Chapter XVIII: Letter XLVIII

The accounts of the state of St. George’s Fund, given without any inconvenience in crowding type, on the last leaf of this number of Fors, will, I hope, be as satisfactory to my subscribers as they are to me. In these days of financial operation, the subscribers to anything may surely be content when they find that all their talents have been laid up in the softest of napkins; and even farther, that, though they are getting no interest themselves, that lichenous growth of vegetable gold, or mould, is duly developing itself on their capital.

The amount of subscriptions received, during the four years of my mendicancy, might have disappointed me, if, in my own mind, I had made any appointments on the subject, or had benevolence pungent enough to make me fret at the delay in the commencement of the national felicity which I propose to bestow. On the contrary, I am only too happy to continue amusing myself in my study, with stones and pictures; and find, as I grow old, that I remain resigned to the consciousness of any quantity of surrounding vice, distress, and disease, provided only the sun shine in at my window over Corpus Garden, and there are no whistles from the luggage trains passing the Waterworks.

I understand this state of even temper to be what most people call ‘rational;’ and, indeed, it has been the result of very steady effort on my own part to keep myself, if it might be, out of Hanwell, or that other Hospital which makes the name of Christ’s native village dreadful in the ear of London. For, having long observed that the most perilous beginning of trustworthy qualification for either of those establishments consisted in an exaggerated sense of self-importance; and being daily compelled, of late, to value my own person and opinions at a higher and higher rate, in proportion to my extending experience of the rarity of any similar creatures or ideas among mankind, it seemed to me expedient to correct this increasing conviction of my superior wisdom, by companionship with pictures I could not copy, and stones I could not understand:—while, that this wholesome seclusion may remain only self-imposed, I think it not a little fortunate for me that the few relations I have left are generally rather fond of me;—don’t know clearly which is the next of kin,—and perceive that the administration of my inconsiderable effects [65] would be rather troublesome than profitable to them. Not in the least, therefore, wondering at the shyness of my readers to trust me with money of theirs, I have made, during these four years past, some few experiments with money of my own,—in hopes of being able to give such account of them as might justify a more extended confidence. I am bound to state that the results, for the present, are not altogether encouraging. On my own little piece of mountain ground at Coniston, I grow a large quantity of wood-hyacinths and heather, without any expense worth mentioning; but my only industrious agricultural operations have been the getting three pounds ten worth of hay, off a field for which I pay six pounds rent; and the surrounding, with a costly wall six feet high, to keep out rabbits, a kitchen garden, which, being terraced and trim, my neighbours say is pretty; and which will probably, every third year, when the weather is not wet, supply me with a dish of strawberries.

At Carshalton, in Surrey, I have indeed had the satisfaction of cleaning out one of the springs of the Wandel, and making it pleasantly habitable by trout; but find that the fountain, instead of taking care of itself when once pure, as I expected it to do, requires continual looking after, like a child getting into a mess; and involves me besides in continual debate with the surveyors of the parish, who insist on letting all the roadwashings run into it. For the present, however, I persevere, at Carshalton, against the wilfulness of the spring and the carelessness of the parish; and hope to conquer both: but I have been obliged entirely to abandon a notion I had of exhibiting ideally clean street pavement in the centre of London,—in the pleasant environs of Church Lane, St. Giles’s. There I had every help and encouragement from the authorities; and hoped, with the staff of two men and a young rogue of a crossing-sweeper, added to the regular force of the parish, to keep a quarter of a mile square of the narrow streets without leaving so much as a bit of orange-peel on the footway, or an eggshell in the gutters. I failed, partly because I chose too difficult a district to begin with, (the contributions of transitional mud being constant, and the inhabitants passive,) but chiefly because I could no more be on the spot myself, to give spirit to the men, when I left Denmark Hill for Coniston.

I next set up a tea-shop at 29, Paddington Street, W., (an establishment which my Fors readers may as well know of,) to supply the poor in that neighbourhood with pure tea, in packets as small as they chose to buy, without making a profit on the subdivision,—larger orders being of course equally acceptable from anybody who cares to promote honest dealing. The result of this experiment has been my ascertaining that the poor only like to buy their tea where it is brilliantly lighted and eloquently ticketed; and as I resolutely refuse to compete with my neighbouring tradesmen either in gas or rhetoric, the patient subdivision of my parcels by the two old servants of my mother’s, who manage the business for me, hitherto passes little recognized as an advantage by my uncalculating public. Also, steady increase in the consumption of spirits throughout the neighbourhood faster and faster slackens the demand for tea; but I believe none of these circumstances have checked my trade so much as my own procrastination in painting my sign. Owing to that total want of imagination and invention which makes me so impartial and so accurate a writer on subjects of political economy, I could not for months determine whether the said sign should be of a Chinese character, black upon gold; or of a Japanese, blue upon white; or of pleasant English, rose-colour on green; and still less how far legible scale of letters could be compatible, on a board only a foot broad, with lengthy enough elucidation of the peculiar offices of ‘Mr. Ruskin’s tea-shop.’ Meanwhile the business languishes, and the rent and taxes absorb the profits, and something more, after the salary of my good servants has been paid.

In all these cases, however, I can see that I am defeated only because I have too many things on hand: and that neither rabbits at Coniston, road-surveyors at Croydon, or mud in St. Giles’s would get the better of me, if I could give exclusive attention to any one business: meantime, I learn the difficulties which are to be met, and shall make the fewer mistakes when I venture on any work with other people’s money.

I may as well, together with these confessions, print a piece written for the end of a Fors letter at Assisi, a month or two back, but for which I had then no room, referring to the increase of commercial, religious, and egotistic insanity, [66] in modern society, and delicacy of the distinction implied by that long wall at Hanwell, between the persons inside it, and out.

‘Does it never occur to me,’ (thus the letter went on) ‘that I may be mad myself?’

Well, I am so alone now in my thoughts and ways, that if I am not mad, I should soon become so, from mere solitude, but for my work. But it must be manual work. Whenever I succeed in a drawing, I am happy, in spite of all that surrounds me of sorrow. It is a strange feeling;—not gratified vanity: I can have any quantity of praise I like from some sorts of people; but that does me no vital good, (though dispraise does me mortal harm); whereas to succeed to my own satisfaction in a manual piece of work, is life,—to me, as to all men; and it is only the peace which comes necessarily from manual labour which in all time has kept the honest country people patient in their task of maintaining the rascals who live in towns. But we are in hard times, now, for all men’s wits; for men who know the truth are like to go mad from isolation; and the fools are all going mad in ‘Schwärmerei,’—only that is much the pleasanter way. Mr. Lecky, for instance, quoted in last Fors; how pleasant for him to think he is ever so much wiser than Aristotle; and that, as a body, the men of his generation are the wisest that ever were born—giants of intellect, according to Lord Macaulay, compared to the pigmies of Bacon’s time, and the minor pigmies of Christ’s time, and the minutest of all, the microscopic pigmies of Solomon’s time, and, finally, the vermicular and infusorial pigmies—twenty-three millions to the cube inch—of Mr. Darwin’s time, whatever that may be. How pleasant for Mr. Lecky to live in these days of the Anakim,—“his spear, to equal which, the tallest pine,” etc., etc., which no man Stratford-born could have lifted, much less shaken.

But for us of the old race—few of us now left,—children who reverence our fathers, and are ashamed of ourselves; comfortless enough in that shame, and yearning for one word or glance from the graves of old, yet knowing ourselves to be of the same blood, and recognizing in our hearts the same passions, with the ancient masters of humanity;—we, who feel as men, and not as carnivorous worms; we, who are every day recognizing some inaccessible height of thought and power, and are miserable in our shortcomings,—the few of us now standing here and there, alone, in the midst of this yelping, carnivorous crowd, mad for money and lust, tearing each other to pieces, and starving each other to death, and leaving heaps of their dung and ponds of their spittle on every palace floor and altar stone,—it is impossible for us, except in the labour of our hands, not to go mad.

And the danger is tenfold greater for a man in my own position, concerned with the arts which develope the more subtle brain sensations; and, through them, tormented all day long. Mr. Leslie Stephen rightly says how much better it is to have a thick skin and a good digestion. Yes, assuredly; but what is the use of knowing that, if one hasn’t? In one of my saddest moods, only a week or two ago, because I had failed twice over in drawing the lifted hand of Giotto’s ‘Poverty;’ utterly beaten and comfortless, at Assisi, I got some wholesome peace and refreshment by mere sympathy with a Bewickian little pig in the roundest and conceitedest burst of pig-blossom. His servant,—a grave old woman, with much sorrow and toil in the wrinkles of her skin, while his was only dimpled in its divine thickness,—was leading him, with magnanimous length of rope, down a grassy path behind the convent; stopping, of course, where he chose. Stray stalks and leaves of eatable things, in various stages of ambrosial rottenness, lay here and there; the convent walls made more savoury by their fumigation, as Mr. Leslie Stephen says the Alpine pines are by his cigar. And the little joyful darling of Demeter shook his curly tail, and munched; and grunted the goodnaturedest of grunts, and snuffled the approvingest of snuffles, and was a balm and beatification to behold; and I would fain have changed places with him for a little while, or with Mr. Leslie Stephen for a little while,—at luncheon, suppose,—anywhere but among the Alps. But it can’t be.

Hotel Meurice, Paris,
20th October, 1874.

I interrupt myself, for an instant or two, to take notice of two little things that happen to me here—arriving to breakfast by night train from Geneva.

Expecting to be cold, I had ordered fire, and sat down by it to read my letters as soon as I arrived, not noticing that the little parlour was getting much too hot. Presently, in comes the chambermaid, to put the bedroom in order, which one enters through the parlour. Perceiving that I am mismanaging myself, in the way of fresh air, as she passes through, “Il fait bien chaud, monsieur, ici,” says she reprovingly, and with entire self-possession. Now that is French servant-character of the right old school. She knows her own position perfectly, and means to stay in it, and wear her little white radiant frill of a cap all her days. She knows my position also; and has not the least fear of my thinking her impertinent because she tells me what it is right that I should know. Presently afterwards, an evidently German-importation of waiter brings me up my breakfast, which has been longer in appearing than it would have been in old times. It looks all right at first,—the napkin, china, and solid silver sugar basin, all of the old régime. Bread, butter,—yes, of the best still. Coffee, milk,—all right too. But, at last, here is a bit of the new régime. There are no sugar-tongs; and the sugar is of beetroot, and in methodically similar cakes, which I must break with my finger and thumb if I want a small piece, and put back what I don’t want for my neighbour, to-morrow.

‘Civilization,’ this, you observe, according to Professor Liebig and Mr. John Stuart Mill. Not according to old French manners, however.

Now, my readers are continually complaining that I don’t go on telling them my plan of life, under the rule of St. George’s Company.

I have told it them, again and again, in broad terms: agricultural life, with as much refinement as I can enforce in it. But it is impossible to describe what I mean by ‘refinement,’ except in details which can only be suggested by practical need; and which cannot at all be set down at once.

Here, however, to-day, is one instance. At the best hotel in what has been supposed the most luxurious city of modern Europe,—because people are now always in a hurry to catch the train, they haven’t time to use the sugar-tongs, or look for a little piece among differently sized lumps, and therefore they use their fingers; have bad sugar instead of good, and waste the ground that would grow blessed cherry trees, currant bushes, or wheat, in growing a miserable root as a substitute for the sugar-cane, which God has appointed to grow where cherries and wheat won’t, and to give juice which will freeze into sweet snow as pure as hoar-frost.

Now, on the poorest farm of the St. George’s Company, the servants shall have white and brown sugar of the best—or none. If we are too poor to buy sugar, we will drink our tea without; and have suet-dumpling instead of pudding. But among the earliest school lessons, and home lessons, decent behaviour at table will be primarily essential; and of such decency, one little exact point will be—the neat, patient, and scrupulous use of sugar-tongs instead of fingers. If we are too poor to have silver basins, we will have delf ones; if not silver tongs, we will have wooden ones; and the boys of the house shall be challenged to cut, and fit together, the prettiest and handiest machines of the sort they can contrive. In six months you would find more real art fancy brought out in the wooden handles and claws, than there is now in all the plate in London.

Now, there’s the cuckoo-clock striking seven, just as I sit down to correct the press of this sheet, in my nursery at Herne Hill; and though I don’t remember, as the murderer does in Mr. Crummles’ play, having heard a cuckoo-clock strike seven—in my infancy, I do remember, in my favourite ‘Frank,’ much talk of the housekeeper’s cuckoo-clock, and of the boy’s ingenuity in mending it. Yet to this hour of seven in the morning, ninth December of my fifty-fifth year, I haven’t the least notion how any such clock says ‘Cuckoo,’ nor a clear one even of the making of the commonest barking toy of a child’s Noah’s ark. I don’t know how a barrel organ produces music by being ground; nor what real function the pea has in a whistle. Physical science—all this—of a kind which would have been boundlessly interesting to me, as to all boys of mellifluous disposition, if only I had been taught it with due immediate practice, and enforcement of true manufacture, or, in pleasant Saxon, ‘handiwork.’ But there shall not be on St. George’s estate a single thing in the house which the boys don’t know how to make, nor a single dish on the table which the girls will not know how to cook.

By the way, I have been greatly surprised by receiving some letters of puzzled inquiry as to the meaning of my recipe, given last year, for Yorkshire Pie. Do not my readers yet at all understand that the whole gist of this book is to make people build their own houses, provide and cook their own dinners, and enjoy both? Something else besides, perhaps; but at least, and at first, those. St. Michael’s mass, and Christ’s mass, may eventually be associated in your minds with other things than goose and pudding; but Fors demands at first no more chivalry nor Christianity from you than that you build your houses bravely, and earn your dinners honestly, and enjoy them both, and be content with them both. The contentment is the main matter; you may enjoy to any extent, but if you are discontented, your life will be poisoned. The little pig was so comforting to me because he was wholly content to be a little pig; and Mr. Leslie Stephen is in a certain degree exemplary and comforting to me, because he is wholly content to be Mr. Leslie Stephen; while I am miserable because I am always wanting to be something else than I am. I want to be Turner; I want to be Gainsborough; I want to be Samuel Prout; I want to be Doge of Venice; I want to be Pope; I want to be Lord of the Sun and Moon. The other day, when I read that story in the papers about the dog-fight, [67] I wanted to be able to fight a bulldog.

Truly, that was the only effect of the story upon me, though I heard everybody else screaming out how horrible it was. What’s horrible in it? Of course it is in bad taste, and the sign of a declining era of national honour—as all brutal gladiatorial exhibitions are; and the stakes and rings of the tethered combat meant precisely, for England, what the stakes and rings of the Theatre of Taormina,—where I saw the holes left for them among the turf, blue with Sicilian lilies, in this last April,—meant, for Greece, and Rome. There might be something loathsome, or something ominous, in such a story, to the old Greeks of the school of Heracles; who used to fight with the Nemean lion, or with Cerberus, when it was needful only, and not for money; and whom their Argus remembered through all Trojan exile. There might be something loathsome in it, or ominous, to an Englishman of the school of Shakespeare or Scott; who would fight with men only, and loved his hound. But for you—you carnivorous cheats—what, in dog’s or devil’s name, is there horrible in it for you? Do you suppose it isn’t more manly and virtuous to fight a bulldog, than to poison a child, or cheat a fellow who trusts you, or leave a girl to go wild in the streets? And don’t you live, and profess to live—and even insolently proclaim that there’s no other way of living than—by poisoning and cheating? And isn’t every woman of fashion’s dress, in Europe, now set the pattern of to her by its prostitutes?

What’s horrible in it? I ask you, the third time. I hate, myself, seeing a bulldog ill-treated; for they are the gentlest and faithfullest of living creatures if you use them well. And the best dog I ever had was a bull-terrier, whose whole object in life was to please me, and nothing else; though, if he found he could please me by holding on with his teeth to an inch-thick stick, and being swung round in the air as fast as I could turn, that was his own idea of entirely felicitous existence. I don’t like, therefore, hearing of a bulldog’s being ill-treated; but I can tell you a little thing that chanced to me at Coniston the other day, more horrible, in the deep elements of it, than all the dog, bulldog, or bull fights, or baitings, of England, Spain, and California. A fine boy, the son of an amiable English clergyman, had come on the coach-box round the Water-head to see me, and was telling me of the delightful drive he had had. “Oh,” he said, in the triumph of his enthusiasm, “and just at the corner of the wood, there was such a big squirrel! and the coachman threw a stone at it, and nearly hit it!”

‘Thoughtlessness—only thoughtlessness’—say you—proud father? Well, perhaps not much worse than that. But how could it be much worse? Thoughtlessness is precisely the chief public calamity of our day; and when it comes to the pitch, in a clergyman’s child, of not thinking that a stone hurts what it hits of living things, and not caring for the daintiest, dextrousest, innocentest living thing in the northern forests of God’s earth, except as a brown excrescence to be knocked off their branches,—nay, good pastor of Christ’s lambs, believe me, your boy had better have been employed in thoughtfully and resolutely stoning St. Stephen—if any St. Stephen is to be found in these days, when men not only can’t see heaven opened, but don’t so much as care to see it, shut.

For they, at least, meant neither to give pain nor death without cause,—that unanimous company who stopped their ears,—they, and the consenting bystander who afterwards was sorry for his mistake.

But, on the whole, the time has now come when we must cease throwing of stones either at saints or squirrels; and, as I say, build our own houses with them, honestly set: and similarly content ourselves in peaceable use of iron and lead, and other such things which we have been in the habit of throwing at each other dangerously, in thoughtlessness; and defending ourselves against as thoughtlessly, though in what we suppose to be an ingenious manner. Ingenious or not, will the fabric of our new ship of the Line, ‘Devastation,’ think you, follow its fabricator in heavenly places, when he dies in the Lord? In such representations as I have chanced to see of probable Paradise, Noah is never without his ark;—holding that up for judgment as the main work of his life. Shall we hope at the Advent to see the builder of the ‘Devastation’ invite St. Michael’s judgment on his better style of naval architecture, and four-foot-six-thick ‘armour of light’?

It is to-day the second Sunday in Advent, and all over England, about the time that I write these words, full congregations will be for the second time saying Amen to the opening collect of the Christian year.

I wonder how many individuals of the enlightened public understand a single word of its first clause:

“Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of
darkness, and put upon us the armour of light, now in the time of
this mortal life.”

How many of them, may it be supposed, have any clear knowledge of what grace is, or of what the works of darkness are which they hope to have grace to cast away; or will feel themselves, in the coming year, armed with any more luminous mail than their customary coats and gowns, hosen and hats? Or again, when they are told to “have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them,”—what fellowship do they recognize themselves to have guiltily formed; and whom, or what, will they feel now called upon to reprove?

In last Fors, I showed you how the works of darkness were unfruitful;—the precise reverse of the fruitful, or creative, works of Light;—but why in this collect, which you pray over and over again all Advent, do you ask for ‘armour’ instead of industry? You take your coat off to work in your own gardens; why must you put a coat of mail on, when you are to work in the Garden of God?

Well; because the earthworms in it are big—and have teeth and claws, and venomous tongues. So that the first question for you is indeed, not whether you have a mind to work in it—many a coward has that—but whether you have courage to stand in it, and armour proved enough to stand in.

Suppose you let the consenting bystander who took care of the coats taken off to do that piece of work on St. Stephen, explain to you the pieces out of St. Michael’s armoury needful to the husbandman, or Georgos, of God’s garden.

“Stand therefore; having your loins girt about with Truth.”

That means, that the strength of your backbone depends on your meaning to do true battle.

“And having on the breastplate of Justice.”

That means, there are to be no partialities in your heart, of anger or pity;—but you must only in justice kill, and only in justice keep alive.

“And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of Peace.”

That means, that where your foot pauses, moves, or enters, there shall be peace; and where you can only shake the dust of it on the threshold, mourning.

“Above all, take the shield of Faith.”

Of fidelity or obedience to your captain, showing his bearings, argent, a cross gules; your safety, and all the army’s, being first in the obedience of faith: and all casting of spears vain against such guarded phalanx.

“And take the helmet of Salvation.”

Elsewhere, the hope of salvation, that being the defence of your intellect against base and sad thoughts, as the shield of fidelity is the defence of your heart against burning and consuming passions.

“And the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.”

That being your weapon of war,—your power of action, whether with sword or ploughshare; according to the saying of St. John of the young soldiers of Christ, “I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the Word of God abideth in you.” The Word by which the heavens were of old; and which, being once only Breath, became in man Flesh, ‘quickening it by the spirit’ into the life which is, and is to come; and enabling it for all the works nobly done by the quick, and following the dead.

And now, finish your Advent collect, and eat your Christmas fare, and drink your Christmas wine, thankfully; and with understanding that if the supper is holy which shows your Lord’s death till He come, the dinner is also holy which shows His life; and if you would think it wrong at any time to go to your own baby’s cradle side, drunk, do not show your gladness by Christ’s cradle in that manner; but eat your meat, and carol your carol in pure gladness and singleness of heart; and so gird up your loins with truth, that, in the year to come, you may do such work as Christ can praise, whether He call you to judgment from the quick or dead; so that among your Christmas carols there may never any more be wanting the joyfullest,—

O sing unto the Lord a new song:
Sing unto the Lord, all the earth.
Say among the heathen that the Lord is King:
The world also shall be stablished that it shall not be moved.
Let the heavens rejoice,
And let the earth be glad;
Let the sea shout, and the fulness thereof.
Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein:
Then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice
Before the Lord:
For He cometh, for He cometh to judge the earth:
He shall judge the world with righteousness,
And the people with His truth.

NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.

I. I have kept the following kind and helpful letter for the close of the year:—

“January 8, 1874.

“Sir,—I have been much moved by a passage in No. 37 of Fors
Clavigera, in which you express yourself in somewhat desponding
terms as to your loneliness in ‘life and thought,’ now you have
grown old. You complain that many of your early friends have
forgotten or disregarded you, and that you are almost left alone. I
cannot certainly be called an early friend, or, in the common
meaning of the word, a friend of any time. But I cannot refrain
from telling you that there are ‘more than 7,000’ in this very
‘Christ-defying’ England whom you have made your friends by your
wise sympathy and faithful teaching. I, for my own part, owe you a
debt of thankfulness not only for the pleasant hours I have spent
with you in your books, but also for the clearer views of many of
the ills which at present press upon us, and for the methods of
cure upon which you so urgently and earnestly insist. I would
especially mention ‘Unto this Last’ as having afforded me the
highest satisfaction. It has ever since I first read it been my
text-book of political economy. I think it is one of the
needfullest lessons for a selfish, recklessly competitive,
cheapest-buying and dearest-selling age, that it should be told
there are principles deeper, higher, and even more prudent than
those by which it is just now governed. It is particularly
refreshing to find Christ’s truths applied to modern commercial
immorality in the trenchant and convincing style which
characterizes your much maligned but most valuable book. It has
been, let me assure you, appreciated in very unexpected quarters;
and one humble person to whom I lent my copy, being too poor to buy
one for himself actually wrote it out word for word, that he might
always have it by him.”

(“What a shame!” thinks the enlightened Mudie-subscriber. “See what
comes of his refusing to sell his books cheap.”

Yes,—see what comes of it. The dreadful calamity, to another
person, of doing once, what I did myself twice—and, in great part
of the book, three times. A vain author, indeed, thinks nothing of
the trouble of writing his own books. But I had infinitely rather
write somebody’s else’s. My good poor disciple, at the most, had
not half the pain his master had; learnt his book rightly, and gave
me more help, by this best kind of laborious sympathy, than twenty
score of flattering friends who tell me what a fine word-painter I
am, and don’t take the pains to understand so much as half a
sentence in a volume.)

“You have done, and are doing, a good work for England, and I pray
you not to be discouraged. Continue as you have been doing,
convincing us by your ‘sweet reasonableness’ of our errors and
miseries, and the time will doubtless come when your work, now
being done in Jeremiah-like sadness and hopelessness, will bear
gracious and abundant fruit.

“Will you pardon my troubling you with this note? but, indeed, I
could not be happy after reading your gloomy experience, until I
had done my little best to send one poor ray of comfort into your
seemingly almost weary heart.

“I remain,
“Yours very sincerely.”

II. Next to this delightful testimony to my ‘sweet reasonableness,’ here is some discussion of evidence on the other side:—

November 12, 1872.

“To John Ruskin, LL.D., greeting, these.

“Enclosed is a slip cut from the ‘Liverpool Mercury’ of last
Friday, November 8. I don’t send it to you because I think it
matters anything what the ‘Mercury’ thinks about any one’s
qualification for either the inside or outside of any asylum; but
that I may suggest to you, as a working-man reader of your letters,
the desirability of your printing any letters of importance you may
send to any of the London papers, over again—in, say, the space of
‘Fors Clavigera’ that you have set apart for correspondence. It is
most tantalizing to see a bit printed like the enclosed, and not
know either what is before or after. I felt similar feelings some
time ago over a little bit of a letter about the subscription to
Warwick Castle.

“We cannot always see the London papers, especially us provincials;
and we would like to see what goes on between you and the newspaper
world.

“Trusting that you will give this suggestion some consideration,
and at any rate take it as given in good faith from a disciple
following afar off,

“I remain, sincerely yours.”

The enclosed slip was as follows:—

“Mr. Ruskin’s Tender Point.—Mr. John Ruskin has written a letter to
a contemporary on madness and crime, which goes far to clear up the
mystery which has surrounded some of his writings of late. The
following passage amply qualifies the distinguished art critic for
admission into any asylum in the country:—‘I assure you, sir,
insanity is a tender point with me.’” The writer then quotes to the
end the last paragraph of the letter, which, in compliance with my
correspondent’s wish, I am happy here to reprint in its entirety.

MADNESS AND CRIME.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ‘PALL MALL GAZETTE.’

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

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

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

Corpus Christi College, Oxford, November 2, (1872).

III. I am very grateful to the friend who sends me the following note on my criticism of Dickens in last letter:—

“It does not in the least detract from the force of Fors, p. 253,
line 18 (November), that there was a real ‘Miss Flite,’ whom I have
seen, and my father well remembers; and who used to haunt the
Courts in general, and sometimes to address them. She had been
ruined, it was believed; and Dickens must have seen her, for her
picture is like the original. But he knew nothing about her, and
only constructed her after his fashion. She cannot have been any
prototype of the character of Miss Flite. I never heard her real
name. Poor thing! she did not look sweet or kind, but crazed and
spiteful; and unless looks deceived Dickens, he just gave careless,
false witness about her. Her condition seemed to strengthen your
statement in its very gist,—as Law had made her look like Peter
Peebles.

“My father remembers little Miss F., of whom nothing was known. She
always carried papers and a bag, and received occasional charity
from lawyers.

“Gridley’s real name was Ikey;—he haunted Chancery. Another, named
Pitt, in the Exchequer;—broken attorneys, both.”

IV. I have long kept by me an official statement of the condition of England when I began Fors, and together with it an illustrative column, printed, without alteration, from the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ of the previous year. They may now fitly close my four years’ work, of which I have good hope next year to see some fruit.

Mr. Goschen on the Condition of England.—“The nation is again making money at an enormous rate, and driving every kind of decently secure investment up to unprecedented figures. Foreign Stocks, Indian Stocks, Home Railway Shares, all securities which are beyond the control of mere speculators and offer above four per cent. were never so dear; risky loans for millions, like that for Peru, are taken with avidity; the cup is getting full, and in all human probability some new burst of speculation is at hand, which may take a beneficial form—for instance, we could get rid of a hundred millions in making cheap country railways with immense advantage—but will more probably turn out to be a mere method of depletion. However it goes, the country is once more getting rich, and the money is filtering downwards to the actual workers. The people, as Mr. Goschen showed by unimpugnable figures, are consuming more sugar, more tea, more beer, spirits, and tobacco, more, in fact, of every kind of popular luxury, than ever. Their savings have also increased, while the exports of cotton, of wool, of linen, of iron, of machinery, have reached a figure wholly beyond precedent. By the testimony of all manner of men—factory inspectors, poor-law inspectors, members of great cities—the Lancashire trade, the silk trade, the flax-spinning trade, the lace trade, and, above all, the iron trade, are all so flourishing, that the want is not of work to be done, but of hands to do it. Even the iron shipbuilding trade, which was at so low a point, is reviving, and the only one believed to be still under serious depression is the building trade of London, which has, it is believed, been considerably overdone. So great is the demand for hands in some parts of the country, that Mr. Goschen believes that internal emigration would do more to help the people than emigration to America, while it is certain that no relief which can be afforded by the departure of a few workpeople is equal to the relief caused by the revival of any one great trade—relief, we must add, which would be more rapid and diffused if the trades’ unions, in this one respect at least false to their central idea of the brotherhood of labour, were not so jealous of the intrusion of outsiders. There is hardly a trade into which a countryman of thirty, however clever, can enter at his own discretion—one of the many social disqualifications which press upon the agricultural labourer.

“The picture thus drawn by Mr. Goschen, and truly drawn—for the President of the Poor-Law Board is a man who does not manipulate figures, but treats them with the reverence of the born statist—is a very pleasant one, especially to those who believe that wealth is the foundation of civilization; but yet what a weary load it is that, according to the same speech, this country is carrying, and must carry! There are 1,100,000 paupers on the books, and not a tenth of them will be taken off by any revival whatever, for not a tenth of them are workers. The rest are children—350,000 of them alone—widows, people past work, cripples, lunatics, incapables, human drift of one sort or another, the detritus of commerce and labour, a compost of suffering, helplessness, and disease. In addition to the burden of the State, in addition to the burden of the Debt, which we talk of as nothing, but without which England would be the least-taxed country in the world, this country has to maintain an army of incapables twice as numerous as the army of France, to feed, and clothe, and lodge and teach them,—an army which she cannot disband, and which she seems incompetent even to diminish. To talk of emigration, of enterprise, even of education, as reducing this burden, is almost waste of breath; for cripples do not emigrate, the aged do not benefit by trade, when education is universal children must still be kept alive.”—The Spectator, June 25, 1870.

V. The following single column of the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ has been occasionally referred to in past letters:—

“It is proposed to erect a memorial church at Oxford to the late
Archbishop Longley. The cost is estimated at from £15,000 to
£20,000. The subscriptions promised already amount to upwards of
£2,000, and in the list are the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the
Bishops of Oxford, St. Asaph, and Chester.”

“An inquest was held in the Isle of Dogs by Mr. Humphreys, the
coroner, respecting the death of a woman named Catherine Spence,
aged thirty-four, and her infant. She was the wife of a labourer,
who had been almost without employment for two years and a half.
They had pledged all their clothes to buy food, and some time since
part of the furniture had been seized by the brokers for rent. The
house in which they lived was occupied by six families, who paid
the landlord 5s. 9d. for rent. One of the witnesses stated that
‘all the persons in the house were ill off for food, and the
deceased never wanted it more than they did.’ The jury on going to
view the bodies found that the bed on which the woman and child had
died was composed of rags, and there were no bed-clothes upon it. A
small box placed upon a broken chair had served as a table. Upon it
lay a tract entitled ‘The Goodness of God.’ The windows were
broken, and an old iron tray had been fastened up against one and a
board up against another. Two days after his wife’s death the poor
man went mad, and he was taken to the workhouse. He was not taken
to the asylum, for there was no room for him in it—it was crowded
with mad people. Another juror said it was of no use to return a
verdict of death from starvation. It would only cause the distress
in the island to be talked about in newspapers. The jury returned a
verdict that the deceased woman died from exhaustion, privation,
and want of food.”

“The Rev. James Nugent, the Roman Catholic chaplain of the
Liverpool borough gaol, reported to the magistrates that crime is
increasing among young women in Liverpool; and he despairs of
amendment until effective steps are taken to check the open display
of vice which may now be witnessed nightly, and even daily, in the
thoroughfares of the town. Mr. Raffles, the stipendiary magistrate,
confesses that he is at a loss what to do in order to deter women
of the class referred to from offending against the law, as even
committal to the sessions and a long term of imprisonment fail to
produce beneficial effects. Father Nugent also despairs of doing
much good with this class; but he thinks that if they were
subjected to stricter control, and prevented from parading in our
thoroughfares, many girls would be deterred from falling into evil
ways.”

“At the Liverpool borough gaol sessions Mr. Robertson Gladstone
closely interrogated the chaplain (the Rev. Thomas Carter)
respecting his visitation of the prisoners. Mr. Gladstone is of
opinion that sufficient means to make the prisoners impressionable
to religious teaching are not used; whilst the chaplain asserts
that the system which he pursues is based upon a long experience,
extending over twenty-eight years, at the gaol. Mr. Gladstone, who
does not share the chaplain’s belief that the prisoners are
‘generally unimpressionable,’ hinted that some active steps in the
matter would probably be taken.”

“Mr. Fowler, the stipendiary magistrate of Manchester, referring to
Mr. Ernest Jones’ death yesterday, in the course of the proceedings
at the City police-court, said: ‘I wish to say one word, which I
intended to have said yesterday morning, in reference to the taking
from amongst us of a face which has been so familiar in this court;
but I wished to have some other magistrates present in order that I
might, on the part of the bench, and not only as an individual,
express our regret at the unexpected removal from our midst of a
man whose life has been a very remarkable one, whose name will
always be associated in this country in connection with the
half-century he lived in it, and who, whatever his faults—and who
amongst us is free?—possessed the great virtues of undoubted
integrity and honour, and of being thoroughly consistent, never
flinching from that course which he believed to be right, though at
times at the cost of fortune and of freedom.’”

“A Chester tradesman named Meacock, an ex-town councillor, has been
arrested in that city on a charge of forging conveyances of
property upon which he subsequently obtained a mortgage of £2,200.
The lady who owns the property appeared before the magistrates, and
declared that her signature to the conveyance was a forgery. The
prisoner was remanded, and was sent to prison in default of
obtaining the bail which was required.”

“Mr. Hughes, a Liverpool merchant, was summoned before the local
bench for having sent to the London Dock a case, containing
hydrochloric acid, without a distinct label or mark denoting that
the goods were dangerous. A penalty of £10 was imposed.”

“A woman, named Daley, came before the Leeds magistrates, with her
son, a boy six years old, whom she wished to be sent to a
reformatory, as she was unable to control him. She said that one
evening last week he went home, carrying a piece of rope, and said
that he was going to hang himself with it. He added that he had
already attempted to hang himself ‘in the Crown Court, but a little
lass loosed the rope for him, and he fell into a tub of water.’ It
turned out that the mother was living with a man by whom she had
two children, and it was thought by some in court that her object
was merely to relieve herself of the cost and care of the boy; but
the magistrates, thinking that the boy would be better away from
the contaminating influence of the street and of his home,
committed him to the Certified Industrial Schools until he arrives
at sixteen years of age, and ordered his mother to contribute one
shilling per week towards his maintenance.”—Pall Mall Gazette,
January 29, 1869.

SUBSCRIPTIONS TO ST. GEORGE’S FUND

TO CLOSE OF YEAR 1874.

(The Subscribers each know his or her number in this List.)

£ s. d.

1. Annual, £4 0 0 (1871, ’72, ’73, ’74) 16 0 0
2. Annual, £20 0 0 (1871, ’72, ’73, ’74) 80 0 0
3. Gift 5 0 0
4. Gifts (1871), £30 0 0; (1873), £20 0 0 50 0 0
5. Gift (1872) 20 0 0
6. Annual, £1 1 0 (1872, ’73, ’74) 3 3 0
7. Gift (1872) 10 0 0
8. Annual, £20 0 0 (1872, ’73, ’74) 60 0 0
9. Gift (1872) 25 0 0
10. Annual, £5 0 0 (1872, ’73) 10 0 0
11. Annual, £1 1 0 (1873, ’74) 2 2 0
12. Gift (1873) 4 0 0
13. Annual, £3 0 0 (1873, ’74) 6 0 0
14. Gift (1873) 13 10 0
15. Gift (1873) 5 0 0
16. Gift (1874) 25 0 0
17. ,, ,, 1 0 0
18. ,, ,, 10 0 0
19. ,, ,, 5 0 0
20. ,, ,, 2 0 0
21. ,, ,, 10 10 0
22. ,, ,, 1 1 0
23. ,, ,, 5 0 0
24. ,, ,, 1 1 0
==============
£370 7 0

One or two more subscriptions have come in since this list was drawn up; these will be acknowledged in the January number, and the subjoined letter from Mr. Cowper-Temple gives the state of the Fund in general terms.

Broadlands, Romsey,
December 9, 1874.

Dear Ruskin,

The St. George’s Fund, of which Sir Thomas Acland and I are
Trustees, consists at present of £7,000 [68] Consolidated Stock,
and of £923 standing to the credit of our joint account at the
Union Bank of London, Chancery Lane Branch. Contributions to this
fund are received by the Bank and placed to the credit of our joint
account.

Yours faithfully,
W. Cowper-Temple.

NOTES

[1] Of 6th March, not long ago, but I have lost note of the year.

[2] The close of the ninth book of Plato’s Republic. I use for the most part Mr. Jowett’s translation, here and there modifying it in my own arbitrarily dogged or diffuse way of Englishing passages of complex significance.

[3] Plato does not mean here, merely dissipation of a destructive kind, (as the next sentence shows,) but also healthy animal stupidities, as our hunting, shooting, and the like.

[4] Not quite so, gentlemen of the Royal Commission. Harvests, no less than sales, and fishermen no less than salesmen, need regulation by just human law. Here is a piece of news, for instance, from Glasgow, concerning Loch Fyne:—“Owing to the permission to fish for herring by trawling, which not only scrapes up the spawn from the bottom, but catches great quantities of the fry which are useless for market, and only fit for manure, it is a fact that, whereas Loch Fyne used to be celebrated for containing the finest herrings to be caught anywhere, and thousands and tens of thousands of boxes used to be exported from Inverary, there are not now enough caught there to enable them to export a single box, and the quantity caught lower down the loch, near its mouth (and every year the herring are being driven farther and farther down) is not a tithe of what it used to be. Such a thing as a Loch Fyne herring (of the old size and quality) cannot be had now in Glasgow for any money, and this is only a type of the destruction which trawling, and too short close-time, are causing to all the west-coast fishing. Whiting Bay, Arran, has been rid of its whiting by trawling on the spawning coast opposite. The cupidity of careless fishers, unchecked by beneficial law, is here also ‘killing the goose that lays the golden eggs,’ and herring of any kind are very scarce and very bad in Glasgow, at a penny and sometimes twopence each. Professor Huxley gave his sanction to trawling, in a Government Commission, I am told, some years ago, and it has been allowed ever since. I will tell you something similar about the seal-fishing off Newfoundland, another time.”

[5] In my aunt’s younger days, at Perth, the servants used regularly to make bargain that they should not be forced to dine on salmon more than so many times a week.

[6] As for instance, and in farther illustration of the use of herrings, here is some account of the maintenance of young painters and lawyers in Edinburgh, sixty years since, sent me by the third Fors; and good Dr. Brown, in an admirable sketch of the life of an admirable Scottish artist, says: “Raeburn (Sir Henry) was left an orphan at six, and was educated in Heriot’s Hospital. At fifteen he was apprenticed to a goldsmith; but after his time was out, set himself entirely to portrait painting. About this time he became acquainted with the famous cynic, lawyer, and wit, John Clerk, afterwards Lord Eldon, then a young advocate. Both were poor. Young Clerk asked Raeburn to dine at his lodgings. Coming in, he found the landlady laying the cloth, and setting down two dishes, one containing three herrings, and the other three potatoes. “Is this a’?” said John. “Ay, it’s a’.” “A’! didna I tell ye, woman, that a gentleman is to dine wi’ me, and that ye were to get six herrin and six potatoes?”

[7] I don’t remember telling you anything of the sort. I should tell you another story now, my dear friend.

[8] Very fine; but have all the children in Sheffield and Leeds had their pennyworth of gospel, first?

[9] All I can say is, tastes differ; but I have not myself tried the degree of comfort which may be attained in winter by lying on one’s side in a coal-seam, and cannot therefore feel confidence in offering an opinion.

[10] Very much so indeed, my good friend; and yet, the plague of it is, one never can get people to do anything that is wise or generous, unless they go and make monks of themselves. I believe this St. George’s land of mine will really be the first place where it has been attempted to get married people to live in any charitable and human way, and graft apples where they may eat them, without getting driven out of their Paradise.

[11] There, again! why, in the name of all that’s natural, can’t decent men and women use their tongues, on occasion, for what God made them for,—talking in a civil way; but must either go and make dumb beasts of themselves, or else (far worse) let out their tongues for hire, and live by vomiting novels and reviews!

[12] If to any reader, looking back on the history of Europe for the last four centuries, this sentence seems ironical, let him be assured that for the causes which make it seem so, during the last four centuries, the end of kinghood has come.

[13] Untranslateable. It means, she made no false pretence of reluctance, and neither politely nor feebly declined what she meant to accept. But the phrase might be used of a person accepting with ungraceful eagerness, or want of sense of obligation. A slight sense of this simplicity is meant by our author to be here included in the expression.

[14] “Trop bon.” It is a little more than ‘very good,’ but not at all equivalent to our English ‘too good.’

[15] “Se trouva.” Untranslateable. It is very little more than ‘was’ in front. But that little more,—the slight sense of not knowing quite how she got there,—is necessary to mark the under-current of meaning; she goes behind the cart first, thinking it more modest; but presently, nevertheless, ‘finds herself’ in front; “the cart goes better, so.”

[16] There used to be an avenue of tall trees, about a quarter of a mile long, on the Thun road, just at the brow of the descent to the bridge of the Aar, at the lower end of the main street of Berne.

[17] “Cohue.” Confused and moving mass. We have no such useful word.

[18] “Se revit.” It would not be right to say here ‘se trouva,’ because there is no surprise, or discovery, in the doing once again what is done every week. But one may nevertheless contemplate oneself, and the situation, from a new point of view. Hansli ‘se revit’—reviewed himself, literally; a very proper operation, every now and then, for everybody.

[19] A slight difference between the Swiss and English peasant is marked here; to the advantage of the former. At least, I imagine an English Hansli would not have known, even in love, whether the road was ugly or pretty.

[20] “Se requinquait a n’en plus finir.” Entirely beyond English rendering.

[21] “Ça.” Note the peculiar character and value, in modern French, of this general and slightly depreciatory pronoun, essentially a republican word,—hurried, inconsiderate, and insolent. The popular chant ‘ça ira’ gives the typical power.

[22] “C’est seulement pour dire.” I’ve been at least ten minutes trying to translate it, and can’t.

[23] “On est toujours homme.” The proverb is frequent among the French and Germans. The modesty of it is not altogether easy to an English mind, and would be totally incomprehensible to an ordinary Scotch one.

[24] “Assez brave.” Untranslateable, except by the old English sense of the word brave, and even that has more reference to outside show than the French word.

[25] You are to note carefully the conditions of sentiment in family relationships implied both here, and in the bride’s reference, farther on, to her godmother’s children. Poverty, with St. Francis’ pardon, is not always holy in its influence: yet a richer girl might have felt exactly the same, without being innocent enough to say so.

[26] I believe the reverend and excellent novelist would himself authorize the distinction; but Hansli’s mother must be answerable for it to my Evangelical readers.

[27] “Poêle a frire.” I don’t quite understand the nature of this article.

[28] Well said, the Viscount. People think me a grumbler; but I wholly believe this,—nay, know this. The world exists, indeed, only by the strength of its silent virtue.

[29] Well said, Viscount, again! So few people know the power of the Third Fors. If I had not chanced to give lessons in drawing to Octavia Hill, I could have done nothing in Marylebone, nor she either, for a while yet, I fancy.

[30] A lovely, classic, unbetterable sentence of Marmontel’s, perfect in wisdom and modesty.

[31] Not for a dividend upon it, I beg you to observe, and even the capital to be repaid in work.

[32] Or, worse still, as our public men do, upon the cost of non-compulsory measures!

[33] These small “powers” of terminal letters in some of the words are very curious.

[34] A lady high in the ranks of kindly English literature.

[35] Italics mine, as usual.

[36] Notes on Old Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1869. Things may possibly have mended in some respects in the last five years, but they have assuredly, in the country villages, got tenfold worse.

[37] “Bernard the happy.” The Beato of Mont Oliveto; not Bernard of Clairvaux. The entire inscription is, “received St. Francis of Assisi to supper and bed”; but it I had written it so, it would have appeared that St. Francis’s ecstacy was in consequence of his getting his supper.

[38] ‘Pall Mall Gazette,’ July 31st, 1873.

[39] “Rigurgitava”—gushed or gorged up; as a bottle which you have filled too full and too fast.

[40] Sensale, an interesting Venetian word. The fair on the Feast of the Ascension at Venice became in mellifluous brevity, ‘Sensa,’ and the most ornamental of the ware purchaseable at it, therefore, Sensale.

A “Holy-Thursday-Fairing,” feeling herself unwell, would be the properest translation.

[41] Observe, this is only asserted of its main principles; not of minor and accessory points. I may be entirely wrong in the explanation of a text, or mistake the parish schools of St. Matthias for St. Matthew’s, over and over again. I have so large a field to work in that this cannot be helped. But none of these minor errors are of the least consequence to the business in hand.

[42] See first article in the Notes and Correspondence to this number.

[43] See second note at end of this letter.

[44] The passage continues thus, curiously enough,—for the parallel of the boat at sea is precisely that which I have given, in true explanation of social phenomena:—

“The notion that when one man becomes rich he makes others poor, will be found upon examination to depend upon the assumption that there is in the world a fixed quantity of wealth; that when one man appropriates to himself a large amount of it, he excludes all others from any benefit arising from it, and that at the same time he forces some one else to be content with less than he would otherwise have had. Society, in short, must be compared to a boat at sea, in which there is a certain quantity of fresh water, and a certain number of shipwrecked passengers. In that case, no doubt, the water drunk by one is of no use to the rest, and if one drinks more, others must drink less, as the water itself is a fixed quantity. Moreover, no one man would be able to get more than a rateable share, except by superior force, or by some form of deceit, because the others would prevent him. The mere statement of this view ought to be a sufficient exposure of the fundamental error of the commonplaces which we are considering.”

[45] The reader might at first fancy that the economy was not “absolute,” but that the expenses of the traveller were simply borne by his host. Not so; the host only gave what he in his turn received, when he also travelled. Every man thus carried his home with him, and to travel, was merely to walk or ride from place to place, instead of round one’s own house. (See Saunders Fairford’s expostulation with Alan on the charges incurred at Noble House.)

[46] But what is to be done, then? Emigrate, of course; but under different laws from those of modern emigration. Don’t emigrate to China, poison Chinamen, and teach them to make steam engines, and then import Chinamen, to dig iron here. But see next Fors.

[47] The writings of our vulgar political economists, calling money only a “medium of exchange,” blind the foolish public conveniently to all the practical actions of the machinery of the currency. Money is not a medium of exchange, but a token of right. I have, suppose, at this moment, ten, twenty, or thirty thousand pounds. That signifies that, as compared with a man who has only ten pounds, I can claim possession of, call for, and do what I like with a thousand, or two thousand, or three thousand times as much of the valuable things existing in the country. The peasant accordingly gives the squire a certain number of these tokens or counters, which give the possessor a right to claim so much corn or meat. The squire gives these tokens to the various persons in town, enumerated in the text, who then claim the corn and meat from the peasant, returning him the counters, which he calls “price,” and gives to the squire again next year.

[48] Of the industry of the Magistrate against crime, I say nothing; for it now scarcely exists, but to do evil. See first article in Correspondence, at end of letter.

[49] Compare, especially, Letter xxix., p. 11.

[50] It is possible that this lending office may have been organised as a method of charity, corresponding to the original Monte di Pieta, the modern clergymen having imagined, in consequence of the common error about interest, that they could improve the system of Venice by ignoring its main condition—the lending gratis,—and benefit themselves at the same time.

[51] Read Isaiah vi. through carefully.

[52] The reader will perhaps now begin to see the true bearing of the earlier letters in Fors. Re-read, with this letter, that on the campaign of Crecy.

[53] I wish I could find room also for the short passages I omit; but one I quoted before, “As no one will deny that man possesses carnivorous teeth,” etc., and the others introduce collateral statements equally absurd, but with which at present we are not concerned.

[54] I must warn you against the false reading of the original, in many editions. Fournier’s five volume one is altogether a later text, in some cases with interesting intentional modifications, probably of the fifteenth century; but oftener with destruction of the older meaning. It gives this couplet, for instance,—

“Si n’avoit el plaisir de rien,
Que quant elle donnoit du sien.”

The old reading is,

“Si n’avoit elle joie de rien,
Fors quant elle povoit dire, ‘tien.’

Didot’s edition, Paris, 1814, is founded on very early and valuable texts; but it is difficult to read. Chaucer has translated a text some twenty or thirty years later in style; and his English is quite trustworthy as far as it is carried. For the rest of the Romanee, Fournier’s text is practically good enough, and easily readable.

[55] Fr. ‘chetive,’ rhyming accurately to ‘ententive.’

[56] Fr. Sarrasinesse.

[57] Even after eighteen hundred years of sermons, the Christian public do not clearly understand that ‘two coats,’ in the brief sermon of the Baptist to repentance, mean also, two petticoats, and the like.

I am glad that Fors obliges me to finish this letter at Lucca, under the special protection of St. Martin.

[58] Fr.,

“Si que par oula la chemise
Lui blancheoit la char alise.”

Look out ‘Alice,’ in Miss Yonge’s Dictionary of Christian Names and remember Alice of Salisbury.

[59] I believe the pale roses are meant to be white, but are tinged with red that they may not contend with the symbolic brightness of the lilies.

[60] Macintosh, 24, Paternoster Row.

[61] 2 Esdras iv. 4.

[62] See ‘Modern Painters,’ vol. iii., “The Firmament.”

[63] Compare Dante, Purg., end of Canto V.

[64] See the part of examination respecting communication held with the brother of the prisoner.

[65] See statement at close of accounts.

[66] See second letter in Notes and Correspondence.

[67] I don’t know how far it turned out to be true,—a fight between a dwarf and a bulldog (both chained to stakes as in Roman days), described at length in some journals.

[68] I have heard that some impression has got abroad that in giving this £7,000 stock to the St. George’s Company, I only parted with one year’s income. It was a fairly estimated tenth of my entire property, including Brantwood. The excess of the sum now at the credit of the Trustees, over the amount subscribed, consists in the accumulated interest on this stock. With the sum thus at their disposal, the Trustees are about to purchase another £1,000 of stock, and in the Fors of January will be a more complete statement of what we shall begin the year with, and of some dawning prospect of a beginning also to our operations.