Chapter VI: Literary Criticism (2)

[99] "A Tenant, not at will" had written to point out the coincidence that he had, before the publication of Mr. Ruskin's third letter, himself begun a letter to the _Daily Telegraph_ on the subject of houses, in parts of which, strangely enough, he had used expressions very similar to those of Mr. Ruskin (see _ante_, pp. 147-8). He had described his modern suburban villa as "one of an ugly mass of blossoms lately burst forth from the parent trunk--a brickfield;" and declared that if it were not that people would think him mad, he "would infinitely rather live in a log hut of his own building" than in a builder's villa. He concluded by saying that all the houses were the same, and that therefore, until Mr. Ruskin could point out honest-built dwellings neglected while the "villas" were all let, it was not quite fair of him to assume that "suburban villains" utterly wanted the true instinct of gentlemen which would lead to the preference of log huts to plaster palaces.

[100] The account consisted of a report presented by Dr. Whitmore, as Metropolitan Officer of Health to the district, to the Marylebone Representative Council. Describing the miseries of Crawford Place, which was left in an untenantable condition, while the landlords still got high rents for it, he added that "property of this description, let out in separate rooms to weekly tenants, constitutes a most profitable investment," according to the degree of flinty determination exercised in collecting the rents.

[101] This alludes to an account of the position of the Cramlington colliers after seventeen days of strike. The masters attempted to evict the pitmen from their houses, an attempt which the pitmen met partly by serious riot and resistance, and partly by destroying the houses they were forced to leave.

[102] "Such a thing as a 'just price,' either for labor or for any other commodity, has, with all submission to Mr. Ruskin, no existence save in the minds of theorists." (_Daily Telegraph_, Oct. 10, quoted by the _Pall Mall_ in its "Epitome of the Morning Papers" on the same day.) The discussion with the _Gazette_ consisted of the "Work and Wages" letters (see _ante_, pp. 72 _seqq._).

[103] See "Fors Clavigera," 1877, Letter 78, Notes and Correspondence, p. 170.

MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS.

III.

ROMAN INUNDATIONS.

A KING'S FIRST DUTY. 1871.

A NATION'S DEFENCES. 1871.

THE WATERS OF COMFORT. 1871.

THE STREAMS OF ITALY. 1871.

THE STREETS OF LONDON. 1871.

III.

ROMAN INUNDATIONS.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," January 12, 1871. Also reprinted in "Fors Clavigera," 1873, Letter 33, p. 23.]

_A KING'S FIRST DUTY._

_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_

SIR: May I ask you to add to your article on the inundation 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 Aufidus,
Et qua, pauper aquæ, Daunus agrestium
Regnavit populorum."[104]

Now the anger and power of that "tauriformis Aufidus" is precisely because "regna Dauni præfluit"--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 Eridanus. They are so much gold, at their sources--they are so much death, if they once break down unbridled 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 maremma, in pestilential fury or pestilential idleness. They also will change into living streams of men, if their Kings literally "lead them forth beside the waters of comfort." Half the money 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 spring where now there will be only burning rock. And the men who have 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,[105] they had been set at the same cost to do good instead of evil, and to save life instead of destroying it, might, by this 10th of January, 1871, have embanked every dangerous stream at 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 brightest happiness and peace. And now! Let the Red Prince look to it; red inundation bears also its fruit in time.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
JOHN RUSKIN.

_Jan._ 10.

FOOTNOTES:

[104] On December 27 there was a disastrous inundation of the Tiber, and a great part of Rome was flooded. The _Daily Telegraph_ in its leading article of Jan. 10, 1871, on the subject, began by quoting from the "very neatest," "sparkling," "light-hearted" ode of Horace, "Jam satis terris nivis" (Horace, Odes, i. 2). The quotations in the letter are from Odes iv. 14, 25, and from the celebrated ode beginning "Exegi monumentum œre perennius" (Odes, iii. 30).

[105] This letter, it will be noticed, was written during the bombardment of Paris in the Franco-Prussian war.

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," January 19, 1871.]

_A NATION'S DEFENCES._

_To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."_

SIR: The letter to which you do me the honor to refer, in your yesterday's article on the Tiber, entered into no detail,[106] because I had already laid the plans spoken of before the Royal Institution in my lecture there last February;[107] in which my principal object was to state the causes of the incalculably destructive inundations of the Rhone, Toccia, and Ticino, in 1868; and to point out that no mountain river ever was or can be successfully embanked in the valleys; but that the rainfall must be arrested on the high and softly rounded hill surfaces, before it reaches any ravine in which its force can be concentrated. Every mountain farm ought to have a dike about two feet high--with a small ditch within it--carried at intervals in regular, scarcely perceptible incline across its fields; with discharge into a reservoir large enough to contain a week's maximum rainfall on the area of that farm in the stormiest weather-the higher uncultivated land being guarded over larger spaces with bolder embankments. No drop of water that had once touched hill ground ought ever to reach the plains till it was wanted there: and the maintenance of the bank and reservoir, once built, on any farm, would not cost more than the keeping up of its cattle-sheds against chance of whirlwind and snow.

The first construction of the work would be costly enough; and, say the Economists, "would not pay." I never heard of any National Defences that did! Presumably, we shall have to pay more income-tax next year, without hope of any dividend on the disbursement. Nay--you must usually wait a year or two before you get paid for any great work, even when the gain is secure. The fortifications of Paris did not pay, till very lately; they are doubtless returning cent. per cent. now, since the kind of rain falls heavy within them which they were meant to catch. Our experimental embankments against (perhaps too economically cheap) shot at Shoeburyness are property which we can only safely "realize" under similarly favorable conditions. But my low embankments would not depend for their utility on the advent of a hypothetical foe, but would have to contend with an instant and inevitable one; yet with one who is only an adversary if unresisted; who, resisted, becomes a faithful friend--a lavish benefactor.

Give me the old bayonets in the Tower, if I can't have anything so good as spades; and a few regiments of "volunteers" with good Engineer officers over them, and, in three years' time, an Inundation of Tiber, at least, shall be Impossible.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
JOHN RUSKIN.

DENMARK HILL, _Jan._ 19, 1871.

FOOTNOTES:

[106] The _Pall Mall Gazette_ had quoted part of the preceding letter, and had spoken of "a remedy which Mr. Ruskin himself appears to contemplate, though he describes it in rather a nebulous manner."

[107] "A Talk respecting Verona and its Rivers," February 4, 1870. (See Proceedings of the Royal Institution, vol. vi. p. 55. The report of the lecture was also printed by the Institution in a separate form; pp. 7.) The lecture concluded thus: "Further, without in the least urging my plans impatiently on any one else, I know thoroughly that this [the protection against inundations] which I have said _should_ be done, _can_ be done, for the Italian rivers, and that no method of employment of our idle able-bodied laborers would be in the end more remunerative, or in the beginnings of it more healthful and every way beneficial than, with the concurrence of the Italian and Swiss governments, setting them to redeem the valleys of the Ticino and the Rhone. And I pray you to think of this; for I tell you truly--you who care for Italy--that both her passions and her mountain streams are noble; but that her happiness depends not on the liberty, but the right government of both."

[From "The Daily Telegraph," February 4, 1871.]

_THE WATERS OF COMFORT._

_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_

SIR: I did not see your impression of yesterday until too late to reply to the question of your correspondent in Rome;[108] and I am hurried to-day; but will send you to-morrow a precise statement of what I believe can be done in the Italian uplands. The simplest and surest beginning would be the purchase, either by the Government or by a small company formed in Rome, of a few plots of highland in the Apennines, now barren for want of water, and valueless; and the showing what could be made of them by terraced irrigation such as English officers have already introduced in many parts of India. The Agricultural College at Cirencester ought, I think, to be able to send out two or three superintendents, who would direct rightly the first processes of cultivation, choosing for purchase good soil in good exposures, and which would need only irrigation to become fruitful; and by next summer, if not by the end of this, there would be growing food for men and cattle where now there is only hot dust; and I do not think there would be much further question "where the money was to come from." The real question is only, "Will you _pay_ your money in advance for what is actually new land added to the kingdom of living Italy?" or "Will you pay it under call from the Tiber every ten or twenty years as the price of the work done by the river for your destruction?"

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. RUSKIN.

OXFORD, _Feb._ 3.

FOOTNOTES:

[108] The correspondent of the _Daily Telegraph_ had written that Mr. Ruskin's letter of January 10 had been translated into Italian and had set people thinking, and he asked Mr. Ruskin to write and state the case once more.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," February 7, 1871.]

_THE STREAMS OF ITALY._[109]

_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_

SIR: In this month, just thirty years ago, I was at Naples, and the days were nearly as dark as these, but with clouds and rain, not fog. The streets leading down from St. Elmo became beds of torrents. A story went about--true or not I do not know, but credible enough--of a child's having been carried off by the gutter and drowned at the bottom of the hill. At last came indeed what, in those simple times, people thought a serious loss of life. A heavy storm burst one night above a village on the flank of the Monte St. Angelo, a mile or two south of Pompeii. The limestones slope steeply there under about three feet of block earth. The water peeled a piece of the rock of its earth, as one would peel an orange, and brought down three or four acres of the good soil in a heap on the village at midnight, driving in the upper walls, and briefly burying some fourteen or fifteen people in their sleep--and, as I say, in those times there was some talk even about fourteen or fifteen. But the same kind of thing takes place, of course, more or less, among the hills in almost every violent storm, generally with the double result of ruining more ground below than is removed from the rocks above; for the frantic streams mostly finish their work with a heap of gravel and blocks of stone like that which came down the ravine below the glacier of Greppond about ten years ago, and destroyed, for at least fifty years to come, some of quite the best land in Chamouni.

In slower, but ceaseless process of ruin, the Po, Arno, and Tiber steadily remove the soil from the hills, and carry it down to their deltas. The Venetians have contended now for a thousand years in vain even with the Brenta and the minor streams that enter their lagoons, and have only kept their canals clear by turning the river south to Malamocco with embankments which have unhealthily checked the drainage of all the flat country about Padua.

And this constant mischief takes place, be it observed, irrespective of inundation. All that Florence, Pisa, and Rome have suffered and suffer periodically from floods is so much mischief added to that of increasing maremmas, spoiled harborages, and lost mountain-ground.

There is yet one further evil. The snow on the bared rock slips lower and melts faster; snow, which in mossy or grass ground would have lain long, and furnished steadily flowing streams far on into summer, fall or melt from the bare rock in avalanche and flood, and spend in desolation in a few days what would have been nourishment for half the year. And against all this there are no remedies possible in any sudden or external action. It is the law of the Heaven which sends flood and food, that national prosperity can only be achieved by national forethought and unity of purpose.

In the year 1858 I was staying the greater part of the summer at Bellinzona, during a drought as harmful as the storms of ten years later. The Ticino sank into a green rivulet; and not having seen the right way to deal with the matter, I had many a talk with the parroco of a little church whose tower I was drawing, as to the possibility of setting his peasants to work to repair the embankment while the river was low. But the good old priest said, sorrowfully, the peasants were too jealous of each other, that no one would build anything or protect his own ground for fear his work might also benefit his neighbors.

But the people of Bellinzona are Swiss, not Italians. I believe the Roman and Sienese races, in different ways, possess qualities of strength and gentleness far more precious than the sunshine and rain upon their mountains, and, hitherto, as cruelly lost. It is in them that all the real power of Italy still lives; it is only by them, and by what care, and providence, and accordant good-will ever be found in them, that the work is to be done, not by money; though, if money were all that is needed, do we in England owe so little to Italy of delight that we cannot so much as lend her spades and pick-axes at her need? Would she trust us? Would her government let us send over some engineer officers and a few sappers and miners, and bear, for a time, with an English instead of a French "occupation" of her barrenest hills?

But she does not need us. Good engineers she has, and has had many since Leonardo designed the canals of Lombardy. Agriculturists she has had, I think, among her gentlemen a little before there were gentlemen farmers in England; something she has told us of agriculture, also, pleasantly by the reeds of Mincio and among the apple-blossoms wet with Arno. Her streams have learned obedience before now: Fonte Branda and the Fountain of Joy flow at Sienna still; the rivulets that make green the slopes of Casentino may yet satisfy true men's thirst. "Where is the money to come from?" Let Italy keep her souls pure, and she will not need to alloy her florins. The only question for her is whether still the mossy rock and the "rivus aquæ" are "in rotis" or rather the racecourse and the boulevard--the curses of England and of France.

At all events, if any one of the Princes of Rome will lead, help enough will follow to set the work on foot, and show the peasants, in some narrow district, what can be done. Take any arid piece of Apennine towards the sources of the Tiber; let the drainage be carried along the hill-sides away from the existing water-courses; let cisterns, as of old in Palestine, and larger reservoirs, such as we now can build, be established at every point convenient for arrest of the streams; let channels of regulated flow be established from these over the tracts that are driest in summer; let ramparts be carried, not along the river banks, but round the heads of the ravines, throwing the water aside into lateral canals; then terrace and support the looser soil on all the steeper slopes; and the entire mountain side may be made one garden of orange and vine and olive beneath; and a wide blossoming orchard above; and a green highest pasture for cattle, and flowers for bees--up to the edge of the snows of spring.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
JOHN RUSKIN.

OXFORD, _Feb._ 3.

FOOTNOTES:

[109] See the date of the letter on a landslip near Giagnano (vol. i. p. 302).

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," December 28, 1871.]

_THE STREETS OF LONDON._

_To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."_

SIR: I have been every day on the point of writing to you since your notice, on the 18th,[110] of the dirty state of the London streets, to ask whether any of your readers would care to know how such matters are managed in my neighborhood. I was obliged, a few years ago, for the benefit of my health, to take a small house in one of the country towns of Utopia; and though I was at first disappointed in the climate, which indeed is no better than our own (except that there is no foul marsh air), I found my cheerfulness and ability for work greatly increased by the mere power of getting exercise pleasantly close to my door, even in the worst of the winter, when, though I have a little garden at the back of my house, I dislike going into it, because the things look all so dead; and find my walk on the whole pleasanter in the streets, these being always perfectly clean, and the wood-carving of the houses prettier than much of our indoor furniture. But it was about the streets I wanted to tell you. The Utopians have the oddest way of carrying out things, when once they begin, as far as they can go; and it occurred to them one dirty December long since, when they, like us, had only crossing-sweepers, that they might just as well sweep the whole of the street as the crossings of it, so that they might cross anywhere. Of course that meant more work for the sweepers; but the Utopians have always hands enough for whatever work is to be done in the open air;--they appointed a due number of brooms-men to every quarter of the town; and since then, at any time of the year, it is in our little town as in great Rotterdam when Doctor Brown saw it on his journey from Norwich to Colen in 1668, "the women go about in white slippers," which is pretty to see.[111] Now, Sir, it would, of course, be more difficult to manage anything like this in London, because, for one thing, in our town we have a rivulet running down every street that slopes to the river; and besides, because you have coal-dust and smoke and what not to deal with; and the habit of spitting, which is worst of all--in Utopia, a man would as soon vomit as spit in the street (or anywhere else, indeed, if he could help it). But still it is certain we can at least anywhere do as much for the whole street, as we have done for the crossing; and to show that we can, I mean, on 1st January next, to take three street-sweepers into constant service; they will be the first workpeople I employ with the interest of the St. George's fund, of which I shall get my first dividend this January; and, whenever I can get leave from the police and inhabitants, I will keep my three sweepers steadily at work for eight hours a day; and I hope soon to show you a bit of our London streets kept as clean as the deck of a ship of the line.[112]

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
JOHN RUSKIN.

_December_ 27, 1871.

FOOTNOTES:

[110] Quite unimportant. It simply complained of the condition of the streets.

[111] Dr. Edward Browne, the son of the author of the "Religio Medici," Sir Thomas Browne. Writing to his father from Rotterdam, in 1668, he says: "The cleanenesse and neatnesse of this towne is so new unto mee, that it affoordeth great satisfaction, most persons going about the streets in white slippers."--"Life and Works of Sir Thomas Browne." Pickering, 1836. Vol. i. p. 154.

[112] Mr. Ruskin was as good as his word, and his sweepers were at work in the following January.

MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS.

IV.

EDUCATION FOR RICH AND POOR.

TRUE EDUCATION. 1868.

THE VALUE OF LECTURES. 1874.

THE CRADLE OF ART! 1876.

ST. GEORGE'S MUSEUM. 1875.

THE MORALITY OF FIELD SPORTS. 1870.

DRUNKENNESS AND CRIME. 1871.

MADNESS AND CRIME. 1872.

EMPLOYMENT FOR THE DESTITUTE POOR AND CRIMINAL CLASSES. 1868.

NOTES ON THE GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF EMPLOYMENT FOR THE DESTITUTE
AND CRIMINAL CLASSES (a pamphlet). 1868.

BLINDNESS AND SIGHT. 1879.

THE EAGLE'S NEST. 1879.

POLITICS IN YOUTH. 1879.

"ACT, ACT IN THE LIVING PRESENT." 1873.

"LABORARE EST ORARE." 1874.

A PAGAN MESSAGE. 1878.

THE FOUNDATIONS OF CHIVALRY.
(Five letters: February 8, 10, 11, and 12, 1877, and July 3, 1878.)

IV.

EDUCATION FOR RICH AND POOR.

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," January 31, 1868.]

_TRUE EDUCATION._[113]

_To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."_

SIR: The letter you published yesterday from a parish schoolboy of "Sixty Years Since" at Weary-faulds (confirmed as it would be doubtless in all practical respects by testimony of English boys educated at Waverley Honour) has my hearty sympathy; but I am wearier than any tenant of Weary-faulds of seeing this subject of education always treated as if "education" only meant teaching children to write or to cipher or to repeat catechism. You know, Sir, as you have shown by your comments on the Bishop of Oxford's last speech on this subject, and you could not at present use your influence more beneficially than by farther showing that the real education-the education which alone should be compulsory--means nothing of the kind. It means teaching children to be clean, active, honest, and useful. All these characters can be taught, and cannot be acquired by sickly and ill-dispositioned children without being taught; but they can be untaught to any extent, by evil habit and example at home. Public schools, in which the aim was to form character faithfully, would return to them in due time to their parents, worth more than their "weight in gold." That is the real answer to the objections founded on economical difficulties. Will you not make some effort, Sir, to get your readers to feel this? I am myself quite sick of saying it over and over again in vain.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. RUSKIN.

DENMARK HILL, _Jan._ 31, 1868.

FOOTNOTES:

[113] The _Pall Mall Gazette_ of January 27 contained a leader on "Compulsory Education," and that of January 29 one upon a speech of the Bishop of Oxford on the same subject, made at a meeting in connection with the National Society, held at Tunbridge Wells on the preceding day. In the _Gazette_ of January 30 appeared a letter referring to these articles, headed "Sixty Years Ago," and signed "One who has walked four miles to the Parish School." It described the writer's early home, situate in some lowland parish north of the Tweed, and divided into five or six estates, such as "Whinny-hills" and "Weary-faulds," the lairds of which were shortly called "Whinny" or "Weary" after their properties. In this primitive village, where supervision, much less compulsion, in education was never heard of, "no child grew up without learning to read," and the morals of the parish were on the whole good; the children quarrelled, but did not steal.--The reader will remember that the second title of "Waverley" is "'Tis Sixty Years Since."

[From "The Glasgow Herald," June 5, 1874. Also reprinted in "The Times" of June 6, 1874.]

_THE VALUE OF LECTURES._[114]

ROME, _26th May_, 1874.

MY DEAR SIR: I have your obliging letter, but am compelled by increase of work to cease lecturing except at Oxford--and practically there also--for, indeed, I find the desire of audiences to be _audiences only_ becoming an entirely pestilent character of the age. Everybody wants to _hear_--nobody to read--nobody to think; to be excited for an hour--and, if possible, amused; to get the knowledge it has cost a man half his life to gather, first sweetened up to make it palatable, and then kneaded into the smallest possible pills--and to swallow it homœopathically and be wise--this is the passionate desire and hope of the multitude of the day.

It is not to be done. A living comment quietly given to a class on a book they are earnestly reading--this kind of lecture is eternally necessary and wholesome; your modern fire-working, smooth-downy-curry-and-strawberry-ice-and-milk-punch-altogether lecture is an entirely pestilent and abominable vanity; and the miserable death of poor Dickens, when he might have been writing blessed books till he was eighty, but for the pestiferous demand of the mob, is a very solemn warning to us all, if we would take it.[115]

God willing, I will go on writing, and as well as I can. There are three volumes published of my Oxford lectures,[116] in which every sentence is set down as carefully as may be. If people want to learn from me, let them read them or my monthly letter _Fors Clavigera_. If they don't care for these, I don't care to talk to them.

Truly yours,
J. RUSKIN.

FOOTNOTES:

[114] This letter was written to Mr. Chapman, of the Glasgow Athenæum Lecture Committee, in reply to a request that Mr. Ruskin would lecture at their meetings during the winter. Writing from Oxford four years later, in answer to a similar request, Mr. Ruskin wrote as follows: "Nothing can advance art in any district of this accursed machine-and-devil driven England until she changes her mind in many things, and my time for talking is past.--Ever faithfully yours, J. Ruskin. I lecture here, but only on the art of the past." (Extract given in the _Times_, Feb. 12, 1878.)

[115] The evil result on Dickens' health of his last series of readings at St. James's Hall, in the early part of 1870, scarcely four months before his death, is thus noted by Mr. Forster: "Little remains to be told that has not in it almost unmixed sorrow and pain. Hardly a day passed, while the readings went on or after they closed, unvisited by some effect or other of the disastrous excitement consequent on them."--"Life of Charles Dickens," vol. iii. p. 493.

[116] "Aratra Pentalici." "The Eagle's Nest"; and either "Val d'Arno" (Orpington, 1874) or "Lectures on Art" (Clarendon Press, 1870).

[Date and place of publication unknown.]

_THE CRADLE OF ART!_[117]

_18th Feb._ 1876.

MY DEAR SIR: I lose a frightful quantity of time because people won't read what I ask them to read, nor believe anything of what I tell them, and yet ask me to talk whenever they think they can take a shilling or two at the door by me. I have written fifty times, if once, that you can't have art where you have smoke; you may have it in hell, perhaps, for the Devil is too clever not to consume his own smoke, if he wants to. But you will never have it in Sheffield. You may learn something about nature, shrivelled, and stones, and iron; and what little you can see of that sort, I'm going to try and show you. But pictures, never.

Ever faithfully yours,
JOHN RUSKIN.

If for no other reason, no artist worth sixpence in a day would live in Sheffield, nor would any one who cared for pictures--for a million a year.

FOOTNOTES:

[117] This letter was in answer to a request of the Sheffield Society of Artists similar to that replied to in the preceding letter.

[From "The Sheffield Daily Telegraph," September 7, 1875.]

_ST. GEORGE'S MUSEUM._[118]

BRANTWOOD, CONISTON, LANCASHIRE.

MY DEAR SIR: I am obliged by your note, but the work of the St. George's Company is necessarily distinct from all other. My "museum" may be perhaps nothing but a two-windowed garret. But it will have in it nothing but what deserves respect in art or admiration in nature. A great museum in the present state of the public mind is simply an exhibition of the possible modes of doing wrong in art, and an accumulation of uselessly multiplied ugliness in misunderstood nature. Our own museum at Oxford is full of distorted skulls, and your Sheffield ironwork department will necessarily contain the most barbarous abortions that human rudeness has ever produced with human fingers. The capitals of the iron shafts in any railway station, for instance, are things to make a man wish--for shame of his species--that he had been born a dog or a bee.

Ever faithfully yours,
J. RUSKIN.

P.S.--I have no doubt the geological department will be well done, and my poor little cabinets will enable your men to use it to better advantage, but would be entirely lost if united with it.

FOOTNOTES:

[118] This letter was written in answer to one addressed to Mr. Ruskin by Mr. W. Bragge, F.R.G.S., who, having read in "Fors Clavigera" of Mr. Ruskin's intention to found the St. George's Museum at Sheffield, wrote to inform him that another museum, in which his might be incorporated, was already in course of building. It was read by Mr. Bragge at a dinner which followed the opening of Western Park to the public on September 6, 1875.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," January 15, 1870.]

_THE MORALITY OF FIELD SPORTS._

_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_

SIR: As, thirty years ago,[119] I publicly expressed a strong opinion on the subject of field sports, and as with more accurate knowledge I hold the same opinion still, and more strongly--will you permit me to place the controversy between your correspondents[120] in which I have no time to take part, on somewhat clearer grounds.

Reprobation of fox-hunting on the ground of cruelty to the fox is entirely futile. More pain is caused to the draught-horses of London in an hour by avariciously overloading them, than to all the foxes in England by the hunts of the year: and the rending of body and heart in human death, caused by neglect, in our country cottages, in any one winter, could not be equalled by the death-pangs of any quantity of foxes.

The real evils of fox-hunting are that it wastes the time, misapplies the energy, exhausts the wealth, narrows the capacity, debases the taste, and abates the honor of the upper classes of this country; and instead of keeping, as your correspondent "Forester" supposes, "thousands from the workhouse," it sends thousands of the poor, both there, and into the grave.

The athletic training given by fox-hunting is excellent; and such training is vitally necessary to the upper classes. But it ought always to be in real service to their country; in personal agricultural labor at the head of their tenantry; and in extending English life and dominion in waste regions, against the adverse powers of nature. Let them become Captains of Emigration;--hunt down the foxes that spoil the Vineyard of the World; and keep their eyes on the leading hound, in Packs of Men.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. RUSKIN.[121]

DENMARK HILL, _Jan._ 14.

FOOTNOTES:

[119] In various parts of "Modern Painters." See vol. v. p. 264. "I wish, however, the reader distinctly to understand that the expressions of reprobation of field-sports which he will find scattered through these volumes ... refer only to the chase and the turf; that is to say, to hunting, shooting, and horse-racing, but not to athletic exercises. I have just as deep a respect for boxing, wrestling, cricketing, and rowing, as contempt of all the various modes of wasting wealth, time, land, and energy of soul, which have been invented by the pride and selfishness of men, in order to enable them to be healthy in uselessness, and get quit of the burdens of their own lives, without condescending to make themselves serviceable to others."

[120] The correspondence originated as follows: In the _Fortnightly Review_ of October, 1869, appeared an article against fox-hunting by Mr. E. A. Freeman, entitled, "The Morality of Field Sports," to which Mr. Anthony Trollope replied by one entitled "The Morality of Hunting," in the _Fortnightly_ of the following December. Mr. Freeman then rejoined by two letters of considerable length, addressed to the editor of the _Daily Telegraph_ (December 18 and 29), in whose columns some discussion of the matter had already been carried on, whilst one of its leaders had strongly supported Mr. Freeman's views. Other correspondence on the subject was still appearing in the _Daily Telegraph_ from day to day at the time Mr. Ruskin wrote the present letter.

[121] At the annual meeting of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Mr. Ruskin is reported (_Daily News_, July 11, 1877) to have said that "as he was somewhat concerned in the studies of the scientific world, it might be thought that he sympathized in the resistance offered, not without some ground of reason, to some of the more enthusiastic and, he feared in some respects, exaggerated and sentimental actions of the society. He pleaded in the name of poor animals that none of them should act too much on the feeling of pity, or without making a thoroughly judicial inquiry. In looking at the report, he found part of the society's admirable evidence mixed up with sentimental tales of fiction and other means of exciting mere emotion, which had caused them to lose power with those who had the greatest influence in the prevention of the abuses which the society desired to check. The true justice of their cause lay in the relations which men had had with animals from the time when both were made. They had endeavored to prevent cruelty to animals; they had not enough endeavored to promote affection for animals. He thought they had had too much to do in the police courts, and not enough in the field and the cottage garden. As one who was especially interested in the education of the poor, he believed that he could not educate them on animals, but that he could educate them by animals. He trusted to the pets of children for their education just as much as to their tutors. He rejoiced in the separate organization of the Ladies' Committee, and looked to it to give full extent and power to action which would supersede all their expensive and painful disputable duties. Without perfect sympathy with the animals around them, no gentleman's education, no Christian education, could be of any possible use. In concluding, he pleaded for an expansion of the protection extended by the society to wild birds."

[From "The Daily Telegraph," December 11, 1871.]

_DRUNKENNESS AND CRIME._

_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_

SIR: I am greatly surprised by the slightness of your article to-day on the statistics of drunkenness and the relative statistics of crime.[122]

The tables you have given, if given only in that form by Professor Leone Levi, are anything but "instructive." Liquor is not, for such purpose, to be measured only by the gallon, but by the gallon with accompanying statement of strength.

Crime is not for such purpose to be measured by the number of criminals, but by the number, with accompanying statement of the crime committed. Drunkenness very slightly encourages theft, very largely encourages murder, and universally encourages idleness, which is not a crime apparent in a tabular form. But, whatever results might, even by such more accurate statement, be attainable, are not material to the question at issue. Drunkenness is not the _cause_ of crime in any case. It _is_ itself crime in every case. A gentleman will not knock out his wife's brains when he is drunk; but it is nevertheless his duty to remain sober.

Much more is it his duty to teach his peasantry to remain sober, and to furnish them with sojourn more pleasant than the pothouse, and means of amusement less circumscribed than the pot. And the encouragement of drunkenness, for the sake of the profit on sale of drink, is certainly one of the most criminal methods of assassination for money hitherto adopted by the bravos of an age or country.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
JOHN RUSKIN.

DENMARK HILL, _Dec._ 9.

FOOTNOTES:

[122] A short leader to which special reference is unnecessary.

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," November 4, 1872. (Also reprinted in "Fors Clavigera," Letter 48, p. 286, vol. iv., 1874),]

_MADNESS AND CRIME._

_To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."_

SIR: Towards the close of the excellent article on the Taylor trial in your issue for October 31[123] you say that people never will be, nor ought to be, persuaded, "to treat criminals simply as vermin which they destroy, and not as men who are to be punished." Certainly not, Sir! Who ever talked, or thought, of regarding criminals "simply" as anything (or innocent people either, if there be any)? But regarding criminals complexly and accurately, they are partly men, partly vermin; what is human in them you must punish--what is vermicular, abolish. Anything between--if you can find it--I wish you joy of, and hope you may be able to preserve it to society. Insane persons, horses, dogs, or cats become vermin when they become dangerous. I am sorry for darling Fido, but there is no question about what is to be done with him.

Yet, I assure you, Sir, insanity is a tender point with me. One of my best friends has just gone mad; and all the rest say I am mad myself. But if ever I murder anybody--and, indeed, there are numbers of people I should like to murder--I won't say that I ought to be hanged; for I think nobody but a bishop or a bank-director can ever be rogue enough to deserve hanging; but I particularly, and with all that is left me of what I imagine to be sound mind, request that I may be immediately shot.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
J. RUSKIN.

CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD,
_November_ 2.

FOOTNOTES:

[123] The trial of Taylor was for murder, and ended in his acquittal on the ground of insanity.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," December 26, 1868.]

_EMPLOYMENT FOR THE DESTITUTE POOR AND CRIMINAL CLASSES_

_To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."_

SIR: Your admirable leader of to-day[124] will do great good; but it will do more if you complete it by pointing out the chief reason for the frequent failure of almsgiving in accomplishing any real benefit to the poor. No almsgiving of money is so helpful as almsgiving of care and thought; the giving of money without thought is indeed continually mischievous; but the invective of the economist against _in_discriminate charity is idle, if it be not coupled with pleading for discriminate charity, and, above all, for that charity which discerns the uses that people may be put to, and helps them by setting them to work in those services. That is the help beyond all others, find out how to make useless people useful, and let them earn their money instead of begging it. Few are so feeble as to be incapable of all occupation, none so faultful but that occupation, well chosen, and kindly compelled, will be medicine for them in soul and body. I have lately drawn up a few notes for private circulation on possible methods of employment for the poor.[125] The reasons which weighed with me in not publishing them have now ceased to exist; and in case you should think the paper worth its room in your columns, and any portion of it deserving your ratification, I send it you herewith, and remain your faithful servant,

J. RUSKIN.

DENMARK HILL, S.E., _Dec._ 24.

FOOTNOTES:

[124] A Christmas article on Charity.

[125] See the following pages.

_NOTES ON THE GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF EMPLOYMENT FOR THE DESTITUTE AND CRIMINAL CLASSES._

[For Private Circulation only. 1868. (Pp. 15, including the title-page. Printed by Strangeways & Walden, Castle Street, Leicester Square.)[126]]

The first great fact on which all wise and enduring legislation respecting labor must be founded, is, that the character of men depends more on their occupations than on any teaching we can give them, or principles with which we can imbue them.

The employment forms the habits of body and mind, and these are the constitution of the man--the greater part of his moral or persistent nature, whatever effort, under special excitement, he may make to change or overcome them. Employment is the half, and the primal half, of education--it is the warp of it; and the fineness or the endurance of all subsequently woven pattern depends wholly on its straightness and strength. And whatever difficulty there may be in tracing through past history the remoter connections of event and cause, one chain of sequence is always clear: the formation, namely, of the character of nations by their employments, and the determination of their final fate by their character. The moment and the first direction of circumstances, of decisive revolutions, often depend on accident; but their persistent course, and their consequences, depend wholly on the nature of the people. The passing of the Reform Bill by the late English Parliament[127] may have been more or less accidental: the results of the measure now rest on the character of the English people, as it has been developed by their recent interests, occupations, and habits of life. Whether as a body, they employ their new powers for good or evil will depend not on their facilities for knowledge, nor even on the general intelligence they may possess, but on the number of persons among them whom wholesome employments have rendered familiar with the duties, and temperate in their estimate of the promises of life.

But especially in passing laws respecting the treatment or employment of improvident and more or less vicious persons it is to be remembered that as men are not to be made heroes by an act of heroism, but must be brave before they can perform it, so they are not made villains by the commission of a crime, but were villains before they committed it; and that the right of public interference with their conduct begins when they begin to corrupt themselves, not merely at the moment when they have proved themselves hopelessly corrupt.

All measures of reformation are effective in exact proportion to their timeliness: partial decay may be cut away and cleansed; incipient error corrected; but there is a point at which corruption can no more be stayed, nor wandering recalled; it has been the manner of modern philanthropy to remain passive until that precise period, and to leave the rich to perish and the foolish to stray, while it exhausted itself in frantic exertions to raise the dead and reform the dust.

The recent direction of a great weight of public opinion against capital punishment is, I think, the sign of an awakening perception that punishment is the last and worst instrument in the hands of the legislature for the prevention of crime.

The true instruments of reformation are employment and reward--not punishment. Aid the willing, honor the virtuous, and compel the idle into occupation, and there will be no need for the compelling of any into the great and last indolence of death. The beginning of all true reformation among the criminal classes depends on the establishment of institutions for their active employment, while their criminality is still unripe, and their feelings of self-respect, capacities of affection, and sense of justice not altogether quenched. That those who are desirous of employment should be always able to find it, will hardly, at the present day, be disputed; but that those who are undesirous of employment should of all persons be the most strictly compelled to it, the public are hardly yet convinced. If the damage of the principal thoroughfares in their capital city, and the multiplication of crimes more ghastly than ever yet disgraced a nominal civilization, do not convince them, they will not have to wait long before they receive sterner lessons. For our neglect of the lower orders has reached a point, at which it begins to bear its necessary fruit, and every day makes the harvest darker and more sure.[128]

The general principles by which employment should be regulated may be briefly stated as follows:

1. There being three great classes of mechanical powers at our disposal, namely, (_a_) vital muscular power; (_b_) natural mechanical power of wind, water, and electricity; and (_c_) artificially produced mechanical power; it is the first principle of economy to use all available vital power first, then the inexpensive natural forces, and only at last to have recourse to artificial power. And this, because it is always better for a man to work with his own hands to feed and clothe himself, than to stand idle while a machine works for him; and if he cannot by all the labor healthily possible to him, feed and clothe himself, then it is better to use an inexpensive machine--as a wind-mill or water-mill--than a costly one like a steam-engine, so long as we have natural force enough at our disposal. Whereas at present we continually hear economists regret that the water-powers of the cascades or streams of a country should be lost, but hardly ever that the muscular power of its idle inhabitants should be lost; and, again, we see vast districts, as the south of Provence, where a strong wind[129] blows steady all day long for six days out of seven throughout the year, without a wind-mill, while men are continually employed a hundred miles to the north, in digging fuel to obtain artificial power.

But the principal point of all to be kept in view is that in every idle arm and shoulder throughout the country there is a certain quantity of force, equivalent to the force of so much fuel; and that it is mere insane waste to dig for coal for our force, while the vital force is unused; and not only unused, but, in being so, corrupting and polluting itself. We waste our coal and spoil our humanity at one and the same instant. Therefore, whenever there is an idle arm, always save coal with it, and the stores of England will last all the longer. And precisely the same argument answers the common one about "taking employment out of the hands of the industrious laborer." Why, what is "employment" but the putting out of vital force instead of mechanical force? We are continually in search of means of strength--to pull, to hammer, to fetch, to carry; we waste our future resources to get power, while we leave all the living fuel to burn itself out in mere pestiferous breath and production of its variously noisome forms of ashes! Clearly, if we want fire for force, we want men for force first. The industrious hands _must_ have so much to do that they can do no more, or else we need not use machines to help them: then use the idle hands first. Instead of dragging petroleum with a steam-engine, put it on a canal, and drag it with human arms and shoulders. Petroleum cannot possibly be in a hurry to arrive anywhere. We can always order that and many other things time enough before we want it. So the carriage of everything which does not spoil by keeping may most wholesomely and safely be done by water-traction and sailing vessels, and no healthier work nor better discipline can men be put to than such active porterage.

2. In employing all the muscular power at our disposal, we are to make the employments we choose as educational as possible. For a wholesome human employment is the first and best method of education, mental as well as bodily. A man taught to plough, row or steer well, and a woman taught to cook properly and make dress neatly, are already educated in many essential moral habits. Labor considered as a discipline has hitherto been thought of only for criminals; but the real and noblest function of labor is to prevent crime, and not to be _Re_formatory but Formatory.

3. The third great principle of employment is, that whenever there is pressure of poverty to be met, all enforced occupation should be directed to the production of useful articles only, that is to say, of food, of simple clothing, of lodging, or of the means of conveying, distributing, and preserving these. It is yet little understood by economists, and not at all by the public, that the employment of persons in a useless business cannot relieve ultimate distress. The money given to employ riband-makers at Coventry is merely so much money withdrawn from what would have employed lace-makers at Honiton, or makers of something else, as useless, elsewhere. We _must_ spend our money in some way, at some time, and it cannot at any time be spent without employing somebody. If we gamble it away, the person who wins it must spend it; if we lose it in a railroad speculation, it has gone into some one else's pockets, or merely gone to pay navvies for making a useless embankment, instead of to pay riband or button makers for making useless ribands or buttons; we cannot lose it (unless by actually destroying it) without giving employment of some kind, and therefore, whatever quantity of money exists, the relative quantity of employment must some day came out of it; but the distress of the nation signifies that the employments given have produced nothing that will support its existence. Men cannot live on ribands, or buttons, or velvet, or by going quickly from place to place; and every coin spent in useless ornament, or useless motion, is so much withdrawn from the national means of life. Whereas every coin spent in cultivating ground, in repairing lodgings, in making necessary and good roads, in preventing danger by sea or land, and in carriage of food or fuel where they are required, is so much absolute and direct gain to the whole nation. To cultivate land round Coventry makes living easier at Honiton, and every house well built in Edinburgh makes lodgings cheaper in Glasgow and London.