
if
about the most religious thing
pious people would understand,
any other God than Mamand nicely dressed, as much as Mammon likes to see them fasting and in rags, they might set a wiser example to everybody than they do. I am frightened out of my wits, every now and then, here at Oxford, by seeing something come out of poor people's houses, all dressed in black down to the ground which, (having been much thinking of wicked things lately,) I at first take for the Devil, and then find, to my extreme relief and gratification, generally, that, if there be indeed
mon,
He
likes to see people comfortable,
;
that
a Sister of Charity.
it's
Indeed, the only serious dis-
advantage of eating, and fine dressing, considered as religious ceremonies, whether at Christmas, or on Sunday, in the Sun-
—
day dinner and Sunday gown, is that you don't always what the eating and dressing signify. For example why should Sunday be kept otherwise than Christmas, and be less merry ? Because it is a day of rest, commemorating the fulfillment of God's easy work, while Christmas is a day of toil, commemorating the beginning of clearly understand :
163
FORS CLAVIGERA.
work ? Is that the reason ? Or because Christmas commemorates His stooping to thirty years of sorrow, and Sunday His rising to countless years of joy ? Which should be the gladdest day of the two, think you, on either ground ? Why haven't you Sunday pantomimes ? It is a strait and sore question with me, for when I was a child, I lost the pleasure of some three-sevenths of my life because of Sunday; for I always had a Avay of looking forward to things, and a lurid shade was cast over the whole of Friday and Saturday by the horrible sense that Sunday was Xot that I was rebellious against my coming, and inevitable. good mother or aunts in any wise feeling only that we were all crushed under a relentless fate which was indeed the fact, for neither they nor I had the least idea what Holiness meant, beyond what I find stated very clearly by Mr. David the pious author of " The Paradezeal system of Botany, an arrangement representing the whole globe as a vast blooming and fruitful Paradise," that " Holiness is a knowledge of His
difficult
;
;
—
—
the Ho's."
My
mother, indeed, never went so far as
carried her religion
Holiness, by giving
do"\\Ti
me
to the
cold dinner
my
aunt
;
nor
ninth or glacial circle of ;
and
to this day, I
am
apt
remembrance Good of the consolation it used to afford me at one o'clock. Friday, also, was partly " intermedled," as Chaucer would call it, with light and shade, because there were hot-cross-buns at breakfast, though we had to go to church afterwards. And, indeed, I observe, happening to have under my hand the account in the Daily Telegraph of Good Friday at the Crystal
to over-eat myself with Yorkshire pudding, in
Palace, in 1870, that its observance is for your sakes also now " intermedled " similarly, with light and shade, by conscientious persons for in that year, " whereas in former years the :
performances had been exclusively of a religious character, the directors had supplemented their programme with secular amusements." that
the
fountains
It was, I suppose, considered
should
play
(though
I
''
secular
"
have noticed
that natural ones persist in that profane practice on
Sunday
164
FOES CLAVIGERA.
and accordingly, " there was a very abundant watersupply, while a brilliant sun gave many lovely prismatic effects to the fleeting and changeful spray " (not careful, even the sun, for his part, to remember how once he became "black as sackcloth of hair"). ''A striking feature presented itself to view in the shape of the large and handsome pavilion of Howe and Cushing's American circus. This vast pavilion occupies the whole center of the grand terrace, and w^as gayly decorated with bunting and fringed with the show-carriages of the circus, which were bright with gilding, mirrors, portraits, and scarlet panels. The outdoor amusements began " (The English public always retaining a distinct impression that this festival was instituted in the East) " with an Oriental procession " (by the way, why don't we always call Wapping the Oriental end of London ?) " of fifteen camels from the circus, mounted by negroes wearing richly colored and bespangled Eastern costume. The performances then commenced, and continued throughout also),
—
—
—
—
the day, the attractions comprising the trained wolves, the wonderful monkeys, and the usual scenes in the circle." " There was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour." I often wonder, myself, how long it will be, in the crucifixion afresh, which all the earth has now resolved upon, crying with more unanimous shout than ever the Jews, ^' Not this man, but Barabbas " before the N^inth Hour comes. Assuming, however, that, for the nonce, trained wolves and
—
wonderful monkeys are proper entertainments on Good Friday, pantomimes on Boxing-day, and sermons on Sunday, have you ever considered what observance might be due to Saturday, the day on which He " preached to the spirits in
—
prison "
?
for that seems to
me
quite the part of the three days'
work which most of us might first hope for a share in. I don't know whether any of you perceive that your spirits are in prison. I know mine is, and that I would fain have it preached to, and delivered, if it be possible. For, however far and steep the slope may have been into the hell which you say every Sunday that you believe He descended into, there
165
FOBS CLAVIGERA. are places trenched deep enough
now
in all our hearts for the
hot lake of Phlegethon to leak and ooze into
and the rock of no less hard than in Dante's time. And as your winter rejoicings, if thej mean anything at all, mean that you have now, at least, a chance of deliverance from that prison, I will ask you to take the pains to understand what the bars and doors of it are, as the wisest man who has yet spoken of them tells you. There is first, observe, this great distinction in his mind between the penalties of Hell, and the joy of Paradise. The penalty is assigned to definite act of hand the joy, to definite It is questioned of no one, either in the Purgastate of mind. tory or the Paradise, what he has done; but only what evil :
their shore is
;
feeling
is
On
what good, when purified
in his heart, or
still
wholly, his nature
is
noble enough to receive.
the contrary. Hell
constituted such by the one gi-eat
is
negative state of being without Love or Fear of are no degrees of that State ful sins
;
but there are more or
which can be done in
Human
of the unrecleemed
God
it,
;
—
there
less dread-
according to the degradation
And men
nature.
are judged
according to their works.
To
The punishment of the fourth Misuse of Money, for having either But the pain in Purgasinfully kept it, or sinfully spent it. tory is only for having sinfully Loved it: and the hymn of give a single instance.
circle in
Hell
repentance
is,
is
"
for the
My soul cleaveth unto the dust
;
quicken Thou
me." Farther, and this
is
You might
very notable.
that Dante's divisions were
narrow and
each circle to one sin only, as
every
if
commit many.
But
destroys souls.
That conquered,
it is
always one
victorious, all others follow with
all it.
artificial,
man
at first
think
in assigning
did not variously
sin, the favorite,
which
others fall with it: that l^evertheless, as I told
you, the joiner's work, and interwoven walls of Dante's Inferno, it
marking double forms of
were,
when they
meet,
is
able in his whole design.
sin,
and
tlicre
overlapping, as
one of the subtlest conditions trace-
;
166
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
Look back to the scheme I gave you in last number. The Minotaur, spirit of lust and anger, rules over the central hell.
But
and anger,
the sins of lust
definitely
and limitedly
de-
scribed as such, are punished in the upper hell,-in the second
and
Why
fifth circles.
Have you
is this,
—
think you
?
ever noticed enough to call it noticing seriously the expression, " fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind " ? There is one lust and one anger of the flesh
—
only
;
these, all
wrongly,
men must
if in excess;
feel
;
rightly feel, if in temperance
but even then, not necessarily to the
destruction of their souls.
But
there
is
another
lust,
and
another anger, of the heart; and these are the Furies of
Phlegethon
—wholly ruinous.
rocks, lies couched the
Lord of
Infamy of
these,
on the shattered
For when the should not, and the
Crete.
heart,
what 'it heart, and kindles to its wrath, tlie corrupted, and his heart's blood is fed in its
as well as the flesh, desires
as well as the flesh, consents
whole
man
is
veins from the lake of
Take
fire.
for special example, this sin of usury with
have ourselves
The punishment
to deal.
which we
in the fourth circle
on Avarice, not Usury, For a man may be g-reedy of gold in an instinctive, fleshly way, yet not corrupt his intellect. Many of the most goodnatured men are misers my first shilling in the pill-box and sleepless night did not at all mean that I was an ill-natured or illiberal boy; it did mean, what is true of me still, that I should have great delight in counting money, and laying it in visible heaps and rouleaux. I never part with a new sovereign without a sigh and if it were not that I am afraid of thieves, I would positively and serioiisly, at this moment, turn all I have into gold of the newest, and dig a hole for it in my garden, and go and look at it every morning and evening, like the man in ^Esop's Fables, or Silas Marner: and where I think thieves will not break through nor steal, I am always laying up for myself treasures upon earth, with the most eager appetite: that bit of gold and diamonds, for instance (IV. 46), and the most gilded mass-books, and such like, I can get of the upper hell
is
utterly avaricious,
—
—
:
:
167
FOES CLAV^IGEEA.
hold of; the acquisition of a Koran, with two hundred leaves richly gilt on both sides, only three weeks since, afforded
me
under variously trying circumstances. Truly, my soul cleaves to the dust of such things. But I have not so perverted my soul, nor palsied my brains, as to expect to be advantaged by that adhesion. I don't expect, because I have gathered much, to find jS^ature or man gatherreal consolation
—
me more to find eighteenpence in my pill-box in the morning, instead of a shilling, as a '' reward for continence " or to make an income of my Koran by lending it to poor ing for
:
;
scholars.
myself,)
—
If I think a scholar can read
and would
like to
— and
leaves by the outside edge, he
nothing
:
if
it,
— (X.B., I
can't,
will carefully turn the
welcome
is
to
read
it
for
he has got into the habit of turning leaves by the
middle, or of wetting his finger, and shufiling up the corners,
my
as I see
banker's clerks do with their ledgers, for no
amount of money
shall he read
it.
(Incidentally, note the es-
sential vulgarism of doing anything in a hurry.)
So that
my mind
and brains are in fact untainted and unam free in that respect from
warjDed by lust of money, and I the power of the
Infamy
of Crete.
I used the words just above
—Furies of Phlegethon.
know something of the Fates also you must know something. The pit of Dante's central hell is reserved are beginning to
:
You
of the Furies
for those
who
have actually committed malicious crime, involving merciless-
But
ness to their neighbor, or, in suicide, to themselves.
it is
necessary to serpent-tail this pit with the upper hell by a district
for
insanity
without deed
;
the
Fury which has
brought horror to the eyes, and hardness to the heart, and yet, having possessed itself of noble persons, issues in no malicious crime. in,
Therefore the sixth circle of the upper hell
is
walled
together with the central pit, as one grievous city of the
dead; and at the gates of
it
the warders are fiends,
and the
watchers Furies. Watchers, observe, as sleepless. ship,
Once in
their
companion-
;
168
rOES CLAVIGEEA. "
Nor poppy, nor mandragora,
the drowsy syrups of the world, Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep Which thou owed'st yesterday."
Nor
all
and yet in the Greek vision of Sleepless, and merciless them which ^schylus wrote, they are first seen asleep and they remain in the city of Theseus, in mercy. Elsewhere, furies that make the eyes evil and the heart hard. Seeing Dante from their watchtower, they call for '^ So will we make flint of him " (" enamel," Medusa. rather which has been in the furnace first, then hardened) ;
;
—
;
but Virgil puts his hands over his eyes.
Thus is
the upper hell
is
central hell, though in a deeper pit of
the abyss in a Niagara of blood)
human
The central Fraud only in the
knitted to the central.
half joined to the lower by the power of it,
:
(Phlegethon
Fraud
is still
falls into
joined with
passion, but in the nether hell is passionate no
the traitors have not natures of flesh or of
and the earth-giants, the
first
fire,
more
but of earth
enemies of Athena, the Greek
spirit of Life, stand about the pit, speechless, as towers of war.
In a bright morning,
this last
midsummer,
at Bologna, I
was
standing in the shade of the tower of Garisenda, which Dante The sun had got just behind its battlesays they were like.
ments and sent out rays round them as from behind a mounI may be tain peak, vast and gray against the morning sky. '' perFors," able to get some picture of it, for the January from haps and perchance the sun may some day rise for us behind our Towers of Treachery. Note but this farther, and then we will try to get out of The divisions of the central fire are under Hell for to-day. ;
them partly man, partly animal. The Minotaur has a man's body, a bull's head, (which is precisely The Centaur the general type of the English nation to-day) Chiron has a horse's body; a man's head and breast. The three creatures, all of
.
Spirit of Fraud, Geryon, has a serpent's body, his face of a just
man, and
labyrinthine lines.
is
that
his breast checkered like a lizard's, with
169
FOES CLAVIGEKA.
All these three creatures signify the mingling of a brutal instinct with the
human mind
humanity
rules, the
is
;
but, in the Minotaur, the brute
subordinate; in the Centaur, the
man
and the brute is subordinate in the third, the man and the animal are in harmony and both false. Of the Centaurs, Chiron and Nessus, one, the type of human gentleness, justice, and wisdom, stooping to join itself with the nature of animals, and to be healed by the herbs of you the ground, the other, the destruction of Hercules, shall be told in the ^' Fors " of January to-day I must swiftly rules,
;
;
—
—
:
sum
the story of Theseus.
His conquest of the Minotaur, the chief glory of his life, is possible only to him through love, and love's hope and help. But he has no joy either of love or victory. Before he has once held Ariadne in his arms, Diana kills her in the isle of Xaxos. Jupiter crowns her in heaven, where there is no following her. Theseus returns to Athens alone. The ship which hitherto had carried the Minotaur's vicTheseus had received tims only, bore always a black sail. from his father a purple one, to hoist instead, if he returned victorious.
The common and Forgot
A
!
is so likely to
He
is
that he forgot to hoist
inconspicuous a part of a ship
forget one's victory, returning, with
on the horizon himself;
senseless story
sail is so
!
— Diana
But he returned not
!
it.
and one
home seen
victorious, at least for
and Death had been too strong for him. sail. And his father, when he saw it,
bore the black
threw himself from the rock of Athens, and died. Of which the meaning is, that we must not mourn for our-
—
worse thing happen to us, a Greek lesson much remembered by Christians about to send expensive orders the undertaker: unless, indeed, they mean by their black
selves, lest a to be
to
vestments to hell.
tell
the world that they think their friends are in
If in Heaven, with Ariadne and the gods, are
mourn ?
And
if
they were
is
too just
we
to
for Heaven, are we, for our-
mourning? Yet Theseus, touching and wise to mourn thereHp sends a
selves, ever to leave off
the beach,
fit
— 170
;
FOES CLAVIGEKA.
herald to the city to
father he is safe stays on the shore and feast his sailors. He sacrifices and makes pottage for them there on the sand. The herald returns to tell him his father is dead also. Such welcome has he for his good work, in the islands, and on the main. In which work he persists, no less, and is redeemed from darkness by Hercules, and at last helps Hercules himself in his sorest need as you shall hear afterwards. I must stop to-day at the vegetable soup, which you would think, I suppose, poor Christmas cheer. Plum-pudding is an Egyptian dish but have you ever thought how many stories were connected with this Athenian one, pottage of lentils ? A bargain of some importance, even to us, (especially as usurers) and the healing miracle of Elisha and the vision of Habakkuk as he was bearing their pottage to the reapers, and had to take it far away to one who needed it more and, chiefly of all, the soup of the bitter herbs, with its dipped bread and faithful company, " he it is to whom I shall give the sop when I have dipped it." The meaning of which things, roughly, is, first, tell his
;
to sacrifice to the gods,
—
—
;
;
;
;
—
that
we
we know and keep them:
are not to sell our birthrights for pottage, though
fast to death; but are diligently to
secondly, that
we
real: lastly, that
are to poison no man's pottage, mental or
we
look to
it lest
we betray
the
hand which
gives us our daily bread.
Lessons to be pondered on at Christmas time over our pud-
and the more, because the sops we are dipping for each and even for our o"\ati children, are not always the most nourishing, nor are the rooms in which we make ready their ding
;
other,
last
supper always carefully furnished.
—
example of last supper (no, I Chicksand Street, Mile End:
this
On Wednesday an
see
Take, for instance, it is
breakfast)
—
in
inquest was held on the body of Annie
who was found dead in a cellar Chicksand Street, Mile End, on the morning of last SunThis unfortunate woman was a fruit-seller, and rented day. the cellar in which she died at Is. 9d. per week her only comRedfern, aged twenty-eight, at 5,
—
171
rOKS CLAVIGEEA,
panion being a the mother.
boy, aged three years, of whom she was appeared from the evidence of the surgeon
little
It
who was smnmoned to see the deceased wdien her body was discovered on Sunday morning that she had been dead some Her knees were drawn up and her hours before his arrival. arms folded in such
show that she died with
a position as to
her child clasped in her arms.
The room was very
without any ventilation, and was totally unfit for
The cause
tation.
of death
dark,
human
was effusion of serum
habi-
into the
pericardium, brought on greatly by living in such a wretched dwelling.
The coroner
many of jurymen who
said that as there were so
these wretched dwellings about, he hoped the
were connected with the vestry would take care to represent the case to the proper authorities, and see that the place was This remark from the coroner not let as a dwelling again. incited a juryman to reply, '' Oh, if we were to do that, we might empty half the houses in London there are thousands more like that, and worse." Some of the jurors objected to ;
the
room being condemned
;
to sign the papers unless this
the majority, however, refused
was done, and a verdict was
turned in accordance with the evidence. the body had to be removed to save little
child
who
it
re-
It transpired that
from the
If the
rats.
lay clasped in his dead mother's arms has not
been devoured by these animals, he
is
probably
now
in the
workhouse, and will remain a burden on the ratepayers, who unfortunately have no means of making the landlord of the foul den that destroyed his mother answerable for his support.
I miss, out of the
column of the Pall Mall for the
1st of
month, one paragraph after this, and proceed to the next but one, which relates to the enlightened notion among Engthis
lish
young women, derived from
]\Ir.
J.
Stuart Mill,
—
that the
" career " of the
Madonna is too limited a one, and that economy can provide them, as the Pall Mall observes, with much more lucrative occupations than that of nursing the baby." But you must know, first, that the modern
political
''
Athenians always kept memory of Theseus' pot of vegetable
— 172
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
soup, and of his sacrifice, by procession in spring-time, bearing
a rod wreathed with lambs'-wool, and singing an Easter carol, in these words " Fair staff,
:
may the gods grant, by thee, the bringing of and buttery cakes, and honey in bulging cups, and the sopping of oil, and wine in flat cups, easy to lift, that thou mayest " (meaning that we may, but not clear which is which,) " get drunk and sleep." Which Mr. Stuart Mill and modern political economy have changed into a pretty Christmas carol for English children, lambs for whom the fair staff also brings wine of a certain sort, in flat cups, " that they may get drunk, and sleep." Here is the next paragraph from the Pall Mall: figs to us,
One is
of the most fertile causes' of excessive infant mortality
the extensive practice in manufacturing districts of insidi-
ously narcotizing young children, that they
conveniently laid aside
when more
may
sent themselves than that of nursing the baby.
gallons of
opium in various forms
districts for this purpose.
be the more
lucrative occupations pre-
Hundreds
are sold weekly in
ISTor is it likely
of
many
that the practice
will be checked until juries can be induced to take a rather
severe view of the suddenly fatal misadventures which this sort of chronic poisoning not unfrequently produces.
pears, however, to be very difficult to persuade
upon
it
them
It apto look
An inquest was reupon the body of an infant who
as other than a venial offense.
cently held at Chapel Gate
had died from the administration, by its mother, of about The bottle was twelve times the proper dose of laudanum. labeled carefully with a caution that " opium should not be In this case given to children under seven years of age." five drops of laudanum were given to a baby of eighteen months. The medical evidence was of a quite unmistakable character, and the coroner in summing up read to the jury a definition of manslaughter, and told them that '' a lawful act, if dangerous, not attended with such care as would render the probability of danger very small, and resulting in death,
'WE HAVE SEEN HIS STAR IX THE Painted by
Bernard of Luino,
at
EAST.'
MILAN.
— 173
FOES CLAVIGEEA.
would amount to manslaughter at the least. Then in this case they must return a verdict of manslaughter unless they could find any circumstances which would take it out of the rule of law he had laid down to them. It was not in evidence that the mother had used anv caution at all in administering the poison."
ISTevertheless, the
interval, the verdict of homicide
jury returned, after a short
by misadventure.
" Hush-a-bye, baby, upon the tree top,"
me and
my
mother used
to
remember the da^vn of intelligence in which I began to object to the bad rhyme which followed " when the wind blows, the cradle will rock." But the Christmas winds must blow rudely, and warp the waters askance indeed, which rock our English cradles now. sing to
:
I
:
—
Mendelssohn's songs without words have been, I believe,
We
lately popular in musical circles.
shall,
perhaps, require
cradle songs with very few words, and Christmas carols with
very sad ones, before long
;
Chaucer's notion of
(though this carol of his
it
time, indeed not at Christmas) "
I
little
Of Mintes *
is
in spring-
:
my right hand, path I found, and Fennel greene.
Then went
Down by
a
it seems to me, we are fast There is a different tone in
in fact,
losing our old skill in caroling.
forth on
full,
*
*
*
and right anon Unto Sir Mirth gan I gone. There, where he was, him to solace: And with him, in that happy place, So fair folke and so fresh, had he, That when I saw, I wondered me From whence such folke might come. So fair were they, all and some; For they were like, as in my sight Sir Mirth I found,
To
angels, that be feathered bright.
These
Upon
which I tell you wenten tho,*
folke, of
a karole
so,
A
Ladie karoled them, that hight f Gladnesse, blissful and light.
*
Went
then in
measure
of a carol dance.
f
Was
called.
— 174
;
rOES CLxiVIGERA. She could make in song such refraining" her wonder well to sing,
It sate
voice full clear was, and full sweet, She was not rude, nor unmeet. But couth* enough for such doing,
Her
As longeth unto karolling; For she was wont, in every place, To singen first, men to solace. For singing most she gave her to.
No
craft
had she so lefef
Mr. Stuart Mill would have (not but that singing shrill
enough)
;
is
set
to do."
her to another craft, I fancy
a lucrative one, nowadays, if
it
be
but you will not get your wives to sing thus
you send them out to earn their dinners (inthem yourselves for them), and put their babies summarily to sleep. It is curious how our English feeling seems to be changed In nearly also towards two other innocent kind of creatures. all German pictures of the Xativity, (I have given you an for nothing, if
stead of earning
Italian one of the ]\[agi for a frontispiece, this time,) the
dove is one way or other conspicuous, and the little angels round the cradle are nearly always, when they are tired, And in the allowed by the Madonna to play with rabbits. very garden in which Ladie Gladness leads her karol-dance, " connis," as well as squirrels, are among the happy company frogs only, as you shall hear, not being allowed the French For the path among says, no flies either, of the watery sort ;
!
the mint and fennel greene leads us into this garden: "
The garden was by measuring. Eight even and square in compasing: It
was long
as
it
was
large.
Of fruit had every tree his charge, And manj' homely trees there were,:]: That peaches, coines,§ and apples bare. * Skillful.
t Fond. bits here and there, omit besides. I There were foreign trees X without putting stars to interrupt the pieces given. §
Quinces.
— 175
rORS CLAVIGEEA. Medlers, plommes, peeres, chestemis, Cherise, of which many one faine* is, With many a high laurel and pine Was rang-ed clean all that gardene.
There might men Does and Eoes see, And of Squirrels ful great plentee From bough to bough alway leping; Connis there were also playing And maden many a tourneying
Upon the fresh grass springing. In places saw I wells there In which no frogges were. There sprang the violet all new
And And
fresh pervinke, rich of hue, flowers yellow, white and rede,
Such plenty grew there never in mede. Full gay was all the ground, and quaint, And poudred, as men had it peint With many a fresh and sundry flour
That castes up
full
good savor."
So far for an old English garden, or " pleasance," and the pleasures of
it.
]*s^ow
take a bit of description written this
year of a modern English garden or pleasance, and the pleasures of
it,
and newly invented odors
:
In a short time the sportsmen issued from the (new ?)
hall,
and, accompanied by sixty or seventy attendants, bent their steps towards that part of the park in situate.
Here were
tlie
rabbit covers
which the old
hall is
—large patches of rank
and extending over many acres. The doomed rabbits, assiduously driven from the burrows during the preceding week by the keepers, forced from their lodgings beneath tlie tree-roots by the suffocating fumes of sulphur, and deterred from returning thither by the application of gas-tar to the " runs,'" had been forced to seek shelter in the fern patch; and here they literally swarmed. At the edge of the ferns a halt was called, and the head gamekeeper proceeded to arrange his assistants in the most apfern, three or four feet in lieight,
proved " beating " fashion. The shooting party, nine in number, including the j)rince, distributed themselves in ad* Fond.
— rORS CLAVIGERA.
176
vance of the line of beaters, and the word " Forward " was Simultaneously the line of beaters moved into the given. cover, vigorously thrashing the long ferns with their stout !
and giving vent to a variety of uncouth ejaculations, was supposed Avere calculated to terrify the hidden Hardly had the beaters proceeded half a dozen rabbits. yards when the cover in front of them became violently agiThe tated, and rabbits were seen running in all directions. quantity of game thus started was little short of marvelous Simultaneously with the very gTound seemed to be alive. the appearance of the terrified animals tlie slaughter commenced. Each sportsman carried a double-barreled breechloader, and an attendant followed him closely, bearing an sticks,
which
it
additional gun, ready loaded.
The
shooter discharged both
some cases with only the interval of a second or two, and immediately exchanged it for a loaded one. Tlie warning cry of " RabRabbits fell in all directions. " from the relentless keepers was lieard continuously, and bit each cry was as quickly followed by the sharp crack of a gun a pretty sure indication that the rabbit referred to had come to an untimely end, as the majority of the sportsmen were barrels of his gun, in
!
crack shots.
Of
course
all this is
quite natural to a sporting people
who
gunpowder, sulphur, and and thyme. But, putting violets gas-tar, better than that of rabbit-shooting of and the baby-poisoning, pigeon-shooting, to-day in comparison with the pleasures of the German Madonna, and her simple company; and of Chaucer and his
have learned
caroling
to like the smell of
company and seeing :
that the present effect of peace
and well-pleasing in men, is that every nation now spends most of its income in machinery for shooting the best and bravest men, just when they were likely to have become of some use to their fathers and mothers, I put it to you, my friends all, calling you so, I suppose for the last time, (unless you are disposed for friendship with Herod instead of Barabbas,) whether it would not be more kind and less expensive,
upon
earth,
FOES CLAVIGEKA.
make the machinery a opium now, and expenses
177
smaller and adapt it to spare maintenance and education afterof wards, (besides no end of diplomacy) by. taking our sport in to
little
shooting babies instead of rabbits
;
?
Believe me,
Faithfully yours, J.
RUSKIK
THE COMPLETE WORKS OF
JOHN RUSKIN VOLUME
XVIII
FORS CLAVIGERA VOLUMES
III-IV
FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTERS TO THE WORKMEN AND LABOURERS OF GREAT BRITAIN.
VOLUME
III.
CONTAINING LETTERS XXV-XXXVI.
CONTENTS OF VOLUME 1873
III
LIST OF PLATES TO
VOLUME
III
Facing Page
The Tale Walter
of Adriane as
it
of the Borderlaud
Sunday Playthings.
was
told at Florence .
The Superbe
.
. .
.
Suisse and his bear
.
.53 .107 .
163
FORS CLAVIGERA. LETTEE XXV. Brantwood, January
Ath, 1873.
The Third Foes, having been much adverse to me, and to many who wish me well, during the whole of last
more
year, has turned
month
trived for
New
my
good and helpful printer
adrift in the last
of it; and, with that grave inconvenience to him, con-
me
Year's
the minor one of being a fortnight late with
letter.
Under which provocation
I
my
am somewhat
consoled this morning by finding in a cookery book, of date 1791, "written purely from
pi;^actice,
and dedicated
Lady Elizabeth Warburton, whom the author
to the
Hon.
lately served as
housekeeper," a receipt for Yorkshire Goose Pie, with which it will be most proper and delightful to begin my
I think
economical instructions to you for the cnri-ent year. I am, indeed, greatly tempted to give precedence to the receipt for " Fairy Butter," and further disturbed by an extreme desire to tell you how to construct an " Apple Floating-Island ;"
making
but will "
al)ide. nevertheless,
Take
my Goose it
down
Pie.
the back, and take all
bone a turkey and two ducks the same way, them very well with pepper and salt, with six wood-
the bones out season
by
a large fat goose, split ;
down on a clean dish, with the skin-side and lay the turkey into the goose, with the skin down have ready a large hare, cleaned well, cut in pieces, and stewed cocks; lay the goose
down
;
;
pound of butter, a quarter of an ounce of the same of white pepper, and salt to your taste
in the oven, with a
mace, beat
fine,
FORS CLAVIGERA.
2 till
the meat will leave the bones, and
gravj, pick the meat clean
scum the butter
and beat
off,
it
in a
off
the
marble mortar
very fine, with the butter you took off and lay it in the turkey; take twenty-four pounds of the finest flour, six pounds ;
of butter, half-a-pound of fresh rendered suet,
pretty thick, and raise the pie oval
;
roll
out a
make lump
tlie
paste
of paste,
and cut it in vine-leaves or what form you please rub tlie pie with the yolks of eggs, and put your ornaments on tlie walls; then turn the hare, turkey, and goose upside down, and lay them in your pie, with the ducks at each end, and the woodcocks on the sides make your lid pretty thick, and put it on you may lay flowers, or the shape of the fowls in paste, on the lid, and make a hole in the middle of your lid the walls of the pie are to be one inch and a half higher than the lid then rub it all over with the yolks of'eggs, and bind it round with thi-eefold paper, and lay the same over the top it will take four hours baking in a brown-bread oven when it comes out, melt two pounds of butter in the gravy that comes from the hare, and pour it hot in the pie through a tun-dish close it well up, and let it be eight or ten days before you cut it if you send it any distance, make i>p the hole in the middle with cold butter, to prevent the air from getting in." Possessed of these instructions, I immediate! 3' went to my cook to ask how far we could faithfully carry them out. But she told me nothing could be done without a " brown-bread oven ;" which I shall therefore instantly build under the rocks on my way down to the lake and, if I live, we will have a Lancashire goose-pie next Michaelmas. You may, perhaps, think this affair irrelevant to the general purposes of Fors Clavigera but it is not so by any means on the contrary', it is closely connected with its primary intentions; and, besides, may interest some readers more than weightier, or, I should rather say, lighter and more spiritual matters. For, indeed, during twenty-three months, I had been writing to you, fellow workmen, of matters affecting your best interests in this world, and all the interests you had, anywhere else explaining, as I could, what the shrewdest of you, hitherto, have thought, and ;
;
;
;
;
;
;
;
;
:
;
:
:
—
FORS CLAVIGERA.
3
—
the best of you have done wliut the most se]fish have gained, and the most generous have suffered. Of all this, no notice whatever is taken. In my twenty-fourth letter, incidentn]]}^ I mentioned the fact of my being in a bad humour, (which I nearly always am, and which it matters little to anybody whether I am or not, so long as I don't act upon it,) and forthwith I got quite a little mail-cartful of consolation, reproof, and advice. Much of it kind, nearly all of it helpful, and some of it wise but very little bearing on matters in hand an eager Irish correspondent offers immediately to reply to anything, 'though he has not been fortunate enough to meet with the hook ;' one working man's letter, for self and mates, is answered in the terminal notes; could not be answered before for want of address another, from a south-country clergyman, could not be answered any way, for he would not read any more, he said, of such silly stuff as Fors but would have been glad to hear of any scheme for giving people a sound practical education. I fain would learn, myself, either from this practical Divine, or any of his mates, what the ecclesiastical idea of a sound practical education is that is to say, what in week-day schools ( the teaching in Sunday ones being nccessarih^ to do no manner of work) our clergy think that boys and girls should ;
—
;
:
;
—
—
;
—
—
;
—
—
—
be taught to practise, in order that,
when grown
up, they
may
For indeed, the constant object of these letters of mine, from their beginning, has been to urge you to do vigorously and dextrously what was useful and nothing but that. And I have told you of Kings and Hei'oes, and now am about to tell you what I can of a Saint, because I believe such persons to have done, sometimes, more useful things than you or I: begging your pardon always for not addressing you as heroes, which I believe you all think yourselves, or as kings, which I presume you all propose to be, or at least, if you cannot, to let nobody else be. Come what may of such proposal, I wish you would consider with me today what form of "sound practical education," if any, would and whether, such form proving enai>le you all to be Saints discoverable, you would really like to be put through it, or
with dextei'ity perform the same.
;
;
FORS CLAVIGERA.
4
and you mean,
whetlier, on the contrary, both the clergy
verily,
and in your hearts, nothing by "practical education" but how Not but that it does my heart to lay one penny upon another, good to hear modern divines exhorting to any kind of practice
—
for, as far as I
make
can
out, thei-e
is
nothing they so
much
dread for their congregations as their getting into their heads that God expects them to do anything, beyond killing rabbits if
they are rich, and being content with bad wages, if they are But if any virtue more than these, (and the last is no
poor.
small one) be indeed necessary to Saint-ship
dently ask what such virtue
is,
— may we not pru-
and, at this Holiday time,
make
our knowledge of the Hos more precise ? Nay, in your pleading for perennial Holiday, in your ten hours or eight hours bills, might you not urge your point with stouter conscience
—
you were all Saints, and the 'hours of rest you demanded became a realization of Baxter's Saints' Rest? Suppose we do rest, for a few minutes, from that process of laying one penny upon another, (those of us, at least, who have learned the trick of it), and look with some attention at the last penny we laid on the pile or, if we can do no better, at the if
—
we mean to lay. penny or, better, show me
of the pile
first
Show me
a
the three pages of
;
our British Bible; penny, shilling, and pound, and
let us try
what we can read on them together. You see how rich they surely so practical a nation, in its are in picture and legend most valued scriptures, cannot have written or pictured any:
thing but with discretion, and to the benefit of
We
begin with the penny
coat pockets. ting,
Yes,
as big as that
Who,
apparently, on
— of course.
then,
— not
Penny
I call such a thing as that a
were boys, were
;
is
;
that, !
Our
whom
filled
it
is
when we
our waist-
represents,
the q.^^q of a dish-cover?
But who
beholders.
farthings,
and two-pence
this lady,
all
except under protest,
sit-
Britannia?
Britannia? and what has she got
on her head, in her hand, and on her seat
"Don't I know who doubt if you do! Is she Great
Britannia is?" Britain,
?
Not
— or
I;
and
much
Little Britain
she England, Scotland, Ireland, Canada, and the Indies,
?
Is
—or a
FORS CLAVIGERA.
no con-
small, dishonest, tailoring and engineering firm, with
nection over the wav, and publicly fined at the police court for
sneakingly supplying customers
had engaged not
it
a Queen, or an Actress, or a Slave
of nations section,
;
sit.
whom
?
Is she
Is she a Nation,
mother
to
or a slimy polype, multiplying by involuntary vivi-
and dropping half putrid pieces of
itself
wherever
it
In the world-feasts of the Nativity, can
crawls or contracts?
she
?
Madonna-like, saying: "Behold,
the Lord hath given
me"
Or
?
—
—
I,
and the children
are her lips capable of
of any utterance no more the musical Hose them cleft back into the long dumb trench of the lizard's; her motherhood summed in saying that she makes all the world's ditches dirtier with her spawn ? And what has she on her head, in her hand, or on that, Shield, I believe it is meant for, which she sits on the edge of? A most truly symbolic position For, you know, all those armour-plates and guns you pay for so pleasantly are indeed made, when you look into the matter, not at all to defend you
such utterance
;
of
!
against anybody'
the newest of
— (no one
them could
ever pretends to say distinctly that
you for twelve hours); but
protect
may get commission on the and the manufacturers commission on the manufacture. And so the Ironmongering and Manufacturing Britannia does very litei'ally sit upon her Shield the cognizance whereof, or now too literally the " Beai'ing," so obscured, becomes of they are made that the iron mastei'S
iron,
:
—
—
small importance.
—
Probably, in a
cushion
—
Cross
to the public satisfaction.
;
or,
what not
— may
little
while, a convenient
be substituted for
St.
George's
must not question farther what any of these symbols may to mean I will tell you, briefly, what they meant once, and are yet, by courtesy, supposed to mean. They were all invented by the Greeks; and all, except the Cross, some twelve hundred years before the first Christmas: they became intelligible and beautiful first about Theseus' time. The Helmet crest properly signifies the adoption by man of the passions of pride and anger which enable nearly all the lower creatures to erect some spinous or plumose ridge upon I
come
;
FORS CLAVIGERA.
6 their lieads or backs.
It
is
curionslj- associated with tlie story
iirst colonist of Tarantum, which might have been the port of an Italia ruling the waves, instead of Britannia, had not the crest fallen from the helmet of the Swabian prince, Manfred, in his death-battle with Charles of Anjon. He had fastened it that morning, he said, with his own hand, you may think, if his armourer had fastened it, it would have stayed on, but kings could do things with their own liands in those days howbeit, it fell, and Manfred, that night, put off his armour for evermore, and the evil French King reigned in his stead and South Italy has lain desert since that day, and so must lie, till the crest of some King rise
of
Spartan Phalanthns, the
tlie
—
;
— :
over
who
again,
it
needful for a
done
will be content with as
and not wear
crest,
lately (or
it,
as
much
horse-hair as
is
our English squires have
perhaps even the hair of an animal inferior to
the horse), on their heads, instead of their helmets.
why it must he a have three prongs, and no more and in what use or significance it differs from other forks, (as for pitchOf
the trident in Britannia's hand, and
trident, that
is
to say,
ing, or toasting)
next the
—get
a
;
— we
will enquire at another time. Take up more to our purj)ose, the double shilling, and examine the sculpture and legend on
shilling, or,
new
florin,
that.
The Legend, you perceive, is on the one side The latter, I presume, you are the other Latin. to read, for not only
is it
English,
— on
not intended
dead language, but two words
in a
more indicated only by their first This arrangement leaves room for the ten decorative
are contracted, and four letters. letters,
an
M, and
a
D, and three
of double stout, and two I's
function (as if
it
is
to
;
C's,
and an L, and the sign
of which ten letters the total
inform you that the coin was struck
mattered either to you or to me, when
it
this year,
was struck!)
—
But the poor fifth part of ten letters, preceding the F and D, namely have for function to inform you that Queen Victoria
—
is
to
the Defender of our Faith.
you and me,
if
it
"Which
be a fact
at all
brace of facts; each letter vocal, for
its
is ;
an all-important fact
— nay, an all-important part, with one.
F, that
FORS CLAVIGERA.
we should a Faitli to defend D, we chance to have too little
that our
;
Heaven be
fucts,
dispraised by our shame,
they be
so,
and
not
if
two
if
monarch can defend it ourselves. For
to say for
it, if
both which
T
praised,
if
they be indeed
they have ceased to be so
so, :
— nor
only,
if
are not enough to assert them cleai-ly more than enough to lie with. On the
lettei's
;
so, ai-e
reverse of the coin, however, the legend
"One
Florin."
"One Tenth
very practical and instructive. a
pound
or
is,
what a
is full, and clear. Pound." Yes; that is all But do we know either what
of a
florin or "
why this we have England, now, by that name? Fiorino" was, or
particular coin should be called a Florin, or whether call
any
the way,
how
any right
And, by
to
coin of is it
that I get continually reproved for
writing above the level of the learning of
when here
my
general readers,
most current of all our books written in three languages, of which one is dead, another foreign, and I find the
the third written in defunct letters, so that anybody with two shillings in his pocket is supposed able to accept information
conveyed in contracted Latin, Roman numerals, old English, and spoiled Italian ? How practical, and how sentimental, at once For indeed we have no right, except sentimentally, to call that coin a !
florin,
— that
is
to say, a " flower (lily-flower) piece," or Flor-
ence-piece. What have vje any more to do with Lilies? Do you ever consider how they grow or care how they die ? Do the very water-lilies, think you, keep white now, for an hour after they open, in an}' stream iA England? And for the heraldry of the coin, neitlier on that, nor any other, have we courage or grace to bear the Fleur-de-Lys any more, it having been once our first bearing of all. For in the first quarter of
—
our English shield
we used
to bear three
blue ground, being the regal arms of France
golden ;
lilies
on a
(our great Kings
being Frenchmen, and claiming Fraiice as their own, before England).
Also these Fleur-de-Lys were from the beginning
the ensigns of a
King; but
tliope
three Lions which
you see
are yet retained for the arms of England on two of the shields in
your
false floiiPj (false in
all
things, for
heaven knows,
wq
— FORS CLAVIGERA.
8
have
as
little
now
right to lions
as to lilies,) " are
deduced
onely fronn Dukedoines*: I say deduced, because the Kiiigs of
England
after the
ensignes of the
King Henry
Conquest did beare two leopards (the
Dukedome
of
Normandy)
the time of
till
the Second, who, according to the received opin-
by marriage of Eleanor, daughter and heire of the duke of Aquitaine and Guyon" (Guienne) " annexed the Lyon, her })aternall coate, being of the same Field, Metall, and Forme ion,
with the Leopards, and so from thence forward they were and Blazoned three Lyons."
jointly marshalled in one Shield
Also "
at
the
first
Edward the King ranke, to show his
quartering of these coats by
Third, question being
moved
of his
title to
France, the
had good cause to put that coat in the first most undoubted Title to that Kingdom, and therefore would have it the most perspicuous place of his Escocheon." But you see it is now on our shield no more, we having been beaten into cowardly and final resignation of it, at the peace of Amiens, in George IIL's time, and precisely in the He, as monarch first year of this supreme nineteenth century. and the verbal l)eing our Lilies, unable to defend England, of Gabriel of Amiens, as he the pacific angel instruction of
—
dropped his lilies, being to the English accordingly, that thenceforward they were to " hate a Frenchman as they did the Devil," which, as you know, was Nelson's notion of the spirit in which England expected every man to do his duty. Next to the three Lions, however (all of them, you find, French), there is a shield bearing one Lion, " Rampant " that
is
to say,
climbing like a vine on a wall.
the proper sense of the
you say rampant
it
word " rampant "
Remember is
that
" creeping" as
of ground ivy, and such plants: and that a lion
— whether British, or
as this one, Scotch,
is
not at
for his part, in what you are so fond of getting into
independent position," nor even but rather generally animal on a tree
;
feline,
all,
— " an
in a specifically leonine one,
as of a cat,
or other climbing
whereas the three French Lions, or Lioncels, * Guillim, Ed. 1638.
;
FORS OLAVIGEEA.
9
are " passant-gardant," " passing on the lookout,'* as beasts of chase.
Round
the rampant Scottish animal (I can't find
why
the
Scotch took him for their type) you observe farther, a double line,
with
— though almost
the knots and cornei'S of
too small to be seen
it.
This
is
— fleur-de-lys at
the ti-essure, or binding
who has really been to both English and Scottish lions what that absent Charles of the polar skies
belt, of the great Charles,
must, I suppose, have been to their Bear, and
who
entirely
therefore deserves to be stellified by British astronomers.
That Tressure,
heraldically, records the alliance of Charle-
magne with the Scottish King Achaius, and the vision by and the adoption of Scottish army of St. Andrew's cross
the
—
same, with the Thistle and Rue, for their national device
the ;
of
which the excellent Scotch clergyman and historian, Robert Henry, giving no particular account, prefers to note, as an example of such miraculous appearances in Scotland, the introduction, by King Kenneth, the son of Alpine, of a shining figure "clothed in the skiiis of dried fish, which shone in the dark," to his nobility and councillors, to give them heavenly admonitions " after they had composed themselves to rest." Of course a Presbyterian divine must have more pleasure in all
recording a miracle so connected with the existing national interests of the herring and
of St.
Andrew's
among
salmon
fisheries, than the tradition
cross; and that tradition itself
is
so confused
Rodericks, Alpines, and Fergus's, that the Lady of the
Lake is about as trustworthy historical reading. But St. Andrew's cross and the Thistle (I don't know when the Rue, much the more honourable bearing of the two, was dropped) are there, you see, to this day and you must learn their story but I've no time to go into that, now. For England, the tressure really implies, though not in heraldry, more than for Scotland. For the Saxon seven kingdoms had fallen into quite murderous anarchy in Charlemagne's time, and especially the most religious of them, Northumberland which then included all the country between the Frith of Forth and the Cheviots commanded by the fortress of Edwin's Burg,
—
—
;
—
FOES CLAVIGERA.
10 (fortress
now
legs, as the
always standing in a rampant manner on
Modern Athens).
But the pious Edwin's
its liind-
had whole district from which the Saxon angels (non Angli) had gone forth to win the pity of Rome, was so distracted and hopeless that Charlemagne called them " worse than heathens," and had like to have set his hand to exterminate them altogether; but the third long
left his burg,
and the
state of the
—
—
Fors ruled
Saxon Prince,
luckily, a "West
otherwise, for
it
spirit
Egbert, being driven to Charles's court, in exile, Charles deter-
mined
to
make
a
man
him
of him, and trained
to
such true
knighthood, that, recovering the throne of the West Saxons, the French-bred youth conquered the Heptarchy, and became the
first
King
of "
England"
{all
England)
;
—and the
Grand-
father of Alfred.
Such belt of lilies did the Frerich chivalry bind us with " tressure" of Charlemagne.
;
the
Of the fourth shield, bearing the Irish Harp, and the harmonious psalmody of which that instrument is significant, I have no time to speak to-day nor of the vegetable heraldry between the shields but before you lay the florin down I must advise you that the very practical motto or war-cry which it now bears "one tenth of a pound," was not anciently the motto round the arms of England, that is to say, of English hings, (for republican England has no shield); but a quite dif;
;
—
—
ferent one
—
to wit
—
'•
Accursed, (or evil-spoken
opposed to well-spoken of, or benedictus), be
of,
maledictus,
He who
tliinks
and that this motto ought to be written on another Tressure or band than Charlemagne's, surrounding the entire shield namely, on a lady's garter specifically the garter of the most beautiful and virtuous English lady, Alice of Salisbury, (of whom soon) and that without this tressure and motto, the mere shield of Lions is but a poor defence. For this is a very great and lordly motto marking the utmost point and acme of honour, which is not merely in doing no evil, but in thinking none and teaching that the first as indeed the last nobility of Education is in the rule over our Evil
;"
—
;
;
;
;
—
Thoughts, on which matter,
T
—
must digress for a minute or two,
FORS CLAVIGERA.
11
Among the letters just received by me, as I told you, is one from a working man of considerable experience, which laments part
his
that, in
of
the country, "literary institutes are a
failure."
Indeed, your. literary institutes must everywhere as
you think
ters, will
book
is
tliat
merely
to
buy a book, and
enable you to read the book.
readable by
you except
so far as
and not merely his words thoughts like your thoughts. its author's,
For
To such degree
spirit,
like
its
Shakespeare
— can produce —and ready
its
is
Good. your pocket;
ings in literature to that extent.
Shakespeare, complete, in
let-
bought a shilling
of wealth, ingenuity, and literary
sum
pocketable shape for that
long
your words, but his
has the nineteenth century reached, that
to spare for
fail, as
know your
Not one word of any your mind is one with
instance, the otlier day, at a bookstall, i
Shakespeare.
to
greatest of dramatic authors at
your
it
has a shilling
Shakespeare
in a
to invest its earn-
You have now your you
leisure,
will read
the
and form your
on that model. Suppose we read a line or two together then, you and I ; may be, that Z cannot, unless you help me.
literary taste
—
it
" And there, at Venice, gave His body to that pleasant country's earth. And his pure soul unto his Captain, Christ, Under whose colours he had fought so long."
"What do yon suppose Shakespeare means by calling Yenice a "pleasant" country? "What sort of country was, or would have been, pleasant to hiTn f The same that is pleasant to you, or another kind of country? "Was there any coal in that earth of Yenice, for instance iron
?
Any
gas to be
made
out of
it ?
Any
?
Again. "What does Shakespeare mean by a "pure" soul, or by Purity in general ? How does a soul become pure, or clean, and how dirty ? Are you sure that your own soul is pure ? if not, is its opinion on the subject of purity likely to be the same And might you not just as well read a as Shakespeare's?
FORS CLAVIGERA.
13
demure, or a scure soul, or obscure, as a pure you don't know what Shakespeare means by the word ? Again. What does Shakespeare mean by a captain, or headperson? What were his notions of head-ship, shoulder-ship, or Have you yourfoot-ship, either in human or divine persons? think of the captain, you true quality seen a ever (see selves know" and did you him when you saw him XXII. ? above, 306); Shakespeare mean What does by colours Tlie ? Or again. " gaily decorative bunting" of Howe and Cnshing's American
mnre
soul, or
soul, if
—
;
Circus? Or the banners with invigorating inscriptions concerning Temperance and Free-trade, under which you walk in procession, sometimes, after a band ? Or colours more dim and tattered than these
What
?
he does mean, in
understand by reading a
all
little
named
these respects,
we
shall
best
one of
bit of the history of
(XXII. was he who first quartered our arms for us; whom I cannot more honourably first exhibit to you than actually fighting under captainship those English Squires, 306),
Edward HI.
of
above, for our study
England namely
and colours of his own choice,
in
;
since
the
;
it
fashion Shakespeare
meant.
mark you, though himself a King, and Which came to pass thus " Wlien the King of a proud one. England heard these news" (that Geoffrey of Chargny was Under
captainship,
:
drawing near his dear town of Calais, and that Amery of Pavia, the false Lombard, was keeping him in play,) " then tlie King set out from England with 300 men at arms, and 600 archers, and took ship at Dover, and by vespers arrived at Calais, and put his people in ambush in the castle, and was Master with them himself. And said to the Lord de Manny :
'
Walter, I will that you should be the head in this need, for I and my son will fight under your banner.' * Now my Lord last
day of Decem-
ber, in the evening, with all his gens-d'-armes,
and came near
Geoffrey of Chargny had
left
Arras on the
* The reason of this honour to Sir Walter was that he had been the first English knight who rode into France after the king had quartered the Fleur de-Lys.
FORS CLAVIGERA. B '
Let the Lombard open
morning,
'
—
are
he said
gates qnicklj
tlie
Li God's name,' said cunning follcs; lie will that none are false.' (You here is one engraved for you cold.'
—and
13 to his
knights*
— he makes us die of
Pepin de Werre, the Lombards look at your florins first, to see '
see
how
important this coin
therefore
is;
— pure Florentine gold
—that
you may look at it honestly, and not like a Lombard.) words came the King of England, and his son at his side, under the banner of Master Walter de Manny; and there were other banners with them, to wit, the Count of Stafford's, the Count of Suffolk's, My Loi'd John de Montao-u's, My Lord Beauchamp's, and the Lord de la Werre's, and no more, that day. When the French saw them come out, and heard the cry, Manny, to the rescue,' they knew they were
And
at these
'
Then
betrayed. f
we fly, we are is, we may gain if
'you say
drew back
a
lost
;
Master Geoffrey to his people, it is
best to fight with
the day.'
and
true,
said
little,
By
'
St.
good
will
'
;
Lords,
— hope
George,' said the English,
him who
flies.' Whereupon they being too crowded, and dismounted, and let
evil be to
And the King of England, under the banner Walter de Manny, came with his people, all on foot, to seek his enemies who were set close, their lances cut short by five feet, in front of them" (set with the stumps against the ground and points forward, eight or ten feet long, still, though cut short by five.) "At the first coming there wa? hard encounter, and the King stopped under" (opposite) " My their horses go.
of Master
;
* 1
omit much, without putting
way,, in last Fors, p. 359, note, for +
Not unfairly
for a bribe
;
stars, in these bits '•
of translation. insert," read " omit."
By
the
only having to tight for their Calais instead of getting in
— FOES CLAVIGERA.
14
Lord Eustace of Ribaumont, who was
And
clievalier.
a strong
and brave it was a
he fought the King so long that
and much pleasure to see. Then they all joined battle," (the English falling on, I think, because the King found he had enough on his hands, though without question one of the best knights in Europe ;) " and there was a great
wonder;
yes,
—
and a hard, and there fought well, of the French, My Lord Geoffrey of Chargny and My Lord John of Landas, and My Lord Gawain of Bailleul, and the Sire of Cresques; and the others; but My Lord Eustace of Ribaumont passed all, wlio that day struck the King to his knees twice; but in the end gave his sword to the King, saying. Sire Chevalier, I render me your prisoner, for the day must remain to the English. For by that time they were all taken or killed who were with My Lord Geoffrey o^ Chargny and the last who was taken, and who had done most, was Master Eustace of
coil,
;
Ribaumont.
"So when back into
King of England drew and made be brought all the castle And then the French knew that the
the need"^ was past, the
Calais, into the
prisoner-knights thither.
;
England had been in it, in person, under the banner Manny. So also the King sent to say to them, as it was the New-year's night, he would give them all supper in his castle of Calais. So when the supper time came,"
King
of
of Master Walter de
(early afternoon, 1st January, 1349) " the
dressed themselves, and also
made themselves
all
put on
new
King and
his knights
robes; and the French
King wished, The King took seat, and set much honour. And the gentle f
greatly splendid, for so the
though they were prisoners. those knights beside
him
in
Prince of Wales and the knights of England served them,
at
—
* Besogne. "The thing that has to be done" word used still in household service, but impossible to translate we have no such concentrated one ;
in English.
Johnes' translation by the use of the f The passage is entirely spoiled in word gallant instead of 'gentle' for the French 'gentil.' The boy was '
'
not yet nineteen, (born at Woodstock, June 15, 1330,) and his father thirtysix fancy how pretty to see the one waiting on the other, with the French '.
knights at his
side.
"
;;
FORS CLAVIGERA.
15
and at the second course, went away to So they were served in peace, and in great When they had supped, they took away the tables leisure. but the King remained in the hall between those French and and he was bareheaded English knights only wearing a chaplet of pearls.* And he began to go from one to another and when he addressed himself to Master Geoffrey of Chargny, he altered countenance somewhat, and looking askance at him, said, Master Geoffrej", I owe you by right, little love, when you would have stolen by night what had cost me so dear. So glad and joyous I am, that I took you at the trial.' At these words he passed on, and let Master Geoffrey alone, who answered no word and so came the King to Master Eustace of Ribaumont, to whom he said joyously, 'Master Eustace, you are the chevalier whom in all the world I have seen most valiantly attack his enemy and defend his body neither did 1 ever find in battle any one who gave me so much work, body So I give you the prize of the to body, as you did to-day. day, and that over all the knights of my own court, by just Thereupon the King took off the chaplet, that he sentence.' wore, (which was good and rich,) and put it on the head of My Lord Eustace; and said, 'My Lord Eustace, I give you this chaplet, for that you liave been the best fighter to-day of all those without or within, and I pray you that you wear it all this year for the love of me. I know well that you are gay, and loving, and glad to be among dames and damsels. So therefore say to them whither-soever you go, that I gave it you and so I quit you of your prison, and you may set forth to-morrow if it please you.' Now, if you have not enjoyed this bit of historical study, I tell you frankly, it is neither Edward the Third's fault, nor Froissart's, nor mine, but your own, for not having cheerfulness, loyalty, or generosity enough in you to understand what is going on. But even supposing you have these, and do enjoy the story as now read, it does not at all follow that you
the
first
course
;
another table.
;
;
—
'
;
:
;
* Sacred
fillet,
or " diadema," the noblest, as the most ancient, crown.
— FOES CLAVIGERA.
16
woula enjoy it at your Literary Institute. There you would find, most probably, a modern abstract of the matter given in You would be fortunate if you chanced polished language. as Robert Henry's above referred to, history on so good a as intelligent, and trustworthy for myself, which I always use general reference.
But hear
his polished account of this sup-
per at Calais. " As Edward was a great admirer of personal valour, he ordered all the French knights and gentlemen to be feasted by the Prince of Wales, in the The King entered the hall in the time of the bangreat hall of the castle. quet, and discovered to his prisoners that he had been present in the late conflict, and was the person who had fought hand to hand with the Sieur Ribaumont. Then, addressing himself to that gentleman, he gave him his liberty, presented him with a chaplet adorned with pearls, which he desired him to wear for his sake, and declared jiim to be the most expert and valorous knight with whom he had ever engaged."
Now, supposing you this,
you had
better read
—
witli
none.
can read no other history than such as
profoundest earnestness I say It
is
it
— infinitely
not the least necessary for 3'ou to
know anything about Edward III. l)ut quite necessary for and to know something vital and real about somebody ;
you
;
not to have polished language given you instead of life. " But you do enjoy it, in Froissart?" And you think it would
have been, to you also, a " pleasure to see" tliat fight between Edward and the Sieur de Ribaumont? So be it: now let us compare with theirs, a piece of modern British figliting, done
under no banner, and in no loyalty nor obedience, but in the independent spirit of freedom, and yet which, I think, it would liave been no pleasure to any of us to see. As we compared before, loyal with free justice, so let us now compare Tlie most active of the contending loyal with free fighting. parties are of your own class, too, I am sorry to say, and that the Telegraph (16th Dec.) calls them many hard names but I can't remedy this without too many inverted commas. ;
Four savages— four brute beasts in human form we should rather say Slane, Rice, Hays, and Beesley, ranging in age between thirty-two and nineteen years, have been sentenced to death for the murder on the 6th
named
FORS CLAVIGERA.
17
November last, at a place called Spennymoor, of one Joseph Waine. The convicts are Irishmen, and had been working as puddlers in the iron foundries. The principal offender was the ruffian Slane, who seems to .have of
had some
spite against the deceased, a very sober, quiet
years of age, who, with his wife and son, kept a
Spennymoor.
him from
holding his head between his
When
ates.
came one
Into this shop Slane
ultimately dragged
man, about forty chandler's shop at
little
legs,
Waine,
night, grossly insulted
him up,
the shop into a dark passage, tripped
and then whistled for
his three confeder-
Rice, Hays, and Beesley appeared on the scene, they were
—
to hold Waine down the wretch declaring, running kick at him, it shall be his last." The horrible miscreant did get a " running kick" nay, more than a dozen at his utterly
instructed
"If
by the prime savage
I get a
—
—
and when Slane's strength was getting exhausted the other three wretches set upon Waine, kicking him in the body with their powerless victim
;
hob-nailed boots, while the poor agonised wife strove vainly to save her
A
husband.
lodger in the house,
savages ran away.
The
named Wilson,
and the
at last interfered,
object of their brutality lived just twenty-five
minutes after the outrage, and the post-mortem examination showed that all the organs were perfectly healthy, and that death could only have arisen
from the violence inflicted on Waine by these fiends, who were plainly identified by the widow and her son. It may be noticed, however, as a painfully significant circumstance, that the lodger Wilson, who was likewise a labouring man, and a most important witness for the prosecution, refused to give evidence, and, before the trial came on, absconded altogether.
Among properly
the
— but
epithets
bestowed
by the Telegraphy
— very
unnecessarily, on these free British Operatives,
—
that of " Misone which needs some qualilication creant," or " Misbeliever," which is only used accurately of Turks or other infidels, whereas it is probable these Irishmen
there
;
is
were zealously religious persons, Evangelical or Catholic. the perversion of the better faith by passion
is
But
indeed a worse
form of ""misbelieving" than the obedient keeping of a poorer if understood not of any special
creed; and thus the word,
heresy, but of powerlessness to believe, with strength of imagination, in anything^ goes to the root of the matter; whicli
must wait till after Christmas on my hands. I
to dig for,
having much
26ang that idleness produces want.
FORS CLAVIGEfiA.
|?1
LETTER XXIX. BrantwoOi., April
It
is
seen for
2, 1873.
a bright morning, the lirst entirely clear one I have
months; such, indeed,
as
one used
to see, before
Eng-
land was civilized into a blacksmith's shop, often enough the sweet spring-time
;
and
as,
iu
perhaps, our children's children,
may
see often enough again, when their coals are burnt out, and they begin to understand that coals are not the source of all power Divine and human. In the meantime, as I say, it is months since I saw the sky, except through smoke, or tlie strange darkness brought by blighting wind (YIII. 23,) and if such weather as this is to last, I shall begin to congratulate
myself, as the " Daily
News"
does
its
of things,
on the " excepmost satisfactory state
readei's,
tionally high price of coal," indicating a
appears, for the general wealth of the countiy,
it
for, says that
well-informed journal, on March 3rd, 1873,
net result of the exceptionally high price of coal that
this,
is
*'
The
in substance
the coal owners and workers obtain an unusually
large share in the distribution of the gross produce of the com-
and the real capital of the community is increased P^ This great and beautiful principle must of course apply to a
munity,
rise in price in
other articles, as well as in coals.
Accordannouncement in any shops, or by any advertising firm, that you can get something there cheaper than usual, remember the capital of the community is being diminished and whenever you have reason to think that anybody has charged you threepence for a twopenny article, remember that, according to the '' Daily News," " the real capital of the community is increased." And as I believe you may be ingly,
all
whenever you
see the
;
generally certain, in the present state of trade, of being charged
even
as
much
the capital
of
as
twenty-seven pence for a twopenny
the
article,
community must be increasing very
fast
!
FORS CLAVIGERA.
t2
Holding these enlightened views on the subject of
indeed.
the p^'ices of
the " Daily
tilings,
Kews" cannot be expected
to
But there is another stoop to any consideration of their uses. " net result" of the high price of coal, besides the increase of the capital of the community, and a result which
immediately your die of cold.
It
affair,
may
namely, that a good
many
is
console you to reflect that a great
rich people will at least feel
chilly, in
more
of you will
many
economical drawing-
rooms of state, and in ill-aired houses, rawly built on raw ground, and already mouldy for want of fires, though under a blackened sky.
What work
a pestilence of them,
— as
if
and alighted
the bricks of
and unseemly plague of builders'
Egypt had multiplied
—has
like its locusts
like its lice,
fallen on the suburbs of loath-
some London The road from the village of Shirley, near Addington, where my father and mother are buried, to the house they lived in
when
I
was four years
winding
lanes,
old, lay, at that time,
through a quite
and wood, traversed here and there by and by one or two smooth mail-coach roads,
secluded district of
field
some gentleand attached fields, indicating a country life of long continuance and quiet respectability. Except such an one here and there, one saw no dwellings above the size of cottages or small farmsteads these, woodbuilt usually, and thatched, their porches embroidered with honeysuckle, and their gardens with daisies, their doors mostly ajar, or with a half one shut to keep in the children, and a bricked or tiled footway from it to the w^icket gate, all neatly beside which, at intervals of a mile or two, stood
man's house, with
its
lawn, gardens,
offices,
;
—
kept, and vivid with a sense of the quiet energies of their con-
tented tenants,
made
the lane-turnings cheerful, and gleamed
in half-hidden clusters beneath the slopes of the
woodlands
at
Sydenham and Penge. There were no signs of distress, of efmany of enjoyment, and not a few of wealth fort, or of change beyond the daily needs of life. That same district is now covered ;
by, literally,
many thousands,
of houses built within the last ten
years, of rotten brick, with various iron devices to hold
it
to-
FORS CLAVIGEEA.
Thej, every one,
getber.
73
drawing-room and dining.
liave a
room, transparent from back to front, so tbat from tbe road one Tbey sees tbe people's beads inside, clear against tbe ligbt.
bave a second story of bedrooms, and an underground one of kitcben. Tbey are fastened in a Siamese-twin manner togetber by tbeir
sides,
and eacb couple bas
a
Greek or Gotbic portico
sbared between tbem, witli magnilicent steps, and bigbly orna-
mented
capitals.
Attacbed
to
every double block are exactly
similar double parallelograms of garden, laid out in
new
gravel
and scanty turf, on tlie model of tbe pleasure grounds in tbe Crystal Palace, and enclosed by bigb, tbin, and pale brick walls. Tbe gardens in front are fenced from tbe road witb an immense weigbt of cast iron, and entered between two square gate-posts, witb projecting stucco cornices, l)earing tbe information tbat tbe
elio-ible
Yilla.
On
down witb mud, one
residence witbin
is
Mortimer House or Montao^ue
tbe otlier side of tbe road, wbicli lai-ge flints,
and
sees Barleigb
is
deep
is
laid fresbly
at tbe sides in ruts of
House, orDevonsbire Yilla,
still
yellow to let,
and getting leprous in patcbes all over tbe fronts. Tbink wbat tbe real state of life is, for tbe people wbo are content to pass it in sucb places and wbat tbe people tbemselves must be. Of tbe men, tbeir wives, and cbildren, wbo live in any of tbose bouses, probably not tbe fiftb part are possessed of one common manly or womanly skill, know^ledge, ;
means of bappiness. The men can indeed write, and cast town every day to get tbeir living by doing so; tbe women and cbildren can perbaps read story-books, or
accounts, and go to
dance in
a vulgar
dexterities
manner, and play on tbe piano witb dull
for exbibition
;
but not a
member
family can, in general, cook, sweep, knock in a stake, or spin a tbread.
work,
Tbey
Tbey know notbing
are
still
less
of tbe wbole nail,
drive a
capable of finer
of painting, sculpture, or arcbitec-
mucb
account to tbem for Mr. Pepper's gbost, and
may more or less make tbem disbe-
any otber gbost but
tbat, particularly
ture
;
of science, inaccurately, as
lieve in tbe existence of
as
Holy One of books, tbey read " Macmillan's Magazine" on week days, and " Good Words" on Sundays, and are entirely
tbe
:
— FOKS CLAVIGERA.
74 ignorant of
all
own
the standard literature belonging to their
country, or to any other.
They never think
of taking a walk,
and, the roads for six miles round tliem being ancle deep in
mud
and
they could not
flints,
if
they would.
They cannot
enjoy their gardens, for they have neitlier sense nor strength
The women and
girls
have no
ures but in calling on each other in false
liair,
cheap dresses
enough
to
gaudy
work
in them.
pleas-
machine made, and high-heeled boots, of which them by Parisian prostitutes of the lowest order: the men have no faculty, beyond that of cheating in business; no pleasures but in smoking or eating; and no ideas,' nor any capacity of forming ideas, of anything that lias yet been done of great, or seen of good, in this world. That is the typical condition of five-sixths, at least, of the "rising" middle classes about 'London the lodgers in those damp shells of brick, ^vhich one cannot say they inhabit, nor call their " houses ;" nor " their' s" indeed, in any sense but packing-cases in which they are temporarily stored, for bad Put the things on wheels (it is already done in America, use. but you must build them stronger first), and they are mere railway vans of brick, thrust in rows on the siding vans full of monkeys that have lost the use of their legs. The baboons in Regent's Park with Mr. Darwin's pardon ai'e of another species; a less passive, and infinitely wittier one. Here, behold, you have a group of gregarious creatures that cannot climb, and are entirely imitative, not as the apes, occasionally, of
stuffs,
pattern was set to
the
—
;
;
—
for the
humour
of
but
it,
their lives lung
all
;
the builders try-
now swindling on live like the Duke of
ing to build as Christians did once, though
every brick
the\' lay
;
and the lodgers
to
Devonshire, on the salaries of railroad clerks. say
!
Scarcely even that.
a year or two, has been
owner's
life.
In
my
Many
made
Lodgers',
do I
a cottage, lodged in but for
a true
home, for that span of the
next letter but one, I hope to give you
some abstract of the man's life whose testimony I want you to compare with that of Dickens, as to the positions of Master and Servant meantime compare with what you may see of these railroad homeS;, this incidental notice bv him of his first one. :
"
;
FORS CLAVIGERA. "
had
When we
75
approached that village (Lasswade) Scott, who my arm, turned along the road in a direction
hold of
laid
not leading to the place where the carriage was to meet us.
After walking some minutes towards Edinburgh, I suggested that we were losing the scenery of the Esk, and, besides, had Dalkeith Palace yet to " '
Yes,' said he,
is little
enough
'
see.
and
have been bringing you where there
I
be seen, only that Scotch cottage (one by
to
but, though not worth lookwas our first country house when newly married, and many a contrivance we had to make
the roadside, with a small garth)
ing
it
at,
I could not
comfortable.
hands.
Look
I
pass
it.
made
at these
;
It
a dining-table for
it
with
my own
two miserable willow-trees on either
side the gate into the enclosure
;
they are tied together at the
top to be an arch, and a cross made of two sticks over them is not yet decayed. To be sure, it is not much of a lion to show a stranger; but I
you that
after I
wanted
to see
had constructed
it it,
again myself, for I assure
mamma
we turned
(Mrs. Scott) and I
it by moonand walked backwards from it to the cottage door, in admiration of our own magnificence and its picturesque effect.
both of us thought
it
so fine,
out to see
light,
I did want to see
if it
was
still there.'
I had scarcely looked out this passage for you,
when
I re-
ceived a letter from the friend who sent me the penny cookery book, incidentally telling me of the breaking up of a real home. I have obtained her leave to let you read part of it. It will come with no disadvantage, even after Scott's, recording as it does the same kind of simple and natural life, now passing so fast away. The same life, and also in the district which, henceforward, I mean to call " Sir Walter's Land " definable as the entire breadth of Scots and English ground from sea to sea, coast and isle included, between Schehallien
on the north, and Ingleborough on the south. (I have my reasons, though some readers may doubt them, for fixing the limit south of Skye, and north of Ashby-de-la-Zouche.) Within this district, then,
home my
but I shall not say in what part of
friend speaks of stood.
In
many
respects
it,
the
it
was
—
— FOES CLAVIGERA.
76
like the " Fair-ladies" in
and
as secluded,
in the
'*
Red
Gauntlet"
;
as near the coast,
same kind of country
;
more
still
like,
and loyal beneficence. Therefore, beits name, I put " Fairthe letter, of which the part I wish you to see
in its mistress's simple
cause I do not like leaving a blank for ladies" for
it
begins thus
in
:
" Please let
me
say one practical thing.
In no cottage
is
more than a pound of meat, if any and a piece of roast beef, such as you or I understand by the word, costs ten shillings or twelve, and is not meant for I never have it in this house now, except when it is artisans. full. I have a much sadder example of the changes wrought there a possibility of roasting ;
who had her by modern wages and extravagance. Miss rather produce), expenses (or home-farm for her laud house and for years all entertained hundred a year who and about young trained dozen a her women and children acquaintances servants in a year, and was a blessing to the country for miles round writes me word yesterday that she hopes and intreats ,
;
;
;
will go this summer to Fair-ladies, as it is the last. She says the provisions are double the price they used to be the wages also and she cannot even work her farm as she used to do the men want beer instead of milk, and won't do half they used to do so she must give it up, and let the place, and come and live by me or some one to comfort her, and I am so sorry, hecause I Fair-ladies will know her no more.
that
we
—
;
;
think
such a loss to the wretched people who drive her Our weekly bills are double what they used to be, yet
it
away.
every servant asks higher wages each time I engage one and as to the poor people in the village, they are not a bit better ;
—they
o£[
religion
eat more,
and
all
and drink more, and learn
that
is
good.
One
to think less of
thing I see very clearly,
keepmg of Sunday is being swept away, so is their day of rest going with it. Of course if no one goes to worship God one day more than another,* what is the sense of talking
that, as the
* My dear friend, 1 can t bear to interrupt your pretty letter but, indeed, one should not worship God on one day more, or less, than on another and one should rest when one needs rest, whether on Sunday or Saturday. ;
;
— FORS CLAVIGERA.
77
If all the railway servants, and all the ? and all the museums and art-collection servants, post-office, and all the refreshment places, and other sorts of amusement, servants are to work on Sunday, why on earth should not the No! artisans, who are as selfish and irreligious as any one? directly I find every one else is at work, I shall insist on the
about the Sabbath
(Quite
baker and the butcher calling for orders as usual.
my
right,
The result of enormous wages will be more on my own boys for carpentering, and on
I rely
dear.)
that pre-
served food, and the cook and butcher will soon be dismissed."
My
little darling, rely on your own boys for carpentermeans and grease be to their elbows but you have something better to rely on than potted crocodile,
poor
ing by shall
all
—
;
in old England, yet,
— please
the pixies, and
pigs,
and
St.
George, and St. Anthony. Nay, we will have also a blue-aproned butcher or two still, We have not to call for orders they are not yet extinct. ;
even reached the preparatory phase of steam-butcher-boys, riding from Buxton for orders to Bakewell, and from Bakeand paying dividends to a Steamwell for orders to Buxton ;
Butcher's-boy-Company. "
He
Not
extinct yet, and a kindly race,
me," (part of another friend's speaking of his butcher), " his sow had foui-teen pigs, and could only rear twelve, the other two, he said, he was feeding ^^^th a spoon. I never could bear, he said, to kill a
for the most part.
told
letter,
young animal because he was one too many." Yes that but if it be Wait a minute all very well when it's a pig ;
;
—
is
;
must go back to Fair-ladies, before I finish my sentence. For note very closely what the actual facts are in this short letter from an English housewife. She, in the south, and the mistress of Fair-ladies in the north, both find " their weekly bills double what they used to be ;" that is to say, they are as poor again as they were, and they have to pay higher wages, of course, for now all wages I
buy so much less. I have too long, perhaps, put questions to you which I knew you could not answer, partly in the hope ot at least making you think, and partly because I knew yon
—
—
FORS CLAVIQERA.
78
would not believe the true answer, if I gave it. But, whether you believe me or not, I must explain the meaning of this to you at once. The weekly bills are double, because the greater part of the labour of the people of England is spent un productively
that
;
to say, in producing iron plates, iron guns,
is
gunpowder, infernal
machines, infernal
about, infernal fortresses standing
still,
fortresses
infernal
floating
means of mis-
chievous locomotion, infernal lawsuits, infernal parliamentary infernal
elocution, statues,
and infernal gazettes, magazines,
beei",
and pictures.
Calculate the labour spent in producing
these infernal articles annually, and put against
producing food
spent in
weekly
bills are
!
it
The only wonder
not tenfold instead of double.
the labour
is,
For
the
that this
poor
housewife, mind you, cannot feed her children with any one, or any quantity, of these infernal articles.
Children can only
Their mother can indeed get to London cheap, but she has no business there she can bu}^ all the morning's news for a halfpenny, but she has no concern
be fed with divine
articles.
;
with them
she can see Gustave Dore's pictures (and she had
;
better see the devil), for a shilling
any quantity of but
it is
as
filthy streets
much
as
her
life's
;
she can be carried through
on a tramway for threepence;
worth to walk in them, or
modesty's worth to look into a print shop in them. her have but to go on foot a quarter of a mile
as
Nay,
in the
her let
West
End, she dares not take her purse in her pocket, nor let her little dog follow her. These are her privileges and facilities, But none of these will bring in the capital of civilization. meat or flour into her own village. Far the contrary The sheep and corn which the flelds of her village produce are carried awaj' from it to feed the makers of Armstrong guns. !
And
her weeklj'
But you, better again.
bills are
double.
you think, with your beer for milk, are Read pages 28 to 34 of my second letter over
forsooth,
off.
And now
The one
observe farther
:
first and absolute question of all economy is you making? Are you making Hell's articles, or Heaven's? gunpowder, or corn ?
What
are
—
—
—
FORS CLAVIGERA.
There
79
no question whether you are to liave work or not. is, vihat work. This poor housewife's mutton and corn are given jou to eat. Good. Now, if jou, with your day's work, produce for her, and send to lier, spices, or tea, or
The
is
question
rice, or maize, or figs, or any other good thing, that is true and beneficent trade. But if you take her mutton and coi-n from lier, and send her back an Armstrong gun, what can slie
But you can't grow figs and spices in England, No, certainly, and tlierefore, means of transit for produce in England are h'ttle necessary. Let my poor housewife keep her sheep in her near fields, and do yon, keep sheep at Newcastle, and the weekly bills will not rise. But you forge iron at Newcastle; then you build an embankment from Newcastle to my friend's village, whereupon you take lier sheep from her, suffocating half of them on the way and you send her an Armstrong gun back or, perhaps not even to her, but to somebody who can fire it down your own throats, you jolterheads. No mattei', you say, in the meantime, we eat more, and drink more the housewife herself alIo%t's that. Yes, I have just told you, her corn and sheep all are sent to you. But
make
of that?
you say
?
—
—
;
;
;
how
about other people
paused in above.
It is
will finish
my
sentence now,
?
I
all
very well to bring up creatures
with a spoon, when they are one or two too many,
if
they are
But how if they be useless things like young ladies? Tou don't want any wives. I understand, now, till you are forty-five what in the world will you do with your girls? Bring them up with a spoon, to that enuseful things like pigs.
;
chanting age "
The
certainly.
?
girls
may
Here
is
shift for
themselves."
a picture of
Tes,
some of them,
as
— they
may,
given by the
" Telegraph" of March ISth, of the present year, under Lord
Derby's new code of
endeavouring to fulfil Mr. and procure some more lucrative occupation than that of nursing the baby " After all the discussions about woman's sphere and woman's rights, and the advisability of doing something to re-
John Stuart
civilization,
Mill's wishes,
:
80
FORS CLAVIGERA.
dress the inequality of position against which the fair sex "by
the
medium
of
many champions, so
stantly struggles,
it is
loudly protests and so con-
not satisfactory to be told what happened
Cannon-row two days last week. It had been announced that the Civil Service Commissioners would receive applicacations pei'sonally from candidates for eleven vacancies in the metropolitan post-offices, and in answer to this notice, about at
women made
2,000 young
The
their appearance.
building,
the court-yard, and the street were blocked by a dense throng of fair applicants; locomotion was impossible, even with the
help of policemen
windows were thrown up
to view the had been passing that way traffic was obstructed, and nothing could be done for houi«. AVe ;
sight, as if a procession
;
understand, indeed, that the published accounts by no means
do justice
were
Many 'of
to the scene.
the applicants,
it
appears,
and of unusually good social position, including daughters of clergymen and professional men, well connected, well educated, tenderly nurtured; girls of the highest respectability
but nevertheless, driven by the res angustcB which have caused many a heart-break, and scattered the members of many a home to seek for the
means of independent support.
agitation, the anxiety, the fatigue
of those
who
attended
violent hysterics
long enough
to
;
be
;
proved too
several fainted
away
;
The crowd, the much for many others went into
remained just and then crept off, showwe are accustomed to a
others, despairing of success, utterl)^
worn
out,
ing such traces of mental anguish as sociate with the most painful bereavements.
In the present
Commissioners examined over 1,000 canThis seems a sad waste of didates for the eleven vacancies. in all probability, the first score power on both sides, when, case,
it is
stated, the
supplied the requisite
Yes,
my
pets, I
am
number
of qualified aspirants."
tired of talking to these
—
workmen, who
never answer a word ; I will try you now for a letter or two but I beg your pardon for calling you pets, my '^'qualifie*^
—
aspirants" I tion
mean (Alas
!
was on the bachelors' side)liberty enough,
want, I hope
!
—
—
time was when the qualified aspira-
Here you have got it
seems
—
if
all
you
only the court-
— FORS CLAVIGERA. yard were bigger
tween young rights of
;
equality enough
81
— no
distinction
made
be-
ladies of the highest, or the lowest, respectability
women
generally claimed, you perceive
;
and obtained
;
without opposition from absurdly religious, moral, or chivalric persons. You have got no God, now, to bid you do anything
you don't
— (and
like
much
no pain nor brats.
Here
no husbands, to
;
of
it
peril of childbirth is
insist
on having their own why
they got, in the old times ;
—
— didn't
all
an entirely scientific occupation for you !
and
!
I
understand the relations of positive and negative
Now
tricity.
you may " communicate intelligence" by
Those wretched
graph.
girls that
?)
no bringing up of tiresome
a beautiful invention this of Mr. Wheatstone's
you
they
used
Such hope electele-
to write love-letters, of
which their foolish lovers would count the words, and somehow they would for, less than twenty envy you if they knew. Only the worst is, that this beautiful invention of Mr, Wheatstone's for talking miles off, won't feed people in the long run, my dears, any more than the old invention of the tongue, for talking near, and you'll soon begin to think that was not so bad a one, after all. But you can't live by talking, though you talk in the scientificalest of manners, and to the other side of the world. All the telegraph wire over the earth and under the sea, will not do so much for you, my poor little qualified aspirants, as one strong needle with thimble and thread. You do sometimes read a novel still, don't you, my scientific dears? I wish I could write one; but I can't; and George Eliot always makes them end so wretchedly that they're worse I must even translate a tlian none so she's no good, neither. foreign novellette or nouvellette, which is to my purpose, next month meantime I have chanced on a little true story, in the journal of an Englishman, travelling, before the revolution, in France, which shows you something of the temper of the poor Here ai-e first, however, a little unscientific girls of that day. picture or two which he gives in the streets of Paris, and which I want nil my readers to see; they mark, what most Englishmen do not know, that the beginning of the French Kevolu-
times be thankful
—
;
6
—
—
FORS CLAVIGERA.
82
with what of good or evil it liad, was in English, not French, notions of "justice" and " liber t\\" The writer is
tion,
travelling with a friend, school, and, "
Mr.
B
,
who
is
of the Liberal
He
and I went this forenoon to a review of the footguards, by Marshal Biron. There was a crowd, and we could with difficulty get within the
An
iently.
circle, so as to see
conven-
some people who
old officer of high rank touched
Ces deux Messieurs sont des etranupon which they innnediately made way, and allowed 'Don't you think that was vei-y obliging?' said I. us to pass. 'Yes,' answered he; 'but, by heavens, it was very unjust,' "We returned by the Boulevards, where crowds of citizens, iu their holiday dresses, were making merry; the young dancing cotillons, the old beating time to the music, and applauding the dancers. These people seem very happy,' said I. 'Happy!' exclaimed B 'if they had common sense, or reflection, they would be miserable.' 'Why so?' 'Could not the minister,' answered he, pick out half-a-dozen of them if he pleased, and clap them into the Bicetre ? That is true, stood before us, saying,
gers
;
'
'
'
;
'
'
'
indeed,' said I
;
'
that
may
a catastrophe which, to be sure,
is
very probably happen, and yet I thought no more of
it
than
they.'
" We met, a few days after he arrived, where we had been both invited to diimer.
whom
lady of quality present, next to seated,
who
paid
lier
French house There was an old young officer was
at a
a
He
the utmost attention.
the dishes she liked,
filled
'What
addressed his discourse particularly to her.
B
says
woman him "
' ,
!
if
does that young fellow
she were
my
to an account for
Though B
mother, d
—n
left
of the poor old
me,
1
if
He
would not
call
it.'
understands French, and speaks
the company, and has refused
ever since.
a fool,'
make
than most Englishmen, he had no relish for soon
helped her to
her glass with wine or water, and
all
tlie
it
better
conversation,
invitations to dinner
generally finds some of our countrymen,
who
dine and pass the evening with him at the Pare Royal.
"After the review
this
day,
we continued
together, and
FORS CLAVIGERA.
83
way
being both disengaged, I proposed, bj
of variety, to dine
He
at the publrc ordinary of the Hotel de Bourbon.
like this
much
at first.
'
be
I shall
teased,' says he,
'
did not
with their
confounded ceremony;' but on my observing that we could not expect much ceremony or politeness at a public ordinary,
he agreed
"Our
my
to go.
entertainment turned out different, however, from
A marked attention was paid everybody seemed inclined to ac-
expectations and his wishes.
us the
moment we
entered
;
commodate us with the best places. They helped us first, and all the company seemed ready to sacrifice every convenience and distinction
to the strangers
;
for,
next to that of a lady,
the most respected character at Paris is that of a stranger. " After dinner, B and I walked into the gardens of the Palais Royal. " There was nothing real in '
about "
all
the fuss those people
made
says he.
us,'
I can't help thinking
something,' said
to be treated and apparent kindness in a foreign country, by strangers who know nothing about us, but that we are Englishmen, and often their enemies.' " '
with
it
I,
'
civility
So much for the behaviour of
Paris.
old
Now
for
our
French in it; my most entirely English readers can easily find out what they mean, and they must gather what moral they may from it, till next month, for I have no space to comment on it in country story.
I will not translate the small bits of
this letter.
"My
friend
F
called on
me
a
few days
since,
and
as
soon as he understood that I had no particular engagement, he insisted that I should drive tete-drtete
somewhere
into the country, dine
with him, and return in time for the play.
"When we
had driven a few miles I perceived a genteelHe sat under a tree on the grass, at a little distance from the road, and amused As we came nearer we perhimself by playing on the violin. ceived he had a wooden leg, part of which lay in fragments looking fellow, dressed in an old uniform.
by
his side.
'
FOBS CLAVIGERA.
84 "
'
What do jou do
am on my way home soldier.
'
my
But,
?
there, soldier
to
my own
said the Marquis.
'
village,
mon
officier,' said
'
I
the
poor friend,' resumed the Marquis, 'you
you arrive at your journey's you have no other carriage besides these,' pointing at
will be a furious long time before
end,
if
the fragujents of his
and if
my
all
suite,' said
wooden
'I wait for
leg.
the soldier, 'and I
am
my
equipage
greatly mistaken
I do not see them this moment coming down the hill.' " saw a kind of cart, drawn by one horse, in which was
We
a woman, and drew near, the
— that
a peasant
who drove
soldier told
While they us he had been wounded in Corsica the horse.
—
had been cut off that before setting out on that expedition he had been contracted to a young woman in the neighbourhood that the marriage liad been postponed till his
return
his leg
;
—but
—
when he appeared with
a
wooden
the girl's relations had opposed the match.
who was ship,
her only surviving parent,
had always been
was abroad.
his friend
;
The
leg, that girl's
when he began
all
mother,
his court-
but she had died while he
The young woman
herself,
however, remained
him with open arms, and her relations, and accompany him to
constant in her affections, I'eceived
had agreed to leave Paris, from whence they intended to set out in the diligence to the town where he was born, and where his father still lived. That on the way to Paris his wooden leg had snapped, which had obliged his mistress to leave him, and go to the next village in quest of a cart to carry him thither, where he would remain till such time as the carpenter should renew his leg. C'est un malheur,' concluded the soldier, mon officier, bientot repare et voici mon amie "The girl sprung before the cart, seized the outstretched hand of her lover, and told him, with a smile full of affection, that she had seen an admirable carpenter, who had promised to make a leg that would not break, that it would be ready by to-morrow, and they might resume their journey as soon after '
'
—
!
as they pleased.
"The served.
soldier received his mistress's
compliment
as
it
de-
FORS CLAVIGEKA,
85
" Slie seemed about twenty years of age, a beautiful, fine-
shaped
gii-I
ment and *
—a
brunette, whose countenance indicated senti-
vivacity.
"'You must be much fatigued, my dear,' On ne se fatigue pas. Monsieur, quand on
qu'on aime,' replied the a gallant
and tender
'
charming
this girl is quite
has the appearance of a brave fellow
betwixt them, and
pour ce hand with
travaille
soldier kissed her
'Allons,' continued the Marquis, ad-
air.
dressing himself to me,
The
gii'l.
said the Marquis.
we have
four;
—
— her lover
;
they have but three legs
if
you have no objection,
they shall have the carriage, and we will follow on foot to the next village, and see wliat can be done for these lovers.' I
never agreed
"The
to a proposal
soldier
the ms-d-vis. a Colonel, and
'
began
to
Come, come, it
is
my
with more pleasure in
make
difficulties
life.
about entering into
friend,' said the Marquis,
your duty
to
obey
:
'
get in without
I
am
more
ado, and your mistress shall follow.'
mon bon ami,' said the girl, 'since these gentleupon doing us so much honour.' " A girl like you would do honour to the finest coach in France. Nothing could please me more than to have it in my power to make you happy,' said the Marquis. Laissez moi "'Entrons,
men
insist
'
'
faire,
mon
colonel,' said the soldier.
'Je suisheureuse
comme
une reine,' said Fanchon. Away moved the chaise, and the Marquis and I followed. "'Yoyez vous, combien nous sommes heureux nous autres Frangois, a bon marche,' said the Mai-quis to me, adding with a smile, le bonheur, a ce qu'on m'a dit, est plus cher en Angleterre.' 'But,' answered I, 'how long will this last with these poor people?' 'Ah, pour le coup,' said he, voila une reflexion bien Angloise;' that, indeed, is what I cannot tell; neither do I know how long you or 1 maj live but I fancy it would be great folly to be sorrowful through life, because we do not know how soon misfortunes may come, and because we are quite certain that death is to come at last.' "When we arrived at the inn to which we had ordered the postillion to drive, we found the soldier and Fanchon. After '
'
—
;
FORS CLAVIGERA.
86
having ordered some victuals and wine, Pray,' said I to the soldier, how do you propose to maintain your wife and your'
'
?
self
'One who has contrived
'
dier's pay,' replied he, 'can
to live for five years on sol-
have
little difficulty
I can play tolerably well
on the
for the rest of
added he, and perhaps there is not a village in all France of the size, where there are so many marriages as in that in which we are going to settle I shall never want employment.' And T,' said Fanchon, can weave hair nets and silk purses, and mend his
life.
fiddle,'
'
'
;
'
Besides,
stockings.
in his hands,
and volontiers '
And
I,'
my
said the soldier,
besides two
him
taxes,
to '
pay
You
'
make him pay
have fifteen
have lent
and which he
see, Sir,' said
jects of compassion.
brother-in-law to the
is
brutal, yet I will
louis that I
"
uncle has two hundred livres of mine
and although he
May we
livres in
to a poor
will repay
Fanchon
to
me,
it
'
bailiff,
every sous.'
my
pocket,
farmer to enable
me when he that
not be happy,
is able.'
we
are not ob-
my
good friend
(turning to her lover with a look of exquisite tenderness),
be not our own fault?' 'If you are not, the soldier with great warmth,
'
ma
if it
douce arnie!' said
je serai bien a plaindre.'
—
NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. As
"Fors" increases, the correspondence connected must of course, and that within no long time, become unmanageable, except by briefest reference to necessary points in letters of real value; with
the circulation of
it
even of such may not be acknowledged, except with the general I render in advance to all who write either with the definite purposj of helping me, or of asking explanation of what I have said, letter of gi'eat interest has thus lain by me since Christmas, though the
many
thanks which
A
had received it by my instant use of the book he told With reference to the statements therein made respecting the robbing of the poor by the rich, through temptation of drink, writer
would know
me
—Professor
of,
I
Kirk's.
the letter goes on.
"But
my mind
the enquiry does not reach deep enough. I would that the workers have so little control over their appetites in this direction? (a) and what the remedy? secondly, why is it that those who wish to drain the working men are permitted to govern them? (b) and what the remcdj ? (c) " The answers to each question will, I think, be found to be nearly related. " The possibility of a watchful and exacting, yet respected, government within a government, is well shown by the existence and discipline of the Society of Friends, of which 1 am a member. Our society is, no doubt, greatly injured by narrow views of religious truth; yet may it not be that their change from an agricultural to a trading people has done the most to sap the vital strength of their early daj's? But the tree is not without good fruit yet. day or two ago the following sentence was extracted by me from a newspaper notice of the death of Robert Charleton, of Bristol: " 'In him the poor and needy, the oppressed, the fallen and friendless, and the lonely sufferer, ever had a tender and faithful friend. When in trade, he was one of the best employers England could boast. He lived for his people, rather than expected them to live for him; and when he did not derive one penny profit from his factory, but rather lost by it, he still kept the business going, for the sake of his work-people.' " (d)
know,
to
first,
why
it is
A
The answers to my coiTespondent's questions are very simple, {a) The workers have in general much more control over their appetites than idle people. But as they are for the most part hindered by their occupation from all rational, and from the best domestic, pleasures, and as manual work naturally makes people thirsty, what can they do but drink? Intoxication
is
to them.
the only
But
see
Heaven
my
that, practically. Christian
England ever displays
statements on this point in the fourth lecture in the
NOTES AXD CORRESPONDENCE.
88
" Crown of "Wild Olive," when I get it out; (the unfinished notes on Freder(b) Because, as the working men have been it back a while), for the last fifty years taught that one man is as good as another, they never think of looking for a good man to govern them; and only those who intend to pillage or cheat them will ever come forward of their own accord to govern them; or can succeed in doing so, because as long as they trust in their own sagacity, any knave can humbug them to the top of his bent; while no ick keeping
wise
man can And
notions.
a real leader, present; (see
them anything whatever, contrary to their immediate which would make them look for and believe him, is the last sensation likely to occur to them at teach
the distrust in themselves,
my
republican correspondent's observations on election, in the
My correspondent twice asks what is the remedy? I now, but the natural one; namely, some of the forms of ruin which necessarily cut a nation of blockheads down to the ground, and leave it, thence to sprout again, if there be any life left for it in the earth, or But, through whatever catastrophes, lesson teachable to it by adversity. for any man who cares for the right and sees it, his own duty in the wreck to keep himself cool and fearless, and do what is instantly is always clear serviceable to the people nearest him, and the best he can, silently, for all. Cotton in one's ears may be necessary for we are like soon to have screaming enough in England, as in the wreck of the Northfleet, if that would do any good, (d) Yes, that is all very fine; but suppose that keeping useless work going on, for the sake of the work people, be not the wisest thing to do for the sake of ot/nir people? Of this hereafter. The sentence respecting the corrupting power of trade, as opposed to agriculture, is certainly right, and very notable. Perhaps some of my readers may be surprised at my giving space to the following comments of my inquisitive Republican acquaintance on my endeavours to answer his questions. But they are so characterLstic of the genius of Republicanism, that I esteem them quite one of the best gifts of the Third "Fors" to us: also, the writer is sincere, and might think, if I next
letter),
(c)
—
believe none,
—
—
did not print his answers, that I treated
him
unfairly.
I
may
afterwards
take note of some points in them, but have no time this month.
"We
are all covetous. I am ravenously covetous of the means to speak ' in such type and on such paper as you can buy the use of. Oh that mine enemy would give me the means of employmg such a printer as you can employ!" (Certainly, he could do nothing worse for you!) questions, and your criticism thereon. "I find j'ou have published I thank you for your 'good- will to man,' but protest against the levity of '
my
your method of dealing with politics. " You assume that you understand me, and that I don't understand myself or you. I fully admit that I don't understand you or myself, and I But I will pass hyper- criticism declare that neither do you understand me. (and, by-the-bye, I am not sure that I know what that compound word means; you will know, of course, for me) and tackle your 'Answers.' "1 You evade the meaning the question, for I cannot think you mean that the world,' or an ocean,' can be rightfully regarded by legisla-
—
'
'
tors as the private property of 'individuals.'
—
NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
89
"2. 'It never was, and never can be.' The price of a cocoanut was the the climber eat the nut. cost of labour in climbing the tree "3. Whatdo you understand by a 'tax"? The penny paid for the conveyance of a letter is not a tax Lord Somebody says I must perish of hunger, or pay him for permission to dig in the land on which I was born. He taxes me that he may live without labouring, and do you say of course,' ' quite rightfully ? ;
'
'
"4. ? "5. You may choose a pig or horse for yourself, but I claim the right of choosing mine, even though you know that you could choose better animals for me. By your system, if logicnlly carried out, we should have no elections, but should have an emperor of the world, the man who knew himself to be the most intelligent of all. I suppose you should be allowed to vote ? It is somebody else who must have no political voice ? Where do you draw the line ? Just below John Ruskin ?* Is a man so little and his polish so much ? Men and women must vote, or must not submit. I have bought but little of the polish sold at schools but, ignorant as I am, I would not yield as the subject of thirty million Ruskins, or of the king they might elect without consulting me. You did not let either your brain or your heart ?peak when you answered that question. "6. 'Beneficial.' I claim the right of personal judgment, and I would grant the exercise of that right to every man and woman. "7. 'Untrue.' Untrue. Lord Somebody consumes, with the aid of a hundred men and women, whom he keeps from productive industry, as much as would suflSce to maintain a hundred families. A hundred yes, a Destroying ? Did j'ou forget that so many admirals, thousand navvies. generals, colonels, and captains, were your law-makers ? Are they not professional destroyers ? I could fill youi' pages T\ith a list of other destructive emplojTnents of your legislators. " 8. Has the tax gatherer too busy a time of it to attend to the duties added by the establishment of a National Post Oflice ? "We remove a thousand toll-bars, and collect the assessment annually with economy. We eat now, and are poisoned, and pay dearly. The buyers and sellers of bread 'have a busy time of it.' "9. Thank you for the straightforwardness. But I find you ask me what I mean by a State.' I meant it as you accepted it, and did not think it economical to bother you or myself with a page of incomplete definitions. " 10. See Munera Pu'veris/' And, j'e workmen and labourers,' go and consult the Emperor of China. " You speak of a king who killed 'without %vrath, and without doubting his rightness,' and of a collier who killed with consciousness.' Glorious, igIt is enough to norant brute of a king Degraded, enlightened collier stimulate a patriot to burn all the colleges and libraries. Much learning makes us ignoble No it is the much labour and the bad teaching of the labourer by those who never earned their food by the sweat of their own
—
;
'
'
—
'
'
'
'
'
'
!
!
!
!
brow." * My correspondent will perhaps be surprised to hear that I have never in voted for any candidate for Parliament, and that I never mean to.
my life
;
POKS CLAYIGERA.
90
LETTEE XXX. BRA2TTWOOD, April
On
19, 1873.
the thirteenth shelf of the south bookcase of inj home-
librarj, stand, first,
Kenelm Digby's "Broad Stone of Honbound in red, the "history of the
our," then, in five volumes,
ingenious gentleman, in one volume,
bound
Don
Quixote of La Mancha;" and then, no less pathetic, called
in green, a story
the " Mirror of Peasants," Its
author does not mean the word " mirror" to be under-
stood in the sense in which one would
"Mirror of Chivalry;" but
—beholding other men,
call
Don Quixote the which a man
in that of a glass in
his natural heart,
may know
also the hearts of
as,
in a glass, face answers to face.
The author
of this story was a clergyman
;
but employed
the greater part of his day in writing novels, having a gift for that species of composition as well as for seiTnons, and observ-
though he gave both excellent in their kind, that his congregation liked their sermons to be short, and his readers, their novels to be long. Among them, however, were also many tiny novellettes, of which, young ladies, I to-day begin translating for you one of the shortest; hoping that you will not think the worse of it ing,
by a clergyman. Of this author I will only though I am not prejudiced in favour of persons of his profession, I think him the wisest man, take him all in chiefly because he all, with whose writings I am acquainted showed his wisdom in pleasant and unappalling ways as for instance, by keeping, for the chief ornament of his study (not being able to afford expensive books), one book beautifully bound, and shining with magnificence of golden embossing this book of books being his register, out of which he read, for being written
say, that,
;
;
from the height of
his
pulpit, the
promises of marriage.
FORS CLAVIGERA. " Dans lequel
lisait,
il
du haut de
91
chaire, les
la
promesses de
mariage."
He
rose always early
;
and then got ready with
breakfasted himself at six o'clock;
own hands
his
liking his servants better to be at
the family breakfast,
work out of doors
:
wrote
eleven, dined at twelve, and spent the afternoon in his
till
parish work, or in his fields, being a farmer of shrewdest and
most
practical
And
and through the Sundays of was absent from his pulpit.
skill
years, never once
now, before
;
my
fifteen
which is a translaGerman, and I can only read French, I must say a few serious words as to the sense in which I wish you to receive what religious instruction this romantic clergyman may sometimes mingle with his I begin
little story,
tion of a translation, for the original
romance. It
He
an Evangelical divine of the purest type.
is
therefore primarily for
is
my
Evangelical readers that I
translate this or others of his tales
either former letters of " Fors," or
they must
know
theology.
But
exactly as I should feel
faithful Turk, to represent
of the
my
and if they have read any of my later books,
best care, represent and en-
my
life
;
familiar tlian he.
my
said Evangelical read-
if I were talking to a and enforce to him any passage
it
Koran which was beyond
ence to practical
more
;
that I do not myself believe in Evangelical I shall with
force this clergyman's teaching to ers,
is
duty,
all
question true, in
its refer-
and with the bearings of which I was For I think that our common prayer
God
" would take away all ignorance, hardness of heart, and contempt of His word, from all Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics," is an entirely absurd one. I do not think all Jews have hard hearts nor that all infidels would despise God's word, if only they could hear it nor do I in the least know whether it is my neighbour or myself who is really the heretic. But I pray that prayer for myself as well as others and in this form, that God would make all Jews honest Jews, all Turks honest Turks, all infidels honest infidels, and all Evangelicals and heretics honest Evangelicals and heretics; that so that
;
;
;
these Israelites in
whom
there
is
no guile, Turks
in
whom
rORS CLAVIGERA.
92
no
and so on,
there
is
know
the power, of
therefore, tirely
guile,
young
ladies, I
sympathize with
because I
know him
teaching what
is
more good from
may
King
tlie
in
due time see the face, and and Esau. Now
alike of Israel
beg you
to understand that I en-
this Evangelical clergyman's feelings
to be honest
also, that I
:
universally true
:
give you of his
and that you may get the
you first to consider with James means by saying in the eighth
his story, I will ask
yourselves what
St.
verse of his general Epistle, " Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that
he
is
exalted, but the rich in that
he
is
made
you find, as you generally will, if you think seriously over any verse of your Bibles whatsoever, that you never have had, and are never likely to have, the slightest idea what it means, perhaps you will permit me to propose That while both rich and the following explanation to you.
low
;"
and
if
poor are to be content to remain in their several
states, gain-
ing only by the due and natural bettering of an honest man's if, nevertheless, any chance should occur to cause sudden difference in either of their positions, the poor man might wisely desire that it should be some relief from the immediate pressure of poverty, while the rich should esteem it the surest sign of God's favour, if, without fault of his own,
settled life
;
he were forced to know" the pain of a lower condition. I have noticed, in " Sesame and Lilies," § 2, the frantic fear of the ordinary British public, lest they should fall below their proper " station in
life."
It appears that almost
only real sense of duty remaining science
is
now
a passionate belief in the propriety of
an appearance
;
no matter
no signs of
that there be
if
the
in the British con-
keeping up
on other people's money, so only
their
coming down in the world. any of my young lady
I should be very glad therefore if readers,
who
consider themselves religious persons, would in-
form me whether they the text
;
and
if so,
complaining, to
let
are satisfied with ray interpretation of
how far they would consent, without God humble them, if He wished to? If, then
for instance, they would, without pouting, allow
His way, even
to the point of forcing
them
Him
to have
to gain their bread
;
FOES CLAVIGERA.
93
—
bj some menial service, as, suppose, a housemaid's and whether they would feel aggrieved at being made lower housemaid instead of upper. If they have read their Bible to so good purpose as not to care which, I hope the following story may not be thought wholly beneath their attention concerning, as it does, the housemaid's principal implement or what (supposing her a member of St. George's company)
we may
properly
call
;
her spear, or weapon of noble war.
THE BROOM MERCHANT.
Brooms
are, as
the epoch
;
and
articles of the
or
week
to
we know, among in
the imperious necessities of
ever^^ liousehold, there are
many
needful
kind which must be provided from day to day,
week
;
and which one accordingly finds, everyBut we pay daily less and less
where, persons glad to supply.
attention to these kindly disposed persons, since
we have been
able to get the articles at their lowest possible price.
was not thus. The broom merchant, the egg merchant, the sand and rottenstone merchant, were, so to speak, part of the family one was connected with them by very close links; one knew the day on which each would arrive; and according to the degree of favour they were in, one kept something nice for their dinner; and if by any chance, they did not
Formerly
it
;
come
to their day,
they excused themselves, next time,
very grave fault indeed.
They considered
as for a
the houses which
— took —and, on quitting
they su]iplied regularly, as the stars of their heaven, the pains in the world to serve them well, their trade for anything
more
dignified, did
all
all
they could to
be replaced either by their children, or by some cousin, or
There was thus a reciprocal bond of fidelity on one and of trust on the other, which unhappily relaxes itself more and more every day, in the measure that also family spirit
cousine. side,
disappears.
The broom merchant
of E-ychiswyl was a servant of this
—
he whom one regrets now, so often at Berne, whom The Saturday might everybody was so fond of at Thun sooner have been left out of the almanack, than the broom-
sort
;
!
FOES CLAVIGERA.
94
man not appear in Thun on the Saturday. He had not always been the broom-man for a long time he had only been the broom-boy until, in the end, tlie boy had boys of his own, His father, wlio wlio put themselves to push his cart for him. had been a soldier, died early in life the lad was then very young, and his mother ailing. His elder sister had started in life many a day before, barefoot, and had found a place in helping a woman who carried pine-cones and turpentine to ;
;
;
When
Berne.
she had
won her
spurs, that
stockings, she obtained advancement,
is
to say, shoes
and became
of poultry, in a large farm near the town.
and
a governess,
Her mother and
brother were greatly proud of her, and never spoke but with of
respect
their
pretty Babeli.
who had need of They lived on the enough. One day,
Hansli could not leave his
mother,
his help, to fetch her
like.
love of
badly
Hansli
My
wood, and the
God and good
[people but farmer they lodged with says to
tlie
;
:
seems to me you might try and earn something you are big enough, and sharp enough. but I don't know how. I wisli I could, said Hansli I know something you could do, said the farmer. Set to work to make brooms there are plenty of twigs on my so they shall not cost willows. I only get them stolen as it is shall make me two brooms a year of them.* much. You you would very fine and be good, said Hansli but Yes, that where shall I learn to make brooms ? Pardieu,f there's no such sorcerj' in the matter, said the farmer. I'll take on me the teaching of you many a year now I've made all the brooms we use on the farm myself, and I'll back myself to make as good as are made;:}: you'll want few tools, and may use mine at first. and God's blessing came All which was accordingly done
now
lad, it
;
;
;
;
;
;
;
* Far wiser than letting him gather them as valueless. In French it has the form of a passionate oath, but f Not translateable. the spirit of a gentle one. If he had not had time X Head of house doing all he can do tcell, himself. to make the brooms "well, he would have bought them.
FORS CLAVIGERA. on
tlie
doing of
it.
95
Hansli took a fancy to the work; and
the farmer was enchanted with Hansli. Don't look so close ; * put all in that
is
needfnl, do the thing
show people they may put confidence in you. Once get their trust, and your business is done, said always the well, so as to
farmer,f and Hansli obeyed him. In the beginning, naturally, things did not go very nevertheless he placed
:{:
what he could make
and
;
as
fast,
he be-
came quicker in the making, the sale increased in proportion. Soon everybody said that no one had such pretty brooms as merchant of Rychiswyl and the better he succeeded, the harder he worked. His mother visibly recovered liking Now the battle's won, said she as soon as one can for life. gain one's bread honourably, one has the right to enjoy oneself, Always, from that time, she and what can one want more the
little
;
;
!
much
nay, even every and she day there remained something over for the next could have as much bread as she liked. Indeed, Hansli very often brought her even a little white bread back from the town,
had, every day, as
as she liked to eat
;
:
whereupon
§
she thanked
how happy did she not feel herself! and how God for having kept so many good things for her
old days.
On
the contrary,
now
for a
little
while, Hansli was looking
Soon he began actually
and provoked. to grumble. Things could not go on much longer that way he could not put up with it.' When the farmer at last set himself to find out what that meant, Hansli declared to him that he liad too many brooms to carry; and could not carry them, and that even when the miller took them on his cart, it was very inconvenient, and that he absolutely wanted a cart of his own, but he hadn't any money to buy one, and didn't know anybody who cross '
;
Do net calculate so closely how much you can afford to give for the price. Not meaning "you can cheat them afterwards," but that the customer would not leave him for another broom-maker. * f
t Sold.
§ " Aussi " also, how happy she felt. Aussi is untranslateable in this pretty use so hereafter I shall put it, as an English word, in its place. ;
rORS CLAVIGERA.
96
was
likely to lend
Look you,
him any. You are a gaby,* said the peasant. you become one of those people who
I won't have
think a thing's done as soon as they've dreamt
way one spends
one's
money
You want people's nets. you make one yourself ?
to
to
make
buy a
That's the
it.
the fish go into other
cart,
do you
?
why
don't
Hansli put himself f to stare at the farmer with his mouth open, and great eyes. Yes, make it yourself you will manage it, if you make up You can chip wood well your mind, went on the farmer. enough, and the wood won't cost you much what I haven't, another peasant will have and there must be old iron about, I believe there's even an old plenty, in the lumber-room. or to use, if cart somewhere, which you can have to look at you like. Winter will be here soon set yourself to work, and by the spring all will be done, and you won't have spent a threepenny piece,:}: for you may pay the smith too, with :
—
;
—
;
brooms, or find a way of doing without him Hansli began to open his eyes again.
I
—
— who knows make a —but ?
cart,
Graby, answered the farI never made one. shall I, Take coureverything once the first time. must make mer, one courage solidly, If people took there age, and it's half done. are many now carrying the beggar's wallet, who would have money up to their ears, and good metal, too. Hansli was on the point of asking if the peasant had lost his head. Neverand entering into theless, he finished by biting at the notion
however
;
by little, as a child into cold water. The peasant came now and then to help him and in spring the new cart was ready, in such sort that on Easter Tuesday Hansli conducted it,§ for the first time, to Berne, and the following Saturday to
it little
;
* " Nigaud," Good for nothing but vice
;
(vaut-rien,
means
trifles
;
worthless, but without sense of
viciously worthless).
The
real sense of this
word
here would be " Handless fool," but said good-humouredly. I shall always translate such passages with the f Se mit a regarrler. eral X
idiom— put
A single
batz,
about three halfpence in bad
use the word without translating henceforward.
§ Pushed
it.
lit-
himself.
Jio horse wanted.
silver, flat struck: I shall
97
FORS CLAVIGERA.
Thun, also for the first time. The joy and pride that this new gave him, it is difficult to form anything like a notion of. If anybody hud proposed to give him the Easter ox for it, that they had promenaded at Berne the evening before, and which weighed well its twenty-five quintals, he wouldn't have heard It seemed to him that everybody stopped ag of such a thing. and, whenever he got a they passed, to look at his cart length what advantages explain at chance, he put himself to that cart had over every other cart that had yet been seen in He asserted very gravely that it went of itself, the world. cart
;
where it was necessary to give it a cookmaid said to him that she would not have thought him so clever; and that if ever she wanted That cookmaid, a cart, she would give him her custom. except only
at the hills
always, afterwards,
had
a present of
;
A
touch of the hand.*
when she bought
two
little
a fresh supply of brooms,
ones into the bargain, to sweep into
the corners of the hearth with
;
things which are very con-
who like to have everything clean even into and who always wash their cheeks to behind
venient for maids the corners
;
their ears.
It is true that
maids of
this sort are thin-sprinkled
enough.f
From
moment, Hansli began to take good heart to his he worked with real work: his cart was for him his farm joy and joy in getting anything done is, compared to illhumour, what a sharp hatchet is to a rusty one, in cutting wood. The farmers of Rychiswyl were delighted with the There wasn't one of them who didn't say, When you boy. want twigs, you've only to take them in my field but don't damage the trees, and think of the wife sometimes; women use so many brooms in a year that the devil couldn't serve this
;:}:
;
'
;
* Coup (le main, a nice French idiom meaning the stroke of hand as opposed by that of a senseless instrument. The phrase "Taking a place by a coup de main" regards essentially not so much the mere difference between sudden and long assault, as between assault with flesh or cannon. f-
Assez
clair semees.
now
a capitalist, in the entirely wholesome and proper sense of the word. See answer of " Pall Mall Gazette," driven to have recourse to the simple truth, to my third question in last " Fors." X
He
is
7
§
PORS CLAVIGERA.
98
Hansli did not
them.'
fail
;
also
was he
in great
favour with
never had been in the way of all aside for buying brooms they ordered setting any money their husbands to provide them,* but one knows how tilings the farm-mistresses.
Tliej'
;
Men
go, that way.
much
brooms
less
!
make
are often too lazy to
—
aussi the
women were
shavings, f
how
often in a perfect
famine of brooms, and the peace of the household had greatly But now, Hansli was there before one had to suffer for it. time
to
think
;
obliged to say to
and
it
him
:
*
was very seldom a paj^sanne ^ was Hansli, don't forget us, we're at our
broom.' Besides the convenience of this, Hansli's brooms were superb very different from the wretched things which one's grumbling husband tied up loose, or as rough and ragged Of course, in these as if they had been made of oat straw. houses, Hansli gave his brooms' for nothing yet they were last
—
;
not the worst placed pieces of his stock the twigs given him gratis,
all
;
for,
not to speak of
the year round he was continu-
ally getting little presents, in bread
and milk, and such kinds
of things, which a paysaune has always under her hand, and
which she gives without looking too close. Also, rarely one churned butter without saying to him, Hansli, we beat butter to-morrow if you like to bring a pot, you shall have some of ;
the beaten.
And that
it
as for fruit,
could not
he had more than
lie
could eat of
things going on in this way, that
fail,
it
;
so
Hans
If he on the day he went to the town, it was In the morning, his mother took care
should prosper; being besides thoroughly economical. spent as
much
as a batz
end of the world.
tlie
||
first speech of the farmer to Hansli, " Many's the year would be a shame for a well-to-do farmer to have to buy only the wretched townspeople whom Hansli counts on for
* See above, the
now,"
etc.
brooms;
It
it is
custom. f
Copeaux,
X
The
this,
I don't
understand
this.
mistress of a farm; paysan, the master, I shall use paysanne, after
without translation, and peasant, for paysan; rarely wanting the word
in our general sense.
§ " Du battu," I don't know if it means the butter, or the buttermilk. " Le bout du monde," meaning, he never thought of going any farther. II
FORS CLAVIGERA.
had a good breakfast,
lie liis
99
which he took
after
something in
also
pocket, without counting that sometimes here, and some-
times there, one gave him a morsel in the kitchens where he
was well known
and
;
finally
always to have something to
he didn't imagine that he ought
eat,
moment he had
the
a
mind
to
it.
am
I
very sorry, but find there's no chance of
the romantic part of
my story
must even leave
August, for
promised for July, and
life is
more
getting
my
must keep
I
;
so I
sketch of Scott's early
my
word
to
time
accurately than hitherto, else, as the letters increase in
number,
them
it till
my
rightly into this letter
;
is
it
may
too probable I
forget what I promised in
not that I lose sight even for a
moment
of
my main
purpose; but the contents of the letters being absolutely as the third " Fors"
may
me
order, she orders
here and there so
sometimes that I can't hold the pace. This unlucky index, for example It is easy enough to make an index, as it is to
fast
!
make a broom of odds and ends, as rough as oat straw but to make an index tied up tight, and that will sweep well into cor;
ners, isn't so easy.
Ill-tied or well, it shall positively
with the July number six
months
late
then
(if I ;
keep
so that
my
will
it
be sent
health), and will be only
have been finished
in
about a fourth of the time a lawyer would have taken to pro-
document for which there was a pressing necessity. In the meantime, compare the picture of country life in Switzerland, already beginning to show itself in outline in our vide any
story of the broom-maker, with this following account of the
changes produced by recent trade in the country life of the It is given me by the cori-espondent who di-
island of Jersey.
rected ter,)
me
and
is
to Professor Kirk's in
book;
(see the notes in last let-
every point of view of the highest value.
Com-
pare especiallj' the operations of the great universal law of supply and demand in the article of fruit, as they affect the
broom-boy, and
how
my correspondent
far that beautiful law
your pippins only, but bread.
also
and consider for yourselves, time to come, not your cheese and even at last your
may
;
ailect, in ;
;
FORS CLAVIGERA.
100
I give this letter large print
thing I have myself to say.
;
it is
The
quite as important as any-
italics
are mine.
Mont a
Deak Master,
—The lesson I have
as to the practical
that thev First, the
l'Abbe, Jersey, April 17, 1873.
gathered here in Jei'sey
working of bodies of small land-ownei-s, is life and well-beingr.
have three arch-enemies to their
covetonsness that, for the sake of money-increase,
permits and seeks that great cities should drain the island of its
life-blood
food
;
— their best
men and
their best food or
secondly, love of strong drink and tobacco
(for these
two
last are closely
;
means of
anc? thirdly,
connected) want of true recrea-
tion.
The island is cut up into small,properties or holdings, a very much larger proportion of these being occupied and cultivated by the owners themselves than
is
the case in England.
sequently, as I think, the poor do not suffer as
England.
Still
within the
Con-
much
as in
the times have altered greatly for the worse
memory
of every middle-aged resident, and the
change has been wrought chiefly h(/ the regular and frequent communication with London and Paris, but more especially the first, which in the matter of luxuries of the tahle, has a maw insatiable.^ Thus the Jersey farmer finds that, by devoting his best labour and land to the raising of potatoes snfliciently early to obtain a fancy price for them, very lai-ge
—
money-gains are sometimes obtained, subject also to large for spring frosts on the one hand, and being ontstripped risks ;
by more venturous farmers on the other, are the Jersey farmScylla and Charybdis. Kow for the results. Land, especially that with southern
ers'
aspect, has increased marvellously in price. risen.
In
many employments
ago a carpenter obtained
and
field labourers'
its
Sd. per day.
wages have
Now
risen nearly as
he gets
much
3s.
in pro-
if you can get at the book in any library, my article on " Economies" in the " Contemporary Review" for May.
* Compare,
and
Is.
Wages have also Twenty years
nearly doubled.
Home
FORS CLAVIGERA.
But food and
portion,
lodging have
101
much more than doubled. now from 2s. 6d. to Zs.
Potatoes for ordinary consumption are 6d. per cabot (40 lb.)
which bring,
toes,
times that price.
;
here I put out of court the early pota-
to those
who
are fortunate in the race, three
Fifteen years ago the regular price for the
same quantity was from 5d. to 8^. Butter is now Is. 4:d. per Then it was 6d. and milk of course has altered in the same proportion. J^ruit, which formerhj could he had in lavish., nay., almost fabulous abundance^ is now dearer than in London. In fact I, who am essentially a frugivorous animal, have found myself unable to indulge in it, and it is only at very rare intervals to be found in any shape at my table. All work harder, and all fare worse; but the poor specially so. lb.
The
;
well-to-do possess a secret solace denied to tliem.
found
in the
"share market."
I
am
told
a banking house and " finance" business here, that
wonderful
how fond
it
is
My
Shares in mines seem also to
friend in the banking house
tells
that he was once induced to try his fortune in that way.
be cautious, he invested
in
four different mines.
haps fortunate for him that he never received
money back from any one of Another mode by which
a
me To
It was perpenny of his
the four.
the earnings of the saving and
industrious Jerseyman find their is
in
quite
the Jersey farmers are of Turkish bonds,
Grecian and Spanish coupons. find favour here.
It is
by one employed
way back
to
London
or Paris
the uncalculated, but not unfrequent, advent of a spendthrift
among
the heirs of the family.
the house I live in
is
I
am
told that the landlord of
of this stamp, and that two years
the same rate of expenditure at Paris that he
now
more of
uses, will
bring him to the end of his patrimony.
But what of the stimulants, and the want of recreation ? I have coupled these together because I think that drinking is an attempt to find, by a short and easy way, the reward of a true recreation
there
may be
;
to
supply a coarse goad to the wits, so that
forced or fancied increase of play to the imagi-
nation, and to experience, with this, an agreeable physical sensation.
I think
men
will usual!}'
drink to get the fascinating
FOKS CLAVIGERA.
103
True recreation
combination of the two. is
is tlie
cure,
and
tliis
not adequately supplied here, either in kind or degree, by
tea-meetings and the various rehgious " services," which are
almost the only social recreations (no irreverence intended by thus classing them) in use among the country folk of Jersey.
But
had better keep
I
my
well leave to
Here is a fact There
here.
as to the
The
facts.
deductions I can
working of the modei-n finance-system
exceedingly
is
my
to
master.
gold coin in the island
little
;
in
we The ])rincipal hank issuiyig these, and also posby far the largest list of depositors, has just failed. by the banks of
use one-pound notes issued
place the]"eof
the island. sessing
Liahilities,
estimated
as
the accountants, not
Tjy
than
less
£332,000 / assets calculated by the same authorities not exceeding SZ^,'^^^. The whole island is thrown into the same sort of catastrophe as English merchants by the Overend-Gurney Business in the town nearly at a standstill, and failfailure. ures of tradesmen taking place one after another, with a large But as the country people reserve of the same in prospect. are as hard at
work
and the panic among the islanders
as ever,
has hindered in nowise
tiie
shooting of the blades through the
buds on the
earth, and general bursting forth of to think the island
may
their accumulations.
dragon
first.
[As far
survive to find
name
begin
Unless indeed the champion slays the as one of the unlearned may have an
opinion, I strongly object both to " skin," as
trees, I
some other chasm for
Eough
skin," and "
Ked
There have been useful words
derivations.
derived from two sources, and I shall hold that the Latin prefix to the
Saxon
Mn
establishes a sort of relationship with St.
George.]
am
I
my
greatly flattered by
correspondent's philological
studies; but alas, his pretty result
is
can stand astride on two languages of
my
for a
readers,
must think of
champion or
letter of this book,
a leader.
me
;
untenable: no derivation also,
neither he, nor any
as setting
myself up either
If they will look
they will find
it is
back
to the
fii'st
cxpi-essly written to quit
FORS CLAVIGERA. myself of public responsibility
in
103
pursuing
mj
private work.
what must be done by all of us, and to fulfil what duty I personally as we can, in our place acknowledge to the State also I have promised, if I live, to show some example of what I know to be necessary, if no more able person will show it first. That is a very different thing from pretending to leadership in a movement which must one day be as wide as the world. Nay, even my marching days may perhaps soon be over, and the best that I can make of myself be a faithful signpost. But what I am, or what I fail The two facts which I to be, is of no moment to the cause. Its
purpose
is
to state clearly ;
;
have to teach, or
sign,
though alone,
as
it
seems, at present, in
the signature, that food can only be got out of the ground, and
happiness only out of honesty, are not altogether dependent
among mankind. For the present, nevertheless, these two important pieces of information are never, so far as I am aware, presented in any scheme of education either to the infantine or adult mind. And, unluckily, no other information whatever, without acquaintance with these facts, can produce either bread and buton any one's championship, for recognition
ter,
or felicity.
I take the following four questions, for in-
stance, as sufiiciently characteristic, out of
the seventy-eight,
proposed, on their Fifth subject of study, to the children of St. Matthias'
(school fees,
National School, Granby Street, Bethnal Green,
twopence or threepence
abling them to pass their First of
May
a week,)
by way of en-
pleasantly, in this blessed
year 1873.
1.
Explain the distinction between an identity and an equaShow that if a tion, and give an easy example of each. simple equation in x of
2.
X, it is
is satisfied
by two
money double itself if incompound interest ? How many different permutations can be made of the letters m the word Chilliajiioallah ? How many if arranged in a circle, instead of a straight line? And how In what time will a
sum
of
vested at 10 per cent, per annum,
3.
different values
an identity.
— FORS CLAVIGERA.
]04
many 4.
Show and
?
that if
a and
/?
be constant, and
(p
and A
variable,
if
cos^
tan'
a cos' ft (tan' a a cos' yS cos' A
then cos' I
two and two, can
different combinations of tliem,
be made
am bound
-|-
A
-[-
tan'
tan' ft cos'
ft sin*
a
sin'
or
cos' (p -\- sin' yS sin' cp
tan'
or
cos' qi -[~ ^an'
tan
yS
cos'
q)
=
to state
cos'
«
/:^
A)
sin'
A~
a
ft -\-
sin' cp
tan' A, unless
^^
n
n.
that I could not answer any one of
these interrogations myself, and that
my
readers
nmst
there-
my
belief
that to liave been able to answer the sort of questions
which
fore allow for the bias of envy in the expression of
the First of
May
once used to propose to English children,
whether they knew a cowslip from an oxlip, and a blackthorn from a white, would have been incomparably more to the purpose, both of getting their living, and liking it.
NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
following expression of the ivounded feelings of the " Daily perhaps worth preserving.
The is
News "
Mr. Ruskin's ' Fors Clavigera ' has already become so notorious as a curious magazine of the blunders of a man of genius who has travelled out of his province, that it is perhaps hardly worth while to notice any fresh blunder. No one who writes on tinancial subjects need be at all surprised that Mr. Ruskin funnily misinterprets what he has said, and we have ourselves just been the victim of a misinterpretation of the sort. Mr. Ruskin quotes a single sentence from an article which appeared in our impression of the 3rd of March, and places on it the inteipretation that whenever you have reason to think that anybody has charged you threepence for a twopenny article, remember that, according to the " Daily News," the real capineed hardly tell our readers that we tal of the community is increased.' wrote no nonsense of that kind. Our object was to show that the most important effect of the high price of coal was to alter the distiibution of tlie proceeds of production in the community, and not to diminish the amount of it that it was quite possible for real production, which is always the most Important matter in a question of material wealth, to increase,* even with coal at a high price; and that there was such an increase at the time we were writing, although coal was dear. These are certainly very different propositions from the curious deduction which Mr. Ruskin makes from a single short sentence in a long article, the purport of which was clear enough. There is certainly no cause for astonishment at the blunders which Mr. Ruskin makes in political economy and finance, if his method is to rush at conclusions without patiently studying the drift of what he reads. Oddly enough, it may be added, there is one way in which dear coal v\ay increase the capital of a country like England, though Mr. Ruskin seems to think are exporters of coal, and of course the higher the the thing impossible. price the more the foreigner has to pay for it. So far, theref ore^ the increased price is advantageous, although on balance, every one knows, it is better to have cheap coal than dear." '
'
'
We
;
We
Let
me
him no
at
once assure the editor of the " Daily
disrespect in choosing a
'
long
'
article for
News"
that I
animadversion.
meant I had
imagined that the length of his articles was owing rather to his sense of the importance of their subject than to the impulsiveness and rash splendour I feel, indeed, how much the consolation it conveys is enof his writing. hanced by this fervid eloquence and even when I had my pocket picked the other day on Tower Hill, it might have soothed my ruffled temper to reflect that, in the beautiful language of the "Daily News," the most important effect of that operation was " to alter the distribution of the proceeds ;
NOTES AND CORKESPON^DENCE.
106
of production in the community, and not to diminish the amount of it." But the Editor ought surely to be grateful to me for pointing out that, in his
may not only make one mistake in a long letter, but two in a short one. Their object, declares the "Daily News," (if I would but have taken the pains to appreciate their efforts,) "was to show present state of mind, he
that
it
was quite
high price."
possible for real production to increase, even with coal at a
production of newspaper articles to and of many other more useful things. The speculative public probably knew, without the help of the " Daily News," that they might still catch a herring, even if they could not broil it. But the rise of price in coal itself was simply caused by the diminution of its production, or by roguery. It is quite possible for the
increase,
Again, the intelligent journal observes that " dear coal
may
increase the
England, because we are exporters of coal, and the higher the price, the more the foreigner has to pay for it." We are exporters of many other articles besides coal, and foreigners are beginning to be so fool ish, finding the prices rise, as, instead of "having more to pay for them," never to buy them. The " Daily News," however, is under the impression capital of a countiy like
that over- instead of under-selling, is the proper
foreign markets,
which
is
I observe that the "Dailj^ New^s," referring
sions
method of competition in
not a received view in economical circles.
which unexpectedly, though
with surprise to the conclu-
incontrovertibly, resulted
from
their en'
need hardly tell their readers they wrote no nonsense of that kind." But I cannot but feel, after their present betterconsidered effusion, that it would be perhaps well on their part to w^arn their readers how many other kinds of nonsense they will in future be justified in thusiastic statement, declare they
expecting.
'
WALTER OF THE BORDER-LAND. Facsimile of C/mii/rt'v^s sketch from
life.
FOES CLAVIGERA.
107
LETTER XXXI. Of
the four great English tale-tellers whose dynasties liave
set or risen within
my own memory — Miss
Dickens, and Thackeray
—
I find myself
Edgeworth, Scott,
greatly at pause in
however dimly, what essential good has been by them, though they all Jiad the best intentions. Of
conjecturing, effected
the essential mischief done by them, there
is, unhappily, no Miss Edgeworth made her morality so impertinent that, since her time, it has only been with fear and trembling that any good novelist has ventured to show the
doubt whatever.
bias in favour of
slightest
made
his
romance
the
Ten Commandments.
Scott
so ridiculous, that, since his day, one can't
help fancying helmets were always pasteboard, and horses were
Dickens made everybody laugh, or
always hobby.
cry, so
that they could not
go about their business till they had got their faces in wrinkles and Thackeray settled like a meatfly on whatever one had got for dinner, and made one sick of it. That, on the other hand, at least Miss Edgeworth and Scott have indeed some inevitable influence for good, I am the more ;
disposed to think, because nobody
ens
is
wonder what
now
will read them.
have made people good-natured.
said to
sort of natures they
had before!
Dick-
If he did, I
Thackeray
is
similarly asserted to have chastised and repressed flnnkeydom,
— which
it
me
greatly puzzles
to hear, because, as far as I can
now left in all people who ought
see, there isn't a carriage
the
sitting inside
to
it
:
the
How
with anybody
have been in
it
are,
every one, lianging on behind the carriage in front.
"What good these writers have done,
is
therefore, to me. I
But what good Scott has in him no words full enough to tell. His ideal of honour men and wotnen is inbi'ed. indisputable; fresh as the air
repeat, extremely doubtful. to do, I find in
of his mountains;
firm
as their
rocks.
His conception of
— ;
FORS CLAVIGERA.
108 purity in for the versal
;
woman
is
even higher than Dante's
relation, as
filial
— there
is
deep
as Yirgil's
liis
;
reverence
his sjnipathy uni-
;
no rank or condition of men of which he has
not shown the loveliest aspect; his code of moral ])rinciple entirely defined, jet taught with a reserved subtlety like
own, so that none but the most earnest readers perceive and his opinions on all practical subjects are the consummate decisions of accurate and inevitable com-
ture's
the intention final
is
Na-
;
:
mon
sense, tempered by the most graceful kindness. That he had the one weakness I will not call it fault of desiring to possess more and more of the actual soil of the land which was so rich to his imagination, and so dear to his pride and that, by this postern-gate of idolatry, entered other taints of folly and fault, punished by supreme misery, and atoned for
—
—
b}' a
generosity and solemn courage moi'e admirable than the
unsullied for
all
wisdom of
these things
his happier da^^s, I have ceased to lament:
make him onh"
an example, because he
and has
liis
is
the
more
not exempt from
appointed portion
in
common
perfect to us as
common
failings,
pain.
I said we were to learn from him the true relations of Master and Servant and learning these, there is little left for us to learn but, on every subject of immediate and vital interest to us, we shall find, as we study his life and words, that both are ;
;
as authoritative as they are clear.
ment, I think that,
it
is
Of
though himself, by
all
impartiality of judg-
liis
enough, once for
all,
to bid
you observe
inherited disposition and accidental
circumstances, prejudiced in favour of the Stuart cause, the
and the Catholic religion,
aristocratic character,
colonel,* and the
— the only per-
Hanoverian most exquisitely finished and heroic charac-
fectly noble character in his first novel
is
that of a
ter in all his novels, that of a Presbyterian milkmaid.
* Colonel Talbot, in " Waverley
;"
I
need not, surely, name the other
:
note only that, in speaking of heroism, I never admit into the field of comparison the merely stage-ideals of impossible \irtue and fortune (Ivanhoe,
—but
—
whom
meant
to be real. Observe also that with Scott, as with Titian, you must often expect the most tender pieces of completion in subordinate characters.
8ir Kenneth,
and the
like)
only persons
Scott
FORS CLAVIGERA.
But before
any of
I press
say knowledges
— upon
own temper and
liis
109
opinions
— or I ought rather
to
you, I must try to give you some idea
His temper, I say the mixture out of which the Potter made him and of his life, what the power of the third Fors had been upon it, before his own hands could make or mar his I shall do this merely by abstractfortune, at the turn of tide. ing and collating (with comment) some passages out of Lockhart's life of him and adding any elucidatory pieces which Lockhart refers to, or which I can find myself, in his own works, so that you may be able to read them easily together. of his
life.
of clay, and the fineness of
;
it,
;
;
And
am
observe, I
life of
Scott
;
not writing, or attempting to write, another
but only putting togetlier bits of Lockhart's
my
in the order wliich
life
side-notes on the pages indicate for
reading and I shall use Lockhart's words, or my own, indifferently, and without the plague of inverted commas. Therefore, if anything is wrong in my statement, Lockhart is
my own
;
not answerable for nevertheless be dots on the
it
little
i's,
but my own work in the business wilt more than what the French call putting ;
and adding such notes
as
may be
needful for
our present thought.
Walter was born on the 15th August^ 1771, in a house at the head of the College Wynd, EdThe house was pulled down to make room for the inburgh. northern front of the New College and the wise people of Edinburgh then built, for I don't know how many thousand pounds, a small vulgar Gothic steeple on the ground, and called There seenis, however, to have it the " Scott Monument." for the destruction of the College been more reason than usual AVynd, for Scott was the first survivor of seven children born in it to his father, and appears to have been saved only by the removal to the house in George's Square,* which his father always afterwards occupied; and by being also sent soon afterSir
belonging to his father,
;
* I beg tells
my
readers to observe that I never flinch from stating a fact that
against me.
which ground.
I
This George's Square
is
in that
said, in the first of these letters, I
New Town
of Edinburgh
should like to destroy to the
— — FORS CLAVIQERA.
110
He was of purest Border race Wat of Harden and the Flower of
wards into the open country.
— seventh
in
Yarrow.
Here
descent from
tury, in order
are
liis
six ancestors,
from the sixteenth cen-
:
Walter Scott (Auld Wat) of Harden. William Scott of Harden. Walter Scott of Raeburn. Walter Scott, Tutor of Kaeburn. Robert Scott of Sandy-Knowe. Walter Scott, citizen of Edinburgh.
1.
2. Sir 3.
4. 5. 6.
I will note briefly
what
is
important respecting each of
these. 1.
Wat
is
a glen
It
Harden, means
of Harden.
down which
Borthwick,
'
the ravine of hares.'
a little brook flows to join the river
itself a tributary of
the Teviot, six miles west of
Branxholm. So long as Sir Walter retained his vigorous habits, he made a yearly pilgrimage to it, with wliatever friend happened to be his guest at the time.* Wat's wife, Mary, the Flower of Yarrow, is said to have
Hawick, and
chiefly
—
just opposite
owed her
celebrity to the love of an English captive,
a beautiful child
whom
she had rescued from the tender
mercies t of Wat's moss-troopers, on their return from a CumThe youth grew up under her protection, and berland foray. is believed to have written both the words and music of
many
of the best songs of the Border.-;}:
This story
is
evidently the
Last Minstrel," only the captivity the English.
The
of that of the "
germ
is
lines describing
Lay
of the
there of a Scottish boy to
Wat
of
Harden
are in the
4th canto, * Lockhart's Life, 8vo.
my
Edinburgh: Cadell, 1837.
following foot-notes I shall only give volume and
Vol.
i.
p.
65.
In
page— the book being
imderstood.
What
were to be expected ? Leyden, is perhaps discoverable; but what songs? Though composed by an Englishman, have they the special character of Scottish music? f X
i.
67.
sort of tender mercies
His name unknown, according
to
—
— Hi
FORS CLAVIGERA. "Marauding chief; his sole delight The moonlight raid, the morning fight. Not even the Flower of Yarrow's charms. In youth, might tame his rage for arms; And still in age he spurned at rest, And still his brows the helmet pressed. Albeit the blanched locks below Were white as Dinlay's spotless snow. " *
With
these, read also the
23rd and
answer of the lady of Brauksoiiie,
24tli stanzas,
" Say '
to
your lords of high emprize,
Who
war on women and on boys, For the young heir of Branksome's
God
be his aid; and
Through mc, no Here, while
friend shall meet his
doom;
no foe finds room.'
I live,
*
line,
God be mine:
*
*
*
Proud she looked round, applause Then lightened Thirlstane's eye of His bugle Watt of Harden blew.
* to claim;
flame;
Pensilsf and pennons wide were flung.
To heaven '
St.
the Border slogan rung, Mary, for the young Buccleugh.'"
Let US stop here to consider what good there may be in all The last line, "St. Mary for the young Buctis. cleugh," probably sounds absurd enough to yon. You have
this for
yon think, with either of these perYou don't care for any St. Mary; and still less for sonages. any, either young or old, Buccleugh ? Well, I'm sorry for you but if you don't care for St.
nothing whatever
to do,
:
* Dinlay;
—where?
—
—
Pennon, a stiff flag sustained ' peasile.' f Pensil, a flag hanging down by a cross arm, like the broad part of a weathercock. Properly, it is the stifif-set
feather of an arrow.
"
Ny
autres riens qui d'or ne fust
Fors que
les
pennons,
et le fust."
" Komance of the Rose," of Love's arrows: Chaucer " For
all
was
gold,
men might
translates,
see,
Out-take the feathers and the tree."
FOKS CLAVIGEKA.
112
Marj, the wife of Joseph, do jou care at all for St. MaryAnne, the wife of Joe ? Have you any faith in the holiness of your own wives, who are hei-e, in flesh and blood ? or do you verily wish thera, as Mr. Mill * M'ould have it sacrifice all
pretence to saintship, as to holy days
more
—
to follow
'"some
lucrative occupation than that of nursing the baby"
And you
young Buccleugh and read the Buc backwards.
don't care for the
cleugh, then,
your own cub as
own
—
much
?
Cut away the Do you care for ?
Walter would have cared for his how he takes care of his wireany beast cares for its cub ? Or
as Sir
beast? (see, farther on,
haired terrier. Spice,) or as
do you send jowy poor little brat to make money for you, like your wife ; as though a cock should send his hen and chickens to pick up what they could for him ^ an4 it were the usual law of nature that nestlings should feed the parent birds? If that be your way of liberal modern life, believe me, the border
Mary and
faith in its
master, however servile, was
its
not
benighted in comparison.
But the border morals delight," etc.
word
'
theft
'
"
?
Marauding
whose
chief,
sole
Just look for the passages indicated under the in
my
fine
new index
to the first
two volumes of
come back to this point for the present, in order to get it more cleai-ly into your minds, remember that the Flower of Yarrow was the chieftainess to whom the invention of serving the empty dish with two spurs in it, for hint to her Fors.
I will
:
husband that he must ride for his next dinner, is fii'st ascribed. Also, for comparison of the English customs of the same time, read this little bit of a letter of Lord Northumberland's to
Henry VIII. " Please
it
in 1533." f
your most gracious Highness to be advertised
* People would not have he's dead, I suppose? sons;
but alas!
how
me
Dead
very grievously
and noble ones. f Out of the first of
harm of Mr. Mill, because one to me, with mischievous pertwo to me, when they are helpful
speak any more
or alive,
all's
all's
Scott's notes to the
Lay, but the note
careless readers are sure to miss the points; also I give
greater ease.
is
so long that
modern
spelling for
a
FORS CLAVIGERA.
my
that
me
113
comptroller, -with Raynold Carnaby, desired licence
to invade the realm of Scotland, to the
annoyance of your Highness's enemies, and so they did meet upon Monday before night, at Warhope, upon North Tyne water, to the number of 1500 men and so invaded Scotland, at the hour of eight of the clock at night, and actively did set upon a town* called Branxholm, where the Lord of Bnccleugh dwelleth, albeit that knight he was not at home. And so they burnt the said Branxholm, and other towns, and had ordered themselves so that sundry of the said Lord Buccleugh's servants, who did issue forth of his gates, were taken prisoners. They did not leave one house, one stack of corn, nor one sheaf without the gate of the said Lord Buccleugh unburn t and so in the breaking And thus, thanks be to God, o"f the day receded homeward. of
:
;
your Highness's subjects, about the hour of twelve of the clock the same day, came into this, your Highness's realm, bringing with them above forty Scotsmen prisoners, one of them named Scott, of the surname and kin of the said Lord of Buccleugh. And of his household they brought also three hundred nowte" (cattle), " and above sixty horses and mares, keeping in safety from loss or hurt all your said Highness's subjects." They had met the evening before on the North Tyne, under Carter Fell (you will find the place partly marked as"Plashett's coal-fields" in modern atlases ;) rode and marched their twenty miles to Branxholm busied themselves there, as we liear, till dawn, and so back thirty miles down Liddesdale, fifty miles' ride and walk altogether, all finished before twelve on Tuesday besides what pillaging and burning had to be ;
;
—
:
done.
Now, but one more
point
is
to
be noticed, and we will get
on with our genealogy. After this bit of the Earl's letter, you will better understand the speech of the Lady of Buccleugh, defending her castle in the absence of her lord, and with her boy taken prisoner. And now look back to my 25tli letter, for I want you not to *
A walled group of houses 8
:
tjoieu,
Saxon, to shut in (Johnson).
rORS CLAVIGERA.
114
King Edward's first sight of her had held her castle exactly in this way, Edagainst a raid of the Scots in Lord Salisbury's absence. ward rode night and day to help her; and the Scots besiegers, breaking up at his approach, this is what follows, which you may receive on Froissart's telling as the vital and effectual forget Alice of Salisbury.
was
just after she
A
truth of the matter.
modern English
always and instantly extinguish
critic will
this vital truth
something inherently detestable to him
;
;
there
indeed is
in
it
thus the editor of
Johnes' Froissart prefaces this very story with " the romance
—
for
it is
nothing more."
Now
the labyrinth of Crete, and
the labyrinth of Woodstock, are indeed out of sight
and of a Ariadne or Rosamond, might be excused for a blockhead real Windsor (or Windedoubting but St. George's Chapel at Rose, as Froissart prettily transposes it, like Adriane for Ariadne) is a very visible piece of romance and the stones of it were laid, and the blue riband which your queen wears on her breast is fastened, to this day, by the hand of Alice of ;
—
;
;
Salisbury.
"So
the
Scots gone
King came ;
at
for he had
noon
come
;
in
and angry he was such haste that
to find
all his
the
people
and horses were dead-tired and toiled. So every one went to rest; and the King, as soon as he was disarmed, took ten or twelve knights with him, and went towards the castle to salute So the Countess, and see how the defence had been made. soon as the Lady of Salisbury
knew
of the King's coming, she
made all the gates be opened," (inmost and outmost at once,) "and came out, so richly dressed that every one was wonderstruck at her, and no one could cease looking at her, nor from had been her mirrors, the reflection of her great nobleness, and her great beauty, and her gracious speaking and bearing herself. When she came to the King, she bowed down to the earth, over against him, in thanking him for his help, and brought him to the castle, to delight him and honour him as she who well knew how to do it. Every one looked at her, even to amazement, and the King himself could not stop looking at her, for it seemed to him that in the world
receiving, as if they
—
FORS CLAVIGERA.
much
115
slie. So tliey and the Lady led him iirst into the great hall, and then into her own chamber, (what the French now call a poutiiig-room, bnt the ladies of that day either smiled or frowned, but did not pour.) which was nobly
never "was lady wlio was so
went hand
in
hand into the
to be loved as
castle,
And
furnished, as befitted such lady.
always the King looked
Lady, so hard that she became
at the
gentle
When
he had looked
at
all
ashamed.
her a long while, he went away to
a
window, to lean upon it, and began to think deeply. The Lady went to cheer the other knights and squires; then ordered the dinner to be got ready, and the room to be dressed. When she had devised all, and commanded her people what seemed good to her, she returned with a gladsome face before in whose presence we must leave her yet awhile, the King,"
—
having other matters
So much for
Wat
to attend to.
of Harden's life then, and his wife's.
shall get a little faster
on with the genealogy after this
We fair
stai-t. II. Sir William Scott of Harden. Wat's eldest son distinguished by the early favour of ;
James
YL
In his youth, engaging in a foray on the lands of Sir Gideon Murray of Elibaiik, and being taken prisoner, Murray oilers him choice between being hanged, or marrying the plainest of his daughters.
ment
of a drum,
This his
is
The
contract of marriage, written on the parch-
is still in
possession of the family of Hnrden.*
Lockhart's reading of the circumstances, and I give
own statement
of
them
in
the note below.
But
his as-
sumption of the extreme plainness of the young lady, and of the absolute worldly-mindedness of the mother, are both examples of the modern manner of reading traditions, out of " Tbe indignant laird was on the point of desiring his prisoner when his more considerate dame interposed milder counsels, suggesting that the culprit was born to a good estate, and that they had three unmarried daughters. Young Harden, it is said, not without hesitation, agreed to save his life by taking the plainest of the three off their hands." *
i.
68.
to say a last pra^-er,
FORS CLAVIGERA.
116 wliicli
some aiiinsement may be gathered oy looking only
at
on the grotesque side, and interpreting that grotesque-
tlieiu
There
ness ungenerously.
than Lockhart has thought
be farther ground worth while to state for his
ma}',, indeed, it
from Gideon having determined the death of his troublesome neighbour. Lady Muri-ay interfered to save his life and could not more forcibly touch her husband's purpose than by reminding him that hostility might be better but
colour of the facts
;
those he has told
is
all
that can be justly gathered
that, Sir
;
ended
in alliance than in death.
sincere and careful affection which Sir William of Harden afterwards shows to all his children by the Maid of Elibank, and his naujing one of them after her father, induce me
The
still
farther to trust in the fairer reading of the tradition.
should, indeed, have been disposed to attach
I
some weight, on
the side of the vulgar story, to the curiously religious tendencies in Sir
William's children, which seem to point
to
some
condition of feeling in the mother, arising out of despised
Women
made nobly
life.
by the possession of extreme beauty, and morbidly so by distressed consciousness of the want of it but there is no reason for insisting on this probability, since both the Christian and surname of Sir Gideon Murray point to his connection with the party in Scotland which was at this time made strong in battle by religious faith, and melare
religious
;
ancholy in peace by religious passion.
Walter William and
Scott, first Laird of
III.
Raeburn
;
this enforced bride of Elibank.
sons altogether
;
third son of Sir
They had four
the eldest, William, becomes the second Sir
William of Harden their father settled the lands of Raeburn upon Walter and of Highchester on his second son, Gideon, named after the rough father-in-law, of Elibank. Now about this time (1657), George Fox comes into Scotland boasting that "as he first set his feet upon Scottish ;
;
;
ground he felt the seed of grace to sparkle about him like innumerable sparks of fire." And he forthwith succeeds in making Quakers of Gideon, Walter, and Walter's wife. This
FORS CLAYIGEKA. is
too
much
117
for Sir William of Harden, the eldest brother,
who
not only remains a staunch Jacobite, but obtains order from the Privy Council of Scotland to imprison his bi'other and brother's wife; that they
may
hold no furtlier converse with
Quakers, and also to "separate and take away their children,
being two sons and a daughter, from tion,
and
to
tlieir
family and educa-
breed them in some convenient place."
Which
is
and poor Walter, who had found pleasantly conversible Quakers in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, is sent to Jedburgh, with strict orders to the Jedburgh magistrates to keep Quakers out of his way. The children are sent to an ortliodox school by Sir William and of the daughter I find nothing further but the two sons both became good scholars, and were so effectually cured of Quakerism, that the elder (I don't find liis Christian name), just as he came of age, was killed in a duel with Pringle of Ci'ichton, fought with swords in a field near Selkirk ever since called, from the Raeburn's ;'" and the younger, Waldeath, " the Raeburn meadow-spot ter, who then became " Tutor of Raeburn," i.e., guardian to liis inf-ant nephew, intrigued in the cause of the exiled Stuarts ran a narrow risk of till he had lost all lie had in the world being hanged was saved by the interference of Anne, Duchfounded a Jacobite- club in Edinburgh, in ess of Buccleuch which the conversation is said to have been maintained in Latin —and wore his beard undipped to his dying day, vowing no razor should pass on it until the return of the Stuarts, whence accordingly done
;
;
;
—
—
—
—
—
'
he held his border name of " Beardie."
when we remember how often this history must have dwelt on Sir Walter's mind that we can understand the It
is
only
tender subtlety of design with which he has completed, even in the
weary time of
his declining life, the almost eventless
story of "Redgauntlet," and given, as in connection with
portion of his IV.
Beardie.
Scott, but
it,
we
shall presently see
the most com.plete, though disguised,
own biography. 1 find
he was living
no at
details of Beardie's life
given by
Leasudden when his landlord, Scott
"
FORS CLAVIGERA.
118
of Harden,* living at Mertoiin House, addressed to him the lines given in the note to the introduction to the sixth canto
"Marniion," in which Scott himself partly adopts the from Mertoun House to Richard Heber.
of
verses, writing
" For course of blood, our proverbs dream. Is warmer than the mountain stream. And thus my Christmas still I hold
Where my great -gran dsire came of old,f With amber beard and flaxen hair, And reverend apostolic au', The feast and holytide to share. '
-
And mix sobriety And honest mirth Small thought was
with wine, ^\ilh thoughts divine.* his, in after time.
E'er to be hitched into a rhj'me.
The simple
sire
could only boast
That he was loyal
The banished
And
"a mark
land
lost his
to his cost,
race of kings revered.
— but kept his beard, —
of attachment," Scott adds in his note, "
pose had been
Cowley's
'
common
which
duiing Cromwell's usurpation
Cutter of Coleman Street
'
;
I sup-
for in
one drunken cavalier
upbraids another that when he was not able to pay a barber, " he affected to wear a beard for the King.' Observe, here, that yoti must always be on your guard, in *
reading Scott's notes or private
letters, against
his
way
of
kindly laughing at what he honours more deeply than he likes
The
to confess.
ing
when
iiouse in
which Beardie died was
still
stand-
Sir Walter wrote his autobiography, (1808), at the
north-east entrance of the churchyard of Kelso.
He
left three sons.
Any
that remain of the family of the
elder are lotig since settled in
James at
Lasswade,
known
Wales in
heirs extinct).
one of the original settlere was a son of the youngest, who died Midlothian (first mention of Scott's Lasswade).
Scott, well
of Prince of
America (male
in India as
Island,
* Eldest son, or grandson, of Sir William Scott of Harden, the second in our genealogy, f
Came by
invitation
from his landlord, Scott of Harden.
FORS CLAVIGERA.
But of the second much.
119
son, Scott's grandfather,
we Lave
to learn
Robert Scott of Sandy-Knowe, second son of Beardie. I own account of the circumstances which determined his choice of life. "My grandfather was originally bred to the sea, but being shipwrecked near Dundee in his trial vo_yage, he took such a V.
cannot shorten Scott's
sincere dislike to that element, that he could not be persuaded to a second attempt.
and
his father,
who
one of those active
He
turned
between him Robert was was no misfortune.
Tliis occasioned a quarrel left
him
to sliift for himself.
spirits to
Whig upon
whom
this
the spot, and fairly abjured his fathers
His chief and relative, Mr. farm of Sandy-Knowe, compreliending the rocks in the centre of which Smailholm or Sandy-Knowe Tower is situated, H!e took for his shepherd an politics
and
his learned poverty.
Scott of Harden, gave
old
man
called
him
a lease of the
Hogg, who willingly
lent him, out of respect to
whole savings, about £30, to stock the new farm. With this sum, which it seems was at the time sufficient for the purpose, the master and servant * set off to purchase a his family, his
stock of sheep at Whitsun-tryste, a fair held on a hill near
Wooler, in Northumberland. fully
from drove
to drove,
till
The
old
he found a
shepherd went carehirsel likely to
their purpose, and then returned to tell his master to
answer
come up
and conclude the bargain. But what was his surprise to see him galloping a mettled hunter about the race-course, and to find he had expended the whole stock in this extraordinary purchase
!
Moses' bargain of green spectacles did not strike
more dismay
into the Vicar of Wakefield's family than
The
grandfather's rashness into the poor old shepherd.
however, was irretrievable, and they returned sheep.
In the course of a few days, however,
who was
my
thing,
without the
my
grandfather,
horsemen of his time, attended John Scott of Harden's hounds on this sameliorse, and displayed him to such advantage that he sold him for double the original one of
tlie
best
* Here, you
see,
our subject begins to purpose
!
FORS CLAVIQERA.
120 price.
my
The farm was now stocked
in earnest,
and the
rest of
He
grandfather's career was that of successful industry.
was one of the first wlio were active in the cattle trade, afterwards carried to such an extent between the Highlands of Scotland and the leading counties in England, and by his droving transactions acquired a considerable sum of money. He was a man of middle stature, extremely active, quick, keen, and fiery in his temper, stubbornly honest, and so distinguished for liis skill in country matters that he was the general referee in all points of dispute which occurred in the neighbourhood. His birth being admitted as gentle, gave him access to the best society in the county, and his dexterity in country spoi-ts, particularly hunting, made him an acceptable companion in the field as
well as at the table."
Thus, then, between Auld "Wat of Harden, and Scott's grandfather,
we have
four generations, numbering approximately a
hundred and fifty years, from 1580 to 1730,* and in that time we have the great change in national manners from stealing cattle to breeding and selling them, which at first might seem But a change in the way of gradually increasing honesty. observe that this^rs^ cattle-dealer of our line honest," a quality which in
it
would be unsafe
any dealer of our own days. Do you suppose, then, that
this
is
^''stubbornly
upon
to calculate
honesty was a sudden and
—
momentary virtue a lightning flash of probity between the two darknesses of Auld Wat's thieving and modern cozening ? Kot so. That open thieving had no dishonesty in it whatFar the contrary. Of all conceivable ways of getting soever. a living, except by actual digging of the ground, this cisely the honestest. this
have
—involves
How many prescriptions
Even the many forms of
them.
taint of dishonesty in
physician's
is
pre-
All other gentlemanly professions but temptation to
best
—the
cozening.
second-rate mediciners have lived, think you, on of bread pills
and rose-coloured water?
—how
* I give the round numbers for better remembering. Wat of Harden Robert of Sandy-Knowe married
married the Flower of Yarrow in 1567 Barbara Haliburton in 1728.
;
FORS CLAVIGERA.
121
many, even of leading physicians, owe all their success to skill by pretence ? Of clergymen, how many preach wholly what tlieyknow to be true without fear of their congreOf lawyers, of antliors, of painters, what need we gations? unaided
speak
These
?
all,
so far as they try to please the
living, are true cozeners,
But Wat of Harden, uiy cattle,
more
a roffue than the
tie-dealer's
honesty
in
mob
for their
the very heart's core.
my farm ou fire, and driving off An enemy, yes, and a spoiler; but no And Kobert the lirst catrock eagles. directly inherited from his race, and
setting
no rogue.
is
— unsound
is
notable as a virtue, not in opposition to their character, but to
For men become dishonest by occult
ours.
trade, not
by open
rapine.
There pastoral inherits
some very definite faults in our Eobert of Sandy-Knowe, which Sir Walter himself and recognizes in his own temper, and which were in are, nevertheless,
him severely punished. shepherd's fortune thought. his father,
we
Of
the rash investment of the poor
shall presently hear
Kobert's graver fault, the turning is
especially to be
remembered
what
Whig
Sir
in connection
Sir Walter's frequent warnings against the sacrifice to
tary passion of
what ought
Walter
to displease
with
momen-
to be the fixed principles of youth.
been enough noticed that the design of his first and greatest story is to exhibit and reprehend, while it tenderly indicates the many grounds for forgiving, the change of politiIt has not
temper under circumstances of personal irritation. in the virtues of Robert Scott, far outnumbering his failings, and above all in this absolute honesty and his content-
cal
But
ment
in the joy of country
life, all
the noblest roots of his
grandson's character found their happy hold.
Note every
introduction to the third canto of " "
him given Marmion"
syllable of the description of
:
with vain fondness, could I trace Anew each kind familiar face That brightened at our evening fire From the thatched mansion's grey-haired Wise without learning, plain, and good, Still,
;
And
sprung of Scotland's gentler blood;
sire,
in
tlie
FOES CLAVIGERA.
122
Whose eye in age, quick, clear, and keen, Showed what in youth its glance had been; Whose doom discording neighbours sought, Content with equity imbought, To him, the venerable priest,
Our frequent and
familiar guest."
Kote, I say, every word of this. The faces " brightened at not a patent stove fancy the difference
the evening fire,"
—
;
on the imagination, in the dark long nights of a Scotwinter, between the flickering shadows of firelight, and
in effect tish
utter
gloom of
"The warmest done
room warmed by a close stove The coolest roof
a
!
thatched mansion's."
Among
in winter.
in France,
in reality
—
in
summer,
the various mischievous things
apparently by the orders of JS^apoleon III., but
by the
foolish nation uttering itself through his pas-
sive voice, (he being
all
his days only a feeble Pan's pipe, or
Charon's boatswain's whistle, instead of a true king.) the substitution of tiles for thatch
of the most barbarous. all
It
on the cottages of Picardy was one was to prevent fire, forsooth and !
the while the poor peasants could not afford candles, except
See above,
to drip about over their church floors.
" Wise without learning." rider, to state
how many
the letters in the
of
exist,
— By no
means
different arrangements
He
word Chillianwallah.
and educate his grandson to come
6, 17.
able, this
border
may be made contrived to
to something,
without
that information.
" Plain, and good." virtue of plainness character.
—
— Consider
the value there
legibility, shall
A clear-printed
we
say
man, readable
?
—
in
is
There
at a glance.
are such things as illuminated letters of character also, tifully unreadable is
;
that
in the letters of
—beau-
but this legibility in the head of a family
greatly precious.
"
And sprung
of Scotland's gentler blood."
—I am
not sure
merely an ordinary expression of family pride, or whether, which I rather think, Scott means to mark distinctly the literal gentleness and softening of character in his grandfather, and in the Lowland Scottish shepherd of his day, as if
this is
— FORS CLAVIGERA.
opposed to the
temper of the Highland clans
fiery
still
123
— the
blood being equally pure, but the race altogether softer and
more Saxon. Even Auld Wat was fair-haired, and Beardie has " amber beard and flaxen hair." "
Whose doom discording neighbours sought, Content with equity unbought."
Here you have the exactly
right and wise condition of the
legal profession.
All good judging, and
Look back
gratis.
to
all
what
1
good preaching, must be given have incidentally said of lawyers
—
and clergy, as professional that is to say, as living by their judgment, and sermons. You will perhaps now be able to receive
my
conclusive statement, that
of justice and mercy
is
all
such professional
A
a deadly sin.
man may
sell
sale
the
work of his hands, but not his equity, nor his piety. Let him and if his neighbours find him wise enough live by his spade ;
to decide a dispute between them, or simplicity able to give so, in
them
if
he
Heaven's name, but not take a fee for
Finally,
Robert Scott
is
is
in
modesty and him do
a jjiece of pious advice, let it.
a cattle-dealer, yet a gentleman, giv-
ing us the exact balance of right between the pride which
employment, and the baseness which makes employment disgraceful, because dishonest. Being
refuses a simple
that simple
wholly upright, he can
We
sell cattle,
shall return presently to his
plete, so as to
yet not disgrace his lineage.
house
;
but must
first
com
get our range of view within due limits, the
sketch of the entire ancestral
line.
Walter Scott, of George's Square, Edinburgh, Scott's father, born 1Y29. He was the eldest son of Robert of Sandy-Knowe, and had three brothers and a sister, namely. Captain Robert Scott, in VI.
East India Service;
Thomas
Scott,
cattle-dealer,
following
younger brother who died early, (also) and the sister Janet, whose part in in East India Service Scott's education was no less constant, and perhaps more influScott's regard for one of his ential, than even his mother's. his father's business
;
a ;
— FOES CLAVIGERA.
124
Indian uncles, and his regret for the other's death, are both traceable in the development of the character of Colonel
Man-
nering; but of his uncle Thomas, and his aunt Jessie, there
much more The
is
to be learned and thought on.
cattle-dealer followed his father's business prosperously;
—
was twice married first to Miss Raeburn, and then to Miss Rutherford of Knowsouth and retired, in his old age, upon Lockhart, visiting him with Sir a handsome independence. Walter, two years before the old man's death, (he being then eighty-eight years old.) thus describes him " I thought him about the most venerable figure I had ever tall and erect, with long flowing tresses of set my eyes on, the most silvery whiteness, and stockings rolled up over his
—
:
—
knees, after the fashion of three generations back.
He
sat
reading his Bible without spectacles, and did not, for a moment, perceive that any one had entered his room
;
but on recogniz-
ing his nephew he rose with cordial alacrity, kissing him on
both cheeks, and exclaiming,
man
;
thou hast risen
His remarks were
'
God
to be great,
lively
bless
thee,
Walter,
my
but thou wast always good.'
and sagacious, and delivered with a
touch of that humour which seems to have been shared by
most of the family.
He
had the
air
and maimers of an ancient
gentleman, and must in his day have been eminently hand-
some."
Next read
Sir
Walter
Haliburton Memorials "
The
said
Thomas
Scott's entry
made
in his
copy of the
:
Scott died at
Monklaw, near Jedl)urgh,
two of the clock, 27th January, 1823, in the 90th year of and fully possessed of all his faculties. He read till nearly the year before his death and being a great musician on the Scotch pipes, had, when on his deathbed, a favourite tune played over to liim by his son James, that he might be After hearing it, he sure he left him in full possession of it. hummed it over liimself, and corrected it in several of the notes. The air was that called Sour Plums in Galashiels.' When barks and other tonics were given him during his last illness, he privately spat them into his handkerchief, saying, at
his life,
;
'
FORS CLAVIGERA.
125
had lived all his life without taking doctors' drugs, he wished to die without, doing so." No occasion whatever for deathbed repentances, you per-
as lie
no particular care ceive, on the part of this old gentleman even for the disposition of his handsome independence but here is a bequest of which one must see one's son in full pos;
;
session
— here
is
a thing to be well looked after, before setting
out for heaven, that the tune of "Sour
may
still
Plums
in
Galashiels"
be played on earth in an incorrupt manner, and no
damnable French or English variations intruded upon the solHis views on the subject authentic melody thereof. of Materia Medica are also greatly to be respected. "I saw more than once," Lockhart goes on, " this respectable man's sister (Scott's aunt Janet), who had married her cousin Walter, Laird of Eaeburn, thus adding a new link to She also must have the closeness of the family connection.
emn and
been, in her youth, remarkable for personal attractions was, she dwells on
my memory
as the perfect picture of
;
as
it
an old
Scotch lady, with a great deal of simple dignity in her bearing, but with the softest eye and the sweetest voice, and a charm of meekness and gentleness about every look and expression.
She spoke her native language pure and undiluted, but without the slightest tincture of that vulgarity which now seems almost unavoidable
in
the oral use of a dialect so long banished
and which has not been avoided by any modern it, with the exception of Lady Scott, and I may add, speaking generally, of Burns. Eaeburn, as she was universally styled, may be numbered with
from
writer
courts,
who
has ventured to introduce
those friends of early days
whom
her nephew has alluded
to in
one of his prefaces as preserving what we may fancy to have been the old Scotch of Holy rood." To this aunt, to his grandmother, his mother, and to the noble and most wise Rector of the High School of Edinburgh, Dr. Adam, Scott owed the essential part of his "education," which began in this manner. At eighteen months old his lameness came on, from sudden cold, bad air, and other such His mother's father. Dr. Rutherford, advised sending causes.
— FORS CLAVIGERA.
126 liiiii
to the country
;
lie
is
sent to his grandfather's at Sandy-
Knowe, where he first becomes conscious of life, and where his grandmother and Aunt Janet beautifully instruct, but partly When he is eight years old, he returns to, and respoil him. And now mains in, his father's house at George's Square. note the following sentence: " I felt the
coming
a
change from being a single indulged of a large family, very severely
member
the gentle
government of
my
brat, to be;
kind grandmother,
for under
who was
meekness itself, and of my aunt, who, though of a higher temper, was exceedingly attached to me, I had acquired a degree I of license which could not be permitted in a lai-ge family. had sense enough, however, to bend my temper to my new circumstances
;
but such was the agony which I internally ex-
perienced, that I have guarded against nothing more, in the
education of
my own
family, than
against their acquiring
habits of self-willed caprice and domination."
The
indulgence, however, no less than the subsequent dis-
had been indeed altogether wholesome for the boy, he being of the noble temper which is the better for having its way. The essential virtue of the training he had in his grandcipline,
father's
and
father's house,
trace fui'ther in next letter.
and
his aunt Jessie's at Kelso, I will
— FOES CLAVIGEKA.
127
LETTER XXXII. I DO not joii
know Low
forward
map we can
far I
its divisions cleaily
be able in
;
;
fit
lives,
tbis letter to carry
me
first,
therefore,
we have
to stop,
time.
note these three great divisions
men's
let
for tben, wherever
return to onr point in
First, all
sliall
in tbe stoiw of Scott's life
—essentially those
but singularly separate in
his,
— the
of
days of
youth, of labour, and of death.
—
Youth is properly the forming time that in which a man makes himself, or is made, what he is for ever to be. Then comes tbe time of laboui', when, having become tlie best he Then the time of death, can be, he does the best he can do. which, in happy lives, is very short: but always a time. The ceasing to breathe
is
only the end of death.
Scott records the beginning of his in his diary,
which reviews the
—
life
own
following entry
in the
then virtually ended
:
—
'^December IS^A, 1S25.* "What a life mine has been half wholly almost neglected, or left stuffing educated, to myself; !
my
head with most nonsensical trash, and undervalued by most of my companions for a time; getting forward, and held a bold, clever fellow, contrary to the opinion of
all
who
thougiit
mere dreamer; broken-hearted for two years my heart handsomely pieced again, but the crack will remain till my dying day. Rich and poor four or five times once on the verge of ruin, yet opened a new source of wealth almost overflowing, I^ow to be broken in my pitch of pride.f .... " Nobody in the end can lose a penny by me that is one comfort. Men will think pride has had a fall. Let them
me
a
;
:
;
indulge in their *Vol. vi.,p. V
own
pride in thinking that
fall will
make
164.
Portion omitted short, and of no
ifterwards.
my
moment
just
now.
I shall refer to
it
— FORS CLAYIGERA..
128
them
higher, or
recollect that
and
seem
my
hope that some
to
so at least.
do good
How
ished crest? — how
my transient wealth my intentions, and my real wish
Sad hearts, too, at Darnick, and in the I have half resolved never to see the
to the poor.
cottages of Abbotsford.
place again.
satisfaction to
at least will forgive
on account of the innocence of to
have the
I
prosperity has been of advantage to many,
my
could I tread
hall
with such a dimin-
man, where I was once have gone there on was to I
live a poor, indebted
the wealthy, the honoured
?
Saturday, in joy and prosperity, to receive doo-s will wait for
me
of parting from these
dumb
my
friends.
My
foolish,
but the thoughts
creatures have
moved me more
in vain.
It
is
than any of the painfu? reflections I have put down. Poor There may be yet things, I must get them kind masters !
may
my
it has been must end these gloomy forebodings, or I sliall lose the tone of mind with which men should meet distress. I feel my dogs' feet on my knees I hear them whining, and seeking
those who, loving me,
mine.
lovfe
dog because
I
;
me He was
everywhere."
his last
on the 15th August of that year, and spoke all," on the 21st Septembel-,
fifty-four
words — " God bless you
—
1832 so ending seven years of death. His youth, like the youth of all the greatest men, had been long, and rich in peace, and altogether accumulative and crescent. I count it to end with that pain which you see he remembers to his dying day, given him by Lilias RedgauntWhereon he sets himself to his work, let, in October, 1796. :
—
which goes on nobly for thirty years, lapping over a little into showing scarcely a trace of (' Woodstock
the death-time.*
'
diminution of power). Count, therefore, thus
:
1771
Labour-time, thirty years
1796—1826.
Death-time, seven years *
The
— 1796. 1825 — 1832.
Youth, twenty-five years
actual toil gone through
than before—in fact
it is
labour-time that which
by him
.... is
far greater during the last years
unceasing, and mortal
is
healthy and fruitful.
;
but I count only as the t^ue
;
FORS CLAVIGERA.
The
great period of mid-life
is
129
again divided exactly in the
midst by the change of temper which made him accurate of fantastic
instead
in
delineation, and
poem, (1810).
last
Lord of the cal
work
cature,
Isles
of 1810
and
tlie
is
therefore habitually
The Lady
of the Lake is his Rokeby, (1812) is a versified novel the not so mnch. The steady legal and histori-
write in prose rather than verse.
;
— 1814, issuing
Essay on Scottish Judi-
in the
Life of Swift, with preparation for his long-
cherished purpose of an edition and Life of Pope,* (" the true
deacon of the craft," as Scott often called him,) confirmed, while they restrained and chastised, his imaginative power;
and Waverley, (begun
in 1805)
was completed
in
The
1814.
apparently unproductive year of accurate study, 1811, divides the thirty years of mid-life in the precise centre, giving fifteen to song,
and
fifteen to history.
You may But
tory.
be surprised
at
mj
speaking of the novels as
Scott's final estimate
of his
his-
own work, given
in
and perfectly just one; (received, of course, with the allowance I have warned you always to a perfectly sincere
1830,
is
make
for his
"
He
manner of
reserve in expressing deep feelings). what he had done for Scotland as a he was no more entitled to the merit which had been
replied f that
writer,
ascribed to
in
him than the servant who scours the brasses to the made them that he had perhaps been a good
credit of having
;
housemaid to Scotland, and given the country a rubbing up;' and in so doing might' have deserved some praise for assiduity, '
and that was
member
all."
Distinguish, however, yourselves, and re-
between the industry which deserves praise, and the love which disdains it. that Scott alwa3's tacitly distinguishes,
You do not praise Old Mortality for his love to his people you praise him for his patience over a bit of moss in a troublesome corner. Scott is the Old Mortality, not of tables of stone, but of the fleshly tables of the heart. * If
my own
life is
spared a
little
longer, I can at least rescue
the hands of his present scavenger biographer
hand and noble thought, f
To
lost to
him
;
Pope from
alas, for Scott's
!
the speech of Mr. Baillie of Jerviswoode
9
but
;
vol. vii., p. 221.
loving
— FORS CLAVIGERA.
130
We
address ourselves to-dav, then, to begin the analysis of
the influences
upon him during the
first
period of twenty-five
he built and filled the treasure-house of But this time of youth I must again map out
years, during whicli his in
own
heart.
minor
detail, that
From
1.
child 2.
grasp
it
clearly.
In Edinburgh, a sickly
— — 1775.
permanent lameness contracted, 1771 177'4. Recovers health at SandyThree years old to four. ;
The dawn
Knowe.
Four years
3.
we may
birth to three years old.
of conscious
old to five.
through London on the way besides,
to
177-1
life,
At it.
Bath, with his aunt, passing
Learns to read, and much
1775—1776.
At Sandy-Knowe. Pastoral Five years old to eight. (an important in its perfectness forming his character
4.
life
:
though short interval at Prestonpans begins his interest in seashore), 1776—1779. School life, under the Pector 5. Eight years old to twelve. Adams, at High School of Edinburgh, with his aunt Janet to 1783. receive him at Kelso, 1779
—
Twelve years old
6.
ness, his uncle
to fifteen.
College
life,
Robert taking good care of bira
broken by at
ill-
Rosebank,
1783—1786. Apprenticeship to his father,
Fifteen to twenty-five.
7.
Study of human life, and of vaHis first fee of any importance expended on a silver taper-stand for his mother. 1786 1796. You have thus seven ages of his youth to examine, one by one and this convenient number really comes out without the for the virtual, though not formal, apprenticeleast forcing and law practice entered on.
rious literature in Edinburgh.
—
'
'
;
;
ship to his father
—happiest
tinues through
the time of his legal practice.
all
of states for a
good son
— con-
I only feel a
compunction at crowding the Prestonpans time together with the second Sandy-Knowe time but the former is too short to be made a period, though of infinite importance to Hear how he writes of it,* revisiting the place Scott's life.
little
;
fifty years
afterwards
:
* ^r^
vii.. n. 213.
— FORS CLAViGEllA.
131
" I knew the house of Mr. Wanoch, where we* lived," (see where the name of the Point of AVarroch in Guv Mannering " I recollected my juvenile ideas of dignity atconies from !) tendant on the large gate, a black arch which lets out upon the sea. I saw the Links whei-e I arranged mj shells upon the turf, and swam my little skiff in the pools. Many recol-
my
lections of
getty" (you
kind aunt
know
— of
old
George Constable
— of
Dal-
name also, don't you?), "a virtuous who swaggered his solitary walk on the
that
half-pay lieutenant,
parade, as he called a
little open space before the same port." (Before the black arch, Scott means, not the harbour.) And
he
falls in love also there, first
And now we
— "as children love."
can begin to count the rosary of his youth,
bead by bead. 1st period
— From birth
to three
years old.
I have hitherto said nothing to j'ou of his father or mother,
nor shall I yet, except
to bid
thirteen years married
when
you observe that they had been Scott was born and that his ;
mother was the daughter of a physician. Dr. Rutlierford, who had been educated under BoerhaaveThis fact miffht be carelessly passed by you in reading Lockhart but if you will ;
take the pains to look through Johnson's life of Boerhaave,
you
will
see
how
perfectly pure and
beautiful and
strong
every influence was, which, from whatever distance, touched the early life of Scott.
I quote a sentence or
two from John-
son's closing account of Dr. Rutherford's master
"
:
and motion somethinof rough and artless, but so majestic and great at the same time, that no man ever looked upon him without veneration, and a kind of tacit
There was
in his air
submission to the superiority of his genius. activity of his
mind sparkled
The vigour and
visibly in his eyes, nor
was
it
ever observed that any change of his fortune, or alteration in Lis affairs,
whether happy or unfortunate, affected
his counte-
nance.
"His
greatest pleasure was
to retire to his house
country, where he had a garden stored with trees
all
in the
the herbs and
which the climate would bear ; here he used
to enjoy his
— FOBS CLAVIGERA.
132 liours unmolested,
and prosecute
his studies
without interrup-
tion." *
The
medicine in Edinburgh owed its rise to this was by his pupil Dr. Rutherford's advice, as we saw, that the infant Walter's life was saved. His mother could not nurse him, and his first nurse had consumption. To this, and the close air of the wj'nd, must be attributed the strength of the childish fever which took away the use of the right limb when he was eighteen months old. How many of your own children die, think you, or are wasted with sickness, from the same causes, in our increasing cities? Scott's lameness, however, we shall find, was, in the end, like everj^ other scliool of
man, and
it
condition of his appointed existence, helpful to him.
A letter (to
in
from my dear fi-iend. Dr. John Brown,f corrects my great delight) a mistake about George's Square I made my last letter. It is not in the Xew Town, but in what was
then a
meadow
district,
burgh
and the
air of it
;
sloping to the south from old Edin-
would be almost as healthy for the open country. But the change to George's checked the illness, did not restore the use
child as that of the
Square, though
* Not to break
it
away from
my
text too long, I
add one or two farther
points worth notice, here:
" Boerhaave
none of his hours, but when he had attained one science He added physick to divinity, chemistry to the mathematicks, and anatomy to botany. " He knew the importance of his own writings to mankind, and lest he might, by a roughness and barbarity of style too frequent among men of great learning, disappoint his own intentions, and make his labours less useThus was ful, he did not neglect the politer arts of eloquence and poetry. his learning at once various and exact, profound and agreeable. "But his knowledge, however uncommon, holds in his character but the second place his virtue was yet much more uncommon than his learning. Being once asked by a friend, who had often admired his patience under great provocations, whether he knew what it was to be angry, and by what means he had so entirely suppressed that impetuous and ungovernable passion, he answered, with the utmost frankness and sincerity, that he was naturally quick of resentment, but that he had, by daily prayer and meditation, at length attained to this mastery over himself." lost
attempted another.
;
'
'
f See terminal notes.
FORS CLAVIGERA. of the limb
;
133
the boy wanted exercise as well as
and Dr.
aii
Rutherford sent him to his other grandfather's farm. II. 1774 1775. The first year at Saudy-Knowe.
—
year, note first his
new
nurse.
hira to prevent his being
This maid had trusted),*
left
The
child had a
an inconvenience to the family.
;
— " tempted
devil" she told Alison "Wilson, the housekeeper, "to
(ill
by the kill
the
in the moss."
it
" Alison instantly took possession of
And
this
her heait behind her in Edinburgh
and went mad in the solitude
child and bury
In
maid sent with
my person,"
says Scott.
no more said of Alison in the autobiography. But what the old farm-housekeeper must have been to the child, is told in the most finished piece of all the beautiful there
is
story of Old Mortality. Among his many beautifully invented names here is one not invented very dear to him,
—
"
'
I wish to speak an instant with one Alison Wilson,
resides here,' said
" '
She's
no
at
hame
—the
who
Henry. the day,' answered Mrs. Wilson in pro-
whose headdress perhaps inspired her with this direct mode of denying herself 'and ye are pria persona
state of
—
but a mislear'd person to speer for her in sic a manner. Ye might have had an under your belt for Mistress Wilson of Milnwood.' " Eead on, if you forget it, to the end, that third
M
chapter of the
last
such return to the
volume of Old Mortality.
home
The
story of
of childhood has been told often
;
but never, so far as I have knowledge, so exquisitely. I do not doubt that Elphin's name is from Sandy-Knowe also but cannot trace it. ;
Secondly, note his grandfathers' medical treatment of him for loth his grandfathers were physicians,
— Dr.
;
Eutherford,
we have seen, so professed, by whose advice he is sent to Sandy-Knowe. There, his cattle-dealing grandfather, true physician by diploma of Kature, orders him, whenever the day is fine, to be carried out and laid down beside the old shepherd among the crags or rocks round which he fed his sheep. " The as
* Autobiography,
p. 15.
—
;
FORS Cl.AYIGEUA.
134
impatience of a child soon inclined nie to struggle witli mj infirniitv, and I began bj degrees to stand, to walk, and to run.
Although the limb
tracted,
my
affected
was much shrunk and con-
general health, which was of more importance,
was much strengthened by being frequently in the open air I, who in a city had iwobably heen condemned to hopeless and helpless decrepitude, (italics mine,) was now a healthy, high-spirited, and, my lameness apart, a sturdy child, non sine dis animosus infans." This then is the beginning of Scott's conscious existence, and, in a word,
—
•
down among the
laid
beside the old shepherd, among the rocks, and " He delighted to roll about in the grass all
sheep.
day long in the midst of the flock, and the sort of fellowship he formed with the sheep and lambs impressed his mind with a degree of affectionate feeling 'towards them which lasted throughout life." *
Such
cradle,
and such companionship. Heaven gives
its
fa-
vourite children.
In 1837, two of the then maidservants of Sandy-Knowe were still living in its neighbourhood one of them, " Tibby Hunter, remembered the child Scott's coming, well. The ;
young ewe-milkers
him about on and he was very gleg (quick) at the uptak, and soon kenned every sheep and lamb by headmark as well as any of them.' His great pleasure, however, was in the society of the 'aged hind' recorded in the epistle to Erskine. Anld Sandy Ormistoun,' called, from the most dignified part of his function, the cow-bailie,' had the chief superintendence of the flocks that browsed upon the velvet tufts of loveliest green.' If the child saw him in the morning, he could not be satisfied unless the old man would set him astride on his shoulder, and take him to keep him company, as he lay watching his charge. " The cow-bailie blew a particular note on his whistle which their backs
among
delighted, she says, to carry
the crags
'
;
'
'
'
* His own words to Mr. Skene of Rubislaw, vol. Turner was sketching Smailholm Tower, vol. vii., p.
i.,
p. 83,
303.
spoken whil§
—
—
:
FORS CLAVIGERA.
135
below when the boy wished to be carried home again." " Every sheep and lamb by head-mark ;" that is our first lesson not an easy one, you will find it, if you try the flock of such a farm. Only yesterday (12th July, 1873,) I saw the signified to the maid-servants in the house
little
—
;
dairy of one half filled with the
'
berry-bread
'
(large flat-baked
cakes enclosing layers of gooseberries) prepared by
her shearers
tress for
;
—the flock being some
its
mis-
six or seven
hun-
dred, on Coniston Fells.
That
is
our
This
heart."
very utterly learned "by
lesson, then,
first
is
our second, (marginal note on Sir Walter's
of Allan Ramsay's Tea-table Miscellany, ed. 1724) " This book belonged to my grandfather, Eobert Scott, and
copy
out of
it
I
was taught
'
Hardiknute
read the ballad myself.
the
last I shall
La Cava,
'
was the
ever forget." *
in the forests of
he died
It
He
by heart before I could first
poem
I ever learnt,
repeated a great part of
in the spring of the year in
it,
which
and above the lake Avernus, a piece of the song of
;
the ewe-milkers "
These I
:
Up the craggy moimtain, and down the mossy glen, "We canna' go a milking, for Charlie and his men." say. then, are to
The
love, and and the remembrance and
be your
first lessons.
care, of simplest living creatures;
honour of the dead, with the workmanship for them of tombs of song. The Border district of Scotland was at this time, of all
fair
dis-
tricts of the inhabited world, pre-eminently the singing coun-
try.
and
— that which
most naturally expressed
its
noble thoughts
passions in song.
* The Ballad of Hardiknute
is
only a fragment—but one consisting of It is the only heroic poem in the
forty-two stanzas of eight lines each.
Miscellany of which— and of the poem itself— more hereafter. four lines are ominous of Scott's owti life ;
:
" stately stept he East the wa', stately stept he West seventy years he now had seen, With scarce seven years of rest."
And
Fvill
;
The
first
FOES CLAVIGERA.
136
The
easily traceable reasons for this character are, I think,
the following
which, music,
exist, of course, untraceably).
and countries,
in all ages if
kind of leisure
solaces itself with simple
other circumstances are favourable,
summer
the
(many
;
distinctly pastoral life, giving the
First,
air
is
— that
is
to say,
if
mild enough to allow repose, and the race
has imagination enough to give motive to verse.
The
Scottish
Lowland
ness and softness,
air
is,
— the heat
summer,
in
of exquisite clear-
never so great as to destroy en-
ergy, and the shepherd's labour not severe enough to occupy
wholly either mind or body. a hot ravine for thousands of ice, to
A Swiss herd may have to climb feet, or cross a diflficult piece of
rescue a lamb, or lead his flock to an isolated pasture.
But the borderer's sheep-path on the heath
is,
frame, utterly without labour or danger
free-hearted and
free-footed
the
all
;
he
is
to his strong
summer day long; in winter darkness and make him grave and stout of
iinding yet enough to
snow heart.
Secondly, the soldier's
life,
passing gradually, not in cow-
ardice or under foreign conquest, but
by
his
own
kindness and sense, into that of the shepherd humiliation, leaving the its
sorrow and
war-wounded past
to
;
increasing
thus without
be recalled for
fame.
its
Thirdly, the extreme sadness of that past itself
pathos and awe to Fourthly, (this
all
is
a
the imagery and
giving
:
power of Nature,
merely physical cause, yet a very notable
one,) the beauty of the sound of Scottish streams. I
know no
other waters to be compared with them
;
—such
streams can only exist under very subtle concurrence of rock
and climate.
There must be much
down with floods and the rocks must break and jaggedly. Our English Yorkshire shales and
tearing the hills irregularly
soft rain, not (habitually)
;
limestones merely form
—carpenter-like —tables and shelves for
the rivers to drip and leap from
;
while the Cumberland and
"Welsh rocks break too boldly, and lose the multiplied chords of
musical sound. tain
Farther, the loosely-breaking rock must con-
hard pebbles, to give the level shore of white shingle,
FOllS
through which
The
tlie
CLAVIGERA.
brown water may
137
stray wide, in rippling
Enghsh
rivers have given the towns and villages ;=— (the difference between ford and bridge curiously if one may let one's fancy threads.
names
fords even of
to half our prettiest
— — characterizing the difference between the and the baptism of of mathematics, crystal universities) but pure of the Scotour two great — loose for a
moment
edification
literature,
;
tish pebbles,*
giving the stream
edge, and the sound as of
make
in
tlie
''
gradations of amber to the
its
ravishing division to the lute,"
all one's day was small and poor, with a coni'mon kailyard on one flank, and a staring barn of the doctor's ('Douglas') erection on the other; while in front appeared a filthy pond, covered with ducks and duckweed,t from which
the Scottish fords the happiest pieces of
walk.
''The farmhouse
itself
the whole tenement had derived the unharmonious designation
But the Tweed was everything
of 'Clarty Hole.'
to
him
:
a
beautiful river, flowing broad and bright over a bed of milk-
white pebbles, unless where, here and there,
it
darkened into a
as yet only by the birches and alders which had survived the statelier growth of the primitive forest and the first hour that he took possession he claimed for his farm the name of the adjoining ford." With the murmur, whisper, and low fall of these streamlets, unmatched for mysteiy and sweetness, we must remember also the variable, but seldom wild, thrilling of the wind among the recesses of tlie glens and, not least, the need of relief from the monotony of occupations involving some rhytlimic measure -of the beat
deep pool, overhung
;
:{:
;
of foot or hand, during the long evenings at the hearth-side. * Lockhart, in the extract just below,
calls
them "milk-white." This is which the agatescent
exactly right of the pale bluish translucent quartz, in
veins are just traceable, and no more, out of the trap rocks sitic hills
;
but the gneis-
give also exquisitely brilliant pure white and cream-coloured
quartz, rolled out of their vein stones. \
With your pardon,
least
IVIr. Lockhart, neither ducks nor duckweed are in the derogatory to the purity of a pool.
t Vol.
ii.,
p. 358;
compare
ii.,
70.
"If
it
seemed possible
to
scramble
through, he scorned to go ten yards about, and in fact preferred the ford," etc.
— FOBS CLAVIGERA.
138
In the rude lines describing such passing of hours quoted by Scott in his introduction to the Border Minstrelsy,* you find the grandmother spinning, with her stool next the hearth, " for she was old, and
saw right dimly" (firelight, observe, all that was needed even then;) "she spins to make a web of good Scots linen," (can you show such now, from your Glasgow mills
The
?)
father
is
pulling
really beautiful piece of
hemp (or
song which
I
beating
heard
at
The only
it).
Verona, during
was the low chant of girls unwinding the cocoons of the silkworm, in the cottages among Never any in the the olive-clad hills on the north of the city.
several months' stay there in 1869,
streets of it; lace,
or
— there, only insane shrieks of
Republican popu-
by operatic-military
played
dance-music,
senseless
bands.
And
one of the most curious points connected with the is this connection of its power of song
study of Border-life either with
its
religious passion of its
subject of the piper or (peasant love as
human
industry or
minstrel
much honoured
modern psalmody
is
being always war or love,
as
;
and
tlie
discordance of
unexampled among
civilized
— shepherds' or plough-
men's (the plough and pulpit coming into so that
definite
as the proudest), his feeling is
nations as the sweetness of their ballads
Ayrshire);
The
"Independent" mind.
steadily antagonistic to Puritanism
Scottish
but never with the
love,
fatalest opposition in
Wandering Willie must,
as a
matter of
course, head the troop of Redgauntlet's riotous fishermen with
"Merrily danced the Quaker's wife." Willie's
own
And
description of his gudesire
:
"
see
A
Wandering
rambling, rat-
he had been, in his young days, and could play he was famous at Hoopers and Girdweel on the pipes na touch him at Jockie Lattin ;' could ers;' a' Cumberland and he had the finest finger for the back-lilt between Berwick the like o' Steenie was na the sort they made and Carlisle tling chiel
;
—
'
'
;
Whigs
o'."
—
And yet,
to this
Puritan element, Scott owed quite
one of the most noble conditions of his mental * 8vo, 1806,
p. 119.
life.
— rOKS CLAVIGEKA.
But
it is
139
of no use trying to get on to his aunt Janet in
this letter, for there is yet
one thing I have
to explain to
you
before I can leave you to meditate, to purpose, over that sor-
rowful piece of Scott's diary with which
it
began.
you had before any thoughtful acquaintance with his general character, or with his writings, but had not studied this close of his life, you cannot but have read with surprise, If
in the piece of the
diary I quoted, the recurring sentences
showing the deep wounds of
him
was,
if
Your impression of man modest and
his pride.
thoughtfully received, that of a
even to error. Yet, very evidently, the bitterunder his fallen fortune is felt by his pride. you fancy the feeling is only by chance so strongly ex-
self-forgetful, est pain
Do
pressed in that passage
?
dated 18th December.
ITow read this ^'February ^th, 1826. Missie was in tiie drawing-room, and overheard William Clerk and me laughing excessively at some foolery or other in the back room, to her no small surprise, which she did not keep to herself. But do people suppose that he was less sorry for his poor sister, or I for my lost It
is
:
—
If I have a very strong passion in tlie world, it is ? and that never hinged upon world's gear, wliich was Light come, light go." always, with me
fortune
pride
;
—
You
will not at first
understand the tone of this
last piece,
which two currents of thought run counter, or, at least, one with a back eddy and you may think Scott did not know himself, and that his strongest passion was not pride ; and that he did care for world's gear. Not so, good reader. Never allow your own conceit to betray you into that extremest folly of thinking that you can know a great man better than he knows himself. He may not often wear his heart on his sleeve for you but when he does, depend upon it, he lets you see deep, and see true. Scott's ruling passion was pride but it was nobly set on his honour, and his courage, and his quite conscious intellectual power. The apprehended loss of honour, the shame of what he thinks m himself cowardice, or the fear of failure in
;
;
—
;
—
—
—
— FOES CLAYIGiiliA.
140
any time overwhelming to liim. But now, was safe his courage was, even to he of intellectual power undiminsense his satisfying himself, recovered some peace of mind, therefore had he ished and evils could not have borne, The he endurance. and power of him, and could not be. on inflicted been and lived, have not in intellect, are at
that his honour
felt
;
;
;
He
can laugh again with his friend
that
was
Tie
poor
less sorry for his
;
—
'*
but do people suppose
sister,
or I for
my
tune?"
What
this loss, then,
is
lost sister
which he
is grieving for
—
as for a
world's gear, " which was always, with me,
Not
?
lost for-
Light come, light go."
Something
far other than that.
Read but these three short sentences more,* out entries in December and January
of the
:
"
My
heart clings to the place I have created
scarce a tree on
it
that does not
"Poor Will Laidlaw
owe
its
:
there
is
being to me."
— poor
Tom Purdie— such news will many a poor fellow besides, to whom
wring your hearts and my prosperity was daily bread." " I have walked my last on the domains I have planted, But death would sate the last time in the halls I have built. spared them. had misfortune if me from them taken have ;
My
poor people,
Nor
whom
did they love
I loved so well 1"
him
less.
You know
that his house
" poor people" served left to him, and that his Hear now Turn they served. or theirs. (]eath
him
was
until his
—
"
The
butler," says Lockhart, visiting Abbotsford in 1827,
" instead of being the easy chief of a large establishment, was
now doing
half the
work
of the house, at probably half his
Old Peter, who had been for five-and-twenty years a dignified coachman, was now ploughman-in-ordinary, only putting his horses to the carriage upon high and rare occasions; and so on with all the rest that remained of the
former wages.
*Vol.
vii.,
pp. 164, 166, 196.
—
"
FORS CLAVIGERA.
141
And all, to my view, seemed happier than they had ever done before. Their good conduct had given every and yet their one of them a new elevation in his own mind ancient train.
;
demeanour had gained,
The
of observance.
whom
for
great loss was that of William Laidlaw,
(the estate being all but a fragment in the hands of
the trustees and their agent) there was
The
here.
simple humility
in place of losing, in
now no
occupation
cottage which his taste had converted into a love-
able retreat had found a rent-paying tenant; and he was liv-
on the farm of a relation in the Vale of Yarrow. Every week, however, he came down to have a ramble with Sir "Walter over their old haunts, to hear how the ing a dozen miles
off,
pecuniary atmosphere was darkening or brightening, and to read, in every face at Abbotsford, that it could never be itself again until circumstances should permit his re-establishment at Kaeside.
warm and
" All this
be
said to
must have had on the mind of Scott, M-ho may
respectful solicitude
a preciously soothing influence
have lived upon
Xo man
love.
popular admiration and applause
;
cared less about
but for the least
chill
on
the affection of any near and dear to him, he had the sensitiveness of a maiden. ej^es
I cannot forget, in pai'ticular,
sparkled when he
Pepe
'
pointed out to
me
plough on the haugh.
son guiding the 'auld
first
said a
yoking
blackies good.
his
Peter Mathie-
'Egad,'
said
he,
was the children's name for their good
(this
friend), 'auld Pepe's whistling at his darg.
low
how
If
The honest
fel-
would do baith him and the things get round with me, easy shall be
in a
deep
field
Pepe's cushion.'
You
see there
is
not the least question about striking for
wages on the part of Sir "Walter's servants. The law of supply and demand is not consulted, nor are the wages determined by the great principle of competition so rustic and absurd are they not but that they take it on them sometimes to be mas-
—
;
ters instead of servants
''''March 21.
—"Wrote
:
till
twelve, then out
upon the
heights,
rORS CLAVIGERA.
142
and faced the gale bravely. Tom Purdie was not with me he would have obliged me to heejp the sheltered ground^ * You are well past all that kind of thing, you think, and know better how to settle the dispute between Capital and ;
Labour.
What has that to do with domestic servants ?" do you You think a house with a tall chimney, and two or three "
dred servants in
way
not properly a house at
is
of belfry, in Lancashire
it
may
—borrowing
well be
tliat
Pepe's
own
you
If
colossal planes
are merely unlucky
—instead of true servants,
whistling at his darg must be whistling any
very impossible for you, only' manufactured
more I
Which
possible.
am
that the
;
applied to
?
Well, perhaps you are right.
Williams
all
?
it; and would have refused to build a Buzzing Tower, by
sacred words, that Giotto
it,
Domus, Duomo, cannot be
ask
hun-
there
afraid
is
are
Which
you?
will you be?
doubt which you are;
little
— but there
is no doubt whatever which you would like to be, whether you know your own minds or not. You will never whistle at
your dargs more, unless you are serving masters can love. You may shorten your hours of labour
you please;
—no
serving truly tionship
:
minute of them
that
is
to say, until the
—service to death —
masters and you.
It has
is
meny,
remnant or shadow of
as till
much
as
you are
bond of constant
rela-
again established between your
been broken by their
but
sin,
may yet
All the best of you cling to the
be recovered by your virtue. least
will be
whom you
I
it.
heard but the other day of
a foreman, in a large liouse of business, discharged at a week's
—
warning on account of depression in trade, who thereupon went to one of the partners, and showed him a letter which he had received a year before, offering him a situation with an inwhich offer he liad crease of his salary by more than a third ;
refused without so
made
to him, that
Scotchman
much
as telling his
he might stay
— and I am glad to * Vol.
tell
in
mastei-s of its being
the story of his
vii., p. 9.
He
was a fidelity with
the old house.
FOES CLAVIGERA. that of
Pepe and Tom Purdie.
the south;
know
but I
I
that in
know
143 not
how
it
may be
in
Scotland, and the nortliern
border, there still remains soinetliino; of the feelino^ which fastened the old French word " loial " among the dearest and
sweetest of their familiar speech; and that there are souls yet
among them, who,
or will depart to, the
'
Land
Sire,
Et
of the Leal.
moult me plaist
vo noble conseil
Ne du Sans
vostre escole
loial,
trespasser rCay entente;
lui n'aray ne bien ne mal.
Amours
ce
wuloir me presente,
veult que tout man appareil mis a servir soir et main Loiaute, et moult me merveil
Qui
Soit
Comment hom^ a le cuer si vain a dfaussete reclaim."
Qu'il
some
alike in labour or in rest, abide in,
NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
I
am
HAVE been making careless
enough
entirely sure of
that I cannot
in
my
it,
not a few mistakes in "Fors" lately; and, indeed, not solicitous at all to avoid mistakes; for being
main ground, and
make any mistake which
entirely honest in purpose, I
know
my
work, and that any chance error which the third Fors" may appoint for me, is often likely to bring out, in its correction, more good than if I had taken the pains Here, for instance, is Dr. Brown's letter, which I should not to avoid it. have had, but for my having confused Geoige's Street with George's Square, and having too shortly generalized my experience of modem novel readers; and it tells me, and you, something about Scott and Dickens which will invalidate
'
'
is
of the greatest use.
—
" My dear Friend, I am rejoiced to see you upon Scott. It will be a permanent good, your having broken this ground. But you are wrong in two things— George's Square is not in the detestable New Town, it is to the south of the very Old Town, and near the Meadows. " Then you say nobody now will read them (Miss Edgeworth and Sir Walter). She is less read than I think she should be, but he is enormously read here and in America. "In the twelve months ending June, 1873, Adam Black and his sons have sold over 250,000 Waverlej's, and I know that when Dickens that great master of fun and falsetto went last to America, and there was a fury for him and his books, the sale of them only touched for a short time the ordinary sale of the Scott Novels, and subsided immensely, soon, the Scotts going steadily on increasing. Our young genteel girls and boys, I fear, don't read them as the same class did thirty years ago, but the readers of them, in the body of the people, are immense, and you have only to look at the four or five copies of the whole set in our public libraries to see how they are being read. That is a beautiful drawing of Chantrey's, and new to me, very like, having the simple, childlike look which he had. The skull is hardly high enough." '
'
—
—
—
'
'
—
A subsequent
letter tells
me
that Dinlay
is
a big hill in Liddesdale; and
being made) the tune of Sour Plums in Galashiels, of which I will only at present bid you farther observe that it is the first enclosed (search for
it
" touch of the auld breadwinner" that Wandering Willie plays to Darsie. Another valued correspondent reminds me that people might get hold of my having spoken, a good many numbers back, of low sunshine "at six o'clock on an October morning;" and truly enough it must have been well on towards seven.
NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE,
145
A more serious,
but again more profitable, mistake, was made in the June by the correspondent (a working man) who sent me the examination paper, arranged from a Kensington one, from which I quoted the four who either did not know, or did not notice, the difference questions, between St. Matthew and St. Matthias. The paper had been set in the schools of St. Matthew, and the chairman of the committee of the schools of Fors,
—
St.
Matthias wrote to
pleased
I
me
—
in violent indignation
little
thinking
how greatly
should be to hear of any school in which Kensington questions
—
were not asked, or if asked, were not likely to be answered. I find even that the St. Matthias children could in all probability answer the questions I proposed as alternative, for they have flower shows, and prizes presented by Bishops, and appear to be quite in an exemplary phase of education all which it is very pleasant to me to learn. (Apropos of the equivoque between St. Matthew and St. Matthias, another correspondent puts me in mind of the promise I made to find out for you who St. Pancras was. I did; but did not much care to tell you for I had put him with St. Paul only because both their names began with P; and found that he was an impertinent youth of sixteen, who ought to have been learning to ride and swim, and took to theology instead, and was made a martyr of, and had that mock-Greek church built to his Christian honour in Mary-le-bone. I have no respect whatever for boy or girl martyrs; we old men know the value of the dregs of life: but young people will throw the whole of it
—
:
—
—
away
for a freak, or in a pet at losing a toy.)
I shall next have a fiery letter abjuring Kensington from the committee of the schools of St. Matthew: nothing could possibly give me greater pleasure. I did not, indeed, intend for some time to give you any serious talk about Kensington, and then I meant to give it you in large print and at length; but as this matter has been "forced" upon me (note the power of the word Fors in the first syllable of that word) I will say a word or two now. I have lying beside me on my table, in a bright orange cover, the seventh I
suppose
—
—
edition of the
"Young
Mechanic's Instructor;
or,
Workman's Guide
various Arts connected with the Building Trades; showing
out
all
kinds of Arches and Gothic Points, to
set
how
to the
to strike
out and construct
Skew
Bridges; with numerous Illustrations of Foundations, Sections, Elevations, Receipts, Rules, and Instructions in the art of Casting, Modelling, etc.
Carving, Gilding, Dyeing, Staining, Polishing, Bronzing, Lacquering, Japanning, Enamelling, Qasfitting, Plumbing, Glazing, Painting, etc. Jewellers' Secrets, Miscellaneous Receipts, Useful Tables, etc., and a variety of useful information designed specially for the Working Mechanic.
— London:
Brodie and Middleton,
Town and Country. Price, 2s. 6d." From pages 11, 20, and 21 of the following observations on
Houses of Parliament, 10
St.
79,
Long Acre; and
all
Booksellers in
introduction to this work, I quote the
Paul's, the
Nineveh
sculptures,
and the
"
"
NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
146
—
OF ST. Paul's. I, " Since London was first built, which we are led to believe was about the year 50, by the Romans, there has not been a more magnificent building erected in it than St. Paul's this stupendous edifice which absorbs the attention, and strikes with wonder all who behold it, was founded by EthelAnd it is certain that bert, the fifth King of Kent, in the year 604 a.d. since the completion of this building, succeeding generations have made no
—
progress in the construction of public buildings." II.
" There
—OP
THE NINEVEH SCULPTURES.
one feature in the Nineveh sculptures which most beautifully illustrates and corroborates the truth of the Scriptures; any person who has carefully read the Scriptures, and has seen the JS^ineveh sculptures, cannot fail to see the beautiful illustration; it will be remembered that the king is spoken of in many places as riding in his chariot, and of the king's armourbearer following him to the battle. In the Nineveh sculptures you Avill see the fact exemplified the king in his chariot, and his armour-bearer defending him with his shield. is
—
—
ni. OP THE HOUSES OP PARLIAMENT. " Of all the Gothic buildings that we liave in our country, both of ancient and modern date, the Houses of Parliament are the best and most elaborate; •
the first step of its grandeur is, that it stands parallel to the majestic stream of the River Thames, and owing to its proximate distance to the river, there is no thoroughfare between it and the water; its open situation gives it a sublime view from the opposite side; but especially from Wcstmiaster Bridge its aspect is grand and magnificent in the extreme. Its superb tracery glitters in the distance, in the sight of the spectator, like the yellow autumnal foliage of some picturesque grove, which beautifies the verdant The majestic figures in their stately valleys and bedecks the silvery hills. order, encanopied in their Gothic palaces, bring to our remembrance the noble patriarchs of old, or the patriots of recent days. Its numerous pinnacles, turrets, and towers, rise up into the smoky and blue atmosphere like forest trees, which will stand as an everlasting memento of the great and noble-minded generation who raised this grand and magnificent structure, so that after generations may say, 'Surely our forefathers were great and illustrious men, that they had reached the climax of human skill, so that we cannot improve on their superb and princely buildings.'
These three
extracts,
though in an extreme degree, are absolutely and
accurately characteristic of the sort of mind, unexampled in any former
ages for
sevenfold —or rather seventy times hypocrisy, and conceit, —ignorance, the dregs of corrupted knowledge, which modern
its
sevenfold
its
its
art-
by Kensington, produces in our workmen and their practical "guides." How it is produced, and how the torturing examinations as to the possible position of the letters in the word Chillianwallah, and the collection of costly objects of art from all quarters of the world, end in these conditions of paralysed brain and corrupted heart, I will show you teaching, centralized
at length in a future letter.
;
FORS CLAVIGERA.
14:7
LETTER XXXIII. I FIND some of my readers are more interested in the last two numbers of Fors than I want tliem to be. " Give np your Fors altogether, and let us have a life of Scott," they say.
They nmst
please to
remember that
I
am
only examining the
may
conditions of the life of thiswise man, that they to rule their
own
lives,
learn
how
or their children's, or their servants'
and, for the present, with this particular object, that they
may
be able to determine, for themselves, whether ancient sentiment, or modern common sense, is to be the rule of life, and of service.
beg them, therefore, to refer constantly to that summary of modern common sense given by Mr. Applegarth, and quoted with due commendation by the Pall Mall Gazette; (above, I
XXYIII. 68) :— "One piece of vigorous good
sense enlivened the discussion.
was uttered by Mr. Api)]egarth, who observed that no sen" timent ought to be brought into the subject.' No sentiment, you observe, is to be brought into your doing, or your whistling, according to Mr. Applegarth. And the main purpose of Fors is to show you that there is, '
It
sometimes, in weak natural whistling quite as much virtue as But it cannot show you this in vigorous steam whistling.
without explaining what your darg, or " doing," ts; which cannot be shoM'n merely by writing pleasant biographies. You are always willing
enough
never willing to
to 7'ead lives, but
lead them. For instance, those few sentences, almost casually given in last Fors, about the Scottish rivers, have been copied^ I see, into various journals, as if they, at any rate, were worth extract
men
from the much
useless matter of
my
like to hear their rivers talked about,
it
books.
appears
Scotch!
But
FORS CLAVIGERA.
148
when It
was np Iluntly
last I
had
all
been drawn
off
Bum
hiirn there.
to
;"
way, there was no somebody's "works
painful for me, as an author, to reflect that, " of
and
it
is
polluting
all
liquids belonging to this category (liquid refuse factories), the discharges
cult to deal with."
from manufrom paper works are the most diffi-
*
At Edinburgh there is a Loch the Water of Leith company what it is ;f and ;
fair,
raih'oad station instead of the is
—
at
well,
Linlithgow, of
— built for a royal dwelling,
North
one cannot say in civilized
etc.,
— the
all
the palaces so
oil, (paraffin), float-
ing on the streams, can be ignited, burning with a large flame.
;{:
My
good Scottish friends, had you not better leave off pleasing yourselves with descriptions of 3"our rivers as they were, and consider what your rivers are to be ? For I correct my derivation of Clarty Hole too sorrowfully. § It is the Ford that
is
To
now
clarty
retui-n to
left in
my last
— not the Hole.
our sentimental work, however, for a while. I letter one or two of the most interesting points
in the first year at
best
it
to
Sandy-Knowe unnoticed, because
I
thought
give you, by comparison with each other, some
idea of the three women who, as far as education could do it, formed the mind of Scott. His masters only polished and directed it. His mother, grandmother, and aunt welded the steel.
Hear first "She had
this of his mothei'. receiv^ed, as
(Lockhart, vol.
i.,
p. 78.)
became the daughter of an eminently
learned physician, the best sort of education then bestowed on
young gentlewomen in Scotland. Tlie poet, speaking of Mrs. Euphemia Sinclair, the mistress of the school at which his mother was reared, to the ingenious local antiquary, Mr. Robert Chambers, said that she must have been possessed of uncommon talents for education, as all her young ladies were, '
in after-life,
fond of reading, wrote and spelled admirably, were
* Fourth Report of Rivers Pollution Commission, p. 52. Water of Leith, the Foul Burn, and Pow
f See analysis of port, p. 21. X
Same
report
;
so also the River
§ See terminal Notes.
—
Almond, pp. 22
i5.
Bum, same Re
"
FORS CLAVIGERA. well acquainted with history and
149
the belles lettres, without
neglecting the more homely duties of the needle and accompt-
Mr. Chambers adds, communicated that his mother, and many others of Mrs. Sinclair's pupils, were sent afterwards to he finished off by the Honourable Mrs. Ogilvie, a lady who trained her young friends to a style of manners which would now be considered intolerably stiff. Such was the effect of this early training upon the mind of Mrs. Scott, that even when she book, and perfectly well-bred in society.' '
Sir Walter further
approached her eightieth year, she took as much care to avoid touching her chair with her back, as if she had still been under the stern eye of Mrs. Ogilvie.'
You
are to note in this extract three things.
First, the sin-
gular influence of education, given by a master or mistress of " All her
real power.
verily
mean
this?)
young ladies" {all, Sir Walter! do you "fond of reading," and so forth.
Well, I beheve that, with slight exception. Sir Walter did it. He seldom wrote, or spoke, in careless generalization.
mean
And girl's
I doubt not that
it is
knowing how
really
very few books, and
truly possible, by first insisting on a to
read,
and then by allowing her and not
—
those absolutely wholesome,
—
amusing! to give her a healthy appetite for reading. Spelling, I had thought, was impossible to many girls but perhaps this is only because it is not early enough made a point of it ;
:
cannot be learned
late.
Secondly I wish Mr. Chambers had given us Sir Walter's words, instead of only the substance of what he "further com:
municated." notice, that Sir
But you may safely gather what I want you to Walter attributes the essentials of good breeding
and scholarly mistress and only the formalwhich he somewhat hesitatingly approves, to the finishing hand of Mrs. Ogilvie. He would have paid less regard to the opinion of modern society on such matters, had he lived to see our languid Paradise of sofas and rocking-chairs. The beginto the first careful
;
ity,
ning, and very nearly the end, of bodily education for a girl, is
to
make
vertical,
sure that she can stand, aiid
and firm
as a
marble shaft
;
sit,
upi-ight
;
the ankle
the waist elastic as a reed.
—
;
;
FORS CLAVIGERA.
150
and
as nnfatiguable.
sunrise to sunset, in a
I have seen
summers
mv own
mother
travel
from
day, without once leaning back
in the carriage.
Thirdly
:
The
respectability belonging in those days to the
In
profession of a schoolmistress.
do not myself think is one, whether
fact, I
that any old lady can be respectable, unless she
she be paid for her pupils or not.
And
to deserve to be one,
makes her Honourable at once, titled or untitled. Thus much comes, then, of the instructions of Mrs.
Sinclair
and Mrs. Ogilvie and why should not all your daughters be educated by Honourable Mrs. Ogilvies, and learn to spell, and Then they will all have sons like Sir Walter to sit upright ? ;
Scott,
Not
you think so, good
learned to
sit
Miss Eutherford had not wholly
friends.
upright from Mrs. Ogilvie.
position of her pupils,
%
own
She had some disfrom the other
in that kind, different
and taught in older
Look
schools.
at the lines in the
Lay, where Conrad of Wolfenstein, " In
humour highly
crossed
About some steeds his band had lost. High words to words succeeding still. Smote with his gauntlet stout Hunthill A hot and hardy Rutherford, Whom men call Dickon Draw-the- Sword Stern Eutherford right
But
bit his glore,
little
and shook
A fortnight thence,
said,
his head.
Inglewood, Stout Conrad, cold, and drenched in blood, His bosom gored with many a woimd. Was by a woodman's lyme-dog * found in
;
Unknown
the
manner of
his death,
Grone was his brand, both sword and sheath But ever from that time, 'twas said
That Dickon wore a Cologne blade."
Such the mother.
race,
— such
Of her home
the
school
education, you
education,
— of
Scott's
may judge by what
she
herself said of her father to her son's tutor (whose exquisitely * Blood-hound, from
"lym," Saxon
for leash.
— ;
FORS CLAVIGERA. grotesque
letter,
for the rest, vol.
i.,
151
p. 108,) is alone
enough
to explain Scott's inevitable future perception of the weakness
of religious egotism. " Mrs. Scott told me that,
when
prescribing for his patients,
was Dr. Rutherford's custom to offer up, at the same time, a laudable a prayer for the accompanying blessing of heaven, practice, in which, 1 fear, he has not been generally imitated
it
—
by those of
his profession."
A very laudable
practice indeed,
good Mr. Mitchell
;
perhaps
even a useful and practically efficacious one, on occasion all
events one of the last
sincerity,
among men
remains of noble Puritanism, in
;
at its
of sound learning.
For Dr. Hutherford was
also an excellent linguist, and, ac-
cording to the custom of the times, delivered his prelections to the students in Latin, (like the conversation in Beardie's
Nowadays, you mean
Jacobite Club).
talked, as I understand
;
nor prayers
to
have no more Latin
said.
—
Pills
—Morison's
and others can be made up on cheaper terms, you think, and be equally salutary ? Be it so. In these ancient manners, however, Scott's mother doubtless, having some is brought up, and consistently abides reverence for the Latin tongue, and much faith in the medihaving had troubles about her soul's safety cine of prayer solicitous, at one time, on that point perhaps too but also soul solicitous about, which is much she has a to be being sure obedient herself to the severest laws of morality and life but mildly and steadily enforcing them on her children naturally of light and happy temper, and with a strong turn to study poetry and works of imagination. I do not say anything of his father till we come to the apexcept only that he was no less devout than his prenticeship, mother, and more formal. Of training which could be known or remembered, neither he nor the mother give any to their boy until after the Sandy-Knowe time. But how of the unremembered training ? When do you suppose the education of At six months old it can answer smile with a child begins ? ;
;
—
;
;
;
;
—
smile,
and impatience with impatience.
It can observe, enjoy.
FORS CLAVIGERA.
152
and
suffer, acutely, and, in
suppose is
it
makes no
a measure, intelligently.
diiierence to
perfect and quiet, the faces of
it
strangers, loving
or that
;
it is
mother full of and even those of
father and
its
peace, their soft voices familiar to
Do you
that tlie order of the house
its
ear,
from arm
tossed
to arm,
hard, or reckless, or vain-minded persons, in the
gay one doubt not, greatly determined
among
gloom of a The moral
vicious household, or the confusion of a
?
disposition
in those first
is,
I
I believe especially that quiet, and the with-
speechless years.
drawal of objects likely to as to let
it fix its
thing in
its
domain,
is
essential to the formation of
the best powers of thought.
own home memory of the
his
observe, liis
it is
by amusing, the
distract,
child, so
attention undisturbed on every visible least
some of
It is chiefly to this quietude of
that I ascribe the intense j)erceptiveness and
Sandy-Knowe
three-years'-old. child at
in that
for,
;
year he learns his Hardiknute
first
;
by
aunt's help, he learns to read at Bath, and can cater for
himself on his return.
Of
and her mother, we must
this aunt,
You
now know what we
can.
who was meekness
and my aunt, who was of a higher grandmother, Barbara Haliburton, was
notice the difference which " Scott himself indicates between the two grandmother,
My
:
temper."
Yet
his
descended from the
itself,
so-called, in speciality of
ard-bearer" of the Douglas'
her family's
estate,
;
honour, " Stand-
and Dryburgh Abbey was part of
they having been true servants to the monks
it, once on a time. Here is a curious little piece of lecture on the duties of master and servant, Boyal Proclamation on the 8th of May, 1535, by James the Fifth - " Whereas we, having been advised, and knowing the said gentlemen, the Halliburtons, to be leal and t?nie honest men, long servants
of
—
:
unto the saide abbeye, for the saide landis, stout men at armes, and goode borderers against Ingland and doe therefore decree and ordaine, that they shall be re-possess'd, and bruik and enjoy the landis and steedings they had of the said abbeye, paying the use and wonte and that they sail be goode servants ;
:
* Irvteoduction to Border Minstrelsy, p. 86.
—
— FORS CLAVIGERA.
153
and their predeces-
to the said venerabil father, like as tbey
sours were to the said venerabil father, and his predecessours,
and he a good master to them." The Abbot of Dryburgh, however, and others in such high places, having thus misread their orders, and taken on themselves to be masters instead of ministers, the Reformation took its course; and Dryburgh claims allegiance no
You
more
—but
notice the phrase, "
Lest I should have to put
it
to its dead.
good borderers against England." off too long, I
may
as well, in this
you know the origin of the tune which Scott's uncle was so fond of. From the letter of one of his friends to Dr.
place, let
Brown
I gratefully take the following passage " In the fourteenth century some English riders were slaking :
Tweed, nearly opposite Cartley plums grew. The borderers came down upon them unexpectedly, and annihilated them, driving some into the Tweed, at a place called the Englishman's Dyke. The borderei-s accordingly thought their surprise sourer fruit to the invaders than the plums they went to pluck, and christened themselves by the soubriquet of Sour Plums in Galashiels,' which gave a text for the song and tune, and a motto for the arms of the town of Galashiels." Thei-e is something to think of for you, when next you see the blackthorn blow, or the azure bloom spread on its bossed clusters of fruit. I cannot find any of the words of the song
their thirst on the banks of the
Hole,
—now Abbotsford, —where wild
'
;
but one beautiful stanza of the ballad of Cospntrick least serve to
summer time
may
remind you of the beauty of the Border in
at its
:
" For
to the greenwood I maun gae To pu' the red rose and the slae. To pu' the red rose and the thyme. To deck my mother's hour and mine."
" Meekness itself," and yet possibly with also, this
Barbara, with the ruins of her
some pride in her Dryburgh still seen
grey above the woods, from the tower at whose foot her grandchild
was playing.
So short the space he had
to travel,
when
—
;
!
FORS CLAVIGEKA.
154
his lameness should be cured,
—the end of
travel already iu
all
sight
Some
pride in her. perhaps
grandchild should have a
"Many
:
you need not be surprised her
little left.
a tale" (she told
him)
'•
of "Watt of Harden,
Aikwood (Oakwood), Jamie
Willie of
Wight
Tellfer of the fair Dod-
—
merry men, all of the persuasion and and Little John. A more recent hei'o, Hood Robin calling of the celebrated De'il of Little Dean, was but not of less note, married her mother's he had whom she well remembered, as liead,
and other heroes
Of
sister.
this
extraordinary person I learned
grave and gay, comic and warlike"
mamma "
—
many
(dearest,
a story
meek, grand-
!)
Two
or three old books which lay in the window-seat were
my amusement
explored for
in the tedious winter days.
Au-
tomathes* and Ramsay's Tea-table Miscellany were my favourites, although, at a later period, an odd volume of Josephus's Wars of the Jews divided my partiality." " Two or tliree old books in the window-seat," and " an odd volume of Josephus " How entertaining our farm library!
think how much matters ;) and your package down from Mudie's the new magazines, and a dozen of novels many as you choose, and Professor Tyn-
(with the Bible, you observe have' changed for the better
monthly, with
Good Words
all
—
as
:
—
dalTs last views on the subject of the Regelation of Ice,
sake also of
my own
—
first
love
—
(Re-
and for the which was of snow, even more
specting which, for the sake of Scott's
first
love,
have a few words to say to Professor Tyndall, but they must be for next month, as they will bitterly interrupt our sentimental proceedings.) Nay with your professorial information that when ice breaks you can stick it together again, you have also imagina-
than water,
I
—
* " The Capacity and Extent of the Human Understanding exempliAutomathes, a j'oung nobleman who was accidentally left in his infancy upon a desolate island, and continued nine;
fied in the extraordinary case of
teen years in that solitary state, separate
Kirkby.
1745.
Small 8vo.
from
all
human
society."
By John
— FORS CLAVIGERA. tive literature of the rarest.
with
table Miscellany,
—
Here instead of Ramsay's TeaHardiknnte and other ballads of
—
some of them not the best of their kind, I you have Mr. Knatchbull-Hugnessen, M.P.'s,
softer tendency,
admit,
its
155
—here
dedicated to the schoolroom teapot, in
Tales at Tea-time,*
which the first story is of the " Pea Green Nose," and in which (opening at random) I find it related of some Mary of our modern St. Mary's Lochs, that " Mary stepped forward hastily, when one of the lobsters sprang forward and seized her arm in his claw, saying, in a low, agitated tone of voice," etc. etc.
You were
better
as
off, little
you think
it,
with that poor
Your own, at worst, though much your own mentally, still more utterly and
library on the window-seat.
lingered and torn
;
—
;
though the volume be odd, do you think that, by any quantity of reading, you can
You
rant you shield
make
3'our
knowledge of
could nol read so
Or, on a bend azure,
:
much
tliree
as
" *
?
Barbara Haliburton's
mascles of the
second quarter a buckle of the second.
graved
history, even
are so proud of having learned to read too, and I war-
I
meant
first
to
;
in the
have en-
but shall never get on to aunt Jessie at this rate. kind and affectionate aunt, Miss Janet Scott, whose
it,
My
impossible to concentrate the vulgar modern vices of art and literamore densely than has been done in this in such kind, documental book. Here is a description of the " Queen of the Flov/ers" out of it, which is so accurately characteristic of the " imagination" of an age of demand and She appears in a wood supply, that I must tiud space for it in small print. in which "here and there was a mulberry tree disporting itself among the It is
—
ture
rest."
(Has Mr. Huguessen, M.P., ever seen a mulberry
much of Pyramus and Thisbe as Bottom?) "The face was the face of a lady, and of
tree,
or read as
a pretty, exceedingly good-hu-
—
her head " (the author had better have written hung up) " was nothing more or less than festoons of roses, red, lovely, sweet scented " (who would have thought it !) " roses; the arms were apparently entirely composed of cloves and" (allthe body was formed of a multitude of various spice? no) "carnations flowers the most beautiful you can imagine, and a cloak of honeysuckle
moured lady
too
;
but the hair which hung
—
down around
—
;
—
and sweetbriar was thrown that of the mulberry.)
(Italics mine growth of the honeysuckle as disport is of
carefully over the shoulders. "
care being as characteristic of the
— FORS CLAVIGERA.
156
memory
will ever be dear to me, used to read these works to me, with admirable patience, until I could repeat long passages
by heart."
Why
Surely she might have spent
admirable. Sir "Walter?
—
—
her time more usefully lucratively at least than in this manner of " nursing the baby." Might you not have been safelj left, to
By With
hunt up Hardiknute,
in matiirer years, for A'ourself
no manner of means, Sir Walter thinks; all
and for hunting
his gifts, but for this aunt Janet, Lilias Redgauntlet,
—
—for
and
?
justly.
his mother,
had assuredly been only
lie
a
and the best story-teller in the Lothians. We scarcely ever, in our study of education, ask this most essential of all questions about a man. What patience had his laird,
mother or sister with him ? And most men are apt to forget for speaking of myself for a
by
my own
You know
me
that
It is
my own it
speak. ;
Pardon me
themselves. I did not
(if
me
know things
them
part in them, I would not write of
a word, grossly
is
;
that people sometimes call
like to hear
Well,
it
moment
a good writer
at all). :
others
I seldom mis-spell or mis-pronounce
and can generally say what
I
want
was born with me, or gradually gained
l)y
to say.
may be, my own study.
impression about this power, such as
it
only by deliberate effort that I recall the long morning
hours of
toil,
as regular as sunrise,
—
toil
on both sides equal,
my
mother forced me to learn all the and ever so many chapters of the heart, pai-aphrases Scotch by Kings being one, try it, good 1st Bible besides, (the eighth of reader, in a leisure hour !) allowing not so much as a syllable to be missed or misplaced; while every sentence was required to be said over and over again till she was satisfied with the accent I recollect a struggle between us of about three weeks, of it. concerning the accent of the " of" in the lines
by which, year
after year,
—
" Shall
The I insisting, partly instinct for
any followiug spring revive ashes of the urn ?"
in childish obstinacy,
rhythm (being wholly
and partly
in
true
careless on the subject both of
FORS CLAVIGERA. urns and their contents), on reciting It
was
not, I say,
it,
157
" Tlie ashes
of the nrn." mother her mind. But had it
after tliree weeks' labour, that mj^
till
got the accent laid upon the ashes, to
taken three years, she would have done
having once underit, I had been simply an avaricious picture collector, or perhaps even a more avaricious money collector, to this day and had she done it wrongly, no after-study would ever have enabled me to read so taken to do
it.
And,
it,
assuredly, had she not done
;
much It
as a single line of verse. is
impossible, either in history or biography, to arrange
what one wants
to insist
rational connection. land, of
which I
upon wholly by time, or wholly by
You must
observe that the
am now going
brilliant display of pyrotechnic light^ the steady stars
From
above Scott's childhood.
beforehe could read, I should
visit to Eiiff-
to speak, interrupts, with a
burning of the
the teaching of his aunt,
go on he could read but I must content myself, for the moment, with adding the catalike, for several reasons, to
at once to the teaching of his mother, after
logue of
mamma's
library to that of aunt Jessie's.
window-seat of Sandj'-Knowe
—
—only
to
;
On
the
be got at the pith of
by help of auntie we had the odd volume of Josephus, AutoA year later, mathes, and two or three old books not named.
—
—
mamma provides for us now scholars ourselves Pope's Homer, Allan Ramsay's Evergreen, and, for Sundays, Bunyan, Gesner's Death of Abel, and Howe's (Mrs.) Letters from the Other World. But' we have made our grand tour in the meanof time, and have some new ideas of this world in our head which the reader must now consider. " I was in my fourth year when my father was advised that the Bath waters might be of some advantage to my lameness. My affectionate aunt although such a journey promised to a person of her retired habits anything but pleasure or amusement undertook as readily to accompany me to the wells of Bladud, as if she had expected all the delight that ever the prospect of a watering-place held out to its most impatient ;
—
—
visitants."
And why
should she not
?
Does
it
not seem somewhat
— FOES CLAYIGERA.
158
what you know of young, or even middle-
strange to you, from
aged, aunt Jessies of the present day,
Miss Scott should
tliat
look upon the journey to Bath as so severe a piece of denial
;
and that her nephew
of course
How
?
old was aunt Jessie, think you
eldest of a large family, fore,
was
self-
regards her doing so as a matter
If
forty-six.
was born
we
Scott's father, the
?
in 1729,
—
the next oldest, she would be precisely
Tabitha Bramble the occasion
of the age
and one could fancy her,
;
in this year, there-
uncharitably suppose Miss Jessie
it
of Mrs,
seems to me, on
of this unforeseen trip to the most fashionable
watering-place in England, putting
up her
rose-collard negle-
gay with green robins, and her bloo quilted petticot, without feeling herself in the position of a martyr led to the stake. But aunt Jessie must really have 'been much younger than Mrs. Tabitha, and have had the adv^antage of her in other particu-
She was afterwards married, and when
lars besides spelling.
—
—
Lockhart saw her (1820 ?) forty years or so after this had still " the softest eye and the sweetest voice." And from the thatched mansion of the moorland, Miss Jessie feels it so irk-
some and solemn
a
duty
— does she — ?
to
go
to " the squares, the
and the parades, which put you^ (Miss Lydia Melford) mind of the sumptuous palaces represented in prints and and the new buildings, such as Prince's Row, Harlepictures quin's Row, Bladud's Row, and twenty other rows besides," circus,
" in
;
pump in a pump room, with a handle to and other machinery, instead of the unpumped Tweed! Her nephew, however, judges her rightly. Aunt Jessie
not to speak of a real it,
could give
him no
truer proof of faithful affection than in the
serenity with which she resolves to take him to this centre of gaiety.
Whereupon, you education for a
are to note this, that the
woman
than any other place
;
queen her queendom
;
its
is
to
make her
end of
love her
all
home
that she should as seldom leave
nor ever feel entirely
at rest
right
better it
as a
but within
threshold.
For her boy, however, there
are things to be seen in Bath,
159
FORS CLAVIGERA.
and to be learned. "I acquired the rudiments of reading from an old dame near our lodgings, and I bad never a more regular teacher, though I think I did not attend her more than An occaBional lesson from mj aunt supa quarter of a year. plied the rest." Yes, little Walter. If we indeed have a mind to our book, that is all the teaching we want we shall ;
perhaps get through a volume or two
"The but
circumstances I recollect of
trifling
not),
;
mj
yet I never recall them
The
pleasure.
in time.
residence in Bath are
without a feeling of
beauties of the Parade (which of
with the river
Avon winding around
it,
them
I
know
and the lowing
from the opposite hills, are warm in my recollection, and are only rivalled by the splendours of a toy-shop somewhere near the Orange Grove. I had acquired, I know not by what means, a kind of superstitious terror for statuary of all kinds. No ancient Iconoclast or modern Calvinist could have looked on the outside of the Abbey Church (if I mistake not, the principal church at Bath is so called,) with more horof the cattle
ror than the
sented to
my
image of Jacob's Ladder, with infant eye.
My
all
its
angels, pre-
uncle* effectually combated
my
and formally introduced me to a statue of Neptune, which perhaps still keeps guard at the side of the Avon, where a pleasure-boat crosses to Spring Gardens." " A sweet retreat" Spring Gardens (again I quote Miss Lydia) " laid out in walks, and ponds, and parterres of
terrors,
—
—
and hard by the Pamprom is a coffee-house for the ladies, but my aunt says young girls are not admitted, inasmuch as the conversation turns upon politics, scandal, philosoflowers,
phy, and other subjects above our capacity."
Is aunt
Janet old
enough and clever enough for the company, I wonder? And Walter what toys did he mostly covet in the Oi'ange Grove? The passage about the effect of sculpture upon him is in-
—
tensely interesting to me, partly as an indication of the state of his
own
power of
nascent imagination, partly as illustrative of the
religious sculpture,
* Robert,
who comes
to visit
meant
them
to terrify,
on the minds of
in Bath, to little Walter's great joy.
!
FORS CLAVIGERA.
160
peasant children of high faculty. point here third
you
:
Fors
I
—
must get on
still
But
I cannot dwell
on
favourable to him
—appoints
to be
it
this
The
to his first sight of a play.
"As
like it."
A never-to-be-forgotten delight, influencing him in his whole nature thenceforward.
It
is
uncle Robert's doing
this,
aunt
Jessie having been probably doubtful on the matter, but irUncle Robert has much to answer for resistibly coaxed. tell you to-day nor for a while now, for I How much, I can't ;
—
have other matters on hand in the next Fors or two Glacier theory, and on the road to it I must not let you forget the broom-maker between Berne and Tliun and I've got to finish my notes on Friedrich and his father, who take more noticing ;
than I expected to give
;
besides that I've Friedrich II. of
some account of; and
all
can only again and again beg the
my
Oxford work
many
Germany
besides.
I
valued correspondents
whose letters I must abruptly answer, to remember that not one word on any of these subjects can be set down without care and to consider what the length of a day is, under exist;
ino' solar
arrangements.
Meantime, here interrupts the
first
is
a point for
you
to
think
of.
The boy
scene of the play by crying aloud,
— (the
''
An't
had appointed for him that own ;) and long remembers the astonishment with which he " looked upon the apathy of the elder part of our company, who, having the means, did not spend every evening at the theatz'e." How was it that he never could write a Play ? they brothers?"
third Fors
one day he should refuse
to
speak to his
—
—
NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
HAYE mislaid, just when I wanted it, a valuable letter, which gave me first name of Abbotsford accurately,— Clarty Hole being only a corruption of it, and the real name bearing no such sense. I shall come upon it sometime or other: meantime, my Scottish readers must not suppose I mean I
the
that the treatment of rivers tliey
have
is
worse in North than in South Britain,
— only
prettier streams in Scotland to float their paraffin, or other beauti-
modem
on the top of. We had one or two was investigating the source of onf of them, only the other day, I found a police office had been built over it, and that the authorities had paid five hundred pounds to construct a cesspool, with a huge iron cylinder conducting to it, through the spring. Excavating, I found the fountain running abundantly, round the pipe. ful productions of
art,
or nature,
clear streams in Surrey, indeed; but as I
The following paragraph, and the two subjoined letters, appeared in the same impression of the Daily Telegraph, on the 12th January, 1871. I wish to preserve them in Fors; and I print them in this number, because the succession of the first four names in the statement of the journal, associated with that of the first magistrate of the City of London, in connection with the business in hand that day, is to me the most pleasant piece of reading and I think must be to all of us among the most significant that has lately met our eyes in a public print; and it means such new solemn league and covenant as Scott had been fain to see. My letter about the Italian streams may well follow what I have said of Scottish ones.
—
The French Appeax to England. "
We are happy to announce
further contributions to the fund which
is
being raised in response to the appeal of the Bishop of Versailles and the clergy of the Seine-et Oise department; and also to state that, in addition to those influential persons whom we named yesterday as being ready to serve on a committee, two other gentlemen of high official and social position have consented to join the body. The list at present is as follows: The Lord Bishop of London; Dr. Manning, Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster; the Rev. Dr. Brock, the Baptist minister; ]\[r. Alfred de Rothschild; and the Lord Mayor, who has coiu'teously placed the Mansion House at the service of the committee. Besides these names, the members of (he Paris Food Fimd,' as will be seen from the subjoined letter, propose to join the more comprehensive organization. '
11
— NOTES AXD CORRESPOIS^DENCE.
163
To the Editor of
Daily Telegraph.
the
" Sir,— Acting on your suggestion that the Paris Food Fund,' which I yesterday described to you, might be advantageously united with that which has been suggested by the Bishop of Versailles, I beg to say that Archbishop Manning, Professor Huxley, Sir John Lubbock, and Jlr. Ruskin wiU, with myself, have great pleasure in forming oart of such a public committee as you have advised, and in placing the subscriptions already sent to us at its disposal. I am, sir, your obedient servant, '
"James
'•Jan. 11."
Daily Telegraph, Jan.
T.
Knowles."
12, 1871.
RosiAN Intjndations. To
the
"Sm, —May I
Editor of the Daily Telegraph.
ask you to add to your article on the miindation of the Tiber some momentary invitation to your readers to think with Horace rather than to smile with him ? In the briefest and proudest words he wrote of himself, he thought of his native land chiefly as divided into the two districts of violent and scanty '
'
waters: Dicar,
qua violens obstrepit Aufldus,
Et qua, pauper aquae, Daunus agrestium Regnavit populorum.
" Now the anger and power of that tauriformis Aujidus is precisely because regna Dauni prafluit because it flows past the poor kingdoms which it should enrich. Stay it there, and it is treasure instead of ruin. And so also with Tiber and Ericlanus. They are so much gold, at their sources, they are so much death, if they once break down uubriclled into the plains. " At the end of your report of the events of the inundation, it is said that the King of Italy expressed an earnest desire to do something, as far as science and industry could effect it, to prevent or mitigate inundations for the future.' "Now, science and industry can do, not 'something,' but everything; and not merely to mitigate inundations and, deadliest of inundations, because perpetual maremmas; but to change them into national banks instead of debts. " The first thing the King of any country has to do is to manage the streams of it. " If he can manage the streams, he can also the people; for the people also form alternately torrent and marcmma, in pestilential fury or pestilential They also will change into living streams of men, if their Kings idleness. Half the money literally 'lead them forth beside the waters of comfort.' lost by" this inundation of Tiber, spent rightly on the hill-sides last summer, would have changed every wave of it into so much fruit and foliage in And the men who have s]iring, where now there will be only burning rock. been killed within the last two months, and whose work, and the money spent in doing it, have filled Europe with misery which fifty years will not efface, had they been set at the same co.st to do good instead of evil, and to save life instead of destroj' it, might, by this 10th of January, 1871, have embanked every dangerous stream a^ the roots of the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Po, and left to Germany, to France, and to Italy an inheritance of blessing for centuries to come they and their families living all the while in And now Let the Red Prince look to it; brightest happiness and peace. red inundation bears also its fruit in time. " I am, sir, your obedient servant,
—
'
—
—
—
!
"Jan. 10." Daily Telegraph, Jan. 12, 1871.
"John Ruskht."
SUNDAY PLAYTHINGS. THE SUPERB SUISSE AND HIS BEAR.
163
SORS CLAVIGERA.
LETTER XXXIV. '
Lorn,
it is
a wrathful peace,
A free acquittance,
icithout releast.
And truth with falsehood all afret. And fear, within secureness set; In heart
despairing hope ; of hope, it is vainhope. Wise madness, and wild reasonne. it is
And full
And sweet
danger, wherein
to
droune.
A heavy burden, light to bear ; A wicked way, away to wear. It
is
discordance that can accord.
And accordance It is
to
discord;
cunning witlwut
science.
Wisdom without sapience. Wit witlunit discretion. Having, without possession.
And health full of malady. And charity full of envy. And restraint full of abundance. And a greedy sufflsaunce. Delight right full of heaviness.
And drear ihood, full and
Bitter sioeetness,
Bight Sin,
evil
thxtt
of gladness; siceet error.
savoured good savour ;
pardon hath within.
And pardon,
A pain also
spotted outside with sin^
it is joyous.
And cimelty,
right piteous ;
A strength tceak to stand upright, And feebleness full Wit tmadvised,
of might;
sagefollie.
And joy full of tmnnentry.
A laughter
it is,
weeping aye ;
Best, that travaileth night
Also a sweet Hell
And a
and day ;
it is.
sorrowful Paradise ; *
* See first terminal note.
164
FORS CLAVIGERA.
'
A pleusant gaol,
and an
ecisy
prison,
And full offroste, summer season ; Prime-time, full offroste's white.
And May, *
devoid of all delight."
*
" Mesmeni
*
*
de ceste
amour
Id plus sages n'y sceunt tour Maiz on ententje te diray XJne aut {outre) aniour
te
descriray
De celle muilje que pour fame Tu aimes la tres-doulce dame. Si com
dist la ste escripture
Amours estfors, amours est dure. Amours soustient, amours endure. Amours retieni, et tousjours dure; Amours met en am£r sa cure; Am/)urs
loyal,
amours seure
Sert, et de sercise nacure.
Amours fait de propre commun. Amours fait de deux cuers un ; Amours enchace, ce me semble, Amx>urs rent cuers, amours
les ernble.
Amours despiece, amours refait. Amours fait paix, amours fait plait. Amours fait bel, amours fait lait, Toutes heures quant
il
lui plaist
Amours attrait, amours estrange Amours fait de prive estrange ; Amours seurprent, amours emprent. Amours reprent, amours esprent, 11
n'est
Hens qu amours neface
;
Amours tolt cuer, amours toll grace Amours delie, amours enlace. Amours ocist, amours efface. Amours ne craint ne pic ne mace ; Amours fist Dieu venir en place, Amours luifi^t ure {noire) char prendre, Anwurs le fist devenir mendre. Amours le fist en la croix pendre. Amours le fist illec extendre. Amours lefist le coste fendre, Amours le fist les maulx reprendre, Amours lui fist les hons aprendre. Amours lefist a nous venir. Amours nous fait a lui tenir."
— FORS CLAVIGERA.
165
These descriptions of the two kinds of noble love are both Romance of the Rose which was writCliaucer translated the first, and I ten by Jean de Meung.* have partly again translated his translation into more familiar English. I leave the original French of the other for you to work at, if ever you care to learn French the fii'st is all that I want you to read just now but they should not be sepai'ated, being among the most interesting expressions extant of the sentiment of the dark ages, which Mr. Applegarth is desirous of eliminating from modern business. The two great loves, that of husband and wife, represent, ing generally the family affections, and that of mankind, to which, at need, the family affection must be saci-ificed, in-
given in the part of the
;
—
;
—
—
clude, rightly understood,
all
the noble sentiments of Immanity.
Modern philosophy supposes
these conditions
of feeling to
have been always absurd, and at present, happily, nearly extinct; and that the only proper, or, in future, possible, motives of liuman action are the three wholly unsentimental desires, the lust of the flesh, (hunger, thirst, and sexual pappion), the lust of the eyes, (covetousness),
and the pride of
life,
(personal
vanity).
Thus, in a recent debate on the treatment of Canada,f Sir C. Adderley deprecates the continuance of a debate on a question " purely sentimental." I doubt if Sir C. Adderley knew in the least
what was meant by a sentimental question.
It
is
a purely "sentimental question," for instance, whether Sir C.
Adderley her.
shall,
or shall not, eat his mother, instead of burying
Similarly,
it is
a purely sentimental question whether, in
the siege of Samaria, the mother
who
boiled her son and ate
him, or the mother who hid her son, was best duty to
societ}'.
fulfilling
Similarly, the relations of a colony to
her its
and depth, are founded on instincts, which may be either senti-
mother-country, in their truth
purely parental and *
filial
Or Mehun, near Beaugency,
Loire.
f On Mr. M'Fie's motion for a committee to consider the relations that On the varieties of subsist between the United Kingdom and the Colonies. filial
sentiment, compare Herodotus,
iii.
38
;
iv. 26.
FORS CLAVIGERA,
166
mental or
bestial,
probably did not tion
but must be one or the other.
know
Sir Charles
that the discussion of everj' such ques-
must therefore be either sentimental
bestial.
o?'
Into one or other, then, of these two forms of sentiment, conjugal and family
lov^e,
or compassion,
all
human
happiness,
properly so called, resolves itself; but the spurious or counter-
happinesses of
lust,
covetousness, and vanity being easily ob-
and naturally grasped at, instead, may altogether occupy the lives of men, without ever allowing them to know what happiness means. But in the use I have just made of the word compassion,' I mean something very different from what is usually underCompassion is the Latin form of the Greek word stood by it. tained,
'
sympathy
— the English for
both
is
fellow-feeling
'
condition of delii^rht in charactei'S higher than truly to be understood
by the word
pain of pity for those inferior to our
'
our
;
;
own
compassion
own
'
'
and the is
more
than the
but in either case,
the imaginative understanding of the natures of others, and the
power of putting ourselves
in their place, is the faculty on which the virtue depends. So that an unimaginative person can neither be reverent nor kind. The main use of works of fiction, and of the drama, is to supply, as far as possible, the
common
defect of this imagination in
But there
minds.
is
a
curious difference in the nature of these works themselves, de-
pendent on the degree of imaginative power of the writers, which I must at once explain, else I can neither answer for you
my own pla}',
question put in last Fors,
nor show you, which
is
why
Scott could not write a
my present
object, the real nature
of sentiment.
Do you
know,
what That is
or what a do you know the perpetual and necessary distinctions in literary aim which have brought these distinctive names into use? You had bet-
poem
ter
is ?
first,
is
?
for clearness' sake, call
the three are or prose.
in the first place,
or what a novel
so,
when they
all
a play
the three
are good,
is ?
to say,
'
poems,' for
whether written
All truly imaginative account of
man
is
all
in vei-se
poetic
;
but
— FOES CLAVIGERA.
167
there are tliree essential kinds of poetry,
and one epic. Dramatic poetry
—one
dramatic, one
lyric,
Lyric poetry
the
is
people's feelings, his
own
expression by the poet of other
not being told.
the expression by the poet of his
is
own
feel-
ings.
Epic poetry
is
account given by the poet of other people's
external circumstances, and of events happening to them, with
only such expression either of their feelings, or his own, as thinks
The
may be
business of Dramatic poetry
essentially
;
the speaker
is
therefore with the heart
despises external circumstance.
it
Lyric poetry
may
speak of anything that excites emotion in
while Epic poetry insists on external circum-
;
and no more exhibits the heart-feeling than
stances,
lie
conveniently added.
as
it
may
be gathered from these.
For
instance, the fight
Hotspur, in
Henry
the
character of the event
between the Prince of Wales and Fourth, corresponds closely, in the to the fight of Fitz- James with
itself,
Roderick, in the Lady of the Lake.
ment
of his subject
is
strictly
But Shakespeare's
dramatic
;
treat-
Scott's strictly epic.
Shakespeare gives you no account whatever of any blow or
wound and
:
his stage direction
falls."
is,
briefly,
'•
Hotspur
is
wounded
Scott gives you accurate account of every external
circumstance, and the finishing touch of botanical accuracy "
Down came The
makes
his
work
always epic, and
:
the blow; but in the heath
erring blade found bloodless sheath,"
perfect, as epic poetry. it is
And
Scott's
work
is
contrary to his very nature to treat any
subject dramatically.
That is the technical distinction, then, between the three modes of work. But the gradation of power in all three depends on the degree of imagination with which the writer can enter into the feelings of other people. Whether in expressing their's or his own, and whether in expressing their feelings only, or also the circumstances surror»D(li^g them, his
FORS CLAVIGERA.
168
power depends on
being able to feel as they do
his
;
And
words, on his being able to conceive character.
in
other
the
liter-
which is essentially unsentimental, or anti-poetic, is that which is produced by persons who have no imagination and whose merit (for of course I
ature which
not poetry at
is
all,
;
am
not speaking of bad literature)
is
in
their wit or sense, in-
stead of their imagination.
The most
examined, in the literature of any nation,
You may
Voltaii'e.
was
as destitute of
have ever myself
this sense, piece I
prosaic, in
work imaginative power as take that as a
the Ilenriade of
is
man whose head
of a it
is
possible for the
healthy cerebral organization of a highly developed
mamma-
The
description of the storm which carries Henry to Jersey, and of the hermit in Jersey " que Dieu lui fit connaitre," and who, on that' occasion, " au bord d'nne onde
animal to be.
lian
pure,
offre
un
festin
champetre,"
stupor in conceptive power,
On
tion.
among
cannot
be
for
the other hand, Yoltaire's wit, and reasoning facul-
are nearly as strong as his imagination
ties,
rivalled,
printed books of reputa-
natural disposition
is
weak.
kind; his sympathy therefore
is
with any sorrow that he can conceive
;
is
His
sincere
and his indignation
comprehend the notice further this, which is very
great against injustices of which he cannot pathetic motives. curious,
me
and to
Now
inexplicable, but not on that account less
certain as a fact.
The imaginative power always therefore as essentially defiles
;
purifies;
and
as the
the
want of
wit-power
is
it
apt to
through absence of imagination, it seems as if had a defiling tendency. In Pindar, Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Scott, the colossal powers of imagination result in
develope wit
itself
itself
absolute virginal purity of thought.
and the splendid rational power
tion
themselves — — with foulness of thought.
ciate
ures its
it
gratuitous
filth, its
and
fitly
difiicult to
say in what decided meas-
The Candide
acute reasoning, and
its
of Voltaire, in entire vacuity
what may perhaps be genertermed 'fimctic literature,' still capable, by its
of imagination, ally
is
The defect of imaginaPope and Horace asso-
in
is
a standard of
;
FORS CLAVIGERA.
and
wit,
partial truth, of a certain
169
paintings, for instance,
—are
its way. But Gustave Dore's
service in
lower forms of modern literature and art
—
the corruption, in national de-
crepitude, of this pessimist nietliod of thought; and of these, tlie final
condemnation
is
true
— they
neither
are
fit
for the
land, nor yet for the dunghilL It is
one of the most curious problems respecting mental
government
how
determine
far tliis fimetic taint must which the reasoning and imaginative powers are equally balanced, and both of them at high to
necessarily affect intellects in
level,
—
as
in
Shakespeare, Chaucer, Moliere,
Aristophanes,
Cervantes, and Fielding; but character wliich
is
it
always indicates the side of
unsympathetic,
and therefore
(thus Shakespeare
makes lago the
in design, of
his villains,) but which,
nature,
is
all
their safeguard against
unkind
foulest in thought, as crudest in
men
of noble
weak enthusiasms and
ideals.
It is impossible, howevei', tliat the highest conditions of tender-
ness in affectionate conception can be reached except by the
Shakespeare and Chaucer throw
absolutely virginal intellect. off,
at
noble work, the lower
pai't
of their natures as they
would a rough dress; and you may also notice this, that the power of conceiving personal, as opposed to general, charactei-, depends on this purity of heart and sentiment. The men who cannot quit themselves of the impure taint, never invent character, properly so called
mon humanity.
Even
;
they only invent symbols of com-
Fielding's Allworthy
but a type of a simple English gentleman
is
not a character,
and Squire Western is not a character, but a type of the rude English squire. But Sir Roger de Coverley is a character, as well as a type ;
;
no one else like him and the masters of Tullyveolan, Ellangowan, Monkbarns, and Osbaldistone Hall, are all, there
is
;
whether slightly or completely drawn,
portraits,
not mere
symbols.
The little piece which I shall to-day further translate for you from my Swiss novel is interesting chiefly in showing the power with which affectionate and sentimental imagination nr.iy attach itself even to inanimate objects, and give them
FORS CLAVIGERA.
170
But the works of its writer generally show the most wholesome balance of the sentimental and rational the part of faculty I have ever met with in literature Gottlielf's nature which is in sympathy with Pope and Fieldpersonality.
;
—
ing enables him to touch, to just the necessary point, the
lower grotesqueness of peasant nature, while his own conception of ideal virtue is as pure as Wordsworth's. I have only room in this Fors for a very little bit more Broom-maker. I continue the last sentence of it from Letter XXX., page 99 :—
But
of the
And
"
then Hansli always
knew
there would be enough to eat
—
that as soon as he got
home
mother saw faithfully to the difference it makes whether a man finds that. She knew something ready to eat, when he comes in, or not. He who knows there will be something at home, does not stop in the taverns; he arrives with an empt}' stomach, and furnishes it, ;
his
about him but if he usually finds home, he stops on the road, comes in when he has had enough, or too much and grumbles right and
highly pleased with
nothing ready when
all
;
at
;
left.
" Hansli was not avaricious, but economical. really useful and
fit,
For things
he did not look at the money.
In
all
matters of food and clothes, he wished his mother to be thor-
oughly at ease. He made a good bed for himself; and when he had saved enough to buy a knife or a good tool, he was
up
quite sively,
in the air.
but solidly.
enough,
He himself Any one with
at the sight of
going up or down.
As
dressed well, a good eye
— not
expen-
knows quickly
houses or of people, whether they are
was easy to see he was on anything fine, but by his cleanliness and the careful look of his things: aussi, everybody liked to see him, and was very glad to know that he prospered With all that, he never thus, not by fraud, but by work. On Sunday he made no brooms in the forgot his prayers. morning he went to the sermon,* and in the afternoon he read his
way up
for Hansli,
it
— not that he ever put on
:
* Much the most important part of the service in Protestant Switzerland,
and a
less
fonnal one than in Scotland.
FORS CLAYIGERA. a chapter of the Bible to
After
failing.
liis
171
he gave himself a personal
that,
now
mother, whose sight was
This
treat.
money, counting it, looking at it,* and calculating how much it had increased, and how much it would yet increase, etc. etc. In that money there were some very pretty pieces, above all, pretty white pieces" (silver among the copper). "Ilansliwas very strong in extreat consisted
bringing ont
in
all
his
—
changes; he took small money willingly enough, but never kept
it
long;
it
and carried
it,
seemed always
it off
to
too quickly.
him that the wind got into The new white pieces gave
—
him an extreme pleasure, above all, the fine dollars of Berne with the bear, and the superb Swiss of old time. When he had managed
many
to catch
one of these,
it
made him happy
for
days.f
" Nevertheless he had also his bad days.
It was always a bad day for him when he lost a customer, or had counted on placing a new dozen of brooms anywhere, and found himself At briskly sent from the door witli We've got all we want.' '
Hansli could not understand the cause of such rebuffs, not
first
knowing
that there are people
as their shirt
new
who change
their cook as often
—sometimes oftener, and that he
cooks to
know him
He
at first sight.
couldn't expect
asked himself then,
—
with surprise, what he could have failed in, whether his brooms had come undone, or whether anj'body had spoken ill of him. He took that much to heart, and would plague himself But soon he took the all night to find out the real cause. who knew him very when cook and even a thing more coolly ;
well sent
him about
* Utmost wisdom pleasure in very f
This pleasure
because
it is
is
little is
his business, he thought to himself,
'
Bah
!
not in self-denial, but in learning to find extreme
things.
a perfectly natui'al and legitimate one, and all the
possible only
when
the riches are very moderate.
more
After getting
my mind greatly upon getting a them the lion standing on the top and my delight in the bloomy surface of their dead silver is of the crown quite a memorable joy to me. I have engraved for the frontispiece, the two it Ls othei-wise interesting as an sides of one of Hansli's Sunday playthings example of the comparatively vulgar coinage of a people imeducated in art.
that
first
pile of
shilling of
new "lion
which
I told j'ou, I set
—
shillings," as I called
;
;
FORS CLAYIGERA.
173 cooks are
human
creatures, like otlier people
or mistress have been rough with them
much pepper in when their schatz
the soup, or too
too
'
(lover,
Pepperlandjt the poor
—
girls
;
and when master
because they've put
-"
much
the sauce, or
salt in
gone
literally, treasure) 'is
have well the right
off to
to quarrel
with
somebody else.' Nevertheless, the course of time needs brought him some worse days still, which he never got himself He knew now, personallj^ very nearly all his to take coolly. trees; he had indeed given, for himself alone, names to his willows, and some other particuhir trees, as Lizzie, Little MaiyAnne, Rosie, and so on. These trees kept him in joy all the year round, and he divided very carefully the pleasure of
gathering their twigs.
He
treated the most beautiful with
great delicacy, and carried the brooms of
tomers.
brooms.
It is true to say also that these
But when he
arrived thus,
and found his Lizzie or his Rosie
all
all
them to his best cuswere always master-
joyous, at his willows;
cut and torn from top to
bottom, his heart was so strained that the tears
I'an
down
his
became so hot that one could have lighted matches at it. That made him unhajipy for a length of time he could not swallow it, and all he asked was that the thief might fall into his grip, not for the value of the twigs, but because his trees had been hurt. If Hansli was not tall, still cheeks, and his blood
;
he knew how lieart full of
to use his limbs
courage.
On
and his strength, and he
that point he absolutely
obey his mother, who begged him for the love of
felt his
would not
God
not to
him or do him some grievmeddle with people who might ous harm. But Hansli took no heed of all that. He lay in Then there were wait and spied until he caught somebody. kill
blows, and formidable battles in the midst of the solitary trees.
Sometimes Hansli got the better; sometimes he came home disorder. But at the worst, he gained at least this, that thenceforward one let his willows more and more alone, as all in
* Has quarrelled with them. f'Les out brusquees." I can't get the derivation beyond Johnson-. " Fr. brusque Gothic, braska." But the Italian brusco is connected with the Proven9al brusca, thicket, and Fr. broussaille. ;
;
FORS CLAVIGERA.
happens always
M'lien a
What
severance.
is
thing
is
173
defended with valour and
the use of putting oneself in the
blows,
when one can get
ger?
Aussi, the E-ychiswj'l farmers were enchanted with
courageous
him with Hansli
;
little
per-
way
of
things somewhere else without dan-
garde-champetre, and
if
his hair pulled, they failed not to say,
he will have had his dance
next time you see anything
—
I'll
all
tlieir
one or the other saw
the same.
go with you
'Never mind, Tell
me
the
— and we'll cure
him of his taste for brooms.' Whereupon Hansli would tell him when he saw anybody about that should not be; the peasant* kept himself hid; Hansli began the attack;
the adversary,
thinking himself strongest, waited for him
once the thief
;
showed himself, and all was said. Then away if he could, but Hansli never let go till he had been beaten as was fitting. " This was a very efficacious remedy against the switchstealers, and little Mary-Anne and Kosie remained in perfect security in the midst of the loneliest fields. Thus Hansli perceiving it, and without imaginpassed some years without ing that things could ever change. A week passed, as the hand went round the clock, he didn't know how. Tuesday, marketday at Berne, was there before he could think about it and Tuesday was no sooner past than Saturday was thei'e and he had to go to Thun, whether he would or no, for how could the Thun people get on without him ? Between times he had enough to do to prepare his cartload, and to content his cusOur tomers, that is to say, tliose of them that pleased him. Hansli was a man and every man, when his position permits seized, the peasant
the maurauder would have got
;
;
—
;
it,
has his caprices of liking and disliking.
had
ti'od
on his
wards to get the
toes,
least
twig of a broom from him.
son's wife, for instance, couldn't
have paid for
it
Whenever one
one must have been very clever
twice over.
It
have got one
if
after-
The
par-
she would
was no use sending to him
every time she did, he said he M'as very sorry, but he hadn't a
broom
left that
would
suit her.
* Paysan
— see above.
FORS CLAVIGERA.
174
" That was because she had one day said to
him that he was and contented himself with putting a few long twigs all round, and then bad ones in the middle. " Then you may as well get your brooms from somebody and held to it too else,' said he so well that the lady died without ever having been able to get the shadow of a broom from him. "One Tuesday he was going to Berne with an enormous cartful of his prettiest brooms, all gathered from his favourite trees, that is to say, Rosie, Little Mary-Anne, and company. He was pulling with all his strength, and greatly astonished to find that his cart didn't go of itself, as it did at first that it really pulled too hard, and that something must be wrong with it. At every moment he was obliged to stop to take breath and wipe his forehead. If only! was at the top of the hill of Stalden said he. He had stopped thus in the little wood of Muri, close to the bench that the women rest their baskets on. Upon the bench sat a young girl, holding a little bundle beside her, and weeping hot tears. Hansli, who had a kind heart, asked her what she was crying for. " The young girl recounted to him that she was obliged to go into the town, and that she was so frightened she scarcely dared that her father was a shoemaker, and that all his best customers were in the town that for a long time she had carried her bundle of shoes in, on market days, and that nothing had ever happened to her. But behold, there had arrived in the town a new gendai'me, very cross, who had already tormented her every Tuesday she had come, for some tim.e back and threatened her, if she came again, to take her shoes from her, and put her in prison. She had begged her father not to send her any more, but her father was as severe as a Prussian soldier, and had ordered her to go in, always; and if anybody hurt her, it was with him they would have ajBfairs;' but what would that help her? she was just as much afraid of the gendarme as before. just like other people,
'
;
;
—
;
'
!
'
;
;
;
'
—
" Hansli felt himself touched with compassion
on account of the confidence the young
girl
;
had had
above
all,
in telling
— FORS CLAVIGERA.
him
175
that which certainly she would not have done to 'But she has seen at once that I am not a bad fellow, and that I have a kind heart,' thought he. all this;
everybody.
"Poor Hansli!
— but after
all, it is
which
faith
saves, people
say."
My
may
readers
ful narrative
;
at first
be
little
but they will find
by
interested
this
unevent-
eventually delightful,
it
if
they accustom themselves to classic and sincere literature; and as an account of Swiss life now fast passing away, it is invalu-
More than
able.
eternal, as in
omen
the life of Switzerland,
one foolishly called them,
of evil.
One-third, at
ice of the Alps, has
been
lost in
In
its
is
ant
phenomenon, by
men
its
very snows,
the depth of
all
bearings on the water supply and
of
far,
all
the
twenty years; -and the without any parallel in aulast
mospheric conditions of central Europe, study of living
—
are passing away, as if
least, in
the
change of climate thus indicated thentic history.
—
it is
at-
the most import-
that offer then:iselves to the
of science: yet in Professor Tyndall's re-
cent work on the glaciers,* though he notices the change as
one which, "
mere
if
continued, will reduce the Swiss glaciers to the
spectres of their former selves," he offers no evidence,
nor even suggestion, I have no space in
there
is
for
my
as to the causes of the this
number
of Fors to say
ory, in connection with the life of Scott.
itself
itself.
what reason
taking notice of this book, or the glacier the-
general literature,
book
change
it is
In the interests of
otherwise fitting that the nature of the
should be pointed out.
Its nature, that is to say, so far as it has any.
be written for a singular order of young people,
It
seems to
whom,
if they Tyndall assures them, it would give him pleasure to take up Mount Blanc but whom he can at present invite to walk with him along the moraine from the Jardin,
were
older. Professor
;
—
where " perfect steadiness of foot is necessary, a slip would be ;" and to whom, with Mr. Hirsch, he can " confide confi-
death
* The Forms of Water.
King and
Co., Cornliill.
1872.
FORS CLAYIGERA.
176
dently" the use of his snrvejing chain. written for entirely ignorant people
who cannot be
It
— and
is,
at all events,
entirely idle ones,
got to read without being coaxed and flattered " Here, my friend," says the Pro-
into the unusual exertion. fessor, at the
end of
hours close
It has been a true pleasure to nie to
my
!
not at
all
.
.
benevolently alluring pages, "our h.
You have
side so long.
throughout.
liis
.
have you at been steadfast and industrious
Steadfast, prudent, without terror, though
times without awe, I liave found yon, on rock and
—
Give me your hand Good-bye." Does the Professor upon 710 readers but those whom he can gratify with polite expressions of this kind ? Upon none who perhaps unsteadfast, imprudent, and very much frightened upon rock and ice, have nevertheless done their own work there, and know good work of other people's, from bad, anywhere and true praise from false anywhere and can detect the dishonouring of nameable and noble persons, couched under sycophancy of the nameless I He has at least had one reader whom I can answer for, of this inconvenient sort. ice.
count, then,
;
;
am
month) saw the Bernese Alps from above Schaffhausen. Since that evening I have never let slip a chance of knowing anything definite about glaciers and their ways and have watched the progress of knowledge, and the oscillations of theory, on the subject, with an interest not less deep, and certainly more sincere, than it would have been if my own industry had been able to advance the one, or my own ingenuity to complicate "the other. But only one great step in the knowledge of glaciers has been made in all that period and it seems the principal object of Professor Tyndall's book to conceal its having been taken, that he and his friends may get the credit, some day, of having taken it themselves. I went to the University in 1836, and my best friend there, It
is,
I
sorry to say, just forty years (some day last
since I first
;
;
among
the older masters, Dr. Buckland, kept
formed on cal,
my
question.
me
not
ill-in-
favourite subject, the geological, or crystallogi-
Nearly everything of which Professor Tyndall
informs his courageous readers was
known
then, just as well
FORS CLAVIGEllA. as
it
is
"We
now.
all,
177
— that to —knew that
say, all geologists of
is
standing, and their pnpils,
they were supplied by snow
at the
glaciers
moved
any that
;
top of the Alps, and con-
snined by heat at the bottom of them
were cracks some of their ice was clear, and other ice opaque; that some of it was sound, and some i-otten and that sti'eams fell into them at places called mills, and came out of them at places called grottoes. We were. I am soi'rj' to say, somewhat languidly conwe never thought of tent with these articles of information M'ading "breast-deep through snow" in search of more, and all
through them, and moraines
all
that there
;
down them
that
;
;
;
less of " striking
still
general
who had won
We
quietly enough.
our theodolites with the feelings of a * Things went on thus
a small battle."
were
all
puzzled to account for glacier
motion, but never thought of ascertaining what the motion
We
really was.
knew
that the ice slipped over the rocks at
tumbled over them at others gaped, or as people who wanted to write sublimely always said, yawned, when And it was steep, and shut up again when it was level. Mr. Charpentier wrote a thick volume to show that it moved by expansion and contraction, which I read all through, and thought extremely plausible. But none of us ever had the slightest idea of the ice's being anything but an entirely solid
some
places,
substance,
;
to be reasoned about as capable indeed
which was
of being broken, or crushed, or pushed, or pulled in any direc-
and of sliding or falling as gravity and smooth surfaces might guide it, but was always entirely rigid and brittle in its
tion,
substance, like so
much
glass or stone.
This was the state of affairs in 1841. Professor Agassiz, of Neuchatel, had then been some eight or ten years at woi'k on the glaciers had built a cabin on one of them walked a ;
;
many times over a great many of them described a number of their phenomena quite correctly proposed, and in great
;
;
*
When
dall's
next the reader has an opportunity of repeating Professor Tyn-
experiments
(p. 92) in
a wreath of dry snow, I
recommend him
first to
how much jumping is necessary in order to get into it "breast-deep"; and secondly, how far he can " wade" in that dramatic position.
try
12
;
FOBS CLAYIGERA.
178
cases performed, many ingenious experiments upon them ; and indeed done almost everjtliing that was to be done for them except find out the one thing that we wanted to know. As his malicious fortune would have it, he invited in that
some
—
year (1841) a
The
man
of acute brains to see
invitation was
what he was about. mathema-
Tlie visitor was a
accepted.
and after examining the question, for discussion of which Agassiz was able to supply him with all the data except those which were essential, resolved to find out the essentician
tial
;
ones himself.
Which
in the
next year
(18-12)
he quietly did
solved the problem of glacier motion for ever, to everybody's astonishment,
and
to the
mortification of all glacier students,
extreme disgust and
— that glaciers were not
but semi-liquid ones, and ran
down
and in 1843
—including my poor
(not the least envious, I fancy, though with as
envious as any one),
;
—announcing,
little
self,
right to be
solid bodies at all,
in their beds like so
much
treacle.
" Cela saute aux yeux," we all said, as soon as we were told and I well remember the intense mortification of first looking down on the dirt bands of the Mer-de-Glace, from the foot of the Little Charmoz, after I had read Principal Forbes' book.
—
That we never should have seen them before so palpable, so inevitable now, with every inch of the ice's motion kept record of, in them, for centuries, and every curve pencilled in dark, so that no river eddies, no festooned fall of sweeping cascade, !
could be more conclusive in proof of the flowing current. of course
it
flowed
;
— how
series of catastrophes
?
*
And
have moved but by a Everything explained, now, by one
else could
it
shrewd and clear-sighted man's work for a couple of summer months and what asses we had all been But fancy the feelings of poor Agassiz in his Hotel des To have had the thing under his nose for ten Neuchatelois There is nothing in the annals of scienmissed it years, and (perhaps the truer word would be scientific tific mischance ;
!
!
!
—
* See the
last terminal note.
179
FOES CLAVTGERA. dulness)
—
to
match more
ocation to be
it; certainly it
bitter,
—
would be
at least, for a
prov-
difficult for
man who
thinks, as
most of our foolish modern scientific men do think, that thei-e is no good in knowing anything for its own sake, but only in being the
first to find it out.
Nor am
I
prepared altogether to justify Forbes in his
method of proceeding, except on the terms
men
of science have laid
down
of battle
which
Here is
a u:!an
for themselv^es.
has been ten years at his diggings
;
has trenched here, and
bored there, and been over all tlie ground again and again, exHe asks one to dinner, and cept just where the nugget is.
—
one has an eye for the run of a stream one does a little bit and walks of pickaxing in the afternoon on one's own account, ;
off
Still,
—
It is hard.
with bis nugget. in strictness,
it
is
perfectly fair.
The new comer,
spade on shoulder, does not understand, when he accepts the or must give all invitation to dinner, that he must not dig,
—
and the old pitsman may him a little but has no swear at growl and very excusably him,— still less to say that his nugget real right to quarrel with is copper, and try to make everybody else think so too. Alas, it was too clear that this Forbes' nugget was not copThe importance of the discovery was shown in nothing per. The really so much as in the spite of Agassiz and his friends. valuable work of Agassiz on the glaciers was itself disgraced,
he gets to his host.
The luck
is his,
;
and made a monument to the genius of Forbes, by the irrelevant spite with which every page was stained in which his name could be introduced. Mr. Desor found consolation in describing the cowardice of the Ecossais on the top of the
and all the ingenuity and plausibility of Professor Tyndall have been employed, since the death of Forbes, to diminish the lustre of his discovery, and divide the credit of it.
Jungfrau
To
;
diminish the lustre, observe,
diminishing
its
distinctness.
At
is
the fatallest
wrong
;
the end of this last book of
by his,
hundred and tenth of the sapient sentences which he numbers with paternal care, he still denies, as far as he in the four
dares, the essential point of Forbes' discovery
;
denies
it
inter-
!
!
FORS CLAVIGERA.
180
rogatively, leaving the reader to consider the whole subject as
—only to be conclusively determined — Professor Tyudall and his friends. " Ice he
yet open to discussion,
by "
splits,"
you
says,
narrow and profound, may be traced for hundi-eds of yards through the ice. Did the ice possess even a very small modicum of that power of stretching which is characteristic of a viscous subif
strike a pointed pricker into
it
;
fissures,
such crevasses could not be formed.' " Tyndall presumably never having seen a crack in stance,
Professor
'
shoe-leather, nor in a dish of jelly set
wax he himself squeezed
in the very
cleavage,
— understood that
down with
clay,
a jerk
nor in ;
nor,
show the nature of the cleavage meant the multiplicato
flat
tion of fissure
And
the book pretends to be so explanatory, too, to his
young
friends
!
—explanatory of the
use of the theodolite, of
the nature of presence of mind, of the dependence of enjoy-
ment
upon honest labour, of the
of scenery
science, " thought, as far as possible,
necessity that in
should be wedded to
and of the propriety of their becoming older and better informed before they unqualifiedly accept his oj)inion of the
fact,"
labours of
Rendu
But the one thing which,
after following him through the hundred and ten sentences, they had a have explained to them the one thing that will puz-
edification of his four
—
right to zle
them
if
ever they see a glacier,
'"''how
the centre flows past
the sides, and the top flows over the bottom," the Professor
does not explain
;
but only assures them of the attention which
the experiments of Mr. Mathews, Mr. Froude, and above
all
Signor Bianconi, on that subject, " will doubtless receive at a future time."
may imagine
they have nothing to do
with personal questions of this kind.
But they have no con-
The
readers of Fors
ception of the degree in which general science
is
corrupted
and retarded by these jealousies of the schools; nor portant
it is
to the cause of
nal indulgence of
all
how
im-
true education, that the crimi-
them should be
chastised.
strong word, but an entirely just one.
I
am
Criminal
is
a
not Hkely to
FOBS CLAVIGEEA.
181
.
but he had at enough to know that his dispute of the statements of Forbes by quibbling on the word " viscous" was as uncandid as it was unscholarly and it retarded the advance of glacier science for at least ten years. It was unscholarly, because no other single word existed in the English language which Forbes could have used instead and uncandid, because Professor Tyndall knew perfectly well that Forbes was aware of the difference between ice and glue, without any need for experiments on them at the Royal Institution. Forbes said that the mass of glacier ice was viscous, though an inch of ice was not, just as it may be said, with absolute truth, that a cartload of fresh-caught herring is liquid, though a single herring overrate the abilities of Professor Tyndall
;
least intelligence
;
;
And
is not.
the absurdity as well as the iniquity of the Pro-
whole debate is consummated in this last book, in which, though its title is " The Forms of "Water," he actually never traces the transformation of snow into glacier ice at all (blundering by the way, in consequence, as to the use of one of the commonest words in Savoyard French, neve). For there are three great " forms of water" by which the Alps are sheeted, one is snow another the third is neve, which is the transitional subis glacier ice fessor's wilful avoidance of this gist of the
—
—
;
;
stance between one and the other. And there is not a syllable from the beginning of the book to the end, on the subject of this change, the nature of which is quite the first point to be
determined in the analysis of glacier motion. I have carried my letter to an unusual length, and must end and nexi; month have to deal with some other for the time ;
matters
;
but as the
round
tliird
Fors has dragged
may
me
into this busi-
and in the next letter which I can devote to the subject, I hope to give some available notes on the present state of glacier knowledge, and of the points which men who really love the Alps may now usefully work upon. ness, I will
it off
as best I
;
I NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
I CTJT out of the Morning Post of September 15th, 1873, the following piece of fashionable intelligence, as a sufficientlj' interesting example of the "Sorro-ft-ful
Paradise" which marriage, and the
domestic arrangements
England where Mr. Applegarth's great principle, " No sentiment ought to be brought into the subject," would be most consistently approved in all the affau-s of life. connected -with
it,
The inconvenience
occasionally construct in the districts of
to his master of the inopportune expression of sentiment
on the part of the dog, is a striking corroboration of Mr. Applegarth's views: "Charles Dawson, an ironworker, who had left his wife and cohabited with a young woman named Margaret Addison, attacked her in the house with a coal rake on the head and body. He then, when his victim screamed, pressed her neck down on the floor with one of his heavy boots, He jumped upon her, and finally while with the other he kicked her. seized a large earthen pan and dashed it upon her head, killing her on the The whole of the attack was witnessed by a man who was deterred spot. from interfering by a loaded revolver which Dawson held. Dawson decamped, and strong bodies of police guarded the different roads from the town, and searched several of his haunts. At three o'clock yesterday morning a dog recognized to be Dawson's was followed, and Sergeant Cuthbert broke open the door where the animal was scratching to obtain admission, find captured Dawson, who was sitting on a chair. Although he was armed with a loaded revolver, he offered no resistance."
—
I
ought
to
have noted in
last Fors, respecting the difHculty of spelling,
some forms of bad spelling which result from the mere quantity of modern literature, and the familiarity of phrases which are now caught by the eye and ear, without being attentively looked at for an instant, so that spelling and pronunciation go to niin together.
On
the other hand, I print the following portions of a very graceful letter
I received early this year,
cation.
I
wish
its
writer
which indicates the diffusion of would tell me her employment.
really
sound edu-
" LONDOX, S.E. '' March Wi, 1873. "And you will not again call yourself our friend, because you are disheartened by our regardlessness of your friendship, and still riiore, it may
— NOTES AND COKRESPONDENCE.
183
by the discouraging voice of some on whom you might perhaps more reasonably have counted. " You say we have never written you a word of encouragement. But don't you think the fault- tinders would be sure to speak first, and loudest? / even, in my loneliness, am able to lend my copies to four, who all look forward to their turn with pleasure. (They get their pleasure for nothing, and I was not quite sure you would approve until I found you would be willing to lend your Talmud!) " On one point /grumble and find fault. " Most of those works which you say you want us to read, I have read; but if I had had to pay the price at which you propose to publish them, they would have cost me £3, and 1 could not have afforded it; because, much as I delighted in them, I longed for certain other books as well. Many an intelligent working man with a family is poorer than I am. " I quite thoroughly and heartilj' sympathise with your contempt for advertising (as it is abused at present, anj-way). But I think all good books should be cheap. I would make bad ones as dear as you like. " Was it not Socrates alone of the great Greeks who would put tw price on his wisdom?— and Christ taught daily in their streets.' I do assure you there are plenty of us teachable enough, if only any one capable of teaching could get near enough, who will never, in this world, be able to afford 'a
be,
!
'
doctor's fee.'
—
—
"I wonder if it be wrong to take interest of what use my very small savings could be to me in old age? Would it be worth while for working women to save at all. (Signed) Working Womai^."
"A
No, certainly not wrong. which make it impossible would be enough for old
The wrong is in the poor wages of good work, buy books at a proper price, or to save what Books should not be cheaper, but work age.
to
should be dearer. to me the other day to ask what I really wanted answered as follows, requesting her to copy the answer, that I print it accordingly, as perhaps a more simple it might serve once for all. statement than the one given in Sesame and Lilies.
A
young lady writing
girls to do, I
Women's work
is,
To please people. To feed them in dainty III. To clothe them. rv. To keep them orderly. V. To teach them. I.
II.
I.
ways.
—
A woman must be a pleasant creature. Be sure that peoroom better with you in it .than out of it; and take all pains to power of sympathy, and the habit of it.
To
please.
ple like the get the
plain meats and dishes economically and savourily? If your first business to learn, as you find opportunity. When you can, advise, and personally help, any poor woman within your reach who will be glad of help in that matter; always avoiding impertinence or discourtesy of interference. Acquaint yourself with the poor, not as their II.
not,
Can you cook
make
it
— NOTES AJSD CORRESPONDENCE.
184
patroness, but their friend: if then you can modestly recommend a little more water in the pot, or half an hour's more boiling, or a dainty bone they
did not
know
of,
you
will
have been useful indeed.
—
Set aside a quite fixed portion of your tune for making III. To clothe. strong and pretty articles of dress of the best procurable materials. You may use a sending machine; but what work is to be done (in order that it
may
be entirely sound) with finger and thimble,
is
to
be your especial
business. First rate material,
however
costly,
sound work, and such prettiness as
ingenious choice of colour and adaptation of simple form will admit, are to be your aims. Head-dress may be fantastic, if it be stout, clean, and consistently
worn, as a
Norman
And you
paysanne's cap.
will be
more useful
in getting up, ironing, etc., a pretty cap for a poor girl who has not taste or time to do it for herself, than in making flannel petticoats or knitting stock-
But do both, and give— (don't be afraid of giving ;— Dorcas wasn't from the dead that modern clergj-men might call her a fool)—the What sort of persons things you make, to those who verily need them. It is a most important part of your work. these are, you have to find out. ings.
raised
—
rV. To keep them orderly, primarily clean, tidy, regular in habits. Begin by keeping things in order soon you will be able to keep people, also. Early rising on all grounds, is for yourself indispensable. You must be (Of course that at work by latest at six in summer and seven in winter. puts an end to evening parties, and so it is a blessed condition in two directions at once.) Every day do a little bit of housemaid's work in your own ;
—
house, thoroughly, so as to be a pattern of perfection in that kind. Your actual housemaid will then follow your lead, if there's an atom of woman's
—
Take a step or two (if not, ask your mother to get another). and a comer of the dining-room, and keep them polished like bits of a Dutch picture. If you have a garden, spend all spare minutes in it in actual gardening. If not, get leave to take care of part of some friend's, a poor person's, but always out of doors. Have nothing to do with greenhouses, still less with spirit in
of
her
stair,
hothouses.
When
there are
gathered,
snow
no flowers
V. Teach— yourself affection,
books.
first
looked after, there are dead leaves to be matting to be nailed, and the like.
to be
to be swept, or
—to
read with attention, and to remember with
what deserves both, and nothing
To
be without books of yolir
endure it. And when you've worth reading which you had ;
to
own
is
buy them,
better,
on
all
else.
Never read borrowea Don't whether they're
the abyss of penury. you'll think
accounts.
— NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
185
{Olaeier catastrophe, page 178.)
With
on which Professor Tyndall piques what would be the result on a say a sheet of glass, four miles long by two hundred
the peculiar scientific sagacity
himself, he has entirely omitted to inquire really brittle body,
—
feet thick, (a to b, in this figure, greatly exaggerates the proportion in depth,)
down over a bed of rocks of any given probable outline Does he suppose it would adhere to them like a tapering leech, in the line given between c and d ? The third sketch shows the actual condition of a portion of a glacier flowing from e to p over such a group of rocks as the lower bed of the Glacier des Bois once presented. Professor of being pushed
say c to D.
^^'-yT^y^,
Tyndall has not even thought of explaining what course the lines of lower motion, or subsidence, (in ice of the various depths roughly suggested by the dots) would follow on any hypothesis for, admitting even Professor Ram(though it would be just as say's theory, that the glacier cut its own bed rational to think that its own dish was made for itself by a custard pudding) still the rocks must have had some irregularity in shape to begin with, and ;
—
—
are not cut, even now, as smooth as a silver spoon.
— I
FORS CLAVIQERA.
186
LETTER XXXY. Brantwood,
my
LooKEsra up from ill
tliis letter,
dow, on
tlie
and
what order
in
18th September, 1873.
paper, as I consider what I to say
it,
am
I see out of
to saj
my
win-
other side of the hike, the ivied chimnies (thick
and strong-built,
like castle towers,
and not
at all disposed to
drop themselves over people below,) of the farmhouse where, I told you the other day, I saw its miitress preparing the feast berry-bread for her sheep-shearers.
of
about two hundred and
fifty
hearth, ten feet across, of
In that farmhouse,
warmed himself at the English squire who wrote
years ago,
its hall,
the
the version of the Psalms from which
I chose for you the November. Of the said squire November, to know somewhat more here, to
fourteenth and fifteenth, I wish you, this
begin,
is
last
;
his general character,
be trusted
given by a biographer
who may
:
He
was a true model of worth a man fit for conquest, plantation, refoi'mation, oi* what action soever is greatest and hardest among men withal such a lover of mankind and good"
;
;
whosoever had any real parts in him found comfort, participation, and protection to the uttermost of his power. The universities abroad and at home accounted him a general Maecenas of learning, dedicated their books to him, and communicated every invention or improvement of knowledge with him Soldiers honoured him, and were so honoured by liiin, ;is no man thought he marched under the trne banner of ness, that
Mars, that had not obtained his approbation.
Men
of affairs
most parts of Christendom entertained correspondency with him. Bat what speak I of these ? His heart and capacity were so large, that there was not a cunning painter, a skilful engineer, an excellent musician, or any other artificer of extraordinary fame, that made not himself known to this famous in
FORS CLAVIGEKA. spirit,
187
and found hira
common
his true friend without hire, and the rendezvous of worth, in his time."
being (and as I can assure jou, by true report,) his
Tliis
and manner of
character,
life,
jou are
to observe these things,
and death. When he was born, his mother was in mourning for her father, brother, and sister-in-law, who all had died on the scaffold. Yet, very strangely, you will find that he takes no measfarther, about his birth, fate,
ures, in his political life, for the abolition of capital punish-
ment.
Perhaps I had better liis
at
once explain to you the meaning of
inactivity in that cause, although for
my own
part I like
and leave you to work them out for yourselves as you are able. But you could not easily answer til is one without help. This psalm-singing squire has nothing best to put questions only,
to urge against
capital punishment, because his grandfather,
uncle, and aunt-in-law
all
have a violent objection rogues
wh© would
don't in the least so only that
maintained
;
died innocent. to
It is
only rogues
desire anything else for them.
mind being hanged
the
who
being hanged, and only abettors of occasionally
Honest men by mistake,
general principle of the gallows be justly
and they have the pleasure of knowing that the
world they leave
is
positively
minded
cleanse
to
the liuujan vermin with which they have
itself
of
been classed by
mistake.
The contrary movement ern daj^s
— has
its real
Worms
indeed
is
'
in
mod-
English nation that they are all vermin. orthodox Evangelical expression.) Which but was by no becoming a fact, very fast indeed
on the part of ('
—so vigorously progressive
root in a gradually increasing conviction
is
tlie
the
;
—
means so in the time of this psalm-singing squire. In his days, tiiere was still a quite sharp separation between honest men and the honest men were perfectly clear about the duty of trying to find out which was which. The confusion of the two characters is a result of the peculiar forms of vice and
and rogues
;
ignorance, reacting on each other, which belong to the
modern
Evangelical sect, as distinguished from other bodies of Chris-
"
FOES CLAVIGERA.
188 tian
men
;
and date therefore,
necessarily,
from
tlie
Reforma-
tion.
They
consist especially in three things.
First, in declaring
a bad translation of a group of books of various qualities, accidentally associated, to be the'
Word
of God.'
Secondly, read-
"Word of God,' only the bits they like and Lever taking any pains to understand even those.* Thirdly, resolutely refusing to practise even the very small bits they do understand, if such practice happen to go against their own worldly especially money interests. Of which three errors, ing, of this singular
'
;
—
—
the climax
— without in — the fourteenth Psalm and
in their always delightedly reading
is
the slightest degree understanding
;
never reading, nor apparently thinking they should read, the next one to
it
— the
it
was ever intended
For which
fifteenth.
reason I gave you those two together, from the squire's version, last
to
November,
— and,
this
make you understand
November and December, will try For among those books acci-
both.
dentally brought together, and recklessly called the
God,' the book of Psalms
is
a very precious one.
'
"Word of
It is cer-
'
"Word of God' but it is the collected words of very wise and good men, who knew a great many important things which you don't know, and had better make haste to tainly not the
;
—
know, and were ignorant of some quite unimportant things, which Professor Huxley knows, and thinks himself wiser on that account than any quantity of Psalmists, or Canticle-singers
The
either.
distinction
and worse than
between the two, indeed,
that, non-natural.
For
it is
is
artificial,
just as pr'^per
natural, sometimes, to write a psalm, or solenm song, to mistress,
and a
canticle, or joyful
and
your
song, to God, as to write
grave songs only to God, and canticles to your mistress.
And
my 'Ethics of the Dust,' but " The way in which common people read their Bibles is just like the way that the old monks thought hedgehogs ate grapes. They rolled themselves (it was said) over and over, where the grapes lay on the ground what fniit 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. *I have long
since expressed these facts in
too metaphorically.
:
—
—
—
—— ;
189
FORS CLAVIGERA.
observe, no proper distinction in the words at all. Jean de Menng continues the love-poem of William de Loris, he says sorrowfully
tliere
is,
When
:
"Cys trespassa Gullleaume De Loris, et ne fit plus pseaume." " Here died William Of Lcris, and made psalm no more."
And
the best word for "Canticles" in the Bible
or Song, which
And
as it
is
just as grave a
word
as
or, at least, exquisitely
happens, this psalm-singing,
psalra-translating, squire,
mine ancient neighbour,
good
know no
a canticle-singer.
his, since
Here
is
I
"Asma,"
is
Psalmos, or Psahn.
is
just as
such lovely love poems as
Dante's. a specimen for you,
which
choose because of
I
connection with the modern subject of railroads
its
only note,
;
first,
The word
a " rider."
meant primarily
Squire, I told you,
mean, and never can mean, a person And it does not at Accordingly, carried in an iron box by a kettle on wheels. this squire, riding to visit hio mistress along an old English all
road, addresses the following sonnet
gravel or turf, I
know
not which
to the
ground of
you my chief Parnassus be Muse, to some ears not unsweet. Tempers her words to trampling horses' feet. More oft than to a chamber melody Now, blessed you, bear onward blessed me. To her, where I my heart, safe left, shall meet My Muse and I must you of duty greet With thanks and wishes wishing thankfully ' Be you still fair, honour'd by public heed By no encroachment wrong'd, nor time forgot Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed And that you know, I envy you no lot Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss,
" Highway,
And
that
it,
:
since
;
my
;
;
;
;
Hundreds of ycai-syou
Hundreds of years tlie
!
Stella's feet
You
very rapture of love.
A
may
•
kifes.'"
think that a mistake
?
No,
it is
lover like this does not believe
—
;;
;
FORS CLAVIGERA.
190
grow
How
do jou tliiiik the other verses read, apropos of railway signals and railway scrip ? his mistress can
old, or die.
" Be you still fair, honour'd by public heed,* Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed."
But to keep our eyes and ears with our squire. comes in sight of his mistress's house, and then
Presently he sings this son-
et:— "
house
I see the
Beware
my heart,
;
full sails
thyself contain
drown not thy
Lest joy, by nature apt
tott'ring
I
barge
;
spirits to enlarge.
Thee, to thy wreck, beyond thy limits strain. Nor do like lords, whose weak, confused brain. Not pointing to fit folks each undercharge,
While
ev'ry office themselves will discharge,
With doing
all,
leave nothing done but pain.
But give apt servants
their
due place
let
;
eyes
See beauty's total sum, summ'd in her face Let ears hear speech, which wit to wonder ties Let breath suck up those sweets let arms embrace The globe of weal ; lips, Love's indentures make ; Thou, but of all the kingly tribute take 1" ;
;
.^
nd here
is
one more, written after a quarrel, which is the song and interesting for you to compare
prettiest of all as a
;
with the Baron of Brad ward ine's song at Lucky M'Leary's: " All
my sense thy sweetness gained fair hair my heart enchained
Thy
My So
;
;
poor reason thy words moved. that thee, like heav'n, I loved.
Fa,
la, la, leridan,
dan, dan, dan, deridan
Dan, dan, dan, deridan, dei While to my mind the outside stood, For messenger of inward good.
Now Thy
thy sweetness sour
is
deemed
;
hair not worth a hair esteemed,
Reason hath thy words removed. Finding that but words they proved. * See terminal Notes,
1.
;
IDi
FORS CLAVIGERA. Fa,
la, la, leridan,
dan, dan, dan, deridan
;
Dan, dan, dan, deridan, dei; For no fair sign can credit win,
K that the substance fail within. No more
in
thy sweetness glory.
For thy knitting hair be sorry; Use thy words but to bewail thee. That no more thy beams avail thee Dan, dan,
;
Dau, dan.
Lay
not thy colours more to view
Without the picture be found "Woe Fool "Was
me,
to !
in
alas
true.
she weepeth
!
me what
!
folly creepeth ?
blaspheme enraged soul I have engaged ? And wretched I must yield to this ? The fault I blame, her chasteness is. I to
Where my
Sweetness sweetly pardon folly Tie mc, hair, your captive wholly !
;
;
O words of heav'nly knowledge Ejiow, my words their faults acknowledge And all my life I will confess. Words
The less
Kow
1
!
I love, I live the less."
like these love-songs, you either have you don't know good writing from bad, (and likely enough both tlie negatives, I'm sorry to say, in modern England). But perliaps if you are a very severe Evangelical person, you may like them still less, when you know something more about them. Excellent love-songs seem always to be written under strange conditions. The writer of that " Song of Songs" was himself, as you perhaps remember, the child of her for whose sake the Psalmist murdered his Ilittite friend and besides, loved many strange women himself, if
YOU don't
never been
in love, or
;
And
after that first bride. ditties,
from which
I
three, are all written else's wife,
For
these, sixty or more, exquisite love-
choose, almost at random, the above
by
my
psalm-singing squire to somebody
he having besides a very nice wife of his own.
this squire
is
the, so called,
'
Divine' Astrophel,
'
Astro-
192
FORS CLAVIQERA.
philos,' or
—
'
star lover, the un-to-be-imitated AstropLel, the ravishing sweetness of whose poesj,' Sir Piercie Shafton, with
—" widowed no longer matched bj my beloved viol-de-ganibo," — bestows on the unwilling his
widowed
voice,
in that it is
ears
Maid of Avenel.* And the Stella, or was the Lady Penelope Devereux, who was of
tlie
whom he loved
his first love, and to was betrothed, and remained faithful in heart all his though she w^as married to Robert, Lord Pich, and he to
whom life,
star,
lie
the daughter of his old friend, Sir Francis Walsingham.
How
very wrong, you think
Well, perhaps so; rights of
it
— we
One
presently.
bearing upon them CcEur-de-Lion)
who
is
?
wrongs and the
will talk of the
of quite the most curious facts
that the very strict queen (the
mother of
poisoned the Rose of Woodstock and the
world for her iinproper conduct, had herself presided
at the
judgment held by the highest married ladies of Christian Europe, which re-examined, and finally re-affirmed,
great court of
the decree of the Court of Love, held under the presidency of Ermengarde, Countess of Narbonne; decree, namely, that " True love cannot exist between married persons." f Meantime let me finish what I have mainly to tell you of the divine Astro phel. You hear by the general character first given of him that he was as good a soldier as a lover, and being about
—
to take part in a skirmish in the IS'etherlands,
—
in
which, accord-
ing to English history, five hundred, or a few more, English, as he was going entirely routed three thousand Dutchmen,
—
into action, meeting the marshal of the
camp
lightly armed,
he
must needs throw off his own cuishes, or thigh armour, not to have an unfair advantage of him and after having so led three charges, and had one horse killed under him and mounted another, " he was struck by a musket shot a little above his left knee, which brake and rifted the bone, and entered the thigh upward whereupon he unwillingly left the field," (not with;
;
* If you don't
know your
Scott properly,
it is
of no use to give
you
refer-
ences.
"
stabilito tenore
Dicimus, et f jugales, suas extendere vires."
firmamus, amorem non posse, inter duas
;
FORS CLAVIGERA. out an act of gentleness, afterwards
poor
wounded
193
much remembered,
to a
and, after lingering sixteen days in severe and unceasing pain, " which he endured with all the soldier,
also
;)
fortitude and resignation of a Christian,
symptoms
of mortifi-
cation, the certain forerunner of death, at length
appeared
which he himself being the first to perceive, was able nevertheless to amuse his sick-bed by composing an ode on the nature of his wound which he caused to be sung to solemn music as an entertainment that might soothe and divert his mind from his torments and on the 16tli October breathed his last breath in the arms of his faithful secretary and bosom companion, Mr. William Temple, after giving this charge to his own brother " Love my memory cherish my friends. Their faith to me may assure you they are honest. But above all govern your will and affections by the will and word of your Creator,* in me beholding the end of this world, with all its ;
:
;
vanities."
Thus
died, for England,
and
a point of personal honour, in
the thirty-second year of his age. Sir Philip Sidney, whose
name perhaps you have heard aunt-in-law.
Lady Jane Grey,
well as that of the
Duke
before, as well as that of his
for
whose
capital
of Northumberland,
his mother, as above stated,
was
in
punishment,
(liis
as
grandfather,)
mourning when he was
born.
And
Spenser broke off his Faery Queen, for grief, when he all England went into mourning for him; which and died; meant, at that time, that England was really sorry, and not that an order had been received from Court. IQth October. (St. Michael's.)
made, after
all
;
had other things ael, to
seem
think to
of.
for
my
—I
haven't got
cook has been
ill,
my
much requiring the patronage of You suppose, perhaps, (the English
as
goose-pie
and, unluckily, I've St.
Mich-
generally
have done so since the blessed Reformation,) that
impious and Popish to
*He meant
tliink of St.
it is
Michael with reference to
the Bible; having learned Evangelical views at the massacre
of St. Bartholomew. 13
FOES CLAVIGEKA.
194:
any more serious and yet
than the roasting of goose, or baking have had some amazed queries from my correspondents, touching the importance I seem to attach to my pie and from others, questioning the economy of its conthereof
affair
I
;
;
struction.
I
don't suppose a
more savoury,
preservable, or
nourishing dish could be made, with Michael's help, to drive the devil of hunger out of poor men's stomachs, on the occa-
when Christians make a feast, and call to it the poor, the maimed, the halt, and the blind. But, putting the point of economy aside for the moment, I must now take leave to reply to my said correspondents, that the importance and reality of goose-pie, in the English imagination, as compared with the unimportance and unreality of the archangel Michael, his name, and his hierarchy, are quite as serious subjects of regret and that I believe them to be mainly traceto me as to them the ideas, both of any arche,' beginning, or tlie loss of able to princedom of things, and of any holy or hieratic end of things; so that, except in eggs of vermin, embryos of apes, and other idols of genesis enthroned in Mr. Darwin's and Mr. Huxley's sions
;
'
shrines, or in such extinction as
double-ends as
may be
may
be proper for
lice,
discoverable in amphisbaenas, there
lienceforward, for man, neither alpha nor omega,
or is
—neither be-
ginning nor end, neither nativity nor judgment no Christmas Day, except for pudding no Michaelmas, except for goose ;
;
;
no Dies Irse, or day of final capital punishment, for anything and that, therefore, in the classical words of Ocellus Lucanus, quoted by Mr. Ephraim Jenkinson, " Anarchon kai atelutaion
;
to pan."
There remains, however, among us, very strangely, some instinct of general difference between the abstractedly angelic, and the hieratic, or at least lord- and lady-like character; diabolic, non-hieratic, or slave- and (reverse-of-lady-) like charInstinct, which induces the London Journal, and other acter.
—
such popular works of
fiction,
always to make their heroine,
Lady something and which your minds not a little in connection with the question of capital punishment so that when I told you just
whether
saint or poisoner,
probably
affects
a
'
;
'
;
FORS CLAVIGERA.
now who
Sir Pliilip's aunt was, perhaps
cheated you by
would say hanged !"
tlie
words of
my
first
to yourselves, " Well, but
195
you
felt as if
I
liad
reference to her, and
Lady Jane Grey wasn't
No she was not hanged nor crucified, which was the most vulgar of capital punishments in Christ's time; nor kicked to death, which you at present consider the proper form of capital punishment for your wives; nor abused to death, which the mob will consider the proper form of capitnl punishment for your daughters,* when Mr. John Stuart Mill's Essay on Liberty shall have become the Gospel of England, and his statue be duly adored. She was only decapitated, in the picturesque manner represented to you by Mr. Paul de la Roche in that charming work of modei'u French art which properly companions the series of Mr. Gerome's deaths of duellists and gladiators, and Mr. Gustave Dore's pictures of lovers, halved, or quartered, with Of all which their hearts jumping into their mistresses' laps. ;
;
the medical officer of the Bengalee-Life-insurance Society would justly declare that " even in an anatomical
pictures,
point of view, they were
— per-fection."
She was only decapitated, by a man in a black mask, on a if that's butcher's block and her head rolled into sawdust, any satisfaction to you. But why on earth do 3'ou care more about her than anybody else, in these days of liberty and
—
;
equality I
?
shall
have something soon
to
Sidney's Arcadia, no less than Sir
tell
you of Sir Philip
Thomas More's
Utopia.
much
The following
letter,
i-especting the
Arcadia of Modern ETigland which I cannot
though only a
girl's,
contains so
elsewhere find expressed in so true and direct a way, that 1 print
it
without asking her permission, pi-omising however,
hereby, not to do so naughty a thing again,
new
correspondents must
risk
— to her,
at least;
it.
* For the present, the daughters seem from Halifax in the last terminal Note.
to
take the initiative.
See story
FORS CLAVIGERA.
196 " I wish people
would be good, and do Reading Fors' last night made
help you.
'
you wish, and
as
me
determined to
I cannot do all the things you you wanted us to do, but I will try. I wish you would emigrate, though I know wish we could all go somewhere fresh, and would be so much easier. In fact it seems
try very hard to be good. said in the last letter
"
Oh
dear
you won't. begin anew
!
I it
:
impossible to alter things here.
The
in a place like this. to rule
all
You
cannot think
how
it is,
idea of there being any higher law
one's actions than self-interest,
is
treated as utter
do not hesitate to say that in business each one must do the best he can for himself, at any risk or You do know all this, perhaps, by hearsay, loss to others. folly
but
;
really, people
it
is
so sad to see in practice.
constant contact I suppose
;
They
—
grow
alike by and one has to hear one after the all
other gradually learning and repeating the lesson they learn in
town
—
no one, believe in no one, admire no one to world was made of rogues and thieves, as the only way to be safe, and not to be a rogue or thief oneself if And what can one do? it's possible to make money without. They laugh at me. Being a woman, of course I know nothing; being, moreover, fond of reading, I imagine I do know to trust
;
act as if all the
something, and so get their duty to disabuse like to
drag them
filled
me
with foolish notions, which
of as soon as possible.
away from
all
this
it
is
I should so
wretched town, to some
empty, new, beautiful, large country, and
set
them
all to dig,
and plant, and build and we could, I am sure, all be pure and honest once more. No, there is no chance here. I am so ;
sick of
it all.
" I want to
day that made please read all
it.
the earth, I
is all
tell
you one
little
fact
that I heard the other
me furious. It will make a long letter, but the vilest spot in You have heard of am sure, and yet they are very proud of it. It ,
—
chemical works, and the country for miles round looks
There are still some farms struggling for damage done to them is very great, and to defend themselves, when called upon to make reparation, the
as if
under a
curse.
existence, but the
FOES CLAVIGERA.
197
chemical manufacturers have formed an association, so that if one should be brought to pay, the others sliould support him.
Of
course, generally,
it
almost impossible to say which of
is
the hundreds of chimneys
may have caused any
particular
further frightened hy this coalition, and hy the exjjense oflaw,"^ the farmers have to submit. But one day, just before harvest-time this year, a farmer was in piece of mischief;
and saw
his fields, it,
2iUil
and, as
his land
passed, destroy a large field of corn.
it
burns up vegetation, as
who
whatever you would call from one of these chimneys,
a great stream, or
smoke come over
of
if it
wei-e a fire.
The
He
went
It literally
loss to this
man,
owners of They did not deny the works and asked for compensation. that it might have been their gas, but told him he could not well
is
off, is
about £4U0.
to the
I dare say they it, and they would pay nothing. were no worse than other people, and that they would be But that is our honesty, quite commended by business men. where there is supposed to be justice. and this is a country These chemical people are very rich, and could consume all I do this gas and smoke at a little more cost of working.
_not prove
believe
it is
—
a
hopeless to attempt to alter these things, they are
Then
so strong.
newspaper
is
up a touch nowadays
the other evening I took
hardly
fit
to
'
Telegraph
— but
'
I hap-
and read an account of some cellar homes in St. Giles'. It sent me to bed miserable, and I am sure that no one has a right to be anything but miserable while such misery is in the world. "What cruel wretches we must all be, to suffer tamely such things to be, and sit by, enjoying yet I am tied hand and I must do something ourselves And meanwhile oh out. nothing but cry foot, and can do are supposed to do clergymen, who our it makes me mad
pened
to look at this one,
!
;
—
1
—
right,
and teach others
right, are
squabbling over their follies;
here they are threatening each other with prosecutions, for exceeding the rubric, or not keeping the rubric, and mercy and truth are forgotten. I wish I might preach once, to * Italics mine.
FOBS CLAVIGERA.
198
them and
to the rich
;
— no
one ought to be rich
;
and
I
if
would not go to one of their dinnerparties, unless I knew that they were moving heaven and earth to do away with this poverty, which, whatever its cause, even though it be, as they say, the people's own fault, is a were a clergyman
I
disgrace to every one of us. And so it seems to me hopeless^ and I wish you would emigrate. " It is no use to be more polite, if we are less honest. ISTo use to treat women with more respect outwardly, and with
more shameless,
brutal, systematic degradation secretly.
than no use to build hospitals, and
kill
Worse
people to put into them
;
and churches, and insult God by pretending to worship Him. Oh dear! what is it all coining to ? Are we going like Rome, like France, like Greece, or
George
fight such a
it
does frighten me.
is
God on
enemies
?
our side? If
Dragon
little
-
You know
am
I
?
Can
St.
a coward, and
Of course I don't mean to run away, but "Why does He not arise and scatter His
you could
quite a peaceful
there time to stop
is ?
see
what
I see here
country village
;
now
!
This used
to
be
the chemical manu-
crowd of them, along the river, place where this hideous colam sure, the ugliest, most loath-
facturers have built works, a
about two miles from here.
The
ony has planted itself, is, I some spot on the earth." (Arcadia, my dear, Arcadia.) " It has been built just as any one wanted either works or a row of all huddled up, backs to fronts, any cottages for the men, way; scrambling, crooked, dirty, squeezed up; the horrid little streets separated by pieces of waste clay, or half-built-up land. The works themselves, with their chimnies and buildings, and discoloured ditches, and heaps of refuse chemical stuff lying about, make up the most horrible picture of progress you can imagine. Because they are all so proud of it. The land, now every blade of grass and every ti-ee is dead, is most valuable I mean, they get enormous sums of money for it, and every year they build new works, and say, What a wonderful place is It is creeping nearer and nearer here. There
—
'
'
—
—
'
!
'
is
a forest of chinmies visible, to
trees that are dying.
We can
make
up, I suppose, for the
hardly ever
now
see the farther
— 199
FORS CLAVIGERA.
bank of our river, that used to be so pretty, for the thick smoke that liangs over it. And worse than all, the very air is poisoned with their gases. Often the vilest smells fill the house, but
were
I wish they
they say they are not unhealthy.
— perhaps
then they would try to prevent them.
me
Dearly maddens
to see the trees, the
poor
trees,
It
standing
bare and naked, or slowly dying, the top branches dead, the few leaves withered and limp. The other evening I went to a farm that used to be (how sad that used to be' sounds) so Now half the trees are dead, pretty, surrounded by woods. and they are cutting down the rest as fast as possible, so that The gas makes them they can at least make use of the wood. useless. Yesterday I went to the house of the manager of '
some
He
plate-glass works.
took
very interesting, and some of the liquid
it
me
over them, and
beautiful.
You
it
was
should see
streaming on to the iron sheets, and then the
fire
sparkling lakes of gold, so intensely bright, like bits out of a
When
setting sun sometimes.
I
was going away, the manager we had been through, a few years ago It sounded
pointed proudly to the mass of buildings
and
said,
'
This was
all
corn-iields
!
'
and I could not help saying, Don't you think it was He langhed, and better growing corn than making glass?' seemed so amused but I came away wondering, if this goes The tide is so strong on, what will become of England. they will try to make money, at any price. And it is no use so crnel,
'
;
trying to remedy one out,
is it ?
evil,
or another, unless the root
is
rooted
— the love of money."
It is of use to
will very soon
remedy any
now end
in
evil you can reach and all this forms of mercantile catastrophe, :
and political revolution, which will end the "amusement" of managers, and leave the ground (too fatally) free, without " emigration." Oxford,
The
third Fors has just put into
my
24