Plate I.— First Conditions of Accumulation and Fusion in 
 Motionless Snow 
 
DEUCALION 
 
 ALSO 
 
 THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN, M.A. 
 
 OF "the seven lamps of architecture," "the crown of wild olive," 
 "sesame and lilies," etc. 
 
 BOSTON 
 ALDINE book PUBLISHING CO. 
 
 PUBLISHERS 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 Volume I. 
 Introduction, .... 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Alps and Jura, 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 The Three Alras, . , 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 On Ice Cream, 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Labitur, et Labetur, 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Valley of Cluse, . 
 
 ctlAPTER v£ 
 
 Of Butter and Honey, 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The Iris of the Earth, 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The Alphabet, 
 
CHAPTER IX, 
 
 Fife and Water, 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Thirty Years Since, 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Of Silica in Lavas, 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Yew dale and its Streamlets, 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Of Stellar Silica, 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 SCHISMA MONTIUM, .... 
 
 APPENDIX, .... 
 
 Living Waves, 
 
 Revision, r 
 
 Kruma Artifex, 
 INDEX, , o 
 
 Volume II. 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 « » » 
 
THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGH 
 
 How the Agricultural System of the Black Brothers was 
 interfered with by Southwest Wind, Esquire, . . 239 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Of the Proceedings of the Three Brothers after the Visit 
 of Southwest Wind, Esquire; and how Little Gluck 
 had an Interview with the King of the Golden River 250 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 i • 
 
 How Mr. Hans set off on an Expedition to the Golden 
 River, and how he prospered therein, . . 258 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 How Mr. Schwartz set off on an Expedition to the Golden 
 River, and how he prospered therein, . . . 265 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 How little Gluck set off on an Expedition to the Golden 
 River, and how he prospered therein ; with other 
 matters of interest, ..... 268 
 
 Dame Wiggins of Lee, ...... 273 
 
EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 February 8, 1872. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The function in Art of the faculty called by the Greeks, 
 
 aoQta. ...... . 301 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 February 10, 1872. 
 
 The function in Science of the faculty called by the 
 
 Greeks, <roq>ia . . . . . . . 313 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 February 15, 1872. 
 The Relation of Wise Art to Wise Science, . . 324 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 
 February 17, 1872. 
 
 The function in Art and Science of the virtue called 
 by the Greeks, ffaxppocrvvy} . ..... 340 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 February, 22, 1872. 
 
 The function in Art and Science of the virtue called 
 
 by the Greeks, aurdptcsia ..... 348 
 
LECTURE VI. 
 February 24, 1872. 
 The relation to Art of the Science of Light, 
 
 PAGE 
 • 36l 
 
 LECTURE VII. 
 February 29, 1872. 
 The relation to Art of the Sciences of Inorganic Form 373 
 
 LECTURE VIII. 
 March 2, 1872. 
 
 The relation to Art of the Science of Organic Form, . 385 
 
 LECTURE IX. 
 March 7, 1872. 
 
 Introduction to Elementary Exercises in Physiologic 
 
 Art. The Story of the Halcyon, . • • 399 
 
 LECTURE X. 
 March 9, 1872. 
 
 Introduction to Elementary Exercises in Historic Art. 
 The Heraldic Ordinaries, ..... 4ig 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER. 
 
 DESIGNED AND DRAWN ON WOOD BY RICHARD DOYLE. 
 
 TAGE 
 
 Southwest Wind, Esq., knocking at the Black Brothers' 
 door, engraved by C. Thurston Thompson, Froiitispiece 
 
 The Treasure Valley, engraved by C. Thurston Thomp- 
 son, ........ Title 
 
 Initial Letter, and Mountain Range, engraved by G. and 
 
 E. Dalziel, . . . . . • . . 239 
 
 Southwest Wind, Esq., seated on the hob, engraved by 
 
 G. and E. Dalziel, ...... 244 
 
 Southwest Wind, Esq., bowing to the Black Brothers, 
 engraved by H. Orrin Smith, .... 246 
 
 Storm Scene, engraved by G. and E. Dalziel, . . 248 
 
 Card of Southwest Wind, Esq., engraved by H. Orrin 
 Smith, ........ 249 
 
 Initial Letter, and Cottage in the Treasure Valley, 
 engraved by Isabel Thompson, .... 250 
 
 The Black Brothers drinking, and Gluck working, 
 
 ENGRAVED BY C. S CHELTNAM, . . . . 251 
 
 Gluck looking out at the Golden River, engraved by 
 
 H. D. Linton, . . . . . . -252 
 
 The Golden Dwarf appearing to Gluck, engraved by 
 G. and E. Dalziel, ...... 255 
 
PAGE 
 
 Gluck looking up the Chimney, engraved by H. Orrin 
 Smith, . . . . . . . .257 
 
 The Black Brothers beating Gluck, engraved by C. S. 
 Cheltnam, ....... 258 
 
 Hans and Schwartz fighting, engraved by H. Orrin Smith, 259 
 
 Schwartz before the Magistrate, engraved by C. S. 
 Cheltnam, ...... 260 
 
 Hans and the Dog, engraved by H. Orrin Smith, . . 262 
 
 The Black Stone, engraved by G. and E. Dalziel, . 264 
 
 Initial Letter — Gluck releasing Schwartz, engraved by 
 G. and E. Dalziel, . . . . . . 265 
 
 Schwartz ascending the Mountain, engraved by H. Orrin 
 Smith, ....... 266 
 
 Initial Letter— Gluck ascending the Mountain, engraved 
 by H. Orrin Smith, ...... 268 
 
 Priest giving Gluck Holy Water, engraved by G. and E. 
 Dalziel, ....... 269 
 
 Gluck and the Child, engraved by C. S. Cheltnam, . 270 
 
LIST OF PLATES. 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 PLATE FACING PAGE 
 
 1. First conditions of Accumulation and Fusion in 
 
 Motionless Snow, .... Frontispiece 
 
 2. The progress of Modern Science in Glacier Survey, . 58 
 
 3. Mural Agates, ...... 72 
 
 4. Amethyst Quartz, . . . . .92 
 
 5. Structure of Lake Agate, . . . 125 
 
 6. Lateral Compression of Strata, . . . . 139 
 
 7. The Strata of Switzerland and Cumberland, . 154 
 
 8. "Development." Crocodile Latent in Toucan, . 176 
 
 9. "Development." Short Noses into Long, . . 190 
 
 10. Modes of Crystalline Increment, • . . 222 
 
 11. The Olympian Lightning, . . • • 225 
 
DEUCALION 
 
 COLLECTED STUDIES ON THE LAPSE OF WAVES 
 AND LIFE OF STONES 
 
IETKODUCTIOK 
 
 Brantwood, 13th July, 1875. 
 
 I have been glancing lately at many biographies, and have 
 been much struck by the number of deaths which occur be- 
 tween the ages of fifty and sixty, (and, for the most part, in 
 the earlier half of the decade,) in cases where the brain has 
 been much used emotionally : or perhaps it would be more 
 accurate to say, where the heart, and the faculties of percep- 
 tion connected with it, have stimulated the brain-action. Sup- 
 posing such excitement to be temperate, equable, and joyful, I 
 have no doubt the tendency of it would be to prolong, rather 
 than depress, the vital energies. But the emotions of indig- 
 nation, grief, controversial anxiety and vanity, or hopeless, 
 and therefore uncontending, scorn, are all of them as deadly 
 to the body as poisonous air or polluted water ; and when I 
 reflect how much of the active part of my past life has been 
 spent in these states, — and that what may remain to me of life 
 can never more be in any other, — I begin to ask myself, with 
 somewhat pressing arithmetic, how much time is likely to be 
 left me, at the age of fifty-six, to complete the various designs 
 for which, until past fifty, I was merely collecting materials. 
 
 Of these materials, I have now enough by me for a most 
 interesting (in my own opinion) history of fifteenth-century 
 Florentine art, in six octavo volumes ; an analysis of the Attic 
 art of the fifth century b.c, in three volumes ; an exhaustive 
 history of northern thirteenth-century art, in ten volumes ; a 
 life of Turner, with analysis of modern landscape art, in four 
 volumes ; a life of Walter Scott, with analysis of modern epic 
 art, in seven volumes ; a life of Xenophon, with analysis of the 
 general principles of Education, in ten volumes ; a commen- 
 
6 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 tary on Hesiod, with final analysis of the principles of Political 
 Economy, in nine volumes ; and a general description of the 
 geology and botany of the Alps, in twenty-four volumes. 
 
 Of these works, though all carefully projected, and some 
 already in progress, — yet, allowing for the duties of my Pro- 
 fessorship, possibly continuing at Oxford, and for the increas- 
 ing correspondence relating to Fors Clavigera, — it does not 
 seem to me, even in my most sanguine moments, now probable 
 that I shall live to effect such conclusion as would be satisfac- 
 tory to me ; and I think it will therefore be only prudent, how- 
 ever humiliating, to throw together at once, out of the heap 
 of loose stones collected for this many-towered city which I 
 am not able to finish, such fragments of good marble as may 
 perchance be useful to future builders ; and to clear away, 
 out of sight, the lime and other rubbish which I meant for 
 mortar. 
 
 And because it is needful, for my health's sake, hencefor- 
 ward to do as far as possible what I find pleasure, or at least 
 tranquillity, in doing, I am minded to collect first what I have 
 done in geology and botany ; for indeed, had it not been for 
 grave mischance in earlier life, (partly consisting in the unlucky 
 gift, from an affectionate friend, of Rogers' poems, as related 
 in Fors Clavigera for August of this year,) my natural dispo- 
 sition for these sciences would certainly long ago have made 
 me a leading member of the British Association for the Ad- 
 vancement of Science ; or — who knows ? — even raised me to 
 the position which it was always the summit of my earthly 
 ambition to attain, that of President of the Geological Society. 
 For, indeed, I began when I was only twelve years old, a 'Minera- 
 logical Dictionary/ intended to supersede everything done by 
 Werner and Mohs, (and written in a shorthand composed of 
 crystallographic signs now entirely unintelligible to me,) — 
 and year by year have endeavoured, until very lately, to keep 
 abreast with the rising tide of geological knowledge ; some- 
 times even, I believe, pushing my way into little creeks in ad- 
 vance of the general wave. I am not careful to assert for my- 
 self the petty advantage of priority in discovering what, some 
 day or other, somebody must certainly have discovered. But 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 7 
 
 X think it due to my readers, that they may receive what real 
 good there may be in these studies with franker confidence, 
 to tell them that the first sun-portrait ever taken of the Mat- 
 terhorn, (and as far as I know of any Swiss mountain what- 
 ever,) was taken by me in the year 1849 ; that the outlines, 
 (drawn by measurement of angle,) given in 'Modern Painters' 
 of the Cervin, and aiguilles of Chamouni, are at this day de- 
 monstrable by photography as the trustworthiest then in ex- 
 istence ; that I was the first to point out, in my lecture given 
 in the Royal Institution,* the real relation of the vertical 
 cleavages to the stratification, in the limestone ranges belong- 
 ing to the chalk formation in Savoy ; and that my analysis of 
 the structure of agates, ('Geological Magazine/) remains, even 
 to the present day, the only one which has the slightest claim 
 to accuracy of distinction, or completeness of arrangement. 1 
 propose therefore, if time be spared me, to collect, of these 
 detached studies, or lectures, what seem to me deserving of 
 preservation; together with the more carefully written chapters 
 on geology and botany in the latter volumes of ' Modern 
 Painters ; ' adding the memoranda I have still by me in manu- 
 script, and such further illustrations as may occur to me on 
 revision. Which fragmentary work, — trusting that among 
 the flowers or stones let fall by other hands it may yet find 
 service and life, — I have ventured to dedicate to Proserpina 
 and Deucalion. 
 
 Why not rather to Eve, or at least to one of the wives of 
 Lamech, and to Noah? asks, perhaps, the pious modern 
 reader. 
 
 Because I think it well that the young student should first 
 learn the myths of the betrayal and redemption, as the Spirit 
 which moved on the face of the wide first waters, taught them 
 to the heathen world. And because, in this power, Proser- 
 pine and Deucalion are at least as true as Eve or Noah ; and 
 all four together incomparably truer than the Darwinian The- 
 ory. And, in general, the reader may take it for a first prin- 
 ciple, both in science and literature, that the feeblest myth is 
 
 * Reported in the ' Journal de Geneve/ date ascertainable, but of no 
 consequence, 
 
9 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 better than the strongest theory : the one recording a natural 
 impression on the imaginations of great men, and of unpre- 
 tending multitudes ; the other, an unnatural exertion of the 
 wits of little men, and half-wits of impertinent multitudes. 
 
 It chanced, this morning, as I sat down to finish my preface, 
 that I had, for my introductory reading, the fifth chapter of 
 the second book of Esdras ; in which, though often read care- 
 fully before, I had never enough noticed the curious verse, 
 " Blood shall drop out of wood, and the stone shall give his 
 voice, and the people shall be troubled." Of which verse, so 
 far as I can gather the meaning from the context, and from 
 the rest of the chapter, the intent is, that in the time spoken 
 of by the prophet, which, if not our own, is one exactly cor- 
 responding to it, the deadness of men to all noble things shall 
 be so great, that the sap of trees shall be more truly blood, 
 in God's sight, than their hearts' blood ; and the silence of 
 men, in praise of all noble things, so great, that the stones 
 shall cry out, in God's hearing, instead of their tongues ; and 
 the rattling of the shingle on the beach, and the roar of the 
 rocks driven by the torrent, be truer Te Deum than the thun- 
 der of all their choirs. The writings of modern scientific 
 prophets teach us to anticipate a day when even these lower 
 voices shall be also silent ; and leaf cease to wave, and stream 
 to murmur, in the grasp of an eternal cold. But it may be, 
 that rather out of the mouths of babes and sucklings a better 
 peace may be promised to the redeemed Jerusalem ; and the 
 strewn branches, and low-laid stones, remain at rest at the 
 gates of the city, built in unity with herself, and saying with 
 her human voice, ' ' My King cometh." 
 
DEUOALIOK 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE ALPS AND JURA. 
 
 {Part of a Lecture given in the Museum of Oxford, in October^ 
 
 1874.) 
 
 1. It is often now a question with me whether the persons 
 who appointed me to this Professorship have been disap- 
 pointed, or pleased, by the little pains I have hitherto taken to 
 advance the study of landscape. That it is my own favourite 
 branch of painting seemed to me a reason for caution in press- 
 ing it on your attention ; and the range of art-practice which 
 I have hitherto indicated for you, seems to me more properly 
 connected with the higher branches of philosophical inquiry 
 native to the University. But, as the second term of my Pro- 
 fessorship will expire next year, and as I intend what remains 
 of it to be chiefly employed in giving some account of the art 
 of Florence and Umbria, it seemed to me proper, before en- 
 tering on that higher subject, to set before you some of the 
 facts respecting the great elements of landscape, which I first 
 stated thirty years ago ; arranging them now in such form as 
 my farther study enables me to give them. I shall not, in- 
 deed, be able to do this in a course of spoken lectures ; nor 
 do I wish to do so. Much of what I desire that you .should 
 notice is already stated, as well as I can do it- in ' Modern 
 Painters ; • and it would be waste of time to recast it in the 
 form of address. But I should not feel justified in merely 
 
10 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 reading passages of my former writings to you from this 
 chair ; and will only ask your audience, here, of some addi- 
 tional matters, as, for instance, to-day, of some observations I 
 have been making recently, in order to complete the account 
 given in ' Modern Painters/ of the structure and aspect of the 
 higher Alps. 
 
 2. Not that their structure — (let me repeat, once more, 
 what I am well assured you will, in spite of my frequent as- 
 sertion, find difficult to believe,) — not that their structure is 
 any business of yours or mine, as students of practical art. 
 All investigations of internal anatomy, whether in plants, 
 rocks, or animals, are hurtful to the finest sensibilities and in- 
 stincts of form. But very few of us have any such sensibili- 
 ties to be injured ; and that we may distinguish the excellent 
 art which they have produced, we must, by duller processes, 
 become cognizant of the facts. The Torso of the Vatican was 
 not wrought by help from dissection ; yet all its supreme 
 qualities could only be explained by an anatomical master. 
 And these drawings of the Alps by Turner are in landscape, 
 what the Elgin marbles or the Torso are in sculpture. There 
 is nothing else approaching them, or of their order. Turner 
 made them before geology existed ; but it is only by help of 
 geology that I can prove their power. 
 
 3. I chanced, the other day, to take up a number of the 
 'Alpine Journal' (May, 1871,) in which there was a review by 
 Mr. Leslie Stephen, of Mr. "Whymper's ' Scrambles among the 
 Alps/ in which it is said that " if the Alpine Club has done 
 nothing else, it has taught us for the first time really to see the 
 mountains." I have not the least idea whom Mr. Stephen 
 means by 'us / but I can assure him that mountains had been 
 seen by several people before the nineteenth century; that 
 both Hesiod and Pindar occasionally had eyes for Parnassus, 
 Virgil for the Apennines, and Scott for the Grampians ; and 
 without speaking of Turner, or of any other accomplished 
 artist, here is a little bit of old-fashioned Swiss drawing of the 
 two Mythens, above the central town of Switzerland,* showing 
 a degree of affection, intelligence, and tender observation, com- 
 
 * In the Educational Series of my Oxford Schools. 
 
THE ALPS AND JURA. 
 
 11 
 
 pared to which our modern enthusiasm is, at best, childish ; 
 and commonly also as shallow as it is vulgar. 
 
 4. Believe me, gentlemen, your power of seeing mountains 
 cannot be developed either by your vanity, your curiosity, or 
 your love of muscular exercise. It depends on the cultivation 
 of the instrument of sight itself, and of the soul that uses it. 
 As soon as you can see mountains rightly, you will see hills 
 also, and valleys, with considerable interest ; and a great many 
 other things in Switzerland with which you are at present but 
 poorly acquainted. The bluntness of your present capacity 
 of ocular sensation is too surely proved by your being unable 
 to enjoy any of the sweet lowland country, which is incom- 
 parably more beautiful than the summits of the central range, 
 and which is meant to detain you, also, by displaying — if you 
 have patience to observe them — the loveliest aspects of that 
 central range itself, in its real majesty of proportion, and 
 mystery of power. 
 
 5. For, gentlemen, little as you may think it, you can no 
 more see the Alps from the Col du Geant, or the top of the 
 Matterhorn, than the pastoral scenery of Switzerland from the 
 railroad carriage. If you want to see the skeletons of the 
 Alps, you may go to Zermatt or Chamouni ; but if you want 
 to see the body and soul of the Alps, you must stay awhile 
 among the Jura, and in the Bernese plain. And, in general, 
 the way to see mountains, is to take a knapsack and a walking- 
 stick ; leave alpenstocks to be nourished in each other s faces, 
 and between one another's legs, by Cook's tourists ; and try 
 to find some companionship in yourself with yourself ; and 
 not to be dependent for your good cheer either on the gossip 
 of the table-d'hote, or the hail-fellow and well met, hearty 
 though it be, of even the pleasantest of celebrated guides. 
 
 6. Whether, however, you think it necessary or not, for 
 true sight of the Alps, to stay awhile among the Jura or in 
 the Bernese fields, very certainly, for understanding, or ques- 
 tioning, of the Alps, it is wholly necessary to do so. If you 
 look back to the lecture, which I gave as the fourth of my 
 inaugural series, on the Relation of Art to Use, you will see it 
 stated, as a grave matter of reproach to the modern traveller, 
 
12 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 that, crossing the great plain of Switzerland nearly every sum* 
 mer, he never thinks of inquiring why it is a plain, and why 
 the mountains to the south of it are mountains. 
 
 7. For solution of which, as it appears to me, not un- 
 natural inquiry, all of you, who have taken any interest in 
 geology whatever, must recognize the importance of studying 
 the calcareous ranges which form the outlying steps of the 
 Alps on the north ; and which, in the lecture just referred to, 
 I requested you to examine for their crag scenery, markedly 
 developed in the Stockhorn, Pilate, and Sentis of Appenzell. 
 The arrangements of strata in that great calcareous belt 
 give the main clue to the mode of elevation of the central 
 chain, the relations of the rocks over the entire breadth of 
 North Switzerland being, roughly, as in this first section : 
 
 v 
 
 B C D E F 
 
 Fig. 1. 
 
 A. Jura limestones, moderately undulating in the successive 
 
 chains of Jura. 
 
 B. Sandstones of the great Swiss plain. 
 
 C. Pebble breccias of the first ranges of Alpine hills. 
 
 D. Chalk formations violently contorted, forming the rock 
 
 scenery of which I have just spoken. 
 
 E. Metamorphic rocks lifted by the central Alps. 
 
 Fo Central gneissic or granitic mass, narrow in Mont 
 Blanc, but of enormous extent southward from St. 
 Gothard. 
 
 8. Now you may, for first grasp of our subject, imagine 
 these several formations all fluted longitudinally, like a Gothic 
 moulding, thus forming a series of ridges and valleys parallel 
 to the Alps ; — such as the valley of Chamouni, the Simmen- 
 thal, and the great vale containing the lakes of Thun and 
 Brienz ; to which longitudinal valleys we now obtain access 
 through gorges or defiles, for the most part cut across the 
 
THE ALPS AND JURA. 
 
 13 
 
 formations, and giving geological sections all the way from 
 the centres of the Alps to the plain. 
 
 9. Get this first notion very simply and massively set in 
 your thoughts. Longitudinal valleys, parallel with the beds ; 
 more or less extended and soft in contour, and often occupied 
 by lakes. Cross defiles like that of Lauterbrunnen, the Via 
 Mala, and the defile of Gondo ; cut down across the beds, and 
 traversed by torrents, but rarely occupied by lakes. The bay 
 of Uri is the only perfect instance in Switzerland of a portion 
 of lake in a diametrically cross valley ; the crossing arms of 
 the lake Lucerne mark the exactly rectangular schism of the 
 forces ; the main direction being that of the lakes of Kuss- 
 nacht and Alpnacht, carried on through those of Sarnen and 
 Lungern, and across the low intervening ridge of the Brunig, 
 joining the depressions of Brienz and Thun ; of which last lake 
 the lower reach, however, is obliquely transverse. Forty 
 miles of the Lago Maggiore, or, including the portion of lake 
 now filled by delta, fifty, from Baveno to Bellinzona, are in 
 the longitudinal valley which continues to the St. Bernardino ; 
 and the entire length of the lake of Como is the continuation 
 of the great lateral Valtelline. 
 
 10. Now such structure of parallel valley and cross defile 
 would be intelligible enough, if it were confined to the lateral 
 stratified ranges. But, as you are well aware, the two most 
 notable longitudinal valleys in the Alps are cut right along 
 the heart of their central gneissic chain ; how much by 
 dividing forces in the rocks themselves, and how much by 
 the sources of the two great rivers of France and Germany, 
 there will yet be debate among geologists for many a day to 
 come. For us, let the facts at least be clear ; the questions 
 definite ; but all debate declined. 
 
 11. All lakes among the Alps, except the little green pool 
 of Lungern, and a few small tarns on the cols, are quite at 
 the bottom of the hills. We are so accustomed to this con- 
 dition, that we never think of it as singular. But in its un- 
 exceptional character, it is extremely singular. How comes 
 it to pass, think you, that through all that wilderness of 
 mountain — raised, in the main mass of it, some six thousand 
 
14 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 feet above the sea, so that there is no col lower, — there is 
 not a single hollow shut in so as to stay the streams of it ; — 
 that no valley is ever barred across by a ridge which can keep 
 so much as ten feet of water calm above it, — that every such 
 ridge that once existed has been cut through, so as to let the 
 stream escape? 
 
 I put this question in passing ; we will return to it : let 
 me first ask you to examine the broad relations of the beds 
 that are cut through. My typical section, Fig. 1, is strin- 
 gently simple ; it must be much enriched and modified to 
 fit any locality ; but in the main conditions it is applicable 
 to the entire north side of the Alps, from Annecy to St. Gall. 
 
 12. You have first — (I read from left to right, or north to 
 south, being obliged to do so because all Studer's sections 
 are thus taken) — this mass of yellow limestone, called of the 
 Jura, from its development in that chain ; but forming an 
 immense tract of the surface of France also ; and, as you 
 well know, this our city of Oxford stands on one of its softer 
 beds, and is chiefly built of it. We may, I think, without 
 entering any forbidden region of theory, assume that this 
 Jura limestone extends under the plain of Switzerland, to 
 reappear where we again find it on the flanks of the great 
 range ; where on the top of it the beds drawn with fine lines 
 in my section correspond generally to the date of our English 
 chalk, though they are far from white in the Alps. Curiously 
 adjusted to the chalk beds, rather than superimposed, we 
 have these notable masses of pebble breccia, w T hich bound 
 the sandstones of the great Swiss plain. 
 
 13. I have drawn that portion of the section a little more 
 boldly in projection, to remind you of the great Eigi prom- 
 ontory; and of the main direction of the slope of these 
 beds, with their backs to the Alps, and their escarpments to 
 the plain. Both these points are of curious importance. 
 Have you ever considered the reason of the fall of the Koss- 
 berg, the most impressive physical catastrophe that has 
 chanced in Europe in modern times? Few mountains in 
 Switzerland looked safer. It was of inconsiderable height, 
 of very moderate steepness ; but its beds lay perfectly 
 
THE ALPS AND JURA. 
 
 15 
 
 straight, and that over so large a space, that when the clay 
 between two of them got softened by rain, one slipped 
 off the other. Now this mathematical straightness is 
 characteristic of these pebble beds, — not universal in them, 
 but characterestic of them, and of them only. The lime- 
 stones underneath are usually, as you see in this section, 
 violently contorted ; if not contorted, they are at least so 
 irregular in the bedding that you can't in general find a sur- 
 face of a furlong square which will not either by its depres- 
 sion, or projection, catch and notch into the one above it, so 
 as to prevent its sliding. Also the limestones are continually 
 torn, or split, across the beds. But the breccias, though in 
 many places they suffer decomposition, are curiously free 
 from fissures and rents. The hillside remains unshattered 
 
 Fig. 2. 
 
 unless it comes down in a mass. But their straight bed- 
 ding, as compared with the twisted limestone, is the notablest 
 point in them ; and see how very many difficulties are gath- 
 ered in the difference. The crushed masses of limestone are 
 supposed to have been wrinkled together by the lateral thrust 
 of the emerging protogines ; and these pebble beds to have 
 been raised into a gable, or broken into a series of colossal 
 fragments set over each other like tiles, all along the south 
 shore of the Swiss plain, by the same lateral thrust ; nay, 
 "though we may leave in doubt," says Studer, "by what 
 cause the folded forms of the Jura may have been pushed 
 back, there yet remains to us, for the explanation of this 
 gabled form of the Nagelfluh, hardly any other choice than 
 to adopt the opinion of a lateral pressure communicated by 
 the Alps to the tertiary bottom. We have often found in the 
 outer limestone chains themselves clear evidence of a pressure 
 
16 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 going out from the inner Alps ; and the pushing of the oldei 
 over the younger formations along the flank of the limestone 
 hills, leaves hardly any other opinion possible." 
 
 14. But if these pebble beds have been heaved up by the 
 same lateral thrust, how is that a force which can bend lime- 
 stone like leather, cannot crash anywhere, these pebble beds 
 into the least confusion ? Consider the scale on which opera- 
 tions are carried on, and the forces of which this sentence of 
 Studer's so serenely assumes the action. Here, A, Fig. 2, is 
 his section of the High Sentis of Appenzell, of which the 
 height is at least, in the parts thus bent, 6,000 feet. And 
 here, B, Fig. 2, are some sheets of paper, crushed together by 
 my friend Mr. Henry Woodward, from a length of four 
 inches, into what you see ; the High Sentis, exactly resem- 
 bles these, and seems to consist of four miles of limestone 
 similarly crushed into one. Seems, I say, remember : I never 
 theorize, I give you the facts only. The beds do go up and 
 down like this : that they have been crushed together, it is 
 Mr. Studer who says or supposes ; I can't go so far ; never- 
 theless, I admit that he appears to be right, and I believe 
 he is right ; only don't be positive about it, and don't debate ; 
 but think of it, and examine. 
 
 15. Suppose, then, you have a bed of rocks, four miles long 
 by a mile thick, to be crushed laterally into the space of a 
 mile. It may be done, supposing the mass not to be reduci- 
 ble in bulk, in two ways : you may either crush it up into 
 folds, as I crush these pieces of cloth ; or you may break it 
 into bits, and shuffle them over one another like cards. Now, 
 Mr. Studer, and our geologists in general, believe the first of 
 these operations to have taken place with the limestones, and 
 the second with the breccias. They are, as I say, very proba- 
 bly right : only just consider what is involved in the notion of 
 shuflling up your breccias like a pack of cards, and folding up 
 your limestones like a length of silk which a dexterous 
 draper's shopman is persuading a young lady to put ten times 
 as much of into her gown as is wanted for it ! Think, I say, 
 what is involved in the notion. That you may shuffle your 
 pebble beds, you must have them strong and well knit. Thes 
 
THE ALPS AND JURA. 
 
 17 
 
 what sort of force must you have to break and to heave them ? 
 Do but try the force required to break so much as a Captain's 
 biscuit by a slow push, — it is the illustration I gave long ago 
 in 'Modern Painters/ — and then fancy the results of such 
 fracturing power on a bed of conglomerate two thousand feet 
 thick ! And here is indeed a very charming bookbinder's 
 pattern, produced by my friend in crushed paper, and the 
 length of silk produces lovely results in these arrangements a 
 la Paul Veronese. But when you have the cliffs of the Dia- 
 blerets, or the Dent du Midi of Bex, to deal with ; and have 
 to fold them up similarly, do you mean to fold your two-thou- 
 sand-fee t-thick Jura limestone in a brittle state, or a ductile 
 one ? If brittle, won't it smash ? If ductile, won't it squeeze ? 
 Yet your whole mountain theory proceeds on the assumption 
 that it has neither broken nor been compressed, — more than 
 the folds of silk or coils of paper. 
 
 16. You most of you have been upon the lake of Thun. 
 You have been at least carried up and down it in a steamer ; 
 you smoked over it meanwhile, and countenanced the French- 
 men and Germans who were spitting into it. The steamer 
 carried you all the length of it in half an hour ; you looked 
 at the Jungfrau and Blumlis Alp, probably, for five minutes, 
 if it was a fine day ; then took to your papers, and read the 
 last news of the Tichborne case ; then you lounged about, — 
 thought it a nuisance that the steamer couldn't take you up 
 in twenty minutes, instead of half an hour ; then you got 
 into a row about your luggage at Neuhaus ; and all that you 
 recollect afterwards is that lunch where you met the so-and- 
 sos at Interlaken. 
 
 17. Well, we used to do it differently in old times. Look 
 here ; — this * is the quay at Neuhaus, with its then travelling 
 arrangements. A flat-bottomed boat, little better than a 
 punt ; — a fat Swiss girl with her schatz, or her father, to row 
 it ; oars made of a board tied to a pole : and so one paddled 
 along over the clear water, in and out among the bays and 
 villages, for half a day of pleasant life. And one knew some* 
 
 * Turner's first study of the Lake of Thun, 1803. 
 
18 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 thing about the lake, ever after, if one had a head with eye* 
 in it. 
 
 It is just possible, however, that some of you also who have 
 been learning to see the Alps in your new fashion, may re- 
 member that the north side of the lake of Thun consists, first, 
 next Thun, of a series of low green hills, with brown cliffs 
 here and there among the pines ; and that above them, just 
 after passing Oberhofen, rears up suddenly a great precipice, 
 with its flank to the lake, and the winding wall of it prolonged 
 upwards, far to the north, losing itself, if the day is fine, in 
 faint tawny crests of rock among the distant blue ; and if 
 stormy, in wreaths of more than commonly torn and fantastic 
 cloud. 
 
 18. To form the top of that peak on the north side of the 
 lake of Thun, you have to imagine forces which have taken — 
 say, the whole of the North Foreland, with Dover castle on it, 
 and have folded it upside-down on the top of the parade at 
 Margate, — then swept up Whitstable oyster-beds, and put 
 them on the bottom of Dover cliffs turned topsy-turvy, — and 
 then wrung the whole round like a wet towel, till it is as close 
 and hard as it will knit ; — such is the beginning of the opera- 
 tions which have produced the lateral masses of the higher 
 Alps. 
 
 19. Next to these, you have the great sculptural force, 
 which gave them, approximately, their present forms, — which 
 let out all the lake waters above a certain level, — -which cut 
 the gorge of the Devil's Bridge — of the Via Mala — of Gondo 
 — of the valley of Cluse ; — which let out the Khone at St. 
 Maurice, the Ticino at Faido, and shaped all the vast ravines 
 which make the flanks of the great mountains awful. 
 
 20. Then, finally, you have the rain, torrent, and glacier of 
 human days. 
 
 Of whose action, briefly, this is the sum. 
 
 Over all the high surfaces, disintegration — melting away — 
 diffusion — loss of height and terror. 
 
 In the ravines, — whether occupied by torrent or glacier,— 
 gradual incumbrance by materials falling from above ; chok- 
 ing up of their beds by silt — by moraine — by continual ad 
 
THE ALPS AND JURA. 
 
 19 
 
 vances of washed slopes on their flanks : here and there, only, 
 exceptional conditions occur in which a river is still continu- 
 ing feebly the ancient cleaving action, and cutting its ravine 
 deeper, or cutting it back. 
 
 Fix this idea thoroughly in your minds. Since the valley 
 of Lauterbrunnen existed for human eyes, — or its pastures 
 for the food of flocks, — it has not been cut deeper, but par- 
 tially filled up by its torrents. The town of Interlachen 
 stands where there was once lake, — and the long slopes of 
 grassy sward on the north of it, stand where once was preci- 
 pice. Slowly — almost with infinite slowness, — the declining 
 and encumbering action takes place ; but incessantly, and, — 
 as far as our experience reaches, — irredeemably. 
 
 21. Now I have touched in this lecture briefly on the 
 theories respecting the elevation of the Alps, because I want to 
 show you how uncertain and unsatisfactory they still remain. 
 For our own work, we must waste no time on them ; we must 
 begin where all theory ceases ; and where observation becomes 
 possible, — that is to say, with the forms which the Alps have 
 actually retained while men have dwelt among them, and on 
 which we can trace the progress, or the power, of existing 
 conditions of minor change. Such change has lately affected, 
 and with grievous deterioration, the outline of the highest 
 mountain of Europe, with that of its beautiful supporting 
 buttresses, — the aiguille de Bionassay. I do not care, and I 
 want you not to care, — how crest or aiguille was lifted, or 
 where its materials came from, or how much bigger it was 
 once. I do care that you should know, and I will endeavour 
 in these following pages securely to show you, in what strength 
 and beauty of form it has actually stood since man was man, 
 and what subtle modifications of aspect, or majesties of con- 
 tour, it still suffers from the rains that beat upon it, or owes 
 to the snows that rest. 
 
20 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE THREE 2E R A S # 
 
 (Part of a Lecture given at the London Institution in March 
 1875, with added pieces from Lectures in Oxford.) 
 
 1. We are now, so many of us, some restlessly and some 
 wisely, in the habit of spending our evenings abroad, that I 
 do not know if any book exists to occupy the jDlace of one 
 classical in my early clays, called 'Evenings at Home.' It 
 contained, among many w T ell-written lessons, one, under the 
 title of 'Eyes and No Eyes,' which some of my older hearers 
 may remember, and which I should myself be sorry to forget. 
 For if such a book were to be written in these days, I suppose 
 the title and the moral of the story would both be changed ; 
 and, instead of 6 Eyes and No Eyes/ the tale would be called 
 * Microscopes and No Microscopes.' Fori observe that the 
 prevailing habit of learned men is now to take interest only 
 in objects which . cannot be seen without the aid of instru- 
 ments ; and I believe many of my learned friends, if they 
 were permitted to make themselves, to their own liking, in- 
 stead of suffering the slow process of selective development, 
 would give themselves heads like wasps', with three micro- 
 scopic eyes in the middle of their foreheads, and two ears at 
 the ends of their antennae. 
 
 2. It is the fashion, in modern days, to say that Pope was 
 no poet. Probably our schoolboys also, think Horace none. 
 They have each, nevertheless, built for themselves a monu- 
 ment of enduring wisdom ; and all the temptations and errors 
 of our own day, in the narrow sphere of lenticular curiosity, 
 were anticipated by Pope, and rebuked, in one couplet : 
 
 " Why has not man a microscopic eye ? 
 For this plain reason,-— Man is not a fly." 
 
 While the nobler following lines, 
 
 il Say, what avail, were finer optics given 
 To inspect a mite, not comprehend the heaven ? 17 
 
THE THREE ^JRAS. 
 
 21 
 
 only fall short of the truth of our present clulness, in that wo 
 inspect heaven itself, without understanding it. 
 
 3. In old times, then, it was not thought necessary for 
 human creatures to know either the infinitely little, or the 
 infinitely distant ; nor either to see, or feel, by artificial help, 
 Old English people used to say they perceived things with 
 their five — or it may be, in a hurry, they would say, their 
 seven, senses ; and that word ' sense ' became, and for ever 
 must remain, classical English, derived from classical Latin, 
 in both languages signifying, not only the bodily sense, but 
 the moral one. If a man heard, saw, and tasted rightly, we 
 used to say he had his bodily senses perfect. If he judged, 
 wished, and felt rightly, we used to say he had his moral 
 senses perfect, or was a man £ in his senses/ And we were 
 then able to speak precise truth respecting both matter and 
 morality ; and if we heard any one saying clearly absurd 
 things, — as, for instance, that human creatures were automata, 
 ■ — we used to say they were out of their 6 senses/ and were 
 talking non- c sense/ 
 
 "Whereas, in modern days, by substituting analysis for sense 
 in morals, and chemistry for sense in matter, we have literally 
 blinded ourselves to the essential qualities of both matter and 
 morals ; and are entirely incapable of understanding what is 
 meant by the description given us, in a book we once honoured, 
 of men who " by reason of use, have their senses exercised to 
 discern both good and evil." 
 
 4. And still, with increasingly evil results to all of us, the 
 separation is every day widening between the man of science 
 and the artist — in that, whether painter, sculptor, or musician, 
 the latter is pre-eminently a person who sees with his Eyes, 
 hears with his Ears, and labours with his Body, as God 
 constructed them ; and who, in using instruments, limits him- 
 self to those which convey or communicate his human power, 
 while he rejects all that increase it. Titian would refuse to 
 quicken his touch by electricity ; and Michael Angelo to sub- 
 stitute a steam hammer for his mallet. Such men not only do 
 not desire, they imperatively and scornfully refuse, either the 
 force 3 or the information, which are beyond the scope of the 
 
22 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 flesh and the senses of humanity. And it is at once the wis< 
 dom, the honour, and the peace, of the Masters both of paint- 
 ing and literature, that they rejoice in the strength, and rest 
 in the knowledge, which are granted to active and disciplined 
 life ; and are more and more sure, every day, of the wisdom of 
 the Maker in setting such measure to their being ; and more 
 and more satisfied, in their sight and their audit of Nature, 
 that " the hearing ear, and the seeing eye, — the Lord hath 
 made even both of them." 
 
 5. This evening, therefore, I venture to address you speak- 
 ing limitedly as an artist ; but, therefore, I think, with a defi- 
 nite advantage in having been trained to the use of my eyes 
 and senses, as my chief means of observation : and I shall try 
 to show you things which w T ith your own eyes you may any 
 day see, and with your own common sense, if it please you 
 to trust it, account for. 
 
 Things wdiich you may see, I repeat ; not which you might 
 perhaps have seen, if you had been born when you were not 
 born ; nor which you might perhaps in future see, if you were 
 alive when you will be dead. But what, in the span of earth, 
 and space of time, allotted to you, may be seen with your hu- 
 man eyes, if you learn to use them. 
 
 And this limitation has, with respect to our present subject, 
 a particular significance, which I must explain to you before 
 entering on the main matter of it. 
 
 G. No one more honours the past labour — no one more re- 
 grets the present rest — of the late Sir Charles Lyell, than his 
 scholar, who speaks to you. But his great theorem of the 
 constancy and power of existing phenomena was only in meas- 
 ure proved, — in a larger measure disputable ; and in the broad- 
 est bearings of it, entirely false. Pardon me if I spend no 
 time in qualifications, references, or apologies, but state clearly 
 to you what Sir Charles LyelFs work itself enables us now to 
 perceive of the truth. There are, broadly, three great demon- 
 strable periods of the Earth's history. That in which it was 
 crystallized ; that in which it was sculptured ; and that in 
 which it is now being unsculptured, or deformed. These three 
 periods interlace with each other, and gradate into each other 
 
THE THREE JERAS. 
 
 23 
 
 ^-as the periods of human life do. Something dies in the 
 child on the day that it is born, — something is born in the 
 man on the day that he dies : nevertheless, his life is broadly 
 divided into youth, strength, and decrepitude. In such clear 
 sense, the Earth has its three ages : of their length we know 
 as yet nothing, except that it has been greater than any man 
 had imagined. 
 
 7. (THE FIEST PERIOD.) — But there was a period, or a 
 succession of periods, during which the rocks which are now 
 hard were soft ; and in which, out of entirely different posi- 
 tions, and under entirely different conditions from any now 
 existing or describable, the masses, of which the mountains 
 you now see are made, were lifted, and hardened, in the posi- 
 tions they now occupy, though in what forms we can now no 
 more guess than we can the original outline of the block from 
 the existing statue. 
 
 8. (THE SECOND PERIOD. ) — Then, out of those raised 
 masses, more or less in lines compliant with their crystalline 
 structure, the mountains we now r see were hewn, or worn, dur- 
 ing the second period, by forces for the most part differing 
 both in mode and violence from any now in operation, but the 
 result of which was to bring the surface of the earth into a 
 form approximately that which it has possessed as far as the 
 records of human history extend. — The Ararat of Moses's time, 
 the Olympus and Ida of Homer's, are practically the same 
 mountains now, that they were then. 
 
 9. (THE THIRD PERIOD.)— Not, however, without some 
 calculable, though superficial, change, and that change, one of 
 steady degradation. For in the third, or historical period, the 
 valleys excavated in the second period are being filled up, and 
 the mountains, hewn in the second period, worn or ruined 
 down. In the second sera the valley of the Rhone was being 
 cut deeper every day ; now it is every day being filled up with 
 gravel. In the second sera, the scars of Derbyshire and York- 
 shire were cut white and steep ; now they are being darkened 
 by vegetation, and crumbled by frost. You cannot, I repeat, 
 separate the periods with precision ; but, in their characters, 
 they are as distinct as youth from age. 
 
24 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 10. The features of mountain form, to which during my 
 own life I have exclusively directed my study, and which I en- 
 deavour to bring before the notice of my pupils in Oxford, 
 are exclusively those produced by existing forces, on mount- 
 ains whose form and substance have not been materially 
 changed during the historical period. 
 
 For familiar example, take the rocks of Edinburgh castle, 
 and Salisbury Craig. Of course we know that they are both 
 basaltic, and must once have been hot. But I do not myself 
 care in the least what happened to them till they were cold.* 
 They have both been cold at least longer than young Harry 
 Percy's spur ; and, since they were last brought out of the 
 oven, in the shape which, approximately, they still retain, with 
 a hollow beneath one of them, which, for aught I know, or 
 care, may have been cut by a glacier out of white-hot lava, but 
 
 * More curious persons, who are interested in their earlier condition, 
 will find a valuable paper by Mr. J. W. Judd, in the quarterly ' Journal 
 of the Geological Society,' May, 1875 ; very successfully, it seems tome, 
 demolishing all former theories on the subject, which the author thus 
 sums, at p. 135. 
 
 "The series of events which we are thus required to believe took 
 place in this district is therefore as follows : — 
 
 A. At the point where the Arthur's Seat group of hills now rises, a 
 series of volcanic eruptions occurred during the Lower Calciferous Sand- 
 stone period, commencing with the emission of basaltic lavas, and end- 
 ing with that of porphyrites. 
 
 B. An interval of such enormous duration supervened as to admit 
 of— 
 
 a. The deposition of at least 3,000 feet of Carboniferous strata. 
 
 b. The bending of all the rocks of the district into a series of great 
 
 anticlinal and synclinal folds. 
 
 c. The removal of every vestige of the 3,000 feet of strata by de- 
 
 nudation. 
 
 C. The outburst, after this vast interval, of a second series of volcanic 
 eruptions upon the identical site of the former ones, presenting in its 
 succession of events precisely the same sequence, and resulting in the 
 production of rocks of totally itndistinguishable character. 
 
 Are we not entitled to regard the demand for the admission of such a 
 series of extraordinary accidents as evidence of the antecedent improb- 
 ability of the theory ? And when we find that all attempts to suggest a 
 period for the supposed second series of outburstshave successively failed, 
 do not the difficulties of the li vpothesir; appear to be overwhelming ? " 
 
THE THREE uERAS. 
 
 assuredly at last got itself filled with pure, sweet, cold water, 
 and called, in Lowland Scotch, the ' Nor' Loch ; ' — since the 
 time, I say, when the basalt, above, became hard, and the lake 
 beneath, drinkable, I am desirous to examine with you what 
 effect the winter's frost and summer's rain have had on the 
 crags and their hollows ; how far the £ Kittle nine steps ' under 
 the castle- walls, or the firm slope and cresting precipice above 
 the dark ghost of Holyrood, are enduring or departing forms ; 
 and how long, unless the young engineers of New Edinburgh 
 blast the incumbrance away, the departing mists of dawn may 
 each day reveal the form, unchanged, of the Eock which was 
 the strength of their Fathers. 
 
 11. Unchanged, or so softly modified that eye can scarcely 
 Irace, or memory measure, the work of time. Have you ever 
 practically endeavoured to estimate the alterations of form in 
 any hard rocks known to you, during the course of }^our own 
 lives ? You have all heard, a thousand times over, the com- 
 mon statements of the school of Sir Charles Lyell. You know 
 all about alluviums and gravels ; and what torrents do, and 
 what rivers do, and what ocean currents do ; and when you 
 see a muddy stream coming down in a flood, or even the yel- 
 low gutter more than usually rampant by the roadside in a 
 thunder shower, you think, of course, that all the forms of the 
 Alps are to be accounted for by aqueous erosion, and that 
 it's a wonder any Alps are still left. Well — any of you who 
 have fished the pools of Scottish or a Welsh stream, — have 
 you ever thought of asking an old keeper how much deeper 
 they had got to be, while his hairs were silvering ? Do you 
 suppose he wouldn't laugh in your face ? 
 
 There are some sitting here, I think, who must have them- 
 selves fished, for more than one summer, years ago, in Dove or 
 Derwent, — in Tweed or Teviot. Can any of you tell me a single 
 pool, even in the limestone or sandstone, where you could 
 spear a salmon then, and can't reach one now — (providing 
 always the wretches of manufacturers have left you one to be 
 speared, or water that you can see through) ? Do you know 
 so much as a single rivulet of clear water which has cut away 
 a visible half-inch of Highland rock, to your own knowledge, 
 
DEUCALION. 
 
 in your own day ? You have seen whole banks, whole fields 
 washed away ; and the rocks exposed beneath ? Yes, of course 
 you have ; and so have L The rains wash the loose earth 
 about everywhere, in any masses that they chance to catch — 
 loose earth, or loose rock. But yonder little rifted well in the 
 native whinstone by the sheepfold, — did the gray shepherd 
 not put his lips to the same ledge of it, to drink — when he 
 and you were boys together ? 
 
 12. ' But Niagara, and the Delta of the Ganges — and — all 
 the rest of it ? ' Well, of course a monstrous mass of conti- 
 nental drainage, like Niagara, trill wash down a piece of crag 
 once in fifty years, (but only that, if it's rotten below ;) and 
 tropical rains will eat the end off a bank of slime and alliga- 
 tors, — and spread it out lower down. But does any Scotchman 
 know a change in the Fall of Fyers ? — any Yorkshireman in 
 the Force of Tees ? 
 
 Except of choking up, it may be — not of cutting down. It 
 is true, at the side of every stream you see the places in the 
 rocks hollowed by the eddies. I suppose the eddies go on at 
 their own rate. But I simply ask, Has any human being ever 
 known a stream, in hard rock, cut its bed an inch deeper down 
 at a given spot ? 
 
 13. I can look back, myself, now pretty nearly, I am sorry 
 to say, half a century, and recognize no change whatever in 
 any of my old dabbling-places ; but that some stones are 
 mossier, and the streams usually dirtier, — the Derwent above 
 Keswick, for example. 
 
 1 But denudation does go on, somehow : one sees the whole 
 glen is shaped by it ? ' Yes, but not by the stream. The stream 
 only sweeps down the loose stones ; frost and chemical change 
 are the powers that loosen them. I have indeed not known 
 one of my dabbling-places changed in fifty years. But I have 
 known the eboulement under the Kochers des Fyz, which filled 
 the Lac de Chede ; I passed through the valley of Cluse a 
 night after some two or three thousand tons of limestone 
 came off the cliffs of Maglans — burying the road and field be- 
 side it. I have seen half a village buried by a landslip, and 
 its people killed, under Monte St. Angelo, above Amalfi. I 
 
THE THREE JERAS. 
 
 21 
 
 have seen the lower lake of Llanberis destroyed, merely by 
 artificial slate quarries ; and the Waterhead of Coniston seri- 
 ously diminished in purity and healthy flow of current by the 
 debris of its copper mines. These are all cases, you will ob- 
 serve, of degradation ; diminishing majesty in the mountain, 
 and diminishing depth in the valley, or pools of its waters. I 
 cannot name a single spot in which, during my lifetime spent 
 among the mountains, I have seen a peak made grander, a 
 watercourse cut deeper, or a mountain pool made larger and 
 purer. 
 
 14. I am almost surprised, myself, as I write these words, 
 at the strength which, on reflection, I am able to give to my 
 assertion. For, even till I began to write these very pages, 
 and was forced to collect my thoughts, I remained under the 
 easily adopted impression, that, at least among soft earthy 
 eminences, the rivers were still cutting out their beds. And 
 it is not so at all. There are indeed banks here and there 
 which they visibly remove ; but whatever they sweep down 
 from one side, they sweep up on the other, and extend a 
 promontory of land for every shelf they undermine : and as 
 for those radiating fibrous valleys in the Apennines, and such 
 other hills, which look symmetrically shaped by streams, — 
 they are not lines of trench from below, but lines of wash or 
 slip from above : they are the natural wear and tear of the 
 surface, directed indeed in easiest descent by the bias of the 
 stream, but not dragged down by its grasp. In every one of 
 those ravines the water is being choked up to a higher level ; 
 it is not gnawing down to a lower. So that, I repeat, ear- 
 nestly, their chasms being choked below, and their precipices 
 shattered above, all mountain forms are suffering a deliques- 
 cent and corroding change, — not a sculpturesque or anato- 
 mizing change. All character is being gradually effaced ; all 
 crooked places made straight, — all rough places, plain ; and 
 among these various agencies, not of erosion, but co?Tosion, 
 none are so distinct as that of the glacier, in filling up, not 
 cutting deeper, the channel it fills ; and in rounding and 
 smoothing, but never sculpturing, the rocks over which it 
 passes. 
 
28 
 
 DEUCALION-. 
 
 In this fragmentary collection of former work, now patched 
 and darned into serviceable ness, I cannot finish my chapters 
 with the ornamental fringes I used to twine for them ; nor 
 even say, by any means, all I have in my mind on the matters 
 they treat of : in the present case, however, the reader will 
 find an elucidatory postscript added at the close of the fourth 
 chapter, which he had perhaps better glance over before be- 
 ginning the third. 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 OF ICE-CREAM. 
 
 (Continuation of Lecture delivered at London Institution, 
 with added Illustrations from Lectures at Oxford.) 
 
 1. The statement at the close of the last chapter, doubtless 
 surprising and incredible to many of my readers, must, be- 
 fore I reinforce it, be explained as referring only to glaciers 
 visible, at this day, in temperate regions. For of formerly 
 deep and continuous tropical ice, or of existing Arctic ice, 
 and their movements, or powers, I know, and therefore say, 
 nothing.* But of the visible glaciers couched upon the visi- 
 
 * The following passage, quoted in the 1 Geological Magazine ' for 
 June of this year, by Mr. Clifton "Ward, of Keswick, from a letter of 
 Professor Sedgwick's, dated May 24th, 1842, is of extreme value ; and 
 Mr. Ward s following comments are most reasonable and just: — 
 
 l *No one will, I trust, be so bold as to affirm that an uninterrupted 
 glacier could ever have extended from Shap Fells to the coast of Holder- 
 ness, and borne along the blocks of granite through the whole distance, 
 without any help from the floating power of water. The supposition 
 involves difficulties tenfold greater than are implied in the phenomenon 
 it pretends to account for. The glaciers descending through the val~ 
 leys of the higher Alps have an enormous transporting power: but there 
 is no such power in a great sheet of ice expanded over a country with- 
 out mountains, and at a nearly dead level. 
 
 The difficulties involved in the theories of Messrs. Croll, Belt, Good- 
 child, and others of the same extreme school, certainly press upon me 
 — and I think I may say abo upon others of my colleagues — increas- 
 ingly, as the country becomes more and more lain i liar in its features. 
 
OF ICE- CREAM, 
 
 29 
 
 ble Alps, two great facts are very clearly ascertainable, which, 
 in my lecture at the London Institution, I asserted in their 
 simplicity, as follows : — 
 
 % The first great fact to be recognized concerning them is 
 that they are Fluid bodies. Sluggishly fluid, indeed, but 
 definitely and completely so ; and therefore, they do not 
 scramble down, nor tumble down, nor crawl down, nor slip 
 down ; but flow down. They do not move like leeches, nor 
 like caterpillars, nor like stones, but like, what they are made 
 of, water. 
 
 That is the main fact in their state, and progress, on which 
 all their great phenomena depend. 
 
 Fact first discovered and proved by Professor James Forbes, 
 of Edinburgh, in the year 1842, to the astonishment of all 
 the glacier theorists of his time ; — fact strenuously denied, 
 disguised, or confusedly and partially apprehended, by all of 
 the glacier theorists of subsequent times, down to our ow r n 
 day ; else there had been no need for me to tell it you again 
 to-night. 
 
 3. The second fact of which I have to assure you is partly, 
 I believe, new to geologists, and therefore may be of some 
 farther interest to you because of its novelty, though I do not 
 myself care a grain of moraine-dust for the newness of things; 
 but rather for their oldness ; and w r onder more willingly at 
 
 It is indeed a most startling thought, as one stands upon the eastern 
 borders of the Lake-mountains, to fancy the ice from the Scotch hills 
 stalking boldly across the Sol way, marching steadily up the Eden Val- 
 ley, and persuading some of the ice from Shap to join it on an excur- 
 sion over Stainmoor, and bring its boulders with it. 
 
 The outlying northern parts of the Lake-district, and the flat country 
 beyond, have indeed been ravished in many a raid by our Scotch neigh- 
 bours, but it is a question whether, in glacial times, the Cumbrian 
 mountains and Pennine chain had not strength in their protruding icy 
 arms to keep at a distance the ice proceeding from the district of the 
 southern uplands, the mountains of which are not superior in elevation. 
 Let us hope that the careful geological observations which will doubt- 
 less be made in the forthcoming scientific Arctic Expedition will throw 
 much new light on our past glacial period. 
 
 J. Clifton Ward 
 
 Keswick, April 26*7*, 1875. 
 
so 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 what my father and grandfather thought wonderful, (as, for 
 instance, that the sun should rise, or a seed grow,) than at 
 any newly-discovered marvel. Nor do I know, any more than 
 I care, whether this that I have to tell you be new or not ; 
 but I did not absolutely know it myself, until lately ; for 
 though I had ventured with some boldness to assert it as a 
 consequence of other facts, I had never been under the bot- 
 tom of a glacier to look. But, last summer, I was able to 
 cross the dry bed of a glacier, which I had seen flowing, two 
 hundred feet deep, over the same spot, forty years ago. And 
 there I saw, what before I had suspected, that modern gla- 
 ciers, like modern rivers, were not cutting their beds deeper, 
 but filling them up. These, then, are the two facts I wish to 
 lay distinctly before you this evening, — first that glaciers are 
 fluent ; and, secondly, that they are filling up their beds, not 
 cutting them deeper. 
 
 4. (I.) Glaciers are fluent; slowly, like lava, but distinct]y. 
 And now I must ask you not to disturb yourselves, as I speak, 
 with bye-thoughts about ' the theory of regulation.' It is very 
 interesting to know that if you put two pieces of ice together, 
 they will stick together ; let good Professor Faraday have all 
 the credit of showing us that ; and the human race in general, 
 the discredit of not having known so much as that, about 
 the substance they have skated upon, dropped through, and 
 eat any quantity of tons of — these two or three thousand 
 years. 
 
 It was left, nevertheless, for Mr. Faraday to show them 
 that two pieces of ice will stick together when they touch — 
 as two pieces of hot glass will. But the capacity of ice for 
 sticking together no more accounts for the making of a glacier,, 
 than the capacity of glass for sticking together accounts for 
 the making of a bottle. The mysteries of crystalline vitrifica- 
 tion, indeed, present endless entertainment to the scientific in- 
 quirer ; but by no theory of vitrification can he explain to us 
 how the bottle was made narrow at the neck, or dishonestly 
 vacant at the bottom. Those conditions of it are to be ex- 
 plained only by the study of the centrifugal and moral 
 powers to which it has been submitted. 
 
OF ICE-CREAM. 
 
 31 
 
 5. In like manner, I do not doubt but that wonderful phe- 
 nomena of congelation, regelation, degelation, and gelation 
 pure without preposition, take place whenever a schoolboy 
 makes a snowball ; and that miraculously rapid changes in 
 the structure and temperature of the particles accompany the 
 experiment of producing a star with it on an old gentleman's 
 back. But the principal conditions of either operation are 
 still entirely dynamic. To make your snowball hard, you 
 must squeeze it hard ; and its expansion on the recipient sur- 
 face is owing to a lateral diversion of the impelling forces, 
 and not to its regelatic properties. 
 
 6. Our first business, then, in studying a glacier, is to con- 
 sider the mode of its original deposition, and the large forces 
 of pressure and fusion brought to bear on it, with their 
 necessary consequences on such a substance as we practicahy 
 know snow to be, — a powder, ductile by wind, compressible 
 by weight ; diminishing by thaw, and hardening by time and 
 frost ; a thing which sticks to rough ground, and slips on 
 smooth ; which clings to the branch of a tree, and slides on 
 a slated roof. 
 
 7. Let us suppose, then, to begin with, a volcanic cone in 
 which the crater has been filled, and the temperature cooled, 
 and which is now exposed to its first season of glacial agen- 
 cies. Then let P]ate 1, Fig. 1, represent this mountain, with 
 part of the plans at its foot under an equally distributed 
 depth of a first winter's snow, and place the level of perpetual 
 snow at any point you like — for simplicity's sake, I put it half- 
 way up the cone. Below this snow-line, all snow disappears 
 in summer ; but above it, the higher we ascend, the more of 
 course we find remaining. It is quite wonderful how few 
 feet in elevation make observable difference in the quantity of 
 snow that will lie. This last winter, in crossing the moors 
 of the peak of Derbyshire, I found, on the higher masses 
 of them, that ascent certainly not greater than that at Harrow 
 from the bottom of the hill to the school-house, made all the 
 difference between easy and difficult travelling, by the change 
 in depth of snow. 
 
 8. At the close of the summer, we have then the remnant 
 
32 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 represented in Fig. 2, on which the snows of the ensuing 
 winter take the form in Fig. 3 ; and from this greater heap 
 we shall have remaining a greater remnant, which, supposing 
 no wind or other disturbing force modified its form, would 
 appear as at Fig. 4 ; and, under such necessary modification, 
 together with its own deliquescence, would actually take some 
 such figure as that shown at Fig. 5. 
 
 Now, what is there to hinder the continuance of accumula- 
 tion ? If we cover this heap with another layer of winters 
 snow (Fig. 6), we see at once that the ultimate condition 
 would be, unless somehow prevented, one of enormous mass, 
 superincumbent on the peak — like a colossal haystack, and 
 extending far down its sides below the level of the snow -line. 
 
 You are, however, doubtless well aware that no such accu- 
 mulation as this ever does take place on a mountain-top. 
 
 9. So far from it, the eternal snows do not so much as fill 
 the basins between mountain-tops ; but, even in these hollows, 
 form depressed sheets at the bottom of them. The difference 
 between the actual aspect of the Alps, and that which they 
 would present if no arrest of the increasing accumulation on 
 them took place, may be shown before you with the greatest 
 ease ; and in doing so I have, in all humility, to correct a 
 grave error of my own, which, strangely enough, has remained 
 undetected, or at least unaccused, in spite of all the animos- 
 ity provoked by my earlier writings. 
 
 10. When I wrote the first volume of 'Modern Painters,' 
 scarcely any single fact was rightly known by anybody, about 
 either the snow or ice of the Alps. Chiefly the snows had 
 been neglected : very few eyes had ever seen the higher 
 snows near ; no foot had trodden the greater number of Alpine 
 summits ; and I had to glean what I needed for my pictorial 
 purposes as best I could, — and my best in this case was a 
 blunder. The thing that struck me most, when I saw the 
 Alps myself, was the enormous accumulation of snow on them ; 
 and the way it clung to their steep sides. Well, I said to my- 
 self, ' of course it must be as thick as it can stand ; because, 
 as there is an excess which doesn't melt, it would go on build- 
 ing itself up like the Tower of Babel, unless it tumbled off 
 
OF ICE-CREAM. 
 
 33 
 
 There must be always, at the end of winter, as much snow on 
 every high summit as it can carry.' 
 
 There must, I said. That is the mathematical method of 
 science as opposed to the artistic. Thinking of a thing, and 
 demonstrating, — instead of looking at it. Very fine, and very 
 sure, if you happen to have before you all the elements of 
 thought ; but always very dangerously inferior to the unpre- 
 tending method of sight — for people who have eyes, and can 
 use them. If I had only looked at the snow carefully, I should 
 have seen that it wasn't anywhere as thick as it could stand or 
 lie — or, at least, as a hard substance, though deposited in 
 powder, could stand. And then I should have asked myself, 
 with legitimate rationalism, why it didn't ; and if I had but 
 asked — Well, it's no matter what perhaps might have hap- 
 pened if I had. I never did. 
 
 11. Let me now show you, practically, how great the error 
 was. Here is a little model of the upper summits of the Ber- 
 nese range. I shake over them as much flour as they will 
 carry ; now I brush it out of the valleys, to represent the 
 melting. Then you see what is left stands in these domes 
 and ridges, representing a mass of snow about six miles 
 deep. That is what the range would be like, however, if 
 the snow stood up as the flour does ; and snow is at least, 
 you will admit, as adhesive as flour. 
 
 12. But, you will say, the scale is so different, you can't 
 reason from the thing on that scale. A most true objection. 
 You cannot ; and therefore I beg you, in like manner, not to 
 suppose that Professor Tyndall's experiments on " a straight 
 prism of ice, four inches long, an inch wide, and a little more 
 than an inch in depth," * are conclusive as to the modes of 
 glacier motion. 
 
 In what respect then, we have to ask, would the difference 
 in scale modify the result of the experiment made here on 
 the table, supposing this model was the Jungfrau itself, and 
 the flour supplied by a Cyclopean miller and his men ? 
 
 13. In the first place, the lower beds of a mass six miles 
 
 * * Glaciers of the Alps,' p. 348. 
 
DEUCALION. 
 
 deep would be much consolidated by pressure. But would 
 they be only consolidated ? Would they be in nowise squeezed 
 out at the sides ? 
 
 The answer depends of course on the nature of flour, and 
 on its conditions of dryness. And you must feel in a mo- 
 ment that, to know what an Alpine range would look like,' 
 heaped with any substance whatever, as high as the sub- 
 stance would stand — you must first ascertain how high the 
 given substance will stand — on level ground. You might, 
 perhaps heap your Alp high with wheat, — not so high with 
 sand, — nothing like so high with dough ; and a very thin 
 coating indeed would be the utmost possible result of any 
 quantity whatever of showers of manna, if it had the consist- 
 ence, as well as the taste, of wafers made with honey. 
 
 14. It is evident, then, that our first of inquiries bearing on 
 the matter before us, must be, How high will snow stand on 
 level ground, in a block or column ? Suppose you were to 
 plank in a square space, securely — twenty feet high — thirty — 
 fifty ; and to fill it with dry snow. How high could you get 
 your pillar to stand, when you took away the wooden walls ? 
 and when you reached your limit, or approached it, whafc 
 would happen ? 
 
 Three more questions instantly propose themselves ; namely, 
 What happens to snow under given pressure ? will it under 
 some degrees of pressure change into anything else than 
 snow? and what length of time will it take to effect the 
 change ? 
 
 Hitherto, we have spoken of snow as dry only, and there- 
 fore as solid substance, permanent in quantity and quality. 
 You know that it very often is not dry ; and that, on the 
 Alps, in vast masses, it is throughout great part of the year 
 thawing, and therefore diminishing in quantity. 
 
 It matters not the least, to our general inquiry, how much 
 of it is wet, or thawing, or at what times. I merely at 
 present have to introduce these two conditions as elements 
 in the business. It is not dry snow always, but often soppy 
 snow — snow and water, — that you have to squeeze. And it 
 is not freezing snow always, but very often thawing snow. 
 
OF ICE-CREAM. 
 
 35 
 
 — diminishing therefore in bulk every instant, — that you 
 have to squeeze. 
 
 It does not matter, I repeat, to our immediate purpose, 
 when, or how far, these other conditions enter our ground ; 
 but it is best, I think, to put the dots on the is as we go 
 along. You have heard it stated, hinted, suggested, im- 
 plied, or whatever else you like to call it, again and again, 
 by the modern school of glacialists, that the discoveries of 
 James Forbes were anticipated by Rendu. 
 
 15. I have myself more respect for Rendu than any modern 
 glacialist has. He was a man of de Saussure's temper, and of 
 more than de Saussure's intelligence ; and if he hadn't had the 
 misfortune to be a bishop, would very certainly have left 
 James Forbes's work a great deal more than cut out for him ; 
 — stitched — and pretty tightly — in most of the seams. But he 
 was a bishop ; and could only examine the glaciers to an ejDisco- 
 pic extent ; and guess, the best he could, after that. His 
 guesses are nearly always splendid ; but he must needs some- 
 times reason as well as guess ; and he reasons himself with 
 beautiful plausibility, ingenuity, and learning, up to the con- 
 clusion — which he announces as positive — that it always freezes 
 on the Alps, even in summer. James Forbes was the first 
 who ascertained the fallacy of this episcopal- position ; and 
 who announced — to our no small astonishment — that it always 
 thawed on the Alps, even in winter. 
 
 16. Not superficially of course, nor in all places. But in- 
 ternally, and in a great many places. And you will find it is 
 an ascertained fact — the first great one of which we owe the 
 discovery to him — that all the year round, you must reason 
 on the masses of aqueous deposit on the Alps as, practically, 
 in a state of squash. Not freezing ice or snow, nor dry ice or 
 snow, but in many places saturated with, — everywhere affected 
 by, — moisture ; and always subject, in enormous masses, to 
 the conditions of change which affect ice or snow at the freez- 
 ing-point, and not below it. Even James Forbes himself 
 scarcely, I think, felt enough the importance of this element 
 of his own discoveries, in all calculations of glacier motion. 
 He sometimes speaks of his glacier a little too simply as if it 
 
36 
 
 DEUCALION, 
 
 were a stream of undiminishing substance, as of treacle or tar, 
 moving under the action of gravity only ; and scarcely enough 
 recognizes the influence of the subsiding languor of its faint- 
 ing mass, as a constant source of motion ; though nothing can 
 be more accurate than his actual account of its results on the 
 surface of the Mer de Glace, in his fourth letter to Professor 
 Jameson. 
 
 17. Let me drive the notion well home in your own minds, 
 therefore, before going farther. You may permanently secure 
 it, by an experiment easily made by each one of you for your- 
 selves this evening, and that also on the minute and easily 
 tenable scale which is so approved at the Eoyal Institution ; 
 for in this particular case the material conditions may indeed 
 all be represented in very small compass. Pour a little hot 
 water on a lump of sugar in your teaspoon. You will imme- 
 diately see the mass thaw, and subside by a series of, in minia- 
 ture, magnificent and appalling catastrophes, into a miniature 
 glacier, which you can pour over the edge of your teaspoon 
 into your saucer ; and if you will then add a little of the brown 
 sugar of our modern commerce — of a slightly sandy character, 
 — you may watch the rate of the flinty erosion upon the soft 
 silver of the teaspoon at your ease, and with Professor Earn- 
 say 's help, calculate the period of time necessary to wear a 
 hole through the bottom of it. 
 
 I think it would be only tiresome to you if I carried the in- 
 quiry farther by progressive analysis. You will, I believe, 
 permit, or even wish me, rather to state summarily what the 
 facts are : — their proof, and the process of their discovery, you 
 will find incontrovertible and finally given in this volume, 
 classical, and immortal in scientific literature — which, twenty- 
 five years ago, my good master Dr. Buckland ordered me, in 
 his lecture-room at the Ashmolean, to get, — as closing all 
 question respecting the nature and cause of glacier movement, 
 — James Forbes's ' Travels in the Alps.' 
 
 18. The entire mass of snow and glacier, (the one passing 
 gradually and by infinite modes of transition into the other, 
 over the whole surface of the Alps,) is one great accumulation 
 of ice-cream, poured upon the tops, and flowing to the bot- 
 
OF ICE- CREAM. 
 
 37 
 
 fcoms, of the mountains, under precisely the same special con- 
 dition of gravity and coherence as the melted sugar poured 
 on the top of a bride-cake ; but on a scale which induces forms 
 and accidents of course peculiar to frozen water, as distin- 
 guished from frozen syrup, and to the scale of Mont Blanc and 
 the Jungfrau, as compared to that of a bride-cake. Instead 
 ©f an inch thick, the ice-cream of the Alps will stand two hun- 
 dred feet thick, — no thicker, anywhere, if it can run off; but 
 will lie in the hollows like lakes, and clot and cling about the 
 less abrupt slopes in festooned wreaths of rich mass and sweep- 
 ing flow, breaking away, where the steepness becomes intolera- 
 ble, into crisp precipices and glittering cliffs. 
 
 19. Yet never for an instant motionless — never for an instant 
 without internal change, through all the gigantic mass, of the 
 relations to each other of every crystal grain. That one which 
 you break now from its wave-edge, and which melts in your 
 hand, has had no rest, day nor night, since it faltered down 
 from heaven when you were a babe at the breast ; and the 
 white cloud that scarcely veils yonder summit — seven-colored 
 in the morning sunshine — has strewed it with pearly hoar- 
 frost, which will be on this spot, trodden by the feet of others, 
 in the day when you also will be trodden under feet of men, 
 in your grave. 
 
 20. Of the infinite subtlety, the exquisite constancy of this 
 fluid motion, it is nearly impossible to form an idea in the 
 least distinct. We hear that the ice advances two feet in the 
 clay ; and wonder how such a thing can be possible, unless the 
 mass crushed and ground down everything before it. But 
 think a little. Two feet in the day is a foot in twelve hours, 
 ■ — only an inch in an hour, (or say a little more in the daytime, 
 as less in the night,) — and that is maximum motion in mid- 
 glacier. If your Geneva watch is an inch across, it is three 
 inches round, and the minute-hand of it moves three times 
 faster than the fastest ice. Fancy the motion of that hand so 
 slow that it must take three- hours to get round the little dial. 
 Between the shores of this vast gulf of hills, the long wave of 
 hastening ice only keeps pace with that lingering arrow, in its 
 central crest ; and that invisible motion fades away upwards 
 
38 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 through forty years of slackening stream, to the pure light of 
 dawn on yonder stainless summit, on which this morning's 
 snow lies — motionless. 
 
 21. And yet, slow as it is, this infinitesimal rate of current is 
 enough to drain the vastest gorges of the Alps of their snow, 
 as clearly as the sluice of a canal-gate empties a lock. The 
 mountain basin included between the Aiguille Verte, the 
 Grandes Jorasses, and the Mont Blanc, has an area of about 
 thirty square miles, and only one outlet, little more than a 
 quarter of a mile wide : yet, through this the contents of the 
 entire basin are drained into the valley of Chamounix with 
 perfect steadiness, and cannot possibly fill the basin beyond a 
 certain constant height above the point of overflow. 
 
 Overflow 7 , I say, deliberately ; distinguishing always the 
 motion of this true fluid from that of the sand in an hour- 
 glass, or stones slipping in a heap of shale. But that the 
 nature of this distinction may be entirely conceived by you, 
 I must ask you to pause with some attention at this word, to 
 'flow,' — which attention may perhaps be more prudently 
 asked in a separate chapter. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 LABITUR, ET LABETUIt. 
 
 {Lecture given at London Institution, continued, with added 
 
 Illustrations.) 
 
 1. Of course — we all know what flowing means. Well, it 
 is to be hoped so ; but I'm not sure. Let us see. The sand 
 of the hour-glass, — do you call the motion of that flowing ? 
 
 No. It is only a consistent and measured fall of many unat- 
 tached particles. 
 
 Or do you call the entrance of a gas through an aperture, 
 out of a full vessel into an empty one, flowing ? 
 
 No. That is expansion — not flux. 
 
 Or the draught through the keyhole ? No — is your answer, 
 
LABITUR, ET LABETUR. 
 
 38 
 
 still. Let us take instance in water itself. The spring of a 
 fountain, or of a sea breaker into spray. You don't call that 
 flowing ? 
 No. 
 
 Nor the fall of a fountain, or of rain ? 
 No. 
 
 Well, the rising of a breaker, — the current of water in the 
 hollow shell of it, — is that flowing ? No. After it has broken 
 — rushing up over the shingle, or impatiently advancing on 
 the sand ? You begin to pause in your negative. 
 
 Drooping back from the shingle then, or ebbing from the 
 sand ? Yes ; flowing, in some places, certainly, now. 
 
 You see how strict and distinct the idea is in our minds. 
 Will you accept — I think you may, — this definition of it? 
 Flowing is " the motion of liquid or viscous matter over solid 
 matter, under the action of gravity, without any other impel- 
 ling force." 
 
 2. Will you accuse me, in pressing this definition on you, 
 of wasting time in mere philological nicety ? Permit me, in 
 the capacity which even the newspapers allow to me, — that of 
 a teacher of expression, — to answer you, as often before now, 
 that philological nicety is philosophical nicety. See the im- 
 portance of it here. I said a glacier flowed. But it remains 
 a question whether it does not also spring, — whether it can 
 rise as a fountain, no less than descend as a stream. 
 
 For, broadly, there are two methods in which either a 
 stream or glacier moves. 
 
 The first, by withdrawing a part of its mass in front, the 
 vacancy left by which, another part supplies from behind. 
 
 That is the method of a continuous stream, — perpetual de- 
 duction,* by what precedes, of what follows. 
 
 The second method of motion is when the mass that is 
 behind, presses, or is poured in upon, the masses before. 
 That is the way in which a cataract falls into a pool, or a 
 fountain into a basin. 
 
 Now, in the first case, you have catenary curves, or else 
 
 * " Ex quo ilia admirabilis a majoribus aquae facta deductio est."-* 
 Cic. de Div., 1, 44. 
 
40 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 curves of traction, going down the stream. In the second 
 case, you have irregularly concentric curves, and ripples of 
 impulse and compression, succeeding each other round the 
 pool. 
 
 3. Now the Mer de Glace is deduced down its narrow 
 channel, like a river ; and the Glacier des Bossons is de- 
 duced down its steep ravine ; and both were once injected 
 into a pool of ice in the valley below, as the Glacier of the 
 Ehone is still. Whereupon, observe, if a stream falls into a 
 basin — level-lipped all round — you know when it runs over it 
 must be pushed over — lifted over. But if ice is thrown into 
 a heap in a plain, you can't tell, without the closest observa- 
 tion, how violently it is pushed from behind, or how softly it 
 is diffusing itself in front ; and I had never set my eyes or 
 wits to ascertain where compression in the mass ceased, and 
 diffusion began, because I thought Forbes had done every- 
 thing that had to be done in the matter. But in going over 
 his work again I find he has left just one thing to be still ex- 
 plained ; and that one chances to be left to me to show you 
 this evening, because, by a singular and splendid Nemesis, in 
 the obstinate rejection of Forbes's former conclusively simple 
 experiments, and in the endeavour to substitute others of his 
 own, Professor Tyndall has confused himself to the extreme 
 point of not distinguishing these two conditions of deductive 
 and impulsive flux. His incapacity of drawing, and ignorance 
 of perspective, prevented him from constructing his diagrams 
 either clearly enough to show him his own mistakes, or pret- 
 tily enough to direct the attention of his friends to them ; — 
 and they luckily remain to us, in their absurd immortality. 
 
 4. Forbes poured viscous substance in layers down a 
 trough ; let the stream harden ; cut it into as many sections 
 as were required ; and showed, in permanence, the actual 
 conditions of such viscous motion. Eager to efface the 
 memory of these conclusive experiments, Professor Tyndall 
 ( c Glaciers of the Alps, 5 page 383) substituted this literally 
 ' superficial ' one of his own. He stamped circles on the top 
 of a viscous current ; found, as it flowed, that they were 
 drawn into ovals ; but had not wit to consider, or sense to 
 
LABITUR, ET LABETUR. 
 
 41 
 
 D 
 
 E 
 
 see, whether the area of the circle was enlarged or diminished 
 — or neither — during its change in 
 shape. He jumped, like the rawest • 
 schoolboy, to the conclusion that a 
 circle, becoming an oval, must neces- 
 sarily be compressed ! You don't 
 compress a globe of glass when you 1 
 blow it into a soda-water bottle, do 
 you? 
 
 5. But to reduce Professor Tyn- 
 dall's problem into terms. Let A F, 
 Fig. 3, be the side of a stream of 
 any substance whatever, and a /the 
 middle of it ; and let the particles 
 at the middle move twice as fast 
 as the particles at the sides. Now 
 we cannot study all the phenomena 
 of fluid motion in one diagram, nor 
 any one phenomenon of fluid motion 
 but by progressive diagrams ; and 
 this first one only shows the changes 
 of form which would take place in a 
 substance which moved with uniform 
 increase of rapidity from side to 
 centre. No fluid substance would 
 so move ; but you can only trace the 
 geometrical facts step by step, from 
 uniform increase to accelerated in- 
 crease. Let the increase of rapidity, 
 therefore, first be supposed uniform. 
 Then, while the point A moves to B, 
 the point a moves to <?, and any points 
 once intermediate in a right line be- 
 tween A and a, will now be interme- 
 diate in a right line between B and- 
 c, and their places determinable by 
 verticals from each to each. 
 
 I need not be tedious in farther 
 
 \i f 
 
 Fig. 3. 
 
 describing the figure 
 
42 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 Suppose A b a square mile of the substance, and the origin 
 of motion on the line A a. Then when the point A has ar- 
 rived at B, the point B has arrived at C, the point a at c, and 
 the point b at d, and the mile square, A b, has become the 
 mile rhombic, B d, of the same area ; and if there were a 
 circle drawn in the square A 6, it will become the fat ellipse 
 in B d, and thin ellipse in C f 9 successively. 
 
 6. Compressed, thinks Professor Tyndall, one way, and 
 stretched the other ! 
 
 But the Professor has never so much as understood what 
 ' stretching ' means. He thinks that ice won't stretch ! Does 
 he suppose treacle, or oil, will ? The brilliant natural philos- 
 opher has actually, all through his two books on glaciers, con- 
 fused viscosity with elasticity ! You can stretch a piece of 
 India-rubber, but you can only diffuse treacle, or oil, or 
 water. 
 
 " But you can draw these out into a narrow stream, where- 
 as you cannot pull the ice ? " 
 
 No ; neither can you pull water, can you? In compressing 
 any substance, you can apply any force you like ; but in ex- 
 tending it, you can only apply force less than that with which 
 its particles cohere. You can pull honey into a thin string, 
 when it comes out of the comb ; let it be candied, and you 
 can't pull it into a thin string. Does that make it less a vis- 
 cous substance ? You can't stretch mortar either. It cracks 
 even in the hod, as it is heaped. Is it, therefore, less fluent 
 or manageable in the mass *? 
 
 7. Whereas the curious fact of the matter is, that, in pre- 
 cise contrariety to Mr. Tyndall's idea, ice, (glacier ice, that is 
 to say,) will stretch ; and that treacle or water won't ! and that's 
 just the plague of dealing with the whole glacier question — 
 that the incomprehensible, untenable, indescribable ice will 
 both squeeze and open ; and is slipping through your fingers 
 all the time besides, by melting away. You can't deal with 
 it as a simple fluid ; and still less as a simple solid. And in- 
 stead of having less power to accommodate itself to the irreg- 
 ularities of its bed than water, it has much more ; — a great 
 deal more of it will subside into a deep place, and ever so 
 
LAB1TUR, ET LABETUR. 
 
 43 
 
 much of it melt in passing over a shallow one ; and the cen- 
 tre, at whatever rate it moves, will supply itself by the ex- 
 haustion of the sides, instead of raging round, like a stream in 
 back- water. 
 
 8. However, somehow, I must contrive to deal at least with 
 the sure fact that the velocity of it is progressively greater 
 from the sides to the centre, and from the bottom to the sur- 
 face. 
 
 Now it is the last of these progressive increments which 
 is of chief importance to my present purpose. 
 
 For my own conviction on the matter ; — mind, not theory, 
 for a man can always avoid constructing theories, but cannot 
 possibly help his convictions, and may sometimes feel it right 
 to state them, — my own conviction is that the ice, when it is 
 of any considerable depth, no more moves over the bottom 
 than the lower particles of a running stream of honey or 
 treacle move over a plate, but that, in entire rest at the bot- 
 tom, except so far as it is moved by dissolution, it increases 
 in velocity to the surface in a curve of the nature of a parab- 
 ola, or a logarithmic curve, capable of being infinitely pro- 
 longed, on the supposition of the depth of the ice increasing 
 to infinity. 
 
 9. But it is now my fixed principle not to care what I think, 
 when a fact can be ascertained by looking, or measuring. So r 
 not having any observations of my own on this matter, I seek 
 w r hat help may be had elsewhere ; and find in the eleventh 
 chapter of Professor Tyndall's 'Glaciers of the Alps,' two most 
 valuable observations, made under circumstances of considera- 
 ble danger, calmly encountered by the author, and grumblingly 
 by his guide, — danger consisting in the exposure to a some- 
 what close and well-supported fire of round and grape from 
 the glacier of the Geant, which objected to having its velocity 
 measured. But I find the relation of these adventures so 
 much distract me from the matter in hand, that I must digress 
 briefly into some notice of the general literary structure of 
 this remarkable book. 
 
 10. Professor Tyndall never fails to observe with compla- 
 cency, and to describe to his approving readers, how un« 
 
44 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 clouded the luminous harmonies of his reason, imagination, 
 and fancy remained, under conditions which, he rightly con- 
 cludes, would have been disagreeably exciting, or even dis- 
 tinctly disturbing, to less courageous persons. And indeed I 
 confess, for my own part, that my successfullest observations 
 have always been made while lying all my length on the soft- 
 est grass I could find ; and after assuring myself with extreme 
 caution that if I chanced to go to sleep, (which in the process 
 of very profound observations I usually do, at least of an af- 
 ternoon,) I am in no conceivable peril beyond that of an ant- 
 bite. Nevertheless, the heroic Professor does not, it seems 
 to me, sufficiently recognize the universality of the power 
 of English, French, German, and Italian gentlemen to re- 
 tain their mental faculties under circumstances even of more 
 serious danger than the crumbling of a glacier moraine ; and to 
 think with quickness and precision, when the chances of death 
 preponderate considerably, or even conclusively, over those of 
 life. Nor does Professor Tyndall seem to have observed that 
 the gentlemen possessing this very admirable power in any 
 high degree, do not usually think their own emotions, or ab- 
 sence of emotions, proper subjects of printed history, and 
 public demonstration. 
 
 11. Nevertheless, when a national philosopher, under show- 
 ers of granite grape, places a stake and auger against his 
 heart, buttons his coat upon them, and cuts himself an oblique 
 staircase up a wall of ice, nearly vertical, to a height of forty 
 feet from the bottom ; and there, unbuttoning his coat, pierces 
 the ice with his auger, drives in his stake, and descends with- 
 out injury, though during the whole operation his guide 
 " growls audibly," we are bound to admit his claim to a sci- 
 entific Victoria Cross — or at least crosslet, — and even his right 
 to w r alk about in our London drawing-rooms in a gracefully 
 cruciferous costume ; while I have no doubt also that many 
 of his friends will be interested in such metaphysical partic- 
 ulars and examples of serene mental analysis as he may choose 
 to give them in the course of his autobiography. But the 
 Professor ought more clearly to understand that scientific 
 writing is one thing, and pleasant autobiography another ; 
 
LABITUH, ET LABETUB. 
 
 15 
 
 and though an officer may not; be able to give an account of a 
 battle without involving some statement of his personal share 
 in it, a scientific observer might with entire ease, and much 
 convenience to the public, have published ' The Glaciers of 
 the Alps ' in two coincident, but not coalescing, branches — 
 like the glaciers of the Giant and Lechaud ; and that out of 
 the present inch and a half thickness of the volume, an inch 
 and a quarter might at once have been dedicated to the Giant 
 glacier of the autobiography, and the remaining quarter of an 
 inch to the minor current of scientific observation, which, like 
 the Glacier de Lechaud, appears to be characterized by " the 
 comparative shallowness of the upper portion," * and by its 
 final reduction to " a driblet measuring about one-tenth of its 
 former transverse dimensions." 
 
 12. It is true that the book is already divided into two por- 
 tions, — the one described as " chiefly narrative," and the other 
 as " chiefly scientific." The chiefly narrative portion is, in- 
 deed, full of very interesting matter fully justifying its title ; 
 as, for instance, " We tumbled so often in the soft snow, and 
 our clothes and boots were so full of it, that we thought we 
 might as well try the sitting posture in sliding down. We 
 did so, and descended with extraordinary velocity" (p. 116). 
 Or again : " We had some tea, which had been made at the 
 Montanvert, and carried up to the Grand Mulets in a bottle. 
 My memory of that tea is not pleasant " (p. 73). Or in higher 
 strains of scientific wit and pathos : " As I looked at the ob- 
 jects which had now become so familiar to me, I felt that, 
 though not viscous, the ice did not lack the quality of adhe- 
 siveness, and I felt a little sad at the prospect of bidding it so 
 soon farewell." 
 
 13. But the merely romantic readers of this section, rich 
 though it be in sentiment and adventure, will find themselves 
 every now and then arrested by pools, as it were, of almost 
 impassable scientific depth — such as the description of a rock 
 " evidently to be regarded as an assemblage of magnets, or as 
 a single magnet full of consequent points" (p. 140). While, 
 on the other hand, when in the course of my own wo* 1 *, find* 
 
 * ' Glaciers of the Alps,' p. 28$. 
 
DEUCALION. 
 
 iug myself pressed for time, and eager to collect every scrap 
 of ascertained data accessible to me, I turn hopefully to the 
 eleventh chapter of the " chiefly scientific " section of the vol- 
 ume, I think it hard upon me that I must read through three 
 pages of narrative describing the Professor's dangers and ad- 
 dress, before I can get at the two observations which are the 
 sum of the scientific contents of the chapter, yet to the first of 
 which " unfortunately some uncertainty attached itself," and 
 the second of which is wanting in precisely the two points 
 which would have made it serviceable. First, it does not give 
 the rate of velocity at the base, but five feet above the base ; 
 and, secondly, it gives only three measurements of motion. 
 Had it given four, we could have drawn the curve ; but we 
 can draw any curve we like through three points. 
 
 14. I will try the three points, however, with the most 
 probable curve ; but this being a tedious business, will re- 
 serve it for a separate chapter, which readers may skip if they 
 choose : and insert, for the better satisfaction of any who 
 may have been left too doubtful by the abrupt close of my 
 second chapter, this postscript, written the other day after 
 watching the streamlets on the outlying fells of Shap. 
 
 15. Think what would be the real result, if any stream 
 among our British hills at this moment were cutting its bed 
 deeper. 
 
 In order to do so, it must of course annually be able to re- 
 move the entire zone of debris moved down to its bed from 
 the hills on each side of it— and somewhat more. 
 
 Take any Yorkshire or Highland stream you happen to 
 know, for example ; and think what quantity of debris must 
 be annually moved, on the hill surfaces which feed its waters. 
 Remember that a lamb cannot skip on their slopes, but it 
 stirs with its hoofs some stone or grain of dust which will 
 more or less roll or move downwards. That no shower of 
 rain can fall — no wreath of snow melt, without moving some 
 quantity of dust downwards. And that no frost can break 
 up, without materially loosening some vast ledges of crag, 
 and innumerable minor ones ; nor without causing the fall of 
 others as vast, or as innumerable. Make now some effort to 
 
juABITTJR, ET LABETUR 47 
 I 
 
 conceive the quantity of rock and dust moved annually, lower, 
 past any given level traced on the flanks of any considerable 
 mountain stream, over the area it drains — say, for example, 
 in the basin of the Ken above Kendal, or of the Wharfe above 
 Bolton Abbey. 
 
 16. Then, if either of those streams were cutting their beds 
 deeper, — that quantity of rock, and something more, must be 
 annually carried doAvn by their force, past Kendal bridge, and 
 Bolton stepping-stones. Which you will find would occasion 
 phenomena very astonishing indeed to the good people of 
 Kendal and Wharfedale. 
 
 17. "But it need not be carried down past the stepping- 
 stones, " you say — "it may be deposited somewhere above." 
 Yes, that is precisely so ; — and wherever ifc is deposited, the 
 bed of the stream, or of some tributary streamlet, is being 
 raised. Nobody notices the raising of it ; — another stone or 
 two among the wide shingle — a tongue of sand an inch or two 
 broader at the burn side — who can notice that ? Four or five 
 years pass ; — a flood comes ; — and Farmer So-and-So's field is 
 covered with slimy ruin. And Farmer So-and-So's field is an 
 inch higher than it w r as, for evermore — but who notices that? 
 The shingly stream has gone back into its bed: here and 
 there a whiter stone or two gleams among its pebbles, but 
 next year the water stain has darkened them like the rest, and 
 the bed is just as far below the level of the field as it was. 
 And your careless geologist says, * what a powerful stream it 
 is, and how deeply it is cutting its bed through the glen ! ' 
 
 18. Now, carry out this principle for existing glaciers. If 
 the glaciers of Chamouni were cutting their beds deeper, 
 either the annual line of debris of the Mont Blanc range on 
 its north side must be annually carried down past the Pont 
 Pelissier ; or the valley of Chamouni must be in process of 
 filling up, while the ravines at its sides are being cut clown 
 deeper. Will any geologist, supporting the modern glacial 
 theories, venture to send me, for the next number of Deu- 
 calion, his idea, on this latter, by him inevitable, hypothesis, 
 of the profile of the bottom of the Glacier des Bossons, a thou* 
 sand years ago : and a thousand years hence ? 
 
48 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 I 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 THE VALLEY OF CLUSE. 
 
 1. What strength of faith men have in each other ; and 
 how impossible it is for them to be independent in thought, 
 however hard they try ! Not that they ever ought to be : 
 bat they should know, better than they do, the incumbrance 
 that the false notions of others are to them. 
 
 Touching this matter of glacial grinding action ; you will 
 find every recent writer taking up, without so much as a 
 thought of questioning it, the notion adopted at first careless 
 sight of a glacier stream by some dull predecessor of all prac- 
 tical investigation — that the milky colour of it is all produced 
 by dust ground off the rocks at the bottom. And it never 
 seems to occur to any one of the Alpine Club men, who are 
 boasting perpetually of their dangers from falling stones ; nor 
 even to professors impeded in their most important observa- 
 tions by steady fire of granite grape, that falling stones may 
 probably knock their edges off when they, strike; and that 
 moving banks and fields of moraine, leagues long, and leagues 
 square, of which every stone is shifted a foot forward every 
 day on a surface melting beneath them, must in such shifting 
 be liable to attrition enough to produce considerably more 
 dust, and that of the finest kind, than any glacier stream car- 
 ries down with it — not to speak of processes of decomposition 
 accelerated, on all surfaces liable to them, by alternate action 
 of frost and fierce sunshine. 
 
 2. But I have not, as yet, seen any attempts to determine 
 even the first data on which the question of attrition must be 
 dealt with. I put it, in simplicity, at the close of last chapter. 
 But, in its full extent, the inquiry ought not to be made 
 merely of the bed of the Glacier des Bossons ; but of the bed 
 of the Arve, from the Col de Balme to Geneva ; in which the 
 really important points for study are the action of its waters 
 at Pont Pelissier ; — at the falls below Servoz ; — at the porta] 
 
THE VALLEY OF CLUSE. 
 
 49 
 
 of Cluse ; — and at the northern end of the slope of the Saleve. 
 
 3. For these four points are the places where, if at all, 
 sculptural action is really going on upon its bed : at those 
 points, if at all, the power of the Second 2Era, the sera of 
 sculpture, is still prolonged into this human clay of ours. As 
 also it is at the rapids and falls of all swiftly descending rivers. 
 The one vulgar and vast deception of Niagara has blinded the 
 entire race of modern geologists to the primal truth of moun- 
 tain form, namely, that the rapids and cascades of their 
 streams indicate, not points to which the falls have receded, 
 but places where the remains of once colossal cataracts still 
 exist, at the places eternally (in human experience) appointed 
 for the formation of such cataracts, by the form and hardness 
 of the local rocks. The rapids of the Amazon, the Nile, and 
 the Ehine, obey precisely the same law as the little Wharfe 
 at its Strid, or as the narrow ' rivus aquae ' which, under a 
 bank of strawberries in my own tiny garden, has given me 
 perpetual trouble to clear its channel of the stones brought 
 down in flood, while, just above, its place of picturesque cas- 
 cade, is determined for it by a harder bed of Coniston flags, 
 and the little pool, below that cascade, never encumbered with 
 stones at all. 
 
 4. Now the bed of the Arve, from the crest of the Col de 
 Balme to Geneva, has a fall of about 5,000 feet ; and if any 
 young Oxford member of the Alpine Club is minded to do a 
 piece of work this vacation, which in his old age, when he 
 comes to take stock of himself, and edit the fragments of 
 himself, as I am now sorrowfully doing, he will be glad to 
 have done, (even though he risked neither his own nor any 
 one else's life to do it,) let him survey that bed accurately, 
 and give a profile of it, w T ith the places and natures of emer- 
 gent rocks, and the ascertainable depths and dates of allu- 
 vium cut through, or in course of deposition. 
 
 5. After doing this piece of work carefully, he will probably 
 find some valuable ideas in his head concerning the propor- 
 tion of the existing stream of the Arve to that which once 
 flowed from the glacier which deposited the moraine of Lc-s 
 Tines ; and again, of that torrent to the infinitely vaster one 
 
50 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 of the glacier that deposited the great moraine of St. Gervais ; 
 and finally of both, to the cliffs of Cluse, which have despised 
 and resisted them. And ideas which, after good practical 
 work, he finds in his head, are likely to be good for some- 
 thing : but he must not seek for them; all thoughts worth 
 having come like sunshine, whether we will or no : the 
 thoughts not worth having, are the little lucifer matches we 
 strike ourselves. 
 
 6. And I hasten the publication of this number of Deuca- 
 lion, to advise any reader who cares for the dreary counsel of 
 an old-fashioned Alpine traveller, to see the valley of Cluse 
 this autumn, if he may, rather than any other scene among 
 the Alps ; — for if not already destroyed, it must be so, in a 
 few months more, by the railway which is to be constructed 
 through it, for the transport of European human diluvium. 
 The following note of my last walk there, written for my 
 autumn lectures, may be worth preserving among the shingle 
 of my scattered work. 
 
 7. I had been, for six months in Italy, never for a single 
 moment quit of liability to interruption of thought. By day 
 or night, whenever I was awake, in the streets of every city, 
 there w T ere entirely monstrous and inhuman noises in perpet- 
 ual recurrence. The violent rattle of carriages, driven habit- 
 ually in brutal and senseless haste, or creaking and thunder- 
 ing under loads too great for their cattle, urged on by 
 perpetual roars and shouts : wild bellowing and howling of 
 obscene wretches far into the night : clashing of church bells, 
 in the morning, dashed into reckless discord, from twenty 
 towers at once, as if rung by devils to defy and destroy the 
 quiet of God's sky, and mock the laws of His harmony : filthy, 
 stridulous shrieks and squeaks, reaching for miles into the 
 quiet air, from the railroad stations at every gate : and the 
 vociferation, endless, and frantic, of a passing populace whose 
 every word was in mean passion, or in unclean jest. Living 
 in the midst of this, and of vulgar sights more horrible than 
 the sounds, for six months, I found myself — suddenly, as in 
 a dream — walking again alone through the valley of Cluse, 
 unchanged since I knew it first, when I was a boy of fifteen, 
 
THE VALLEY OF CLUSE. 
 
 51 
 
 quite forty years ago ; — and in perfect quiet, and with the 
 priceless completion of quiet, that I was without fear of any 
 outcry or base disturbance of it. 
 
 8. But presently, as I walked, the calm was deepened, in- 
 stead of interrupted, by a murmur — first low, as of bees, and 
 then rising into distinct harmonious chime of deep bells, ring- 
 ing in true cadences — but I could not tell where. The cliffs 
 on each side of the valley of Cluse vary from 1,500 to above 
 2,000 feet in height; and, without absolutely echoing the 
 chime, they so accepted, prolonged, and diffused it, that at 
 first I thought it came from a village high up and far away 
 among the hills ; then presently it came down to me as if 
 from above the cliff under which I was walking ; then I 
 turned about and stood still, wondering ; for the whole valley 
 was filled with the sweet sound, entirely without local or con- 
 ceivable origin : and only after some twenty minutes' walk, 
 the depth of tones, gradually increasing, showed me that they 
 came from the tower of Maglans in front of me ; but when I 
 actually got into the village, the cliffs on the other side so 
 took up the ringing, that I again thought for some moments 
 I was wrong. 
 
 Perfectly beautiful, all the while, the sound, and exquisitely 
 varied, — from ancient bells of perfect tone and series, rung 
 with decent and joyful art. 
 
 " What are the bells ringing so to-day for, — it is no fete ? " 
 I asked of a woman who stood watching at a garden gate. 
 
 " For a baptism, sir." 
 
 And so I went on, and heard them fading back, and lost 
 among the same bewildering answers of the mountain air. 
 
 9. Now that half-hour's walk was to me, and I think would 
 have been to every man of ordinarily well-trained human and 
 Christian feeling — I do not say merely worth the whole six 
 months of my previous journey in Italy ; — it was a reward for 
 the endurance and horror of the six months' previous journey ; 
 but, as many here may not know what the place itself is like, 
 and may think I am making too much of a little pleasant belk 
 ~ : "ging, I must tell you what the valley of Cluse is in itself. 
 
 10. Of * Cluse,' the closed valley, — not a ravine, but a 
 
52 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 winding plain, between very great mountains, rising for tht; 
 most part in cliffs — but cliffs which retire one behind the 
 other above slopes of pasture and forest, (Now as I am writ- 
 ing this passage in a country parsonage — of Cowsley, near "Ox- 
 bridge, — I am first stopped by a railroad whistle two minutes 
 and a half long,* and then by the rumble and grind of a slow 
 train, which prevents me from hearing my own words, or be- 
 ing able to think, so that I must simply wait for ten minutes, 
 till it is past.) 
 
 It being past, I can go on. Slopes of pasture and forest, I 
 said, mingled with arable land, in a way which you can only at 
 present see in Savoy ; that is to say, you have walnut and 
 fruit trees of great age, mixed with oak, beech, and pine, as 
 they all choose to grow — it seems as if the fruit trees planted 
 themselves as freely as the pines. I imagine this to be the 
 consequence of a cultivation of very ancient date under entirely 
 natural laws; if a plum-tree or a walnut planted itself, it was 
 allowed to grow ; if it came in the way of anything or any- 
 body, it would be cut down ; but on the whole the trees grew 
 as they liked ; and the fields were cultivated round them in 
 such spaces as the rocks left ; — ploughed, where the level ad- 
 mitted, with a ploughshare lightly constructed, but so huge 
 that it looks more like the beak of a trireme than a plough, 
 two oxen forcing it to heave aside at least two feet depth of 
 the light earth ;— no fences anywhere ; winding field walks, of 
 rock paths, from cottage to cottage ; these last not of the lux^ 
 urious or trim Bernese type, nor yet comfortless chalets ; but 
 sufficient for orderly and virtuous life : in outer aspect, beau, 
 tiful exceedingly, just because their steep roofs, white walls, 
 and wandering vines had no pretence to perfectness, but were 
 wild as their hills. All this pastoral country lapped into in- 
 lets among the cliffs, vast belts of larch and pine cresting or 
 clouding the higher ranges, whose green meadows change an 
 they rise, into mossy slopes and fade away at last among the 
 grey ridges of rock that are soonest silvered with autumnal 
 snow. 
 
 * Counted by watch, for I knew by its manner it would last, and 
 
THE VALLEY OF CLUSE. 
 
 53 
 
 11. The ten-miles length of this valley, between Cluse and 
 St. Martin's, include more scenes of pastoral beauty and 
 mountain power than all the poets of the world have imagined ; 
 and present more decisive and trenchant questions respecting 
 mountain structure than all the philosophers of the world 
 could answer : yet the only object which occupies the mind 
 of the European travelling public, respecting it, is to get 
 through it, if possible, under the hour. 
 
 12. I spoke with sorrow, deeper than my words attempted 
 to express, in my first lecture, of the blind rushing of our best 
 youth through the noblest scenery of the Alps, without once 
 glancing at it, that they might amuse, or kill, themselves on 
 their snow. That the claims of all sweet pastoral beauty, of 
 all pious domestic life, for a moment's pause of admiration or 
 sympathy, should be unfelt, in the zest and sparkle of boy's 
 vanity in summer play, may be natural at all times ; and inev- 
 itable while our youth remain ignorant of art, and defiant of 
 religion ; but that, in the present state of science, when every 
 eye is busied with the fires in the Moon and the shadows in 
 the San, no eye should occupy itself with the ravines of its 
 own world, nor with the shadows which the sun casts on the 
 clifis of them ; that the simplest, — I do not say problems, but 
 bare facts, of structure, — should still be unrepresented, and 
 the outmost difficulties of rock history untouched ; while dis- 
 pute, and babble, idler than the chafed pebbles of the waver- 
 ing beach, clink, jar, and jangle on from year to year in vain, 
 — surely this, in our great University, I am bound to declare 
 to be blameful ; and to ask you, with more than an artist's won- 
 der, why this fair valley of Cluse is now closed indeed, and for- 
 saken, " clasped like a missal shut where Paynims pray ; " and, 
 with all an honest inquirer's indignation, to challenge — in the 
 presence of our Master of Geology, happily one of its faithful 
 and true teachers,* the Speakers concerning the Earth, — the 
 geologists, not of England only, but of Europe and America, — 
 
 *Mr. Prestwich. I have to acknowledge, with too late and vain grati- 
 tude, the kindness and constancy of the assistance given me, on all oc- 
 casions when I asked it, by his lamented predecessor in the Oxford 
 Professorship of Geology, Mr. Phillips. 
 
54 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 either to explain to you the structure or sculpture of this* 
 renownedest cliff in all the Alps, under which Tell leaped 
 ashore ; or to assign valid reason for the veins in the pebbles 
 which every Scotch lassie wears for her common jewellery. 
 
 CHAPTEE VI 
 
 OF BUTTER AND HONEY. 
 
 1'. The last chapter, being properly only a continuation of 
 the postscript to the fourth, has delayed me so long from my 
 question as to ice-curves, that I cannot get room for the need- 
 ful diagrams and text in this number ; which is perhaps 
 fortunate, for I believe it will be better first to explain to the 
 reader more fully why the ascertainment of this curve of ver- 
 tical motion is so desirable. 
 
 To which explanation, very clear definition of some care- 
 lessly used terms will be essential. 
 
 2. The extremely scientific Professor Tyndall always uses 
 the terms Plastic, and Viscous, as if they were synonymous. 
 But they express entirely different conditions of matter. The 
 first is the term proper to be used of the state of butter, on 
 which you can stamp whatever you choose ; and the stamp 
 will stay ; the second expresses that of honey, on which you 
 can indeed stamp what you choose ; but the stamp melts away 
 forthwith. 
 
 And of viscosity itself there are two distinct varieties — one 
 glutinous, or gelatinous, like that of treacle or tapioca soup ; 
 and the other simply adhesive, like that of mercury or melted 
 lead. 
 
 And of both plasticity and viscosity there are infinitely 
 various degrees in different substances, from the perfect and 
 absolute plasticity of gold, to the fragile, and imperfect, but 
 to man more precious than any quality of gold, plasticity of 
 
 * The cliff between Fluelen and Brunuen, on the lake of Uri, of 
 which Turner s drawing was exhibited at this lecture. 
 
OF BUTTER AND HONEY. 
 
 55 
 
 clay, and, most precious of all, the blunt and dull plasticity of 
 dough ; and again, from the vigorous and binding viscosity 
 of stiff glue, to the softening viscosity of oil, and tender vis- 
 cosity of old wine. I am obliged therefore to ask my readers 
 to learn, and observe very carefully in our future work, these 
 following definitions. 
 
 Plastic. — Capable of change of form under external force, 
 without any loss of continuity of substance ; and of retaining 
 afterwards the form imposed on it. 
 
 Gold is the most perfectly plastic substance we commonly 
 know ; clay, butter, etc., being more coarsely and ruggedly 
 plastic, and only in certain consistencies or at certain tem- 
 peratures. 
 
 Viscous. — Capable of change of form under external force, 
 but not of retaining the form imposed j being languidly obe- 
 dient to the force of gravity, and necessarily declining to the 
 lowest possible level, — as lava, treacle, or honey. 
 
 .Ductile. — Capable of being extended by traction without 
 loss of continuity of substance. Gold is both plastic and 
 ductile ; but clay, plastic only, not ductile ; while most melted 
 metals are ductile only, but not plastic. 
 
 Malleable.— Plastic only under considerable force. 
 
 3. We must never let any of these words entangle, as neces- 
 sary, the idea belonging to another. 
 
 A plastic substance is not necessarily ductile, though gold 
 is both ; a viscous substance is not necessarily ductile, though 
 treacle is both ; and the quality of elasticity, though prac- 
 tically inconsistent with the character either of a plastic body, 
 or a viscous one, may enter both the one and the other as a 
 gradually superadded or interferent condition, in certain 
 states of congelation ; as in india-rubber, glass, sealing-wax, 
 asphalt, or basalt. 
 
 I think the number of substances I have named in this last 
 sentence, and the number of entirely different states which in 
 an instant will suggest themselves to you, as characteristic of 
 each, at, and above, its freezing or solidifying point, may 
 show at once how careful we should be in defining the notion 
 attached to the words we use ; and how inadequate, without 
 
56 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 specific limitation and qualification, any word must be, to ex- 
 press all the qualities of any given substance. 
 
 4. But, above all substances that can be proposed for 
 definition of quality, glacier ice is the most defeating. For j 
 it is practically plastic ; but actually viscous ; — and that to the 
 full extent. You can beat or hammer it, like gold ; and it 1 
 will stay in the form you have beaten it into, for a time ; — 
 and so long a time, that, on all instant occasions of plasticity, 
 it is practically plastic. But only have patience to wait long 
 enough, and it will run down out of the form you have 
 stamped on it, as honey does, so that, actually and inherently, 
 it is viscous, and not plastic. 
 
 5. Here then, at last, I have got Forbes's discovery and 
 assertion put into accurately intelligible terms ; — very in- 
 credible terms, I doubt not, to most readers. 
 
 There is not the smallest hurry, however, needful in be- 
 lieving them ; only let us understand clearly what it is we 
 either believe or deny ; and in the meantime, return to our 
 progressive conditions of snow on the simplest supposable 
 terms, as shown in my first plate. 
 
 6. On a conical mountain, such as that represented in Fig. 
 6, we are embarrassed by having to calculate the subtraction 
 by avalanche down the slopes. Let us therefore take rather, 
 for examination, a place where the snow can lie quiet. 
 
 Let Fig. 7, Plate I., represent a hollow in rocks at the sum- 
 mit of a mountain above the line of perpetual snow, the 
 lowest watershed being at the level indicated by the dotted 
 line. Then the snow, once fallen in this hollow T , can't get out 
 again ; but a little of it is taken away every year, partly by 
 the heat of the ground below, partly by surface sunshine and 
 evaporation, partly by filtration of water from above, while it 
 is also saturated with water in thaw-time, up to the level of 
 watershed. Consequently it must subside every year in the 
 middle ; and, as the mass remains unchanged, the same quan- 
 tity must be added every year at the top, — the excess being 
 always, of course, blown away, or dropped off, or thawed 
 above, in the year it falls. 
 
 7. Hence the entire mass will be composed, at any given 
 
OF BUTTER AND HONEY. 
 
 57 
 
 time, of a series of beds somewhat in the arrangement given 
 in Fig. 8 ; more remaining of each year's snow in proportion 
 to its youth, and very little indeed of the lowest and oldest 
 Led. 
 
 It must subside, I say, every year ; — but how much is in- 
 volved, of new condition, in saying this ? Take the question 
 in the simplest possible terms ; and let Fig. 9 represent a cup 
 or crater full of snow, level in its surface at the end of winter. 
 During the summer, there w 7 ill be large superficial melting ; 
 considerable lateral melting by reverberation from rock, and 
 lateral drainage ; bottom melting from ground heat, not more 
 than a quarter of an inch, — (Forbes's Travels, page 364,) — a 
 quantity which we may practically ignore. Thus the mass, 
 supposing the substance of it immovable in position, w T ould 
 be reduced by superficial melting during the year to the form 
 approximately traced by the dotted line within it, in Fig. 9. 
 
 8. But how of the interior melting ? Every interstice and 
 fissure in the snow, during summer, is filled either with warm 
 air, or warm water in circulation through it, and every sep- 
 arate surface of crystal is undergoing its own degree of 
 diminution. And a constant change in the conditions of 
 equilibrium results on every particle of the mass ; and a con- 
 stant subsidence takes place, involving an entirely different 
 relative position of every portion of it at the end of the year. 
 
 9. But I cannot, under any simple geometrical figure, give 
 an approximation to the resultant directions of change in 
 form ; because the density of the snow must be in some degree 
 proportioned to the depth, and the melting less, in proportion 
 to the density. 
 
 Only at all events, towards the close of the year, the mass 
 enclosed by the dotted line in Fig. 9 will have sunk into some 
 accommodation of itself to the hollow bottom of the crater, as 
 represented by the continuous line in Fig. 10. And, over 
 that, the next winter will again heap the snow to the cup- 
 brim, to be reduced in the following summer ; but now 
 through two different states of consistence, to the bulk limited 
 by the dotted line in Fig. 10. 
 
 10. In a sequence of six years, therefore, we shall have a 
 
58 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 series of beds approximately such as in Fig. 11 ; — approximate 
 ly observe, I say always, being myself wholly unable to deal 
 with the complexities of the question, and only giving the 
 diagram for simplest basis of future investigation, by the first 
 man of mathematical knowledge and practical common sense, 
 who will leave off labouring for the contradiction of his neigh- 
 bours, and apply himself to the hitherto despised toil of the 
 ascertainment of facts. And when he has determined what 
 the positions of the strata will be in a perfectly uniform cup, 
 such as that of which the half is represented in perspective in 
 Fig. 12, let him next inquire what would have happened to 
 the mass, if, instead of being deposited in a cup enclosed, on 
 all sides, it had been deposited in an amphitheatre open on 
 one, as in the section shown in Fig. 12. For that is indeed 
 the first radical problem to be determined respecting glacier 
 motion. 
 
 Difficult enough, if approached even with a clear head, and 
 open heart ; acceptant of all help from former observers, and 
 of all hints from nature and heaven ; but very totally insol- 
 uble, when approached by men whose poor capacities for 
 original thought are unsteadied by conceit, and paralyzed 
 by envy. 
 
 11. In my second plate, I have given, side by side, a reduc- 
 tion, to half-scale, of part of Forbes's exquisite chart of the 
 Mer de Glace, published in 1845, from his own survey made 
 in 1842 ; and a reproduction, approximately in facsimile, of 
 Professor Tyndall's woodcut, from his own ' ej^e-sketch ' of the 
 same portion of the glacier "as seen from the cleft station, 
 Treiaporte," published in I860.* 
 
 That Professor Tyndall is unable to draw T anything as seen 
 from anywhere, I observe to be a matter of much self-con- 
 gratulation to him ; such inability serving farther to establish 
 the sense of his proud position as a man of science, above us 
 poor artists, who labour under the disadvantage of being able 
 
 * 1 Glaciers of the Alps,' p. 3G9. Observe also that my engraving, in 
 consequence of the reduced scale, is grievously inferior to Forbes's 
 work; but quite effectually and satisfactorily reproduces Professor 
 TyDdall's, of the same size as the original. 
 
OF BUTTER AND HONEY. 
 
 with some accuracy to see, and with some fidelity to repre- 
 sent, what we wish to talk about. But when he found him- 
 self so resplendently inartistic, in the eye-sketch in question, 
 that the expression of his scientific vision became, for less 
 scientific persons, only a very bad map, it was at least incum- 
 bent on his Koyally-social Eminence to ascertain whether any 
 better map of the same places had been published before. 
 And it is indeed clear, in other places of his book, that he was 
 conscious of the existence of Forbes's chart ; but did not care 
 to refer to it on this occasion, because it contained the cor- 
 rection of a mistake made by Forbes in 1842, which Professor 
 Tyndall wanted, himself, to have the credit of correcting ; leav- 
 ing the public at the same time to suppose it had never been 
 corrected by its author. 
 
 12. This manner, and temper, of reticence, with its relative 
 personal loquacity, is not one in which noble science can be 
 advanced ; or in which even petty science can be increased. 
 Had Professor Tyndall, instead of seeking renown by the ex- 
 position of Forbes's few and minute mistakes, availed himself 
 modestly of Forbes's many and great discoveries, ten years of 
 arrest by futile discussion and foolish speculation might have 
 been avoided in the annals of geology ; and assuredly it would 
 not have been left for a despised artist to point out to you, 
 this evening, the one circumstance of importance in glacier 
 structure which Forbes has not explained. 
 
 13. You may perhaps have heard I have been founding my 
 artistic instructions lately on the delineation of a jam-pot. 
 Delighted by the appearance of that instructive object, in the 
 Hotel du Mont Blanc, at St. Martin's, full of Chamouni honey, 
 of last year, stiff and white, I found it also gave me command 
 of the best possible material for examination of glacial action 
 on a small scale. 
 
 Pouring a little of its candied contents out upon my plate, 
 by various tilting of which I could obtain any rate of motion 
 I wished to observe in the viscous stream ; and encumbering the 
 sides and centre of the said stream wdth magnificent moraines 
 composed of crumbs of toast, I was able, looking alternately to 
 table and window, to compare the visible motion of the met 
 
CO 
 
 DEUCALION'. 
 
 lifluous glacier, and its transported toast, with the less trace- 
 able, but equally constant, motion of the glacier of Bionnassay, 
 and its transported granite. And I thus arrived at the per- 
 ception of the condition of glacial structure, which though, as 
 I told you just now, not, I believe, hitherto illustrated, it is 
 entirely in your power to illustrate for yourselves in the fol- 
 lowing manner. 
 
 If }'ou will open a fresh pot of honey to-morrow at break- 
 fast, and take out a good table-spoonful of it, you will see, 
 of course, the surface generally ebb in the pot. Put the 
 table-spoonful back in a lump at one side, and you will see the 
 surface generally flow in the pot. The lump you have put on 
 at the side does not diffuse itself over the rest ; but it sinks 
 into the rest, and the entire surface rises round it, to its former 
 level. 
 
 Precisely in like manner, every pound of snow you put on 
 the top of Mont Blanc, eventually makes the surface of the 
 glaciers rise at the bottom.* 
 
 15. That is not impulsive action, mind you. That is mere 
 and pure viscous action- — the communication of force equally 
 in every direction among slowly moving particles. I once 
 thought that this force might also be partially elastic, so that 
 whereas, however vast a mass of honey you had to deal with, 
 — a Niagara of honey, — you never could get it to leap like a 
 sea-wave at rocks, ice might yet, in its fluency, retain this 
 power of leaping ; only slowly, — taking a long time to rise, 
 yet obeying the same mathematic law of impulse as a sea- 
 breaker ; but ascending through seras of surge, and commu- 
 nicating, through seras, its recoil. The little ripple of the 
 stream breaks on the shore, — quick, quick, quick. The Atlantic 
 wave slowly uplifts itself to its plunge, and slowly appeases its 
 thunder. The ice w r ave — if there be one — would be to the 
 Atlantic wave as the ocean is to the brook. 
 
 If there be one ! The question is of immense — of vital — 
 importance, to that of glacier action on crag : but before at- 
 tacking it, we need to know what the lines of motion are, — 
 first, in a subsiding table- spoonful of honey ; secondly, in an 
 * Practically hyperbolic expression, but mathematically true. 
 
OF BUTTER AND HONEY. 
 
 61 
 
 uprearing Atlantic wave ; and, thirdly, in the pulsatory festoons 
 of a descending cataract, obtained by the relaxation of its mass, 
 while the same pulsatory action is displayed, as unaccountably, 
 by a glacier cataract,* in the compression of its mass. 
 
 And on applying to learned men in Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge f for elucidation of these modes of motion, I find that, 
 while they can tell me everything I don't want to know, about 
 the collision and destruction of planets, they are not entirely 
 clear on the subject either of the diffusion of a drop of honey 
 from its comb, or the confusion of a rivulet among its cresses. 
 Of which difficult matters, I will therefore reserve inquiry to 
 another chapter ; anticipating, however, its conclusions, for 
 the reader's better convenience, by the brief statement, that 
 glacier ice has no power of springing whatever ; — that it can- 
 not descend into a rock-hollow, and sweep out the bottom of 
 it, as a cascade or a wave can ; but must always sluggishly fill 
 it to the brim before flowing over ; and accumulate, beneath, 
 under dead ice, quiet as the depths of a mountain tarn, the 
 fallen ruins of its colossal shore. 
 
 * Or a stick of sealing-wax. Warm one at the fire slowly through ; 
 and "bend it into the form of a horseshoe. You will then see, through 
 a lens of moderate power, the most exquisite facsimiles of glacier fissure 
 produced by extension, on its convex surface, and as faithful image of 
 glacier surge produced by compression, on its concave one. 
 
 In the course of such extension, the substance of the ice is actually 
 expanded, (see above, Chap. IV., § 7,) by the widening of every minute 
 fissure ; and in the course of such compression, reduced to apparently 
 solid ice, by their closing. The experiments both of Forbes and Agassiz 
 appear to indicate that the original fissures are never wholly effaced by 
 compression : but I do not myself know how far the supposed result of 
 these experiments may be consistent with ascertained phenomena of 
 regelation. 
 
 f I have received opportune and kind help, from the other side of 
 the Atlantic waves, in a study of them by my friend Professor Rood. 
 
62 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 CHAPTEE VXX. 
 
 THE IRIS OF THE EARTH. 
 
 Lecture given at the London Institution, February 11th and 
 March 2Sth, 1876,* — the subject announced being, "And 
 
 THE GOLD OF THAT LAND IS GOOD : THERE IS BDELLIUM AND 
 THE ONYX STONE." 
 
 L The subject which you permit me the pleasure of illustrat- 
 ing to you this evening, namely, the symbolic use of the colours 
 of precious stones in heraldry, will, I trust, not interest you 
 less because forming part both of the course of education in 
 art which I have been permitted to found in Oxford ; and of 
 that in physical science, which I am about to introduce in the 
 Museum for working men at Sheffield. 
 
 I say 'to introduce,' not as having anything novel to teach, 
 or show ; for in the present day I think novelty the worst ene- 
 my of knowledge, and my introductions are only of things 
 forgotten. And I am compelled to be pertinaciously — it might 
 even seem, insolently, separate in effort from any who would 
 help me, just because I am resolved that no pupil of mine shall 
 see anything, or learn, but what the consent of the past has ad- 
 mitted to be beautiful, and the experience of the past has as- 
 certained to be true. During the many thousand years of this 
 world's existence the persons living upon it have produced 
 more lovely things than any of us can ever see ; and have as- 
 certained more profitable things that any of us can ever know. 
 Of these infinitely existing, beautiful things, I show to my 
 pupils as many as they can thoroughly see, — not more ; and 
 of the natural facts which are positively known, I urge them 
 to know as many as they can thoroughly know, — not more ; 
 and absolutely forbid all debate whatsoever. The time for 
 debate is when we have become masters — not while we are 
 
 * The abrupt interpolation of this lecture in the text of Deucalion is 
 explained in the next chapter. 
 
THE IRIS OF TIIE EARTH. 
 
 63 
 
 students. And the wisest of masters are those who debate 
 least. 
 
 2. For my own part — holding myself nothing better than 
 an advanced student, guiding younger ones, — I never waste a 
 moment of life in dispute, or discussion. It is at least ten 
 years since I ceased to speak of anything but what I had as- 
 certained ; and thus becoming, as far as I know, the most prac- 
 tical and positive of men, left discourse of things doubtful to 
 those whose pleasure is in quarrel ; — content, for my pupils 
 and myself, to range all matters under the broad head of things 
 certain, with which we are vitally concerned, and things un- 
 certain, which don't in the least matter. 
 
 3. In the working men's museum at Sheffield, then, I mean 
 to place illustrations of entirely fine metal-work, including 
 niello and engraving ; and of the stones, and the Flora and 
 Fauna, of Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Durham, and "Westmore- 
 land ; * together with such foreign examples as may help to 
 the better understanding of what we have at home. But in 
 teaching metal-work, I am obliged to exhibit, not the uses of 
 iron and steel only, but those also of the most precious metals, 
 and their history ; and for the understanding of any sort of 
 stones, I must admit precious stones, and their history. The 
 first elements of both these subjects, I hope it may not be un- 
 interesting to follow out with me this evening. 
 
 4. I have here, in my right hand, a little round thing, and 
 in my left a little flat one, about which, and the like of them, 
 it is my first business to explain, in Sheffield, what may posi- 
 tively be known. They have long been, both, to me, subjects 
 of extreme interest ; and I do not hesitate to say that I know 
 more about them than most people : but that, having learned 
 what I can, the happy feeling of wonder is always increasing 
 upon me — how little that is ! What an utter mystery both 
 the little things still are ! 
 
 5. This first — in my right hand — is what we call a ' pebble,' f 
 or rolled flint, presumably out of Kensington gravel-pits. I 
 picked it up in the Park, — the first that lay loose, inside the 
 
 * Properly, Westmoreland, the district of Western Meres, 
 f I. A. i. Sheffield Museum ; see Chapter VIII. 
 
64 
 
 DEUCALION, 
 
 railings, at the little gate entering from Norfolk Street. 1 
 shall send it to Sheffield ; knowing that like the bit of lead 
 picked up by Saadi in the 'Arabian Nights/ it will make the 
 fortune of Sheffield, scientifically, — if Sheffield makes the most 
 of it, and thoroughly learns what it is. 
 
 6. What it is, I say — you observe ; not merely, what it is 
 made of Anybody — the pitifullest apothecary round the 
 corner, with a beggarly account of empty boxes — can tell you 
 that. It is made of brown stuff called silicon, and oxygen, 
 and a little iron : and so any apothecary can tell what you all 
 who are sitting there are made of : — you, and I, and all of us, 
 are made of carbon, nitrogen, lime, and phosphorus, and 
 seventy per cent, or rather more of water ; but then, that 
 doesn't tell us what we are, — what a child is, or what a boy 
 is, — much less what a man is, — least of all, what supremely 
 inexplicable woman is. And so, in knowing only what it is 
 made of, we don't know what a flint is. 
 
 7. To know what it is, we must know what it can do, and 
 suffer. 
 
 That it can strike, steel into white-hot fire, but can itself be 
 melted down like water, if mixed with ashes ; that it is 
 subject to law T s of form one jot of which it cannot violate, and 
 yet which it can continually evade, and apparently disobey ; 
 that in the fulfilment of these it becomes pure, — in rebellion 
 against them, foul and base ; that it is appointed on our 
 island coast to endure for countless ages, fortifying the sea 
 cliff ; and on the brow of that very cliff, every spring, to be 
 dissolved, that the green blades of corn may drink it with the 
 dew ; — that in its noblest forms it is still imperfect, and in 
 the meanest, still honorable, — this, if we have rightly learned, 
 we begin to know what a flint is. 
 
 8. And of this other thing, in my left hand, — this flat bit 
 of yellow mineral matter, — commonly called a 'sovereign,' 
 not indeed to be picked up so easily as the other — (though 
 often, by rogues, with small pains ;) — yet familiar enough to 
 the sight of most of us, and too familiar to our thought, — 
 there perhaps are the like inquiries to be put. What is it ? 
 What can it do ; and for whom ? This shape given to it by 
 
THE IRIS OF THE EARTH. 
 
 men, bearing the image of a Caesar ; — how far does this make 
 it a thing which is Caesar's ? the opposed image of a saint, 
 riding against a dragon — how far does this make it a thing 
 which is of Saints? Is its testimony true, or conceivably 
 true, on either side ? Are there yet Caesars ruling us, or 
 saints saving us, to whom it does of right belong ? 
 
 9. And the substance of it, — not separable, this, into others, 
 but a pure element, — what laws are over it, other than 
 Caesar's ; what forms must it take, of its own, in eternal 
 obedience to invisible power, if it escape our human ham- 
 mer-stroke ? How far, in its own shape, or in this, is it itself 
 a Caesar ; inevitable in authority ; secure of loyalty, loveable, 
 and meritorious of love ? For, reading its past history, we 
 find it has been much beloved, righteously or iniquitously, — 
 a thing to be known the grounds of, surely ? 
 
 10. Nay, also of this dark and despised thing in my right 
 hand, we must ask that higher question, has it ever been be- 
 loved? And finding in its past history that in its pure and 
 loyal forms, of amethyst, opal, crystal, jasper, and onyx, it 
 also has been much beloved of men, shall we not ask farther 
 whether it deserves to be beloved, — whether in wisdom or 
 folly, equity or inequity, we give our affections to glittering 
 shapes of clay, and found our fortunes on fortitudes of stone ; 
 and carry down from lip to lip, and teach, the father to the 
 child, as a sacred tradition, that the Power which made us, 
 and preserves, gave also with the leaves of the earth for our 
 food, and the streams of the earth for our thirst, so also the 
 dust of the earth for our delight and possession : bidding the 
 first of the Rivers of Paradise roll stainless waves over 
 radiant sands, and writing, by the word of the Spirit, of the 
 Rocks that it divided, " The gold of that land is good ; there 
 also is the crystal, and the onyx stone." 
 
 11. Before I go on, I must justify to you the familiar word 
 I have used for the rare one in the text. 
 
 If with mere curiosity, or ambitious scholarship, you were 
 to read the commentators on the Pentateuch, you might 
 spend, literally, many years of life, on the discussions as to 
 the kinds of the gems named in it ; and be no wiser at the 
 5 
 
66 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 end than you were at the beginning. But if, honestly and 
 earnestly desiring to know the meaning of the book itself, 
 you set yourself to read with such ordinary help as a good 
 concordance and dictionary, and with fair knowledge of the 
 two languages in which the Testaments have been clearly 
 given to us, you may find out all you need know, in an hour. 
 
 12, The word ' bdellium ' occurs only twice in the Old 
 Testament : here, and in the book of Numbers, where you 
 are told the manna was of the colour or look of bdellium. 
 There, the Septuagint uses for it the word icpwraAAos, crystal, 
 or more properly anything congealed by cold ; and in the 
 other account of the manna, in Exodus, you are told that, 
 after the dew round the camp was gone up, " there lay a 
 small round thing — as small as the hoar-frost upon the 
 ground." Until I heard from my friend Mr. Tyrrwhitt* of 
 the cold felt at night in camping on Sinai, I could not under- 
 stand how deep the feeling of the Arab, no less than the 
 Greek, must have been respecting the divine gift of the dew, 
 — nor with what sense of thankfulness for miraculous bless- 
 ing the question of Job would be uttered, " The hoary frost 
 of heaven, who hath gendered it ? " Then compare the first 
 words of the blessing of Isaac : " God give thee of the dew 
 of heaven, and of the fatness of earth ; " and, again, the first 
 words of the song of Moses : " Give ear, oh ye heavens, — for 
 my speech shall distil as the dew ; " and you will see at once 
 why this heavenly food was made to shine clear in the desert, 
 like an enduring of its dew ; — Divine remaining for continual 
 need. Frozen, as the Alpine snow — pure for ever. 
 
 13. Seize firmly that first idea of the manna, as the type 
 of the bread which is the Word of God ; f and then look on 
 
 * See some admirable sketches of travelling in the Peninsula of Sinai 9 
 by this writer, in 1 Vacation Tourists,' Macmillan, 1864. "I still re- 
 member," he adds in a private letter to me, ' ' that the frozen towels 
 stood on their edges as stiff as biscuits. By 11 A.M. the thermometer 
 had risen to 85°, and was still rising." 
 
 f Sir Philip Sidney, in his translation of the &prov ovpavov of the 
 105th Psalm, completes the entire range of idea, 
 
 M Himself, from skies, their hunger to repel, 
 Candies the grasse with sweete congealed dew." 
 
THE IRIS OF THE EARTH 
 
 67 
 
 for the English word ' crystal' in Job, of Wisdom, "It cannot 
 be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or 
 *he sapphire : the gold and the crystal shall not equal it, neither 
 shall it be valued with pure gold ;" in Ezekiel, " firmament of 
 the terrible crystal," or in the Apocalypse, " A sea of glass, 
 like unto crystal, — water of life, clear as crystal," — " light of 
 the city like a stone most precious, even like a jasper stone, 
 clear as crystal." Your understanding the true meaning of 
 all these passages depends on your distinct conception of the 
 permanent clearness and hardness of the Rock-crystal. You 
 may trust me to tell you quickly, in this matter, what you may 
 all for yourselves discover if you will read. 
 
 14. The three substances named here in the first account 
 of Paradise, stand generally as types — the Gold of all precious 
 metals ; the Crystal of all clear precious stones prized for 
 lustre; the Onyx of all opaque precious stones prized for 
 colour. And to mark this distinction as a vital one, — in each 
 case when the stones to be set for the tabernacle-service are 
 named, the onyx is named separately. The Jewish rulers 
 brought "onyx stones, and stones to be set for the ephod, and 
 for the breastplate."* And the onyx is used thrice, while 
 every other stone is used only once, in the High Priest's robe ; 
 two onyxes on the shoulders, bearing the twelve names of the 
 tribes, six on each stone, (Exod. xxviii. 9, 10,) and one in the 
 breast-plate, with its separate name of one tribe, (Exod. xxviii. 
 20.) 
 
 15. a. Now note the importance of this grouping. The 
 Gold, or precious metal, is significant of all that the power of 
 the beautiful earth, gold, and of the strong earth, iron, has 
 done for and against man. How much evil I need not say. 
 How much good is a question I will endeavour to show some 
 evidence on forthwith. 
 
 b. The Crystal is significant of all the power that jewels, 
 from diamonds down through every Indian gem to the glass 
 beads which we now make for ball-dresses, have had over the 
 imagination and economy of men and women — from the day 
 
 * Exod. xxv. 7, xxxv. 27, comparing Job above quoted, and Ezekie* 
 xxviii. 13. 
 
68 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 that Adam drank of the water of the crystal river to this hour. 
 How much evil that is, you partially know ; how much good, 
 we have to consider. 
 
 c. The Onyx is the type of ail stones arranged in bands of 
 different colours ; it means primarily, nail-stone — showing a 
 separation like the white half-crescent at the root of the fin- 
 ger-nail ; not without some idea of its subjection to laws of 
 Jife. Of these stones, part, which are flinty, are the material 
 used for cameos and all manner of engraved work and pietra 
 dura ; but in the great idea of banded or belted stones, they 
 include the whole range of marble, and especially alabaster, 
 giving the name to the alabastra, or vases used especially for 
 the containing of precious unguents, themselves more pre- 
 cious ; * so that this stone, as best representative of all others, 
 is chosen to be the last gift of men to Christ, as gold is their 
 first ; incense with both : at His birth, gold and frankincense ; 
 at His death, alabaster and spikenard. 
 
 16. The two sources of the material wealth of all nations 
 were thus offered to the King of men in their simplicity. But 
 their power among civilized nations has been owing to their 
 workmanship. And if we are to ask whether the gold and the 
 stones are to be holy, much more have we to ask if the worker 
 in gold, and the worker in stone, are to be conceived as exer- 
 cising holy function. 
 
 17. Now, as we ask of a stone, to know what it is, what it 
 can do, or suffer, so of a human creature, to know what it is, 
 we ask what it can do, or suffer. 
 
 So that we have two scientific questions put to us, in this 
 matter : how the stones came to be what they are — or the law 
 of Crystallization ; and how the jewellers came to be what they 
 are — or the law of Inspiration. You see how vital this ques- 
 tion is to me, beginning now actually to give my laws of Flor- 
 entine art in English Schools ! How can artists be made 
 artists, — in gold and in precious stones? whether in the 
 desert, or the city? — and if in the city, whether, as at Jerusa- 
 lem, so also in Florence, Paris, or London ? 
 
 * Compare the " Nardi parvos onyx," which was to be Virgil's feast- 
 gift, in spring, to Horace. 
 
THE IRIS OF THE EARTH, 
 
 69 
 
 Must we at this present time, think you, order the jewellers, 
 whom we wish to teach, merely to study and copy the best 
 results of past fashion ? or are we to hope that some day or 
 other, if we behave rightly, and take care of our jewels prop- 
 erly, we shall be shown also how to set them ; and that, 
 merely substituting modern names for ancient ones, some 
 divine message will come to our craftsmen, such as this : 
 ' See, I have called by name Messrs. Hunt and Eoskell, and 
 Messrs. London and Kyder, and I have filled them with the 
 Spirit of God, in wisdom and in understanding, and in all 
 manner of workmanship, to work in gold, and in silver, and 
 in brass, and in cutting of stones ' ? 
 
 18. This sentence, which, I suppose, becomes startling to 
 your ear in the substitution of modern for ancient names, is 
 the first, so far as I know, distinctly referring to the ancient 
 methods of instruction in the art of jewellery. So also the 
 words which I have chosen for the title (or, as perhaps some 
 of my audience may regretfully think it should be called, the 
 text,) of my lecture, are the first I know that give any account 
 of the formation or existence of jewels. So that the same 
 tradition, whatever its value, w T hich gave us the commands we 
 profess to obey for our moral law, implies also the necessity 
 of inspired instruction for the proper practice of the art of 
 jewellery ; and connects the richness of the earth in gold and 
 jewels with the pleasure of Heaven that we should use them 
 under its direction. The scientific mind will of course draw 
 back in scorn from the idea of such possibility ; but then, the 
 scientific mind can neither design, itself, nor perceive the 
 power of design in others. And practically you will find that 
 all noble design in jewellery whatsoever, from the beginning 
 of the world till now, has been either instinctive, — done, that 
 is to say, by tutorship of nature, with the innocent felicity and 
 security of purely animal art, — Etruscan, Irish, Indian, or 
 Peruvian gold being interwoven with a fine and unerring 
 grace of industry, like the touch of the bee on its cell and of 
 the bird on her nest, — or else, has been wrought into its finer 
 forms, under the impulse of religion in sacred service, in 
 crosier, chalice, and lamp ; and that the best beauty of its 
 
70 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 profane service has been debased from these. And the three 
 greatest masters of design in jewellery, the ' facile principes 
 of the entire European School, are — centrally, the one who 
 definitely worked always with appeal for inspiration — Angel- 
 ico of Fesole ; and on each side of him, the two most earnest 
 reformers of the morals of the Christian Church — Holbein and 
 Sandro Botticelli. 
 
 19. I have first answered this, the most close home of the 
 questions, — how men come to be jewellers. Next, how do 
 stones come to be jewels ? It seems that by all religious, no 
 less than all profane, teaching or tradition, these substances 
 are asserted to be precious, — useful to man, and sacred to 
 God. Whether we have not made them deadly instead of 
 useful, and sacrificed them to devils instead of God, — you 
 may consider at another time. To-night, I would examine 
 only a little w r ay the methods in which they are prepared by 
 nature, for such service as they are capable of. 
 
 20. There are three great laws by which they, and the 
 metals they are to be set in, are prepared for us ; and at pres- 
 ent all these are mysteries to us. 
 
 I. The first, the mystery by which " surely there is a vein 
 for the silver, and a place for the gold whence * they fine it." 
 No geologist, no scientific person whatsoever, can tell you 
 how this gold under my hand was brought into this cleft in 
 the bdellium ; f no one knows where it was before, or how it 
 got here : one thing only seems to be manifest — that it was 
 not here always. This white bdellium itself closes rents, and 
 fills hollows, in rocks which had to be rent before they could 
 be rejoined, and hollowed before they could be refilled. But 
 no one hitherto has been able to say where the gold first was, 
 or by what process it came into this its resting-place. First 
 mystery, then, — that there is a vein for the silver and a place 
 for the gold. 
 
 II. The second mystery is that of crystallization ; by which, 
 obeying laws no less arbitrary than those by which the bee 
 builds her cell — the water produced by the sweet miracles of 
 
 * * Whence,' not 4 where/ they sift or wash it : odev $(q0€<rai, LXX. 
 f 20. A. 1. Sheffield Museum. 
 
THE IRIS OF THE EARTH. 
 
 71 
 
 cloud and spring freezes into the hexagonal stars of the hoar- 
 frost ; — the flint, which can be melted and diffused like water, 
 freezes also, like water, into these hexagonal towers of everlast- 
 ing ice ; * and the clay, which can be dashed on the potter's 
 wheel as it pleaseth the potter to make it, can be frozen by 
 the touch of Heaven into the hexagonal star of Heaven's own 
 colour — the sapphire. 
 
 HI. The third mystery, the gathering of crystals themselves 
 into ranks or bands, by which Scotch pebbles are made, not 
 only is at present unpierced, but — which is a wonderful thing 
 in the present century — it is even untalked about. There has 
 been much discussion as to the nature of metallic veins ; and 
 books have been written with indefatigable industry, and 
 splendid accumulation of facts, on the limits, though never 
 on the methods, of eiystallization. But of the structure of 
 banded stones not a word is ever said, and, popularly, less 
 than nothing known ; there being many very false notions 
 current respecting them, in the minds even of good mineralo- 
 gists. 
 
 And the basis of what I find to be ascertainable about 
 them, may be told with small stress to your patience. 
 
 21. I have here in my hand,f a pebble which used to deco- 
 rate the chimney-piece of the children's playroom in my aunts 
 house at Perth, when I was seven years old, just half a cen- 
 tury ago ; which pebble having come out of the hill of Kin- 
 noull, on the other side of the Tay, I show you because I 
 know so well where it came from, and can therefore answer 
 for its originality and genuineness. 
 
 22. The hill of Kinnoull, like all the characteristic crags or 
 craigs of central Scotland, is of a basaltic lava — in which, 
 however, more specially than in most others, these balls of 
 pebble form themselves. And of these, in their first and 
 simplest state, you may think as little pieces of flint jelly, 
 filling the pores or cavities of the rock. 
 
 Without insisting too strictly on the analogy — for Nature 
 is so various in her operations that you are sure to be de- 
 
 * I. Q. 11. Sheffield Museum, 
 f t A. 8. Sheffield Museum. 
 
72 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 ceived if you ever think one process has been in all respects 
 like another — you may yet in most respects think of the whole 
 substance of the rock as a kind of brown bread, volcanically 
 baked, the pores and cavities of which, when it has risen, are 
 filled with agate or onyx jelly, as the similar pores of a slice 
 of quartern loaf are filled with butter, if the cook has spread 
 it in a hurry. 
 
 23. I use this simile with more satisfaction, because, in the 
 course of last autumn, I was making some practical experi- 
 ments on glacial motion — the substances for experiment be- 
 ing supplied to me in any degree of congelation or regelation 
 which might be required, by the perfectly angelic cook of a 
 country friend, who not only gave me the run of her kitchen, 
 but allowed me to make domical mountains of her best dish- 
 covers, and tortuous valleys of her finest napkins ; — under 
 which altogether favourable conditions, and being besides 
 supplied with any quality of ice-cream and blancmange, in 
 every state of frost and thaw, I got more beautiful results, 
 both respecting glacier motion, and interstratified rocks, than 
 a year's work would have reached by unculinary analysis. 
 Keeping, however — as I must to-night — to our present ques- 
 tion, I have here a piece of this baked volcanic rock, which is 
 as full of agate pebbles as a plum-pudding is of currants ; 
 each of these agate pebbles consisting of a clear green chalce- 
 dony, with balls of banded agate formed in the midst, or at 
 the sides of them. This diagram * represents one enlarged. 
 
 And you have there one white ball of agate, floating appar- 
 ently in the green pool, and a larger ball, which is cut through 
 by the section of the stone, and shows you the banded struct- 
 ure in the most exquisite precision. 
 
 24. Now, there is no doubt as to the possible formation of 
 these balls in melted vitreous substance as it cools, because 
 we get them in glass itself, when gradually cooled in old 
 glass-houses ; and there is no more difficulty in accounting 
 for the formation of round agate balls of this character than 
 for that of common globular chalcedony. But the difficulty 
 begins when the jelly is not allowed to remain quiet, but can 
 
 * This drawing is in Sheffield Museum. 
 
Plate III— -Mural Agates. 
 
THE IRIS OF THE EARTH. 
 
 73 
 
 run about while it is crystallizing. Then you get glutinous 
 forms that choke cavities in the rock, in which the chalcedony 
 slowly runs down the sides, and forms a level lake at the bot- 
 tom ; and sometimes you get the whole cavity filled with lake 
 poured over lake, the liquid one over the frozen, floor and 
 walls at last encrusted with onyx fit for kings' signets.* 
 
 25. Of the methods of engraving this stone, and of its gen- 
 eral uses and values in ancient and modern days, you will 
 find all that can interest you, admirably told by Mr. King, in 
 his book on precious stones and gems, to which I owe most 
 of the little I know myself on this subject. 
 
 To-night, I would only once more direct your attention to 
 that special use of it in the dress of the Jewish High Priest ; 
 that while, as one of the twelve stones of the breastplate, it 
 was engraved like the rest wdth the name of a single tribe, two 
 larger onyxes were used for the shoulder-studs of the ephod ; 
 and on these, the names of all the twelve tribes were engraved, 
 six upon each. I do not infer from this use of the onyx, how- 
 ever, any pre-eminence of value, or isolation of symbolism, in 
 the stone ; I suppose it to have been set apart for the more 
 laborious piece of engraving, simply because larger surfaces 
 of it were attainable than of true gems, and its substance was 
 more easily cut. I suppose the bearing of the names on the 
 shoulder to be symbolical of the priest's sacrificial office in 
 bearing the guilt and pain of the people ; while the bearing 
 of them on the breast was symbolical of his pastoral office in 
 teaching them : but, except in the broad distinction between 
 gem and onyx, it is impossible now to state w T ith any certainty 
 the nature or meaning of the stones, confused as they have 
 been by the most fantastic speculation of vain Jewish writers 
 themselves. 
 
 There is no such difficulty when we pass to the inquiry as 
 to the use of these stones in Christian Heraldry, on the breast- 
 plate and shield of the Knight ; for that use is founded on 
 natural relations of colour, which cannot be changed, and 
 which will become of more and more importance to mankind 
 
 * I am obliged to omit, here the part of the lecture referring to dia- 
 grams. It will be given in greater detail in the subsequent text. 
 
74 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 in proportion to the degree in which Christian Knighthood, 
 once proudly faithful to Death, in War, becomes humbly 
 faithful to Life, in Peace. 
 
 28. To these natural relations of colour, the human sight, 
 in health, is joyfully sensitive, as the ear is to the harmonies 
 of sound ; but what healthy sight is, you may well suppose, I 
 have not time to define to-night ; — the nervous power of the 
 eye, and its delight in the pure hues of colour presented 
 either by the opal, or by wild flowers, being dependent on the 
 perfect purity of the blood supplied to the brain, as well as on 
 the entire soundness of the nervous tissue to which that blood 
 is supplied. And how much is required, through the thoughts 
 and conduct of generations, to make the new blood of our 
 race of children pure — it is for your physicians to tell you, 
 when they have themselves discovered this medicinal truth, 
 that the divine laws of the life of Men cannot be learned in 
 the pain and death of Brutes. 
 
 27. The natural and unchangeable system of visible colour 
 has been lately confused, in the minds of all students, partly 
 by the pedantry of unnecessary science ; partly by the for- 
 malism of illiberal art : for all practical service, it may be 
 stated in a very few words, and expressed in a very simple 
 diagram. 
 
 28. There are three primary colours, Ked, Blue, and Yel- 
 low ; three secondary, formed by the union of any two of 
 these ; and one tertiary, formed by the union of all three. 
 
 If we admitted, as separate colours, the different tints pro- 
 duced by varying proportions of the composing tints, there 
 would of course be an infinite number of secondaries, and a 
 wider infinitude of tertiaries. But tints can be systematically 
 arranged only by the elements of them, not the proportions 
 of those elements. Green is only green, whether there be 
 less or more of blue in it ; purple only purple, whether there 
 be less or more of red in it ; scarlet only scarlet, whether 
 there be less or more of yellow in it ; and the tertiary gray 
 only gray, in whatever proportions the three primaries are 
 combined in it. 
 
 29. The diagram used in my drawing schools to express 
 
THE IBIS OF THE EARTH. 
 
 75 
 
 the system of these colours will be found coloured in the 
 ' Laws of Fesole ' :— this figure will serve our present pur- 
 pose.* 
 
 The simple trefoil produced by segments of three circles 
 in contact, is inscribed in a curvilinear equilateral triangle. 
 Nine small circles are set,— three in the extremities of the 
 foils, three on their cusps, three in the angles of the triangle. 
 
 The circles numbered 1 to 3 are coloured with the primi- 
 tive colours ; 4 to 6, with the secondaries ; 7 with white ; 8 
 with black ; and the 9th, with the tertiary, gray. 
 
 30. All the primary and secondary colours are capable of 
 * Readers interested in this subject are sure to be able to enlarge and 
 colour it for themselves. I take no notice of the new scientific theories 
 of primary colour : because they are entirely false as applied to practi- 
 cal work, natural or artistic. Golden light in blue sky makes green 
 sky ; but green sky and red clouds can't make yellow sky. 
 
76 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 infinitely various degrees of intensity or depression : they pass 
 through every degree of increasing light, to perfect light, or 
 white ; and of increasing shade, to perfect absence of light, 
 or black. And these are essential in the harmony required 
 by sight ; so that no group of colours can be perfect that has 
 not white in it, nor any that has not black ; or else the abate- 
 ment or modesty of them, in the tertiary, gray. So that these 
 three form the limiting angles of the field, or cloudy ground 
 of the rainbow. "I do set my bow in the cloud." 
 
 And the nine colours of which you here see the essential 
 group, have, as you know, been the messenger Iris ; exponents 
 of the highest purpose, and records of the perfect house- 
 hold purity and honour of men, from the days when Hesiod 
 blazoned the shield of Heracles, to the day when the fighting 
 Temeraire led the line at Trafalgar, — the Victory following 
 her, with three flags nailed to her masts, for fear one should 
 be shot away. 
 
 31. The names of these colours in ordinary shields of 
 knighthood, are those given opposite, in the left hand 
 column. The names given them in blazoning the shields of 
 nobles, are those of the correspondent gems : of heraldry by 
 the planets, reserved for the shields of kings, I have no time 
 to speak, to-night, except incidentally. 
 
 A. THE PRIMARY COLOURS. 
 
 1. 
 
 2. 
 
 3. 
 
 Or. 
 
 Gules. 
 Azure. 
 
 Topaz. 
 Ruby. 
 Sapphire. 
 
 B. THE SECONDARY COLOURS. 
 
 4. 
 5. 
 
 6. 
 
 Jasper. 
 
 Emerald. 
 
 Hyacinth. 
 
 Purpure. 
 
 C. THE TERTIARY COLOURS. 
 
 7. 
 8. 
 9. 
 
 Argent. 
 
 Sable. 
 
 Colombin. 
 
 Carbuncle. 
 
 Diamond. 
 
 Pearl. 
 
THE IRIS OF THE EARTH 
 
 77 
 
 32. I. Or. Stands between the light and darkness ; as the 
 sun, who " rejoice th as a strong man to run his course," be- 
 tween the morning and the evening. Its heraldic name, in 
 the shields of kings, is Sol : the Sun, or Sun of Justice ; and it 
 stands for the strength and honour of all men who run their 
 race in noble work ; whose path " is as the shining light, that 
 shineth more and more unto the perfect day." 
 
 For theirs are the works which are to shine before men, 
 that they may glorify our Father. And they are also to shine 
 before God, so that with respect to them, what was written 
 of St. Bernard may be always true : " Opera sancti patris 
 velut Sol in conspectu Dei." 
 
 For indeed they are a true light of the world, infinitely 
 more good, in the sight of its Creator, than the dead flame of 
 its sunshine ; and the discovery of modern science, that all 
 mortal strength is from the sun, which has thrown irrational 
 persons into stupid atheism, as if there was no God but the 
 sun, is indeed the accurate physical expression of this truth, 
 that men, rightly active, are living sunshine. 
 
 II. Gules, (rose colour,) from the Persian word ' gul,' for 
 the rose. It is the exactly central hue between the dark red, 
 and pale red, or wild-rose. It is the colour of love, the ful- 
 filment of the joy and of the love of life upon the earth. And 
 it is doubly marked for this symbol. We saw earlier, how 
 the vase given by the Madelaine was precious in its material ; 
 but it was also to be indicated as precious in its form. It is 
 not only the substance, but the form of the Greek urn, which 
 gives it nobleness ; and these vases for precious perfume were 
 tall, and shaped like the bud of the rose. So that the rose- 
 bud itself, being a vase filled with perfume, is called also 
 ' alabastron ' ; and Pliny uses that word for it in describing 
 the growth of the rose. 
 
 The stone of it is the Ruby. 
 
 III. Azure. The colour of the blue sky in the height of it, 
 at noon ; — type of the fulfilment of all joy and love in heaven, 
 as the rose-colour, of the fulfilment of all joy and love in earth. 
 And the stone of this is the Sapphire ; and because the loves of 
 Earth and Heaven are in truth one, the ruby and sapphire are 
 
78 
 
 DEUCALION: 
 
 indeed the same stone ; and they are coloured as if by en- 
 chantment, — how, or with what, no chemist has yet shown, — 
 the one azure, and the other rose. 
 
 And now you will understand why, in the vision of the 
 Lord of Life to the Elders of Israel, of which it is written, 
 "Also they saw God, and did eat and drink," you are told, 
 " Under His feet was a plinth of sapphire, and, as it were, 
 the body of Heaven in its clearness." 
 
 IV. Ecarlate (scarlet). I use the French word, because all 
 other heraldic words for colours are Norman-French. The 
 ordinary heraldic term here is ' tenne ' (tawny) ; for the later 
 heralds confused scarlet with gules; but the colour first 
 meant w T as the sacred hue of human flesh — Carnation ; — in- 
 carnation : the colour of the body of man in its beauty ; of 
 the maid's scarlet blush in noble love ; of the youth's scarlet 
 glow in noble war : the dye of the earth into which heaven 
 has breathed its spirit : — incarnate strength — incarnate mod- 
 esty. 
 
 The stone of it is the Jasper, which, as we shall see, is col- 
 oured with the same iron that colours the human blood ; and 
 thus you can understand why on the throne, in the vision of 
 the returning Christ, "He that sat was to look upon like a 
 jasper and a sardine stone." 
 
 V. Vert, (viridis,) from the same root as the words 'virtue,' 
 and 'Virgin,' — the colour of the green rod in budding spring ; 
 the noble life of youth, born in the spirit, — as the scarlet 
 means, the life of noble youth, in Jlesh.* It is seen most 
 perfectly in clear air after the sun has set, — the blue of the 
 upper sky brightening down into it. It is the true colour 
 of the eyes of Athena, — Athena TXavKuiinsj-f looking from the 
 w r est. 
 
 * Therefore, the Spirit of Beatrice is dressed in green, over scarlet, 
 (not rose ; — observe this specially). 
 
 " Sovra candido vel, cinta d 1 oliva 
 Donna m' apparve sotto verde manto, 
 Vestita di color di flamma viva." 
 
 f Accurately described by Pausanias, 1, xiv., as of the colour of a 
 green lake, from the Tritonian pool ; compare again the eyes of Bea- 
 trice. 
 
THE IRIS OF THE EARTH. 
 
 79 
 
 The stone of it is the Emerald ; and I must stay for a mo- 
 ment to tell you the derivation of that word. 
 
 Anciently, it did not mean our emerald, but a massive 
 green marble, veined apparently by being rent asunder, and 
 called, therefore, the Rent or Torn Rock. 
 
 Now, in the central war of Athena with the Giants, the sign 
 of her victory was that the earth was rent, the power of it 
 torn, and graves of it opened. We know this is written for 
 the sign of a greater victory than hers. And the word which 
 Hesiod uses — the oldest describer of this battle — is twice over 
 the same : the sea roared, the heavens thundered, the earth 
 cried out in being rent, ior^apdyrjo-e. From that word you 
 have F c the rent rock," — in Latin, smaragdus ; in Latin dialect, 
 smaraudus — softened into emeraudu, emeraude, emerald. 
 And now you see why "there was a rainbow round about the 
 throne in sight like unto an emerald." 
 
 VI. Purpure. The true purple of the Tabernacle, "blue, 
 purple, and scarlet " — the kingly colour, retained afterwards 
 in all manuscripts of the Greek Gospels ; therefore known 
 to us absolutely by its constant use in illumination. It is rose 
 colour darkened or saddened with blue ; the colour of love in 
 noble or divine sorrow ; borne by the kings, whose witness is 
 in heaven, and their labour on the earth. Its stone is the 
 Jacinth, Hyacinth, or Amethyst, — "like to that sable flower 
 inscribed with woe." 
 
 In these six colours, then, you have the rainbow, or angelic 
 iris, of the light and covenant of life. 
 
 But the law of the covenant is, " I do set my bow in the 
 cloud, on the shadow of death — and the ordinance of it." 
 
 And as here, central, is the sun in his strength, so in the 
 heraldry of our faith, the morning and the evening are the 
 first day, — and the last. 
 
 VII. Argent. Silver, or snow-colour ; of the hoar-frost on 
 the earth, or the star of the morning. 
 
 I was long hindered from understanding the entire group 
 of heraldic colours, because of the mistake in our use of the 
 word 'carbuncle/ It is not the garnet, but the same stone 
 as the ruby and sapphire — only crystallized white, instead of 
 
80 
 
 DEUCALIOK 
 
 red or blue. It is the white sapphire, showing the hex 
 agonal star of its crystallization perfectly ; and therefore it 
 becomes an heraldic bearing as a star. 
 
 And it is the personal bearing of that Geoffrey Plantagenet, 
 who married Maud the Empress, and became the sire of the 
 lords of England, in her glorious time. 
 
 VIII. Sable, (sable, sabulum,) the colour of sand of the great 
 hour-glass of the world, outshaken. Its stone is the diamond 
 — never yet, so far as I know, found but in the sand.* It is 
 the symbol at once of dissolution, and of endurance : dark- 
 ness changing into light — the adamant of the grave. 
 
 IX. Gray. (When deep, the second violet, giving Dante's 
 fall chord of the seven colours). The abatement of the light, 
 the abatement of the darkness. Patience, between this which 
 recedes and that which advances ; the colour of the turtle- 
 dove, with the message that the waters are abated ; the col- \ 
 our of the sacrifice of the poor, — therefore of humility. Its 
 stone is the Pearl ; in Norman heraldry the Marguerite — the 
 lowest on the shield, yet of great price ; and because, through 
 this virtue, open first the gates of Paradise, you are told that 
 while the building of the walls of it was of jasper, every sev- 
 eral gate was of one pearl. 
 
 33. You hear me tell you thus positively, — and without 
 qualification or hesitation, — what these things mean. But 
 mind, I tell you so, after thirty years' work, and that directed 
 wholly to the one end of finding out the truth, whether it was 
 pretty or ugly to look in face of. During which labour I 
 have found that the ultimate truth, the central truth, is 
 always pretty ; but there is a superficial truth, or half-way 
 truth, which may be very ugly ; and which the earnest and 
 faithful worker has to face and fight, and pass over the body 
 of, — feeling it to be his enemy ; but which a careless seeker 
 may be stopped by, and a misbelieving seeker will be de- 
 lighted by, and stay with gladly. 
 
 34. When I first gave this lecture, you will find the only 
 reports of it in the papers, with which any pains had been 
 taken, were endeavours to make you disbelieve it, or misbe- 
 
 * Or in rock virtually composed of it. 
 
THE IRIS OF THE EARTH 
 
 81 
 
 kieve it, — that is to say, to make £ meseroyants ' or ' miscreants 1 
 of you. 
 
 And among the most earnest of these, was a really indu& 
 trious essay in the ' Daily Telegraph,' — showing evidence that 
 the writer had perseveringly gone to the Heralds' Office and 
 British Museum to read for the occasion ; and, I think, de- 
 serving of serious notice because we really owe to the pro- 
 prietors of that journal (who supplied the most earnest of our 
 recent investigators with funds for his Assyrian excavations) 
 the most important heraldic discoveries of the generations of 
 Noah and Nimrod, that had been made since printing took 
 the place of cuneiform inscription. 
 
 I pay, therefore, so much respect to the archseologians of 
 Fleet Street as to notice the results of their suddenly stimu- 
 lated investigations in heraldry. 
 
 35. " The lecturer appeared to have forgotten," they said, 
 "thafc every nation had its own code of symbols, and that 
 gules, or red, is denominated by the French heralds gueules, 
 and is derived by the best French philologers from the Latin 
 ' gula,' the gullet of a beast of prey." 
 
 It is perfectly true that the best French philologists do give 
 this derivation ; but it is also unfortunately true that the best 
 French philologists are not heralds ; and what is more, and 
 worse, all modern heraldry whatsoever is, to the old science, 
 just what the poor gipsy Hayraddin, in 6 Quentin Durward,' 
 is to Toison d'Or. But, so far from having ' forgotten,' as the 
 writer for the press supposes I had, that there were knights of 
 France, and Venice, and Florence, as well as England, it so 
 happens that my first studies in heraldry were in this manu- 
 script, which is the lesson-book of heraldry written for the 
 young Archduke Charles of Austria ; and in this one, which 
 is a psalter written in the monastery of the Saint Chapelle for 
 St. Louis, King of France ; and on the upper page of which, 
 here framed,* you will see written, in letters of gold, the record 
 of the death of his mother, Blanche of Castile, on the 27th of 
 November, next after St. Genevieve's day ; and on the under 
 
 * The books referred to, in my rooms at Oxford, are always accessible 
 for examination. 
 
S2 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 page, between the last lines of the Athanasian Creed, het 
 bearing, the Castilian tower, alternating with the king's, — 
 Azure, seme de France. 
 
 36. With this and other such surer authority than was 
 open to the investigation of the press-writer, I will clear up 
 for you his point about the word ' gules.' But I must go 
 a long way back first. I do not know if, in reading the 
 account of the pitching of the standards of the princes of 
 Israel round the Tabernacle, you have ever been brought 
 to pause by the singular covering given to the Tabernacle 
 itself, — rams' skins, dyed red, and badgers' skins. Of rams 5 
 skins, of course, any quantity could be had from the flocks, 
 but of badgers', the supply must have been difficult ! 
 
 And you will find, on looking into the matter, that the so- 
 called badgers' skins were indeed those which young ladies 
 are very glad to dress in at the present day, — sealskins ; and 
 that the meaning of their use in the Tabernacle was, that it 
 might be adorned with the useful service of the flocks of the 
 earth and sea : the multitude of the seals then in the Medi- 
 terranean being indicated to you both by the name and coin- 
 age of the city Phocaea ; and by the attribution of them, to 
 the God Proteus, in the first book of the Odyssey, under the 
 precise term of flocks, to be counted by him as their shepherd. 
 
 37. From the days of Moses and of Homer to our own, the 
 traffic in these precious wools and furs, in the Cashmere wool, 
 and the fur, after the seal disappeared, of the grey ermine, 
 (becoming white in the Siberian winter,) has continued : and 
 in the days of chivalry became of immense importance ; be- 
 cause the mantle, and the collar fastening close about the 
 neck, were at once the most useful and the most splendid 
 piece of dress of the warrior nations, who rode and slept in 
 roughest weather, and in open field. Now, these rams' skins, 
 or fleeces, dyed of precious red, were continually called by 
 their Eastern merchants 6 the red things,' from the Zoroas- 
 trian word c gul,' — taking the place of the scarlet Chlamydes, 
 which were among the richest wealth of old Rome. The 
 Latin knights could only render the eastern word ' gul ' by 
 gula ; and so in St. Bernard's red-hot denunciation of these 
 
THE IRIS OF THE EARTH. 
 
 83 
 
 proud red dresses, he numbers chiefly among them the little 
 red-dyed skins, — pelliculas rubricatas, — which they call guise: 
 " Quas gulas vocant." These red furs, for wrist and neck, 
 were afterwards supposed by bad Latinists to be called 
 ' guise,' as ^/jrootf-pieces. St. Bernard specifies them, also, in 
 that office : "Even some of the clergy," he says, "have the 
 red skins of weasels hanging from their necks— dependentes 
 a collo " ; this vulgar interpretation of gula became more 
 commonly accepted, as intercourse with the East, and chival- 
 ric heraldry, diminished ; and the modem philologist finally 
 jumps fairly down the lion's throat, and supposes that the 
 Tyrian purple, which had been the pride of all the Emperors 
 of East and West, was named from a wild beast's gullet ! 
 
 38. I do not hold for a mischance, or even for a chance 
 at all, that this particular error should have been unearthed 
 by the hasty studies of the Daily Telegraph. It is a mistake 
 entirely characteristic of the results of vulgar modern analy- 
 sis ; and I have exposed it in detail, that I might very sol- 
 emnly warn you of the impossibility of arriving at any just 
 conclusions respecting ancient classical languages, of which 
 this heraldry is among the noblest, unless we take pains first 
 to render ourselves capable of the ideas which such languages 
 convey. It is perfectly true that every great symbol, as it has, 
 on one side a meaning of comfort, has on the other one of 
 terror ; and if to noble persons it speaks of noble things, to 
 ignoble persons it will as necessarily speak of ignoble ones. 
 Not under one only, but under all, of these heraldic symbols, 
 as there is, for thoughtful and noble persons, the spiritual 
 sense, so for thoughtless and sensual persons, there is the 
 sensual one ; and can be no other. Every word has only the 
 meaning which its hearer can receive ; you cannot express 
 honour to the shameless, nor love to the unloving. Nay, 
 gradually you may fall to the level of having words no more, 
 either for honour or for love : 
 
 " There are whole nations," says Mr. Farrar, in his excellent 
 little book on the families of speech, " people whom no nation 
 now acknowledges as its kinsmen, whese languages, rich in 
 words for all that can be eaten or handled, seem absolutely 
 
84 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 incapable of expressing the reflex conceptions of the intellect, 
 or the higher forms of the consciousness ; whose life seems 
 confined to a gratification of animal wants, with no hope ill 
 the future, and no pride in the past. They are for the most 
 part peoples without a literature, and without a history ; — 
 peoples whose tongues in some instances have twenty names 
 for murder, but no name for love, no name for gratitude, no 
 name for God." 
 
 39. The English nation, under the teaching of modern 
 economists, is rapidly becoming one of this kind, which, de- 
 liberately livings not in love of God or man, but in defiance 
 of God, and hatred of man, will no longer have in its heraldry, 
 gules as the colour of love ; but gules only as the colour of 
 the throat of a wild beast. That will be the only part of the 
 British lion symbolized by the British flag ; — not the lion 
 heart any more, but only the lion gullet. 
 
 And if you choose to interpret your heraldry in that modern 
 fashion, there are volumes of instruction open for you every- 
 where. Yellow shall be to you the colour of treachery, in- 
 stead of sunshine ; green, the colour of putrefaction, instead 
 of strength ; blue, the colour of sulphurous hell-fire, instead 
 of sun-lit heaven ; and scarlet, the colour of the harlot of 
 Babylon, instead of the Virgin of God. All these are legiti- 
 mate readings, — nay, inevitable readings. I said wrongly just 
 now that you might choose what the symbols shall be to you. 
 Even if you would, you cannot choose. They can only reflect 
 to you what you have made your own mind, and can only 
 herald to you what you have determined for your own fate. 
 
 40. And now, with safe understanding of the meaning of 
 purple, I can show you the purple and dove-colour of St. 
 Mark's, once itself a sea-borne vase of alabaster f ull of incense 
 of prayers ; and a purple manuscript, — floor, walls and roof 
 blazoned with the scrolls of the gospel. 
 
 They have been made a den of thieves, and these stones of 
 Venice here in my hand * are rags of the sacred robes of her 
 
 * Portions of the alabaster of St. Mark's torn away for recent restora- 
 tions. Tlie destruction of the floor of the church, to give work to 
 modem mosaic mongers, has been going on foi years. I cannot bea* 
 
THE IRIS OF THE EARTH. 
 
 85 
 
 Church, sold, and mocked like her Master. They have parted 
 her garments, and cast lots upon her vesture. 
 
 41. I return to our question at the beginning : Are we right 
 in setting our hearts on these stones, — loving them, holding 
 them precious? 
 
 Yes, assuredly; provided it is the stone we love, and the 
 stone we think precious ; and not ourselves we love, and our- 
 selves we think precious. To worship a black stone, because 
 it fell from heaven, may not be wholly wise, but it is half-way 
 to being wise ; half-way to worship of heaven itself. Or, to 
 worship a white stone because it is dug with difficulty out of 
 the earth, and to put it into a log of wood, and say the wood 
 sees with it, may not be wholly wise ; but it is half-way to 
 being wise ; half-way to believing that the God who makes 
 earth so bright, may also brighten the eyes of the blind. It 
 is no true folly to think that stones see, but it is, to think that 
 eyes do not ; it is no true folly to think that stones live, but 
 it is, to think that souls die ; it is no true folly to believe that, 
 in the day of the making up of jewels, the palace walls shall 
 be compact of life above their corner-stone, — but it is, to be- 
 lieve that in the day of dissolution the souls of the globe shall 
 be shattered with its emerald ; and no spirit survive, unterri- 
 fied, above the ruin. 
 
 42. Yes, pretty ladies ! love the stones, and take care of 
 them ; but love your own souls better, and take care of them, 
 for the day when the Master shall make up His jewels. See 
 »;hat it be first the precious stones of the breastplate of justice 
 you delight in, and are brave in ; not first the stones, of your 
 own diamond necklaces * you delight in, and are fearful for, 
 
 the pain of describing the facts of it, and must leave the part of the 
 lecture referring to the colour of the marbles to be given farther on, 
 in connection with some extracts from my 'Stones of Venice.' The 
 superb drawing, by Mr. Bunney, of the north portico, which illustrated 
 them, together with the alabasters themselves, will be placed in the 
 Sheffield Museum. 
 
 * Do yon think there was no meaning of fate in that omen of the 
 diamond necklace ; at the end of the days of queenly pride ; — omen of 
 another line, of scarlet, on many a fair neck ? It was a foul story, you 
 
86 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 lest perchance the lady's maid miss that box at the station. 
 Get your breastplate of truth first, and every earthly stone 
 will shine in it. 
 
 Alas ! most of you know no more what justice means, than 
 what jewels mean ; but here is the pure practice of it to be 
 begun, if you will, to-morrow. 
 
 43. For literal truth of your jewels themselves, absolutely 
 search out and cast away all manner of false, or dyed, or al- 
 tered stones. And at present, to make quite sure, wear your 
 jewels uncut : they will be twenty times more interesting to 
 you, so. The ruby in the British crown is uncut ; and is, as 
 far as my knowledge extends, — I have not had it to look at 
 close, — the loveliest precious stone in the world. And, as a 
 piece of true gentlewoman's and true lady's knowledge, learn 
 to know these stones when you see them, uncut. So much of 
 mineralogy the abundance of modern science may, I think, 
 spare, as a piece of required education for the upper classes. 
 
 44. Then, when you know them, and their shapes, get your 
 highest artists to design the setting of them. Holbein, Bot- 
 ticelli, or Angelico, will always be ready to design a brooch 
 for you. Then you will begin to think how to get your Hol- 
 bein and Botticelli, which will lead to many other wholesome 
 thoughts. 
 
 45. And lastly, as you are true in the choosing, be just in 
 the sharing, of your jewels. They are but dross and dust 
 after all ; and you, my sweet religious friends, who are so 
 anxious to impart to the poor your pearls of great price, may 
 surely also share with them your pearls of little price. 
 Strangely (to my own mind at least), you are not so zealous 
 in distributing your estimable rubies, as you are in communi- 
 cating your inestimable wisdom. Of the grace of God, which 
 you can give away in the quantity you think others are in 
 
 say— slander of the innocent. Yes, undoubtedly, fate meant it to be so. 
 Slander, and lying, and every form of loathsome shame, cast on the 
 innocently fading Royalty. For the corruption of the best is the worst ; 
 and these gems, which are given by God to be on the breast of the pure 
 priest, and in the crown of the righteous king, sank into the black gravel 
 of diluvium, under streams of innocent blood. 
 
THE IMS OF THE EARTH 
 
 need of, without losing any yourselves, I observe you to be 
 affectionately lavish ; but of the jewels of God, if any sugges- 
 tions be made by charity touching the distribution of them, 
 you are apt, in your wisdom, to make answer like the wise 
 virgins, " Not so, lest there be not enough for us and you." 
 
 46. Now, my fair friends, doubtless, if the Tabernacle were 
 to be erected again, in the middle of the Park, you would all 
 be eager to stitch camels' hair for it ; — some, to make presents 
 of sealskins to it ; and, perhaps, not a few fetch your jewel- 
 cases, offering their contents to the selection of Bezaleel and 
 Aholiab. 
 
 But that cannot be, now, with so Crystal-Palace-like enter- 
 tainment to you. The tabernacle of God is now with men ; — 
 in men, and women, and sucklings also ; which temple ye are, 
 ye and your Christian sisters ; of whom the poorest, here in 
 London, are a very undecorated shrine indeed. They are the 
 Tabernacle, fair friends, which you have got leave, and charge, 
 to adorn. Not, in anywise, those charming churches and 
 altars which you wreathe with garlands for God's sake, and 
 the eloquent clergyman's. You are quite wTong, and barba- 
 rous in language, when you call them ' Churches ' at all. They 
 are only Synagogues ; — the very same of which Christ spoke, 
 with eternal meaning, as the places that hypocrites would love 
 to be seen in. Here, in St. Giles's and the East, sister to that 
 in St. George's, and the West, is the Church! raggedly 
 enough curtained, surely ! Let those arches and pillars of 
 Mr. Scott's alone, young ladies : it is you whom God likes to 
 see well decorated, not them. Keep your roses for your hair 
 -—your embroidery for your petticoats. You are yourselves 
 the Church, dears ; and see that you be finally adorned, as 
 women professing godliness, with the precious stones of good 
 works, which may be quite briefly defined, for the present, as 
 decorating the entire Tabernacle ; and clothing your poor 
 sisters, with yourselves. Put roses also in their hair, put 
 precious stones also on their breasts ; see that they also are 
 clothed in your purple and scarlet, with other delights ; that 
 they also learn to read the gilded heraldry of the sky ; and, 
 upon the earth, be taught, not only the labours of it, but the 
 
88 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 loveliness. For them, also, let the hereditary jewel recall thehr 
 father's pride, their mother's beauty : so shall your days, and 
 theirs, be long in the sweet and sacred land which the Lord 
 your God has given you : so, truly, shall the gold of that 
 
 LAND BE GOOD, AND THERE, ALSO, THE CRYSTAL, AND THE ONYX STONE. 
 
 CHAPTER VHI. 
 
 THE ALPHABET. 
 
 {Chapter written to introduce the preceding Lecture ; but trans 
 posed, that the Lecture might not be divided between iwo 
 numbers.) 
 
 1. Since the last sentence of the preceding number of 'Deuca- 
 lion 3 was written, I have been compelled, in preparing for the 
 arrangement of my Sheffield museum, to look with nicety into 
 the present relations of theory to knowledge in geological 
 science ; and find, to my no small consternation, that the as- 
 sertions which I had supposed beyond dispute, made by the 
 geologists of forty years back, respecting the igneous origin 
 of the main crystalline masses of the primary rocks, are now 
 all brought again into question ; and that the investigations of 
 many of the most intelligent observers render many former 
 theories, in their generality, more than doubtful. My own 
 studies of rock structure, with reference to landscape, have 
 led me, also, to see the necessity of retreating to and securing 
 the very bases of knowledge in this infinitely difficult science ; 
 and I am resolved, therefore, at once to make the series of 
 ' Deucalion ' an absolutely trustworthy foundation for the 
 geological teaching in St, George's schools ; by first sifting 
 what is really known from what is supposed ; and then, out 
 of things known, sifting what may be usefully taught to young 
 people, from the perplexed vanity of prematurely systematic 
 science. 
 
 2. I propose, also, in the St. George's Museum at Sheffield 
 
THE ALPHABET. 
 
 89 
 
 and in any provincial museums hereafter connected with it, 
 to allow space for two arrangements of inorganic substances ; 
 one for mineralogists, properly so called, and the general pub- 
 lic ; the other for chemists, and advanced students in physi- 
 cal science. The mineralogical collection will be fully de- 
 scribed and explained in its catalogue, so that very young 
 people may begin their study of it without difficulty, and so 
 chosen and arranged as to be comprehensible by persons who 
 have not the time to make themselves masters of the science 
 of chemistry, but who may desire some accurate acquaintance 
 with the aspect of the principal minerals which compose the 
 world. And I trust, as I said in the preceding lecture, that 
 the day is near when the knowledge of the native forms and 
 aspects of precious stones will be made a necessary part of a 
 lady's education ; and knowledge of the nature of the soils, 
 and the building stones, of his native country, a necessary 
 part of a gentleman's. 
 
 3. The arrangement of the chemical collection I shall leave 
 to any good chemist who will undertake it ; I suppose that 
 now adopted by Mr. Maskelyne for the mineral collection in 
 the British Museum may be considered as permanently au- 
 thoritative. 
 
 But the mineralogical collection I shall arrange myself, as 
 aforesaid, in the manner which I think likely to be clearest 
 for simple persons ; omitting many of the rarer elements 
 altogether, in the trust that they will be sufficiently illustrated 
 by the chemical series ; and placing the substances most com- 
 monly seen in the earth beneath our feet, in an order rather 
 addressed to the convenience of memory than to the symme- 
 tries of classification. 
 
 4. In the outset, therefore, I shall divide our entire collec- 
 tion into twenty groups, illustrated each by a separately bound 
 portion of catalogue. 
 
 These twenty groups will illustrate the native states, and 
 ordinary combinations, of nine solid oxides, one gaseous ele- 
 ment (fluorine), and ten solid elements, placed in the follow* 
 ing order : — 
 
90 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 1. Silica. 
 
 2. Oxide of Titanium. 
 
 3. Oxide of Iron. 
 
 4. Alumina. 
 
 5. Potassa. 
 
 6. Soda. 
 
 7. Magnesia. 
 
 8. Calcium. 
 
 9. Glucina. 
 
 10. Fluorine. 
 
 11. Carbon. 
 
 12. Sulphur. 
 
 13. Phosphorus. 
 
 14. Tellurium. 
 
 15. Uranium. 
 
 16. Tin. 
 
 17. Lead. 
 
 18. Copper. 
 
 19. Silver. 
 
 20. Gold. 
 
 5. A few words will show the objects proposed by this 
 limited arrangement. The three first oxides are placed in one 
 group, on account of the natural fellowship and constant as- 
 sociation of their crystals. 
 
 Added to these, the next group of the alkaline earths will 
 constitute one easily memorable group of nine oxides, out of 
 which, broadly and practically, the solid globe of the earth is 
 made, containing in the cracks, rents, or volcanic pits of it, 
 the remaining eleven substances, variously prepared for man's 
 use, torment, or temptation. 
 
 6. I put fluorine by itself, on account of its notable impor 
 tance in natural mineralogy, and especially in that of Cornwall, 
 Derbyshire, and Cumberland : what I have to say of chlorine 
 and iodine will be arranged under the same head ; then the 
 triple group of anomalous substances created for ministry by 
 fire, and the seven-fold group of the great metals, complete 
 the list of substances which must be generally known to the 
 
THE ALPHABET. 
 
 91 
 
 pupils in St. George's schools. The phosphates, sulphates, 
 and carbonates of the earths, will be given with the earths ; 
 and those of the metals, under the metals. The carburets, 
 sulphurets, and phosphurets,* under carbon, sulphur, and 
 phosphorus. Under glucina, given representatively, on ac- 
 count of its importance in the emerald, will be given what 
 specimens may be desirable of the minor or auxiliary earths 
 ■ — baryta, strontia, etc. ; and under tellurium and uranium, 
 the auxiliary metals — platinum, columbium, etc., naming them 
 thus together, under those themselves named from Tellus and 
 Uranus. With uranium I shall place the cupreous micas, for 
 their similarity of aspect. 
 
 7. The minerals referred to in each of these twenty groups 
 will be further divided, under separate letters, into such 
 minor classes as may be convenient, not exceeding twenty : 
 the letters being initial, if possible, of the name of the class ; 
 but the letters I and J omitted, that they may not be confused 
 with numerals ; and any letter of important sound in the min - 
 eral's name substituted for these, or for any other that would 
 come twice over. Then any number of specimens may be 
 catalogued under each letter. 
 
 For instance, the siliceous minerals which are the subject 
 of study in the following lecture will be lettered thus : — 
 
 A. Agate. 
 C. Carnelian. 
 H. Hyalite. 
 L. Chalcedony. 
 M. Amethyst. 
 O. Opal. 
 Q. Quartz. 
 S. Jasper. 
 
 In which list, M is used that we may not have A repeated, 
 and will yet be sufficiently characteristic of Amethyst ; and L, 
 to avoid the repetition of C, may stand for Chalcedony ; while 
 
 * I reject the modern term * sulphide ' unhesitatingly. It is as bar 
 barous as 4 carbide. ' 
 
92 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 S, being important in the sound of Jasper, will serve instead 
 of excluded J, or pre-engaged A. 
 
 The complete label, then, on any (principally) siliceous 
 mineral will be in such form as these following : — 
 
 1 A 1, meaning Silica, Agate, No. 1. 
 
 1 L 40, " Silica, Chalcedony, No. 40. 
 
 1 Q 520, " Silica, Quartz, No. 520. 
 
 8. In many of the classes, as in this first one of Silica, we 
 shall not need all our twenty letters ; but there will be a let- 
 ter A to every class, which will contain the examples that 
 explain the relation and connection of the rest. It happens 
 that in Silica, the agates exactly serve this purpose ; and 
 therefore may have A for their proper initial letter. But in 
 the case of other minerals, the letter A will not be the initial 
 of the mineral's name, but the indication of its character, as 
 explanatory of the succeeding series. 
 
 Thus the specimen of gold, referred to as 20 A 1 in the 
 preceding lecture, is the first of the series exhibiting the gen- 
 eral method of the occurrence of native gold in the rocks 
 containing it ; and the complete series in the catalogue will 
 be:— 
 
 A. Native Gold, in various geological 
 
 formations. 
 
 B. Branched Gold. 
 
 C. Crystalline Gold. 
 
 D. Dispersed Gold. 
 G. Granulate Gold. 
 K. Knitted Gold. 
 L. Leaf Gold. 
 
 M. Mossy Gold. 
 B. Boiled Gold. 
 
 • 
 
 9. It may be at once stated that I shall always retain the 
 word ' branched ' for minerals taking either of the forms now 
 called ' arborescent ' or ' dendritic' The advance of education 
 must soon make all students feel the absurdity of using the 
 epithet ' tree-like ' in Latin, with a different meaning from 
 
Plate IV. — Amethyst— Quartz. 
 With Warped Faults in Concretion. 
 
THE ALPHABET. 
 
 93 
 
 the epithet c tree-like ' in Greek. My general word £ branched' 
 will include both the so-called ' arborescent ' forms (meaning 
 those branched in straight crystals), and the so-called ' den- 
 dritic ■ (branched like the manganese or oxide in Mocha 
 stones ;) but with most accurate explanation of the difference ; 
 while the term ' spun * will be reserved for the variously 
 thread-like forms, inaccurately now called dendritic, assumed 
 characteristically by native silver and copper. 
 
 Of course, thread, branch, leaf, and grain, are all in most 
 cases crystalline, no less definitely than larger crystals ; but 
 all my epithets are for practical service, not scientific defini- 
 tion ; and I mean by ' crystalline gold ' a specimen which dis- 
 tinctly shows octohedric or other specific form ; and by 
 ' branched gold ' a specimen in which such crystalline forms 
 are either so indistinct or so minute as to be apparently 
 united into groups resembling branches of trees. 
 
 10. Every one of the specimens will be chosen for some 
 specialty of character ; and the points characteristic of it de- 
 scribed in the catalogue ; and whatever questions respecting 
 its structure are yet unsolved, and significant, will be sub- 
 mitted in succession, noted each by a Greek letter, so that 
 any given question may be at once referred to. Thus, for 
 instance : question a in example 20 G 1 will be the relation 
 of the subdivided or granular condition of crystalline gold to 
 porous states of the quartz matrix. As the average length of 
 description required by any single specimen, chosen on such 
 principal, ought to be at least half a page of my usual type, 
 the distribution of the catalogue into volumes will not seem 
 unnecessary ; especially as in due course of time, I hope that 
 each volume will consist of two parts, the first containing 
 questions submitted, and the second, solutions received. 
 
 The geological series will be distinguished by two letters 
 instead of one, the first indicating the principal locality of the 
 formation, or at least that whence it was first named. And I 
 shall distinguish all formations by their localities — CC M, L., 
 Malham limestone"; "S. S., Skiddaw slate"; etc.,— leaving 
 the geologists to assign systematic or chronological names as 
 they like. What is pliocene to-day may be pleistocene to* 
 
94 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 morrow ; and what is triassic in Mr. A.'s system, tesserassic 
 in Mr. B.'s ; but Turin gravels and Warwick sands remain 
 where they used to be, for all that. 
 
 These particulars being understood, the lecture which I 
 gave this spring on the general relations of precious minerals 
 to human interests, may most properly introduce us to our 
 detailed and progressive labour ; and two paragraphs of it P 
 incidentally touching upon methods of public instruction, 
 may fitly end the present chapter. 
 
 11. In all museums intended for popular teaching, there 
 are two great evils to be avoided. The first is, superabun- 
 dance ; the second, disorder. The first is having too much of 
 everything. You will find in your own work that the less 
 you have to look at, the better you attend. You can no 
 more see twenty things worth seeing in an hour, than }^ou 
 can read twenty books worth reading in a day. Give little, 
 but that little good and beautiful, and explain it thoroughly. 
 For instance, here in crystal, you may have literally a thou- 
 sand specimens, every one with something new in it to a 
 mineralogist ; but what is the use of that to a man who has 
 only a quarter of an hour to spare in a week ? Here are four 
 pieces — showing it in perfect purity, — with the substances 
 which it is fondest of working with, woven by it into tissues 
 as fine as Penelope's ; and one crystal of it stainless, with the 
 favourite shape it has here in Europe — the so-called 6 flute- 
 beak ' of Dauphin 6, — let a man once understand that crystal, 
 and study the polish of this plane surface, given to it by its 
 own pure growth, and the word ' crystal' will become a mira- 
 cle to him, and a treasure in his heart for evermore. 
 
 12. Not too much, is the first law ; not in disorder, is the 
 second. Any order will do, if it is fixed and intelligible : no 
 system is of use that is disturbed by additions, or difficult to 
 follow ; above all, let all things, for popular use, be beautifully 
 exhibited. In our own houses, we may have our drawers and 
 bookcases as rough as we please ; but to teach our people 
 rightly, we must make it a true joy to them to see the pretty 
 things we have to show : and we must let them feel that, al- 
 though^ poverty, they may be compelled to the pain of labour, 
 
FIRE AND WATER. 
 
 95 
 
 they need not, by poverty, be debarred from the felicity and the 
 brightness of rest ; nor see the work of great artists, or of the 
 great powers of nature, disgraced by commonness and vile- 
 ness in the manner of setting them forth. Stateliness, splen- 
 dour, and order are above all things needful in places dedi- 
 cated to the highest labours of thought : what we willingly 
 concede to the Graces of Society, we must reverently offer to 
 the Muses of Seclusion ; and out of the millions spent annu- 
 ally to give attractiveness to folly, may spare at least what is 
 necessary to give honour to Instruction. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 FIRE AND WATER. 
 
 1. In examining any mineral, I wish my pupils first to be 
 able to ascertain easily what it is ; then to be accurately in- 
 formed of what is known respecting the processes of its forma- 
 tion ; lastly, to examine, with such precision as their time or 
 instruments may permit, the effects of such formation on 
 the substance. Thus, from almost any piece of rock, in 
 Derbyshire, over which spring water has trickled or dashed 
 for any length of time, they may break with a light blow a 
 piece of brown incrustation, which, with little experience, they 
 may ascertain to be carbonate of lime ; — of which they may 
 authoritatively be told that it was formed by slow deposition 
 from the dripping water ; — and in which, with little strain of 
 sight, they may observe structural lines, vertical to the sur- 
 face, which present many analogies with those which may be 
 seen in coats of semi-crystalline quartz, or reniform chalcedony. 
 
 2. The more accurate the description they can give of the 
 aspect of the stone, and the more authoritative and sifted the 
 account they can render of the circumstances of its origin, 
 the greater shall I consider their progress, and the more 
 hopeful their scientific disposition. 
 
 But I absolutely forbid their proceeding to draw any logical 
 inferences from what they know of stalagmite, to what they 
 
96 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 don't know of chalcedony. They are not to indulge either 
 their reason or their imagination in the feeblest flight beyond 
 the verge of actual experience ; and they are to quench, as 
 demoniacal temptation, any disposition they find in themselves 
 to suppose that, because stalagmite and chalcedony both show 
 lines of structure vertical to reniform surface, both have been 
 deposited in a similar manner from a current solution. They 
 are to address themselves to the investigation of the chalce- 
 dony precisely as if no stalagmite were in existence, — to inquire 
 first what it is ; secondly, when and how it is known to be 
 formed ; and, thirdly, what structure is discernible in it, — 
 leaving to the close of their lives, and of other people's, the 
 collection, from evidence thus securely accumulated, of such 
 general conclusions as may then, without dispute, and without 
 loss of time through prejudice in error, manifest themselves, 
 not as 'theories,' but as demonstrable laws. 
 
 When, however, for the secure instruction of my thus re- 
 strained and patient pupils, I look, myself, for what is actually 
 told me by eye-witnesses, of the formation of mineral bodies, 
 I find the sources of information so few, the facts so scanty, 
 and the connecting paste, or diluvial detritus, of past guesses, 
 so cumbrously delaying the operation of rational diamond- 
 washing, that I am fain, as the shortest way, to set such of my 
 friends as are minded to help me, to begin again at the very 
 beginning; and reassert, for the general good, what their, eyes 
 can now see, in what their hands can now handle. 
 
 3. And as we have begun with a rolled flint, it seems by 
 special guidance of Fors that the friend who has already first 
 contributed to the art-wealth of the Sheffield Museum, Mr. 
 Henry Willett, is willing also to be the first contributor to its 
 scientific treasuries of fact ; and has set himself zealously to 
 collect for us the phenomena observable in the chalk and flint 
 of his neighbourhood. 
 
 Of which kindly industry, the following trustworthy notes 
 have been already the result, which, (whether the like observa- 
 tions have been made before or not being quite immaterial to 
 the matter in hand,) are assuredly themselves original and se- 
 cure : not mere traditional gossip. Before giving them, how- 
 
FIRE AND WATER 
 
 97 
 
 ever, I will briefly mark their relations to the entire subject 
 of the structure of siliceous minerals. 
 
 4. There are a certain number of rocks in the world, which 
 have been seen by human eyes, flowing, white-hot, and watched 
 by human eyes as they cool down. The structure of these 
 rocks is therefore absolutely known to have had something to 
 do with fire. 
 
 There are a certain number of other rocks in the world 
 which have been seen by human eyes in a state of wet sand or 
 mud, and which have been watched, as they dried, into sub- 
 stances more or less resembling stone. The structure of these 
 rocks is therefore known to have had something to do with 
 water. 
 
 Between these two materials, whose nature is avouched by 
 testimony, there occur an indefinite number of rocks, which 
 no human eyes have ever seen, either hot or muddy • but 
 which nevertheless show curious analogies to the ascertainably 
 cooled substances on the one side and to the ascertainably 
 dried substances on the other. Respecting these medial for- 
 mations, geologists have disputed in my ears during the 
 half- century of my audient life ; (and had been disputing for 
 about a century before I was born,) without having yet arrived 
 at any conclusion whatever ; the book now held to be the 
 principal authority on the subject, entirely contradicting, as 
 aforesaid, the conclusions which, until very lately, the geo- 
 logical world, if it had not accepted as incontrovertible, at 
 least asserted as positive. 
 
 5. In the said book, however, — Gustaf Bischofs Chemical 
 Geology, — there are, at last, collected a large number of im- 
 portant and secure facts, bearing on mineral formation : and 
 principles of microscopic investigation have been established 
 by Mr. Sorby, some years ago, which have, I doubt not, laid 
 the foundation, at last, of the sound knowledge of the con- 
 ditions under which crystals are formed. Applying Mr. 
 Sorby's method, with steady industry, to the rocks of Cum- 
 berland, Mr. Clifton Ward has, so far as I can judge, placed 
 the nature of these, at least, within the range of secure inves- 
 tigation. Mr. Ward's kindness has induced him also to spare 
 
 7 
 
98 
 
 DEUCALION, 
 
 the time needful for the test of the primary phenomena of 
 agatescent structure in a similar manner ; and I am engraving 
 the beautiful drawings he sent me, with extreme care, for our 
 next number ; to be published with a letter from him, coi> 
 taining, I suppose, the first serviceable description of agates- 
 cent structure yet extant.* 
 
 6. Hitherto, however, notwithstanding all that has been ac- 
 complished, nobody can tell us how a common flint is made. 
 Nobody ever made one ; nobody has ever seen one naturally 
 coagulate, or naturally dissolve ; nobody has ever watched 
 their increase, detected their diminution, or explained the 
 exact share which organic bodies have in their formation. 
 The splendid labours of Mr. Bowerbank have made us ac- 
 quainted with myriads of organic bodies which have provoked 
 siliceous concretion, or become entangled in it : but the beau- 
 tiful forms which these present have only increased the dif- 
 ficulty of determining the real crystalline modes of siliceous 
 structure, unaffected by organic bodies. 
 
 7. Crystalline modes, I say, as distinguished from crystalline 
 laws. It is of great importance to mineralogy that we should 
 carefully distinguish between the laws or limits which deter- 
 mine the possible angles in the form of a mineral, and the 
 modes, or measures, in which, according to its peculiar nature 
 or circumstances, it conducts itself under these restrictions. 
 
 Thus both cuprite and fluor are under laws which enforce 
 cubic or octohedric angles in their crystals ; but cuprite can 
 arrange its cubes in fibres finer than those of the softest silk, 
 while fluor spar only under rare conditions distinctly elongates 
 its approximate cube into a parallelopiped. 
 
 Again, the prismatic crystals of Wavellite arrange them- 
 selves invariably in spherical or reniform concretions ; but the 
 rhombohedral crystals of quartz and hematite do so only 
 under particular conditions, the study of which becomes a 
 quite distinct part of their lithology. 
 
 * I must, however, refer the reader to the valuable summary of work 
 hitherto done on this subject by Professor Rupert Jones, (Proceedings 
 of Geologist's Association, Vol. IV., No. 7,) for examination of these 
 questions of priority. 
 
FIRE AND WATER. 
 
 99 
 
 8. This stellar or radiant arrangement is one essential con- 
 dition in the forms and phenomena of agate and chalcedony ; 
 and Mr. Clifton "Ward has shown in the paper to which I have 
 just referred, that it is exhibited under the microscope, as a 
 prevalent condition in their most translucent substance, and 
 on the minutest scale. 
 
 Now all siliceous concretions, distinguishing themselves 
 from the mass of the surrounding rocks, are to be arranged 
 under two main classes ; briefly memorable as knots and nuts ; 
 the latter, from their commonly oval form, have been usually 
 described by mineralogists as, more specially, 'almonds.' 
 
 ' Knots ' are concretions of silica round some central point 
 or involved substance, (often organic) ; such knots being usu- 
 ally harder and more solid in the centre than at the outside, 
 and having their fibres of crystallization, if visible, shot out- 
 wards like the rays of a star, forming pyramidal crystals on 
 the exterior of the knot. 
 
 9. 'Almonds 9 are concretions of silica formed in cavities of 
 rocks, or, in some cases, probably by their own energy pro- 
 ducing the cavities they enclose ; the fibres of crystallization, 
 if visible, being directed from the outside of the almond-shell 
 towards its interior cavity. 
 
 10. These two precisely opposite conditions are severally 
 represented best by a knot of sound black flint in chalk, and 
 by a well-formed hollow agate in a volcanic rock. 
 
 I have placed in the Sheffield Museum a block of black flint, 
 formed round a bit of Inoceramus shell ; and an almond-shell 
 of agate, about six times as big as a cocoa nut, which will 
 satisfactorily illustrate these two states. Bat between the 
 two, there are two others of distinctly gelatinous silica, and 
 distinctly crystalline silica, filling pores, cavities, and veins, in 
 rocks, by infiltration or secretion. And each of these states 
 will be found passing through infinite gradations into some 
 one of the three others, so that separate account has to be 
 given of every step in the transitions before we can rightly 
 understand the main types. 
 
 11. But at the base of the whole subject lies, first, the 
 clear understanding of the way a knot of solid crystalline 
 
100 
 
 LEU C ALIO JS\ 
 
 substance — say, a doclecahedral garnet — forms itself out of 
 a rock-paste, say greenstone trap, without admitting a hairs- 
 breadth of interstice between the formed knot and enclosing 
 paste ; and, secondly, clear separation in our thoughts, of the 
 bands or layers which are produced by crystalline segregation, 
 from those produced by successively accumulating substance. 
 But the method of increase of crystals themselves, in an ap- 
 parently undisturbed solution, has never yet been accurately 
 described ; how much less the phenomena resulting from 
 influx of various elements, and changes of temperature and 
 pressure. The frontispiece to the third number of i Deu- 
 calion ' gives typical examples of banded structure resulting 
 from pure crystalline action ; and the three specimens, 1. A. 
 21, 22, and 23, at Sheffield, furnish parallel examples of ex- 
 treme interest. But a particular form of banding in flint, 
 first noticed and described by Mr. S. P. Woodward,* is of 
 more interest than any other in the total obscurity of its 
 origin ; and in the extreme decision of the lines by which, in 
 a plurality of specimens, the banded spaces are separated 
 from the homogeneous ones, indicating the first approach to 
 the conditions which produce, in more perfect materials, the 
 forms of, so-called ' brecciated ' agates. Together with these, 
 a certain number of flints are to be examined which present 
 every appearance of having been violently fractured and re- 
 cemented. "Whether fractured by mechanical violence, by 
 the expansive or decomponent forces of contained minerals, 
 or by such slow contraction and re-gelation as must have 
 taken place in most veins through masses of rock, w r e have to 
 ascertain by the continuance of such work as my friend has 
 here begun. 
 
 Letter I.f — Introductory. 
 
 12. " I am beginning to be perplexed about the number of 
 flints, containing problems and illustrations, and wondering 
 to what extent my inquiries will be of any use to you. 
 
 * ' Geological Magazine,' 1864, vol. i., p. 145, pi. vii. and viii. 
 | I shall put my own notes on these and any future communications 
 I may insert, in small print at the bottom of the pages ; and with letter- 
 
FIRE AND WA TEH. 
 
 101 
 
 " I intended at first to collect only what was really beauti- 
 ful in itself — ' crystalline '! but how the subject widens, and 
 how the arbitrary divisions do run into one another ! What a 
 paltry shifting thing our classification is ! One is sometimes 
 tempted to give it all up in disgust, and I have a shrewd sus- 
 picion that all scientific classification (except for mutual aid 
 to students) is absurd and pedantic : (a) varieties, species, 
 genera, classes, orders, have most of them more in common 
 than of divergence, — ' a forming spirit ' everywhere, for use 
 and beauty. 
 
 "It is (to me) impossible to separate purely mineral and 
 chemical siliceous bodies in chalk, (b) from those which are 
 partly formed by the silicate-collecting sponges, which seem 
 to have given them their forms. 
 
 "Who is to say that the radiations and accretions of a 
 crystal are not life, but that the same arrangements in a leaf 
 or a tree are life ? — that the clouds which float in their 
 balanced changeableness are not as much guided and defined 
 as the clouds of the chalcedony, or the lenses of the human 
 eye which perceives them ? 
 
 " I think the following facts are plain : 
 
 " 1. The chalk bands do go through the flint. 
 
 " 2. Fissures in flints are constantly repaired by fresh 
 deposits of chalcedony and silex. 
 
 " 3. Original sponge matter is preserved (c) and obliterated 
 by siliceous deposit, in extent and degree varying infinitely, 
 and apparently proportioned to the amount of iron present — 
 i.e., the iron preserves original form, unless when combined 
 with sulphur enough to crystallize, when all the original 
 structure disappears. 
 
 references — a, b, etc. ; but the notes of the authors themselves will be 
 put at the end of their papers, in large print, and with number-ref- 
 erences— 1, 2, etc. 
 
 {a) All, at least, is imperfect ; and most of it absurd in the attempt 
 to be otherwise. 
 
 (b) It may be doubtful if any such exist in chalk ; but, if they exist, 
 they will eventually be distinguishable. 
 
 (c) Q. The form or body of it only ; is the matter itself ever pre- 
 served ? 
 
102 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 "4. Amygdaloids seem to be formed by a kind of inde* 
 pendent or diverse arrangement of molecules, caused hj 
 slight admixture of foreign minerals." 
 
 Letter II. — Memoranda made at MantelVs Quarry, Cuckfield, 
 on the banding noticed in the beds and nodules of the sili- 
 ceous calciferous sandstone there, Slst May, 1876. 
 
 Nos. L and II. Ovate, concentric, ferruginous bandings ; 
 the centre apparently (1) free from banding. 
 
 III. Bands arranged at acute angles. These bands are not 
 caused by fracture, but apparently by the intersection, at an 
 acute angle, of the original lines of deposit, (d) 
 
 IV. In this specimen the newly fractured surfaces show no 
 bandings, but the weathered surface develops the banding. 
 
 V. Ditto — i.e. bands parallel ; much more ferruginous and 
 consequently more friable when exposed to weathering. 
 
 May not something be learnt regarding the laws of banding 
 in agates, flints, etc., from observing the arrangement of 
 banding in rocks composed mainly of siliceous matter ? (e) 
 
 May not some of the subtler influences which regulate the 
 growth of trees in their lines of annual increase (magnetic 
 probably) have some effect in the arrangement of minerals in 
 solution ? — nay, even of the higher vital processes, such as the 
 deposition of osseous matter in teeth and bones ? (/) 
 
 Letter III. — Memoranda respecting banded chalk. 
 
 I. In the banded lines (ferruginous) noticed above and be- 
 low the horizontal fissures beneath the cliff at the Hope Gap, 
 Seaford, it is evident that these lines are not markings of 
 
 Note 1, page 121. 
 
 (d) These angular concretions require the closest study ; see the seg- 
 ments of spheres in the plate given in the last number. 
 
 {e) More, I should say, from the agates, respecting the laws of band- 
 ing in rocks : see the plate to the present number. When we can ex- 
 plain the interruptions of the bands on such scale as this, we may begin 
 to understand some of those in larger strata. 
 
 if) Yes, certainly ; but in such case, the teeth and bones act by 
 mineral law ; not the minerals by teeth and bone law. 
 
FIRE AND WATER. 
 
 103 
 
 original deposition, but are caused by successive infiltrations 
 of water containing iron in solution, (g) 
 
 II. Concentric markings of the same nature are observable 
 in places where — 
 
 a. Iron pyrites are decomposing, and the iron in solution is 
 being successively infiltrated into the surrounding chalk rock. 
 
 b. From dropping of ferruginous springs through crevices 
 on horizontal surfaces. 
 
 c. This is observable also on surfaces of tabular flint. 
 
 III. Very peculiar contorted bandings, (similar to the so- 
 called contorted-rocks,) are observable in certain places, 
 notably in the face of the chalk-pit on the east side of Gold- 
 stone Bottom. This chalk-pit, or quarry, is remarkable — 
 
 1. For the contorted bandings in the chalk rock which are not 
 markings of original deposition, being quite independent of 
 original stratification, (h) 
 
 2. For the excessive shattering and Assuring observable. 
 
 3. For the fact that these cracks and fissures have been re- 
 filled with distinctive and varying substances, as with flint, 
 clay, Websterite, and intermediate admixtures of these sub- 
 stances. 
 
 4. For veins of flint, formerly horizontal, which show visi- 
 ble signs of disjDlacenient by subsidence. 
 
 5. For the numerous fissures in these veins of tabular flint 
 being stained by iron, which apparently aids in the further 
 process of splitting up and of widening the minute crevices 
 in the flint. The iron also appears to be infiltrated at varying 
 depths into the body of unfractured flint. 
 
 Qy. Has not ordinary flint the power or property of absorb- 
 ing ferruginous fluid ? 
 
 (g) Questionable. Bands are almost always caused by concretion, or 
 separation, not infiltration. However caused, tlie essential point, in 
 the assertion of which this paper has so great value, is their distinction 
 from strata. 
 
 (h) A most important point. It is a question with me whether the 
 greater number of minor contortions in Alpine limestones may not have 
 been produced in this manner. When once the bands are arranged by 
 segregation, chemical agencies will soon produce mechanical separation, 
 as of original beds. 
 
104 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 Letter IV. — Memoranda respecting brecciate flint. 
 
 "June 7, 1876. 
 
 " I hasten to report the result of my fresh inquiry respect- 
 ing the specimen I first sent to you as 'breccia/ but which 
 you doubted. 
 
 " The site is the embouchure of the little tidal river Cuck- 
 mere, about two miles east of Seaford. I found a block at 
 about the same spot (about three hundred yards east of the 
 coastguard station, and about three quarters of the distance 
 west of the river's mouth). 
 
 "The rocks are here covered with sand, or with a bed of 
 the old valley alluvium, not yet removed by wave action. 
 Travelling westward, the transported blocks of breccia 
 gradually increase in size, (a pretty sure augury that they 
 were derived from a western source). The whole coast is 
 subject to a very rapid degradation and consequent encroach- 
 ment of the sea, the average in some places being from twenty- 
 five to thirty feet yearly. At a spot a hundred yards east of 
 the coastguard station, blocks of one or two tons were visible. 
 The denuded chalk rock is of chalk, seamed and fissured ; the 
 cliff of the same nature ; but all the flints, and especially the 
 tabular veins, are splintered and displaced to an unusual 
 extent. 
 
 " Farther westward yet, the blocks of breccia weigh several 
 tons, the cement being itself fissured, and in some places con- 
 sisting of angular fragments stained with iron. From one 
 mass I extracted a hollow circular flint split into four or five 
 pieces, the fragments, although displaced, re-cemented in 
 juxtaposition, (i) 
 
 " At the Hope Gap, the whole cliff becomes a fractured 
 mass, the fissures being refilled, sometimes with calcareous 
 cement, sometimes with clay, and in other places being 
 hollow. 
 
 " From the sides of an oblique fissure filled with clay I 
 extracted two pieces of a nodular flint, separated from each 
 
 (i) I am not prepared to admit, yet, that any of these phenomena are 
 owing to violence. We shall see. 
 
FIRE AND WATER 
 
 105 
 
 other by a two-inch seam of clay : when replaced (the clay 
 having been removed) the two fitted exactly. An examin- 
 ation of the rocks shows that the fissures, which run in all 
 directions, are largest when nearly horizontal, dipping slightly 
 seawards. 
 
 " The upper and lower portions of some of these horizontal 
 fissures are banded with iron stains, evidently derived from 
 iron-water percolating the seams. 
 
 "If I am right, therefore, the mystery seems to be ex- 
 plained thus : (k) — 
 
 " L Rain water, charged with carbonic acid, falling on the 
 hills behind, trickles past the grass and humus beneath, 
 through the cracks in the chalk, dissolving the carbonate of 
 lime into a soluble bi-carbonate. Falling downwards, it 
 escapes seaw r ards through the horizontal fissures, widening 
 them by its solvent power. 
 
 " II. The weight of the superincumbent mass by slow, cer- 
 tain, irregular pressure, descends, maintaining the contact of 
 surfaces, but still ever sinking at intervals, varied by the re- 
 sisting forces of weight and pressure. 
 
 "III. This process is probably accelerated by the inflow 
 and reflow of salt water at the ebb and flow of tide (into the 
 fissures). 
 
 "IV. At certain periods, probably in the summer, (as 
 soluble bi-carbonate of lime becomes less soluble as temper- 
 ature increases,) a portion becomes redeposited as a hard 
 semi-crystalline calcareous cement. 
 
 " V. This cement appears, in some instances, to be slightly 
 siliceous, and may have a tendency, by the mutual attraction 
 of siliceous matter, to form solid layers of tabular flint. 
 
 "VI. If these deductions be correct, it is probable that the 
 great results involved in the sinking of limestone hills, and 
 the consequent encroachment of the sea, may be traced (step 
 
 (W) I think this statement of Mr. Willett s extremely valuable ; and 
 see no reason to doubt its truth, as an explanation of the subsidence or 
 chalk and limestone in certain localities. I do not hitherto receive it 
 as any explanation of fracture in Hints. I believe Dover Cliffs might 
 sink to Channel bottom without splitting a flint, unless bedded. 
 
106 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 by step) to the springs in valleys 'which run among the 
 hills ; ' thence to the rain and dewdrops ; higher up to the 
 mists and clouds ; and so onward, by solar heat, to the ocean, 
 where at last again they find their rest." 
 
 Letter V. — Final Abstract. 
 
 "June 13, 1876. 
 
 "In addition to the heat derived from summer and at- 
 mospheric changes, there will be a considerable amount of 
 heat evolved from the friction produced between the sides of 
 fissures when slipping and subsidence occur, and from the 
 crushing down of flint supports when weight overcomes re- 
 sistance. 
 
 " After heavy rainfall — 
 
 1. Fissures are filled. 
 
 2. Solution is rapid. 
 
 3. Hydraulic pressure increases. 
 
 4. Fissures are widened. 
 
 " After a period of dry weather — 
 
 1. Solution is diminished. 
 
 2. Hydraulic pressure relieved. 
 
 3. Subsidence and flint-crushing commence, or progress 
 
 more rapidly. 
 
 4. Heat is evolved. 
 
 5. Carbonic acid discharged. 
 
 6. Semi-crystalline carbonate of lime is deposited around. 
 
 a. Fragments of crushed flint, (at rest at intermitting 
 
 intervals between motion of rocks). 
 
 b. Angular fragments of original chalk rock. 
 
 c. Angular fractured pieces of old cement. 
 
 "I have a dawning suspicion that siliceous deposits (as 
 chalcedony, etc.) are made when the temperature falls, for 
 reasons which I must postpone to a future paper." 
 
THIRTY YEARS SINCE. 
 
 107 
 
 (1) Probably the same arrangement exists (concentric), 
 but has not been made visible because the iron has not been 
 oxydized. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 'thirty years since.' 
 
 Village of Simplon, 2d September, 1876. 
 
 1. I am writing in the little one-windowed room opening 
 from the salle-a-manger of the Hotel de la Poste ; but under 
 some little disadvantage, being disturbed partly by the invo- 
 cation, as it might be fancied, of calamity on the heads of 
 nations, by the howling of a frantic wind from the Col ; and 
 partly by the merry clattering of the knives and forks of a 
 hungry party in the salon doing their best to breakfast ade- 
 quately, while the diligence changes horses. 
 
 In that same room, — a little earlier in the year, — two-and- 
 thirty years ago, my father and mother and I were sitting at 
 one end of the long table in the evening : and at the other 
 end of it, a quiet, somewhat severe-looking, and pale, English 
 (as we supposed) traveller, with his wife ; she, and my 
 mother, working ; her husband carefully completing some 
 mountain outlines in his sketch-book. 
 
 2. Those days are become very dim to me ; and I forget 
 which of the group spoke first. My father and mother were 
 always as shy as children ; and our busy fellow-traveller 
 seemed to us taciturn, slightly inaccessible, and even Al- 
 pestre, and, as it were, hewn out of mountain flint, in his 
 serene labour. 
 
 Whether some harmony of Scottish accent struck my 
 father's ear, or the pride he took in his son's accomplishments 
 prevailed over his own shyness, I think we first ventured 
 word across the table, with view of informing the grave 
 draughtsman that we also could draw. Whereupon my own 
 sketch-book was brought out, the pale traveller politely per- 
 missive. My good father and mother had stopped at the 
 
.108 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 Simplon for me, (and now, feeling miserable myself in the 
 thin air, I know what it cost them,) because I wanted to climb 
 the high point immediately w T est of the Col, thinking thence 
 to get a perspective of the chain joining the Fletschhorn to 
 the Monte Bosa. I had been drawing there the best part of 
 the afternoon, and had brought down with me careful studies 
 of the Fletschhorn itself, and of a great pyramid far eastward, 
 whose name I did not know, but, from its bearing, supposed 
 it must be the Matterhorn, which I had then never seen. 
 
 3. I have since lost both these drawings ; and if they were 
 given away, in the old times when I despised the best I did, 
 because it was not like Turner, and any friend has preserved 
 them, I wish they might be returned to me ; for they would 
 be of value in Deucalion, and of greater value to myself ; as 
 having won for me, that evening, the sympathy and help of 
 James Forbes. For his eye grew keen, and his face attentive, 
 as he examined the drawings ; and he turned instantly to me 
 as to a recognized fellow- workman, — though yet young, no 
 less faithful than himself. 
 
 He heard kindly what I had to ask about the chain I had 
 been drawing ; only saying, with a slightly proud smile, of my 
 peak supposed to be the Matterhorn,* " No, — and when once 
 you have seen the Matterhorn, you will never take anything 
 else for it ! " 
 
 He told me as much as I w r as able to learn, at that time, of 
 the structures of the chain, and some pleasant general talk 
 followed ; but I knew nothing of glaciers then, and he had his 
 evening's work to finish. And I never saw him again. 
 
 I wonder if he sees me now, or guided my hand as I cut the 
 leaves of M. Violet-le-Duc's ' Massif du Mont Blanc ' this morn- 
 ing, till I came to page 58, — and stopped ! 
 
 I must yet go back, for a little while, to those dead days. 
 
 4. Failing of Matterhorn on this side of the valley of the 
 Ehone, I resolved to try for it from the other ; and begged 
 my father to wait yet a day for me at Brieg. 
 
 No one, then, had ever heard of the Bell Alp ; and few Eng- 
 lish knew even of the Aletsch glacier. I laid my plans from 
 * It was the Weisshorn. 
 
THIRTY YEARS SINGE. 
 
 109 
 
 the top of the Simplon Col ; and was up at four, next day ; in 
 a cloudless morning, climbing the little rock path which as- 
 cends directly to the left, after crossing the bridge over the 
 Ehone, at Brieg ; path which is quite as critical a little bit of 
 walking as the Ponts of the Mer de Glace ; and now, encum- 
 bered with the late fallen shatterings of a flake of gneiss of 
 the shape of an artichoke leaf, and the size of the stern of an 
 old ship of the line, which has rent itself away, and dashed 
 down like a piece of the walls of Jericho, leaving exposed, 
 underneath, the undulatory surfaces of pure rock, which, I am 
 under a very strong impression, our young raw geologists take 
 for real " mutton ed " glacier tracks.* 
 
 I took this path because I wanted first to climb the green 
 wooded mass of the hill rising directly over the valley, so as to 
 enfilade the entire profiles of the opposite chain, and length 
 of the valley of the Rhone, from its brow. 
 
 By midday I had mastered it, and got up half as high again, 
 on the barren ridge above it, commanding a little tarn ; 
 whence, in one panorama are seen the Simplon and Saas Alps 
 on the south, with the Matterhorn closing the avenue of the 
 valley of St. Nicolas ; and the Aletsch Alps on the north, with 
 all the lower reach of the Aletsch glacier. This panorama I 
 drew carefully; and slightly coloured afterwards, in such 
 crude way as I was then able ; and fortunately not having 
 lost this, I place it in the Sheffield Museum, for a perfectly 
 trustworthy witness to the extent of snow on the Breithorn, 
 Fletschhorn, and Montague de Saas, thirty years ago. 
 
 My drawing finished, I ran round and down obliquely to 
 the Bell Alp, and so returned above the gorge of the Aletsch 
 torrent — making some notes on it afterwards used in c Mod- 
 ern Painters,' many and many such a day of foot and hand 
 labour having been needed to build that book, in which my 
 friends, nevertheless, I perceive, still regard nothing but what 
 they are pleased to call its elegant language, and are entirely 
 indifferent, with respect to that and all other books they read, 
 whether the elegant language tells them truths or lies. 
 
 * I saw this wisely suggested in a recent number of the ' Alpine 
 Journal.' 
 
110 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 That book contains, however, (and to-day it is needful that 
 I should not be ashamed in this confidence of boasting) the 
 first faithful drawings ever given of the Alps, not only in Eng- 
 land, but in Europe ; and the first definitions of the manner 
 in which their forms have been developed out of their crys- 
 talline rocks. 
 
 6. 'Definitions' only, observe, and descriptions; but no 
 * explanations.' I knew, even at that time, far too much of 
 the Alps to theorize on them ; and having learned, in the thirty 
 years since, a good deal more, with the only consequence of 
 finding the facts more inexplicable to me than ever, laid M. 
 Violet-le-D uc's book on the seat of the carriage the day be- 
 fore yesterday, among other stores and preparations for pass- 
 ing the Simplon, contemplating on its open first page the 
 splendid dash of its first sentence into space, — " La croute 
 terrestre, refroidie au moment du plissement qui a forme le 
 massif du Mont Blanc," — with something of the same amaze- 
 ment, and same manner of the praise, which our French allies 
 are reported to have rendered to our charge at Balaclava : — 
 
 u (Test magnifique ; — mais ce n'est pas" — la geologie. 
 
 7. I soon had leisure enough to look farther, as the steam- 
 ing horses dragged me up slowly round the first ledges of 
 pines, under a drenching rain which left nothing but their 
 nearest branches visible. Usually, their nearest branches, and 
 the wreaths of white clouds braided among them, would have 
 been all the books I cared to read ; but both curiosity and 
 vanity were piqued by the new utterances, prophetic, appar- 
 ently, in claimed authority, on the matters timidly debated by 
 me in old time. 
 
 I soon saw that the book manifested, in spite of so great 
 false-confidence, powers of observation more true in their scope 
 and grasp than can be traced in any writer on the Alps since 
 De Saussure. But, alas, before we had got up to Berisal, I had 
 found also more fallacies than I could count, in the author's 
 first statements of physical law ; and seen, too surely, that the 
 poor Frenchman's keen natural faculty, and quite splendid 
 zeal and industry, had all been wasted, through the wretched 
 
THIRTY YEARS SINCE. 
 
 Ill 
 
 national vanity which made him interested in Mont Blanc 
 only 'since it became a part of France/ and had thrown him 
 totally into the clique of Agassiz and Desor, with results in 
 which neither the clique, nor M. Violet, are likely, in the end, 
 to find satisfaction. 
 
 8. Too sorrowfully weary of bearing with the provincial tem- 
 per, and insolent errors, of this architectural restoration of 
 the Gothic globe, I threw the book aside, and took up my 
 Carey's Dante, which is always on the carriage seat, or in my 
 pocket — not exactly for reading, but as an antidote to pesti- 
 lent things and thoughts in general ; and store, as it were, of 
 mental quinine,— a few lines being usually enough to recover 
 me out of any shivering marsh fever fit, brought on among 
 foulness or stupidity. 
 
 It opened at a favourite old place, in the twenty-first canto 
 of the Paradise, (marked with an M. long ago, when I was 
 reading Dante through to glean his mountain descriptions): — - 
 
 u 'Twixt either shore 
 Of Italy, nor distant from thy land," etc.; 
 
 and I read on into the twenty-third canto, down to St. Bene- 
 dict's 
 
 ff. There, all things are, as they have ever been; 
 Our ladder reaches even to that clime, 
 Whither the patriarch Jacob saw it stretch 
 Its topmost round, when it appeared to him 
 With angels laden. But to mount it now 
 None lifts his foot from earth ; and hence my rule 
 Is left a profitless stain upon the leaves, 
 The walls, for abbey reared, turned into dens ; 
 The cowls, to sacks choked up with musty meal. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 His convent, Peter founded without gold 
 Or silver ; I, with prayers and fasting, mine; 
 And Francis, his, in meek humility. 
 And if thou note the point whence each proceeds, 
 Then look what it hath erred to, thou shalt find 
 The white turned murky. 
 
 Jordan was turned back, 
 And a less wonder than the refluent sea 
 May, at God's pleasure, work amendment here." 
 
112 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 9. I stopped at this, (holding myself a brother of the third 
 order of St. Francis,) and began thinking how long it would 
 take for any turn of tide by St. George's work, when a ray of 
 light came gleaming in at the carriage window, and I saw, 
 where the road turns into the high ravine of the glacier gal- 
 leries, a little piece of the Breithorn snowfield beyond. 
 
 Somehow, I think, as fires never burn, so skies never clear, 
 while they are watched ; so I took up my Dante again, though 
 scarcely caring to read more ; and it opened, this time, not at 
 an accustomed place at all, but at the " I come to aid thy wish," 
 of St. Bernard, in the thirty-first canto. Not an accustomed 
 place, because I always think it very unkind of Beatrice to 
 leave him to St. Bernard ; and seldom turn expressly to the 
 passage : but it has chanced lately to become of more signifi- 
 cance to me, and I read on eagerly, to the " So burned the 
 peaceful oriflamme/' when the increasing light became so 
 strong that it awaked me, like a new morning ; and I closed 
 the book again, and looked out. 
 
 We had just got up to the glacier galleries, and the last 
 films of rain were melting into a horizontal bar of blue sky 
 which had opened behind the Bernese Alps. 
 
 I watched it for a minute or two through the alternate arch 
 and pier of the glacier galleries, and then as we got on the 
 open hill flank again, called to Bernardo * to stop. 
 
 10. Of all views of the great mountains that I know r in 
 Switzerland, I think this, of the southern side of the Bernese 
 range from the Simplon, in general the most disappointing — 
 for two reasons : the first, that the green mass of their foun- 
 dation slopes so softly to the valley that it takes away half the 
 look of their height ; and the second, that the greater peaks 
 are confused among the crags immediately above the Aletsch 
 glacier, and cannot, in quite clear weather, be recognized as 
 more distant, or more vast. But at this moment, both these 
 disadvantages were totally conquered. The whole valley was 
 full of absolutely impenetrable wreathed cloud, nearly all pure 
 
 * Bernardo Bergonza, of the Hotel d'ltalie, Arona, in whom any friend 
 of mine will find a glad charioteer ; and they cannot anywhere find an 
 abler or honester one. 
 
THIRTY TEARS SINCE. 
 
 113 
 
 white, only the palest grey rounding the changeful domes of 
 it ; and beyond these domes of heavenly marble, the great Alps 
 stood up against the blue, — not wholly clear, but clasped and 
 entwined with translucent folds of mist, traceable, but no more 
 traceable, than the thinnest veil drawn over St. Catherine's or 
 the Virgin's hair by Lippi or Luini ; and rising as they were 
 withdrawn from such investiture, into faint oriflammes, as if 
 borne by an angel host far distant ; the peaks themselves 
 strewn with strange light, by snow fallen but that moment, — 
 the glory shed upon them as the veil fled ; — and intermittent 
 waves of still gaining seas of light increasing upon them, as 
 if on the first day of creation. 
 
 " A present, vous pouvez voir l'hotel sur le Bell Alp, bati 
 par Monsieur Tyndall." 
 
 The voice was the voice of the driver of the supplementary 
 pair of horses from Brieg, who, just dismissed by Bernardo, 
 had been for some minutes considering how he could best rec- 
 ommend himself to me for an extra franc. 
 
 I not instantly appearing favourably stirred by this infor- 
 mation, he went on with increased emphasis, "Monsieur le 
 professeur Tyndall." 
 
 The poor fellow lost his bonnemain by it altogether — not 
 out of any deliberate spite of mine ; but because, at this sec- 
 ond interruption, I looked at him, with an expression (as I 
 suppose) so little calculated to encourage his hopes of my gene- 
 rosity that he gave the matter up in a moment, and turned 
 away, with his horses, down the hill ; — I partly not caring to 
 be further disturbed, and being besides too slow — as I always 
 am in cases where presence of mind is needful — in calling him 
 back again. 
 
 11. For, indeed, the confusion into which he had thrown 
 my thoughts was all the more perfect and diabolic, because it 
 consisted mainly in the stirring up of every particle of personal 
 vanity and mean spirit of contention which could be concen- 
 trated in one blot of pure black ink, to be dropped into the 
 midst of my aerial vision. 
 
 Finding it totally impossible to look at the Alps any more, 
 for the moment, I got out of the carriage, sent it on to th8 
 8 
 
Ill 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 Simplon village ; and began climbing, to recover my feelings 
 and wits, among the mossy knolls above the convent. 
 
 They were drenched with the just past rain ; glittering now 
 in perfect sunshine, and themselves enriched by autumn into 
 wreaths of responding gold. 
 
 The vast hospice stood desolate in the hollow behind them; 
 the first time I had ever passed it with no welcome from either 
 monk, or dog. Blank as the fields of snow above, stood now 
 the useless walls ; and for the first time, unredeemed by asso- 
 ciation ; only the thin iron cross in the centre of the roof re- 
 maining to say that this had once been a house of Christian 
 Hospitallers. 
 
 12. Desolate this, and dead the office of this, — for the pres- 
 ent, it seems; and across the valley, instead, "1 hotel sur le 
 Bell Alp, bati par Monsieur Tyndall," no nest of dreamy 
 monks, but of philosophically peripatetic or perisaltatory 
 ' puces des glaces.' 
 
 For, on the whole, that is indeed the dramatic aspect and 
 relation of them to the glaciers ; little jumping black things, 
 who appear, under the photographic microscope, active on the 
 ice- waves, or even inside of them ; — giving to most of the 
 great views of the Alps, in the windows at Geneva, a more or 
 less animatedly punctuate and pulicarious character. 
 
 Such their dramatic and picturesque function, to any one 
 with clear eyes ; their intellectual function, however, being 
 more important, and comparable rather to a symmetrical suc- 
 cession of dirt-bands, — each making the ice more invisible 
 than the last ; for indeed, here, in 1876, are published, with 
 great care and expense, such a quantity of accumulated rub- 
 bish of past dejection, and moraine of finely triturated mis- 
 take, clogging together gigantic heaped blocks of far- travelled 
 blunder, — as it takes away one's breath to approach the 
 shadow of. 
 
 13. The first in magnitude, as in origin, of these long-sus- 
 tained stupidities, — the pierre-a-Bot, or Frog-stone, par ex- 
 cellence, of the Neuchatel clique, — is Charpentier's Dilatation 
 Theory, revived by M. Violet, not now as a theory, but an 
 assured principle ! — without, however, naming Charpentier 
 
THIRTY TEARS SINCE. 
 
 115 
 
 as the author of it ; and of course without having read a word 
 of Forbes's demolition of it. The essential work of Deucalion 
 is construction, not demolition ; but when an avalanche of old 
 rubbish is shot in our way, I must, whether I would or no, 
 clear it aside before I can go on. I suppose myself speaking 
 to my Sheffield men ; and shall put so much as they need know 
 of these logs upon the line, as briefly as possible, before them. 
 
 14. There are three theories extant, concerning glacier-mo- 
 tion, among the gentlemen who live at the intellectual ' Hotel 
 des Neuchatelois.' These are specifically known as the Slid- 
 ing, — Dilatation, — and Kegelation, theories. 
 
 When snow lies deep on a sloping roof, and is not supported 
 below by any cornice or gutter, you know that when it thaws, 
 and the sun has warmed it to a certain extent, the whole mass 
 slides off into the street. 
 
 That is the way the scientific persons who hold the ' Sliding 
 theory/ suppose glaciers to move. They assume, therefore, 
 two things more ; namely, first that all mountains are as 
 smooth as house-roofs ; and, secondly, that a piece of ice a 
 mile long and three or four hundred feet deep will slide 
 gently, though a piece a foot deep and a yard long slides fast, 
 — in other words, that a paving-stone will slide fast on another 
 paving-stone, but the Eossberg fall at the rate of eighteen 
 inches a day. 
 
 There is another form of the sliding theory, which is that 
 glaciers slide in little bits, one at a time ; or, for example, that 
 if you put a railway train on an incline, with loose fastening 
 to the carriages, the first carriage will slide first, as far as it 
 can go, and then stop ; then the second start, and catch it up, 
 and wait for the third ; and so on, till when the last has come 
 up, the first will start again. 
 
 Having once for all sufficiently explained the 'Sliding 
 theory ' to you, I shall not trouble myself any more in Deuca- 
 lion about it. 
 
 15. The next theory is the Dilatation theory. The scien- 
 tific persons who hold that theory suppose that whenever a 
 shower of rain falls on a glacier, the said rain freezes inside 
 of it ; and that the glacier being thereby made bigger, 
 
116 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 stretches itself uniformly in one direction, and never in any 
 other ; also that, although it can only be thus expanded in cold 
 and wet weather, such expansion is the reason that it always 
 goes fastest In hot and dry weather. 
 
 There is another form of the Dilatation theory, which is 
 that the glacier expands by freezing its own meltings. 
 
 16. Having thus sufficiently explained the Dilatation theory 
 to you, I shall not trouble myself in Deucalion farther about 
 it ; noticing only, in bidding it goodbye, the curious want of 
 power in scientific men, when once they get hold of a false 
 notion, to perceive the commonest analogies implying its 
 correction. One would have thought that, with their ther- 
 mometer in their hand to measure congelation with, and the 
 idea of expansion in their head, the analogy between the tube 
 of the thermometer, and a glacier channel, and the ball of the 
 thermometer, and a glacier reservoir, might, some sunshiny 
 day, have climbed across the muddily-fissured glacier of their 
 wits : — and all the quicker, that their much-studied Mer de 
 Glace bears to the great reservoirs of ice above it precisely 
 the relation of a very narrow tube to a very large bail. The 
 vast c instrument ' seems actually to have been constructed by 
 Nature, to show to the dullest of savants the difference be- 
 tween the steady current of flux through a channel of drain- 
 age, and the oscillatory vivacity of expansion which they 
 constructed their own tubular apparatus to obtain ! 
 
 17. The last popular theory concerning glaciers is the 
 Eegelation theory. The scientific persons who hold that 
 theory, suppose that a glacier advances by breaking itself 
 spontaneously into small pieces ; and then spontaneously 
 sticking the pieces together again ; — that it becomes continu- 
 ally larger by a repetition of this operation, and that the 
 enlargement (as assumed also by the gentlemen of the dilata- 
 tion party), can only take place downwards. 
 
 You may best conceive the gist of the Eegelation theory by 
 considering the parallel statement, which you may make to 
 your scientific young people, that if they put a large piece of 
 barley sugar on the staircase landing, it will walk downstairs 
 by alternately cracking and mending itself. 
 
THIRTY YEARS SINCE. 
 
 117 
 
 I shall not trouble myself farther, in Deucalion, about the 
 Regelation theory. 
 
 18. M. Violet-le-Duc, indeed, appears to have written his 
 book without even having heard of it ; but he makes most 
 dextrous use of the two others, fighting, as it were, at once 
 with sword and dagger ; and making his glaciers move on the 
 Sliding theory when the ground is steep, and on the Dilatation 
 theory when it is level. The woodcuts at pages 65, 66, in 
 which a glacier is represented dilating itself up a number of 
 hills and down again, and that at page 99, in which it defers 
 a line of boulders, which by unexplained supernatural power 
 have been deposited all across it, into moraines at its side, 
 cannot but remain triumphant among monuments of scientific 
 
 B 
 
 Fig. 5. 
 
 error, — bestowing on their author a kind of St. Simeon- 
 Stylitic pre-eminence of immortality in the Paradise of Fools. 
 
 19. Why I stopped first at page 58 of this singular volume, 
 I see there is no room to tell in this number of Deucalion ; stili 
 less to note the interesting repetitions by M. Violet-le-Duc of 
 the Tyndall-Agassiz demonstration that Forbes' assertion of 
 the plasticity of ice in large pieces, is now untenable, by 
 reason of the more recent discovery of its plasticity in little 
 ones. I have just space, however, for a little woodcut from 
 the ' Glaciers of the Alps/ (or ' Forms of Water,' I forget 
 which, and it is no matter,) in final illustration of the Tyndalh 
 Agassiz quality of wit. 
 
 20, Fig. 5, a, is Professor Tyndall's illustration of the effect 
 
118 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 of sunshine on a piece of glacier, originally of the form shown 
 by the dotted line, and reduced by solar power on the south 
 side to the beautifully delineated wave in the shape of a 
 wedge. 
 
 It never occurred to the scientific author that the sunshine 
 would melt some of the top, as well as of the side, of his 
 parallelopiped ; nor that, during the process, even on the 
 shady side of it, some melting would take place in the sum- 
 mer air. The figure at b represents three stages of the dimi- 
 nution which would really take place, allowing for these other 
 somew T hat important conditions of the question ; and it shows, 
 what may farther interest the ordinary observer, how rectan- 
 gular portions of ice, originally produced merely by fissure in 
 its horizontal mass, may be gradually reduced into sharp, axe- 
 edged ridges, having every appearance of splintery and vitre- 
 ous fracture. In next Deucalion I hope to give at last some 
 account of my experiments on gelatinous fracture, made in the 
 delightful laboratory of my friend's kitchen, with the aid of 
 her infinitely conceding, and patiently collaborating, cook. 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 OF SILICA IN LAVAS. 
 
 1. The rocks through whose vast range, as stated in the 
 ninth chapter, our at first well-founded knowledge of their 
 igneous origin gradually becomes dim, and fades into theory, 
 may be logically divided into these four following groups. 
 
 I. True lavas. Substances which have been rapidly cooled 
 from fusion into homogeneous masses, showing no clear traces 
 of crystallization. 
 
 II. Basalts.* Rocks in which, without distinct separation 
 of their elements, a disposition towards crystalline structure 
 manifests itself. 
 
 * I use this word as on the whole the best for the vast class of rocks 
 I wish to include ; but without any reference to columnar desiccation 
 I consider, in this arrangement, only internal structure. 
 
OF SILICA IN LAVAS. 
 
 119 
 
 III. Porphyries. Eocks in which one or more mineral ele- 
 ments separate themselves in crystalline form from a homo- 
 geneous paste. 
 
 IV. Granites. Eocks in which all their elements have taken 
 crystalline form. 
 
 2. These, I say, are logical divisions, very easily tenable. 
 But Nature laughs at logic, and in her infinite imagination of 
 rocks, defies all Kosmos, except the mighty one which we, 
 her poor puppets, shall never discern. Our logic will help us 
 but a little way ; — so far, however, we will take its help. 
 
 3. And first, therefore, let us ask what questions impera- 
 tively need answer, concerning indisputable lavas, seen by 
 living human eyes to flow incandescent out of the earth, and 
 thereon to cool into ghastly siags. 
 
 On these I have practically burnt the soles of my boots, 
 and in their hollows have practically roasted eggs ; and in the 
 lee of them, have been wellnigh choked with their stench ; 
 and can positively testify respecting them, that they were in 
 many parts once fluid under power of fire, in a very fine and 
 soft flux ; and did congeal out of that state into ropy or cel- 
 lular masses, variously tormented and kneaded by explosive 
 gas ; or pinched into tortuous tension, as by diabolic tongs ; 
 and are so finally left by the powers of Hell, to submit them- 
 selves to the powers of Heaven, in black or brown masses of 
 adamantine sponge without water, and horrible honeycombs 
 without honey, interlaid between drifted banks of earthy 
 flood, poured down from merciless clouds whose rain was 
 ashes. 
 
 The seas that now beat against these, have shores of black 
 sand ; the peasant, whose field is in these, ploughs with his 
 foot, and the wind harrows. 
 
 4. Now of the outsides of these lava streams, and unaltered 
 volcanic ashes, I know the look well enough ; and could sup- 
 ply Sheffield with any quantity of characteristic specimens, 
 if their policy and trade had not already pretty nearly buried 
 them, and great part of England besides, under such devil's 
 ware of their own production. But o* the insides of these 
 lava streams, and of the recognized iterations of volcanic 
 
120 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 tufa, I know nothing. And, accordingly, I want authentic an* 
 swer to these following questions, with illustrative specimens. 
 
 5. a. In lavas which have been historically hot to perfect 
 fusion, so as to be progressive, on steep slopes, in the man- 
 ner of iron out of a furnace in its pig-furrows ; — in such per- 
 fect lavas, I say — what kind of difference is there between the 
 substance at the surface and at the extremest known depths, 
 after cooling ? It is evident that such lavas can only accumu- 
 late to great depths in infernal pools or lakes. Of such lakes, 
 which are the deepest known ? and of those known, where 
 are the best sections ? I want for Sheffield a series of speci- 
 mens of any well-fused lava anywhere, showing the gradations 
 of solidity or crystalline consolidation, from the outside to 
 extreme depth. 
 
 b. On lavas which have not been historically hot, but of 
 which there is no possible doubt that they were once fluent, 
 (in the air,) to the above-stated degree, what changes are 
 traceable, produced, irrespectively of atmospheric action, by 
 lapse of time ? "What evidence is there that lavas, once cool 
 to their centres, can sustain any farther crystalline change, or 
 re-arrangement of mineral structure? 
 
 c. Ill lavas either historically or indisputably once fluent, 
 what forms of silica are found ? I limit myself at present to 
 the investigation of volcanic silica: other geologists will in 
 time take up other minerals ; but I find silica enough, and 
 more than enough, for my life, or at least for what may be 
 left of it. 
 
 Now I am myself rich in specimens of Hyalite, and Auvergne 
 stellar and guttate chalcedonies ; but I have no notion what- 
 ever how these, or the bitumen associated with them, have 
 been developed ; and I shall be most grateful for a clear ac- 
 count of their locality, — possible or probable mode of produc- 
 tion in that locality, — and microscopic structure. Of pure 
 quartz, of opal, or of agate, I have no specimen connected 
 with what I should call a truly ' living ' lava ; one, that is to 
 say, which has simply cooled down to its existing form from 
 the fluid state ; but I have sent to the Sheffield Museum a 
 piece of Hyalite, on a living lava, so much like a living wasp's 
 
OF SILICA IN LaVAS. 
 
 nest, and so incredible for a lava at all to the general observer, 
 that I want forthwith some help from my mineralogical friends, 
 in giving account of it. 
 
 6. And here I must, for a paragraph or two, pass from defi- 
 nition of flinty and molten minerals, to the more difficult 
 definition of flinty and molten hearts ; in order to explain why 
 the Hyalite which I have just sent to the men of Sheffield, for 
 their first type of volcanic silica,* is not at all the best Hyalite 
 in my collection. This is because I practically find a certain 
 quantity of selfishness necessary to live by ; and having no 
 manner of saintly nature in me, but only that of ordinary men, 
 — (which makes me all the hotter in temper when I can't get 
 ordinary men either to see what I know they can see if they 
 look, or do what I know they can do if they like,) — I get some- 
 times weary of giving things away, letting my drawers get into 
 disorder, and losing the powers of observation and thought 
 which are connected with the complacency of possession, and 
 the pleasantness of order. Whereupon I have resolved to bring 
 my own collection within narrow limits ; but to constitute it 
 resolutely and irrevocably of chosen and curious pieces, for my 
 own pleasure ; trusting that they may be afterwards cared for 
 by some of the persons who knew me, when I myself am 
 troubled with care no more.f 
 
 7. This piece of Hyalite, however, just sent to Sheffield, 
 though not my best, is the most curiously definite example I 
 ever saw. It is on a bit of brown lava, which looks, as afore- 
 said, a little way off, exactly like a piece of a wasp's nest : seen 
 closer, the cells are not hexagonal, but just like a cast of a 
 spoonful of pease ! the spherical hollows having this of nota- 
 ble in them, that they are only as close to each other as they 
 can be, to admit of their being perfectly round : therefore, neces- 
 
 * I give tlie description of these seven pieces of Hyalite at Sheffield, 
 in Deucalion, because their description is necessary to explain certain 
 general principles of arrangement and nomenclature. 
 
 f By the way, this selfish collection is to be primarily of stones that 
 will icash. Of petty troubles, none are more fretting than the effect of 
 dust on minerals that can neither be washed nor brushed. Hence, my 
 specialty of liking for silica, felspar, and the granitic or gneissic rocks. 
 
122 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 sarily, with little spaces of solid stone between them. I have 
 not the slightest notion how such a lava can be produced. It 
 is like an oolite with the yolks of its eggs dropped out, and 
 not in the least like a ductile substance churned into foam by 
 expansive gas. 
 
 8. On this my sterious bit of gaseous wasp's nest, the Hya- 
 lite seems to have been dropped, like drops of glass from a melt- 
 ing glass rod. It seems to touch the lava just as little as it can ; 
 sticks at once on the edges of the cells, and laps over without run- 
 ning into, much less filling them. There is not any appearance, 
 and I think no possibility, of exudation having taken place ; 
 the silica cannot but, I think, have been deposited ; and it is 
 stuck together just as if it had fallen in drops, which is what 
 I mean by calling Hyalite characteristically 6 guttate 5 ; but it 
 shows, nevertheless, a tendency to something like crystalliza- 
 tion, in irregularities of surface like those of glacier ice, or the 
 kind of old Venetian glass which is rough, and apparently of 
 lumps coagulated. The fracture is splendidly vitreous, — the 
 substance, mostly quite clear, but in parts white and opaque. 
 
 9. Now although no other specimen that I have yet seen is 
 so manifestly guttate as this, all the Irpalites I know agree in 
 approximate conditions ; and associate themselves with forms 
 of chalcedony which exactly resemble the droppings from a 
 fine wax candle. Such heated waxen effluences, as they con- 
 geal, will be found thrown into flattened coats ; and the chal- 
 cedonies in question on the under surface precisely resemble 
 them ; while on the upper they become more or less crystalline, 
 and, in some specimens, form lustrous stellar crystals in the 
 centre. 
 
 10. Now, observe, this chalcedony, capable of crystallization, 
 differs wholly from chalcedony properly so called, which may 
 indeed be covered with crystals, but itself remains consistently 
 smooth in surface, as true Hyalite does, also. 
 
 Not to be teazed with too many classes, however, I shall ar- 
 range these peculiar chalcedonies with Hyalite ; and, accord- 
 ingly, I send next to the Sheffield Museum, to follow this 
 first Hyalite, an example of the transition from Hyalite to 
 dropped chalcedony, (x. h. 2,) being an Indian volcanic chai- 
 
OF SILICA IN LA VAS. 
 
 123 
 
 cedony, translucent, aggregated like Hyalite, and showing a 
 concave fracture where a ball of it has been broken out. 
 
 11. Next, (i. h. 3,) pure dropped chalcedony. I do not like 
 the word ' dropped ' in this use, — so that, instead, I shall call 
 this in future wax chalcedony ; then (i. h. 4) the same form, 
 with crystalline surface, — this I shall henceforward call sugar 
 chalcedony ; and, lastly, the ordinary stellar form of Auvergne, 
 star chalcedony (i. h. 5). 
 
 These five examples are typical, and perfect in their kind : 
 next to them (i. h. 6) I place a wax chalcedony formed on a 
 porous rock, (volcanic ash ?) which has at the surface of it 
 small circular concavities, being also so irregularly coagulate 
 thoughout that it suggests no mode of deposition whatever, 
 and is peculiar, in this also, that it is thinner in the centre 
 than at the edges, and that no vestige of its substance occurs 
 in the pores of the rock it overlies. 
 
 Take a piece of porous broken brick, drop any tallowy com- 
 position over four or five inches square of its surface, to the 
 depth of one-tenth of an inch ; then drop more on the edges 
 till you have a rampart round, the third of an inch thick ; and 
 you w r ill have some likeness of this piece of stone : but how 
 Nature held the composition in her fingers, or composed it to 
 be held, I leave you to guess, for I cannot. 
 
 12. Next following, I place the most singular example of 
 ail (i. h. 7). The chalcedony in i. h. 6 is apparently dropped 
 on the ashes, and of irregular thickness ; it is difficult to un- 
 derstand how it was dropped, but once get Nature to hold the 
 candle, and the thing is done. 
 
 But here, in i. h. 7, it is no longer apparently dropped, but 
 apparently boiled ! It rises like the bubbles of a strongly boil- 
 ing liquid ; — but not from a liquid mass ; on the contrary, 
 (except in three places, presently to be described,) it coats the 
 volcanic ash in perfectly even thickness — a quarter of an inch, 
 and no more, nor less, everywhere, over a space five inches 
 square ! and the ash, or lava, itself, instead of being porous 
 throughout the mass, w r ith the silica only on the surface, is, 
 filled with chalcedony in every cavity ! 
 
 Now this specimen completes the transitional series from 
 
124 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 hyalite to perfect chalcedony ; and with these seven speci- 
 mens, in order, before us, we can define some things, and 
 question of others, with great precision. 
 
 13. First, observe that all the first six pieces agree in two 
 conditions, — varying, and coagulated, thickness of the deposit. 
 But the seventh has the remarkable character of equal, and 
 therefore probably crystalline, deposition everywhere. 
 
 Secondly. In the first six specimens, though the coagula- 
 tions are more or less rounded, none of them are regularly 
 spherical. But in the seventh, though the larger bubbles (so 
 to call them) are subdivided into many small ones, every un- 
 interrupted piece of the surface is a portion of a sphere, as in 
 true bubbles. 
 
 Thirdly. The sugar chalcedony, i. h. 4, and stellar chal- 
 cedony, i. h. 5, show perfect power of assuming, under favour- 
 able conditions, prismatic crystalline form. But there is no 
 trace of such tendency in the first three, or last two, of the 
 seven examples. Nor has there ever, so far as I know, been 
 found prismatic true hyalite, or prismatic true chalcedony. 
 
 Therefore w r e have here essentially three different minerals, 
 passing into each other, it is true ; but, at a certain point, 
 changing their natures definitely, so that hyalite, becoming wax 
 chalcedony, gains the power of prismatic crystallization ; and 
 wax chalcedony, becoming true chalcedony, loses it again ! 
 
 And now I must pause, to explain rightly this term 1 pris- 
 matic,' and others which are now in use, or which are to be 
 used, in St. George's schools, in describing crystallization. 
 
 14. A prism, (the sawn thing,) in Newton's use of the word, 
 is a triangular pillar with fiat top and bottom. Putting two 
 or more of these together, we can make pillars of any number 
 of plane sides, in any regular or irregular shape. Crystals, 
 therefore, which are columnar, and thick enough to be dis- 
 tinctly seen, are called ' prismatic' 
 
 2. But crystals which are columnar, and so delicate that they 
 
 look like needles, are called ' acicular,' from acus, a needle. 
 
 3. When such crystals become so fine that they look like bail- 
 
 or down, and lie in confused directions, the mineral 
 composed of them is called 6 plumose.' 
 
Plate V. — Structure of Lake Agate. 
 
OF SILICA IN LAVAS. 
 
 125 
 
 4. And when they adhere together closely by their sides, the 
 
 mineral is called 1 fibrous/ 
 
 5. When a crystal is flattened by the extension of two of its 
 
 planes, so as to look like a board, it is called ' tabular ' ; 
 but people don't call it a ' tabula/ 
 6c But when such a board becomes very thin, it is called a 
 'lamina/ and the mineral composed of many such 
 plates, laminated. 
 
 7. When laminae are so thin that, joining with others equally 
 
 so, they form fine leaves, the mineral is c foliate.' 
 
 8. And when these leaves are capable of perpetual subdivision, 
 
 the mineral is ' micaceous.' 
 
 15. Now, so far as i know their works, mineralogists hith- 
 erto have never attempted to show cause why some minerals 
 rejoice in longitude, others in latitude, and others in plati- 
 tude. They indicate to their own satisfaction, — that is to say, 
 in a manner totally incomprehensible by the public, — all the 
 modes of expatiation possible to the mineral, by cardinal 
 points on a sphere : but why a crystal of ruby likes to be 
 short and fat, and a crystal of rutile, long and lean ; why 
 amianth should bind itself into bundles of threads, cuprite 
 weave itself into tissues, and silver braid itself into nests. — ■ 
 the use, in fact, that any mineral makes of its opportunities, 
 and the cultivation which it gives to its faculties, — of all this, 
 my mineralogical authorities tell me nothing. Industry, in- 
 deed, is theirs to a quite infinite degree, in pounding, decoct- 
 ing, weighing, measuring, but they have remained just as un- 
 conscious as vivisecting physicians that all this was only the 
 anatomy of dust, — not its history. 
 
 But here at last, in Cumberland, I find a friend, Mr. Clifton 
 Ward, able and willing to begin some true history of mineral 
 substance, and far advanced already in preliminary discovery ; 
 and in answer to my request for help, taking up this first hy- 
 alitic problem, he has sent me the drawings — engraved, I 
 regret to say, with little justice to their delicacy;* — in 
 Plate V. 
 
 * But not by my fault, for I told the engraver to do his best ; and 
 took more trouble with the plate than with any of my own. 
 
126 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 16. This plate represents, in Figure 1, the varieties of 
 structure in an inch vertical section of a lake-agate ; and ic 
 Figures 2, 3, 4, and 5, still farther magnified portions of the 
 layers so numbered in Figure 1. 
 
 Figures 6 to 9 represent the structure and effect of polar- 
 ized light in a lake-agate of more distinctly crystalline struct- 
 ure ; and Figures 10 to 13, the orbicular concretions of vol- 
 canic Indian chalcedony. But before entering farther on the 
 description of these definitely concretionary bands, I think it 
 will be desirable to take note of some facts regarding the 
 larger bands of our Westmoreland mountains, which become 
 to me, the more I climb them, mysterious to a point scarcely 
 tolerable ; and only the more so, in consequence of their re- 
 cent more accurate survey. 
 
 17. Leaving their pebbles, therefore, for a little while, I 
 will ask my readers to think over some of the conditions of 
 their crags and pools, explained as best I could, in the follow- 
 ing lecture, to the Literary and Scientific Society of the town 
 of Kendal. For indeed, beneath the evermore blessed Kendal- 
 green of their sweet meadows and moors, the secrets of hill- 
 structure remain, for all the work spent on them, in colour- 
 less darkness ; and indeed, " So dark, Hal,, that thou could'st 
 not see thine hand." 
 
 CHAPTER XH. 
 
 YEWDALE AND ITS STREAMLETS. 
 
 Lecture delivered before the Members of the Literary and 
 Scientific Institution, Kendal, 1st October, 1877. 
 
 1. I fear that some of my hearers may think an apology due 
 to them for having brought, on the first occasion of my being 
 honoured by their audience, a subject before them which they 
 may suppose unconnected with my own special work, past or 
 present. But the truth is, I knew mountains long before I 
 knew pictures ; and these mountains of yours, before any 
 
TEWDALE AND ITS STREAMLETS. 
 
 127 
 
 other mountains. From this town, of Kendal, I went out, a 
 child, to the first joyful excursions among the Cumberland 
 lakes, which formed my love of landscape and of painting : 
 and now, being an old man, I find myself more and more 
 glad to return — and pray you to-night to return with me — 
 from shadows to the reality. 
 
 I do not, however, believe that one in a hundred of our 
 youth, or of our educated classes, out of directly scientific 
 circles, take any real interest in geology. And for my own 
 part, I do not wonder, — for it seems to me that geology tells 
 us nothing really interesting. It tells us much about a world 
 that once was. But, for my part, a world that only was, is 
 as little interesting as a world that only is to be. I no more 
 care to hear of the forms of mountains that crumbled away a 
 million of years ago to leave room for the town of Kendal, 
 than of forms of mountains that some future day may swallow 
 up the town of Kendal in the cracks of them. I am only in- 
 terested — so ignoble and unspeculative is my disposition — in 
 knowing how God made the Castle Hill of Kendal, for the 
 Baron of it to build on, and how he brought the Kent through 
 the dale of it, for its people and flocks to drink of. 
 
 2. And these things, if you think of them, you will find are 
 precisely what the geologists cannot tell you. They never 
 trouble themselves about matters so recent, or so visible ; 
 and w^hile you may always obtain the most satisfactory in- 
 formation from them respecting the congelation of the whole 
 globe out of gas, or the direction of it in space, there is really 
 not one who can explain to you the making of a pebble, or 
 the running of a rivulet. 
 
 May I, however, before pursuing my poor little inquiry into 
 these trifling matters, congratulate those members of my 
 audience who delight more in literature than science, on the 
 possession, not only of dales in reality, but of dales in name. 
 Consider, for an instant or two, how much is involved, how 
 much indicated, by our possession in English of the six quite 
 distinct words— vale, valley, dale, dell, glen, and dingle ;— 
 consider the gradations of character in scene^ and fineness of 
 observation in the inhabitants, implied by that six-foil cluster 
 
DEUCALION. 
 
 of words ; as compared to the simple ' thai ' of the Germans, 
 c valle I of the Italians, and ' vallee ' of the French, shortening 
 into 'vaT merely for ease of pronunciation, but having no 
 variety of sense whatever ; so that, supposing I want to trans- 
 late, for the benefit of an Italian friend, Wordsworth's * Rev- 
 erie of Poor Susan/ and come to u Green pastures she views 
 in the midst of the dale," and look for 4 dale' in my Italian 
 dictionary, I find "valle lunga e stretta tra poggi aiti," and 
 can only convey Mr. Wordsworth's meaning to my Italian lis- 
 tener by telling him that "la povera Susanna vede verdi 
 prati, nel mezzo della valle lunga e stretta tra poggi alti " ! 
 It is worth while, both for geological and literary reasons, to 
 trace the essential differences in the meaning and proper use 
 of these words. 
 
 3. * Vale ' signifies a large extent of level land, surrounded 
 by hills, or nearly so ; as the Vale of the White Horse, or 
 Vale of Severn. The level extent is necessary to the idea ; 
 while the next word, 6 valley,' means a large hollow among 
 hills, in which there is little level ground, or none. Next 
 comes ' dale,' which signifies properly a tract of level land on 
 the borders of a stream, continued for so great a distance as 
 to make it a district of importance as a part of the inhabited 
 country ; as Ennerdale, Langdale, Liddesdale. ' Dell ' is to 
 dale, what valley is to vale ; and implies that there is scarcely 
 any level land beside the stream. ' Dingle ' is such a recess 
 or dell clothed with wood ; * and ' glen ' one varied with 
 rocks. The term 'ravine,' a rent chasm among rocks, has its 
 necessary parallel in other languages. 
 
 Our richness of expression in these particulars may be 
 traced to the refinement of our country life, chiefly since the 
 fifteenth century ; and to the poetry founded on the ancient 
 character of the Border peasantry ; mingling agricultural 
 with shepherd life in almost equal measure. 
 
 I am about to endeavour, then, to lay before you this even- 
 
 * Connected partly, I doubt not, with Ingle, or Inglewood,— "brush- 
 wood to burn, (hence Justice Inglewood in ' Hob Roy '). I have still 
 omitted 'clough,' or cleugh, given by Johnson in relation to 'dingle,' 
 and constant in Scott, from ' Gander-cleugh ' to 4 Buc(k)- cleugh.' 
 
T E WD ALE AND ITS STREAMLETS. 
 
 129 
 
 ing the geological laws which have produced the 'dale/ 
 properly so called, of which I take — for a sw T eet and near ex- 
 ample — the green piece of meadow land through which flows, 
 into Coniston Water, the brook that chiefly feeds it. 
 
 4. And now, before going farther, let me at once vindicate 
 myself from the blame of not doing full justice to the earnest 
 continuance of labour, and excellent subtlety of investigation, 
 by which Mr. Aveline and Mr. Clifton Ward have presented 
 you with the marvellous maps and sections of this district, 
 now in course of publication in the Geological Survey. Es- 
 pecially let me, in the strongest terms of grateful admiration, 
 refer to the results which have been obtained by the micro- 
 scopic observations of minerals instituted by Mr. Sorby, and 
 carried out indefatigably by Mr. Clifton Ward, forming the 
 first sound foundations laid for the solution of the most 
 secret problems of geology. 
 
 5. But while I make this most sincere acknowledgment of 
 what has been done by these gentlemen, and by their brother 
 geologists in the higher paths of science, I must yet in all 
 humility lament that this vast fund of gathered knowledge is 
 every bit of it, hitherto, beyond you and me. Dealing only 
 with infinitude of space and remoteness of time, it leaves us 
 as ignorant as ever we were, or perhaps, in fancying ourselves 
 wiser, even more ignorant, of the things that are near us and 
 around, — of the brooks that sing to us, the rocks that guard 
 us, and the fields that feed. 
 
 6. To-night, therefore, I am here for no other purpose than 
 to ask the simplest questions ; and to win your interest, if it 
 may be, in pleading with our geological teachers for the an- 
 swers which as yet they disdain to give. 
 
 Here, in your long winding dale of the Kent, — and over the 
 hills, in my little nested dale of the Yew, — will you ask the 
 geologist, with me, to tell us how their pleasant depth was 
 opened for us, and their lovely borders built. For, as yet, 
 this is all that we are told concerning them, by accumulated 
 evidence of geology, as collected in this summary at the end 
 of the first part of Mr. Clifton Ward's volume on the geology 
 of the lakes : — 
 
130 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 " The most ancient geologic records in the district indicate 
 marine conditions with a probable proximity of land. Sub- 
 marine volcanoes broke out during the close of this period, 
 followed by an elevation of land, with continued volcanic 
 eruptions, of which perhaps the present site of Keswick was 
 one of the chief centres. Depression of the volcanic district 
 then ensued beneath the sea, with the probable cessation of 
 volcanic activity ; much denudation was effected ; another 
 slight volcanic outburst accompanied the formation of the 
 Coniston Limestone, and then the old deposits of Skiddaw 
 Slate and volcanic material were buried thousands of feet 
 deep beneath strata formed in an upper Silurian sea. Next 
 followed an immensely long period of elevation, accompanied 
 by disturbance and alteration of the rocks, and by a prodigious 
 amount of marine and atmospheric denudation. A subse- 
 quent depression, to a considerable extent, marked the coming 
 on of the Carboniferous epoch, heralded however, in all like- 
 lihood, by a period of more or less intense cold. Then for 
 succeeding ages, the district elevated high above the surround- 
 ing seas of later times, underwent that large amount of sub- 
 aerial denudation which has resulted in the formation of our 
 beautiful English Lake-country." 
 
 7. The only sentence in this passage of the smallest service 
 to us, at present, is that stating the large amount of ' sub- 
 aerial denudation ' which formed our beautiful country. 
 
 Putting the geological language into simple English, that 
 means that your dales and hills were produced by being 
 < rubbed down in the open air/ — rubbed down, that is to say, 
 in the manner in which people are rubbed down after a 
 Turkish bath, so as to have a good deal of their skin taken off 
 them. But observe, it would be just as rational to say that 
 the beauty of the human form was owing to the immemorial 
 and continual use of the flesh-brush, as that we owe the 
 beauty of our mountains to the mere fact of their having been 
 rubbed away. No quantity of stripping or denuding will 
 give beauty when there is none to denude ; — you cannot rub 
 a statue out of a sandbank, or carve the Elgin frieze with 
 rottenstone for a chisel, and chance to drive it. 
 
YE WD ALE AND ITS STREAMLETS. 
 
 131 
 
 8. We have to ask then, first, what material there was here 
 to carve ; and then what sort of chisels, and in what work- 
 man's hand, were used to produce this large piece of precious 
 chasing or embossed work, which we call Cumberland and 
 Weste-more-land. 
 
 I think we shall get at our subject most clearly, however, 
 by taking a somewhat wider view of it than our own dales 
 permit, and considering what ' sub-aerial denudation ' means, 
 on the surface of the world, instead of in "Westmoreland only. 
 
 9. Broadly, therefore, we have, forming a great part of that 
 surface, vast plains or steppes, like the levels of France, and 
 lowlands of England, and prairies of America, composed 
 mostly of horizontal beds of soft stone or gravel. Nobody in 
 general talks of these having been rubbed down ; so little, 
 indeed, that I really do not myself know what the notions of 
 geologists are on the matter. They tell me that some four- 
 and-twenty thousand feet or so of slate — say, four miles thick 
 of slate — must have been taken off the top of Skiddaw to 
 grind that into what it is ; but I don't know in the least how 
 much chalk or freestone they think has been ground off the 
 East Cliff at Brighton, to flatten that into what it is. They 
 tell me that Mont Blanc must have been three times as high 
 as he is now, when God, or the affinity of atoms, first made 
 him ; but give me no idea whatever how much higher the 
 shore of the Adriatic was than it is now, before the lagoon of 
 Venice was rubbed out of it. 
 
 10. Collecting and inferring as best I can, it seems to me 
 they mean generally that all the mountains were much higher 
 than they are now, and all the plains lower ; and that what 
 has been scraped off the one has been heaped on to the 
 other : but that is by no means generally so ; and in the de- 
 gree in which it is so, hitherto has been unexplained, and has 
 even the aspect of being inexplicable. 
 
 I don't know what sort of models of the district you have 
 in the Museum, but the kind commonly sold represent the 
 entire mountain surface merely as so much sandheap washed 
 into gutters. It is totally impossible for your youth, while 
 these false impressions are conveyed by the cheap tricks of 
 
132 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 geographical manufacture, to approach the problems of moun- 
 tain form under any sense of their real conditions : while 
 even advanced geologists are too much in the habit of think- 
 ing that every mountain mass may be considered as a heap of 
 homogeneous clay, which some common plough has fretted 
 into similar clods. 
 
 But even to account for the furrows of a field you must ask 
 for plough and ploughman. How much more to account for 
 the furrows of the adamantine rock. Shall one plough there 
 with oxen ? 
 
 I will ask you, therefore, to-night, to approach this question 
 in its first and simplest terms, and to examine the edge of the 
 weapon which is supposed to be still at work. The streamlets 
 of the dale seem yet in many places to be excavating their 
 glens as they dash down them, — or deepening the pools under 
 their cascades. Let us in such simple and daily visible matters 
 consider more carefully what are the facts. 
 
 11. Towards the end of July, this last summer, I was saun- 
 tering among the fern, beside the bed of the Yewdale stream, 
 and stopped, as one does instinctively, at a place where the 
 stream stopped also, — bending itself round in a quiet brown 
 eddy under the root of an oak tree. 
 
 How many thousand thousand times have I not stopped to 
 look down into the pools of a mountain stream, — and yet never 
 till that day had it occurred to me to ask how the pools came 
 there. As a matter of course, I had always said to myself, 
 there must be deep places and shallow ones, — and where the 
 water is deep there is an eddy, and where it is shallow there 
 is a ripple, — and what more is there to say about it? 
 
 However, that day, having been of late in an interrogative 
 humour about everything, it did suddenly occur to me to ask 
 why the water should be deep there, more than anywhere else. 
 This pool was at a bend of the stream, and rather a wide part 
 of it ; and it seemed to me that, for the most part, of the deep 
 pools I recollected had been at bends of streams, and in rather 
 wide parts of them ; — with the accompanying condition of 
 slow circular motion in the water ; and also, mostly under 
 steep banks. 
 
YE WD ALE AND ITS STREAMLETS. 
 
 133 
 
 12. Gathering my fifty years' experience of brooks, this 
 seemed to me a tenable generalization, that on the whole, 
 where the bank was steepest, and one was most likely to tum- 
 ble in, one was least likely to get out again. 
 
 And that gloomily slow and sullen motion on the surface, 
 as if the bubbles were unwillingly going round in a mill, — 
 this also I recollected as a usual condition of the deeper water, 
 — so usual, indeed, that (as I say) I never once before had 
 reflected upon it as the least odd. Whereas now, the thought 
 struck me as I looked, and struck me harder as I looked longer, 
 If the bubbles stay at the top, why don't the stones stay at the 
 bottom ? If, when I throw in a stick here in the back eddy 
 at the surface, it keeps spinning slowly round and round, and 
 never goes down-stream — am I to expect that when I throw a 
 stone into the same eddy, it will be immediately lifted by it 
 out of the hole and carried away ? And yet unless the water 
 at the bottom of the hole has this power of lifting stones out 
 of it, why is the hole not filled up ? 
 
 13. Coming to this point of the question, I looked up the 
 beck, and down. Up the beck, above the pool, there was a 
 shallow rapid over innumerable stones of all sizes : and down 
 the beck, just below the pool, there was a ledge of rock, against 
 which the stream had deposited a heap of rolled shingle, and 
 over the edges of which it flowed in glittering tricklets, so 
 shallow that a child of four years old might have safely waded 
 across ; and between the loose stones above in the steep rapid, 
 and the ledge of rock below — which seemed put there ex- 
 pressly for them to be lodged against — here was this deep, and 
 wide, and quiet, pool. 
 
 So I stared at it, and stared ; and the more I stared, the 
 Jess I understood it. And if you like, any of you may easily 
 go and stare too, for the pool in question is visible enough 
 from the coach-road, from Mr. Sly's Waterhead Inn, up to Til- 
 berthwaite. You turn to the right from the bridge at Mr. 
 Bowness's smithy, and then in a quarter of a mile you may 
 look over the roadside wall into this quiet recess of the stream, 
 and consider of many things. For, observe, if there were any- 
 thing out of the way in the pool — I should not send you to 
 
134 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 look at it. I mark it only for one of myriads such in every 
 mountain stream that ever trout leaped or ripple laughed in. 
 
 And beside it, as a type of ail its brother deeps, these fol- 
 lowing questions may be wisely put to yourselves. 
 
 14. First— How are any of the pools kept clear in a stream 
 that carries shingle ? There is some power the water has got 
 of lifting it out of the deeps hitherto unexplained — unthought 
 of. Coming down the rapid in a rage, it drops the stones, 
 and leaves them behind ; coming to the deep hole, where it 
 seems to have no motion, it picks them up and carries them 
 away in its pocket. Explain that. 
 
 15. But, secondly, beside this pool let us listen to the wide 
 murmuring geological voice, telling us — "To sub-aerial denu- 
 dation you owe your beautiful lake scenery " ! — Then, presum- 
 ably, Yewdale among the rest ? — Therefore we may look upon 
 Yewdale as a dale sub-aerially denuded. That is to say, there 
 was once a time w T hen no dale was there, and the process of 
 denudation has excavated it to the depth you see. 
 
 16. But now I can ask, more definitely and clearly, With 
 what chisel has this hollow been hewn for us ? Of course, the 
 geologist replies, by the frost, and the rain, and the decom- 
 position of its rocks. Good ; but though frost may break up, 
 and the rain wash down, there must have been somebody 
 to cart away the rubbish, or still you would have had no 
 Yewdale. Well, of course, again the geologist answers, the 
 streamlets are the carters ; and this stream past Mr. Bow- 
 ness's smithy is carter-in-chief. 
 
 17. How many cartloads, then, may we suppose the stream 
 has carried past Mr. Bowness's, before it carted away all Yew- 
 dale to this extent, and cut out all the northern side of Weth- 
 erlam, and all that precipice of Yewdale Crag, and carted all 
 the rubbish first into Coniston Lake, and then out of it again, 
 and so down the Crake into the sea ? Oh, the geologists re- 
 ply, we don't mean that the little Crake did all that. Of 
 course it was a great river full of crocodiles a quarter of a 
 mile long ; or it was a glacier five miles thick, going ten miles 
 an hour ; or a sea of hot water fifty miles deep, — or, — some- 
 thing of that sort. Well, I have no interest, myself, in any* 
 
YE WD ALE AND ITS STREAMLETS. 
 
 135 
 
 thing of that sort : and 1 want to know, here, at the side of 
 my little puzzler of a pool, whether there's any sub-aerial 
 denudation going on still, and whether this visible Crake, 
 though it can only do little, does anything. Is it carrying 
 stones at all, now, past Mr. Bowness's ? Of course, reply the 
 geologists ; don't you see the stones all along it, and doesn't 
 it bring down more every flood ? Well, yes ; the delta of 
 Coniston Waterhead may, perhaps, within the memory of the 
 oldest inhabitant, or within the last hundred years, have ad- 
 vanced a couple of yards or so. At that rate, those two 
 streams, considered as navvies, are proceeding with the works 
 in hand ;— to that extent they are indeed filling up the lake, 
 and to that extent sub-aerially denuding the mountains. But 
 now, I must ask your attention very closely : for I have a 
 strict bit of logic to put before you, which the best I can do 
 will not make clear without some helpful effort on your part. 
 
 18. The streams, we say, by little and little, are filling up 
 the lake. They did not cut out the basin of that. Something 
 else must have cut out that, then, before the streams began 
 their work. Could the lake, then, have been cut out all by 
 itself, and none of the valleys that lead to it ? Was it punched 
 into the mass of elevated ground like a long grave, before the 
 streams were set to work to cut Yewdale down to it? 
 
 19. You don't for a moment imagine that. Well, then, the 
 lake and the dales that descend with it, must have been cut 
 out together. But if the lake not by the streamlets, then the 
 dales not by the streamlets ? The streamlets are the conse- 
 quence of the dales then, — not the causes ; and the sub-aerial 
 denudation to which you owe your beautiful lake scenery, 
 must have been something, not only different from what is 
 going on now, but, in one half of it at least, contrary to what 
 is going on now. Then, the lakes which are now being filled 
 up, were being cut down ; and as probably, the mountains 
 now being cut down, were being cast up. 
 
 20. Don't let us go too fast, however. The streamlets are 
 now, we perceive, filling up the big lake. But are they not, 
 then, also filling up the little ones ? If they don't cut Conis- 
 ton water deeper, do you think they are cutting Mr. Marshall's 
 
136 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 tarns deeper ? If not Mr. Marshall's tarns deeper, are they 
 cutting their own little pools deeper ? This pool by which we 
 are standing — we have seen it is inconceivable how it is not 
 filled up, — much more it is inconceivable that it should be 
 cut deeper down. You can't suppose that the same stream 
 which is filling up the Coniston lake below Mr. Browness's, is 
 cutting out another Coniston lake above Mr. Browness's? 
 The truth is that, above the bridge as below it, and from their 
 sources to the sea, the streamlets have the same function, and 
 are filling, not deepening, alike lake, tarn, pool, channel, and 
 valley. 
 
 21. And that being so, think how you have been misled by 
 seeking knowledge far afield, and for vanity's sake, instead of 
 close at home, and for love's sake. You must go and see 
 Niagara, must you ? — and you will brick up and make a foul 
 drain of the sweet streamlet that ran past your doors. And 
 all the knowledge of the waters and the earth that God meant 
 for you, flowed with it, as water of life. 
 
 Understand, then, at least, and at last, to-day, Niagara is a 
 vast Exception — and Deception. The true cataracts and falls 
 of the great mountains, as the dear little cascades and leaplets 
 of your own rills, fall where they fell of old ; — that is to say, 
 wherever there's a hard bed of rock for them to jump over. 
 They don't cut it away — and they can't. They do form pools 
 beneath in a mystic way,— they excavate them to the depth 
 which will break their fall's force— and then they excavate no 
 more.* 
 
 We must look, then, for some other chisel than the stream- 
 let ; and therefore, as we have hitherto interrogated the waters 
 at their work, we will now interrogate the hills, in their 
 patience. 
 
 22. The principal flank of Yewdale is formed by a steep 
 range of crag, thrown out from the greater mass of Wether- 
 lam, and known as Yewdale Crag. 
 
 It is almost entirely composed of basalt, or hard volcanic 
 ash ; and is of supreme interest among the southern hills of 
 
 * Else, every pool would become a well, of continually increasing 
 depth. 
 
YE WD ALE AND ITS STREAMLETS. 
 
 137 
 
 the lake district, as being practically the first rise of the great 
 mountains of England, out of the lowlands of England. 
 
 And it chances that my own study window being just op- 
 posite this crag, and not more than a mile from it as the bird 
 flies, I have it always staring me, as it were, in the face, and 
 asking again and again, when I look up from writing any of 
 my books, — " How did / come here ? " 
 
 I wrote that last sentence hurriedly, but leave it — as it was 
 written ; for, indeed, however well I know the vanity of it, the 
 question is still sometimes, in spite of my best effort, put to 
 me in that old form by the mocking crags, as by a vast 
 couchant Sphinx, tempting me to vain labour in the inscruta- 
 ble abyss. 
 
 But as I regain my collected thought, the mocking question 
 ceases, and the divine one forms itself, in the voice of vale 
 and streamlet, and in the shadowy lettering of the engraven 
 rock. 
 
 " Where wast thou when I laid the foundation of the earth? 
 — declare, if thou hast understanding." 
 
 23. How Yewdale Crags came there, I, for one, will no 
 more dream, therefore, of knowing, than the wild grass can 
 know, that shelters in their clefts. I will only to-night ask 
 you to consider one more mystery in the things they have 
 suffered since they came. 
 
 You might naturally think, following out the idea of 1 sub- 
 aerial denudation 9 that the sudden and steep rise of the crag- 
 above these softer strata was the natural consequence of its 
 greater hardness ; and that in general the district was only 
 the remains of a hard knot or kernel in the substance of the 
 island, from which the softer superincumbent or surrounding 
 material had been more or less rubbed or washed away.* 
 
 24. But had that been so, one result of the process must 
 have been certain — that the hard rocks would have resisted 
 
 * The most wonderful piece of weathering, in all my own district, is 
 on & projecting mass of intensely hard rock on the eastern side of Goat's 
 Water. It was discovered and shown to me by my friend the Rev. F. A. 
 Malleson ; and exactly resembles deer> ripple-marking, though noth- 
 ing in the grain of the rock indicates its undulatory structure, 
 
138 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 more than the soft ; and that in some distinct proportion and 
 connection, the hardness of a mountain would be conjecture 
 able from its height, and the whole surface of the district 
 more or less manifestly composed of hard bosses or ridges, 
 with depressions between them in softer materials. Nothing 
 is so common, nothing so clear, as this condition, on a small 
 scale, in every " weathered rock. Its quartz, or other hard 
 knots and veins, stand out from the depressed surface in 
 raised w T alls, like the divisions between the pits of Dante's 
 eighth circle, — and to a certain extent, Mr. Ward tells us, the 
 lava dykes, either by their hardness or by their decomposition, 
 produce walls and trenches in the existing surface of the 
 hills. But these are on so small a scale, that on this map 
 they cannot be discernibly indicated ; and the quite amazing 
 fact stands out here in unqualified and indisputable decision, 
 that by whatever force these forms of your mountains were 
 hewn, it cut through the substance of them, as a sword-stroke 
 through flesh, bone, and marrow, and swept away the masses 
 to be removed, with as serene and indiscriminating power as 
 one of the shot from the Devil's great guns at Shoeburyness 
 goes through the oak and the iron of its target. 
 
 25. It is with renewed astonishment, whenever I take these 
 sections into my hand, that I observe the phenomenon itself; 
 and that I remember the persistent silence of geological 
 teachers on this matter, through the last forty years of their 
 various discourse. In this shortened section, through Bow- 
 fell to Brantwood, you go through the summits of three first- 
 rate mountains down to the lowland moors : you find them 
 built, or heaped ; barred, or bedded ; here with forged basalt, 
 harder than flint, and tougher than iron, — there, with shiver- 
 ing shales that split themselves into flakes as fine as puft- 
 paste, and as brittle as shortbread. And behold, the hewing 
 tool of the Master Builder sweeps along the forming lines, 
 and shapes the indented masses of them, as a draper's scis- 
 sors shred a piece of striped sarsnet ! 
 
 26. Now do but think a little of the wonderfulness in this. 
 If the process of grinding was slow, why don't the hard rocks 
 project ? If swift, what kind of force must it have been ? and 
 
Fig.l. Slates of Bull Cra£ and Maiden Moox. (GEOL^ SURVEY.) 
 
 Fig. 3. Pie-Pa,ste. Compression modified l)y elevatory forces. 
 
 Fi£. 4. Pie Paste. Compression, restricted to tine lower Strata 
 
 under a ri^id upper one. 
 Plate VI. * 
 
 LATERAL COMPRESSION>OF STRATA 
 
 Fig.l. Ideal. Figs 2.3 & 4- Practical. 
 
YE WD ALE AND ITS STREAMLETS. 
 
 139 
 
 Why do the rocks it tore show no signs of rending ? Nobody 
 supposes it was indeed swift as a sword or a cannon-ball ; 
 but if not, why are the rocks not broken ? Can you break an 
 oak plank and leave no splinters, or cut a bed of basalt a 
 a thousand feet thick like cream-cheese ? 
 
 But you suppose the rocks were soft when it was done. 
 Why don't they squeeze, then ? 
 
 Make Dover cliffs of baker's dough, and put St. Paul's on 
 the top of them, — won't they give way somewhat, think you ? 
 and will you then make Causey Pike of clay, and heave Scaw- 
 fell against the side of it ; and yet shall it not so much as 
 show a bruise ? 
 
 Yet your modern geologists placidly draw the folded beds 
 of the Skiddaw and Causey Pike slate, first, without observ- 
 ing whether the folds they draw are possible folds in anything ; 
 and, secondly, without the slightest suggestion of sustained 
 pressure, or bruise, in any part of them. 
 
 27. I have given in my diagram, (Plate VI, Fig. 1,) the 
 section attributed, in that last issued by the Geological Sur- 
 vey, to the contorted slates of Maiden Moor, between Causey 
 Pike and the erupted masses of the central mountains. Now, 
 for aught I know, those contortions may be truly represented ; 
 —but if so, they are not contortions by lateral pressure. 
 For, first, they are impossible forms in any substance what- 
 ever, capable of being contorted ; and, secondly, they are 
 doubly impossible in any substance capable of being squeezed. 
 
 Impossible, I say, first in any substance capable of being 
 contorted. Fold paper, cloth, leather, sheets of iron, — what 
 you will, and still you can't have the folded bed at the top 
 double the length of that at the bottom. But here, I have meas- 
 ured the length of the upper bed, as compared with that of 
 the lower, and it is twenty miles, to eight miles and a half. 
 
 Secondly, I say, these are impossible folds in any substance 
 capable of being squeezed, for every such substance will 
 change its form as well as its direction under pressure. And 
 to show you how such a substance does actually behave, and 
 contort itself under lateral pressure, I have prepared the sec- 
 tions Figures 2, 3, and 4. 
 
DEUCALION. 
 
 28. I have just said, you have no business to seek knowl- 
 edge far afield, when you can get it at your doors. But more 
 than that, you have no business to go outside your doors 
 for it, when you can get it in your parlour. And it so hap- 
 pens that the two substances which, while the foolish little 
 king was counting out his money, the wise little queen was 
 eating in the parlour, are precisely the two substances be- 
 side which wise little queens and kings, and everybody else, 
 may also think, in the parlour, — Bread, and honey. For 
 whatever bread, or at least dough, will do under pressure, 
 ductile rocks, in their proportion, must also do under pres- 
 sure ; and in the manner that honey will move, poured upon 
 a slice of them, — in that manner, though in its own measure, 
 ice will move, poured upon a bed of them. Eocks, no more 
 than piecrust, can be rolled out without squeezing them 
 thinner ; and flowing ice can no more excavate a valley, than 
 flowing treacle a teaspoon. 
 
 29. I said just now, Will you dash Scawfell against Causey 
 Pike? 
 
 I take, therefore, from the Geological Survey the section of 
 the Skiddaw slates, which continue the mass of Causey Pike 
 under the Vale of Newlands, to the point where the volcanic 
 mass of the Scawfell range thrusts itself up against them, and 
 laps over them. They are represented, in the section, as you 
 see, (Plate VI., Fig. 1 ;) and it has always been calmly as- 
 sumed by geologists that these contortions were owing to 
 lateral pressure. 
 
 But I must beg you to observe that since the uppermost of 
 these beds, if it were straightened out, would be more than 
 twice the length of the lower ones, you could only obtain that 
 elongation by squeezing the upper bed more than the lower, 
 und making it narrower where it is elongated. Now, if this 
 were indeed at the surface of the ground, the geologists might 
 i>ay the upper bed had been thrown up because there was less 
 weight on it. But, by their own accounts, there were five 
 miles thick of rocks on the top of all this when it was bent. 
 So you could not have made one bed tilt up, and another stay 
 down ; and the structure is evidently an impossible one. 
 
YE WD ALE AND ITS STREAMLETS. 
 
 141 
 
 30. Nay, answer the surveyors, impossible or not, it is there, 
 t partly, in pausing, myself doubt its being there. This looks 
 to me an ideal, as well as an impossible, undulation. 
 
 But if it is indeed truly surveyed, then assuredly, whatever 
 it may be owing to, it is not owing to lateral pressure. 
 
 That is to say, it may be a crystalline arrangement assumed 
 under pressure, but it is assuredly not a form assumed by 
 ductile substance under mechanical force. Order the cook to 
 roll out half a dozen strips of dough, and to stain three of 
 them with cochineal. Put red and white alternately one 
 above the other. Then press them in any manner you like ; 
 after pressure, a wetted carving knife will give you quite un- 
 questionable sections, and you see the results of three such 
 experiments in the lower figures of the plate. 
 
 31. Figure 2 represents the simplest possible case. Three 
 white and three red dough-strips were taken, a red one upper- 
 most, (for the pleasure of painting it afterwards) ! They were 
 left free at the top, enclosed at the sides, and then reduced 
 from a foot to six inches in length, by pressure from the 
 right. The result, you see, is that the lower bed rises into 
 sharpest gables ; the upper ones are rounded softly. But in 
 the geological section it is the upper bed that rises, the lower 
 keeps down ! The second case is much more interesting. 
 The pastes were arranged in the same order, but bent up a 
 little, to begin with, in two places, before applying the pres- 
 sure. The result was, to my own great surprise, that at these 
 points of previous elevation, the lower bed first became quite 
 straight by tension as it rose, and then broke into transverse 
 faults. 
 
 32. The third case is the most interesting of all. In this 
 case, a roof of slate was put over the upper bed, allowing it 
 to rise to some extent only, and the pressure was applied to 
 the two lower beds only.* The upper bed of course exuded 
 backwards, giving these fiame-like forms, of which afterwards 
 
 * Here I had to give the left-hand section, as it came more neatly. 
 The wrinkled mass on the left colored brown represents the pushing 
 piece of wood, at the height to which it was applied. 
 
142 
 
 DEVCALIOK 
 
 I got quite lovely complications by repeated pressures. Thes$ 
 I must reserve for future illustration, concluding to-night, if 
 you will permit me, with a few words of general advice to the 
 younger members of this society, formed as it has been to 
 trace for itself a straight path through the fields of literature, 
 and over the rocks of science. 
 
 33. First. — Whenever you write or read English, write it 
 pure, and make it pure if ill written, by avoiding all unnec- 
 essary foreign, especially Greek, forms of words yourself, and 
 translating them when used by others. Above all, make this 
 a practice in science. Great part of the supposed scientific 
 knowledge of the day is simply bad English, and vanishes the 
 moment you translate it. 
 
 There is a farther very practical reason for avoiding all 
 vulgar Greek-English. Greece is now a kingdom, and will I 
 hope remain one, and its language is now living. The ship- 
 chandler, within six doors of me on the quay at Venice had 
 indeed a small English sign — calling himself Ship-Chandler ; 
 but he had a large and practically more serviceable, Greek 
 one, calling himself a " TrpofjurjOtTTrjs twv ttXohdv." Now when 
 the Greeks want a little of your science, as in very few years 
 they must, if this absurd practice of using foreign languages 
 for the clarification of scientific principle still holds, what 
 you, in compliment to Greece, call a ( Dinotherium,' Greece, 
 in compliment to you, must call a £ Nastybeastium,' — and you 
 know that interchange of compliments can't last long. 
 
 34. II. Observe generally that all knowledge, little or 
 much, is dangerous, in which your progress is likely to be 
 broken short by any strict limit set to the powers of mortals : 
 while it is precisely that kind of knowledge which provokes 
 vulgar curiosity, because it seems so far away ; and idle am- 
 bition, because it allows any quantity of speculation, without 
 proof. And the fact is that the greater quantity of the 
 knowledge which modern science is so saucy about, is only an 
 asses' bridge, which the asses all stop at the top of, and 
 which, moreover, they can't help stopping at the top of ; for 
 they have from the beginning taken the wrong road, and so 
 come to a broken bridge — a Ponte Kotto over the River of 
 
YE WD ALE AND ITS STREAMLETS. 
 
 143 
 
 Death, by which the Pontifex Maximus allows them to pasa 
 no step farther. 
 
 35. For instance, — having invented telescopes and photog- 
 raphy, you are all stuck up on your hobby-horses, because 
 you know how big the moon is, and can get pictures of the 
 volcanoes in it ! 
 
 But you never can get any more than pictures of these, 
 while in your own planet there are a thousand volcanoes which 
 you may jump into, if you have a mind to ; and may one 
 day perhaps be blown sky high by, whether you have a mind 
 or not. The last time the great volcano in Java was in erup- 
 tion, it threw out a stream of hot water as big as Lancaster 
 Bay, and boiled twelve thousand people. That's what I call 
 a volcano to be interested about, if you want sensational 
 science. 
 
 36. But if not, and you can be content in the wonder and 
 the power of Nature, without her terror, — here is a little bit 
 of a volcano, close at your very doors — Yewdale Crag, which I 
 think will be quiet for our time, — and on which the anagallis 
 tenella, and the golden potentilla, and the sundew, grow 
 together among the dewy moss in peace. And on the cellular 
 surface of one of the blocks of it, you may find more beauty, 
 and learn more precious things, than with telescope or pho- 
 tograph from all the moons in the milky way, though every 
 drop of it were another solar system. 
 
 I have a few more serious words to say to the fathers, and 
 mothers, and masters, who have honored me with their pres- 
 ence this evening, with respect to the influence of these far- 
 reaching sciences on the temper of children. 
 
 37. Those parents who love their children most tenderly, 
 cannot but sometimes dwell on the old Christian fancy, that 
 they have guardian angels. I call it an old fancy, in defer- 
 ence to your modern enlightenment in religion ; but I assure 
 you nevertheless, in spite of all that illumination, there re- 
 mains yet some dark possibility that the old fancy may be 
 true : and that, although the modern apothecary cannot ex- 
 hibit to you either an angel, or an imp, in a bottle, the 
 spiritual Dowers of heaven and bell are no less now 3 than 
 
144 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 heretofore, contending for the souls of your children ; and 
 contending with you — for the privilege of their tutorship. 
 
 88. Forgive me if I use, for the few minutes I have yet to 
 speak to you, the ancient language, — metaphorical, if you 
 will, of Luther and Fenelon, of Dante and Milton, of Goethe 
 and Shakspeare, of St. John and St. Paul, rather than your 
 modern metaphysical or scientific slang : and if I tell you, 
 what in the issue of it you will find is either life-giving, or 
 deadly, fact, — that the fiends and the angels contend with you 
 daily for the spirits of your children : the devil using to you 
 his old, his hitherto immortal, bribes, of lust and pride ; and 
 the angels pleading with you, still, that they may be allowed 
 to lead your babes in the divine life of the pure and the 
 lowly. To enrage their lusts, and chiefly the vilest lust of 
 money, the devils would drag them to the classes that teach 
 them how to get on in the world ; and for the better pluming 
 of their pride, provoke their zeal in the sciences which will 
 assure them of their being no God in nature but the gas of 
 their own graves. 
 
 And of these powers you may discern the one from the 
 other by a vivid, instant, practical test. The devils always 
 will exhibit to you what is loathsome, ugly, and, above all, 
 dead ; and the angels, what is pure, beautiful, and, above all, 
 living. 
 
 39. Take an actual, literal instance. Of all kiiown quadru- 
 peds, the unhappiest and vilest, yet alive, is the uloth, having 
 this farther strange devilry in him, that what activity he is 
 capable of, is in storm, and in the night. Well, the devil 
 takes up this creature, and makes a monster of it, — gives it 
 legs as big as hogsheads, claws stretched like the roots of a 
 tree, shoulders like a hump of crag, and a skull as thick as 
 a paving-stone. From this nightmare monster he takes what 
 poor faculty of motion the creature, though wretched, has 
 in its minuter size ; and shows you, instead of the clinging 
 climber that scratched and scrambled from branch to branch 
 among the rattling trees as they bowed in storm, only a vast 
 heap of stony bones and staggering clay, that drags its meat 
 down to its mouth out of the forest ruin. This creature the 
 
YE WD ALE AND ITS STREAMLETS. 
 
 145 
 
 fiends delight to exhibit to you, but are permitted by the 
 nobler powers only to exhibit to you in its death.* 
 
 40. On the other hand, as of all quadrupeds there is none 
 so ugly or so miserable as the sloth, so, take him for all in 
 all, there is none so beautiful, so happy, so wonderful as the 
 squirrel. Innocent in all his ways, harmless in his food, play- 
 ful as a kitten, but without cruelty, and surpassing the fan- 
 tastic dexterity of the monkey, with the grace and the bright- 
 ness of a bird, the little dark-eyed miracle of the forest 
 
 * The Mylodon. An old sketch, (I think, one of Leech's) in Punch, 
 of Paterfamilias improving Master Tom s mind among the models on 
 the mud-bank of the lowest pond at Sydenham, went to the root of the 
 matter. For the effect, on Master Tom's mind of the living squirrel, 
 compare the following account of the most approved modes of squirrel- 
 hunting, by a clerical patron of the sport, extracted for me by a cor- 
 respondent, from 'Rabbits: how to rear and manage them; with 
 Chapters on Hares, Squirrels, etc.' S. O. Beefcon, 248, Strand, W. C. 
 
 " It may be easily imagined that a creature whose playground is the 
 top twigs of tall trees, where no human climber dare venture, is by no 
 means easy to capture — especially as its hearing is keen, and its vision 
 remarkably acute. Still, among boys living in the vicinity of large 
 woods and copses, squirrel-hunting is a favorite diversion, and none 
 the less so because it is seldom attended by success. 1 The only plan.* 
 says the Rev. Mr. Wood, ' is to watch the animal until it has ascended 
 an isolated tree, or, by a well-directed shower missiles, to drive it 
 into such a place of refuge, and then to form a ring round the tree so as 
 to intercept the squirrel, should it try to escape by leaping to the ground 
 and running to another tree. The best climber is then sent in chase of 
 the squirrel, and endeavours, by violently shaking the branches, to force 
 the little animal to loose its hold and fall to the earth. But it is by no 
 means an easy matter to shake a squirrel from a branch, especially as 
 the little creature takes refuge on the topmost and most slender boughs, 
 which even bend under the weight of its own small body, and can in 
 no way be trusted with the weight of a human being. By dint, how- 
 ever, of perseverance, the squirrel is at last dislodged, and comes to th<» 
 ground as lightly as a snow-flake. Hats, caps, sticks, and all available 
 missiles are immediately flung at the luckless animal as soon as it 
 touches the ground, and it is very probably struck and overwhelmed 
 by a cap. The successful hurler flings himself upon the cap, and tries 
 to seize the squirrel as it lies under his property. All his companions 
 gather round him, and great is the disappointment to find the cap 
 empty, and to see the squirrel triumphantly scampering up some tree 
 where ft would be useless to follow it.' " 
 
146 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 glances from branch to branch more like a sunbeam than a 
 living creature : it leaps, and darts, and twines, where it will ; 
 — a chamois is slow to it ; and a panther, clumsy : grotesque 
 as a gnome, gentle as a fairy, delicate as the silken plumes of 
 the rush, beautiful and strong like the spiral of a fern, — it 
 haunts you, listens for you, hides from you, looks for you, 
 loves you, as if the angel that walks with your children had 
 made it himself for their heavenly plaything. 
 
 And this is what you do, to thwart alike your child's angel, 
 and his God, — you take him out of the woods into the town, 
 — you send him from modest labour to competitive schooling, 
 — you force him out of the fresh air into the dusty bone- 
 house, — you show him the skeleton of the dead monster, and 
 make him pore over its rotten cells and wire-stitched joints, 
 and vile extinct capacities of destruction, — and when he is 
 choked and sickened with useless horror and putrid air, you 
 let him — regretting the waste of time — go out for once to 
 play again by the woodside ; — and the first squirrel he sees, 
 he throws a stone at ! 
 
 Carry, then, I beseech you, this assured truth away with 
 you to-night. All true science begins in the love, not the dis- 
 section, of your fellow-creatures ; and it ends in the love, not 
 the analysis, of God. Your alphabet of science is in the 
 nearest knowledge, as your alphabet of science is in the near- 
 est duty. " Behold, it is nigh thee, even at the doors." The 
 Spirit of God is around you in the air that you breathe, — His 
 glory in the light that you see ; and in the fruitfulness of the 
 earth, and the joy of its creatures, He has written for you, day 
 by day, His revelation, as He has granted you, day by day, 
 your daily bread. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 OF STELLAR SILICA. 
 
 1. The issue of this number of Deucalion has been so long 
 delayed, first by other work, and recently by my illness, that 
 1 think it best at once to begin Mr. Ward's notes on Plate V. ; 
 
OF STELLAR SILICA. 
 
 147 
 
 reserving their close, with full explanation of their importance 
 and bearing, to the next following number. 
 
 Greta Bank Cottage, Keswick, 
 June 13, 1876. 
 
 My dear Sir, — I send you a few notes on the microscopic 
 structure of the three specimens I have had cut. In them I 
 have stated merely what I have seen. There has been much 
 which I did not expect, and still more is there that I don't 
 understand. 
 
 I am particularly sorry I have not the time to send a whole 
 series of coloured drawings illustrating the various points ; 
 but this summer weather claims my time on the mountain- 
 side, and I must give up microscopic work until winter comes 
 round again. 
 
 The minute spherulitic structure — especially along the fine 
 brown lines — was quite a surprise, and I shall hope on some 
 future occasion to see more of this subject. Believe me, yours 
 very truly, 
 
 J. Clifton Ward. 
 
 P.S. — There seems to be a great difference between the 
 microscopic structure of the specimens now examined and 
 that of the filled-up vesicles in many of my old lavas here, so 
 far as my limited examination has gone. 
 
 specimen a. 
 
 No. 1 commences at the end of the section farthest from A in 
 
 specimen. 
 
 1. Transparent zone with irregular curious cavities (not 
 liquid), and a few mossy-looking round spots (brownish). 
 
 Polarization. Indicating an indefinite semi-crystalline struct- 
 ure. (See note at page 148.) 
 
 2. Zone with minute seed -like bodies of various sizes (nar- 
 row brownish bands in the specimen of darker and lighter 
 tints). 
 
 a. Many cavities, and of an indefinite oval form in general. 
 
 b. The large spherulites (2) are very beautiful, the outer 
 
148 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 zone (radiate) of a delicate greenish-yellow, the nucleus of $ 
 brownish-yellow, and the intermediate zone generally clear. 
 
 c. A layer of densely packed bodies, oblong or oval in form. 
 
 d. Spherulites generally similar to b, but smaller, much 
 more stained of a brownish-yellow, and with more defined 
 nuclei. 
 
 Polarization. The spherulites show a clearly radiate polari- 
 zation, with rotation of a dark cross on turning either of the 
 prisms ; the intermediate ground shows the irregular semi- 
 crystalline structure. 
 
 3. Clear zone, with little yellowish, dark, squarish specks. 
 Polarization. Irregular, semi-crystalline. 
 
 4. Row of closely touching spherulites with large nucleus 
 and defined margin, rather furry in character (3). Margins 
 and nuclei brown ; intermediate space brownish-yellow. 
 
 Polarization. Eadiate, as in the spherulites 2 b. 
 (This is a short brown band which does not extend down 
 through the whole thickness of the specimen.) 
 
 5. Generally clear ground, with a brownish cloudy appear- 
 ance in parts. 
 
 Polarization, Indefinite semi-crystalline. 
 6 a. On a hazy ground may be seen the cloudy margins of 
 separately crystalline spaces. 
 
 Polarization. Definite semi-crystalline.** 
 
 6 b. A clear band with very indefinite polarization. 
 
 7. A clearish zone with somewhat of a brown mottled ap- 
 pearance (light clouds of brown colouring matter). 
 
 Polarization. Indefinite semi-crystalline. 
 
 8. Zone of brownish bodies (this is a fine brown line, about 
 the middle of the section in the specimen). 
 
 * By 1 indefinite semi-crystalline ' is meant the breaking up of the 
 ground under crossed prisms with sheaves (5) of various colours not 
 clearly margined. 
 
 By ' definite semi-crystalline ' is meant the breaking up &f the ground 
 under crossed prisms with a mosaic (4) of various colours clearly mar- 
 gined. 
 
 By ' semi-crystalline ' is meant the interference of crystalline spaces 
 with one another, so as to prevent a perfect crystalline form being 
 assumed. 
 
OF STELLAR SILICA. 149 
 
 a. Yellowish-brown nucleated disks. 
 
 b. Smaller, scattered, and generally non-nucleated disks. 
 
 c. Generally non-nucleated. 
 
 Polarization. The disks are too minute to show separate 
 polarization effects, but the ground exhibits the indefinite 
 semi-crystalline. 
 
 9. Ground showing indefinite semi-crystalline polarization. 
 
 10. Irregular line of furry-looking yellowish disks. 
 
 11. Zone traversed by a series of generally parallel and 
 faint lines of a brownish-yellow. These are apparently lines 
 produced by colouring matter alone, — at any rate, not by 
 visible disks of any kind. 
 
 Polarization. Tolerably definite, and limited by the cross 
 lines (6). 
 
 12. Dark-brown flocculent-looking matter, as if growing 
 out from a well-defined line, looking like a moss-growth. 
 
 13. Defined crystalline interlocked spaces. 
 Polarization. Definite semi-crystalline. 
 
 14. Generally, not clearly defined spaces ; central part 
 rather a granular look (spaces very small). 
 
 Polarization. Under crossed prisms breaking up into toler- 
 ably definite semi-crystalline spaces. 
 
 SPECIMEN B. 
 
 B 1. In the slice taken from this side there seems to be 
 frequently a great tendency to spherulitic arrangement, as 
 shown by the polarization phenomena. In parts of the white 
 quartz where the polarization appearance is like that of a 
 mosaic pavement, there is even a semi-spherulitic structure. 
 In other parts there are many spherulites on white and yel- 
 lowish ground. 
 
 Between the many parallel lines of a yellowish colour the 
 polarization (7) effect is that of fibrous coloured sheaves. 
 
 Here (8) there is a central clear band (b) ; between it and (a) 
 a fine granular line with some larger granules (or very minute 
 spherulites). The part (a) is carious, apparently with g}f$s 
 cavities. On the other side of the clear band, at c, are half- 
 formed and adherent spherulites ; the central (shaded) parts 
 
150 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 are yellow, and the outer coat, the intermediate portion 
 
 clearish. 
 
 B 2. The slice from this end of the specimen shows the 
 same general structure. 
 
 The general tendency to spherulitic arrangement is well 
 seen in polarized light, dark crosses frequently traversing 
 the curved structures. 
 
 Here (in Fig. 9) the portion represented on the left was 
 situated close to the other portion, where the point of the 
 arrow terminates, both crosses appearing together and revolv- 
 ing in rotation of one of the prisms. 
 
 specimen c. 
 
 The slice from this specimen presents far less variety than 
 in the other cases. There are two sets of structural lines — 
 those radiate (10), and those curved and circumferential (11). 
 The latter structure is exceedingly fine and delicate, and not 
 readily seen, even with a high power, owing to the fine radii 
 not being marked out by any colour, the whole section being 
 very clear and white. 
 
 A more decidedly nucleated structure is seen in part 12. 
 
 In (13) is a very curious example of a somewhat more glassy 
 portion protruding in finger-like masses into a radiate, clear, 
 and largely spherical portion. 
 
 2. These notes of Mr. Clifton Ward's contain the first ac- 
 curate statements yet laid before mineralogists respecting the 
 stellar crystallization of silica, although that mode of ita 
 formation lies at the very root of the structure of the greater 
 mass of amygdaloidal rocks, and of all the most beautiful 
 phenomena of agates. And indeed I have no words to express 
 the wonder with which I see work like that done by Cloize- 
 aux in the measurement of quartz angles, conclude only in 
 the construction of the marvellous diagram, as subtle in exe- 
 cution as amazing in its accumulated facts,* without the least 
 reference to the conditions of varying energy which produce 
 the spherical masses of chalcedony ! He does not even use the 
 classic name of the mineral, but coins the useless one, Gey- 
 * Facing page 8 of the 'Manuel de Mineralogie. ' 
 
OF STELLAR SILICA. 
 
 151 
 
 serite, for the absolutely local condition of the Iceland 
 sinter. 
 
 3. And although, in that formation, he went so near the 
 edge of Mr. Clifton Ward's discovery as to announce that 
 " leur masse se compose ellememe de spheres enchassees dans 
 une sorte de pate gelatin euse," he not only fails, on this sug- 
 gestion, to examine chalcedonic structure generally, but ar- 
 rested himself finally in the pursuit of his inquiry by quietly 
 asserting, "ce genre de structure n'a jamais ete recontre jus- 
 qu'ici sur aucune autre variete de silice naturelle ou artifici- 
 elle," — the fact being that there is no chalcedonic mass 
 whatever, which does not consist of spherical concretions more 
 or less perfect, enclosed in a " pate gelatineuse." 
 
 4. In Professor Miller's manual, which was the basis of 
 Cloizeaux's, chalcedony is stated to appear to be a mixture of 
 amorphous with crystalline silica ! and its form taken no ac- 
 count of. Malachite might just as well have been described as 
 a mixture of amorphous with crystalline carbonate of copper ! 
 
 5. I will not, however, attempt to proceed farther in this 
 difficult subject until Mr. Clifton Ward has time to continue 
 his own observations. Perhaps I may persuade him to let 
 me have a connected series of figured examples, from pure 
 stellar quartz down to entirely fluent chalcedony, to begin 
 the next volume of Deucalion with ; — but I must endeav- 
 our, in closing the present one, to give some available sum- 
 mary of its contents, and clearer idea of its purpose ; and 
 will only trespass so far on my friend's province as to lay 
 before him, together with my readers, some points noted 
 lately on another kind of semi-crystallization, which bear 
 not merely on the domes of delicate chalcedony, and pyramids 
 of microscopic quartz, but on the far-seen chalcedony of the 
 Dome du Goute, and the prismatic towers of the Cervin and 
 dark peak of Aar. 
 
152 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 SCHISMA MONTI UM. 
 
 1. The index closing this volume of Deucalion, drawn up 
 by myself, is made as short as possible, and classifies the con- 
 tents of the volume so as to enable the reader to collect all 
 notices of importance relating to any one subject, and to col- 
 late them with those in my former writings. That they need 
 such assemblage from their desultory occurrence in the previ- 
 ous pages, is matter of sincere regret to me, but inevitable, 
 since the writing of a systematic treatise was incompatible 
 with the more serious work I had in hand, on greater subjects. 
 The f Laws of Fesole ' alone might well occupy all the hours I 
 can now permit myself in severe thought. But any student 
 of intelligence may perceive that one inherent cause of the 
 divided character of this book, is its function of advance in 
 parallel columns over a wide field ; seeing that, on no fewer 
 than four subjects, respecting which geological theories and 
 assertions have long been alike fantastic and daring, it has 
 shown at least the necessity for revisal of evidence, and, in 
 two cases, for reversal of judgment. 
 
 2. I say " it has shown," fearlessly ; for at my time of life, 
 every man of ordinary sense, and probity, knows what he has 
 done securely, and what perishabl} r . And during the last 
 twenty years, none of my words have been set down untried ; 
 nor has any opponent succeeded in overthrowing a single sen- 
 tence of them. 
 
 3. But respecting the four subjects above alluded to. (denu- 
 dation, cleavage, crystallization, and elevation, as causes of 
 mountain form,) proofs of the uncertainty, or even falseness, of 
 current conceptions have been scattered at intervals through 
 my writings, early and late, from ' Modern Painters ' to the 
 ' Ethics of the Dust : ' and, with gradually increasing wonder at 
 the fury of so-called ' scientific ' speculation, I have insisted, 
 year by year, on the undeait with, and usually undreamt of, 
 
8CII1SMA MONTIUM. 
 
 153 
 
 difficulties which lay at the threshold of secure knowledge in 
 such matters ; — trusting always that some ingenuous young 
 reader would take up the work I had no proper time for, and 
 follow out the investigations of which the necessity had been 
 indicated. But I waited in vain ; and the rough experiments 
 made at last by myself, a year ago, of which the results are 
 represented in Plate VI. of this volume, are actually the first 
 of which there is record in the annals of geology, made to as- 
 certain the primary physical conditions regulating the forms of 
 contorted strata. The leisure granted me, unhappily, by the 
 illness which has closed my relations with the University of 
 Oxford, has permitted the pursuit of these experiments a little 
 farther ; but I must defer account of their results to the fol- 
 lowing volume, contenting myself with indicating, for conclu- 
 sion of the present one, to what points of doubt in existing 
 theories they have been chiefly directed. 
 
 4. From the examination of all mountain ground hitherto 
 well gone over, one general conclusion has been derived, that 
 wherever there are high mountains, there are hard rocks. 
 Earth, at its strongest, has difficulty in sustaining itself above 
 the clouds ; and could not hold itself in any noble height, if 
 knitted infirmly. 
 
 5. And it has farther followed, in evidence, that on the 
 flanks of these harder rocks, there are yielding beds, which 
 appear to have been, in some places, compressed by them into 
 wrinkles and undulations ; — in others, shattered, and thrown 
 up or down to different levels. My own interest was excited, 
 very early in life,* by the forms and fractures in the mountain 
 groups of Savoy ; and it happens that the undulatory action 
 of the limestone beds on each shore of the Lake of Annecy, 
 
 * I well yet remember my father's rushing up to the drawing-room at 
 Heme Hill, with wet and flashing eyes, with the proof in his hand of 
 the first sentences of his son's writing ever set in type, — * Enquiries on 
 the Causes of the Colour of the Water of the Rhone,' (Magazine of Natu- 
 ral History, September, 1834 ; followed next month by ' Facts and 
 Considerations on the Strata of Mont Blanc, and on some Instances of 
 Twisted Strata observable in Switzerland.' I was then fifteen.) M^ 
 mother and I eagerly questioning the cause of his excitement, — u It's-~ 
 it's — only $Hkt" said he ! Alas ! how much the ■ only ' meant ! 
 
154 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 and the final rupture of their outmost wave into the precipice 
 of the Saleve, present examples so clear, and so imposing, of 
 each condition of form, that I have been led, without there- 
 fore laying claim to any special sagacity, at least into clearer 
 power of putting essential questions respecting such phenom- 
 ena than geologists of far wider experience, who have confused 
 or amused themselves by collecting facts indiscriminately over 
 vast spaces of ground. I am well convinced that the reader 
 will find more profit in following my restricted steps ; and 
 satisfying, or dissatisfying himself, with precision, respecting 
 forms of mountains which he can repeatedly and exhaustively 
 examine. 
 
 6. In the uppermost figure in Plate VII., I have enlarged 
 and coloured the general section given rudely above in Figure 
 1, page 12, of the Jura and Alps, with the intervening plain. 
 The central figure is the southern, and the lowermost figure, 
 which should be conceived as joining it on the right hand, the 
 northern, series of the rocks composing our own Lake dis- 
 trict, drawn for me with extreme care by the late Professor 
 Phillips, of Oxford. 
 
 I compare, and oppose, these two sections, for the sake of 
 fixing in the reader's mind one essential point of difference 
 among many resemblances ; but that they may not, in this 
 comparison, induce any false impressions, the system of col- 
 our which I adopt in this plate, and henceforward shall ob- 
 serve, must be accurately understood. 
 
 7. At pages 93-94 above, I gave my reasons for making no 
 endeavour, at the Sheffield Museum, to certify the ages of 
 rocks. For the same reason, in practical sections I concern 
 myself only with their nature and position ; and colour 
 granite pink, slate purple, and sandstone red, without inquir- 
 ing whether the granite is ancient or modern, — the sand triaa 
 or pliocene, and the slate Wenlock or Caradoc ; but with this 
 much only of necessary concession to recognized method, as 
 to colour with the same tint all rocks which unquestionably 
 belong to the same great geological formation, and vary their 
 mineralogical characters within narrow limits. Thus, since, 
 in characteristic English sections, chalk may most convert 
 
8CH18MA MONTIUM. 
 
 155 
 
 iently be expressed by leaving it white, and some of the 
 upper beds of the Alps unquestionably are of the same pe- 
 riod, I leave them white also, though their general colour 
 may be brown or grey, so long as they retain cretaceous or 
 marly consistence ; but if they become metamorphic, and 
 change into clay slate or gneiss, I colour them purple, what- 
 ever their historical relations may be. 
 
 8. ilnd in all geological maps and sections given in 'Deu- 
 calion,' I shall limit myself to the definition of the twelve fol- 
 lowing formations by the twelve following colours. It is 
 enough for any young student at first to learn the relations 
 of these great orders of rock and earth : — once master of 
 these, in any locality, he may split his beds into any com- 
 plexity of finely laminated chronology he likes ;— and if I 
 have occasion to split them for him myself, I can easily ex- 
 press their minor differences by methods of engraving. But, 
 primarily, let him be content in the recognition of these 
 twelve territories of Demeter, by this following colour her- 
 aldry : — 
 
 9. 
 
 1. Granite will bear in the field, 
 
 2. Gneiss and mica-slate — 
 
 3. Clay-slate 
 
 4. Mountain limestone 
 
 5. Coal measures and 
 
 millstone grit 
 
 6. Jura limestone 
 
 7. Chalk 
 
 8. Tertiaries forming 
 
 hard rock 
 
 9. Tertiary sands and clays 
 
 10. Eruptive rocks, not de- 
 
 finitely volcanic 
 
 11. Eruptive rocks, defi- 
 
 nitely volcanic, but at 
 
 rest 
 
 12. Volcanic rocks, active 
 
 Rose-red. 
 Rose-purple. 
 Violet-purple, 
 Blue. 
 
 Grey. 
 
 Yellow. 
 
 White. 
 
 Scarlet. 
 Tawny. 
 
 Green. 
 
 Green, spotted red. 
 Black, spotted red. 
 
 10. It will at once be seen by readers of some geological 
 experience, that approximately, and to the degree possible, 
 
150 
 
 DEUCALION-. 
 
 these colours are really characteristic of the several forma* 
 tions ; and they may be rendered more so by a little care in 
 modifying the tints. Thus the 'scarlet' used for the tertia- 
 ries may be subdued as much as we please, to what will be as 
 near a sober brown as we can venture without confusing it 
 with the darker shades of yellow ; and it may be used more 
 pare to represent definitely red sandstones or conglomerates : 
 while, again, the old red sands of the coal measures may be 
 extricated from the general grey by a tint of vermilion which 
 will associate them, as mineral substances, with more recent 
 sand. Thus in the midmost section of Plate VII. this colour 
 is used for the old red conglomerates of Kirby Lonsdale. 
 And again, keeping pure light blue for the dated mountain 
 limestones, which are indeed, in their emergence from the 
 crisp turf of their pastures, grey, or even blue in shade, to 
 the eye, a deeper blue may be kept for the dateless limestones 
 which are associated with the metamorphic beds of the Alps ; 
 as for my own Coniston Silurian limestone, which may be 
 nearly as old as Skiddaw. 
 
 11. The colour called c tawny/ I mean to be as nearly that 
 of ripe wheat as may be, indicating arable land, or hot prai- 
 rie ; while, in maps of northern countries, touched with 
 points of green, it may pass for moorland and pasture : or, 
 kept in the hue of pale vermilion, it may equally well repre- 
 sent desert alluvial sand. Finally, the avoidance of the large 
 masses of fierce and frightful scarlet which render modern 
 geological maps intolerable to a painter's sight, (besides in- 
 volving such geographical incongruities as the showing Ice- 
 land in the colour of a red-hot coal ;) and the substitution 
 over all volcanic districts, of the colour of real greenstone, or 
 serpentine, for one which resembles neither these, nor the 
 general tones of dark colour either in lava or cinders, will 
 certainly render all geological study less injurious to the eye- 
 sight, and less harmful to the taste. 
 
 12. Of the two sections in Plate VII., the upper one is ar- 
 ranged from Stucler, so as to exhibit in one view the principal 
 phenomena of Alpine structure according to that geologist. 
 The cleavages in the central granite mass are given 3 however 
 
SCHISM A MONTI UM. 
 
 157 
 
 on my own responsibility, not his. The lower section was, 
 as aforesaid, drawn for me by my kind old friend Professor 
 Phillips, and is, I doubt not, entirely authoritative. In all 
 great respects, the sections given by Studer are no less so ; 
 but they are much ruder in drawing, and can be received 
 only as imperfect summaries — perhaps, in their abstraction, 
 occasionally involving some misrepresentation of the complex 
 facts. For my present purposes, however, they give me all 
 the data required. 
 
 13. It will instantly be seen, on comparing the two groups 
 of rocks, that although nearly similar in succession, and both 
 suggesting the eruptive and elevatory force of the granitic 
 central masses, there is a wdde difference in the manner of the 
 action of these on the strata lifted by them. In the Swiss 
 section, the softer rocks seem to have been crushed aside, like 
 the ripples of water round any submersed object rising to the 
 surface. In the English section, they seem to have undergone 
 no such torsion, but to be lifted straight, as they lay, like the 
 timbers of a gabled roof. It is true that, on the larger scale 
 of the Geological Survey, contortions are shown at most of 
 the faults in the Skiddaw slate ; but, for the reasons already 
 stated, I believe these contortions to be more or less conven- 
 tionally represented ; and until I have myself examined them, 
 will not modify Professor Phillips 1 drawing by their intro- 
 duction. 
 
 Some acknowledgment of such a structure is indeed given 
 by him observably in the dark slates on the left in the lower- 
 most section ; but he has written under these undulatory lines 
 " quartz veins," and certainly means them, so far as they are 
 structural, to stand only for ordinary gneissitic contortion in 
 the laminated mass, and not for undulating strata. 
 
 14. Farther. No authority is given me by Studer for 
 dividing the undulatory masses of the outer Alps by any kind 
 of cleavage-lines. Nor do I myself know examples of fissile 
 structure in any of these mountain masses, unless where they 
 are affected by distinctly metamorphic action, in the neigh- 
 bourhood of the central gneiss or mica-schist. On the con- 
 trary, the entire courses of the Cumberland rock, from Kirby 
 
158 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 Lonsdale to Carlisle, are represented by Professor Phillips as 
 traversed by a perfectly definite and consistent cleavage 
 throughout, dipping steeply south, in accurately straight par- 
 allel lines, and modified only, in the eruptive masses, by a 
 vertical cleavage, characterizing the pure granite centres, 
 
 15. I wish the reader to note this with especial care, be- 
 cause the cleavage of secondary rock has been lately attrib- 
 uted, with more appearance of reason than modern scientific 
 theories usually possess, to lateral pressure, acting in a direc- 
 tion perpendicular to the lamination. It seems, however, little 
 calculated to strengthen our confidence in such an explanation, 
 to fiud the Swiss rocks, which appear to have been subjected 
 to a force capable of doubling up leagues of them backwards 
 and forwards like a folded map, wholly without any resultant 
 schistose structure ; and the English rocks, which seem only 
 to have been lifted as a raft is raised on a wave, split across, 
 for fifty miles in succession, by foliate structures of the most 
 perfect smoothness and precision. 
 
 16. It might indeed be alleged, in deprecation of this ob- 
 jection, that the dough or batter of which the Alps were com- 
 posed, mostly calcareous, did not lend itself kindly to lamina- 
 tion, while the mud and volcanic ashes of Cumberland were 
 of a slippery and unctuous character, easily susceptible of re- 
 arrangement under pressure. And this view receives strong 
 support from the dextrous experiment performed by Professor 
 Tyndall in 1856, and recorded, as conclusive, in 1872,* where- 
 in, first warming some wax, then pressing it between two 
 pieces of glass, and finally freezing it, he finds the congealed 
 mass delicately laminated ; and attributes its lamination to 
 the " lateral sliding of the particles over each other." * But 
 with his usual, and quite unrivalled, incapacity of following 
 out any subject on the two sides of it, he never tells us, and 
 never seems to have asked himself, how far the wax was flat- 
 tened, and how far, therefore, its particles had been forced to 
 slide ; — nor, during the sixteen years between his first and 
 final record of the experiment, does he seem ever to have used 
 
 * « Forms of Water,' King and Co., 1872, p. 190. 
 
SCHISMA MONTIUM. 
 
 159 
 
 any means of ascertaining whether, under the observed con- 
 ditions, real compression of the substance of the wax had 
 taken place at all ! For if not, and the form of the mass was 
 only altered from a lump to a plate, without any increase of 
 its density, a less period for reflection than sixteen years might 
 surely have suggested to Professor Tyndall the necessity, in 
 applying his result to geological matters, of providing moun- 
 tains which were to be squeezed m one direction, with room 
 for expansion in another. 
 
 17. For once, however, Professor Tyndall is not without 
 fellowship in his hesitation to follow the full circumference 
 of this question. Among the thousands of passages I have 
 read in the works even of the most careful and logical geolo- 
 gists, — even such as Humboldt and De Saussure, — I remem- 
 ber not one distinct statement * of the degree in which they 
 supposed the lamination of any given rock to imply real in- 
 crease of its density, or only the lateral extension of its 
 mass. 
 
 18. And the student must observe that in many cases 
 lateral extension of mass is precisely avoided by the very 
 positions of rocks which are supposed to indicate the pressure 
 
 * As these sheets are passing through the press, I receive the follow- 
 ing most important note from Mr. Clifton Ward : ' ' With regard to the 
 question whether cleavage is necessarily followed by a reduction in 
 hulk of the body cleaved, the following cases may help us to form an 
 opinion. Crystalline volcanic rocks (commonly called trap), as a rule, 
 are not cleaved, though the beds, uncrystalline in character, above and 
 below them, may be. When, however, a trap is highly vesicular, it is 
 sometimes well cleaved. May we not, therefore, suppose that in a rock, 
 wholly crystalline, the particles are too much interlocked to take up new 
 positions ? In a purely fragmentary rock, however, the particles seem 
 to have more freedom of motion ; their motion under pressure leads to 
 a new and more parallel arrangement of particles, each being slightly 
 flattened or pulled out along the planes of new arrangement. This, 
 then, points to a diminution of bulk at any rate in a direction at right 
 angles to the planes of cleavage. The tendency to new arrangement of 
 particles under pressure poin ts to accommodation under altered circum- 
 stances of space. In rocks composed of fragments, the interspaces, being 
 for the most part larger than the intercrystalline spaces of a trap rock, 
 more freely allow of movement and new arrangement." 
 
160 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 sustained. In Mr. Woodward's experiment with sheets o! 
 paper, for instance, (above quoted, p. 16,*) there is neither 
 increase of density nor extension of mass, in the sheets of 
 paper. They remain just as thick as they were, — just as long 
 and broad as they were. They are only altered in direction, 
 and no more compressed, as they bend, than a flag is com- 
 pressed by the wind that waves it. In my own experiments 
 with dough, of course the dough was no more compressible 
 than so much water would have been. Yet the language of 
 the geologists who attribute cleavage to pressure might usu- 
 ally leave their readers in the notion that clay can be re- 
 duced like steam ; and that we could squeeze the sea down 
 to half its depth by first mixing mud with it ! Else, if they 
 really comprehended the changes of form rendered necessary 
 by proved directions of pressure, and did indeed mean that 
 the paste of primitive slate had been ' flattened out \ (in Pro- 
 fessor Tyndall's words) as a cook flattens out her pastry-crust 
 with a rolling-pin, they would surely sometimes have asked 
 themselves, — and occasionally taken the pains to tell their 
 scholars, — where the rocks in question had been flattened to. 
 Yet in the entire series of Swiss sections (upwards of a 
 hundred) given by Studer in his Alpine Geology, there is no 
 hint of such a difficulty having occurred to him ; — none, of 
 his having observed any actual balance between diminution 
 of bulk and alteration of form in contorted beds ; — and 
 none, showing any attempt to distinguish mechanical from 
 crystalline foliation. The cleavages are given rarely in any 
 section, and always imperfectly. 
 
 19. In the more limited, but steadier and closer, work of 
 Professor Phillips on the geology of Yorkshire, the solitary 
 notice of "that very obscure subject, the cleavage of slate " is 
 contained in three pages, (5 to 8 of the first chapter,) de- 
 scribing the structure of a single quarry, in which the author 
 does not know, and cannot eventually discover, whether the 
 
 * There is a double mistake in the thirteenth line from the top in that 
 page. I meant to have written, 4 'from a length of four inches into the 
 length of one inch,"— but I believe the real dimensions should have 
 been " a foot crushed into three inches. " 
 
SCHISMA MONTIUM. 
 
 161 
 
 rock is stratified or not ! I respect, and admire, the frankness 
 of the confession ; but it is evident that before any affirmation 
 of value, respecting cleavages, can be made by good geolo- 
 gists, they must both ascertain many laws of pressure in 
 viscous substances at present unknown ; and describe a great 
 many quarries with no less attention than was given by Pro- 
 fessor Phillips to this single one. 
 
 20. The experiment in wax, however, above referred to as 
 ingeniously performed by Professor Tyndall, is not adduced 
 in the "Forms of Water" for elucidation of cleavage in rocks, 
 but of riband structure in ice — (of which more presently). 
 His first display of it, however, was I believe in the lecture 
 delivered in 1856 at the Royal Institution, — this, and the other 
 similar experiments recorded in the Appendix to the ' Glaciers 
 of the Alps/ being then directed mainly to the confusion of 
 Professor Sedgwick, in that the Cambridge geologist had — 
 with caution — expressed an opinion that cleavage was a result 
 of crystallization under polar forces. 
 
 21. Of that suggestion Professor Tyndall complimentarily 
 observed that " it was a bold stretch of analogies," and con- 
 descendingly — that "it had its value, — it has drawn attention 
 to the subject. " Presently, translating this too vulgarly in- 
 telligible statement into his own sublime language, he declares 
 of the theory in debate that it, and the like of it, are " a 
 dynamic power wdiich operates against intellectual stagnation." 
 How a dynamic power differs from an undynamic one, — (and, 
 presumably, also, a potestatic dynamis from an unpotestatic 
 one ;) and how much more scientific it is to say, instead of — 
 that our spoon stirs our porridge, — that it " operates against 
 the stagnation " of our porridge, Professor Tyndall trusts the 
 reader to recognize with admiration. But if any stirring, or 
 skimming, or other operation of a duly dynamic character, 
 could have clarified from its scum of vanity the pease-porridge 
 of his own wits, Professor Tyndall would have felt that men 
 like the Cambridge veteran, — one of the very few modern men 
 of science who possessed real genius, — stretch no analogies 
 farther than they will hold ; and, in this particular case, there 
 were two facts, familiar to Sedgwick, and with which Pro- 
 
102 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 fessor Tyndall manifesis no acquaintance, materially affecting 
 every question relating to cleavage structure. 
 
 22. The first, that all slates whatever, among the older rocks, 
 are more or less metamorphic ; and that all metamorphism 
 implies the development of crystalline force. Neither the 
 chiastolite in the slate of Skiddaw, nor the kyanite in that 
 of St. Gothard, could have been formed without the exertion, 
 through the whole body of the rock, of crystalline force, 
 which, extracting some of its elements, necessarily modifies 
 the structure of the rest. The second, that slate-quarries of 
 commercial value, fortunately rare among beautiful mountains, 
 owe their utility to the unusual circumstance of cleaving, over 
 the quarry able space, practically in one direction only. But 
 such quarryable spaces extend only across a few fathoms of 
 crag, and the entire mass of the slate mountains of the world 
 is cloven, not in one, but in half a dozen directions, each sep- 
 arate and explicit ; and requiring, for their production on the 
 pressure theory, the application of half a dozen distinct press- 
 ures, of which none shall neutralize the effect of any other ! 
 That six applications of various pressures at various epochs, 
 might produce six cross cleavages, may be conceived without 
 unpardonable rashness, and conceded without perilous cour- 
 tesy ; but before pursuing the investigation of this hexfoiled 
 subject, it would be well to ascertain w T hether the cleavage of 
 any rock w r hatever does indeed accommodate itself to the cal- 
 culable variations of a single pressure, applied at a single 
 time. 
 
 23. Whenever a bed of rock is bent, the substance of it on 
 the concave side must be compressed, and the substance of 
 it on the convex side, expanded. The degree in which such 
 change of structure must take place may be studied at ease 
 in one's arm-chair with no more apparatus than a stick of 
 sealing-wax and a candle ; and as soon as I am shown a bent 
 bed of any rock with distinct lamination on its concave side, 
 traceably gradated into distinct crevassing on its convex one, 
 I will admit without farther debate the connection of foliation 
 with pressure. 
 
 24. In the meantime, the delicate experiments by the con- 
 
SCH1SMA MONTIUM. 
 
 1G3 
 
 duct of which Professor Tyndall brought his audiences into 
 what he is pleased to call "contact with facts" (in olden times 
 we used to say ' grasp of facts ' ; modern science, for its own 
 part prefers, not unreasonably, the term ' contact,' expressive 
 merely of occasional collision with them,) must remain incon- 
 clusive. But if in the course of his own various ' contact with 
 facts ' Professor Tyndall has ever come across a bed of slate 
 squeezed between tw r o pieces of glass — or anything like them 
 — I will thank him for a description of the locality. All 
 me tani orphic slates have been subjected assuredly to heat — 
 probably to pressure ; but (unless they were merely the shaly 
 portions of a stratified group) the pressure to which they have 
 been subjected was that of an irregular mass of rock ejected 
 in the midst of them, or driven fiercely against them ; and 
 their cleavage — so far as it is indeed produced by that pressure, 
 must be such as the iron of a target shows round a shell ; — 
 and not at all representable by a film of candle-droppings. 
 
 25. It is further to be observed, — and not without increas- 
 ing surprise and increasing doubt, — that the experiment was 
 shown, on the first occasion, to explain the lamination of slate, 
 and, on the second, to explain the riband structure of ice. 
 But there are no ribands in slate, and there is no lamination 
 in ice. There are no regulated alternations of porous with 
 solid substance in the one ; and there are no constancies of 
 fracture by plane surfaces in the other ; moreover — and this 
 is to be chiefly noted, — slate lamination is always straight ; 
 glacier banding always bent. The structure of the pressed 
 w r ax might possibly explain one or other of these phenomena ; 
 but could not possibly explain both, and does actually explain 
 neither. 
 
 26. That the arrangement of rock substance into fissile folia 
 does indeed take place in metamorphic aluminous masses un- 
 der some manner of pressure, has, I believe, been established 
 by the investigations both of Mr. Sorby and of Mr. Clifton 
 Ward. But the reasons for continuity of parallel cleavage 
 through great extents of variously contorted beds ; — for its al- 
 most uniform assumption of a high angle ; — for its as uniform 
 non-occurrence in horizontal laminae under vertical i>ressure, 
 
164 
 
 DEUCALIOK 
 
 however vast ; — for its total disregard of the forces causing 
 upheaval of the beds ; — and its mysteriously deceptive har- 
 monies with the stratification, if only steep enough, of neigh- 
 bouring sedimentary rocks, remain to this hour, not only un- 
 assigned, but unsought. 
 
 27. And it is difficult for me to understand either the con- 
 tentment of geologists with this state of things, or the results 
 on the mind of ingenuous learners, of the partial and more 
 or less contradictory information hitherto obtainable on the 
 subject. The section given in the two low r er figures of Plate 
 VII. was drawn for me, as I have already said, by my most 
 affectionately and reverently remembered friend, Professor 
 Phillips, of Oxford. It goes through the entire crest of the 
 Lake district from Lancaster to Carlisle, the first emergent 
 rock-beds being those of mountain limestone, A to B, not 
 steeply inclined, but lying unconformably on the steeply in- 
 clined flags and grit of Furness Fells, B to C. In the depres- 
 sion at C lies Coniston Lake ; then follow the masses of Con- 
 iston Old Man and Scawfell, C to D, sinking to the basin of 
 Derwentwater just after the junction, at Grange, of their vol- 
 canic ashes with the Skiddaw slate.. Skiddaw himself, and 
 Carrock Fell, rise between D and E ; and above E, at Cald- 
 beck, again the mountain limestone appears in unconformable 
 bedding, declining under the Trias of the plain of Carlisle, at 
 the northern extremity of which a few rippled lines do service 
 for the waves of Solway. 
 
 28. The entire ranges of the greater mountains, it will be 
 seen, are thus represented by Professor Phillips as consisting 
 of more or less steeply inclined beds, parallel to those of the 
 Furness shales ; and traversed by occasional cleavages at an 
 opposite angle. But in the section of the Geological Survey, 
 already referred to, the beds parallel to the Furness shales 
 reach only as far as Wetherlam, and the central mountains are 
 represented as laid in horizontal or slightly basin-shaped 
 swirls of ashes, traversed by ejected trap, and divided by no 
 cleavages at all, except a few vertical ones indicative of the 
 Tilberthwaite slate quarries. 
 
 29. I think it somewhat hard upon me, now that I am sixty 
 
S CIIIS MA MONTIUM. 
 
 165 
 
 years old, and short of breath in going up hills, to have to 
 compare, verify for myself, and reconcile as I may, these en- 
 tirely adverse representations of the classical mountains of 
 England : — no less than that I am left to carryforward, in my 
 broken leisure, the experiments on viscous motion instituted 
 by James Forbes thirty years ago. For the present, however, 
 I choose Professor Phillips's section as far the most accurately 
 representative of the general aspect of matters, to my present 
 judgment; and hope, with Mr. Clifton Ward's good help, to 
 give more detailed drawings of separate parts in the next vol- 
 ume of Deucalion. 
 
 30. I am prepared also to find Professor Phillips's drawing 
 in many respects justifiable, by my own former studies of the 
 cleavage structure of the central Alps, which, in all the cases 
 I have examined, I found to be a distinctly crystalline lami- 
 nation, sometimes contorted according to the rock's own 
 humour, fantastically as Damascus steel ; but presently after- 
 wards assuming inconceivable consistency with the untroubled 
 repose of the sedimentary masses into whose company it had 
 been thrust. The junction of the contorted gneiss through 
 which the gorge of Trient is cleft, with the micaceous marble 
 on which the tower of Martigny is built, is a transition of this 
 kind within reach of the least adventurous traveller ; and the 
 junction of the gneiss of the Montanvert with the porous 
 limestone which underlies it, is certainly the most interesting, 
 and the most easily explored, piece of rock-fellowship in 
 Europe. Yet the gneissitic lamination of the Montanvert has 
 been attributed to stratification by one group of geologists, 
 and to cleavage by another, ever since the valley of Chamouni 
 was first heard of, and the only accurate drawings of the 
 beds hitherto given are those published thirty years ago in 
 'Modern Painters/ I had hoped at the same time to con- 
 tribute some mite of direct evidence to their elucidation, by 
 sinking a gallery in the soft limestone under the gneiss, sup- 
 posing the upper rock hard enough to form a safe roof ; but 
 a decomposing fragment fell, and so nearly ended the troubles, 
 with the toil, of the old miner who was driving the tunnel, 
 that I attempted no farther inquiries in that practical manner, 
 
166 
 
 DEUCALIOJST. 
 
 31. The narrow bed, curved like a sickle, and coloured ver- 
 milion, among the purple slate, in the uppermost section oi 
 Plate VII, is intended to represent the position of the sin- 
 gular band of quartzite and mottled schists, ("bunte schie- 
 fer,") which, on the authority of Studer's section at page 178 
 of his second volume, underlies, at least for some thousands 
 of feet, the granite of the Jungfrau ; and corresponds, in its 
 relation to the uppermost cliff of that mountain, with the 
 subjacence of the limestone of Les Tines to the aiguilles of 
 Chamouni. I have coloured it vermilion in order to connect 
 it in the student's mind with the notable conglomerates of the 
 Black Forest, through which their underlying granites pass 
 into the Trias ; but the reversed position which it here as- 
 sumes, and the relative dominance of the central mass of the 
 Bernese Alps, if given by Studer with fidelity, are certainly 
 the first structural phenomena which the geologists of Ger- 
 many should benevolently qualify themselves to explain to the 
 summer society of Interlachen. The view of the Jungfrau 
 from the Castle of Manfred is probably the most beautiful 
 natural vision in Europe ; but, for all that modern science 
 can hitherto tell us, the construction of it is supernatural, and 
 explicable only by the Witch of the Alps. 
 
 32. In the meantime I close this volume of Deucalion by 
 noting firmly one or two letters of the cuneiform language in 
 which the history of that scene has been written. 
 
 There are five conditions of rock cleavage w T hich the stu- 
 dent must accustom himself to recognize, and hold apart in 
 his mind with perfect clearness, in all study of mountain form. 
 
 I. The Wave cleavage : that is to say, the condition of 
 structure on a vast scale which has regulated the succession 
 of summits. In almost all chains of mountains not volcanic, 
 if seen from a rightly chosen point, some law of sequence will 
 manifest itself in the arrangement of their eminences. On a 
 small scale, the declining surges of pastoral mountain, from 
 the summit of Helvellyn to the hills above Kendal, seen from 
 any point giving a clear profile of them, on Wetherlam or the 
 Old Man of Coniston, show a quite rhythmic, almost formal, 
 order of ridged waves, with their steepest sides to the low 
 
SCHISMA MONTIUM. 
 
 167 
 
 lands ; for which the cause must be sought in some internal 
 structure of the rocks, utterly untraceable in close section. 
 On vaster scale, the succession of the aiguilles of Chamouni, 
 and of the great central aiguilles themselves, from the dome 
 of Mont Blanc through the Jorasses, to the low peak of the 
 aiguille de Trient, is again regulated by a harmonious law of 
 alternate cleft and crest, which can be studied rightly only 
 from the far-distant Jura. 
 
 The main directions of this vast mountain tendency might 
 always be shown in a moderately good model of any given 
 district, by merely colouring all slopes of ground inclined at 
 a greater angle than thirty degrees, of some darker colour 
 than the rest. No slope of talus can maintain itself at a 
 higher angle than this, (compare * Modern Painters/ vol. iv., 
 p. 318 ;) and therefore, while the mathematical laws of curva- 
 ture by aqueous denudation, which were first ascertained and 
 systematized by Mr. Alfred Tylor, will be found assuredly to 
 regulate or modify the disposition of masses reaching no 
 steeper angle, the cliffs and banks which exceed it, brought 
 into one abstracted group, will always display the action of 
 the wave cleavage on the body of the yet resisting rocks. 
 
 33. II. The Structural cleavage. 
 
 This is essentially determined by the arrangement of the 
 plates of mica in crystalline rocks, or — where the mica is ob- 
 scurely formed, or replaced by other minerals — by the sinu- 
 osities of their quartz veins. Next to the actual bedding, it 
 is the most important element of form in minor masses of 
 crag ; but in its influence on large contours, subordinate al- 
 ways to the two next following orders of cleavage. 
 
 34. IIL The Asphodeline cleavage ; — the detachment, that 
 is to say, of curved masses of crag more or less concentric, 
 like the coats of an onion. It is for the most part transverse 
 to the structural cleavage, and forms rounded domes and 
 bending billows of smooth contour, on the flanks of the great 
 foliated mountains, which look exactly as if they had been 
 worn for ages under some river of colossal strength. It is far 
 and away the most important element of mountain form in 
 granitic and metamorphic districts. 
 
168 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 35. IV. The Frontal cleavage. This shows itself only on 
 the steep escarpments of sedimentary rock, when the cliff has 
 been produced in all probability by rending elevatory force. 
 It occurs on the faces of nearly ail the great precipices in Savoy, 
 formed of Jura limestone, and has been in many cases mis- 
 taken for real bedding. I hold it one of the most fortunate 
 chances attending the acquisition of Brantwood, that I have 
 within three hundred yards of me, as I write, jutting from 
 beneath my garden wall, a piece of crag knit out of the 
 Furness shales, showing frontal cleavage of the most definite 
 kind, and enabling me to examine the conditions of it as per- 
 fectly as I could at Bonneville or Annecy. 
 
 36. V. The Atomic cleavage. 
 
 This is the mechanical fracture of the rock under the hammer, 
 indicating the mode of coherence between its particles, irre- 
 spectively of their crystalline arrangements. The conchoidal 
 fractures of flint and calcite, the raggedly vitreous fractures of 
 quartz and corundum, and the earthy transverse fracture of 
 clay slate, come under this general head. And supposing it 
 proved that slaty lamination is indeed owing either to the lat- 
 eral expansion of the mass under pressure, or to the filling 
 of vacant pores in it by the flattening of particles, such a 
 formation ought to be considered, logically, as the ultimate 
 degree of fineness in the coherence of crushed substance ; and 
 not properly a ' structure/ I should call this, therefore, also 
 an ' atomic ' cleavage. 
 
 37. The more or less rectilinear divisions, known as ' joints/ 
 and apparently owing merely to the desiccation or contraction 
 of the rock, are not included in the above list of cleavages, 
 which is limited strictly to the characters of separation in- 
 duced either by arrangements of the crystalline elements, or 
 by violence in the methods of rock elevation or sculpture. 
 
 38. If my life is spared, and my purposes hold, the second 
 volume of Deucalion will contain such an account of the hills 
 surrounding me in this district, as shall be, so far as it is car- 
 ried, trustworthy down to the minutest details in the exposi- 
 tion of their first elements of mountain form. And I am even 
 fond enough to hope that some of the youths of Oxford, edu- 
 
SCHISMA MONTIUM. 
 
 169 
 
 cated in its now established schools of Natural History and 
 Art, may so securely and consistently follow out such a piece 
 of home study by the delineation of the greater mountains 
 they are proud to climb, as to redeem, at last, the ingenious 
 nineteenth century from the reproach of having fostered a 
 mountaineering club, which was content to approve itself in 
 competitive agilities, without knowing either how an aiguille 
 stood, or how a glacier flowed ; and a Geological Society, 
 which discoursed with confidence on the catastrophes of 
 chaos, and the processes of creation, without being able to 
 tell a builder how a slate split, or a lapidary how a pebble 
 was coloured, 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 When I began Deucalion, one of the hopes chiefly connected 
 with it was that of giving some account of the work done by 
 the real masters and fathers of Geology. I must not conclude 
 this first volume without making some reference, (more espe- 
 cially in relation to the subjects of inquiry touched upon in 
 its last chapter,) to the modest life and intelligent labour of a 
 most true pioneer in geological science, Jonathan Otley. Mr. 
 Clifton Ward's sketch of the good guide's life, drawn up in 
 1877 for the Cumberland Association for the Advancement of 
 Literature and Science, supplies me with the following par- 
 ticulars of it, deeply — as it seems to me — instructive and im- 
 pressive. 
 
 He was born near Ambleside, at Nook House, in Loughrigg, 
 January 19th, 1766. His father was a basket-maker ; and it is 
 especially interesting to me, in connection with the resolved 
 retention of Latin as one of the chief elements of education in 
 the system I am arranging for St. George's schools, to find that 
 the Westmoreland basket-maker was a good Latin scholar ; 
 and united Oxford and Cambridge discipline for his son with 
 one nobler than either, by making him study Latin and 
 mathematics, while, till he was twenty-five, he worked as his 
 father's journeyman at his father's handicraft. "He also 
 cleaned all the clocks and watches in the neighbourhood, and 
 showed himself very skilful in engraving upon copper-plates, 
 seals and coin." In 1791 he moved to Keswick, and there 
 lived sixty-five years, and died, ninety years old and upwards. 
 
 I find no notice in Mr. Ward's paper of the death of the 
 father, to whose good sense and firmness the boy owed so 
 much. There was yet a more wof ul reason for his leaving his 
 
172 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 birthplace. He was in love with a young woman named Anno 
 Youdale, and had engraved their names together on a silver 
 coin. But the village blacksmith, Mr. Bowness, was also a 
 suitor for the maiden's hand ; and some years after, Jonathan's 
 niece, Mrs. "Wilson, asking him how it was that his name and 
 Anne Youdale's were engraved together on the same coin, he 
 replied, " Oh, the blacksmith beat me." * He never married, 
 but took to mineralogy, watchmaking, and other consolatory 
 pursuits, with mountain rambling — alike discursive and at- 
 tentive. Let me not omit what thanks for friendly help and 
 healthy stimulus to the earnest youth may be due to another 
 honest Cumberland soul, — Mr. Crosthwaite. Otley was stand- 
 ing one day (before he removed to Keswick) outside the 
 Crosthwaite Museum, f when he was accosted by its founder, 
 and asked if he would sell a curious stick he held in his hand. 
 Otley asked a shilling for it, the proprietor of the Museum 
 stipulating to show him the collection over the bargain. From 
 this time congenial tastes drew the two together as firm and 
 staunch friends. 
 
 He lived all his life at Keswick, in lodgings, — recognized 
 as " Jonathan Otley's, up the steps," — paying from five shil- 
 lings a week at first, to ten, in uttermost luxury ; and being 
 able to give account of his keep to a guinea, up to October 
 18, 1852, — namely, board and lodging for sixty-one years and 
 one week, £1325 ; rent of room extra, fifty-six years, £164 10a 
 
 *I doubt tlie orthography of the fickle maid's name, but all authority 
 of antiquaries obliges me to distinguish it from that of the valley. I do 
 so, however, still under protest — as if I were compelled to write Lord 
 Lonsdale, ' Lownsdale,' or the Marquis of Tweeddale, 4 Twaddle,' or the 
 victorious blacksmith, ' Beauness.' The latter's family still retain the 
 forge by Elter Water— an entirely distinct branch, I am told, from our 
 blacksmith's of the Dale : see above, pp. 133, 134. 
 
 f In that same museum, my first collection of minerals — fifty specimens 
 —total price, if I remember rightly, five shillings— was bought for me, 
 by my father, of Mr. Crosthwaite. No subsequent possession has had so 
 much influence on my life. I studied Turner at his own gallery, and in 
 Mr. Windus's portfolios ; but the little yellow bit of " copper ore from 
 Coniston," and the "Garnets" (I never could see more than one!) 
 from Borrowdale, were the beginning of science to me which never 
 could have been otherwise acquired. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 173 
 
 Total keep and roof overhead, for the sixty usefullest of his 
 ninety years, £1489 10s. 
 
 Thus housed and fed, he became the friend, and often the 
 teacher, of the leading scientific men of his clay, — Dr. Dalton 
 the chemist, Dr. Henry the chemist, Mr. Farey the engineer, 
 Airy the Astronomer Royal, Professor Phillips of Oxford, and 
 Professor Sedgwick of Cambridge. He was the first accurate 
 clescriber and accurate map-maker of the Lake district ; the 
 founder of the geological divisions of its rocks, — which were 
 accepted from him by Sedgwick, and are now finally con- 
 firmed ; — and the first who clearly defined the separation be- 
 tween bedding, cleavage, and joint in rock, — hence my en- 
 forced notice of him, in this place. Mr. Ward's Memoir gives 
 examples of his correspondence with the men of science above 
 named : both Phillips and Sedgwick referring always to him 
 in any question touching Cumberland rocks, and becoming 
 gradually his sincere and affectionate friends. Sedgwick sate 
 by his death-bed. 
 
 I shall have frequent occasion to refer to his letters, and to 
 avail myself of his work. But that work was chiefly crowned 
 in the example he left — not of what is vulgarly praised as 
 weilt-help, (for every noble spirit's watchword is "God us 
 ayde") — but of the rarest of mortal virtues, self-possession, 
 " In your patience, possess ye your souls." 
 
 I should have dwelt at greater length on the worthiness 
 both of the tenure and the treasure, but for the bitterness of 
 my conviction that the rage of modern vanity must destroy 
 in our scientific schoolmen, alike the casket, and the possession. 
 
DEUCALION. 
 
 VOL. H. 
 
 CHAPTEK I 
 
 LIVING WAVES. 
 
 1. The opening of the second volume of Deucalion with a 
 Lecture on Serpents may seem at first a curiously serpentine 
 mode of advance towards the fulfilment of my promise that 
 the said volume should contain an account of the hills sur- 
 rounding me at Coniston, (above, vol. i., p. 168, § 38). But 
 I am obliged now in all things to follow in great part the 
 leadings of circumstance : and although it was only the fortui- 
 tous hearing of a lecture by Professor Huxley which induced 
 me to take up at present the materials I had by me respecting 
 snake motion, I believe my readers will find their study of 
 undulatory forces dealt through the shattered vertebrae of 
 rocks, very materially enlivened, if not aided, by first observ- 
 ing the transitions of it through the adjusted vertebrae of the 
 serpent. I w r ould rather indeed have made this the matter of 
 a detached essay, but my distinct books are far too numerous 
 already ; and, if I could only complete them to my mind, 
 would in the end rather see all of them fitted into one colu- 
 brine chain of consistent strength, than allowed to stand in 
 any broken or diverse relations. 
 
 There are, however, no indications in the text of the lecture 
 itself of its possible use in my geological work. It was written 
 as briefly and clearly as I could, for its own immediate purpose : 
 and is given here, as it was delivered, with only the insertion 
 of the passages I was forced to omit for want of time. 
 
 2. The lecture, as it stands, was, as I have just said, thrown 
 
176 
 
 DEUCALION, 
 
 together out of the materials I had by me ; most of them for 
 a considerable time ; and with the help of such books as I 
 chanced to possess, — chiefly, the last French edition of Cuvier, 
 — Dr. Russell's Indian Serpents, — and Bell's British Reptiles. 
 Not until after the delivery of the lecture for the second time, 
 was I aware of the splendid w r ork done recently by Dr Gun- 
 ther, nor had I ever seen drawings of serpents for a moment 
 comparable, both in action and in detail of scale, to those by 
 Mr. Ford which illustrate Dr. Gunther's descriptions ; or, in 
 colour, and refinement of occasional action, to those given in 
 Dr. Fayrer's Thanatophidia of India. The reader must there- 
 fore understand that anything generally said, in the following 
 lecture, of modern scientific shortcoming, or error, is not to 
 be understood as applying to any publication by either of these 
 two authors, who have, I believe, been the first naturalists to 
 adopt the artistically and mathematically sound method of 
 delineation by plan and profile ; and the first to represent 
 serpent action in true lines, whether of actual curve, or induced 
 perspective. 
 
 What follows, then, is the text of what I read, or, to the 
 best of my memory, spoke, at the London Institution. 
 
 3. In all my lectures on Natural History at Oxford I virtu- 
 ally divided my subject always into three parts, and asked my 
 pupils, first, to consider what had been beautifully thought 
 about the creature ; secondly, what was accurately known of 
 it ; thirdly, what was to be wisely asked about it. 
 
 First, you observe, what w r as, or had been, beautifully 
 thought about it ; the effect of the creature, that is to say, 
 [luring past ages, on the greatest human minds. This, it is 
 especially the business of a gentleman and a scholar to know. 
 It is a king's business, for instance, to know the meaning of 
 the legend of the basilisk, the King of Serpents, who killed 
 with a look, in order that he may not himself become like a 
 basilisk. But that kind of knowledge would be of small use 
 to a viper-catcher. 
 
 Then the second part of the animal's history is — what is 
 truly known of it, which one usually finds to be extremely 
 little. 
 
LIVING WAVES. 
 
 177 
 
 And the third part of its history will be — what remains to 
 be asked about it — what it now behoves us, or will be profit- 
 able to us, to discover. 
 
 4. It will perhaps be a weight off jour minds to be assured 
 that I shall waive to-night the first part of the subject alto- 
 gether except so far as thoughts of it may be suggested to 
 you by Mr. Severn's beautiful introductory diagram, * and by 
 the references I have to make to it, though shown for the sake 
 of the ivy, not the Eve, — its subject being already explained 
 in my Florentine Guide to the Shepherd's Tower. But I will 
 venture to detain you a few moments while I point out how, 
 in one great department of modern science, past traditions 
 may be used to facilitate, where at present they do but en- 
 cumber, even the materialistic teaching of our own day. 
 
 5. When I was furnishing Brantwood, a few years ago, I 
 indulged myself with two bran-new globes, brought up to all 
 the modern fine discoveries. I find, however, that there's 
 so much in them that I can see nothing. The names are 
 too many on the earth, and the stars too crowded in the 
 heaven. And I am going to have made for my Coniston 
 parish school a series of drawings in dark blue, with golden 
 stars, of one constellation at a time, such as my diagram No. 
 2, with no names written to the stars at all. For if the chil- 
 dren don't know their names without print on their diagram, 
 they won't know them without print on the sky. Then there 
 must be a school-manual of the constellations, which will have 
 the legend of each told as simply as a fairy tale ; and the 
 names of the chief stars given on a map of them, correspond- 
 ing to the blue diagram, — both of course drawn as the stars- 
 are placed in the sky ; or as they would be seen on a concave 
 celestial globe, from the centre of it. The having to look 
 down on the stars from outside of them is a difficult position 
 for children to comprehend, and not a very scientific one, even 
 when comprehended. 
 
 6. But to do all this rightly, I must have better outlines 
 than those at present extant. The red diagram, No. 3, which 
 
 * The Creation of Eve, bas-relief from the tower of Giotto. The 
 photograph may he obtained from Mr, Ward. 
 
178 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 has I hope a little amused you, more than frightened, is an 
 enlargement of the outline given on my new celestial globe, 
 to the head of the constellation Draco. I need not tell you 
 that it is as false to nature as it is foolish in art ; and I want 
 you to compare it with the uppermost snake head in No. 4, 
 because the two together will show you in a moment what 
 long chapters of ' Modern Painters ' were written to explain, — 
 how the real faculty of imagination is always true, and goes 
 straight to its mark : but people with no imagination are 
 always false, and blunder or drivel about their mark. That 
 red head was drawn by a man who didn't know a snake from 
 a sausage, and had no more imagination in him than the 
 chopped pork of which it is made. Of course he didn't know 
 that, and with a scrabble of lines this way and the other, 
 gets together what he thinks an invention — a knot of gratui- 
 tous lies, which you contentedly see portrayed as an instrument 
 of your children's daily education. While — two thousand and 
 more years ago — the people who had imagination enough to 
 believe in Gods, saw also faithfully what was to be seen in 
 snakes ; and the Greek workman gives, as you see in this en- 
 largement of the silver drachma of Phsestus, with a group of 
 some six or seven sharp incisions, the half-dead and yet dread- 
 ful eye, the flat brow, the yawning jaw, and the forked tongue, 
 which are an abstract of the serpent tribe for ever and ever. 
 
 And I certify you that all the exhibitions they could see in 
 all London would not teach your children so much of art as 
 a celestial globe in the nursery, designed with the force and 
 the simplicity of a Greek vase. 
 
 7. Now, I have done alike with myths and traditions; and 
 perhaps I had better forewarn yon, in order, what I am next 
 coining to. For, after my first delivery of this lecture, one of 
 my most attentive hearers, and best accustomed pupils, told 
 me that he had felt it to be painfully unconnected, — with 
 much resultant difficulty to the hearer in following its inten- 
 tion. This is partly inevitable when one endeavours to get 
 over a great deal of ground in an hour ; and indeed I have 
 been obliged, as I fastened, the leaves together, to cut out 
 sundry sentences of adaptation or transition— and run my 
 
LIVING WAVES. 
 
 179 
 
 bits of train all into one, without buffers. But the actual di- 
 visions of what I have to say are clearly jointed for all that ; 
 and if you like to jot them down from the leaf I have put 
 here at my side for my own guidance, these are the heads of 
 them : — 
 
 I. Introduction— Imaginary Serpents. 
 II. The Names of Serpents. 
 
 III. The Classification of Serpents. 
 
 IV. The Patterns of Serpents. 
 V. The Motion of Serpents. 
 
 VI. The Poison of Serpents. 
 VII. Caution, concerning their Poison. 
 VIII. The Wisdom of Serpents. 
 IX. Caution, concerning their Wisdom. 
 
 It is not quite so bad as the sixteenthly, seventeenthly, and 
 to conclude, of the Duke's chaplain, to Major Dalgetty ; but 
 you see we have no time to round the corners, and must get 
 through our work as straightly as we may. 
 
 We have got done already with our first article, and begin 
 now with the names of serpents ; of which those used in the 
 great languages, ancient and modern, are all significant, and 
 therefore instructive, in the highest degree. 
 
 8. The first and most important is the Greek 'ophis,' from 
 which you know the whole race are called, by scientific people, 
 ophidia. It means the thing that sees all around ; and Milton 
 is thinking of it w r hen he makes the serpent, looking to see 
 if Eve be assailable, say of himself, " Her husband, for I view 
 far round, not near." Satan says that, mind you, in the per- 
 son of the Serpent, to whose faculties, in its form, he has re- 
 duced himself. As an angel, he would have known whether 
 Adam was near or not : in the serpent, he has to look and see. 
 This, mind you further, however, is Miltonic fancy, not 
 Mosaic theology ; — it is a poet and a scholar who speaks here, 
 — by no means a prophet. 
 
 9. Practically, it has never seemed to me that a snake could 
 see far round, out of the slit in his eye, which is drawn large 
 
180 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 for you in my diagram of the rattlesnake ;* but either he oi 
 the puffadder, I have observed, seem to see with the backs of 
 their heads as well as the fronts, whenever I am drawing 
 them. You will find the question entered into at some length 
 in my sixth lecture in the 4 Eagles Nest' ; and I endeavoured 
 to find out some particulars of which I might have given you 
 assurance to-night, in my scientific books ; but though I 
 found pages upon pages of description of the scales and 
 wrinkles about snakes' eyes, I could come at no account what- 
 ever of the probable range or distinctness in the sight of 
 them ; and though extreme pains had been taken to exhibit, 
 in sundry delicate engravings, their lachrymatory glands and 
 ducts, I could neither discover the occasions on which rattle- 
 snakes wept, nor under what consolations they dried their 
 eyes. 
 
 10. Next for the word dracon, or dragon. We are accus- 
 tomed to think of a dragon as a winged and clawed creature ; 
 but the real Greek dragon, Cadmus's or Jason's, was simply 
 a serpent, only a serpent of more determined vigilance than 
 the ophis, and guardian therefore of fruit, fountain, or fleece. 
 In that sense of guardianship, not as a protecter, but as a 
 sentinel, the name is to be remembered as well fitted for the 
 great Greek lawgiver. 
 
 The dragon of Christian legend is more definitely malig- 
 nant, and no less vigilant. You will find in Mr. Anderson's 
 supplement to my ' St. Mark's Rest,' " The Place of Dragons," 
 a perfect analysis of the translation of classic into Christian 
 tradition in this respect. 
 
 11. III. Anguis. The strangling thing, passing into the 
 French ' angoisse ' and English ' anguish ' ; but we have never 
 taken this Latin word for our serpents, because we have none 
 of the strangling or constrictor kind in Europe. It is always 
 used in Latin for the most terrible forms of snake, and has 
 been, with peculiar infelicity, given by scientific people to the 
 most innocent, and especially to those which can't strangle 
 
 * See the careful drawing of the eye of Daboia Rtissellii, Thanato 
 
LIVING WAVES. 
 
 ISl 
 
 anything. The 1 Anguis fragilis ' breaks like a tobacco-pipe ; 
 but imagine how disconcerting such an accident would be to 
 a constrictor ! 
 
 12. IV. Coluber, passing into the French, \ couleuvre/ a 
 grandly expressive word. The derivation of the Latin one is 
 uncertain, but it will be wise and convenient to reserve it for 
 the expression of coiling. Our word 'coil/ as the French 
 ' cueillir,' is from the Latin ' colligere,' to collect ; and we 
 shall presently see that the way in which a snake £ collects • 
 itself i3 no less characteristic than the way in which it diffuses 
 itself. 
 
 13. V. Serpens. The winding thing. This is the great 
 word which expresses the progressive action of a snake, dis- 
 tinguishing it from all other animals ; or, so far as modifying 
 the motion of others, making them in that degree serpents 
 also, as the elongated species of fish and lizard. It is the 
 principal object of my lecture this evening to lay before you 
 the law of this action, although the interest attaching to other 
 parts of my subject has tempted me to enlarge on them so as 
 to give them undue prominence. 
 
 14. VI. Adder. This Saxon word, the same as nieder or 
 nether, ' the grovelling thing,' was at first general for all ser- 
 pents, as an epithet of degradation, * the deaf adder that stop- 
 peth her ears/ Afterwards it became provincial, and has 
 never been accepted as a term of science. In the most schol- 
 arly late English it is nearly a synonym with 6 viper,' but that 
 word, said to be a contraction for vivipara, bringing forth the 
 young alive, is especially used in the New Testament of the 
 Pharisees, who compass heaven and earth to make one prose- 
 lyte. The Greek word used in the same place, echidna, is of 
 doubtful origin, but always expresses treachery joined with 
 malice. 
 
 15. VII. Snake. German, * schlange,' the crawling thing ; 
 and with some involved idea of sliminess, as in a snail. Of 
 late it has become partly habitual, in ordinary English, to use 
 it for innocent species of serpents, as opposed to venomous ; 
 but it is the strongest and best general term for the entire 
 race ; which race, in order to define clearly, I must now entef 
 
182 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 into some particulars respecting classification, which I find 
 little announced in scientific books. 
 
 16. And here I enter on the third division of my lecture, 
 which must be a disproportionately long one, because it in- 
 volves the statement of matters important in a far wider scope 
 than any others I have to dwell on this evening. For although 
 it is not necessary for any young persons, nor for many old 
 ones, to know 3 even if they can know, anything about the 
 origin or development of species, it is vitally necessary that 
 they should know what a species is, and much more what a 
 genus or (a better word) gens, a race, of animals is. 
 
 17. A gens, race, or kinship, of animals, means, in the truth 
 of it, a group which can do some special thing nobly and well. 
 And there are always varieties of the race which do it in dif- 
 ferent styles, — an eagle flies in one style, a windhover in 
 another, but both gloriously, — they are ' Gentiles' — gentle- 
 men creatures, well born and bred. So a trout belongs to the 
 true race, or gens, of fish : he can swim perfectly ; so can a 
 dolphin, so can a mackerel : they swim in different styles in- 
 deed, but they belong to the true kinship of swimming 
 creatures. 
 
 18. Now between the gentes, or races, and between the 
 species, or families, there are invariably links — mongrel creat- 
 ures, neither one thing nor another, — but clumsy, blunder- 
 ing, hobbling, misshapen things. You are always thankful 
 when you see one that you are not it. They are, according to 
 old philosophy, in no process of development up or down, 
 but are necessary, though much pitiable, where they are. 
 Thus between the eagle and the trout, the mongrel or need- 
 ful link is the penguin. Well, if you ever saw an eagle or a 
 windhover flying, I am sure you must have sometimes wished 
 to be a windhover ; and if ever you saw a trout or a dolphin, 
 swimming, I am sure, if it was a hot day, you wished you 
 could be a trout. But did ever anybody wish to be a 
 penguin ? 
 
 So, again, a swallow is a perfect creature of a true gens ; 
 and a field-mouse is a perfect creature of a true gens ; and 
 between the two you have an accurate mongrel— the bat 
 
LIVING WAVES. 
 
 183 
 
 Well, surely some of you have wished, as you saw them glanc- 
 ing and dipping over lake or stream, that you could for half 
 an hour be a swallow : there have been humble times with 
 myself when I could have envied a field-mouse. But did ever 
 anybody wish to be a bat ? 
 
 19. And don't suppose that you can invert the places of the 
 creatures, and make the gentleman of the penguin, and the 
 mongrel of the windhover, — the gentleman of the bat, and 
 mongrel of the swallow. All these living forms, and the laws 
 that rule them, are parables, when once you can read ; but 
 you can only read them through love, and the sense of 
 beauty ; and some day I hope to plead with you a little, of the 
 value of that sense, and the way you have been lately losing- 
 it. But as things are, often the best way of explaining the 
 nature of any one creature is to point out the other creatures 
 with whom it is connected, through some intermediate form 
 of degradation. There are almost always two or three, or 
 more, connected gentes, and between each, some peculiar 
 manner of decline and of reascent. Thus, you heard Professor 
 Huxley explain to you that the true snakes were connected 
 with the lizards through helpless snakes, that break like with- 
 ered branches ; and sightless lizards, that have no need for 
 eyes or legs. But there are three other great races of life, 
 with which snakes are connected in other and in yet more mar- 
 vellous ways. And I do not doubt being able to show you, 
 this afternoon, the four quarters, or, as astrologers would say, 
 the four houses, of the horizon of serpent development, in the 
 modern view, or serpent relation, in the ancient one. In the 
 first quarter, or house, of his nativity, a serpent is, as Profess- 
 or Huxley showed you, a lizard that has dropped his legs off. 
 But in the second quarter, or house, of his nativity, I shall 
 show you that he is also a duck that has dropped her wings 
 off. In the third quarter, I shall show you that he is a iish 
 that has dropped his fins off. And in the fourth quarter of 
 ascent, or descent, whichever you esteem it, that a serpent is 
 a honeysuckle, with a head put on. 
 
 20. The lacertine relations having been explained to you in 
 *the preceding lecture by Professor Huxley, I begin this even- 
 
184 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 ing with the Duck. I might more easily, and yet more sur- 
 prisingly, begin with the Dove ; but for time-saving must 
 leave your own imaginations to trace the transition, easy as 
 you may think it, from the coo to the quack, and from the 
 walk to the waddle. Yet that is very nearly one-half the jour- 
 ney. The bird is essentially a singing creature, as a serpent 
 is a mute one ; the bird is essentially a creature singing for 
 love, as a puffadder is one puffing for anger ; and in the 
 descent from the sound which fills that verse of Solomon's 
 Song, " The time of the singing of birds is come, and the 
 voice of the turtle is heard in our land," to the recollection of 
 the last flock of ducks which you saw disturbed in a ditch, ex- 
 pressing their dissatisfaction in that peculiar monosyllable 
 which from its senselessness has become the English expres- 
 sion for foolish talk,* you have actually got down half-way ; 
 and in the next flock of geese whom you discompose, might 
 imagine at first you had got the whole way, from the lark's 
 song to the serpent's hiss. 
 
 21. But observe, there is a variety of instrumentation in 
 hisses. Most people fancy the goose, the snake, and we our- 
 selves, are alike in the manner of that peculiar expression of 
 opinion. But not at all. Our own hiss, whether the useful 
 and practical ostler's in rubbing down his horse, or that om- 
 nipotent one which — please do not try on me just now ! — are 
 produced by the pressure of our soft round tongues against 
 our teeth. But neither the goose nor snake can hiss that 
 way, for a goose has got no teeth, to speak of, and a serpent 
 no tongue, to speak of. The sound which imitates so closely 
 our lingual hiss is with them only a vicious and vindictive 
 sigh, — the general disgust which the creature feels at the 
 sight of us expressed in a gasp. Why do you suppose the 
 puffadder is called puffy ? f Simply because he swells himself 
 up to hiss, just as Sir Gorgius Midas might do to scold his 
 footmen, and then actually and literally 'expires* with rage, 
 
 * The substantive 1 quack ' in its origin means a person who quacks, 
 ■ — i.e., talks senselessly; see Johnson. 
 
 f In more graceful Indian metaphor, the 4 Father of Tumefaction. 
 (Note from a friend.) 
 
LIVING WAVES. 
 
 185 
 
 sending all the air in bis body out at you in a biss. In a 
 quieter way, the drake and gander do the same thing ; and 
 we ourselves do the same thing under nobler conditions, of 
 which presently. 
 
 22. But now, here's the first thing, it seems to me, we've 
 got to ask of the scientific people, what use a serpent has for 
 his tongue, since it neither wants it to talk with, to taste with, 
 to hiss with, nor, so far as I know, to lick with,* and least of 
 all to sting with,- — and yet, for people who do not know the 
 creature, the little vibrating forked thread, flashed out of its 
 mouth, and back again, as quick as lightening, is the most 
 threatening part of the beast ; but what is the use of it ? 
 Nearly every other creature but a snake can do all sorts of 
 mischief with its tongue. A woman worries with it, a cha- 
 meleon catches flies with it, a snail files away fruit with it, a 
 hummingbird steals honey with it, a cat steals milk with it, a 
 pholas digs holes in rocks with it, and a gnat digs holes in us 
 with it ; but the poor snake cannot do any manner of harm 
 with it whatsoever ; and what is his tongue forked for ? 
 
 23. I must leave you to find out that at your leisure ; and 
 to enter at your pleasure into the relative anatomical questions 
 respecting forms of palate, larynx, and lung, in the dove, the 
 swan, the goose, and the adder, — not unaccompanied by ser- 
 pentine extension and action in the necks of the hissing birds, 
 which show you what, so to speak, Nature is thinking of. 
 These mechanical questions are all — leather and prunella, or 
 leather and catgut ; — the moral descent of the temper and 
 meaning in the sound, from a murmur of affection to a gasp 
 of fury, is the real transition of the creature's being. You 
 will find in Kinglake's account of the charge of the Grays in 
 the battle of Balaclava, accurate record of the human murmur 
 of long-restrained rage, at last let loose ; and may reflect, also 
 at your leisure, on the modes of political development which 
 change a kindly Scot into a fiery dragon. 
 
 24. So far of the fall of the bird-angels from song to hiss : 
 
 * I will not take on me to contradict, but I don't in the least believe, 
 any of the statements about serpents licking their prey before they 
 swallow it. 
 
ISO 
 
 DEUCALIOSr. 
 
 next consider for a minute or two the second phase of catas* 
 trophe — from walk to waddle. Walk,— or, in prettier creatures 
 still, the run. Think what a descent it is, from the pace of 
 the lapwing, like a pretty lady's, — " Look, where Beatrice, like 
 a lapwing, runs ; " or of the cream-coloured courser * of the 
 African desert, whom you might yourselves see run, on your 
 own downs, like a little racehorse, if you didn't shoot it the 
 moment it alighted there, — to the respectable, but, to say the 
 least, unimpressive, gait from which we have coined the useful 
 word to ' w T addle.' Can you remember exactly how a duck 
 does walk ? You can best fancy it by conceiving the body of 
 a large barrel carried forward on two short legs, and rolling 
 alternately to each side at every step. Once watch this 
 method of motion attentively, and you will soon feel how near 
 you are to dispensing with legs altogether, and getting the 
 barrel to roll along by itself in a succession of zigzags. 
 
 25. Now, put the duck well under water, and he does dis- 
 pense with his legs altogether. 
 
 There is a bird who — my good friend, and boat-builder, 
 Mr. Bell, tells me — once lived on Coniston Water, and some- 
 times visits it yet, called the saw-bill duck, who is the link, on 
 the ducky side, between the ducks and divers : his shape on 
 the whole is a duck's, but his habits are a diver's, — that is to 
 say, he lives on fish, and he catches them deep under water- 
 swimming, under the surface, a hundred yards at a time. 
 
 26. W T e do not at all enough dwell upon this faculty in 
 aquatic birds. Their feet are only for rowing — not for diving. 
 Those little membranous paddles are no use whatever, once 
 under water. The bird's full strength must be used in div- 
 ing : he dives with his wings — literally flies under water with 
 his wings ; — the great northern diver, at a pace which a well- 
 manned boat can't keep up with. The stroke for progress, ob- 
 serve, is the same as in the air ; only in flying under water, the 
 bird has to keep himself down, instead of keeping himself up, 
 and strikes up with the wing instead of down. Well, the great 
 divers hawk at fish this way, and become themselves fish, or 
 saurians, the wings acting for the time as true fins, or paddles 
 
 * Cursorius isabellinus (Meyer), Gallicus (Gould). 
 
LIVING WAVES. 
 
 187 
 
 And at the same time, observe, the head takes the shape, and 
 receives the weapons, of the fish-eating lizard. 
 
 Magnified in the diagram to the same scale, this head of the 
 saw-bill duck (No. 5) is no less terrible than that of the gavial, 
 or fish-eating crocodile of the Ganges. The gavial passes, by 
 the mere widening of the bones of his beak, into the true 
 crocodile, — the crocodile into the serpentine lizard. I drop 
 my duck's wings off through the penguin ; and its beak being 
 now a saurian's, I have only to ask Professor Huxley to get 
 rid of its feet for me, and my line of descent is unbroken, from 
 the dove to the cobra, except at the one point of the gift of 
 poison. 
 
 27. An important point, you say ? Yes ; but one which the 
 anatomists take small note of. Legs, or no legs, are by no 
 means the chief criterion of lizard from snake. Poison, or no 
 poison, is a far more serious one. Why should the mere fact 
 of being quadruped, make the creature chemically innocent ? 
 Yet no lizard has ever been recognized as venomous. 
 
 28. A less trenchant, yet equally singular, law of distinc- 
 tion is found in the next line of relationship we have to learn, 
 that of serpents with fish. 
 
 The first quite sweeping division of the whole serpent race is 
 into water serpents and land serpents.* A large number, in- 
 deed, like damp places ; and I suppose all serpents who ever 
 saw water can swim ; but still fix in your minds the intense and 
 broad distinction between the sand asp, which is so fond of heat 
 that if you light a real fire near him he will instantly wriggle 
 up to it and burn himself to death in the ashes, and the water 
 hydra, who lives in the open, often in the deep sea, and 
 
 * Br. Gunther's division of serpents, (' Reptiles of British India,' p. 
 166,) the most rational I ever saw in a scientific book, is into five main 
 kinds : burrowing snakes, ground snakes, and tree snakes, on the land ; 
 and fresh-water snakes and sea snakes, in the water. 
 
 All the water snakes are viviparous ; and I believe all the salt-water 
 ones venomous. Of the fresh-water snakes, Dr. Gunther strongly says, 
 l< none are venomous," to my much surprise ; for I have an ugly recol- 
 lection of the black river viper in the Zoological Gardens, and am 
 nearly certain that Humboldt speaks of some of the water serpents of 
 Brazil as dangerous. 
 
188 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 though just as venomous as the little fiery wretch, has the 
 
 bo(fy flattened vertically at the tail so as to swim exactly as 
 eels do. 
 
 29. Not that I am quite sure that even those who go often- 
 est to Eel Pie Island quite know how eels do swim, and still 
 less how they walk ; nor, though I have myself seen them 
 doing it, can I tell you how they manage it. Nothing in ani- 
 mal instinct or movement is more curious than the way young 
 eels get up beside the waterfalls of the Highland streams. 
 They get first into the jets of foam at the edge, to be thrown 
 ashore by them, and then wriggle up the smooth rocks — 
 heaven knows how. If you like, any of you, to put on greased 
 sacks, with your arms tied down inside, and your feet tied 
 together, and then try to wriggle up after them on rocks as 
 smooth as glass, I think even the skilfulest members of the 
 Alpine Club will agree with me as to the difficulty of the 
 feat ; and though I have watched them at it for hours, I do 
 not know how much of serpent, and how much of fish, is min- 
 gled in the motion. But observe, at all events, there is no 
 walking here on the plates of the belly : whatever motion is 
 got at all, is by undulation of body and lash of tail : so far as 
 by undulation of body, serpentine ; so far as by lash of tail, fishy. 
 
 30. But the serpent is in a more intimate sense still, a fish 
 that has dropped its fins off. All fish poison is in the fins or 
 tail, not in the mouth. There are no venomous sharks, no 
 fanged pikes ; but one of the loveliest fishes of the south 
 coast, and daintiest too when boiled, is so venomous in the 
 fin, that when I was going eagerly to take the first up that 
 came on the fishing-boat's deck with the mackerel line, in my 
 first day of mackerel fishing, the French pilot who was with 
 me caught hold of my arm as eagerly as if I had been going 
 to lay hold of a viper. 
 
 Of the common medusa, and of the sting ray, you know 
 probably more than I do : but have any of us enough con- 
 sidered this curious fact ; (have any of you seen it stated 
 clearly in any book of natural history?) that throughout the 
 whole fish race, — which, broadly speaking, pass the whole of 
 their existence in one continual gobble, — you never find any 
 
LIVING WAVES. 
 
 189 
 
 poison put into the teeth ; and throughout the whole serpent- 
 race, never any poison put into the horns, tail, scales, or skin ? 
 
 31. Besides this, I believe the aquatic poisons are for the 
 most part black ; serpent poison invariably white ; and, finally, 
 that fish poison is only like that of bees or nettles, numbing 
 and irritating, but not deadly ; but that the moment the fish 
 passes into the hydra, and the poison comes through the teeth, 
 the bite is mortal. In these senses, and in many others, 
 (which I could only trace by showing you the undulatory 
 motion of fins in the seahorse, and of body in the sole,) the 
 serpent is a fish without fins. 
 
 32. Now, thirdly, I said that a serpent was a honeysuckle 
 with a head put on. You perhaps thought I was jesting ; 
 but nothing is more mysterious in the compass of creation than 
 the relation of flowers to the serpent tribe, — not only in those 
 to which, in ' Proserpina/ I have given the name Draconidse, 
 and in which there is recognized resemblance in their popular 
 name, Snapdragon, (as also in the speckling of the Snake's- 
 head Fritillary,) but much more in those carnivorous, insect- 
 eating, and monstrous, insect-begotten, structures, to which 
 your attention may perhaps iiave been recently directed by the 
 clever caricature of the possible effects of electric light, which 
 appeared lately in the ' Daily Telegraph.' But, seven hundred 
 years ago, to the Florentine, and three thousand years ago, to 
 the Egyptian and the Greek, the mystery of that bond was told 
 in the dedication of the ivy to Dionysus, and of the dragon to 
 Triptolemus. Giotto, in the lovely design which is to-night 
 the only relief to your eyes, thought the story of temptation 
 enough symbolized by the spray of ivy round the hazel 
 trunk ; and I have substituted, in my definition, the honey- 
 suckle for the ivy, because, in the most accurate sense, the 
 honeysuckle is an 6 anguis ' — a strangling thing. The ivy stem 
 increases with age, without compressing the tree trunk, any 
 more than the rock, that it adorns ; but the woodbine retains, 
 to a degree not yet measured, but almost, I believe, after a 
 certain time, unchanged, the first scope of its narrow con- 
 tortion ; and the growing wood of the stem it has seized is 
 contorted with it, and at last paralyzed and killed. 
 
190 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 That there is any essential difference in the spirit of life 
 which gives power to the tormenting tendrils, from that 
 which animates the strangling coils, your recent philosophy 
 denies, and I do not take upon me to assert. The serpent is 
 a honeysuckle * with a head put on ; and perhaps some day, 
 in the zenith of development, you may see a honeysuckle 
 getting so much done for it. 
 
 33. It is, however, more than time for me now to ap- 
 proach the main parts of our subject, the characteristics of 
 perfect serpent nature in pattern, motion, and poison. First, 
 the pattern — i.e., of their colours, and the arranged masses of 
 them. That, the scientific people always seem to think a 
 matter of no consequence ; but to practical persons like me, 
 it is often of very primal consequence to know a viper when 
 they see it, which they can't conveniently, except by the pat- 
 tern. The scientific people count the number of scales be- 
 tween its eyes and its nose, and inform you duly of the 
 amount ; but then a real viper won't stand still for you to 
 count the scales between his eyes and his nose ; whereas you 
 can see at a glance, what to us Londoners, at least, should 
 surely be an interesting fact — that it has a pretty letter H on 
 the top of its head (Diag. No. 6). I am a true Cockney my- 
 self, — born within ring of Bow ; and it is impressive to me 
 thus to see such a development of our dropped Hs. Then, 
 the wavy zigzag down the back, with the lateral spots — one 
 to each bend, are again unmistakable ; and a pretty general 
 type of the kind of pattern which makes the poets and the 
 story-tellers, when they need one epithet only, speak always 
 of the Spotted snake.' Not but that a thrush or a wood- 
 pecker are much more spotty than any snakes, only they're a 
 great deal more than that, while the snake can often only be 
 known from the gravel he lies on by the comparative sym- 
 metry of his spots. 
 
 34. But, whether spotted, zigzagged, or blotched with re- 
 
 * Farther note was here taken of the action of the blossoms of the 
 cranberry, myrtilla regina, etc., for more detailed account of which 
 (useless in this place without the diagram) the reader is referred to 
 the sixth number of 1 Proserpina. ' 
 
LIVING WAVES. 
 
 191 
 
 ticulated stains, this, please observe, is constant in their col- 
 ours : they are always, in the deadly serpents, lurid, or dull. 
 
 The fatal serpents are all of the French school of art, — 
 French grey ; the throat of the asp, French blue, the bright- 
 est thing I know in the deadly snakes. The rest are all 
 gravel colour, mud colour, blue-pill colour, or in general, as I 
 say, French high-art colour. You will find this pointed out 
 long ago in one of the most important chapters of * Modern 
 Painters,' and I need not dwell upon it now, except just to 
 ask you to observe, not only that puffadders and rattlesnakes 
 have no resemblance to tulips and roses, but that they never 
 have even the variegated greens and blues of mackerel, or the 
 pinks and crimsons of the char or trout. Fancy the difference 
 it would make in our general conception of creation, if pea- 
 cocks had grey tails, and serpents golden and blue ones ; or 
 if cocks had only black spectacles on their shoulders, and 
 cobras red combs on their heads, — if hummingbirds flew in 
 suits of black, and water- vipers swam in amethyst ! * 
 
 35. I come now to the fifth, midmost, and chiefly important 
 section of my subject, namely, the manner of motion in ser- 
 pents. They are distinguished from all other creatures by 
 that motion, which I tried to describe the terror of, in the 
 * Queen of the Air' — calling the Serpent "a wave without wind, 
 — a current, — but with no fall." A snail and a worm go on 
 their bellies as much as a serpent, but the essential motion o! 
 a serpent is undulation, — not up and down, but from side to 
 
 * Had I possessed the beautiful volume of the Thauatophidia, above 
 referred to, before giving my lecture, I should have quoted from it the 
 instance of one water-viper, Hydrophis nigrocincta (q. purpureocincta ?), 
 who does swim in amethyst, if the colouring of the plate may be trusted, 
 rather than the epithet of its name. I should also have recommended 
 to especial admiration the finishing of the angular spots in Dr. Shortfs 
 exquisite drawing of Hypnale Nepa. 
 
 Mr. Alfred Tylor, on the evening when I last lectured, himself laid 
 before the Zoological Society, for the first time, the theory of relation 
 between the vertebras and the succession of dorsal bars or spots, which 
 I shall be rejoiced if he is able to establish ; but I am quite ready to 
 accept it on his authority, without going myself into any work on the 
 bones. 
 
192 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 side ; and the first thing you have got to ask about it, is, why 
 it goes from side to side. Those who attended carefully to 
 Professor Huxley's lecture, do not need to be again told that 
 the bones of its spine alloiv it to do so ; but you were not then 
 told, nor does any scientific book that I know, tell you, why 
 it needs to do so. Why should not it go straight the shortest 
 way? Why, even when most frightened and most in a hurry, 
 does it wriggle across the road, or through the grass, with that 
 special action from which you have named your twisting lake 
 in Hyde Park, and all other serpentine things ? That is the 
 first thing you have to ask about it, and it never has been 
 asked yet, distinctly. 
 
 36. Supposing that the ordinary impression were true, that 
 it thrusts itself forward by the alternate advance and thrust- 
 backward of the plates of its belly, there is no reason why it 
 should not go straight as a centipede does, or the more terrific 
 scarlet centipede or millepede, — a regiment of soldiers. I 
 was myself long under the impression, gathered from scientific 
 books, that it moved in this manner, or as this w T ise Natural 
 History of Cuvier puts it, " by true reptation ; " * but, how- 
 ever many legs a regiment or a centipede may possess, neither 
 body of them can move faster than an individual pair of legs 
 can, — their hundred or thousand feet being each capable of 
 only one step at a time ; and, with that allowance, only a cer- 
 tain proportion of pace is possible, and the utmost rapidity of 
 the most active spider, or centipede, does not for an instant 
 equal the dash of a snake in full power. But you — nearly all 
 of you, I fancy — have learned, during the sharp frosts of the 
 last winters, the real secret of it, and will recognize in a mo- 
 ment what the motion is, and only can be, when I show you 
 the real rate of it. It is not often that you can see a snake in 
 a hurry, for he generally withdraws subtly and quietly, even 
 
 f It cannot be too often pointed out how much would be gained by 
 merely insisting on scientific books being written in plain English. If 
 only this writer had been forbidden to use the word 4 repo' for k crawl,' 
 and to write, therefore, that serpents were crawling creatures, who 
 moved by true crawlation, — his readers would have seen exactly how 
 far he and they had got. 
 
LIVING WAVES. 
 
 193 
 
 when distinctly seen ; but if you put him to his pace either 
 by fear or anger, you will find it is the sweep of the outsiiio 
 edge in skating, carried along the whole body, — that is to say, 
 three or four times over. Outside or inside edge does not, 
 however, I suppose, matter to the snake, the fulcrum being- 
 according to the lie of the ground, on the concave or convex 
 side of the curve, and the whole strength of the bod}' is alive 
 in the alternate curves of it. 
 
 37. This splendid action, however, you must observe, can 
 hardly ever be seen when the snake is in confinement. Half 
 a second would take him twice the length of his cage ; and 
 the sluggish movement which you see there, is scarcely ever 
 more than the muscular extension of himself out of his • col- 
 lected' coil into a more or less straight line ; which is an 
 action imitable at once with a coil of rope. You see that one- 
 half of it can move anywhere without stirring the other ; and 
 accordingly you may see a foot or two of a large snake s body 
 moving one way, and another foot or two moving the other 
 way, and a bit between not moving at all ; which I, altogether, 
 think we may specifically call ' Parliamentary ! motion ; but 
 this has nothing in common with the gliding and truly ser- 
 pentine power of the animal when it exerts itself. 
 
 38. (Thus far, I stated the matter in my lecture, apologizing 
 at the same time for the incompleteness of demonstration 
 which, to be convincing, would have taken me the full hour of - 
 granted attention, and perhaps with small entertainment to 
 most of my hearers. But, for once, I care somewhat to estab- 
 lish my own claim to have first described serpent motion, just 
 as I have cared much to establish Forbes's claim to have first 
 discerned the laws of glacier flow ; and I allow myself, there- 
 fore, here, a few added words of clearer definition. 
 
 39. "When languidly moving in its cage, (or stealthily when 
 at liberty,) a serpent may continually be seen to hitch or catch 
 one part of its body by the edge of the scales against the 
 ground, and from the fulcrum of that fixed piece extend other 
 parts or coils in various directions. But this is not the move- 
 ment of progress. When a serpent is once in full pace, every 
 part of its body moves with equal velocity ; and the whole in 
 
194 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 a series of waves, varied only in sweep in proportion to tha 
 thickness of the trunk. No part is straightened — no part ex- 
 tended — no part stationary. Fast as the head advances, the 
 tail follows, and between both — at the same rate — every point 
 of the body. And the impulse of that body bears it against, 
 and is progressively resilient from, the ground at the edge of 
 each wave, exactly as the blade of the oar in sculling a boat is 
 progressively resilient from the water. In swimming, the 
 action is seen in water itself, and is partially imitated also by 
 fish in the lash of the tail. I do not attempt to analyze the 
 direction of power and thrust in the organic structure, because 
 I believe, without very high mathematics, it cannot be done 
 even for the inorganic momentum of a stream, how much less 
 for the distributed volition of muscle, which applies the thrust 
 at the exact point of the living wave where it will give most 
 forwarding power. 
 
 I am not sure how far the water serpents may sometimes 
 use vertical instead of lateral undulation ; but their tails are 
 I believe always vertically flattened, implying only lateral oar- 
 stroke. My friend Mr. Henry Severn, however, on one occa- 
 sion saw a large fresh- water serpent swimming in vertically 
 sinuous folds, with its head raised high above the surface, and 
 making the water foam at its breast, just as a swan would.) 
 
 40. Adding thus much to what I said of snake action, I find 
 - myself enabled to withdraw, as unnecessary, the question 
 urged, in the next division of the lecture, as to the actual pain 
 inflicted by snakebite, by the following letter,* since received 
 on the subject, from Mr. Arthur Nicols : — 
 
 * A series of most interesting papers, by Mr. Nicols, already pub- 
 lished in 1 The Country,' and reprinted in ' Chapters from the Physical 
 History of the Earth,' (Kegan, Paul, & Co.), may be consulted on all the 
 points of chiefly terrible interest in serpent life. I have also a most 
 valuable letter describing the utter faintness and prostration, without 
 serious pain, caused by the bite of the English adder, from Mr. Speddiug 
 Cur wen, adding the following very interesting notes. u The action was, 
 and, so far as I have seen, always is, a distinct hammer-like stroke of 
 the head and neck, with the jaw wide open. In the particular case in 
 question, my brother had the adder hanging by the tail between his 
 finger and thumb, and was lowering it gradually into our botany-box 
 
LIVING WAVES. 
 
 195 
 
 " With respect to your remark that there are no descrip- 
 tions of the sensation produced by snake-poison, in the nature 
 of things, direct evidence of this kind is not easy to get ; for, 
 in the first place, the sufferer is very soon past the power of 
 describing the sensations ; and, in the second, but a minute 
 fraction of those who are killed by snakes in India come under 
 the hands of medical men. A person of the better class, too, 
 is rarely bitten fatally. The sufferers are those who go about 
 with naked feet, and handle wood, and whose work generally 
 brings them into contact with snakes. 
 
 " A friend brought me from India last year several speci- 
 mens of Echis carinata, a species about nine inches long, 
 whose fangs (two on one maxilla in one instance) were as 
 large as this— (a quarter of an inch long, curved), and hard as 
 steel. 
 
 " This Echis kills more people in its district than all the 
 other snakes together ; it is found everywhere. We must also 
 remember how very few persons bitten recover. Indirect evi- 
 dence seems to point to a comatose state as soon as the poison 
 takes effect ; and those writhings of bitten animals which it 
 gives us so much pain to witness are probably not the expres- 
 sion of suffering. In one of Fayrer's cases the patient (bitten 
 by a cobra) complained, when taken to the hospital, of a burn- 
 ing pain in his foot ; but as no more is said, I infer he then 
 became incapable of giving any further description. The 
 ? burning ' is just what I feel when stung by a bee, and the 
 poison soon makes me drowsy. In one instance I lay for an 
 
 the lid of which I was holding open. There were already three adders 
 in the box ; and in our care lest they should try to escape, we did not 
 keep enough watch over the new capture. As his head reached the level 
 of the lid of the box, he made a side- dart at my hand, and struck by 
 the thumb nail. The hold was quite momentary, but as the adder was 
 suspended by the tail, that may be no guide to the general rule. The 
 receding of the blood was only to a small distance, say a quarter of an 
 inch round the wound. The remedies I used were whisky, (half a pint, 
 as soon as I got to the nearest inn, and more at intervals all day, also 
 ammonia,) both to drink and to bathe the wound with. The whisky 
 seemed to have no effect : my whole body was cold and deathly, and I 
 felt none of the glow which usually follows a stimulant." 
 
196 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 hour feebly conscious, but quite indifferent to the external 
 world ; and although that is fourteen years ago, I well remem- 
 ber speculating (albeit I was innocent of any knowledge of 
 snakes then) as to whether their poison had a similar effect. 
 It should not, I think, concern us much to learn what is the 
 precise character of the suffering endured by any poor human 
 being whose life is passing away under this mysterious influ- 
 ence, but to discover its physiological action." 
 
 41. Most wisely and truly said : and indeed, if any useful 
 result is ever obtained for humanity by the time devoted re- 
 cently, both in experiment and debate, to the question of the 
 origin of life, it must be in the true determination of the 
 meanings of the words Medicine and Poison, and the separa- 
 tion into recognized orders of the powers of the things which 
 supply strength and stimulate function, from those which dis- 
 solve flesh and paralyze nerve. The most interesting summed 
 result which I yet find recorded by physicians, is the state- 
 ment in the appendix to Dr. Fayrer's ' Thanatophidia \ of the 
 relative mortal action of the Indian and Australian venomous 
 snakes ; the one paralyzing the limbs, and muscles of breath- 
 ing and speech, but not affecting the heart ; the other leaving 
 the limbs free, but stopping the heart. 
 
 42. But the most terrific account which I find given with 
 sufficient authority of the effect of snake-bite is in the general 
 article closing the first volume of Kussell's ' History of Indian 
 Serpents.' Four instances are there recorded of the bite, not of 
 the common Cobra, but of that called by the Portuguese Cobra 
 di Morte. It is the smallest, and the deadliest, of all venom- 
 ous serpents known, — only six inches long, or nine at the 
 most, and not thicker than a tobacco-pipe, — and, according to 
 the most definite account, does not move like ordinary ser- 
 pents, but throws itself forward a foot or two on the ground, 
 in successive springs, falling in the shape of a horse-shoe. In 
 the five instances given of its bite, death follows, in a boy, ten 
 minutes after the bite ; and in the case of two soldiers, bitten 
 by the same snake, but one a minute after the other, in their 
 guard-room, about one in the morning, — the first died at 
 seven in the morning, the second at noon ; in both, the powers 
 
LIVING WAVES. 
 
 197 
 
 of sight gradually failing, and tliey became entirely blind be- 
 fore death. The snake is described as of a dark straw colour, 
 with two black lines behind the head ; small, flat head, with 
 eyes that shone like diamonds. 
 
 43. Next in fatal power to this serpent, — fortunately so rare 
 that I can find no published drawing of it, — come the Cobra, 
 Kattlesnake, and Trigonocephalus, or triangle-headed serpent 
 of the West Indies. Of the last of these snakes, you will find 
 a most terrific account (which I do not myself above one- 
 third believe) in the ninth volume of the English translation 
 of Cuvier's ' Animal Kingdom/ It is a grand book of fifteen 
 volumes, copiously illustrated, and quite unequalled for col- 
 lection of the things you do not want to know in the body of 
 the text, and for ceasing to be trustworthy the moment it is 
 entertaining. I will read from it a single paragraph concern- 
 ing the Trigonocephalus, of which you may believe as much 
 or as little as you like. " These reptiles possess an activity 
 and vivacity of motion truly alarming. A ferocious instinct 
 induces them to dart impetuously upon passengers, either by 
 suddenly letting go the sort of spring which their body forms, 
 rolled in concentric and superpoised circles, and thus shoot- 
 ing like an arrow from the bow of a vigorous archer, or pur- 
 suing them by a series of rapid and multiplied leaps, or 
 climbing up trees after them, or even threatening them in a 
 vertical position." 
 
 44. The two other serpents, one used to be able to study at 
 our own Zoological Gardens ; but the cobra has now for some 
 years had the glass in front of him whitened, to prevent vul- 
 gar visitors from poking sticks at him, and wearing out his 
 constitution in bad temper. I do not know anything more 
 disgraceful to the upper classes of England as a body, than 
 that, while on the one hand their chief recreations, without 
 which existence would not be endurable to them, are gam- 
 bling in horses, and shooting at birds, they are so totally with- 
 out interest in the natures and habits of animals in general, 
 that they have never thought of enclosing for themselves a 
 park and space of various kinds of ground, in free and healthy 
 air, in which there should be a perfect gallery, Louvre, or 
 
198 
 
 DEUCALION, 
 
 Uffizii, not of pictures, as at Paris, nor of statues, as a' 
 Florence, but of living creatures of all kinds, beautifully kept, 
 and of which the contemplation should be granted only to 
 well-educated and gentle people who would take the trouble 
 to travel so far, and might be trusted to behave decently and 
 kindly to any living creatures, wild or tame. 
 
 45. Under existing circumstances, however, the Zoological 
 Gardens are still a place of extreme interest ; and I have 
 been able at different times to make memoranda of the ways 
 of snakes there, which have been here enlarged for you by my 
 friends, or by myself ; and having been made always with 
 reference to gesture or expression, show you, I believe, more 
 of the living action than you w T ill usually find in scientific 
 drawings : the point which you have chiefly to recollect about 
 the cobra being this curious one — that while the puffadder, 
 and most other snakes, or snakelike creatures, sw T ell when 
 they are angry, the cobra flattens himself ; and becomes, for 
 four or five inches of his length, rather a hollow shell than a 
 snake. The beautiful drawing made by Mr. Macdonald in 
 enlarging my sketch from life shows you the gesture accu- 
 rately," and especially the levelling of the head which gives it 
 the chief terror. It is always represented with absolute truth 
 in Egyptian painting and sculpture ; one of the notablest 
 facts to my mind in the entire histoiy of the human race 
 being the adoption by the Egyptians of this serpent for the 
 type of their tyrannous monarchy, just as the cross or the lily 
 was adopted for the general symbol of kinghood by the mon- 
 arch s of Christendom. 
 
 46. I would fain enlarge upon this point,' but time forbids 
 me : only please recollect this one vital fact, that the nature 
 of Egyptian monarchy, however great its justice, is always 
 that of government by cruel force ; and that the nature of 
 Christian monarchy is embodied in the cross or lily, which 
 signify either an authority received by divine appointment, 
 and maintained by personal suffering and sacrifice ; or else a 
 dominion consisting in recognized gentleness and beauty of 
 character, loved long before it is obeyed. 
 
 47. And again, whatever may be the doubtful meanings of 
 
LIVING WAVES. 
 
 199 
 
 the legends invented among all those nations of the earth who 
 have ever seen a serpent alive, one thing is certain, that they 
 all have felt it to represent to them, in a way quite inevitably 
 instructive, the state of an entirely degraded and malignant 
 human life. I have no time to enter on any analysis of the 
 causes of expression in animals, but this is a constant law for 
 them, that they are delightful or dreadful to us exactly in the 
 degree in which they resemble the contours of the human 
 countenance given to it by virtue and vice ; and this head of 
 the cerastes, and that of the rattlesnake, are in reality more 
 terrific to you than the others, not because they are more 
 snaky, but because they are more human, — because the one 
 has in it the ghastliest expression of malignant avarice, and the 
 other of malignant pride. In the deepest and most literal 
 sense, to those who allow the temptations of our natural pas- 
 sions their full sway, the curse, fabulously (if you will) spoken 
 on the serpent is fatally and to the full accomplished upon 
 ourselves ; and as for noble and righteous persons and nations, 
 the words are for ever true, "Thou art fairer than the children 
 of men : full of grace are thy lips ; " so for the ignoble and 
 iniquitous, the saying is for ever true, " Thou art fouler than the 
 children of the Dust, and the poison of asps is under thy lips. *' 
 48. Let me show you, in one constant manner of our na- 
 tional iniquity, how literally that is true. Literally, observe. 
 In any good book, but especially in the Bible, you must 
 always look for the literal meaning of everything first, — and 
 act out that, then the spiritual meaning easily and securely 
 follows. Now in the great Song of Moses, in w^hich he fore- 
 tells, before his death, the corruption of Israel, he says of the 
 wicked race into which the Holy People are to change, " Their 
 wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps." 
 Their wine, — that is to say, of course, not the wine they drink, 
 but the wine they give to drink. So that, as our best duty to 
 our neighbour is figured by the Samaritan who heals wounds 
 by pouring in oil and wine, our worst sin against our neigh- 
 bour is in envenoming his wounds by pouring in gall and 
 poison. The cruel venom of Asps — of that brow T n gentleman 
 you see there ! 
 
200 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 49. Now I am sure you would all be very much shocked, 
 and think it extremely wrong, if you saw anybody deliberately 
 poisoning so much as one person in that manner. Suppose 
 even in the interests of science, to which you are all so de- 
 voted, I were myself to bring into this lecture-room a country 
 lout of the stupidest, — the sort whom you produce by Church 
 of England education, and then do all you can to get emi- 
 grated out of your way ; fellows whose life is of no use to 
 them, nor anybody else ; and that — always in the interests of 
 science — I were to lance just the least drop out of that beast's 
 tooth into his throat, and let you see him swell, and choke, 
 and get blue and blind, and gasp himself away — you wouldn't 
 all sit quiet there, and have it so done — would you? — in the 
 interests of science. 
 
 50. Well ; but how then if in your own interests ? Suppose 
 the poor lout had his week's wages in his pocket — thirty 
 shillings or so ; and, after his inoculation, I were to pick his 
 pocket of them; and then order in a few more louts, and 
 lance their throats likewise, and pick their pockets likewise, 
 and divide the proceeds of, say, a dozen of poisoned louts, 
 among you all, after lecture : for the seven or eight hundred 
 of you, I could perhaps get sixpence each out of a dozen of 
 poisoned louts ; yet you would still feel the proceedings pain- 
 ful to your feelings, and wouldn't take the sixpen'north — 
 would you ? 
 
 51. But how, if you constituted yourselves into a co-oper- 
 ative Egyptian Asp and Mississippi Rattlesnake Company, 
 with an eloquent member of Parliament for the rattle at its 
 tail ? and if, brown asps getting scarce, you brewed your own 
 venom of beautiful aspic brown, with a white head, and per- 
 suaded your louts to turn their own pockets inside-out to get 
 it, giving you each sixpence a night, — seven pounds ten a year 
 of lovely dividend ! — How does the operation begin to look 
 now ? Commercial and amiable — does it not ? 
 
 52. But how — to come to actual fact and climax — if, instead 
 of a Company, you were constituted into a College of reverend 
 and scholarly persons, each appointed — like the King of Salem 
 — to bring forth the bread and wine of healing knowledge ; 
 
LIVING WAVES. 
 
 201 
 
 but that, instead of bread gratis, you gave stones for pay ; 
 and, instead of wine gratis, you gave asp-poison for pay, — 
 how then ? Suppose, for closer instance, that you became a 
 College called of the Body of Christ, and with a symbolic 
 pelican for its crest, but that this charitable pelican had begun 
 to peck — not itself, but other people, — and become a vampire 
 pelican, sucking blood instead of shedding, — how then ? They 
 say it's an ill bird that fouls its own nest. My own feeling is 
 that a well-behaved bird will neither foul its own nest nor 
 another's, but that, finding it in any wise foul, it will openly 
 say so, and clean it. 
 
 53. Well, I know a village, some few miles from Oxford, 
 numbering of inhabitants some four hundred louts, in which 
 .my own College of the Body of Christ keeps the public-house, 
 and therein sells — by its deputy — such poisoned beer that the 
 Rector's wife told me, only the day before yesterday, that she 
 sent for some to take out a stain in a dress with, and couldn't 
 touch the dress with it, it was so filthy with salt and acid, to 
 provoke thirst ; and that while the public-house was there she 
 had no hope of doing any good to the men, who always pre- 
 pared for Sunday by a fight on Saturday night. And that my 
 own very good friend the Bursar, and we the Fellows, of 
 Corpus, being appealed to again and again to shut up that 
 tavern, the answer is always, "The College can't afford it : we 
 can't give up that fifty pounds a year out of those peasant 
 sots' pockets, and yet ' as a College ' live." 
 
 Drive that nail home with your own hammers, for I've no 
 more time ; and consider the significance of the fact, that the 
 gentlemen of England can't afford to keep up a college for 
 their own sons but by selling death of body and soul to their 
 own peasantry. 
 
 54. I come now to my last head of lecture — my caution 
 concerning the wisdom which we buy at such a price. I had 
 not intended any part of my talk to-night to be so grave ; 
 and was forced into saying what I have now said by the ap- 
 pointment of Fors that the said village Rector's wife should 
 come up to town to nurse her brother, Mr. Severn, who drew 
 your diagrams for you. I had meant to be as cheerful as I 
 
202 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 could ; and chose the original title of my lecture, c A Caution 
 to Snakes/ partly in play, and partly in affectionate remem- 
 brance of the scene in 'New Men and Old Acres,' in which 
 the phrase became at once so startling and so charming, on 
 the lips of my much-regarded friend, Mrs. Kendal. 
 
 But this one little bit of caution more I always intended to 
 give, and to give earnestly. 
 
 55. What the best wisdom of the Serpent may be, I assume 
 that you all possess ; — and my caution is to be addressed to 
 you in that brightly serpentine perfection. In all other re- 
 spects as wise, in one respect let me beg you to be wiser than 
 the Serpent, and not to eat your meat without tasting it, — 
 meat of any sort, but above all the serpent-recommended meat 
 of knowledge. Think what a delicate and delightful meat 
 that used to be in old days, when it was not quite so common 
 as it is now, and when young people — the best sort of them — - 
 really hungered and thirsted for it. Then a youth went up 
 to Cambridge, or Padua, or Bonn, as to a feast of fat things, 
 of wines on the lees, well-refined. But now, he goes only to 
 swallow, — and, more's the pity, not even to swallow as a 
 glutton does, with enjoyment ; not even-*-forgive me the old 
 Aristotelian Greek, ^So/xa'os rrj a^y — pleased w T ith the going 
 down, but in the saddest and exactest way, as a constrictor 
 does, tasting nothing all the time. You remember what 
 Professor Huxley told you — most interesting it was, and new 
 to me — of the way the great boa does not in any true sense 
 swallow, but only hitches himself on to his meat like a coal- 
 sack ; — well, that's the exact way you expect your poor modern 
 student to hitch himself onto his meat, catching and notching 
 his teeth into it, and dragging the skin of him tight over it, 
 — till at last — you know I told you a little while ago our 
 artists didn't know a snake from a sausage, — but, Heaven 
 help us, your University doctors are going on at such a rate 
 that it will be all we can do, soon, to know a man from a 
 sausage. 
 
 56. Then think again, in old times what a delicious thing 
 a book used to be in a chimney corner, or in the garden, or 
 in the fields, where one used really to read a book, and nibble 
 
BE VISION. 
 
 203 
 
 a nice bit here and there if it was a bride-cakey sort of book, 
 and cut oneself a lovely slice — fat and lean — if it was a 
 round-of-beef sort of book. But what do you do with a book 
 now, be it ever so good ? You give it to a reviewer, first to 
 skin it, and then to bone it, and then to chew it, and then to 
 lick it, and then to give it you down your throat like a hand- 
 ful of pilau. And when you've got it, you've no relish for it, 
 after all. And, alas ! this continually increasing deadness to 
 the pleasures of literature leaves your minds, even in their 
 most conscientious action, sensitive with agony to the sting 
 of vanity, and at the mercy of the meanest temptations held 
 out by the competition of the schools. How often do I re- 
 ceive letters from young men of sense and genius, lamenting 
 the loss of their strength, and waste of their time, but ending 
 always with the same saying, " I must take as high a class as 
 I can, in order to please my father." And the fathers love 
 the lads all the time, but yet, in every word they speak to 
 them, prick the poison of the asp into their young blood, and 
 sicken their eyes with blindness to all the true joys, the true 
 aims, and the true praises of science and literature ; neither 
 do they themselves any more conceive what was once the 
 faith of Englishmen ; that the only path of honour is that of 
 rectitude, and the only place of honour, the one that you are 
 fit for. Make your children happy in their youth ; let dis- 
 tinction come to them, if it will, after well-spent and well- 
 remembered years ; but let them now break and eat the bread 
 of Heaven with gladness and singleness of heart, and send 
 portions to them for whom nothing is prepared ; — and so 
 Heaven send you its grace — before meat, and after it. 
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 
 REVISION. 
 
 1. If the reader will look back to the opening chapter of 
 ' Deucalion,' he will see that the book was intended to be a col- 
 lection of the notices of phenomena relating to geology which 
 
i>04 
 
 DEUCALION: 
 
 were scattered through my former works, systematized so fai 
 a& might be possible, by such additional studies as time per- 
 mitted me. 
 
 Hitherto, however, the scattered chapters have contained 
 nothing else than these additional studies, which, so far from 
 systematizing what preceded them, stand now greatly in need 
 of arrangement themselves ; and still more of some explana- 
 tion of the incidental passages referring to matters of higher 
 science than geology, in which I have too often assumed that 
 the reader is acquainted with — and in some degree even pre- 
 pared to admit — the modes of thought and reasoning which 
 have been followed throughout the general body of my writ- 
 ings. 
 
 I have never given myself out for a philosopher ; nor spoken 
 of the teaching attempted in connection with any subject of 
 inquiry, as other than that of a village showman's "Look — 
 and you shall see." But, during the last twenty years, so many 
 baseless semblances of philosophy have announced themselves ; 
 and the laws of decent thought and rational question have 
 been so far transgressed (even in our universities, where the 
 moral philosophy they once taught is now only remembered 
 as an obscure tradition, and the natural science in which they 
 are proud, presented only as an impious conjecture), that it is 
 forced upon me, as the only means of making what I have 
 said on these subjects permanently useful, to put into clear 
 terms the natural philosophy and natural theology to which 
 my books refer, as accepted by the intellectual leaders of all 
 past time. 
 
 2. To this end I am republishing the second volume of 
 ' Modern Painters,' which, though in affected language, yet 
 with sincere and very deep feeling, expresses the first and 
 foundational law respecting human contemplation of the nat- 
 ural phenomena under whose influence we exist, — that they 
 can only be seen with their properly belonging joy, and in- 
 terpreted up to the measure of proper human intelligence, 
 when they are accepted as the work, and the gift, of a Living 
 Spirit greater than our own. 
 
 3. Similarly, the moral philosophy which underlies all the 
 
BE VISION. 
 
 205 
 
 appeals, and all the accusations, made in the course of my 
 wri tings on political science, assumes throughout that the 
 principles of Justice and Mercy which are fastened in the hearts 
 of men, are also expressed in entirely consistent terms through- 
 out the higher — (and even the inferior, when undefiled)— ■ 
 forms of all lovely literature and art ; and enforced by the 
 Providence of a Ruling and Judging Spiritual Power, man- 
 ifest to those who desire its manifestation, and concealed from 
 those who desire its concealment. 
 
 4. These two Faiths, in the creating Spirit, as the source 
 of Beauty, — in the governing Spirit, as the founder and main- 
 tainer of Moral Law, are, I have said, assumed as the basis of 
 all exposition and of all counsel, which have ever been at- 
 tempted or offered in my books. I have never held it my duty, 
 never ventured to think of it even as a permitted right, to 
 proclaim or explain these faiths, except only by referring to 
 the writings, properly called inspired, in which the good men 
 of all nations and languages had concurrently — though at far 
 distant and different times — declared them. But it has become 
 now for many reasons, besides those above sj)ecined, necessary 
 for me to define clearly the meaning of the words I have used 
 — the scope of the laws I have appealed to, and, most of all, 
 the nature of some of the feelings possible under the reception 
 of these creeds, and impossible to those who refuse them. 
 
 5. This may, I think, be done with the best brevity and 
 least repetition, by adding to those of my books still unfin- 
 ished, ' Deucalion,' ' Proserpina/ ' Love's Meinie/ and Tors 
 Clavigera,' explanatory references to the pieces of theology or 
 natural philosophy which have already occurred in each, in- 
 dicating their modes of connection, and the chiefly parallel 
 passages in the books which are already concluded ; among 
 which I may name the ' Eagle's Nest,' as already, if read care- 
 fully, containing nearly all necessary elements of interpretation 
 for the others. 
 
 6. I am glad to begin with ' Deucalion,' for its title already 
 implies, (and is directly explained in its seventh page as imply- 
 ing,) the quite first principle, with me, of historic reading in 
 divinity, that all nations have been taught of God according 
 
206 
 
 Dm C ALIGN. 
 
 to their capacity, and may best learn what farther they would 
 know of Him by reverence for the impressions which He has 
 set on the hearts of each, and all. 
 
 I said farther in the same place that I thought it well for 
 the student first to learn the " myths of the Betrayal and Re- 
 demption " as they were taught to the heathen world ; but I 
 did not say what I meant by the e Betrayal ? and ' Redemption ■ 
 in their universal sense, as represented alike by Christian and 
 heathen legends. 
 
 7. The idea of contest between good and evil spirits for the 
 soul and body of man, which forms the principal subject of 
 all the imaginative literature of the world, has hitherto been 
 the only explanation of its moral phenomena tenable by intel- 
 lects of the highest power. It is no more a certain or suf- 
 ficient explanation than the theory of gravitation is of the con- 
 struction of the starry heavens ; but it reaches farther towards 
 analysis of the facts known to us than any other. By ' the Be- 
 trayal I in the passage just referred to I meant the supposed 
 victory, in the present age of the world, of the deceiving spirit- 
 ual power, which makes the vices of man his leading motives 
 of action, and his follies, its leading methods. By ' the Re- 
 demption ' I meant the promised final victory of the creating 
 and true Spirit, in opening the blind eyes, in making the 
 crooked places straight and the rough plain, and restoring the 
 power of His ministering angels, over a world in which there 
 shall be no more tears. 
 
 8. The £ myths ' — allegorical fables or stories — in wdrich this 
 belief is represented, were, I went on to say in the same place, 
 "incomparably truer " than the Darwinian — or, I will add, any 
 other conceivable materialistic theory — because they are the 
 instinctive products of the natural human mind, conscious of 
 certain facts relating to its fate and peace ; and as unerring 
 in that instinct as all other living creatures are in the difr 
 covery of what is necessary for their life : while the material- 
 istic theories have been from their beginning products, in the 
 words used in the passage I am explaining (page 8, line 4), 
 of the 'h alf wits of impertinent multitudes.' They are half- 
 witted because never entertained by any person possessing 
 
REVISION, 
 
 207 
 
 imaginative power, — and impertinent, because they are always 
 announced as if the very defect of imagination constituted a 
 superiority of discernment. 
 
 9. In one of the cleverest — -(and, in description of the faults 
 and errors of religious persons, usefullest) — books of this 
 modern half-witted school, "une cure du Docteur Pontalais," 
 of which the plot consists in the revelation by an ingenious 
 doctor to an ingenuous priest that the creation of the world 
 may be sufficiently explained by dropping oil with dexterity 
 out of a pipe into a wineglass, — the assumption that 4a lo- 
 gique ' and ' la methode ' were never applied to theological 
 subjects except in the Quartier Latin of Paris in the present 
 blessed state of Parisian intelligence and morals, may be I 
 hope received as expressing nearly the ultimate possibilities 
 of shallow arrogance in these regions of thought ; and I name 
 the book as one extremely well worth reading, first as such ; 
 and secondly because it puts into the clearest form I have yet 
 met with, the peculiar darkness of materialism, in its denial 
 of the hope of immortality. The hero of it, who is a perfectly 
 virtuous person, and inventor of the most ingenious and be- 
 nevolent machines, is killed by the cruelties of an usurer and 
 a priest ; and in dying, the only consolation he offers his wife 
 and children is that the loss of one life is of no consequence 
 in the progress of humanity. 
 
 This unselfish resignation to total death is the most heroic 
 element in the Religion now in materialist circles called the 
 Religion "of Humanity," and announced as if it were a new 
 discovery of nineteenth-century sagacity, and able to replace 
 in the system of its society, alike all former ideas of the power 
 of God, and destinies of man. 
 
 10. But, in the first place, it is by no means a new discovery. 
 The fact that the loss of a single life is of no consequence 
 when the lives of many are to be saved, is, and always has 
 been, the root of every form of beautiful courage ; and I have 
 again and again pointed out, in passages scattered through 
 writings carefully limited in assertion, between 1860 and 1870, 
 that the heroic actions on which the material destinies of this 
 world depend are almost invariably done under the conception 
 
208 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 of death as a calamity, which is to be endured by one for the 
 deliverance of many, and after which there is no personal re- 
 ward to be looked for, but the gratitude or fame of which the 
 victim anticipates no consciousness. 
 
 11. In the second place, this idea of self-sacrifice is no more 
 sufficient for man than it is new to him. It has, indeed, 
 strength enough to maintain his courage under circumstances 
 of sharp and instant trial ; but it has no power whatever to 
 satisfy the heart in the ordinary conditions of social affection, 
 or to console the spirit and invigorate the character through 
 years of separation or distress. Still less can it produce the 
 states of intellectual imagination which have hitherto been 
 necessary for the triumphs of constructive art ; and it is a dis- 
 tinctive essential point in the modes of examining the arts as 
 part of necessary moral education, which have been constant 
 in my references to them, that those of poetry, music, and 
 painting, which the religious schools who have employed them 
 usually regard only as stimulants or embodiments of faith, 
 have been by me always considered as its evidences. Men do 
 not sing themselves into love or faith ; but they are incapable 
 of true song, till they love, and believe. 
 
 12. The lower conditions of intellect which are concerned 
 in the pursuit of natural science, or the invention of mechan- 
 ical structure, are similarly, and no less intimately, dependent 
 for their perfection on the lower feelings of admiration and 
 affection which can be attached to material things : these al- 
 so — the curiosity and ingenuity of man — live by admiration 
 and by love ; but they differ from the imaginative powers in 
 that they are concerned with things seen — not with the evi- 
 dences of things unseen — and it would be well for them if 
 the understanding of this restriction prevented them in the 
 present day as severely from speculation as it does from de- 
 votion. 
 
 13. Nevertheless, in the earlier and happier days of Lin- 
 naeus, de Saussure, von Humboldt, and the multitude of quiet 
 workers on whose secure foundation the fantastic expatiations 
 of modern science depend for whatever good or stability there 
 is in them, natural religion was always a part of natural 
 
REVISION. 
 
 209 
 
 science ; it becomes with Linnaeus a part of his definitions ; 
 it underlies, in serene modesty, the courage and enthusiasm 
 of the great travellers and discoverers, from Columbus and 
 Hudson to Livingstone ; and it has saved the lives, or solaced 
 the deaths, of myriads of men whose nobleness asked for no 
 memorial but in the gradual enlargement of the realm of 
 manhood, in habitation, and in social virtue. 
 
 14. And it is perhaps, of all the tests of difference between 
 the majestic science of those days, and the wild theories or 
 foul curiosities of our own, the most strange and the most 
 distinct, that the practical suggestions which are scattered 
 through the writings of the older naturalists tend always di- 
 rectly to the benefit of the general body of mankind ; while 
 the discoverers of modern science have, almost without ex- 
 ception, provoked new furies of avarice, and new tyrannies of 
 individual interest ; or else have directly contributed to the 
 means of violent and sudden destruction, already incalculably 
 too potent in the hands of the idle and the wicked. 
 
 15. It is right and just that the reader should remember, 
 in reviewing the chapters of my own earlier writings on the 
 origin and sculpture of mountain form, that all the investiga- 
 tions undertaken by me at that time were connected in my 
 own mind with the practical hope of arousing the attention 
 of the Swiss and Italian mountain peasantry to an intelligent 
 administration of the natural treasures of their woods and 
 streams. I had fixed my thoughts on these problems where 
 they are put in the most exigent distinctness by the various 
 distress and disease of the inhabitants of the valley of the 
 Rhone, above the lake of Geneva : a district in which the ad- 
 verse influences of unequal temperatures, unwholesome air, 
 and alternate or correlative drought and inundation, are all 
 gathered in hostility against a race of peasantry, the Valaisan, 
 by nature virtuous, industrious, and intelligent in no ordinary 
 degree, and by the hereditary and natural adversities of their 
 position, regarded by themselves as inevitable, reduced in- 
 deed, many of them, to extreme poverty and woful disease ; 
 but never sunk into a vicious or reckless despair. 
 
 16. The practical conclusions at which I arrived, in study- 
 
210 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 ing the channels and currents of the Rhone, Ticino, and Ad. 
 ige, were stated first in the letters addressed to the English 
 press on the subject of the great inundations at Rome in 1871 
 ('Arrows of the Chace,' vol. ii., pp. 104-113), and they are 
 again stated incidentally in 4 Fors 5 (Letter XIX.), with direct 
 reference to the dangerous power of the Adige above Verona, 
 Had those suggestions been acted upon, even in the most 
 languid and feeble manner, the twentieth part of the sums 
 since spent by the Italian government in carrying French 
 Boulevards round Tuscan cities, and throwing down their 
 ancient streets to find lines for steam tramways, would not 
 only have prevented the recent inundations in North Italy, 
 but rendered their recurrence for ever impossible. 
 
 17. As it is thus the seal of rightly directed scientific inves- 
 tigation, to be sanctified by loving anxiety for instant practi- 
 cal use, so also the best sign of its completeness and sym- 
 metry is in the frankness of its communication to the general 
 mind of well-educated persons. 
 
 The fixed relations of the crystalline planes of minerals, 
 first stated, and in the simplest mathematical terms ex- 
 pressed, by Professor Miller of Cambridge, have been exam- 
 ined by succeeding mineralogists with an ambitious intensity 
 which has at last placed the diagrams of zone circles for 
 quartz and calcite, given in Cloizeaux's mineralogy, both as 
 monuments of research, and masterpieces of engraving, a 
 place among the most remarkable productions of the feverish 
 energies of the nineteenth century. But in the meantime, all 
 the characters of minerals, except the optical and crystalline 
 ones, which it required the best instruments to detect, and 
 the severest industry to register, have been neglected ; * the 
 
 * Even the chemistry has been allowed to remain imperfect or doubt- 
 ful, while the planes of crystals were being counted : thus for an ex- 
 treme instance, the most important practical fact that the colour of 
 ultramarine is destroyed by acids, will not be found stated in the de- 
 scriptions of that mineral by either Miller, Cloizeaux, or Dana ; and no 
 microscopic studies of refraction have hitherto informed the public 
 why a ruby is red, a sapphire blue, or a flint black. On a large scale, 
 the darkening of the metamorphic limestones, near the central ranges, 
 remains unexplained. 
 
HE VISION. 
 
 211 
 
 arrangement of collections in museums has been made unin- 
 telligibly scientific, without the slightest consideration whether 
 the formally sequent specimens were in lights, or places, where 
 they could be ever visible ; the elements of mineralogy pre- 
 pared for schools have been diversified by eight or ten differ- 
 ent modes, nomenclatures, and systems of notation ; and 
 while thus the study of mineralogy at all has become impos- 
 sible to young people, except as a very arduous branch of 
 mathematics, that of its connection with the structure of the 
 earth has been postponed by the leading members of the 
 Geological Society, to inquire into the habits of animalculae 
 fortunately for the world invisible, and monsters fortunately 
 for the world unregenerate. The race of old Swiss guides, 
 who knew the flowers and crystals of their crags, has mean- 
 while been replaced by chapmen, who destroy the rarest liv- 
 ing flowers of the Alps to raise the price of their herbaria, 
 and pedestrian athletes in the pay of foolish youths ; the 
 result being that while fifty years ago there was a good 
 and valuable mineral cabinet in every important mountain 
 village, it is impossible now to find even at Geneva anything 
 offered for sale but dyed agates from Oberstein ; and the 
 confused refuse of the cheap lapidary's wheel, working for 
 the supply of Mr. Cooke's tourists with ' Trifles from Cha- 
 mouni.' 
 
 18. I have too long hoped to obtain some remedy for these 
 evils by putting the questions about simple things which 
 ought to be answered in elementary schoolbooks of science, 
 clearly before the student. My own books have thus some- 
 times become little more than notes of interrogation, in their 
 trust that some day or other the compassion of men of science 
 might lead them to pause in their career of discovery, and 
 take up the more generous task of instruction. But so far 
 from this, the compilers of popular treatises have sought al- 
 ways to make them more saleable by bringing them up to the 
 level of last month's scientific news ; seizing also invariably, 
 of such new matter, that which was either in itself most singu- 
 lar, or in its tendencies most contradictory of former suppo- 
 sitions and credences : and I purpose now to redeem, so far 
 
212 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 as I can, the enigmatical tone of my own books, by collecting 
 the sum of the facts they contain, partly by indices, partly in 
 abstracts, and so leaving what I myself have seen or known, 
 distinctly told, for what use it may plainly serve. 
 
 For a first step in the fulfilment of this intention, some 
 explanation of the circumstances under which the preceding- 
 lecture (on the serpent) was prepared, and of the reasons for 
 its insertion in ' Deucalion,' are due to the reader, who may 
 have thought it either careless in its apparent jesting, or ir- 
 relevant in its position. 
 
 I happened to be present at the lecture given on the same 
 subject, a few weeks before, by Professor Huxley, in which 
 the now accepted doctrine of development was partly used in 
 support of the assertion that serpents were lizards which had 
 lost their legs ; and partly itself supported reciprocally, by 
 the probability which the lecturer clearly showed to exist, 
 of their being so. 
 
 Without denying this probability, or entering at all into 
 the question of the links between the present generation of 
 animal life and that preceding it, my own lecture was in- 
 tended to exhibit another series, not of merely probable, but 
 of observable, facts, in the relation of living animals to each 
 other. 
 
 And in doing so, to define, more intelligibly than is usual 
 among naturalists, the disputed idea of Species itself. 
 
 As I wrote down the several points to be insisted on, I 
 found they would not admit of being gravely treated, unless 
 at extreme cost of pains and time — not to say of weariness to 
 my audience. Do what I would with them, the facts them- 
 selves were still superficially comic, or at least grotesque : and 
 in the end I had to let them have their own way ; so that the 
 lecture accordingly became, apparently, rather a piece of 
 badinage suggested by Professor Huxley's, than a serious com- 
 plementary statement. 
 
 Nothing, however, could have been more seriously intended ; 
 and the entire lecture must be understood as a part, and a 
 very important part, of the variously reiterated illustration, 
 through all my writings, of the harmonies and intervals in the 
 
REVISION. 
 
 213 
 
 being of the existent animal creation — whether it be developed 
 or undeveloped. 
 
 The nobly religious passion in which Linnaeus writes the 
 prefaces and summaries of the * Systema Naturae/ with the 
 universal and serene philanthropy and sagacity of Humboldt, 
 agree in leading them to the optimist conclusion, best, and 
 unsurpassably, expressed for ever in Pope's f Essay on Man ' ; 
 and with respect to lower creatures, epigrammatized in the 
 four lines of George Herbert, — 
 
 " God's creatures leap not, bat express a feast 
 
 Where all the guests sit close, and nothing wants. 
 Progs marry fish and flesh ; — bats, bird and beast, 
 
 Sponges, non-sense and sense, mines,* th' earth and plants." 
 
 And the thoughts and feelings of these, and all other good, 
 wise, and happy men, about the world they live in, are 
 summed in the 104th Psalm. 
 
 On the other hand, the thoughts of cruel, proud, envious, 
 and unhappy men, of the Creation, always issue out of, and 
 gather themselves into, the shambles or the charnel house : 
 the word £ shambles/ as I use it, meaning primarily the battle- 
 field, and secondly, every spot where any one rejoices in tak- 
 ing life ; f and the ' charnel house ' meaning collectively, the 
 Morgue, brothel, and vivisection-room. 
 
 But, lastly, between these two classes, of the happy and the 
 heartless, there is a mediate order of men both unhappy and 
 compassionate' who have become aware of another form of 
 existence in the world, and a domain of zoology extremely 
 difficult of vivisection, — the diabolic. These men, of whom 
 Byron, Burns, Goethe, and Carlyle are in modern days the 
 chief, do not at all feel that the Nature they have to deal with 
 expresses a Feast only ; or that her mysteries of good and 
 evil are reducible to a quite visible Kosmos, as they stand ; 
 
 * 'Mines' mean crystallized minerals. 
 
 f Compare the Modern with the Ancient Mariner — gun versus cross- 
 bow. — " A magnificent albatross was soaring about at a short distance 
 astern, for some time in the afternoon, and was knocked over, but un- 
 fortunately not picked up." (' Natural History of the Strait of MageL 
 lan' : Edmonston and Douglas, 1871, page 225.) 
 
214 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 but that there is another Kosmos, mostly invisible, yet per- 
 haps tangible, and to be felt if not seen.* 
 
 Without entering, with Dr. Reville of Eotterdam, upon the 
 question how men of this inferior quality of intellect become 
 possessed either of the idea — or substance — of what they are 
 in the habit of calling ' the Devil ' ; nor even into the more 
 definite historical question, " how men lived who did seriously 
 believe in the Devil " — (that is to say, every saint and sinner 
 who received a decent education between the first and the 
 seventeenth centuries of the Christian eera,) — I will merely 
 advise my own readers of one fact respecting the above-named 
 writers, of whom, and whose minds, I know somewhat more 
 than Dr. Reville of Rotterdam, — that they, at least, do not 
 use the w T ord ' Devil ' in any metaphorical, typical, or abstract 
 sense, but — whether they believe or disbelieve in what they 
 say — in a distinctly personal one : and farther, that the con- 
 ceptions or imaginations of these persons, or any other such 
 persons, greater or less, yet of their species — whether they 
 are a mere condition of diseased brains, or a perception of 
 really existent external forces, — are nevertheless real Visions 
 described by them ' from the life/ as literally and straight- 
 forwardly as ever any artist of Rotterdam painted a sot — or 
 his pot of beer : and farther — even were we at once to grant 
 that all these visions — as for instance Zechariah's, " I saw the 
 Lord sitting on His Throne, and Satan standing at His right 
 hand to resist Him," are nothing more than emanations of the 
 unphosphated nervous matter — still, these states of delirium 
 are an essential part of human natural history : and the species 
 of human Animal subject to them, with the peculiar charac- 
 ters of the phantoms which result from its diseases of the 
 brain, are a much more curious and important subject of 
 science than that which principally occupies the scientific 
 mind of modern days — the species of vermin which are the 
 product of peculiar diseases of the skin. 
 
 I state this, however, merely as a necessary Kosmic princi- 
 ple, without any intention of attempting henceforward to en- 
 
 * * The Devil Iris Origin Greatness and Decadence/ (Sic, without 
 commas,) Williams and Norgate, 1871. 
 
BRUMA ABTIFBX. 
 
 215 
 
 gage my readers in any department of Natural History which 
 is outside of the ordinary range of Optics and Mechanics : but 
 if they should turn back to passages of my earlier books 
 which did so, it must always be understood that I am just as 
 literal and simple in language as any of the writers above re- 
 ferred to : and that, for instance, when in the first volume of 
 'Deucalion,' p. 144-145, I say of the Mylodon — "This crea- 
 ture the Fiends delight to exhibit to you," I don't mean by 'the 
 Fiends ' my good and kind geological friends at the British 
 Museum, nor even the architect who made the drain-pipes 
 from the posteriors of its gargoyles the principal shafts in his 
 design for the front of the new building, — be it far from me, 
 — but I do mean, distinctly, Powers of supernatural Mischief, 
 such as St. Dunstan, or St. Anthony, meant by the same ex- 
 pressions. 
 
 With which advice I must for the present end this bit of 
 explanatory chapter, and proceed with some of the glacial 
 investigations relating only to the Lakes — and not to the In- 
 habitants — whether of Coniston or Caina. 
 
 CHAPTER IH. 
 
 BRUMA ARTIFEX. 
 
 1. The frost of 9th March, 1879, suddenly recurrent and 
 severe, after an almost Arctic winter, found the soil and rock 
 of my little shaded hill garden, at Brantwood, chilled under- 
 neath far down ; but at the surface, saturated through every 
 cranny and pore with moisture, by masses of recently thawed 
 snow. 
 
 The effect of the acutely recurrent frost on the surface of 
 the gravel walks, under these conditions, was the tearing up 
 of their surface as if by minutely and delicately explosive 
 gases ; leaving the heavier stones imbedded at the bottom of 
 little pits fluted to their outline, and raising the earth round 
 them in a thin shell or crust, sustained by miniature ranges of 
 
216 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 "basaltic pillars of ice, one range set above another, with level 
 plates or films of earth between ; each tier of pillars some 
 half-inch to an inch in height, and the storied architecture of 
 them two or three inches altogether ; the little prismatic crys- 
 tals of which each several tier was composed being sometimes 
 knit into close masses with radiant silky lustre, and sometimes 
 separated into tiny, but innumerable shafts, or needles, none 
 more than the twentieth of an inch thick, and many termi- 
 nating in needle-points, of extreme fineness. 
 
 2. The soft mould of the garden beds, and the crumbling 
 earth in the banks of streams, were still more singularly di- 
 vided. The separate clods, — often the separate particles, — were 
 pushed up, or thrust asunder, by thread-like crystals, con- 
 torted in the most fantastic lines, and presenting every form 
 usual in twisted and netted chalcedonies, except the definitely 
 fluent or meltingly diffused conditions, here of course impos- 
 sible in crystallizations owing their origin to acute and steady 
 frost. The coils of these minute fibres were also more paral- 
 lel in their swathes and sheaves than chalcedony ; and more 
 lustrous in their crystalline surfaces : those which did not 
 sustain any of the lifted clods, usually terminating in fringes 
 of needle-points, melting beneath the breath before they 
 could be examined under the lens. 
 
 3. The extreme singularity of the whole structure la} 7 , to 
 my mind, in the fact that there was nowhere the least vestige 
 of stellar crystallization. No resemblance could be traced, — no 
 connection imagined, — between these coiled sheaves, or pil- 
 lared aisles, and the ordinary shootings of radiant films along 
 the surface of calmly freezing water, or the symmetrical arbo- 
 rescence of hoar-frost and snow. Here was an ice-structure 
 wholly of the earth, earthy ; requiring for its development, 
 the weight, and for its stimulus, the interference, of clods or 
 particles of earth. In some places, a small quantity of dust, 
 with a large supply of subterranean moisture, had been 
 enough to provoke the concretion of masses of serpentine fila- 
 ments three or four inches long ; but where there was no 
 dust, there were no filaments, and the ground, whether dry 
 or moist, froze hard under the foot. 
 
BRUM A ART IF EX. 
 
 217 
 
 4. Greatly blaming myself for never having noticed this 
 structure before, I have since observed it, with other modes 
 of freezing shown in the streamlets of the best watered dis- 
 trict of the British Islands, — with continually increasing in- 
 terest : until nearly all the questions I have so long vainly 
 asked myself and other people, respecting the variable forma- 
 tions of crystalline minerals, seem to me visibly answerable 
 by the glittering, and softly by the voice, of even the least- 
 thought-of mountain stream, as it relapses into its wintry 
 quietness. 
 
 5. Thus, in the first place, the action of common opaque 
 white quartz in filling veins, caused by settlement or desicca- 
 tion, with transverse threads, imperfectly or tentatively crys- 
 talline, (those traversing the soft slates of the Buet and Col 
 d'Anter are peculiarly characteristic, owing to the total ab- 
 sence of lustrous surface in the filaments, and the tortuous 
 aggregation of their nearly solidified tiers or ranks,) cannot 
 but receive some new rays of light in aid of its future expla- 
 nation, by comparison with the agency here put forth, before 
 our eyes, in the early hours of a single frosty morning ; agency 
 almost measurable in force and progress, resulting in the 
 steady elevation of pillars of ice, bearing up an earthy roof, 
 with strength enough entirely to conquer its adherence to 
 heavier stones imbedded in it. 
 
 G. Again. While in its first formation, lake or pool ice 
 throws itself always, on calm water, into stellar or plumose 
 films, shot in a few instants over large surfaces ; or, in small 
 pools, filling them with spongy reticulation as the water is 
 exhausted, the final structure of its compact mass is an aggre- 
 gation of vertical prisms, easily separable, when thick ice is 
 slowly thawing : prisms neither formally divided, like those 
 of basalt, nor in any part of their structure founded on the 
 primitive hexagonal crystals of the ice ; but starch-like, and 
 irregularly acute-Eingled. 
 
 7. Icicles, and all other such accretions of ice formed by 
 additions at the surface, by flowing or dropping water, are 
 filways, when unaffected by irregular changes of tempera- 
 ture or other disturbing accidents, composed of exquisitely 
 
DEUCALION. 
 
 transparent vitreous ice, (the water of course being supposed 
 transparent to begin with) — compact, flawless, absolutely 
 smooth at the surface, and presenting on the fracture, to 
 the naked eye, no evidence whatever of crystalline structure. 
 They will enclose living leaves of holly, fern, or ivy, without 
 disturbing one fold or fringe of them, in clear jelly (if one 
 may use the word of anything frozen so hard), like the dainti- 
 est candyings by Parisian confectioner's art, over glace fruit, 
 or like the fixed juice of the white currant in the perfect con- 
 fiture of Bar-le-Duc ; — and the frozen gelatine melts, as it 
 forms, stealthily, serenely, showing no vestige of its crystal- 
 line power ; pushing nowhere, pulling nowhere ; revealing 
 in dissolution, no secrets of its structure ; affecting flexile 
 branches and foliage only by its weight, and letting them 
 rise when it has passed away, as they rise after being bowed 
 under rain. 
 
 8. But ice, on the contrary, formed by an unfailing supply 
 of running water over a rock surface, increases, not from above, 
 but from beneath. The stream is never displaced by the ice, and 
 forced to run over it, but the ice is always lifted by the stream ; 
 and the tiniest runlet of water keeps its own rippling way on 
 the rock as long as the frost leaves it life to run with. In 
 most cases, the tricklings which moisten large rock surfaces 
 are supplied by deep under-drainage which no frost can reach ; 
 and then, the constant welling forth and wimpling down of 
 the perennial rivulet, seen here and there under its ice, glit- 
 tering in timed pulses, steadily, and with a strength according 
 to the need, and practically infinite, heaves up the accumu- 
 lated bulk of chalcedony it has formed, in masses a foot or 
 a foot and a half thick, if the frost hold ; but always more 
 or less opaque in consequence of the action of the sun and 
 wind, and the superficial additions by adhering snow or sleet ; 
 until the slowly nascent, silently uplifted, but otherwise mo- 
 tionless glaciers, — here taking casts of the crags, and fitted 
 into their finest crannies with more than sculptor's care, and 
 anon extended in rugged undulation over moss or shale, cover 
 the oozy slopes of our moorlands with statues of cascades, 
 where, even in the wildest floods of autumn, cascade is not. 
 
BRUM A ARTIFEX. 
 
 219 
 
 9. Actual waterfalls, when their body of water is great, and 
 much of it reduced to finely divided mist, build or block them- 
 selves up, during a hard winter, with disappointingly ponder- 
 ous and inelegant incrustations, — I regret to say more like 
 messes of dropped tallow than any work of water-nymphs, 
 But a small cascade, falling lightly, and shattering itself only 
 into drops, will always do beautiful things, and often incom- 
 prehensible ones. After some fortnight or so of clear frost in 
 one of our recent hard winters at Coniston, a fall of about 
 twenty-five feet in the stream of Leathes-water, beginning 
 with general glass basket-making out of all the light grasses 
 at its sides, built for itself at last a complete veil or vault of 
 finely interwoven ice, under which it might be seen, when the 
 embroidery was finished, falling tranquilly : its strength being 
 then too far subdued to spoil by overloading or over-labouring 
 the poised traceries of its incandescent canopy. 
 
 10. I suppose the component substance of this vault to have 
 been that of ordinary icicle, varied only in direction by infinite 
 accidents of impact in the flying spray. But without includ- 
 ing any such equivocal structures, we have already counted 
 five stages of ice familiar to us all, yet not one of which has 
 been accurately described, far less explained. Namely, 
 
 (1) Common deep-water surface ice, increased from beneath, 
 and floating, but, except in the degrees of its own expansion, 
 not uplifted. 
 
 (2) Surface ice on pools of streams, exhausting the water as 
 it forms, and adherent to the stones at its edge. Variously 
 increased in crusts and films of spongy network 
 
 (3) Ice deposited by external flow or fall of water in super- 
 added layers — exogen ice, — on a small scale, vitreous, and 
 perfectly compact, on a large one, coarsely stalagmitic, like 
 impure carbonate of lime, but I think never visibly fibrous- 
 radiant, as stalactitic lime is. 
 
 (4) Endogen ice, formed from beneath by tricklings over 
 ground surface. 
 
 (5) Capillary ice, extant from pores in the ground itself, and 
 carrying portions of it up with its crystals. 
 
 11. If to these five modes of slowly progressive formation 
 
220 
 
 DEUCALION, 
 
 we add the swift and conclusive arrest of vapour or dew on a 
 chilled surface, we shall have, in all, six different kinds of 
 — terrestrial, it may be called as opposed to aerial — conge- 
 lation of water : exclusive of all the atmospheric phenomena 
 of snow, hail, and the aggregation of frozen or freezing par- 
 ticles of vapour in clouds. Inscrutable these, on our present 
 terms of inquiry ; but the six persistent conditions, formed 
 before our eyes, may be examined with some chance of arriv- 
 ing at useful conclusions touching crystallization in general. 
 
 12. Of which, this universal principle is to be first under- 
 stood by young people ; — that every crystalline substance has 
 a brick of a particular form to build with, usually, in some 
 angle or modification of angle, quite the mineral's own special 
 property, — and if not absolutely peculiar to it, at least pecul- 
 iarly used by it. Thus, though the brick of gold, and that of 
 the ruby-coloured oxide of copper, are alike cubes, yet gold 
 grows trees with its bricks, and ruby copper weaves samite 
 with them. Gold cannot plait samite, nor ruby copper 
 branch into trees ; and ruby itself, with a far more convenient 
 and adaptable form of brick, does neither the one nor the 
 other. But ice, which has the same form of bricks to build 
 with as ruby, can, at its pleasure, bind them into branches, or 
 w T eave them into w r ool ; buttress a polar cliff with adamant, or 
 flush a dome of Alp with light lovlier than the ruby's. 
 
 13. You see, I have written above, 'ruby/ as I write 'gold s 
 or ice, not calling their separate crystals, rubies, or golds, or 
 ices. For indeed the laws of structure hitherto ascertained 
 by mineralogists have not shown us any essential difference 
 between substances which crystallize habitually in symmet- 
 rical detached figures, seeming to be some favourite arrange- 
 ment of the figures of their primary molecules ; and those 
 which, like ice, only under rare circumstances give clue to the 
 forms of their true crystals, but habitually show themselves 
 in accumulated mass, or complex and capricious involution. 
 Of course the difference may be a question only of time ; and 
 the sea, cooled slowly enough, might build bergs of hexagonal 
 ice-prisms as tall as Cleopatra's needle, and as broad as the 
 tower of Windsor ; but the time and temperature required, 
 
BRUM A ART IF EX. 
 
 221 
 
 by any given mineral, for its successful constructions of form, 
 are of course to be noted among the conditions of its history, 
 and stated in the account of its qualities. 
 
 14. Neither, hitherto, has any sufficient distinction been 
 made between properly crystalline and properly cleavage 
 planes.* The first great laws of crystalline form are given 
 by Miller as equally affecting both ; but the conditions of sub- 
 stance which have only so much crystalline quality as to 
 break in directions fixed at given angles, are manifestly to be 
 distinguished decisively from those which imply an effort in 
 the substance to collect itself into a form terminated at sym- 
 metrical distances from a given centre. The distinction is 
 practically asserted by the mineral itself, since it is seldom 
 that any substance has a cleavage parallel to more than one 
 or two of its planes : and it is forced farther on our notice by 
 the ragged lustres of true cleavage planes like those of mica, 
 opposed to the serene bloom of the crystalline surfaces formed 
 by the edges of the folia. 
 
 15. Yet farther. The nature of cleavage planes in definitely 
 crystalline minerals connects itself by imperceptible grada- 
 tions with that of the surfaces produced by mechanical sepa- 
 ration in their masses consolidating from fusion or solution. 
 It is now thirty years, and more, since the question whether 
 the forms of the gneissitic buttresses of Mont Blanc were 
 owing to cleavage or stratification, became matter of debate 
 between leading members of the Geological Society ; and it 
 remains to this day an undetermined one ! In succeeding 
 numbers of 'Deucalion,' I shall reproduce, according to my 
 promise in the introduction, the chapters of 'Modern Painters ' 
 which first put this question into clear form ; the drawings 
 which had been previously given by de Saussure and other 
 geologists having never been accurate enough to explain the 
 niceties of rock structure to their readers, although, to their 
 own eyes on this spot, the conditions of form had been per- 
 fectly clear. I see nothing to alter either in the text of these 
 chapters, written during the years 1845 to 1850, or in the 
 plates and diagrams by which they were illustrated ; and 
 
 f See vol. i., chap, xiv., 20-22. 
 
222 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 hitherto, the course of geological discovery has given me, I 
 regret to say, nothing to add to them : but the methods of 
 microscopic research originated by Mr. Sorby, cannot but 
 issue, in the hands of the next de Saussure, in some trust- 
 worthy interpretation of the great phenomena of Alpine 
 form. 
 
 16. I have just enough space left in this chapter to give 
 some illustrations of the modes of crystalline increment which 
 are not properly subjects of mathematical definition ; but are 
 variable, as in the case of the formations of ice above described, 
 by accidents of situation, and by the modes and quantities of 
 material supply. 
 
 17. More than a third of all known minerals crystallize in 
 forms developed from original molecules which can be ar- 
 ranged in cubes and octahedrons ; and it is the peculiarity of 
 these minerals that whatever the size of their crystals, so far 
 as they are perfect, they are of equal diameter in every di- 
 rection ; they may be square blocks or round balls, but do 
 not become pillars or cylinders. A diamond, from which the 
 crystalline figure familiar on our playing cards has taken its 
 popular name, be it large or small, is still a diamond, in figure 
 as well as in substance, and neither divides into a star, nor 
 lengthens into a needle. 
 
 18. But the remaining two-thirds of mineral bodies resolve 
 themselves into groups, which, under many distinctive con- 
 ditions, have this in common, — that they consist essentially 
 of pillars terminating in pyramids at both ends. A diamond 
 of ordinary octahedric type may be roughly conceived as com- 
 posed of two pyramids set base to base ; and nearly all min- 
 erals belonging to other systems than the cubic, as composed 
 of two pyramids with a tower between them. The pyramids 
 may be four-sided, six-sided, eight-sided ; the tower may be 
 tall, or short, or, though rarely, altogether absent, leaving the 
 crystal a diamond of its own sort ; nevertheless, the primal 
 separation of the double pyramid from the true tower with 
 pyramid at both ends, will hold good for all practice, and to 
 all sound intelligence. 
 
 19. Now, so long as it is the law for a mineral, that how- 
 
Fig 1- Fig. 2 
 
 Plate X. — Modes of Crystalline Increment. 
 
BRUM A ART1FEX. 
 
 223 
 
 ever large it may be, its form shall be the same, we have only 
 crystallographic questions respecting the modes of its increase. 
 But when it has the choice whether it will be tall or short, 
 stout or slender, and also whether it will grow at one end or 
 the other, a number of very curious conditions present them- 
 selves, unconnected with crystallography proper, but bearing 
 much on the formation and aspect of rocks. 
 
 20. Let a, fig. 1, plate X., be the section of a crystal formed 
 by a square tower one-third higher than it is broad, and 
 having a pyramid at each end half as high as it is broad. 
 Such a form is the simplest general type of average crystalline 
 dimension, not cubic, that we can take to start with. 
 
 Now if, as at b, we suppose the crystal to be enlarged by 
 the addition of equal thickness or depth of material on all its 
 surfaces, — in the figure its own thickness is added to each 
 side, — as the process goes on, the crystal will gradually lose 
 its elongated shape, 'and approximate more and more to that 
 of a regular hexagon. If it is to retain its primary shape, the 
 additions to its substance must be made on the diagonal lines 
 dotted across the angles, as at c, and be always more at the 
 ends than at the flanks. But it may chance to determine the 
 additions wholly otherwise, and to enlarge, as at d, on the 
 flanks instead of the points ; or, as at e, losing all relation to 
 the original form, prolong itself at the extremities, giving 
 little, or perhaps nothing, to its sides. Or, lastly, it may alter 
 the axis of growth altogether, and build obliquely, as at /, on 
 one or more planes in opposite directions. 
 
 21. All the effective structure and aspect of crystalline sub- 
 stances depend on these caprices of their aggregation. The 
 crystal of amethyst of which a longitudinal section is given in 
 plate X., fig. 2, is more visibly, by help of its amethyst stain- 
 ing,) but not more frequently or curiously, modified by acci- 
 dent than any common prism of rough quartz will be usually 
 found on close examination ; but in this example, the various 
 humours, advances, and pauses of the stone are all traced for 
 us by its varying blush ; and it is seen to have raised itself in 
 successive layers above the original pyramid — always thin at 
 the sides, and oblique at the summit, and apparently endeav* 
 
224 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 ouring to educate the rectilinear impulses of its being into 
 compliance with a beautiful imaginary curve. 
 
 22. Of prisms more successful in this effort, and constructed 
 finally with smoothly curved sides, as symmetrical in their 
 entasis as a Greek pillar, it is easy to find examples in opaque 
 quartz — (not in transparent*) — but no quartz crystal ever 
 bends the vertical axis as it grows, if the prismatic structure is 
 complete ; while yet in the imperfect and fibrous state above 
 spoken of, § 5, and mixed with clay in the flammeate forms of 
 jasper, undulation becomes a law of its being ! 
 
 23. These habits, faculties, and disabilities of common quartz 
 are of peculiar interest when compared with the totally differ- 
 ent nature and disposition of ice, though belonging to the same 
 crystalline system. The rigidly and limitedly mathematical 
 mind of Cloizeaux passes without notice the mystery, and the 
 
 marvel, implied in his own brief statement of its elementary 
 form " Frisme hexagonal regidier" Why 'regular'? All crys- 
 tals belonging to the hexagonal system are necessarily regular, 
 in the equality of their angles. But ice is regular also in di- 
 mensions. A prism of quartz or calcite may be of the form a 
 on the section, Fig. 6,f or of the form b ; but ice is always 
 true — like c, as a bee's cell — ' prisme regulier.' 
 
 So again, Cloizeaux tells us that ice habitually is formed in 
 ' tables hexagonales minces.' But why thin ? — and hoiv thin ? 
 What proportion of surface to edge was in his mind as he 
 wrote, undefined? The square plates of uranite, the hex- 
 agonal folia of mica, are 6 minces ' in a quite different sense. 
 They can be seen separately, or in masses which are distinctly 
 
 * Smoky quartz, or even Cairngorm, will sometimes curve the sides 
 parallel to the axis, but (I think) pure white quartz never. 
 
 f I think it best to number my woodcuts consecutively through the 
 whole work, as the plates also ; but fig. 5 is a long way back, p. 11?, 
 vol. i. Some further notes on it will be found in the next chapter. 
 
 a 
 
 b 
 
 Fig. 6. 
 
 c 
 
Plate XI. — The Olympian Lightning. 
 
BRUM A ART IF EX. 
 
 225 
 
 separable. But the "prisme hexagonale mince, regulier" of 
 ice cannot be split into thinner plates — cannot be built into 
 longer prishis ; but, as we have seen, when it builds, is fantas- 
 tic in direction, sudden in force, endlessly complex in form. 
 
 24. Here, for instance, fig. 7, is the outline of one of the 
 sjHculse of incipient surface ice, formed by sharp frost on calm 
 water already cooled to the freezing point. I have seen liter- 
 ally clouds of surface ice woven of these barbed arrows, shot, 
 — or breathed, across half a mile of lake in ten minutes. And 
 every barb of them itself a miracle of structure, complex as an 
 Alpine peak. 
 
 These spicule float with their barbs downwards, like keels, 
 and form guiding ribs above like those of leaves, between 
 which the entire surface of the water becomes laminated ; but, 
 as it does so, the spiculse get pushed up into little mountain 
 
 ^^^^^ 
 
 Fig. 7. 
 
 ridges, always steeper on one side than the other — barbed on 
 the steep side, laminated on the other — and radiating more or 
 less trigonally from little central cones, which are raised above 
 the water-surface with hollow spaces underneath. 
 
 And it is all done with ' prismes hexagonales reguliers 9 ! 
 
 25. Done, — and sufficiently explained, in Professor Tyndall's 
 imagination, by the poetical conception of ■ six poles 1 for every 
 hexagon of ice.* Perhaps !— if one knew first what a pole was. 
 itself — and how many, attractive, or repulsive, to the east and 
 to the west, as well as to the north and the south — one might 
 institute in imaginative science — at one's pleasure ; — thus also 
 allowing a rose five poles for its five petals, and a wallflower 
 four for its four, and a lily three, and a hawkweed thirteen. 
 In the meantime, we will return to the safer guidance of primal 
 mythology. 
 
 26. The opposite plate (XI.) has been both drawn and en- 
 graved, with very happy success, from a small Greek coin, n 
 
 * 4 Forms of Water, 7 in the chapter on snow. The discovery is an< 
 nounced, with much self-applause, as an important step in science. 
 
226 
 
 DEUCALION. 
 
 drachma of Elis, by my good publisher's son, Hugh Allen. It 
 is the best example I know of the Greek type of lightning, 
 grasped or gathered in the hand of Zeus. In ordinary coins 
 or gems, it is composed merely of three flames or forked rays, 
 alike at both extremities. But in this Eleian thunderbolt, 
 when the letters F.A. (the old form of beginning the name of 
 the Eleian nation with the di gamma) are placed upright, the 
 higher extremity of the thunderbolt is seen to be twisted, in 
 sign of the whirlwind of electric storm, while its lower ex- 
 tremity divides into three symmetrical lobes, like those of a 
 flower, with spiral tendrils from the lateral points : as con- 
 stantly the honeysuckle ornament on vases, and the other 
 double groups of volute completed in the Ionic capital, and 
 passing through minor forms into the earliest recognizable 
 types of the fleur-de-lys. 
 
 27. The intention of the twisted rays to express the action 
 of storm is not questionable — "tres imbris torti radios, et 
 alitis austri." But there can also be little doubt that the 
 tranquillities of line in the lower divisions of the symbol are 
 intended to express the vital and formative power of electricity 
 in its terrestrial currents. If my readers will refer to the 
 chapter in ' Proserpina ' on the roots of plants, they will find 
 reasons suggested for concluding that the root is not merely a 
 channel of material nourishment to the plant, but has a vital 
 influence by mere contact with the earth, which the Greek 
 probably thought of as depending on the conveyance of ter- 
 restrial electricity. We know, to this day, little more of the 
 great functions of this distributed fire than he : nor how 
 much, while we subdue or pervert it to our vulgar uses, we 
 are in every beat of the heart and glance of the eye, depen- 
 dent, with the herb of the field and the crystal of the hills, on 
 the aid of its everlasting force. If less than this was implied 
 by the Olympian art of olden time, we have at least, since, 
 learned enough to read, for ourselves his symbol, into the 
 higher faith, that, in the hand of the Father of heaven, the 
 lightning is not for destruction only ; but glows, with a 
 deeper strength than the sun's heat or the stars' light, through 
 all the forms of matter, to purify them, to direct, and to save. 
 
USTDEX TO YOL. I. 
 
 Agate, 82, 83. See Chalcedony; also, if possible, the papers on this 
 subject in the Geological Magazine, vol. iv., Nos. 8 and 11 ; v., Nos. 
 1, 4, 5 ; vi., No. 12 ; and vii., No. 1 ; and Pebbles. 
 
 Ages of Rocks, not to be denned in the catalogue of a practical Museum, 
 106. • 
 
 Alabaster, sacred uses of, 78. 
 
 Alabastron, the Greek vase so called, 78, 88. 
 
 Alps, general structure of, 11, 154 ; are not best seen from their highest 
 points, 12 ; general section of, 13 ; violence of former energies in 
 sculpture of, 20 ; Bernese chain of, seen from the Simplon, 120 ; 
 sections of, given by Studer examined, 157, 158. 
 
 Anatomy, study of, hurtful to the finest art-perceptions, 11 ; of minerals, 
 distinct from their history, 125. 
 
 Amethyst, 90 ; and see Hyacinth. 
 
 Angelo, Monte St. , near Naples, 30. 
 
 Angels, and fiends, contention of, for souls of children, 144. 
 Anger, and vanity, depressing influence of, on vital energies, 5, 6. 
 Argent, the Heraldic metal, meaning of, 91. 
 Arrangement, permanence of, how necessary in Museums, 107. 
 Artist, distinction between, and man of science, 24 ; how to make one, 
 79. 
 
 Athena, her eyes of the colour of sunset sky, 78. 
 
 Banded structure, in rocks, 116. 
 
 Baptism, chimes in rejoicing for, at Maglans, 58. 
 
 Bdellium, meaning of the word, 76. 
 
 Bell- Alp, hotel lately built on, its relation to ancient hospice of Simplon, 
 109. 
 
 Bells, sweetness of their sound among mountains, 58. 
 Beauty, more at hand than can ever be seen, 71. 
 Benedict, St., laments decline of his order, 111. 
 
 Bernard, St., labours of, 89 ; sermons of, 94 ; his coming to help 
 
 Dante, 112. 
 Berne, town of, scenery in its canton, 13. 
 
228 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Bionnassay, aiguille of, its beauty, 19. In the 25th line of that page, 
 
 for 1 buttresses/ read 'buttress.' 
 Blue, how represented in Heraldry, 89. 
 
 Bischof, G-ustav, facts of mineral formation collected by, as yet in- 
 sufficient, 111. 
 
 Bowerbank, Mr., exhaustive examination of flint fossils by, 112. 
 Breccia, (but for 'breccia' in these pages, read 'conglomerate ') of the 
 
 outmost Bernese Alps, 16, 17. 
 Brientz, lake and valley of, 14. 
 Brunig, pass of, 14. 
 
 Bunney, Mr. J., drawing in Yenice by, 96. 
 
 Carbuncle, meaning of the stone in Heraldry, 91. 
 Chalcedony, formation of, 109 ; general account of, 122. 
 Chalk, formation of, in the Alps, 13. 
 
 Chamouni, valley of, its relation to the valley-system of the Alps, 14. 
 Channels of rivers, formation of, 52, 136 ; and compare with p. 52 Mr. 
 
 Clifton Ward s account of the denudation of the Lake district, 
 
 Geological Magazine, vol. vii., p. 16. 
 Chede, lake of, its destruction, 29. 
 
 Cleavage, general discussion of subject opens, 158 ; definition of the 
 
 several kinds of, 166. 
 Cliffs of the Bay of Uri, 61. 
 
 Clifton Ward, Rev. Mr., justice of his observations on glaciation of 
 Lake district, 32 ; examination of agate structure by, 111 ; con- 
 tinued, 125, 147 ; completed, 150 ; note on cleavage by, 159. 
 
 Cluse, valley of, in Savoy, described, 58. 
 
 Colour, perception of, its relation to health and temper, 85, 95 ; di* 
 
 visions and order of, 86 ; Heraldic, antiquity of, 87. 
 Como, lake and valley of, 15. 
 
 Conglomerate of the Alps, 16 ; and in the 6th line of that page, fof 
 
 4 breccia,' read 1 conglomerate.' 
 Coniston, rocks and lake of, 136. 
 
 Contortion of Strata, 17, 19 ; observations on by Mr. Henry Willett, 
 117 ; assumptions respecting the " Plissement de la croute terrestre," 
 by M. Violet-le-Duc, 109 ; general question of, 139-140 ; practical 
 experiments in imitation of, 141, 160. Compare Saussure, Voy- 
 ages, § 35, 1801, 1802. 
 
 Controversy, fatal consequences of, 5. 
 
 Crystal, Scriptural references to 77 ; construction of, 81. 
 
 Crystallization, mystery of, 80 ; terms of its description, 125. Compart 
 ' Ethics of the Dust,' passim ; but especially chap. iii. 
 
 Curve of ice -velocities, 51. 
 
 Dante, use of, the Divina Commedia in mental purification, 111. 
 Debate, mischievousness of, to young people, 71. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 229 
 
 Defiles, transverse, of Alps, 14. 
 
 Deundation, first opening of discussion upon, 130 ; obscurity of the 
 geological expression, 131 ; apparent violence of its indiscriminate 
 action, 138. See above, Channels ; and compare * Modern Painters,' 
 vol. iv., p. 110. 
 
 Design of ornament, how obtainable, 98. 
 
 4 Deucalion' and * Proserpina,' reasons for choice of these names for 
 
 the author's final works, 8. 
 Devil, influence of the, in modern education, 144. 
 Dew, Arabian delight in, 76. 
 
 Diamond, its meaning in Heraldry, 91 ; the story of diamond necklace, 
 moral of, 97. 
 
 Dilatation, theory of, in glaciers, its absurdity, 115 ; the bed of the Mer 
 
 de Glace, considered as a thermometer tube, 116. 
 Dover, cliffs of, operations which would be needful to construct Alps 
 
 with them, 20 ; imagined results of their softness, 139. 
 
 Edinburgh Castle, geology of its rock, 27. 
 Emerald, meaning of, in Heraldry, 89. 
 English, how to write it best, 142. 
 Erosion, how far the idea of it is exaggerated, 31. 
 
 Esdras, second book of, curious verse in its 5th chapter, probable inter- 
 pretation of, 8. 
 
 Essence (real being) of things, is in what they can do and suffer, 73. 
 'Evenings at Home,' quoted, 22. 
 
 Excess in quantity, harm of, in Museum collections for educational pur- 
 poses, 107. 
 Expansion. See Dilatation. 
 
 Eyes, their use, a nobler art than that of using microscopes, 22 ; colour 
 of Athena's, 78. 
 
 Facts, how few, generally trustworthy, yet ascertained respecting min- 
 eral formation, 110. 
 Faraday, Professor, discovery of regelation by, 34. 
 
 Fissures in chalk containing flints, and traversing the flints, described 
 by Mr. Henry Willett, 102, 107. 
 
 Flint, essential characters of, 73 ; account of, carefully instituted by 
 Mr. H. Willett, 110; no one knows yet how secreted, 112; dis- 
 placed veins of, 101, 103. 
 
 Forbes, Professor James, of Edinburgh, discovers the law of glacier mo- 
 tion, 41 ; his survey of the Mer de Glace, 66 ; general notices of, 33 ? 
 64 ; the Author's meeting with, 108. 
 
 Flowing, difficulty of defining the word, 43. 
 
 Fluids, the laws of their motion not yet known, 69. 
 
 Fractures of flint, difficulties in explaining, 102-107. 
 
230 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Geology, the Author's early attachment to, 6 ; not needfut to artists, 
 but rather injurious, 11 ; modern errors in developing, 60. 
 
 Glaciers, are fluent bodies, 32 ; do not cut their beds deeper, but fill 
 them up, 34, 53 ; original deposition of, 35 ; summary of laws of 
 motion in, 41 ; rate of motion in, how little conceivable in slow- 
 ness, 42 ; drainage of higher valleys by, 42 ; rising of their surface 
 in winter, how accounted for, 68 ; false theories respecting, illus- 
 trated, 115, 116. Compare also Tors Clavigera,' Letters xxxiv., 
 pp. 88-94, and xxxv. , pp. 112-114. 
 
 Gold, special mechanical qualities of, 62 ; need for instruction in its 
 use, 79 ; mystery of its origin, 80 ; nomenclature of its forms, 
 105. 
 
 Gondo, defile of, in the Simplon pass, 14. 
 
 Good and Evil in spiritual natures, how discernible, 23, 144. 
 
 Greek-English words, barbarism of, 142. 
 
 Green, how represented in Heraldry, 89. 
 
 Grey, meaning of, in Heraldry, 82. 
 
 Gula, mediaeval use of the word, 94. 
 
 Gules, meaning of the colour so called, in Heraldry, 82. 
 
 Honey, use of, in experiments on glacier motion, 68, 140. 
 Hyacinth, the precious stone so called, meaning of in Heraldry, 92. 
 Heraldry, nobleness of, as a language, 95 ; order of colours in, 88 ; of 
 the sky, 99. 
 
 Hyalite, transition of, into chalcedony, 121-123. 
 
 Ice, (of glaciers) will stretch, 47 ; is both plastic and viscous, 64. See 
 Glacier. 
 
 Interlachen, village of, stands on the soil deposited by the stream from 
 
 Lauterbrunnen, 21 ; duty of geologists at, 166. 
 Iris of the Earth, 62 ; the Messenger, 87. 
 Imps, not to be bottled by modern chemists, 143. 
 Iacinth. See Hyacinth. 
 
 Jasper, Heraldic meaning of, 89. 
 
 Jewels, holiness of, 79, 84; delighted in by religious painters, 98 ; duty 
 
 of distributing, 99. 
 Jones, Mr. Rupert, summary of mineralogical work by, 111. 
 Judd, Mr. J. W., notice of geology of Edinburgh by, 27. 
 Jungfrau, view of, from Castle of Manfred, 166. 
 
 Jura mountains, view of the Alps from, 13 ; section of, in relation ta 
 Alps, 13, 164 ; limestone formation of, 16. 
 
 Kendal, town of, scenery near, 127. 
 Kinnoull, hill of, near Perth, agates in, 82. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 231 
 
 Knighthood, Christian, its faithfulness to Peace, 85. 
 Knots of siliceous rock, nature of, 113. 
 
 Knowledge, how shortened by impatience, and blighted by debate, 70, 
 71. 
 
 Lakes, level of, among Alps, 15 ; evacuation of, 135 ; English district 
 
 of, section through, 157. 
 Landscape, the study of, little recommended by the Author at Oxford, 10. 
 Language, scientific, how to be mended, 142 ; dependence of, for its 
 
 beauty, on moral powers, 95. 
 Lauterbrunnen, valley of, 21, 166. 
 Lava, definition of, 119 ; depth of, 120. 
 Lenticular curiosity, vileness of, 23. 
 
 Leslie, Mr. Stephen, reference to unadvised statements by, respecting 
 
 the achievements of Alpine Club, 11. 
 Limestone, Jura and Mountain, general notes on, 16, 164, 165. 
 Lucerne, lake of, reason of its cruciform plan, 14. 
 Lungren, lake of, its unusual elevation, 15. 
 Lyell, Sir Charles, final result of his work, 25, 28. 
 
 Maggiore, lake and valley of, 16. 
 Maglans, village of, in Savoy, scenery near, 60. 
 Malleson, the Rev. F. A., discovers rare form of Coniston slate, 138. 
 Manna, (food of the Israelites,) reasons for its resemblance to crystal, 
 77. 
 
 Mental perception, how dependent on moral character, 96. 
 Metal-work, history of, proposal for its illustration, 72. 
 Microscope, mistaken use of the, opposed to use of eyes, 23. 
 Mineralogy, principles of arrangement in, adapted to popular intelli- 
 gence, 101 ; present state of the science, 110. 
 Modernism, the degradation of England by it, 95. 
 
 * Modern Painters,' (the Author's book, so called,) contained the first 
 truthful delineations of the Alps, 109 ; the Author's design for its 
 republication, 8, 11 ; mistake in it, caused by thinking instead of 
 observing, 36. 
 
 Motion, proportionate, how to study, 47 ; rate of, in glaciers, 42. 
 Mountains, how to see, and whence, 12. 
 
 Museums, arrangement of, general principles respecting, 106 ; special 
 
 plan of that at Sheffield, 99, 102. 
 Muscular energy, not an all-sufficient source of happiness, or criterion 
 
 of taste, 12. 
 
 Nations, lower types of, without language or conscience, 95. 
 Niagara, misleading observations upon, by the school of Sir Charles 
 Lyell, 29. 
 
232 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Noises in modern travelling, 57. 
 
 Novelty the worst enemy of knowledge, 71. 
 
 Nuts of silica, and almonds, why so called, 113. 
 
 Onyx, importance of, in the history of the Jews, 77, 78 ; general ac- 
 count of, 78, 83. 
 Or, the Heraldic metal, meaning of, 87. 
 
 Paradise, treasures of its first river, 75. 
 
 Passion, evil effects of, on bodily health, 5. The reader would do well 
 to study on this subject, with extreme care, the introductory clauses 
 of Sir Henry Thompson's paper on Food, in the 28th number of 
 the 'Nineteenth Century.' 
 
 Paste, experiments in, on compression of strata, 139. 
 
 Pearls, of great and little price, relative estimate of by English ladies, 
 98 ; Heraldic meaning of, 92. 
 
 Pebbles, Scotch, nature of, unknown, 61. See Agate. 
 
 Periods, the three great, of the Earth's construction, 25. 
 
 Phillips, Professor, of Oxford, 61 ; section of Lake district by, 139. 
 
 Plain of Switzerland, north of the Alps, its structure, 13. 
 
 Plans, the Author's, of future work, 6. (I observe many readers have 
 passed this sentence without recognizing its irony.) 
 
 Plantagenet, Geoffrey, shield of, 91. 
 
 Plasticity, the term defined, 62. 
 
 Pools, how kept deep in streams, dubitable, 132. 
 
 Poverty, how to be honourably mitigated, 107. 
 
 Prestwich, Professor, of Oxford, 86. 
 
 Priority in discovery, never cared for by the Author, 7. 
 
 Progress, certainty of, to be secured in science only by modesty, 109. 
 
 Proteus, the seal-herdsman, 94. 
 
 Purple, modern errors respecting the colour, 94. Compare Hyacinth. 
 Purpure, the Heraldic colour, meaning of, 90. 
 
 Ram's skins, for covering of Jewish Tabernacle, 94. 
 Red, how represented in Heraldry, 88. 
 
 Regelation, theory of, as causing the motion of glaciers,-— its absurdity, 
 187. 
 
 Rendu, Bishop of Amiens, his keenness of sense, 39. 
 
 Rhine, upper valley of, 15. 
 
 Rhone, upper valley of, 15. 
 
 Rocks, wet and dry formation of, 110. 
 
 Rood, Professor, Author receives assistance from, 69. 
 
 Rosa, Monte, the chain of Alps to the north of it, 175. 
 
 Rose, the origin of the Persian word for red, 88. 
 
 Rossberg, fall of, how illustrating its form. 16. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 233 
 
 Sable, the Heraldic colour, meaning of, 91. 
 Scarlet, the Heraldic colour, meaning of, 89. 
 
 Science, modern, duties of, 30, 127 ; modern vileness and falseness of, 
 144 ; true, how beginning and ending, 146. (In that page, line 
 23, for ' science, 7 read * morals.') 
 
 Scientific Persons, how different from artists, 24. 
 
 Sealskins, use of, in the Jewish Tabernacle, 26. 
 
 Selfishness, the Author's, 121. 
 
 Sense, in morals, evil of substituting analysis for, 23. 
 Senses, the meaning of being in or out of them, 23. 
 Sensibility, few persons have any worth appealing to, 11. 
 Sentis, Hoche, of Appenzell, structure of, 13, 17. 
 Silica in lavas, 119 ; varieties of, defined, 120. 
 Sinai, desert of, coldness of occasional climate in, 74. 
 Simplon, village of, 107 ; Hospice of, 114. 
 
 Slate, cleavage of, generally discussed, 158. Compare * Modern Paint- 
 ers,' Part v , chapters viii.-x. 
 Sloth, (the nocturnal animal,) misery of, 144. 
 Snow, Alpine, structure of, 35, 38, 40. 
 Sorby, Mr., value of his work, 111. 
 Sovereign, (the coin,) imagery on, 102. 
 Squirrel, beauty of, and relation to man, 145. 
 Stalagmite, incrustation of, 109. 
 Standing of aiguilles, method of, to be learned, 21. 
 Stockhorn, of Thun, structure of, 13. 
 
 Stones, loose in the Park, one made use of, 73 ; precious their real 
 meaning, 96. 
 
 Streams, action of, 132. See Channels ; and compare i Modern Paint- 
 ers,' vol. x., pp. 91, 95. 
 Studer, Professor, references to his work on the Alps, 18, 157. 
 Sun, Heraldic type of Justice, 87, 88. 
 
 Tabernacle, the Jewish fur-coverings of, 94 ; the spiritual, of God, in 
 man, 99. 
 
 Temeraire, the fighting, at Trafalgar, 87. 
 Tenny, the Heraldic colour, meaning of, 89. 
 
 Theory, mischief of, in scientific study, 109 ; the work of ' Deucalion ' 
 
 exclusive of it, 20. 
 Thinking, not to be trusted, when seeing is possible, 36. 
 Thoughts, worth having, come to us ; we cannot come at them, 56. 
 Thun, lake and vale of, 14 ; passage of the lake by modern tourists, 
 
 19 ; old-fashioned manners of its navigation, 19. 
 Time, respect due to, in forming collections of objects for study, 107. 
 Topaz, Heraldic meaning of, 88. 
 
 Torrents, action of, in forming their beds, debated, 28. 
 
234 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Town life, misery of, 146. 
 
 Truth, ultimate and mediate, differing character of, 92. 
 
 Turner, J. M. W., Alpine drawings by, 11. 
 
 Tylor, Mr. Alfred, exhaustive analysis of hill curves by, 167. 
 
 Tyndall, Professor, experiments by, 37 ; various references to his works t 
 
 46, 50, 67, 114, 158, 163. 
 Tyrrwhitt, the Rev. St. John, sketches in Arabia by, 76. 
 
 Valleys, lateral and transverse, of Alps, 14 ; names descriptive of, in 
 
 England how various, 128. 
 Valtelline, relation of, to Alps, 15. 
 Vanity of prematurely systematic science, 101. 
 Vert, the Heraldic colour, meaning of, 89. 
 Via Mala, defile of, 14, 20. 
 Violet-le-Duc, unwary geology by, 108. 
 
 Viscosity, definition of, 47, 62 ; first experiments on viscous motion of 
 
 viscous fluids by Professor Forbes, 45. 
 Volcanos, our personal interest in the phenomena of, in this world, 143. 
 
 Woman, supremely inexplicable, 72. 
 
 Willett, Mr. Henry, investigations of flint undertaken by, 110 ; pro- 
 ceeded with, 114. 
 Waves of glacier ice, contours of, in melting, 117. 
 
 Wood, the Rev. Mr., method of his teaching, 145 ; and compare 1 Fors 
 
 Clavigera,' Letter li., vol. ii. pp. 356-357. 
 Woodward, Mr. Henry, experiment by, on contorted strata, 18. 
 Woods, free growth of, in Savoy, 59. 
 Weathering of Coniston slate, 137. 
 
 Yellow, how represented in Heraldry, 81. 
 Yewdale, near Coniston, scenery of, 130, 134, 136. 
 Yewdale Crag, structure of 137 ; a better subject of study than crags in 
 the moon, 143. 
 
KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 The Publishers think it due to the Author of this Fairy 
 Tale.', to state the circumstances under which it appears. 
 
 The King of the Golden Kiver was written in 1841, at the 
 request of a very young lady, and solely for her amusement, 
 without any idea of publication. It has since remained in the 
 possession of a friend, to whose suggestion, and the passive 
 assent of the Author, the Publishers are indebted for the op- 
 portunity of printing it. 
 
 The Illustrations, by Mr. Kichard Doyle, will, it is hoped, 
 be found to embody the Author's ideas with characteristic 
 spirit. 
 
THE KING OF THE GOLDEN 
 
 OR, 
 
 THE BLACK BROTHERS. 
 
 RIVER; 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 How the Agricultural System of the Black Brothers was 
 
 INTERFERED WITH BY SOUTHWEST WlND, ESQUIRE. 
 
 A secluded and mountainous part of 
 Stiria there was, in old time, a valley 
 of the most surprising and luxuriant 
 fertility. It was surrounded, on all 
 sides, by steep and rocky mountains, 
 rising into peaks, which were always 
 covered with snow, and from which a number of torrents 
 descended in constant cataracts. One of these fell westward, 
 over the face of a crag so high, that, when the sun had set to 
 everything else, and all below was darkness, his beams still 
 $hone full upon this waterfall, so that it looked like a shower 
 J. gold, it wa$, therefore, called, by the people of the neigh- 
 
240 
 
 THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER; 
 
 borhood, the Golden Biver. It was strange that none of 
 these streams fell into the valley itself. They all descended 
 on the other side of the mountains, and wound away through 
 broad plains and by popular cities. But the clouds were 
 drawn so constantly to the snowy hills, and rested so softly in 
 the circular hollow, that in time of drought and heat, when 
 all the country round was burnt up, there was still rain in 
 the little valley ; and its crops were so heavy, and its hay so 
 high, and its apples so red, and its grapes so blue, and its 
 wine so rich, and its honey so sweet, that it was a marvel to 
 every one who beheld it, and was commonly called the Treas- 
 ure Valley. 
 
 The whole of this little valley belonged to three brothers, 
 called Schwartz, Hans, and Gluck. Schwartz and Hans, the 
 two elder brothers, were very ugly men, with over-hanging 
 eyebrows and small dull eyes, which were always half shut, 
 so that you couldn't see into them, and always fancied they 
 saw very far into you. They lived by farming the Treasure 
 Valley, and very good farmers they were. They killed every- 
 thing that did not pay for its eating. They shot the black- 
 birds, because they pecked the fruit ; and killed the hedge- 
 hogs, lest they should suck the cows ; they poisoned the 
 crickets for eating the crumbs in the kitchen ; and smothered 
 the cicadas, which used to sing all summer in the lime trees. 
 They worked their servants without any wages, till they would 
 not work any more, and then quarrelled with them, and turned 
 them out of doors without paying them. It would have been 
 very odd, if with such a farm, and such a system of farming, 
 they hadn't got very rich ; and very rich they did get. They 
 generally contrived to keep their corn by them till it was very 
 dear, and then sell it for twice its value ; they had heaps of 
 gold lying about on their floors, yet it was never known that 
 they had given so much as a penny or a crust in charity ; they 
 never went to mass ; grumbled perpetually at paying tithes ; 
 and were, in a word, of so cruel and grinding a temper, as to 
 receive from all those with whom they had any dealings, the 
 pickname of the "Black Brothers." 
 
 The youngest brother, Gluck, was as completely opposed. 
 
OR, TEE BLACK BROTHERS. 
 
 2« 
 
 in both appearance and character, to his seniors as could pos- 
 sibly be imagined or desired. He was not above twelve years 
 old, fair, blue-eyed, and kind in temper to every living thing. 
 He did not, of course, agree particularly well with his brothers, 
 or rather, they did not agree with him. He was usually ap- 
 pointed to the honorable office of turnspit, when there was 
 anything to roast, which was not often ; for, to do the brothers 
 justice, they were hardly less sparing upon themselves than 
 upon other people. At other times he used to clean the shoes, 
 floors, and sometimes the plates, occasionally getting what 
 was left on them, by way of encouragement, and a wholesome 
 quantity of dry blows, by way of education. 
 
 Things went on in this manner for a long time. At last 
 came a very wet summer, and everything went wrong in the 
 country around. The hay had hardly been got in, when the 
 haystacks were floated bodily down to the sea by an inunda- 
 tion ; the vines were cut to pieces with the hail ; the corn was 
 all kil]ed by a black blight ; only in the Treasure Valley, as 
 usual, all was safe. As it had rain when there was rain no- 
 where else, so it had sun when there was sun nowhere else. 
 Everybody came to buy corn at the farm, and went away 
 pouring maledictions on the Black Brothers. They asked 
 what they liked, and got it, except from the poor people, who 
 could only beg, and several of whom were starved at their 
 very door, without the slightest regard or notice. 
 
 It was drawing toward winter, and very cold weather, when 
 one day the two elder brothers had gone out, with their usual 
 warning to little Gluck, who was left to mind the roast, that 
 he was to let nobody in, and give nothing out. Gluck sat 
 down quite close to the fire, for it was raining very hard, and 
 the kitchen walls were by no means dry or comfortable look- 
 ing. He turned and turned, and the roast got nice and brown. 
 " What a pity," thought Gluck, " my brothers never ask any- 
 body to dinner. I'm sure, when they've got such a nice piece 
 of mutton as this, and nobody else has got so much as a piece 
 of dry bread, it would do their hearts good to have somebody 
 to eat it with them." 
 
 Just as he spoke, there came a double knock at the house 
 
2*2 THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER; 
 
 door, yet heavy and dull, as though the knocker had been tied 
 up — more like a puff than a knock. 
 
 "It must be the wind," said Gluck ; "nobody else would 
 venture to knock double knocks at our door." 
 
 No ; it wasn't the wind : there it came again very hard, and 
 what was particularly astounding, the knocker seemed to be 
 in a hurry, and not to be in the least afraid of the conse- 
 quences. Gluck went to the window, opened it, and put his 
 head out to see who it was. 
 
 It was the most extraordinary looking little gentleman he 
 had ever seen in his life. He had a very large nose, slightly 
 brass-colored ; his cheeks were very round, and very red, 
 and might have warranted a supposition that he had been 
 blowing a refractory fire for the last eight-and-forty hours ; his 
 eyes twinkled merrily through long silky eyelashes, his mus- 
 taches curled twice round like a corkscrew on each side of his 
 mouth, and his hair, of a curious mixed pepper-and-salt color, 
 descended far over his shoulders. He was about four feet 
 six in height, and wore a conical-pointed cap of nearly the 
 same altitude, decorated with a black feather some three feet 
 long. His doublet was prolonged behind into something re- 
 sembling a violent exaggeration of what is now termed a 
 " swallow tail/' but was much obscured by the swelling folds 
 of an enormous black, glossy-looking cloak, which must have 
 been very much too long in calm weather, as the wind, whist- 
 ling round the old house, carried it clear out from the w T earer's 
 shoulders to about four times his own length. 
 
 Gluck was so perfectly paralyzed by the singular appear- 
 ance of his visitor, that he remained fixed, without uttering a 
 word, until the old gentleman, having performed another, and 
 a more energetic concerto on the knocker, turned round to 
 look after his fly-away cloak. In so doing he caught sight of 
 Gl uck's little yellow head jammed in the window, with its 
 mouth and eyes very wide open indeed. 
 
 " Hollo ! " said the little gentleman, " that's not the way to 
 answer the door : I'm w T et, let me in." 
 
 To do the little gentleman justice, he teas wet. His feather 
 hung down between his le^s like a beaten puppy's tail drip- 
 
or. ftiE b^ack brothers. 
 
 213 
 
 ping like an umbrella ; and from the ends of his mustaches 
 the water was running into his waistcoat pockets, and out 
 again like a mill stream. 
 
 " I beg pardon, sir," said Gluck, " I'm very sorry, but I 
 really can't." 
 
 " Can't what ! " said the old gentleman. 
 
 "I can't let you in, sir, — I can't, indeed; my brothers 
 would beat me to death, sir, if I thought of such a thing. 
 What do you want, sir ? " 
 
 " Want ? " said the old gentleman, petulantly. " I want 
 fire, and shelter ; and there's your great fire there blazing, 
 crackling, and dancing on the walls, with nobody to feel it. 
 Let me in, I say ; I only want to warm myself." 
 
 Gluck had had his head, by this time, so long out of the 
 window, that he began to feel it was really unpleasantly cold, 
 and when he turned, and saw the beautiful fire rustling and 
 roaring, and throwing long bright tongues up the chimney, 
 as if it were licking its chops at the savory smell of the leg 
 of mutton, his heart melted within him that it should be burn- 
 ing away for nothing. "He does look very wet," said little 
 Gluck ; " I'll just let him in for a quarter of an hour." Round 
 he went to the door, and opened it ; and as the little gentle- 
 man walked in, there came a gust of wind through the house, 
 that made the old chimneys totter. 
 
 " That's a good boy," said the little gentleman. " Never 
 mind your brothers. I'll talk to them." 
 
 "Pray, sir, don't do any such thing," said Gluck. "I can't 
 let you stay till they come ; they'd be the death of me." 
 
 " Dear me," said the old gentleman, " I'm very sorry to 
 hear that. How long may I stay ? " 
 
 " Only till the mutton's done, sir," replied Gluck, "and it's 
 very brown." 
 
 Then the old gentleman walked into the kitchen, and sat 
 himself down on the hob, with the top of his cap accommo- 
 dated up the chimney, for it was a great deal too high for the 
 roof. 
 
 "You'll soon dry there, sir," said Gluck, and sat down 
 again to turn the mutton. But the old gentleman did not 
 
244 THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER; 
 
 dry there, but went on drip, drip, dripping among the cin- 
 ders, and the fire fizzed, and sputtered, and began to look 
 very black, and uncomfortable : never was such a cloak ; ev- 
 ery fold in it ran like a gutter. 
 
 "I beg pardon, sir," said Gluck, at length, after watching 
 the water spreading in long, quicksilver-like streams over the 
 floor for a quarter of an hour ; " mayn't I take your cloak ?" 
 
 "No, thank you," said the old gentleman. 
 
 " Your cap, sir ? " 
 
 "I am all right, thank you," said the old gentleman, rather 
 gruffly. 
 
 "But — sir — I'm very sorry," said Gluck, hesitatingly; 
 "but — really, sir — you're — putting the fire out." 
 
 " It'll take longer to do the mutton, then," replied his visi- 
 tor dryly. 
 
 Gluck was very much puzzled by the behavior of his 
 guest ; it was such a strange mixture of coolness and humil- 
 ity. He turned away at the string meditatively for another 
 five minutes. 
 
 "That mutton looks very nice," said the old gentlenmn, ai 
 length. "Can't you give me a little bit?" 
 
OR, THE BLACK BROTHERS. 
 
 245 
 
 " Impossible, sir," said Gluck. 
 
 "I'm very hungry," continued the old gentleman : "I've 
 had nothing to eat yesterday, nor to-day. They surely 
 couldn't miss a bit from the knuckle ! " 
 
 He spoke in so very melancholy a tone, that it quite melted 
 Gluck 's heart. "They promised me one slice to-day, sir,* 5 
 said he ; I can give you that, but not a bit more." 
 
 " That's a good boy," said the old gentleman again. 
 
 Then Gluck warmed a plate, and sharpened a knife. " I 
 don't care if I do get beaten for it," thought he. Just as he 
 had cut a large slice out of the mutton, there came a tremen- 
 dous rap at the door. The old gentleman jumped off the hob, 
 as if it had suddenly become inconveniently warm. Gluck 
 fitted the slice into the mutton again, with desperate efforts 
 at exactitude, and ran to open the door. 
 
 "What did you keep us waiting in the rain for?" said 
 Schwartz, as he walked in, throwing his umbrella in Gluck's 
 face. Ay ! what for, indeed, you little vagabond ? " said Hans, 
 administering an educational box on the ear, as he followed 
 his brother into the kitchen. 
 
 "Bless my soul! " said Schwartz, when he opened the door. 
 
 "Amen," said the little gentleman, who had taken his cap 
 off, and was standing in the middle of the kitchen, bowing 
 with the utmost possible velocity. 
 
 "Who's that?" said Schwartz, catching up a rolling-pin, 
 and turning to Gluck, with a fierce frown. 
 
 "I don't know, indeed, brother," said Gluck, in great ter- 
 ror. 
 
 " How did he get in ? " roared Schwartz. 
 "My dear brother," said Gluck, deprecatingly, "he was so 
 very wet ! " 
 
 The rolling-pin was descending on Gluck's head ; but, at 
 the instant, the old gentleman interposed his conical cap, on 
 which it crashed with a shock that shook the water out of it 
 all over the room. What was very odd, the rolling pin no 
 sooner touched the cap, than it flew out of Schwartz's hand, 
 spinning like a straw in a high wind, and fell into the corner 
 at the further end of the room. 
 
246 THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER; 
 
 " Who are you, sir ? " demanded Schwartz, turning upon 
 hiin. 
 
 " What's your business ? 93 snarled Hans. 
 
 "I'm a poor old man, sir," the little gentleman began very 
 modestly, " and I saw your fire through the window, and 
 begged shelter for a quarter of an hour." 
 
 " Have the goodness to walk out again, then," said Schwartz. 
 " We've quite enough water in our kitchen, without making 
 it a drying-house." 
 
 "It is a cold day to turn an old man out in, sir ; look at 
 
 my gray hairs." They hung down to his shoulders, as I told 
 you before. 
 
 " Ay ! " said Hans, " there are enough of them to keep you 
 warm. Walk ! " 
 
 " I'm very, very hungry, sir ; couldn't you spare me a bit 
 of bread before I go ? " 
 
 "Bread, indeed ! " said Schwartz ; " do you suppose we've 
 nothing to do with our bread, but to give it to such red-nosed 
 fellows as you ? " 
 
 "Why don't you sell your feather ? " said Hans, sneeringly- 
 "Out with you." 
 
 "A little bit," said the old gentleman. 
 
OR, THE BLACK BROTHERS. 
 
 247 
 
 " Be off ! " said Schwartz. 
 * ' Pray, gentlemen." 
 
 " Off, and be hanged ! " cried Hans, seizing him by the 
 collar. But he had no sooner touched the old gentleman's 
 collar, than away he went after the rolling-pin, spinning round 
 and round, till he fell into the corner on the top of it. Then 
 Schwartz was very angry, and ran at the old gentleman to 
 turn him out ; but he also had hardly touched him, when 
 away he went after Hans and the rolling-pin, and hit his head 
 against the wall as he tumbled into the corner. And so there 
 they lay, all three. 
 
 Then the old gentleman spun himself round with velocity 
 in the opposite direction ; continued to spin until his long 
 cloak was all wound neatly about him ; clapped his cap on his 
 head, very much on one side (for it could not stand upright 
 without going through the ceiling), gave an additional twist 
 to his corkscrew mustaches, and replied with perfect coolness : 
 *' Gentlemen, I wish you a very good morning. At twelve 
 o'clock to-night I'll call again ; after such a refusal of hospital- 
 ity as I have just experienced, you will not be surprised if 
 that visit is the last I ever pay you." 
 
 "If ever I catch you here again," muttered Schwartz, com- 
 ing, half frightened, out of the corner — but, before he could 
 finish his sentence, the old gentleman had shut the house door 
 behind him with a great bang : and there drove past the win- 
 dow, at the same instant, a wreath of ragged cloud, that 
 whirled and rolled away down the valley in all manner of 
 shapes ; turning over and over in the air ; and melting away 
 at last in a gush of rain. 
 
 "A very pretty business, indeed, Mr. Gluck !" said Schwartz. 
 " Dish the mutton, sir. If ever I catch you at such a trick 
 again — bless me, why the mutton's been cut ! " 
 
 " You promised me one slice, brother, you know," said 
 Gluck. 
 
 " Oh ! and you were cutting it hot, I suppose, and going 
 to catch all the gravy. It'll be long before I promise you 
 such a thing again. Leave the room, sir ; and have the 
 kindness to wait in the coal-cellar till I call you." 
 
248 
 
 TEE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER; 
 
 Gluck left the room melancholy enough. The brothers ate 
 as much mutton as they could, locked the rest in the cup- 
 board, and proceeded to get very drunk after dinner. 
 
 Such a night as it was ! Howling wind, and rushing rain, 
 without intermission. The brothers had just sense enough 
 left to put up all the shutters, and double bar the door, be- 
 fore they went to bed. They usually slept in the same room. 
 As the clock struck twelve, they were both awakened by a 
 tremendous crash. Their door burst open with a violence 
 that shook the house from top to bottom. 
 
 " What's that ? " cried Schwartz, starting up in his bed. 
 
 " Only I," said the little gentleman. 
 
 The two brothers sat up on their bolster, and stared into 
 the darkness. The room was full of water, and by a misty 
 moonbeam, which found its way through a hole in the shut- 
 ter, they could see in the midst of it, an enormous foam 
 globe, spinning round, and bobbing up and down like a 
 cork, on which, as on a most luxurious cushion, reclined the 
 little old gentleman, cap and all. There was plenty of room 
 for it now, for the roof was off. 
 
 " Sorry to incommode you," said their visitor, ironically. 
 " I'm afraid your beds are dampish ; perhaps you had better 
 go to your brother's room : I've left the ceiling on, there." 
 
0P h THE BLACK BROTHERS. 
 
 249 
 
 They required no second admonition, but rushed into 
 Gluck's room, wet through, and in an agony of terror. 
 
 " You'll find my card on the kitchen table," the old gentle- 
 man called after them. "Kemember, the last visit. " 
 
 "Pray Heaven it may !" said Schwartz, shuddering. And 
 the foam globe disappeared. 
 
 Dawn came at last, and the two brothers looked out of 
 Gluck's little window in the morning. The Treasure Valley 
 was one mass of ruin and desolation. The inundation had 
 swept away trees, crops, and cattle, and left in their stead a 
 waste of red sand, and gray mud. The two brothers crept 
 shivering and horror-struck into the kitchen. The water had 
 gutted the whole first floor ; corn, money, almost every mov- 
 able thing had been swept away, and there was left only % 
 small white card on the kitchen table. On it, in large, 
 breezy, long-legged letters, were engraved the words : 
 
250 THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER; 
 
 CHAPTEE n. 
 
 Of the Proceedings of the Three Brothers after the Visit 
 of Southwest Wind, Esquire ; and how little Gluck hak 
 an Interview with the King of the Golden Kiver. 
 
 OIJTHWEST WIND, 
 
 Esquire, was as good 
 as his word. After 
 the momentous visit 
 above related, he en- 
 tered the Treasure 
 Valley no more ; and, 
 what was worse, he 
 had so much influ- 
 ence with his relations, 
 the West Winds in 
 general, and used it 
 so effectually, that they 
 all adopted a similar 
 line of conduct. So 
 no rain fell in the val- 
 ley from one year's end 
 to another. Though 
 everything remained 
 green and flourishing in the plains below, the inheritance of 
 the Three Brothers was a desert. What had once been the 
 richest soil in the kingdom became a shifting heap of red 
 sand ; and the brothers, unable longer to contend with the 
 adverse skies, abandoned their valueless patrimony in despair, 
 to seek some means of gaining a livelihood among the cities 
 and people of the plains. All their money was gone, and they 
 
02?, THE BLACK BROTHERS. 
 
 251 
 
 had nothing left but some curious old-fashioned pieces of 
 gold plate, the last remnants of their ill-gotten wealth. 
 
 " Suppose we turn goldsmiths ? " said Schwartz to Hans, 
 as they entered the large city. " It is a good knave's trade ; 
 we can put a great deal of copper into the gold, without any 
 one's finding it out." 
 
 The thought was agreed to be a very good one ; they hired 
 a furnace, and turned goldsmiths. But two slight circum- 
 stances affected their trade : the first, that people did not ap- 
 prove of the coppered gold ; the second, that the two elder 
 
 brothers, whenever they had sold anything, used to leave lit- 
 tle Gluck to mind the furnace, and go and drink out the 
 money in the ale-house next door. So they melted all their 
 gold, without making money enough to buy more, and were 
 at last reduced to one large drinking-mug, which an uncle of 
 his had given to little Gluck, and which he was very fond of, 
 and would not have parted with for the world ; though he 
 never drank anything out of it but milk and water. The 
 mug was a very odd mug to look at. The handle was formed 
 of two wreaths of flowing golden hair, so finely spun that it 
 looked more like silk than metal, and these wreaths descended 
 into, and mixed with, a beard and whiskers of the same ex- 
 quisite workmanship, which surrounded and decorated a very 
 
252 
 
 THE KING OF THE GOLDEN E1VEE; 
 
 fierce little face, of the reddest gold imaginable, right in the 
 front of the mug, with a pair of eyes in it which seemed to 
 command its whole circumference. It was impossible to 
 drink out of the mug without being subjected to an intense 
 gaze out of the side of these eyes ; and Schwartz positively 
 averred, that once, after emptying it, full of Rhenish, seven- 
 teen times, he had seen them wink ! When it came to the 
 mug's turn to be made into spoons, it half broke poor little 
 Gluck's heart ; but the brothers only laughed at him, tossed 
 the mug into the melting-pot, and staggered out to the ale- 
 house ; leaving him, as usual, to pour the gold into bars, 
 when it was all ready. 
 
 When they were gone, Gluck took a farewell look at his 
 old friend in the melting-pot. The flowing hair was all gone ; 
 nothing remained but the red nose, and the sparkling eyes, 
 which looked more malicious than ever. " And no wonder," 
 thought Gluck, "after being treated in that way." He saun- 
 tered disconsolately to the window, and sat himself down to 
 catch the fresh evening air, and escape the hot breath of the 
 furnace. Now this window commanded a direct view of the 
 range of mountains, which, as I told you before, overhung 
 
 umn of pure gold, from precipice to precipice, with the 
 double arch of a broad purple rainbow stretched across it, 
 flushing and fading alternately in the wreaths of spray. 
 
 "All! " said Gluck aloud, after he had looked at it for a 
 
 the Treasure Valley, and more 
 especially of the peak from 
 which fell the Golden River. 
 It was just at the close of 
 the day, and, when Gluck sat 
 down at the window, he saw 
 the rocks of the mountain-tops 
 all crimson and purple with 
 
 M the sunset ; and there were 
 bright tongues of fiery cloud 
 burning and quivering about 
 them ; and the river, brighter 
 than all, fell, in a waving col- 
 
OR, THE BLACK BROTHERS. 
 
 £53 
 
 while, " if that river were really all gold, what a nice thing it 
 would be." 
 
 " No, it wouldn't, Gluck," said a clear metallic voice, close 
 at his ear. 
 
 "Bless me, what's that?" exclaimed Gluck, jumping up 6 
 There was nobody there. He looked round the room, and 
 under the table, and a great many times behind him, but 
 there was certainly nobody there, and he sat down again at 
 the window. This time he didn't speak, but he couldn't help 
 thinking again that it would be very convenient if the river 
 were really all gold. 
 
 "Not at all, my boy," said the same voice, louder than 
 before. 
 
 " Bless me ! 99 said Gluck again, " what is that ? " He 
 looked again into all the corners, and cupboards, and then 
 began turning round, and round, as fast as he could in the 
 middle of the room, thinking there was somebody behind him, 
 when the same voice struck again on his ear. It was singing 
 now very merrily, " Lala-lira-la ; " no words, only a soft run- 
 ning, effervescent melody, something like that of a keitle on 
 the boil. Gluck looked out of the window. No, it was cer- 
 tainly in the house. Up-stairs, and down-stairs. No, it was 
 certainly in that very room, coming in quicker time, and 
 clearer notes, every moment. "Lala-lira-la." All at once it 
 struck Gluck that it sounded louder near the furnace. He 
 ran to the opening, and looked in : yes, he saw right, it seemed 
 to be coming, not only out of the furnace, but out of the pot. 
 He uncovered it, and ran back in a great fright, for the pot 
 w T as certainly singing ! He stood in the farthest corner of 
 the room, with his hands up, and his mouth open, for a min- 
 ute or two, when the singing stopped, and the voice became 
 dear and pronunciative. 
 
 " Hollo ! " said the voice. 
 
 Gluck made no answer. 
 
 " Hollo ! Gluck, my boy," said the pot again. 
 
 Gluck summoned all his energies, walked straight up to the 
 crucible, drew it out of the furnace, and looked in. The gold 
 was all melted, and its surface as smooth and polished as 
 
254 THE KINO OF THE GOLDEN E1VER; 
 
 a river ; but instead of reflecting little Gluck's head, as he 
 looked in, he saw, meeting his glance from beneath the gold, 
 the red nose and sharp eyes of his old friend of the mug, a 
 thousand times redder and sharper than ever he had seen 
 them in his life. 
 
 "Come, Gluck, my boy," said the voice out of the pot again. 
 "I'm all right ; pour me out." 
 
 But Gluck was too much astonished to do anything of the 
 kind. 
 
 "Pour me out, I say," said the voice, rather gruffly. 
 Still Gluck couldn't move. 
 
 " Will you pour me out? " said the voice, passionately, "I'm 
 too hot." 
 
 By a violent effort, Gluck recovered the use of his limbs, 
 took hold of the crucible, and sloped it, so as to pour out the 
 gold. But instead of a liquid stream, there came out, first, a 
 pair of pretty little yellow legs, then some coat-tails, then a 
 pair of arms stuck a-kimbo, and, finally, the well-known 
 head of his friend the mug ; all which articles, uniting 
 as they rolled out, stood up energetically on the floor, 
 in the shape of a little golden dwarf, about a foot and a half 
 high. 
 
 " That's right ! " said the dwarf, stretching out first his 
 legs, and then his arms, and then shaking his head up and 
 down, and as far around as it would go, for five minutes, 
 without stopping ; apparently with the view of ascertaining 
 if he were quite correctly put together, while Gluck stood 
 contemplating him in speechless amazement. He was dressed 
 in a slashed doublet of spun gold, so fine in its texture, that 
 the prismatic colors gleamed over it as if on a surface of 
 mother of pearl ; and, over this brilliant doublet, his hair 
 and beard fell full half w T ay to the ground, in waving curls, 
 so exquisitely delicate, that Gluck could hardly tell where 
 they ended ; they seemed to melt into air. The features of 
 the face, however, were by no means finished with the same 
 delicacy ; they were rather coarse, slightly inclining to 
 coppery in complexion, and indicative, in expression, of a 
 very pertinacious and intractable disposition in their smal] 
 
OK, THE BLACK BROTHERS. 
 
 255 
 
 proprietor. When the dwarf had finished his self-examina- 
 tion, he turned his small sharp eyes full on Gluck, and 
 stared at him deliberately for a minute or two. "No, it 
 wouldn't, Gluck, my boy," said the little man. 
 
 This was certainly rather an abrupt and unconnected mode 
 
 of commencing conversation. It might indeed be supposed 
 to refer to the course of Gluck's thoughts, which had first 
 produced the dwarf's observations out of the pot ; but what- 
 ever it referred to, Gluck had no inclination to dispute the 
 dictum. 
 
 " Wouldn't it, sir V " said Gluck, very mildly and submit 
 sively indeed. 
 
256 THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVEU ; 
 
 "No," said the dwarf, conclusively, "No, it wouldn't." 
 And with that, the dwarf pulled his cap hard over his brows, 
 and took two turns, of three feet long, up and down the room, 
 lifting his legs up very high, and setting them down very 
 hard. This pause gave time for Gluck to collect his thoughts 
 a little, and, seeing no great reason to view his diminutive 
 visitor with dread, and feeling his curiosity overcome his 
 amazement, he ventured on a question of peculiar deli- 
 cacy. 
 
 " Pray, sir," said Gluck, rather hesitatingly, "were you my 
 mug ? " 
 
 On which the little man turned sharp round, walked 
 straight up to Gluck, and drew himself up to his full height. 
 " I, " said the little man, " am the King of the Golden River," 
 Whereupon he turned about again, and took two more turns, 
 some six feet long, in order to allow time for the conster- 
 nation which this announcement produced in his auditor to 
 evaporate. After which, he again walked up to Gluck, and 
 stood still, as if expecting some comment on his communica- 
 tion. 
 
 Gluck determined to say something at all events. " I hope 
 your Majesty is very well," said Gluck. 
 
 " Listen ! " said the little man, deigning no reply to this 
 polite inquiry. " I am the King of what you mortals call the 
 Golden River. The shape you saw me in was owing to the 
 malice of a stronger King, from whose enchantments you 
 have this instant freed me. "What I have seen of you, and 
 your conduct to your wicked brothers, renders me willing to 
 serve you ; therefore, attend to w r hat I tell you. Whoever 
 shall climb to the top of that mountain, from which you see 
 the Golden River issue, and shall cast into the stream at its 
 source three drops of holy waiter, for him, and for him only, 
 the river shall turn to gold. But no one failing in his first, 
 can succeed in a second attempt ; and if any one shall cast 
 unholy water into the river, it will overwhelm him, and he 
 will become a black stone." So saying, the King of the 
 Golden River turned away, and deliberately walked into the 
 centre of the hottest flame of the furnace. His figure became 
 
OB, THE BLACK BROTHERS. 
 
 red, white, transparent, dazzling — a blaze of intense light — 
 rose, trembled, and disappeared. The King of the Golden 
 River had evaporated. 
 
 " Oh ! 99 cried poor Gluck, running to look up the chimney 
 after him ; " Oh, dear, dear, dear me ! My mug ! my mug ! 
 my mug ! " 
 
258 
 
 TEE KING OF THE GOLDEN PdVEU; 
 
 CHAPTER HI. 
 
 How Mr. Hans set off on an Expedition to the Golden 
 River, and how he prospered therein. 
 
 HE King of the Gold- 
 en River had hardly 
 made the extraordina- 
 ry exit related in the 
 last chapter, before 
 Hans and Schwartz 
 came roaring into the 
 house, very savagely 
 drunk The discov- 
 ery of the total loss 
 of their last piece of 
 plate had the effect 
 of sobering them just 
 enough to enable them 
 to stand over Gluck, 
 beating him very 
 steadily for a quarter of an hour ; at the expiration of which 
 period they dropped into a couple of chairs, and requested to 
 know what he had got to say for himself. Gluck told them 
 his story, of which, of course, they did not believe a word. 
 They beat him again, till their arms were tired, and staggered 
 to bed. In the morning, however, the steadiness with which 
 he adhered to his story obtained him some degree of cre- 
 dence ; the immediate consequence of which was, that the 
 two brothers, after wrangling a long time on the knotty ques- 
 tion, which of them should try his fortune first, drew their 
 swords and began fighting. The noise of the fray alarmed 
 
OR, THE BLACK BROTHERS. 
 
 259 
 
 the neighbors, who, finding they could not pacify the com- 
 batants, sent for the constable. 
 
 Hans, on hearing this, contrived to escape, and hid himself ; 
 but Schwartz was taken before the magistrate, fined for 
 breaking the peace, and, having drunk out his last penny the 
 evening before, was thrown into prison till he should pay. 
 
 When Hans heard this, he was much delighted, and deter- 
 mined to set out immediately for the Golden River. How to 
 get the holy water was the question. He went to the priest, 
 but the priest could not give any holy water to so abandoned 
 a character. So Hans went to vespers in the evening for the 
 
 first time in his life, and, under pretence of crossing himself, 
 stole a cupful, and returned home in triumph. 
 
 Next morning he got up before the sun rose, put the holy 
 water into a strong flask, and two bottles of wine and some 
 meat in a basket, slung them over his back, took his alpine 
 staff in his hand, and set off for the mountains. 
 
 On his way out of the town he had to pass the prison, and as 
 he looked in at the windows, whom should he see but Schwartz 
 himself peeping out of the bars, and looking very disconso- 
 late. 
 
 " Good morning, brother," said Hans ; " have you any mes- 
 sage for the King of the Golden River ? " 
 
 Schwartz gnashed his teeth with rage, and shook the bars 
 with all his strength ; but Hans only laughed at him, and ad- 
 vising him to make himself comfortable till he came back 
 again, shouldered his basket, shook the bottle of holy water 
 
2G0 THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER; 
 
 in Schwartz's face till it frothed again, and marched off in the 
 highest spirits in the world. 
 
 It was, indeed, a morning that might have made any one 
 happy, even with no Golden Eiver to seek for. Level lines of 
 dewy mist lay stretched along the valley, out of which rose 
 the massy mountains — their lower cliffs in pale gray shadow, 
 hardly distinguishable from the floating vapor, but gradu- 
 ally ascending till they caught the sunlight, which ran in 
 sharp touches of ruddy color along the angular crags, and 
 pierced, in long level rays, through their fringes of spear-like 
 pine. Far above, shot up red splintered masses of castellated 
 rock, jagged and shivered into myriads of fantastic forms/ 
 
 with here and there a streak of sunlit snow, traced down their 
 chasms like a line of forked lightning ; and, far beyond, and 
 far above all these, fainter than the morning cloud, but purer 
 and changeless, slept, in the blue sky, the utmost peaks of the 
 eternal snow. 
 
 The Golden River, which sprang from one of the lower 
 and snowless elevations, was now nearly in shadow ; all but 
 the uppermost jets of spray, which rose like slow smoke above 
 the undulating line of the cataract, and floated away in feeble 
 wreathes upon the morning wind. 
 
 On this object, and on this alone, Hans' eyes and thoughts 
 were fixed ; forgetting the distance he had to traverse, he set 
 off at an imprudent rate of walking, which greatly exhausted 
 
OB, THE BLACK BROTHERS. 261 
 
 him before he had scaled the first range of the green and low 
 hills. He was, moreover, surprised, on surmounting them, to 
 find that a large glacier, of whose existence, notwithstanding 
 his previous knowledge of the mountains, he had been abso- 
 lutely ignorant, lay between him and the source of the Golden 
 River. He entered on it with the boldness of a practised 
 mountaineer; yet he thought he had never traversed so 
 strange or so dangerous a glacier in his life. The ice was ex- 
 cessively slippery, and out of all its chasms came wild sounds 
 of gushing water ; not monotonous or low, but changeful and 
 loud, rising occasionally into drifting passages of wild mel- 
 ody, then breaking off into short melancholy tones, or sudden 
 shrieks, resembling those of human voices in distress or pain. 
 The ice was broken into thousands of confused shapes, but 
 none, Hans thought, like the ordinary forms of splintered ice. 
 There seemed a curious expression about all their outlines — a 
 perpetual resemblance to living features, distorted and scorn- 
 ful. Myriads of deceitful shadows, and lurid lights, played 
 and floated about and through the pale blue pinnacles, daz- 
 zling and confusing the sight of the traveller ; while his ears 
 grew dull and his head giddy with the constant gush and 
 roar of the concealed waters. These painful circumstances 
 increased upon him as he advanced ; the ice crashed and 
 yawned into fresh chasms at his feet, tottering spires nodded 
 around him, and fell thundering across his path ; and though 
 he had repeatedly faced these dangers on the most terrific 
 glaciers, and in the wildest weather, it was with a new and 
 oppressive feeling of panic terror that he leaped the last 
 chasm, and flung himself, exhausted and shuddering, on the 
 firm turf of the mountain. 
 
 He had been compelled to abandon his basket of food, 
 which became a perilous incumbrance on the glacier, and had 
 now no means of refreshing himself but by breaking off and 
 eating some of the pieces of ice. This, however, relieved his 
 thirst ; an hour's repose recruited his hardy frame, and with 
 the indomitable spirit of avarice he resumed his laborious 
 journey. 
 
 His way now lay straight up a ridge of bare red rocks, 
 
262 
 
 THE KINO OF THE GOLDEN RIVER; 
 
 without a blade of grass to ease the foot, or a projecting angle 
 to afford an inch of shade from the south sun. It was past 
 noon, and the rajs beat intensely upon the steep path, while 
 the whole atmosphere was motionless, and penetrated with 
 heat. Intense thirst was soon added to the bodily fatigue 
 with which Hans was now afflicted ; glance after glance he 
 cast on the flask of water which hung at his belt. " Three 
 drops are enough," at last thought he ; "I may, at least, cool 
 my lips with it." 
 
 He opened the flask, and was raising it to his lips, when his 
 
 eye fell on an object lying 
 on the rock beside him ; 
 he thought it moved. It 
 was a small c 
 ently in the last agony of 
 death from thirst. Its 
 tongue was out, its jaws 
 dry, its limbs extended 
 lifelessly, and a swarm of 
 black ants were crawling 
 about its lips and throat. 
 Its eye moved to the 
 
 bottle which Hans held in his hand. He raised it, drank, 
 spurned the animal with his foot, and passed on. And he did 
 not know how it was, but he thought that a strange shadow 
 had suddenly come across the blue sky. 
 
 The path became steeper and more rugged every moment ; 
 
OR, THE BLACK BROTHERS. 
 
 and the high hill air, instead of refreshing him, seemed to 
 throw his blood into a fever. The noise of the hill cataracts 
 sounded like mockery in his ears ; they were all distant, and 
 his thirst increased every moment. Another hour passed, and 
 he again looked down to the flask at his side ; it was half 
 empty ; but there was much more than three drops in it. 
 He stopped to open it, and again, as he did so, something 
 moved in the path above him. It was a fair child, stretched 
 nearly lifeless on the rock, its breast heaving with thirst, its 
 eyes closed, and its lips parched and burning. Hans eyed it 
 deliberately, drank, and passed on. And a dark gray cloud 
 came over the sun, and long, snake-like shadows crept up. 
 along the mountain sides. Hans struggled on. The sun was 
 sinking, but its descent seemed to bring no coolness ; the 
 leaden weight of the dead air pressed upon his brow and 
 heart, but the goal was near. He saw the cataract of the 
 Golden River springing from the hillside, scarcely five hun- 
 dred feet above him. He paused for a moment to breathe, and 
 sprang on to complete his task. 
 
 At this instant a faint cry fell on his ear. He turned, and 
 saw a gray-haired old man extended on the rocks. His eyes 
 were sunk, his features deadly pale, and gathered into an ex- 
 pression of despair. "Water!" he stretched his arms to 
 Hans, and cried feebly ; " Water ! I am dying." 
 
 "I have none," replied Hans ; "thou hast had thy share of 
 life." He strode over the prostrate body, and darted on. And 
 a flash of blue lightning rose out of the east, shaped like a 
 sword ; it shook thrice over the whole heaven, and left it dark 
 with one heavy, impenetrable shade. The sun was setting ; it 
 plunged toward the horizon like a red-hot ball. 
 
 The roar of the Golden River rose on Hans' ear. He stood 
 at the brink of the chasm through which it ran. Its waves 
 were filled with the red glory of the sunset : they shook their 
 crests like tongues of fire, and flashes of bloody light gleamed 
 along their foam. Their sound came mightier and mightier 
 on his senses ; his brain grew giddy with the prolonged thun- 
 der. Shuddering he drew the flask from his girdle, and hurled 
 it into the centre of the torrent. As he did so, an icy chili 
 
^64 TEE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER; 
 
 shot through his limbs ; he staggered, shrieked, and fell. The 
 waters closed over his cry. And the moaning of the river rose 
 wildly into the night, as it gushed over 
 
 The Black Stone, 
 
OR, THE BLACK BROTHERS. 
 
 265 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 How Mr. Schwartz set off on an Expedition to the Goldeh 
 River, and how he prospered therein. . 
 
 OR little Gluck waited very 
 anxiously alone in the house 
 for Hans' return. Finding- 
 he did not come back, he was 
 terribly frightened, and went 
 and told Schwartz in the 
 prison all that had happen- 
 ed. Then Schwartz was very 
 much pleased, and said that 
 Hans must certainly have 
 been turned into a black 
 stone, and he should have all 
 the gold to himself. But 
 Gluck was very sorry, and 
 cried all night. When he got 
 up in the morning, there was no bread in the house, nor any 
 money : so Gluck went and hired himself to another gold- 
 smith, and he worked so hard, and so neatly, and so long 
 every day, that he soon got money enough together to pay his 
 brother's fine, and he went and gave it all to Schwartz, and 
 Schwartz got out of prison. Then Schwartz was quite pleased, 
 and said he should have some of the gold of the river. But 
 Gluck only begged he would go and see what had become of 
 Hans. 
 
 Now, when Schwartz had heard that Hans had stolen the 
 holy water, he thought to himself that such a proceeding might 
 not be considered altogether correct by the King of the Golden 
 River, and determined to manage matters better. So he took 
 some more of Gluck's money, and went to a bad priest, who 
 
266 THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER; 
 
 gave liim some holy water very readily for it. Then Schwartz 
 was sure it was all quite right. So Schwartz got up early in 
 
 he was 
 surprised at 
 sight of the glacier, 
 and had great diffi- 
 culty in crossing it, 
 even after leaving his 
 basket behind him. 
 The day was cloud- 
 less, but not bright : 
 leavy 
 
 purple haze hanging 
 over the sky, and the 
 hills looked lowering 
 loomy. And as 
 Schwartz climbed the 
 steep rock path, the 
 thirst came upon him, 
 as it had upon his 
 brother, until he lifted 
 his flask to his lips to 
 drink. Then he saw 
 the fair child lying near him on the rocks, and it cried to him, 
 and moaned for water. " Water, indeed," said Schwartz ; "I 
 haven't half enough for myself," and passed on. And as he 
 went he thought the sunbeams grew more dim, and he say/ a 
 low bank of black cloud rising out of the west ; and when 
 he had climbed for another hour the thirst overcame him 
 again, and he would have drunk. Then he saw the old man 
 lying before him on the path, and heard him cry out for 
 
OR, TEE BLACK BROTHERS. 
 
 267 
 
 water. u Water, indeed," said Schwartz; " I haven't hail 
 enough for myself," and on he went. 
 
 Then again the light seemed to fade from before his eyes, 
 and he looked up, and, behold, a mist, of the color of blood, 
 had come over the sun ; and the bank of black cloud had 
 risen very high, and its edges were tossing and tumbling like 
 the waves of the angry sea. And they cast long shadows, 
 which flickered over Schwartz's path. 
 
 Then Schwartz climbed for another hour, and again his thirst 
 returned ; and as he lifted his flask to his lips, he thought 
 he saw his brother Hans lying exhausted on the path before 
 him, and, as he gazed, the figure stretched its arms to him, 
 and cried for water. "Ha, ha," laughed Schwartz, " are you 
 there ? remember the prison bars, my boy. Water, in- 
 deed ! do you suppose I carried it all the way up here for 
 you ? " And he strode over the figure ; yet, as he passed, 
 he thought he saw a strange expression of mockery about its 
 lips. And, when he had gone a few yards farther, he looked 
 back ; but the figure was not there. 
 
 And a sudden horror came over Schwartz, he knew not 
 why ; but the thirst for gold prevailed over his fear, and he 
 rushed on. And the bank of black cloud rose to the zenith, 
 and out of it came bursts of spiry lightning, and waves of 
 darkness seemed to heave and float between their flashes, over 
 the whole heavens. And the sky, where the sun was setting, 
 was all level, and like a lake of blood ; and a strong wind 
 came out of that sky, tearing its crimson clouds into frag- 
 ments, and scattering them far into the darkness. And, when 
 Schwartz stood by the brink of the Golden River, its waves 
 were black, like thunder clouds, but their foam was like fire ; 
 and the roar of the waters below and the thunder above met, 
 as he cast the flask into the stream. And, as he did so, the 
 lightning glared in his eyes, and the earth gave way beneath 
 him, and the waters closed over his cry. And the moaning 
 of the river rose wildly into the night, as it gushed over the 
 
 Two Black Stones, 
 
268 
 
 THE KINO OF THE GOLDEN RIVER; 
 
 CHAPTEE V. 
 
 HOW LITTLE GlUCK SET OFF ON AN EXPEDITION TO THE GOLDEN 
 
 River, and how he prospered therein ; with other matters 
 
 OF INTEREST. 
 
 " The little king looked very kind," thought he. "I don't 
 think he will turn me into a black stone." So he went to the 
 priest, and the priest gave him some holy water as soon as he 
 asked for it. Then Gluck took some bread in his basket, and 
 the bottle of water, and set off very early for the mountains. 
 
 If the glacier had occasioned a great deal of fatigue to his 
 brothers, it was twenty times worse for him, who was neither 
 so strong nor so practised on the mountains. He had several 
 very bad falls, lost his basket and bread, and was very much 
 frightened at the strange noises under the ice. He lay a long 
 time to rest on the grass, after he had got over, and began to 
 climb the hill just in the hottest part of the day. When he 
 had climbed for an hour, he got dreadfully thirsty, and was 
 going to drink, like his brothers, when he saw an old man 
 coming down the path above him, looking very feeble, and 
 leaning on a staff. " My son," said the old man, "lam faint 
 
 HEN Gluck found that Schwartz 
 did not come back, he was very 
 sorry, and did not know what 
 to do. He had no money, and 
 was obliged to go and hire him- 
 self again to the goldsmith, 
 who worked him very hard, and 
 gave him very little money. 
 So, after a month or two, 
 Gluck grew tired, and made 
 up his mind to go and try his 
 fortune with the Golden Eiver. 
 
OR, THE BLACK BROTHERS. 
 
 2G9 
 
 with thirst, give me some of that water." Then Gluck looked 
 at him, and when he saw that he was pale and weary, he gave 
 him the water ; fC Only, pray, don't drink it all," said Gluck. 
 But the old man drank a great deal, and gave him back the 
 bottle two-thirds empty. Then he bade him good speed, and 
 Gluck went on again merrily. And the path became easier to 
 his feet, and two or three blades of grass appeared upon if, 
 and some grasshoppers began singing on the bank beside it ; 
 and Gluck thought he had never heard such merry singing. 
 
 Then he went on for another hour, and the thirst increased 
 on him so that he thought he should be forced to drink. But, 
 
 as he raised the flask, he saw a little child lying panting by 
 the roadside, and it cried out piteously for water. Then 
 Gluck struggled with himself, and determined to bear the 
 thirst a little longer ; and he put the bottle to the child's lips, 
 and it drank it all but a few drops. Then it smiled on him, 
 and got up, and ran down the hill ; and Gluck looked after it, 
 till it became as small as a little star, and then turned and 
 began climbing again. And then there were all kinds of 
 sweet flowers growing on the rocks, bright green moss with 
 pale pink starry flowers, and soft belled gentians, more blue 
 than the sky at its deepest, and pure white transparent lilies. 
 And crimson and purple butterflies darted hither and thither, 
 and the sky sent down such pure light, that Gluck had never 
 felt so happy in his life. 
 
270 
 
 THE KINO OF THE GOLDEN RIVER; 
 
 Yet, when he had climbed for another hour, his thirst be* 
 
 came intolerable 
 again ; and, when 
 he looked at his 
 bottle, he saw that 
 there were only 
 five or six drops 
 left in it, and he 
 could not venture 
 to drink. And, as 
 he was hanging 
 the flask to his 
 j \ belt again, he saw 
 j ^\ a little dog lying 
 jl^ , on the rocks, gasp- 
 (1 tf iug for breath — 
 ^Wk just as Hans had 
 ™^ seen it on the day 
 of his ascent. And 
 Gluck stopped 
 and looked at it, 
 and then at the 
 Golden River, not 
 five hundred 
 yards above him ; 
 and he thought of 
 the dwarf's words, 
 " that no one 
 could succeed, ex- 
 cept in his first 
 \ attempt ; " and he 
 tried to pass the 
 dog, but it whined 
 piteously, and 
 Gluck stopped 
 a^ain. « Poor beastie," said Gluck, " it'll be dead when I come 
 down again, if I don't help it." Then he looked closer and 
 closer at it, and its eye turned on him so mournfully, that he 
 
On, THE BLACK BROTHERS. 
 
 211 
 
 could not stand it. " Confound the King, and his gold too," 
 said Gluek ; and he opened the flask, and poured all the water 
 into the dog's mouth. 
 
 The dog sprang up and stood on its hind legs. Its tail 
 disappeared, its ears became long, longer, silky, golden ; its 
 nose became very red, its eyes became very twinkling ; in 
 three seconds the dog was gone, and before Gluck stood his 
 old acquaintance, the King of the Golden River. 
 
 " Thank you," said the monarch ; " but don't be frightened, 
 its all right ; " for Gluck showed manifest symptoms of con- 
 sternation at this unlooked-for reply to his last observation. 
 4 4 Why didn't you come before," continued the dwarf, "in- 
 stead of sending me those rascally brothers of yours, for me 
 to have the trouble of turning into stones ? Very hard stones 
 they make too." 
 
 "Oh dear me!" said Gluck, "have you really been so 
 cruel ? " 
 
 "Cruel ! " said the dwarf, "they poured unholy water into 
 my stream : do you suppose I'm going to allow that ? " 
 
 " Why," said Gluck, "I am sure, sir — y our majesty, I mean 
 — they got the water out of the church-font." 
 
 "Very probably," replied the dwarf ; " but," and his coun- 
 tenance grew stern as he spoke, " the water which has been 
 refused to the cry of the weary and dying is unholy, though 
 it had been blessed by every saint in heaven ; and the water 
 which is found in the vessel of mercy is holy, though it had 
 been denied with corpses." 
 
 So saying, the dwarf stooped and plucked a lily that grew 
 at his feet. On its white leaves there hung three drops of 
 clear dew. And the dwarf shook them into the flask which 
 Gluck held in his hand. "Cast these into the river," he said, 
 * & and descend on the other side of the mountains into the 
 Treasure Valley. And so good speed." 
 
 As he spoke, the figure of the dwarf became indistinct. 
 The playing colors of his robe formed themselves into a pris- 
 matic mist of dewy light : he stood for an instant veiled with 
 them as with the belt of a broad rainbow. The colors grew 
 faint, the mist rose into the air ; the monarch had evaporated. 
 
272 
 
 THE KING OF THE GOLDEN RIVER 
 
 And Gluck climbed to the brink of the Golden River, and 
 its waves were as clear as crystal, and as brilliant as the sun. 
 And, when he cast the three drops of dew into the stream, 
 there opened where they fell a- small circular whirlpool, into 
 which the waters descended with a musical noise. 
 
 Gluck stood watching it for some time, very much disap- 
 pointed, because not only the river was not turned into gold, 
 but its waters seemed much diminished in quantity. Yet he 
 obeyed his friend the dwarf, and descended the other side of 
 the mountains, toward the Treasure Valley ; and, as he went, 
 he thought he heard the noise of water working its way under 
 the ground. And, when he came in sight of the Treasure 
 Valley, behold, a river, like the Golden River, was springing 
 from a new cleft of the rocks above it, and was flowing in in- 
 numerable streams among the dry heaps of red sand. 
 
 And as Gluck gazed, fresh grass sprang beside the new 
 streams, and creeping plants grew, and climbed among the 
 moistening soil.' Young flowers opened suddenly along the 
 river-sides, as stars leap out when twilight is deepening, and 
 thickets of myrtle, and tendrils of vine, cast lengthening 
 shadows over the valley as they grew. And thus the Treasure 
 Valley became a garden again, and the inheritance which 
 had been lost by cruelty was regained by love. 
 
 And Gluck went and dwelt in the valley, and the poor 
 were never driven from his door : so that his barns became 
 full of corn, and his house of treasure. And, for him, the 
 river had, according to the dwarf's promise, become a River 
 of Gold. 
 
 And, to this day, the inhabitants of the valley point out 
 the place where the three drops of holy dew were cast in- 
 to the stream, and trace the course of the Golden River 
 under the ground, until it emerges in the Treasure Valley. 
 And at the top of the cataract of the Golden River are still to 
 be seen two black stones, round which the waters howl 
 mournfully every day at sunset ; and these stones are still 
 called by the people of the valley 
 
 The Black Brothers. 
 
DAME WIGGINS OF LEE. 
 
 AAD HER 
 
 SEVEN WOiNDERFUL CATS. 
 
 A HUMOUROUS TALE, 
 
 WRITTEN PRINCIPALLY BY A LADY OF NINETY. 
 
 EMBELLISHED WITH EIGHTEEN COLOURED ENGRAVINGS, 
 
 VBIKTED FOB 
 
 A. K. NEWMAN & Co. LEA DENH ALL-STREET. 
 1823. 
 
DAME WIGGINS of Lee 
 Was a worthy old soul, 
 As e'er threaded a nee- 
 die, or wash'd in a bowl : 
 She held mice and rats 
 In such antipa-.thy ; 
 That seven fine eats 
 Kept Dame Wiggins of Lee. 
 
The rats and mice scared 
 By this fierce whisker' d crew, 
 The poor seven cats 
 Soon had nothing to do ; 
 
 So, as anv one idle 
 She ne'er loved to see, 
 She sent them to school. 
 Did Dame Wiggins of Lee* 
 
The Master soon wrote 
 That they all of them knew 
 How to read the word " milk " 
 And to spell the word u mew." 
 And they all washed their faces 
 Before they took tea : 
 * Were there ever such dears 1 9 
 Said Dame Wiggins of Lee. 
 
 3 
 
He had also thought well 
 To comply with their wish 
 To spend all their play-time 
 In learning to fish 
 For stitlings ; they sent her 
 .A present of three, 
 Which* fried, were a feast 
 For Dame Wiggins of Lee* 
 
But soon she grew tired 
 Of living alone ; 
 So she sent for her eats 
 From school to come home* 
 Each rowing a wherry, 
 Returning yon see : 
 The frolic made merry 
 Dame Wiggins of Lee 0 
 
Hie Dame was quite pleas'd, 
 
 And ran out to market; 
 
 When she came back 
 
 They were mending the carpet. 
 
 The needle each handled 
 
 As brisk as a bee ; 
 
 M Well done, my good eats/' 
 
 Said Dame Wiggins of Lee* 
 
To give them a treat, 
 She ran out for some rice ; 
 When she came back, 
 They were skating on ice. 
 " J shall soon see one down^ 
 Aje 7 perhaps 5 two or three, 
 1 ? U bet half-a-crown 3 ,f 
 Said Dame Wiggins of Lee. 
 
 7 
 
When spring-time came bade 
 They bad breakfast of curds s 
 And were greatly afraid 
 Of disturbing the birds. 
 " If you sit, like good eats, 
 All the seven in a tree. 
 They will teach you to sing S 
 Said Dame Wiggins of Lee, 
 
 s 
 
So they sat in a tree, 
 
 And said "Beautiful! Hark ! " 
 
 And they listened and looked 
 
 In the clouds for the lark. 
 
 Then sang, by the fireside, 
 
 Syniphonious-ly, 
 
 A song without words 
 
 To Dame Wiggins of Lee. 
 
They called the next day 
 
 On the tomtit and sparrow, 
 
 And wheeled a poor sick lamb 
 
 Home in a barrow* 
 
 " You. shall all have some sprats 
 
 For vour humani-tv. 
 
 My seven good cats, 9 * 
 
 Said Dame Wiggins of Lee, 
 
While she ran to the field, 
 To look for its dam $ 
 They were warming the bed 
 For the poor sick Iamb : 
 They turn'd up the clothes 
 All as neat as could be ; 
 " I shall ne'er want a nurse, 
 Said Dame Wiggins of Lee. 
 
 IE 
 
She wished them good night, 
 And went up to hod : 
 When, lo ! in the morning. 
 The cats were all fled. 
 But soon — what a ftiss ! 
 ** Where can thev all be ? 
 Here, pussy, puss, puss ! " 
 Cried Dame Wiggins of Lee/ 
 
The Dame's heart was nigh broke. 
 So she sat down tar weep, 
 When she saw them come hack 
 Each riding' a sheep : 
 She fondled and patted 
 Each purring 1 Tom -my : 
 " Ah ! welcome, my dears/' 
 Said Dame Wiggins of Lee, 
 
The Dame was unable 
 Her pleasure to smother ; 
 To see the sick Lamb 
 Jump up to its mother* 
 la spite of the gout, 
 And a pain in her knee, 
 She went dancing about ; 
 Did Dame Wiggins of Lee. 
 
The Farmer soon heard 
 Where his sheep went astray, 
 And arrived at Dame's door 
 With his faithful dog Tray. 
 He knocked with his crook 5 
 And the stranger to see, 
 Out of window did look 
 Dame Wiggins of Lee 6 
 
For their kindness he had them 
 
 All drawn by his team ; 
 
 And gave them some field- mice, 
 
 And raspberry- cream. 
 
 Said he, " All mv stock 
 
 You shall presently see ; 
 
 Eor I honour the cats 
 
 Of Dame Wiggins of Lee " 
 
 i6 
 
Me sent' his maid out 
 For some muffins and crumpets ; 
 And when lie turn'd round 
 They were Mowing of trumpets* 
 Said he* 66 1 suppose* 
 She's as deaf as can be* 
 Or this ne'er could be borne 
 By Dame Wiggins of Lee/* 
 
 i7 
 
To show them his poultry, 
 He -turn'd them all loose. 
 When each nimbly leap'd 
 On the back of a Goose* 
 Which fnghten'd them so 
 That they ran to the sea, 
 And half- drown 9 d the poor cats 
 Of Daine Wiggins of Lee. 
 
 IS 
 
For the care of his Iamb, 
 And their comical pranks, 
 He gave them a ham 
 And abundance of thanks. 
 " i wish you good-clay, 
 My- fine fellows/' said he; 
 " My compliments, pray, 
 To Dame Wiggins of Lee; 
 
 19 * 
 
You see them arrived 
 At their Dame's welcome door ; 
 They show her their presents, 
 And all their good store. 
 " New come in to supper, 
 And sit down with me ; 
 Ail welcome once more/* 
 Cried Dame Wiggins of Lee, 
 
 20 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST 
 
 TEN LECTURES 
 
 ON THE RELATION OF NATURAL SCIENCE TO ART 
 
 GIVEN BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 
 IN LENT TERM, 1872 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The following Lectures have been written, not with less care 
 but with less pains, than any in former courses, because no 
 labour could have rendered them exhaustive statements of 
 their subjects, and I wished, therefore, to take from them 
 every appearance of pretending to be so : but the assertions 
 I have made are entirely deliberate, though their terms are 
 unstudied ; and the one which to the general reader will ap- 
 pear most startling, that the study of anatomy is destructive 
 to art, is instantly necessary in explanation of the system 
 adopted for the direction of my Oxford schools. 
 
 At the period when engraving might have become to art 
 what printing became to literature, the four greatest point- 
 draughtsmen hitherto known, Mantegna, Sandro Botticelli, 
 Durer, and Holbein, occupied themselves in the new industry. 
 All these four men were as high in intellect and moral senti- 
 ment as in art-power ; and if they had engraved as Giotto 
 painted, with popular and unscientific simplicity, would have 
 left an inexhaustible series of prints, delightful to the most 
 innocent minds, and strengthening to the most noble. 
 
 But two of them, Mantegna and Durer, were so polluted 
 and paralyzed by the study of anatomy that the former's best 
 yorks (the magnificent mythology of the Vices in the Louvre, 
 for instance) are entirely revolting to all women and children ; 
 while Durer never could draw one beautiful female form or 
 face ; and, of his important plates, only four, the Melencholia, 
 St. Jerome in his study, St. Hubert, and Knight and Death, 
 are of any use for popular instruction, because in these only, 
 the figures being fuliy draped or armed, he was enabled to 
 
300 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 think and feel rightly, being delivered from the ghastly toil 
 of bone-delineation. 
 
 Botticelli and Holbein studied the face first, and the limbs 
 secondarily ; and the works they have left are therefore with- 
 out exception precious ; yet saddened and corrupted by the 
 influence which the contemporary masters of body-drawing 
 exercised on them ; and at last eclipsed by their false fame. 
 I purpose, therefore, in my next course of lectures, to explain 
 the relation of these two draughtsmen to other masters of de- 
 sign, and of engraving. 
 
 Bbantwood, Sept. 2nd, 1872. 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 LECTUKE I. 
 
 OF WISDOM AND FOLLY IN ART.* 
 
 8th February, 1872. 
 
 1. The Lectures I have given hitherto, though, in the matter 
 of them conscientiously addressed to my undergraduate pu- 
 pils, yet were greatly modified in method by my feeling that 
 this undergraduate class, to which I wished to speak, was 
 indeed a somewhat imaginary one ; and that, in truth, I was 
 addressing a mixed audience, in greater part composed of 
 the masters of the University, before whom it was my duty to 
 lay down the principles on which I hoped to conduct, or pre- 
 pare the way for the conduct of, these schools, rather than to 
 enter on the immediate work of elementary teaching. But 
 to-day, and henceforward most frequently, we are to be en- 
 gaged in definite, and, I trust, continuous studies ; and from 
 this time forward, I address myself wholly to my under- 
 graduate pupils ; and wish only that my Lectures may be ser- 
 viceable to them, and, as far as the subject may admit of it, 
 interesting. 
 
 2. And, farther still, I must ask even my younger hearers to 
 pardon me if I treat that subject in a somewhat narrow, and 
 simple way. They have a great deal of hard work to do in 
 other schools : in these, they must not think that I underrate 
 their powers, if I endeavour to make everything as easy to 
 
 * The proper titles of these lectures, too long for page headings, are 
 given in the Contents. 
 
302 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 them as possible* No study that is worth pursuing seriously 
 can be pursued without effort ; but we need never make the 
 effort painful merely for the sake of preserving our dignity. 
 Also, I shall make my Lectures shorter than heretofore. 
 What I tell you, I wish you to remember ; and I do not think it 
 possible for you to remember well much more than I can easily 
 tell you in half-an-hour. I will promise that, at all events, 
 you shall always be released so well within the hour, that you 
 can keep any appointment accurately for the next. You will 
 not think me indolent in doing this ; for, in the first place, I 
 can assure you, it sometimes takes me a week to think over 
 what it does not take a minute to say : and, secondly, believe 
 me, the least part of the work of any sound art-teacher must 
 be his talking. Nay, most deeply also, it is to be wished that, 
 with respect to the study which I have to bring before you 
 to-day, in its relation to art, namely, natural philosophy, the 
 teachers of it, up to this present century, had done less work 
 in talking, and more in observing : and it would be well even 
 for the men of this century, pre-eminent and accomplished as 
 they are in accuracy of observation, if they had completely 
 conquered the old habit of considering, with respect to any 
 matter, rather what is to be said, than what is to be known. 
 
 3. You will, perhaps, readily admit this with respect to 
 science ; and believe my assertion of it with respect to art. 
 You will feel the probable mischief, in both these domains of 
 intellect, which must follow on the desire rather to talk than 
 to know, and rather to talk than to do. But the third domain, 
 into the midst of which, here, in Oxford, science and art 
 seem to have thrust themselves hotly, like intrusive rocks, not 
 without grim disturbance of the anciently fruitful plain 
 your Kingdom or Princedom of Literature ? Can we carry 
 our statement into a third parallelism, for that ? It is ill for 
 Science, we say, when men desire to talk rather than to know ; 
 ill for Art, when they desire to talk rather than to do. HI 
 for Literature when they desire to talk, — is it? and rather 
 than — what else ? Perhaps you think that literature means 
 nothing else than talking ? that the triple powers of science, 
 art, and scholarship, mean simply the powers of knowing, 
 
TEE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 303 
 
 doing, and saying. But that is not so in any wise. The 
 faculty of saying or writing anything well, is an art, just as 
 much as any other ; and founded on a science as definite as 
 any other. Professor Max Midler teaches you the science of 
 language ; and there are people who will tell you that the only 
 art I can teach you myself, is the art of it. But try your triple 
 parallelism once more, briefly, and see if another idea will not 
 occur to you. In science, you must not talk before you 
 know. In art, you must not talk before you do. In litera- 
 ture, you must not talk before you — think. 
 
 That is your third Province. The Kingdom of Thought, 
 or Conception. 
 
 And it is entirely desirable that you should define to your- 
 selves the three great occupations of men in these following 
 terms : — 
 
 Science The knowledge of things, whether Ideal or 
 
 Substantial. 
 
 Art o ......... . The modification of Substantial things by our 
 
 Substantial Power. 
 Literature ..... The modification of Ideal things by our Ideal 
 
 Power. 
 
 4. But now observe. If this division be a just one, we 
 ought to have a word for literature, with the ' Letter ' left out 
 of it. It is true that, for the most part, the modification of 
 ideal things by our ideal power is not complete till it is ex- 
 pressed ; nor even to ourselves delightful, till it is communi- 
 cated. To letter it and label it — to inscribe and to word it 
 rightly, — this is a great task, and it is the part of literature 
 which can be most distinctly taught. But it is only the 
 formation of its body. And the soul of it can exist without 
 the body ; but not at all the body without the soul ; for that 
 is true no less of literature than of all else in us or of us — 
 "litera occidit, spiritus autem vivificat." 
 
 Nevertheless, I must be content to-day with our old word* 
 We cannot say * spiriture ' nor ' animature,' instead of litera- 
 ture ; but you must not be content with the vulgar interpret 
 
304 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 tation of the word. Remember always that you come to this 
 University, — or, at least, your fathers came, — not to learn 
 how to say things, but how to think them. 
 
 5. " How to think them ! but that is only the art of logic," 
 you perhaps would answer. No, again, not at all : logic is a 
 method, not a power ; and we have defined literature to be 
 the modification of ideal things by ideal power, not by me- 
 chanical method. And you come to the University to get 
 that power, or develope it ; not to be taught the mere method 
 of using it. 
 
 I say you come to the University for this ; and perhaps 
 some of you are much surprised to hear it ! You did not 
 know that you came to the University for any such purpose. 
 Nay, perhaps you did not know that you had come to a Uni- 
 versity at all ? You do not at this instant, some of you, I am 
 well assured, know what a University means. Does it mean, 
 for instance — can you answer me in a moment, whether it 
 means — a place where everybody comes to learn something ; 
 or a place where somebody comes to learn everything? It 
 means — or you are trying to make it mean — practically and 
 at present, the first ; but it means theoretically, and always, 
 the last ; a place where only certain persons come to learn 
 everything ; that is to say, where those who wish to be able to 
 think, come to learn to think : not to think of mathematics 
 only, nor of morals, nor of surgery, nor chemistry, but of 
 everything, rightly. 
 
 6. I say you do not all know this ; and yet, whether you 
 know it or not, — whether you desire it or not, — to some ex- 
 tent the everlasting fitness of the matter makes the facts con- 
 form to it. For we have at present, observe, schools of three 
 kinds, in operation over the whole of England. We have — I 
 name it first, though, I am sorry to say, it is last in influence 
 — the body consisting of the Royal Academy, with the Insti- 
 tute of Architects, and the schools at Kensington, and their 
 branches ; teaching various styles of fine or mechanical art. 
 We have, in the second place, the Royal Society, as a central 
 body ; and, as its satellites, separate companies of men de- 
 voted to each several science : investigating, classing, and 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 305 
 
 describing facts with unwearied industry. And, lastly and 
 chiefly, we have the great Universities, with all their subordi- 
 nate public schools, distinctively occupied in regulating, — as 
 I think you will at once admit, — not the language merely, nor 
 even the language principally, but the modes of philosophical 
 and imaginative thought in which we desire that youth 
 Should be disciplined, and age informed and majestic. The 
 methods of language, and its range ; the possibilities of its 
 beautv, and the necessities for its precision, are all dependent 
 upon the range and dignity of the unspoken conceptions 
 which it is the function of these great schools of literature to 
 awaken, and to guide. 
 
 7. The range and dignity of conceptions ! Let us pause 
 a minute or two at these words, and be sure we accept them. 
 
 First, what is a conception ? What is this separate object 
 of our work, as scholars, distinguished from artists., and from 
 men of science ? 
 
 "We shall discover this better by taking a simple instance 
 of the three agencies. 
 
 Suppose that you were actually on the plain of Paestum, 
 watching the drift of storm-cloud which Turner has here 
 engraved.* If you had occupied yourself chiefly in schools 
 of science, you would think of the mode in which the elec- 
 tricity was collected ; of the influence it had on the shape 
 and motion of the cloud ; of the force and duration of its 
 flashes, and of other such material phenomena. If you were 
 an artist, you would be considering how it might be possible, 
 with the means at your disposal, to obtain the brilliancy of 
 the light, or the depth of the gloom. Finally, if you were a 
 scholar, as distinguished from either of these, you would be 
 occupied with the imagination of the state of the temple in 
 former times ; and as you watched the thunder-clouds drift 
 past its columns, and the power of the God of the heavens 
 put forth, as it seemed, in scorn of the departed power of the 
 god who was thought by the heathen to shake the earth — the 
 utterance of your mind would become, whether in actual 
 
 * Educational Series, No. 8 ? E, 
 
306 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 words or not, such as that of the Psalmist : — u Clouds and 
 darkness are round about Him — righteousness and judgment 
 are the habitation of His throne." Your thoughts would take 
 that shape, of their own accord, and if they fell also into the 
 language, still your essential scholarship would consist, not 
 in your remembering the verse, still less in your knowing 
 that "judgment" was a Latin word, and "throne" a Greek 
 one ; but in your having power enough of conception, and 
 elevation enough of character, to understand the nature of 
 justice, and be appalled before the majesty of dominion. 
 
 8. You come, therefore, to this University, I repeat once 
 again, that you may learn how to form conceptions of proper 
 range or grasp, and proper dignity, or worthiness. Keeping 
 then the ideas of a separate school of art, and separate school 
 of science, what have you to learn in these ? You would learn 
 in the school of art, the due range and dignity of deeds ; or 
 doings — (I prefer the word to "makings," as more general) ; 
 and in the school of science, you would have to learn the 
 range and dignity of knowledges. 
 
 Now be quite clear about this : be sure whether you really 
 agree with me or not. 
 
 You come to the School of Literature, I say, to learn the 
 range and dignity of conceptions. 
 
 To the School of Art, to learn the range and dignity of 
 Deeds. 
 
 To the School of Science to learn the range and dignity of 
 Knowledges. 
 
 Do you agree to that, or not? I will assume that you 
 admit my triple division ; but do you think, in opposition 
 to me, that a school of science is still a school of science, 
 whatever sort of knowledge it teaches ; and a school of art 
 still a school of art, whatever sort of deed it teaches ; and a 
 school of literature still a school of literature, whatever sort 
 of notion it teaches ? 
 
 Do you think that ? for observe, my statement denies that. 
 My statement is, that a school of literature teaches you to 
 have one sort of conception, not another sort ; a school of 
 art to do a particular sort of deed, not another sort ; a school 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 307 
 
 of science to possess a particular sort of knowledge, not an- 
 other sort. 
 
 9. I assume that you differ with me on this point ; — some 
 of you certainly will. Well then, let me go back a step. You 
 will all go thus far with me, that — now taking the Greek words 
 — the school of literature teaches you to have vovs, or concep- 
 tion of things, instead of avota, — no conception of things ; 
 that the school of art teaches you r^vy of things, instead of 
 areata ; and the school of science, lirLa-rrnx-q, instead of dyvota 
 or 'ignorantia.' But, you recollect, Aristotle names two other 
 faculties with these three, — ^povrjats, namely, and <ro<f>ia. He 
 has altogether five, tc^vt/, l-nuTTr]^, <j>p6vr)o-is, o-o<£ux, vovs ; that 
 is to say, in simplest English, — art, science, sense, wisdom, and 
 wit. We have got our art, science, and wit, set over their 
 three domains ; and we old people send you young ones to 
 those three schools, that you may not remain artless, science- 
 less, nor witless. But how of the sense, and the wisdom ? 
 What domains belong to these ? Do you think our trefoil 
 division should become cinquefoil, and that we ought to have 
 two additional schools ; one of Philosophia, and one of Philo- 
 phronesia ? If Aristotle's division were right it would be so. 
 But his division is wrong, and he presently shows it is ; for he 
 tells jou in the next page, (in the sentence I have so often 
 quoted to you,) that " the virtue of art is the wisdom which 
 consists in the wit of what is honourable." Now that is per- 
 fectly true ; but it of course vitiates his division altogether. 
 He divides his entire subject into A, B, C, D, and E ; and 
 then he tells you that the virtue of A is the B which consists 
 in C. Now you will continually find, in this way, that Aris- 
 totle's assertions are right, but his divisions illogical. It is 
 quite true that the virtue of art is the wisdom which consists 
 in the wit of what is honourable ; but also the virtue of sci- 
 ence is the wit of what is honourable, and in the same sense, 
 the virtue of vovs, or wit itself, consists in its being the wit or 
 conception of what is honourable. 2o<£ia, therefore, is not 
 only the dperrj t€x^9, but, in exactly the same sense, the apcn} 
 c7rto-rr;/xr/9, and in the same sense, it is the dperrj voov. And if 
 not governed by <ro<£ta, each school will teach the vicious con- 
 
308 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 dition of its own special faculty. As o-o&a is the aperr} of all \ 
 three, so pupta will be the KaKia of all three. 
 
 10. Now in this, whether you agree with me or not, let me | 
 be at least sure you understand me. 2o<£ta, I say, is the 
 virtue, /xwpta is the vice, of all the three faculties of art, science, 
 and literature. There is for each of them a negative and a 
 positive side, as well as a zero. There is nescience for zero 
 in science — with wise science on one side, foolish science on 
 the other : areata for zero in art, with wise art on one side, 
 foolish art on the other ; and avoca for zero in vovs, with wise 
 vovs on one side, foolish vovs on the other. 
 
 11. You will smile at that last expression, 'foolish vovs.* 
 Yet it is, of all foolish things, the commonest and deadliest. 
 We continually complain of men, much more of women, for 
 reasoning ill. But it does not matter how they reason, if they 
 don't conceive basely. Not one person in a hundred is capa- 
 ble of seriously reasoning ; the difference between man and 
 man is in the quickness and quality, the accipitrine intensity, 
 the olfactory choice, of his vovs. Does he hawk at game or 
 carrion ? What you choose to grasp with your mind is the 
 question ; — not how you handle it afterwards. What does it 
 matter how you build, if you have bad bricks to build with ; 
 or how you reason, if every idea with which you begin is foul 
 or false. And in general all fatal false reasoning proceeds 
 from people's having some one false notion in their hearts, 
 with which they are resolved that their reasoning shall comply. 
 
 But, for better illustration, I will now take my own special 
 subject out of the three ; — rexvrj. I have said that we have, 
 for its zero, arcx^^a, or artlessness — in Latin, ' inertia,' opposed 
 to ' ars.' Well, then, we have, from that zero, wise art on the 
 one side, foolish art on the other ; and the finer the art, the 
 more it is capable of this living increase, or deadly defect. I 
 will take, for example, first, a very simple art, then a finer 
 one ; but both of them arts with which most of you are 
 thoroughly acquainted. 
 
 12. One of the simplest pieces of perfect art, which you 
 are yourselves in the habit of practising, is the stroke of an 
 oar given in true time. We have defined art to be the wise 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 309 
 
 modification of matter by the body (substantial things by sub- 
 stantial power, § 3). With a good oarstroke you displace a 
 certain quantity of water in a wise way. Supposing you 
 missed your stroke, and caught a crab, you would displace a 
 certain quantity of water in a foolish way, not only ineffect- 
 ually, but in a way the reverse of what you intended. The 
 perfectness of the stroke implies not only absolutely accurate 
 knowledge or science of the mode in which water resists the 
 blade of an oar, but the having in past time met that resistance 
 repeatedly with greater and greater lightness of adaptation 
 to the end proposed. That end being perfectly simple, — the 
 advance of the boat as far as possible w T ith a given expenditure 
 of strength, you at once recognize the degree in which the 
 art falls short of, or the artlessness negatives your purpose. 
 But your being ' o-o<£oV as an oarsman, implies much more 
 than this mere art founded on pure science. The fact of your 
 being able to row in a beautiful manner depends on other 
 things than the knowledge of the force of water, or the re- 
 peated practice of certain actions in resistance to it. It im- 
 plies the practice of those actions under a resolved discipline 
 of the body, involving regulation of the passions. It signifies 
 submission to the authority, and amicable concurrence with 
 the humours of other persons ; and so far as it is beautifully 
 done at last, absolutely signifies therefore a moral and intel- 
 lectual rightness, to the necessary extent influencing the char- 
 acter honourably and graciously. This is the sophia, or wit, 
 of what is most honourable, which is concerned in rowing, 
 without which it must become no rowing, or the reverse of 
 rowing. 
 
 13. Let us next take example in an art which perhaps you 
 will think (though I hope not) much inferior to rowing, but 
 which is in reality a much higher art — dancing. I have just 
 told you (§ 11) how to test the rank of arts — namely, by their 
 corruptibility, as you judge of the fineness of organic sub- 
 stance. The moria,* or folly, of rowing, is only ridiculous, 
 
 * If the English reader will pronounce the o in this word as in fold, 
 and in sophia as in sop, but accenting the o, not the i, I need not any 
 more disturb my pages with Greek types. 
 
310 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 but the moria, or folly, of dancing, is much worse than ridicu- 
 lous ; and, therefore you may know that its sophia, or wis- 
 dom, will be much more beautiful than the wisdom of row- 
 ing. Suppose, for instance, a minuet danced by two lovers, 
 both highly bred, both of noble character, and very much in 
 love with each other. You would see, in that, an art of the 
 most highly-finished kind, under the government of a sophia 
 which dealt with the strongest passions, and most exquisite 
 perceptions of beauty, possible to humanity. 
 
 14. For example of the contrary of these, in the same art, 
 I cannot give you one more definite than that which I saw at, 
 I think, the Gaiety Theatre — but it might have been at any 
 London theatre now, — two years ago. 
 
 The supposed scene of the dance was Hell, which was 
 painted in the background with its flames. The dancers 
 were supposed to be demons, and wore black masks, with red 
 tinsel for fiery eyes ; the same red light was represented as 
 coming out of their ears also. They began their dance by 
 ascending through the stage on spring trap-doors, which 
 threw them at once ten feet into the air ; and its performance 
 consisted in the expression of every kind of evil passion, in 
 frantic excess. 
 
 15. You will not, I imagine, be at a loss to understand the 
 sense in which the words sophia and moria are to be rightly 
 used of these two methods of the same art. But those of 
 you who are in the habit of accurate thinking will at once 
 perceive that I have introduced a new element into my sub- 
 ject by taking an instance in a higher art. The folly of row- 
 ing consisted mainly in not being able to row ; but this folly 
 of dancing does not consist in not being able to dance, but in 
 dancing well with evil purpose ; and the better the dancing, 
 the worse the result. 
 
 And now I am afraid I must tease you by asking your at- 
 tention to what you may at first think a vain nicety in analy- 
 sis, but the nicety is here essential, and I hope thoroughout 
 this course of Lectures, not to be so troublesome to you again. 
 
 16. The mere negation of the power of art — the zero of it 
 —you say, in rowing, is ridiculous. It is, of course, not less 
 
TEE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 311 
 
 ridiculous in dancing. But what do you mean by ridiculous ? 
 You mean contemptible, so as to provoke laughter. The con- 
 tempt, in either case, is slight, in ordinary society ; because, 
 though a man may neither know how to row, or dance, ho 
 may know many other things. But suppose he lived where 
 he could not know many other things ? By a stormy sea- 
 coast, where there could be no fresco-painting, in a poor 
 country, where could be none of the fine arts connected with 
 wealth, and in a simple, and primitive society, not yet reached 
 by refinements of literature ; but where good rowing was 
 necessary for the support of life, and good dancing, one of 
 the most vivid aids to domestic pleasure. You would then 
 say that inability to row, or to dance, was far worse than ridic- 
 ulous ; that it marked a man for a good-for-nothing fellow, 
 to be regarded with indignation, as well as contempt. 
 
 Now, remember, the inertia or zero of art alwa} r s involves 
 this kind of crime, or at least, pitiableness. The want of op- 
 portunity of learning takes away the moral guilt of artless- 
 ness ; but the want of opportunity of learning such arts as 
 are becoming in given circumstances, may indeed be no crime 
 in an individual, but cannot be alleged in its defence by a 
 nation. National ignorance of decent art is always criminal, 
 unless in earliest conditions of society ; and then it is brutal. 
 
 17. To that extent, therefore, culpably or otherwise, a kind 
 of moria, or folly, is always indicated by the zero of art-power. 
 But the true folly, or assuredly culpable folly, is in the exer- 
 tion of our art-power in an evil direction. And here we need 
 the finesse of distinction, which I am afraid will be provoking 
 to you. Observe, first, and simply, that the possession of any 
 art-power at all implies a sophia of some kind. These demons 
 dancers, of whom I have just spoken, were earning their 
 bread by severe and honest labour. The skill they possessed 
 could not have been acquired but by great patience and resolute 
 self-denial ; and the very power with which they were able to 
 express, with precision, states of evil passion, indicated that 
 they had been brought up in a society which, in some measure, 
 knew evil from good, and which had, therefore, some measure 
 of good in the midst of it. Nay, the farther probability is, 
 
312 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 that if you inquired into the life of these men, you would find 
 that this demon dance had been invented by some one of 
 them with a great imaginative power, and was performed by 
 them not at all in preference of evil, but to meet the demand 
 of a public whose admiration was capable of being excited 
 only by violence of gesture, and vice of emotion. 
 
 18, In all cases, therefore, observe, w 7 here the opportunity 
 of learning has been given ; the existence of the art-power in- 
 dicates sophia, and its absence indicates moria. That great 
 fact I endeavoured to express to you, two years since, in my 
 third introductory Lecture. In the present course I have to 
 show you the action of the final, or higher sophia which di- 
 rects the skill of art to the best purposes ; and of the final, or 
 lower moria which misdirects them to the worst. And the 
 two points I shall endeavour to bring before you throughout 
 will be these : — First, that the object of University teaching 
 is to form your conceptions ; — not to acquaint you with arts, 
 nor sciences. It is to give you a notion of what is meant by 
 smith's work ; for instance — but not to make you blacksmiths. 
 It is to give you a notion of what is meant by medicine, but 
 not to make you physicians. The proper academy for black- 
 smiths is a blacksmith's forge ; the proper academy for phy- 
 sicians is an hospital. Here you are to be taken away from 
 the forge, out of the hospital, out of all special and limited 
 labour and thought, into the ' Universitas ' of labour and 
 thought, that you may in peace, in leisure, in calm of disin- 
 terested contemplation be enabled to conceive rightly the 
 laws of nature, and the destinies of Man. 
 
 19. Then the second thing I have to show you is that over 
 these three kingdoms of imagination, art, and science, there 
 reigns a virtue of faculty, which from all time, and by all 
 great people, has been recognized as the appointed ruler and 
 guide of every method of labour, or passion of soul ; and the 
 most glorious recompense of the toil, and crown of the ambi- 
 tion of man. " She is more precious than rubies, and all the 
 things thou canst desire are not to be compared unto her. • 
 Lay fast hold upon her ; let her not go ; keep her, for she is 
 thy life." 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 313 
 
 Are not these, and the innumerable words like to these, 
 which you remember as I read them, strange words if Aris- 
 totle's statement respecting wisdom be true ; that it never 
 contemplates anything that can make men happy, "?} fikv yap 
 o-o<fiLa ouSeV Oeuypet i$ wv tarai evSatfjuiDV av#pu)7ros." 
 
 When we next meet, therefore, I purpose to examine what 
 it is which wisdom, by preference, contemplates ; what choice 
 she makes among the thoughts and sciences open to her, and 
 to what purpose she employs whatever science she may pos- 
 sess. 
 
 And I will briefly tell you, beforehand, that the result of 
 the inquiry will be, that instead of regarding none of the 
 sources of happiness, she regards nothing else ; that she 
 measures all worthiness by pure felicity ; that we are per- 
 mitted to conceive her as the cause even of gladness to God— 
 "I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him,"— and 
 that we are commanded to know her as queen of the popu- 
 lous world, " rejoicing in the habitable parts of the Earth, and 
 whose delights are with the sons of Men." 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 OF WISDOM AND FOLLY IN SCIENCE. 
 
 Wth February, 1872. 
 
 20. In my last lecture I asserted the positive- and negative 
 powers of literature, art, and science ; and endeavoured to 
 show you some of the relations of wise art to foolish art. 
 To-day we are to examine the nature of these positive and 
 negative powers in science ; it being the object of every true 
 school to teach the positive or constructive power, and by all 
 means to discourage, reprove, and extinguish the negative 
 power. 
 
 It is very possible that you may not often have thought of, 
 or clearly defined to yourselves, this destructive or deadly 
 character of some elements of science. You may indeed have 
 
314 
 
 TEE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 recognized with Pope that a little knowledge was dangerous, 
 and you have therefore striven to drink deep ; you may have 
 recognized with Bacon, that knowledge might partially be- 
 come venomous ; and you may have sought, in modesty and 
 sincerity, antidote to the inflating poison. But that there is 
 a ruling spirit or o-o^ta, under whose authority you are placed,, 
 to determine for you, first the choice, and then the use of all 
 knowledge whatsoever ; and that if you do not appeal to that 
 ruler, much more if you disobey her, all science becomes to 
 you ruinous in proportion to its accumulation, and as a net 
 to your soul, fatal in proportion to the fineness of its thread, 
 — this, I imagine, few of you, in the zeal of learning, have 
 suspected, and fewer still have pressed their suspicion so far 
 as to recognize or believe. 
 
 21. You must have nearly all heard of, many must have 
 seen, the singular paintings ; some also may have read the 
 poems, of William Blake. The impression that his drawings 
 once made is fast, and justly, fading away, though they are 
 not without noble merit. But his poems have much more 
 than merit ; they are written with absolute sincerity, with in- 
 finite tenderness, and, though in the manner of them diseased 
 and wild, are in verity the words of a great and wise mind, 
 disturbed, but not deceived, by its sickness ; nay, partly ex- 
 alted by it, and sometimes giving forth in fiery aphorism some 
 of the most precious words of existing literature. One of 
 these passages I will ask you to remember ; it will often be 
 serviceable to you — 
 
 1 1 Doth the Eagle know what is in the pit, 
 Or wilt thou go ask the Mole ? " 
 
 It would be impossible to express to you in briefer terms the 
 great truth that there is a different kind of knowledge good 
 for every different creature, and that the glory of the higher 
 creatures is in ignorance of what is known to the lower. 
 
 22. And, above all, this is true of man ; for every other 
 creature is compelled by its instinct to learn its own ap- 
 pointed lesson, and must centralize its perception in its own 
 
TEE EAGLE'S .NEST. 
 
 315 
 
 being. But man has the choice of stooping in science be- 
 neath himself, and striving in science beyond himself ; and 
 the " Know thyself " is, for him, not a law to which he must 
 in peace submit ; but a precept which of all others is the 
 most painful to understand, and the most difficult to fulfil. 
 Most painful to understand, and humiliating ; and this alike, 
 whether it be held to refer to the knowledge beneath us, or 
 above. For, singularly enough, men are always most con- 
 ceited of the meanest science : — 
 
 " Doth tlie Eagle know what is in the pit, 
 Or wilt thou go ask the Mole ? " 
 
 It is just those who grope with the mole and cling with the 
 bat, who are vainest of their sight and of their wings. 
 
 23. " Know thyself; " but can it indeed be sophia, — can it 
 be the noble wisdom, which thus speaks to science ? Is not 
 this rather, you will ask, the voice of the lower virtue of pru- 
 dence, concerning itself with right conduct, whether for the 
 interests of this world or of the future ? Does not sophia re- 
 gard all that is above and greater than man ; and by so much 
 as we are forbidden to bury ourselves in the mole's earth- 
 heap, by so much also, are we not urged to raise ourselves 
 towards the stars ? 
 
 Indeed, it would at first seem so ; nay, in the passage of 
 the Ethics, which I proposed to you to-day for question, you 
 are distinctly told so. There are, it is said, many different 
 kinds of phronesis, by which every animal recognizes what is 
 for its own good : and man, like any other creature, has his 
 own separate phronesis telling him what he is to seek, and to 
 do, for the preservation of his life : but above all these forms 
 of prudence, the Greek sage tells you, is the sophia of which 
 the objects are unchangeable and eternal, the methods con- 
 sistent, and the conclusions universal : and this wisdom has 
 no regard whatever to the things in which the happiness of 
 man consists, but acquaints itself only with the things that 
 are most honourable ; so that " we call Anaxagoras and 
 Thales, and such others, wise indeed, but not prudent, in 
 
31G 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 that they know nothing of what is for their own advantage, 
 but know surpassing things, marvellous things, difficult 
 things, and divine things." 
 
 24. Now here is a question which evidently touches m 
 closely. We profess at this day to be an especially prudent 
 nation ; — to regard only the things which are for our own ad- 
 vantage ; to leave to other races the knowledge of surpassing 
 things, marvellous things, divine things, or beautiful things ; 
 and in our exceeding prudence we are at this moment, refus- 
 ing the purchase of, perhaps, the most interesting picture by 
 Eaphael in the world, and, certainly, one of the most beautiful 
 works ever produced by the art-wisdom of man, for five-and- 
 twenty thousand pounds, while we are debating whether we 
 shall not pay three hundred millions to the Americans, as a 
 fine for selling a small frigate to Captain Semmes. Let me 
 reduce these sums from thousands of pounds, to single 
 pounds ; you will then see the facts more clearly ; (there is 
 not one person in a million who knows what a " million " 
 means ; and that is one reason the nation is always ready to 
 let its ministers spend a million or two in cannon, if they can 
 show they have save saved twopence-halfpenny in tape). 
 These are the facts then, stating pounds for thousands of 
 pounds ; you are offered a Nativity, by Eaphael, for five-and- 
 twenty pounds, and cannot afford it ; but it is thought you 
 may be bullied into paying three hundred thousand pounds, 
 for having sold a ship to Captain Semmes. I do not say you 
 will pay it. Still your present position is one of deprecation 
 and humility, and that is the kind of result which you bring 
 about by acting with what you call " practical common sense," 
 instead of Divine wisdom. 
 
 25. Perhaps you think I am losing Aristotle's notion of 
 common sense, by confusing it with our vulgar English one ; 
 and that selling ships or ammunition to people whom we have 
 not courage to fight either for or against, would not by Aris- 
 totle have been held a phronetic, or prudent proceeding. Be 
 it so ; let us be certain then, if we can, what Aristotle does 
 mean. Take the instance I gave you in the last lecture, of the 
 various modes of feeling in which a master of literature, of 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 317 
 
 science, and of art, would severally regard the storm round 
 the temples of Psestum. 
 
 The man of science, we said, thought of the origin of the 
 electricity ; the artist of its light in the clouds, and the 
 scholar, of its relation to the power of Zeus and Poseidon. 
 There you have Episteme ; Techne, and Nous ; well, now 
 what does Phronesis do ? 
 
 Phronesis puts up his umbrella, and goes home as fast as 
 he can. Aristotle's Phronesis at least does ; having no regard 
 for marvellous things. But are you sure that Aristotle's 
 Phronesis is indeed the right sort of Phronesis ? May there 
 not be a common sense, as well as an art, and a science, under 
 the command of sophia ? Let us take an instance of a more 
 subtle kind. 
 
 26. Suppose that two young ladies, (I assume in my present 
 lectures, that none are present, and that we may say among 
 ourselves what we like ; and we do like, do we not, to suppose 
 that young ladies excel us only in prudence, and not in wis- 
 dom ?) let us suppose that two young ladies go to the observa- 
 tory on a winter night, and that one is so anxious to look at 
 the stars that she does not care whether she gives herself cold, 
 or not ; but the other is prudent, and takes care, and looks at 
 the stars only as long as she can without catching cold. In 
 Aristotle's mind the first young lady would properly deserve 
 the name of Sophia and the other that of Prudence. But in 
 order to judge them fairly, we must assume that they are act- 
 ing under exactly the same conditions. Assume that they 
 both equally desire to look at the stars ; then, the fact that 
 one of them stops when it would be dangerous to look longer, 
 does not show that she is less wise, — less interested, that is to 
 say, in surpassing and marvellous things ; — but it shows that 
 she has more self-command, and is able therefore to remember 
 what the other does not think of. She is equally wise, and 
 more sensible. But suppose that the two girls are originally 
 different in disposition ; and that the one, having much more 
 imagination than the other, is more interested in these sur- 
 passing and marvellous things ; so that the self-command, 
 which is enough to stop the other, who cares little for the 
 
318 
 
 TEE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 stars, is not enough to stop her, who cares much for them 
 you would say, then, that, both the girls being equally sensi- 
 ble, the one that caught cold was the wisest. 
 
 27. Let us make a farther supposition. Returning to our 
 first condition, that both the girls desire equally to look at the 
 stars ; let us put it now that both have equal self-command, 
 and would therefore, supposing no other motives were in their 
 minds, together go on star-gazing, or together stop star-gaz- 
 ing ; but that one of them has greater consideration for her 
 friends than the other, and though she would not mind catch- 
 ing cold for her own part, would mind it much for fear of giv- 
 ing her mother trouble. She will leave the stars first, there- 
 fore ; but should we be right now in saying that she was only 
 more sensible than her companion, and not more wise ? This 
 respect for the feelings of others, this understanding of her 
 duty towards others, is a much higher thing than the love of 
 stars. It is an imaginative knowledge, not of balls of fire or 
 differences of space ; but of the feelings of living creatures, 
 and of the forces of duty by which they justly move. This is 
 a knowledge, or perception, therefore, of a thing more sur- 
 passing and marvellous than the stars themselves, and the 
 grasp of it is reached by a higher sophia. 
 
 28. Will you have patience with me for one supposition 
 more ? We may assume the attraction of the spectacle of the 
 heavens to be equal in degree, and yet, in the minds of the 
 two girls, it may be entirely different in kind. Supposing the 
 one versed somewhat in abstract Science, and more or less ac- 
 quainted with the laws by which what she now sees may be 
 explained ; she will probably take interest chiefly in questions 
 of distance and magnitude, in varieties of orbit, and propor- 
 tions of light. Supposing the other not versed in any science 
 of this kind, but acquainted with the traditions attached by 
 the religion of dead nations to the figures they discerned 
 in the sky : she will care little for arithmetical or geometrical 
 matters, but will probably receive a much deeper emotion, 
 from witnessing in clearness what has been the amazement of 
 so many eyes long closed ; and recognizing the same lights, 
 through the same darkness, with innocent shepherds and hus- 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 319 
 
 bandmen, who knew only tlie risings and settings of the im- 
 measurable vault, as its lights shone on their own fields or 
 mountains ; yet saw true miracle in them, thankful that none 
 but the Supreme Ruler could bind the sweet influences of 
 Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion. I need not surely tell 
 you, that in this exertion of the intellect and the heart, there 
 would be a far nobler sophia than any concerned with the an- 
 alysis of matter, or the measurement of space. 
 
 29. I will not weary you longer with questions, but simply 
 tell you, what you will find ultimately to be true, that sophia 
 is the form of thought, which makes common sense unselfish, 
 — knowledge unselfish, — art unselfish, — and wit and imagina- 
 tion unselfish. Of all these, by themselves, it is true that they 
 are partly venomous ; that, as knowledge puffeth up, so does 
 prudence — so does art — so does wit ; but, added to ail these, 
 wisdom, or (you may read it as an equivalent word), added to 
 all these — charity, edifieth. 
 
 30. Note the word ; builds forward, or builds up, and builds 
 securely because on modest and measured foundation, wide, 
 though low, and in the natural and living rock. 
 
 Sophia is the faculty which recognizes in all things their 
 bearing upon life, in the entire sum of life that we know, bestial 
 and human; but which, understanding the appointed objects of 
 that life, concentrates its interest and its power on Humanity, 
 as opposed on the one side to the Animalism which it must 
 rule, and distinguished on the other side from the Divinity 
 which rules it, and which it cannot imagine. 
 
 It is as little the part of a wise man to reflect much on the 
 nature of beings above him, as of beings beneath him. It is 
 immodest to suppose that he can conceive the one, and de- 
 grading to suppose that he should be busied with the other. 
 To recognize his everlasting inferiority, and his everlasting 
 greatness ; to know himself, and his place ; to be content to 
 submit to God without understanding Him ; and to rule the 
 lower creation with sympathy and kindness, yet neither shar- 
 ing the passion of the wild beast, nor imitating the science of 
 the Insect ; — this you will find is to be modest towards God, 
 gentle to His creatures, and wise for himself. 
 
320 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 31. I think you will now be able to fasten in your minds, 
 first the idea of unselfishness, and secondly, that of modesty, 
 as component elements of sophist ; and having obtained thus 
 much, we will at once make use of our gain, by rendering 
 more clear one or two points respecting its action on art, that 
 we may then see more surely its obscurer function in science. 
 
 It is absolutely unselfish, w r e say, not in the sense of being 
 without desire, or effort to gratify that desire ; on the con- 
 trary, it longs intensely to see, or know the things it is rightly 
 interested in. But it is not interested specially in itself. In 
 the degree of his wisdom, an artist is unconcerned about his 
 work as his own ; — concerned about it only in the degree in 
 which he would be, if it were another man's — recognizing its 
 precise value, or no value, from that outer stand-point. I do 
 not think, unless you examine your minds very attentively, 
 that you can have any conception of the difficulty of doing 
 this. Absolutely to do it is impossible, for we are all in- 
 tended by nature to be a little unwise, and to derive more 
 pleasure, therefore, from our own success than that of others. 
 But the intense degree of the difference is usually unmeasured 
 by us. In preparing the drawings for you to use as copies in 
 these schools, my assistant and I are often sitting beside each 
 other; and he is at work, usually, on the more important 
 drawing of the two. I so far recognize that greater import- 
 ance, when it exists, that if I had the power of determining 
 which of us should succeed, and w r hich fail, I should be wise 
 enough to choose his success rather than my own. But the 
 actual effect on my own mind, and comfort, is very different 
 in the two cases. If he fails, I am sorry, but not mortified ; — 
 on the contrary, perhaps a little pleased. I tell him, indul- 
 gently, ' he will do better another time/ and go down with great 
 contentment to my lunch. But, if / fail, though I would 
 rather, for the sake of the two drawings, have had it so, the 
 effect on my temper is very different. I say, philosophically, 
 that it was better so — but I can't eat any lunch. 
 
 32. Now, just imagine what this inherently selfish passion 
 — unconquerable as you will find it by the most deliberate and 
 maintained efforts — fancy what it becomes, when, instead of 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 321 
 
 striving to subdue, we take every means in our power to in- 
 crease and encourage it ; and when all the circumstances 
 around us concur in the deadly cultivation. In all base 
 schools of Art, the craftsman is dependent for his bread on 
 originality ; that is to say, on finding in himself some frag- 
 ment of isolated faculty, by which his work may be recognized 
 as distinct from that of other men. We are ready enough to 
 take delight in our little doings, without any such stimulus ; 
 — what must be the effect of the popular applause which con- 
 tinually suggests that the little thing we can separately do is 
 as excellent as it is singular ! and what the effect of the bribe, 
 held out to us through the whole of life, to produce, — it be- 
 ing also at our peril not to produce — something different from 
 the work of our neighbours ? In all great schools of art these 
 conditions are exactly reversed. An artist is praised in these, 
 not for what is different in him from others, nor for solitary 
 performance Of singular work ; but onty for doing most 
 strongly what all are endeavouring ; and for contributing, in 
 the measure of his strength, to some great achievement, to be 
 completed by the unity of multitudes, and the sequence of 
 ages. 
 
 33. And now, passing from art to science, the unselfishness 
 of sophia is shown by the value it therein attaches to every 
 part of knowledge, new or old, in proportion to its real utility 
 to mankind, or largeness of range in creation. The selfishness 
 which renders sophia impossible, and enlarges the elastic and 
 vaporous kingdom of folly, is shown by our caring for knowl- 
 edge only so far as we have been concerned in its discovery, 
 or are ourselves skilled and admired in its communication. 
 If there is an art which "puffeth up," even when we are sur- 
 round by magnificence of achievement of past ages, confess- 
 edly not by us to be rivalled, how much more must there be 
 a science which puffeth up, when, by the very condition of 
 science, it must be an advance on the attainments of former 
 time, and however slight, or however slow, is still always as 
 the leaf of a pleasant spring compared to the dried branches 
 of years gone by ? And, for the double calamity of the age 
 in which we live, it has chanced that the demand of the vulgar 
 
322 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 and the dull for originality in Art, is associated with the de- 
 mand of a sensual economy for originality in science ; and the 
 praise which is too readily given always to discoveries that are 
 new, is enhanced by the reward which rapidity of communi- 
 cation now ensures to discoveries that are profitable. What 
 marvel if future time shall reproach us with having destroyed 
 t lie labours, and betrayed the knowledge of the greatest na- 
 tions .and the wisest men, while we amused ourselves with fan- 
 tasy in art, and with theory in science : happy, if the one was 
 idle without being vicious, and the other mistaken without 
 being mischievous. Nay, truth, and success, are often to us 
 more deadly than error. Perhaps no progress more triumphant 
 has been made in any science than that of Chemistry ; but 
 the practical fact which will remain for the contemplation of 
 the future, is that we have lost the art of painting on glass, and 
 invented gun-cotton and nitro-glycerine. " Can you imagine," 
 the future will say, " those English fools of the nineteenth 
 century, who went about putting up memorials of themselves 
 in glass which they could not paint, and blowing their women 
 and children to pieces with cartridges they would not fight 
 with ? " 
 
 34. You may well think, gentlemen, that I am unjust and 
 prejudiced in such sayings ; — you may imagine that when all 
 our mischievous inventions have done their worst, and the 
 wars they provoked by cowardice have been forgotten in dis- 
 honour, our great investigators will be remembered, as men 
 who laid first the foundations of fruitful knowledge, and vin- 
 dicated the majesty of inviolable law. No, gentlemen ; it 
 will not be so. In a little while, the discoveries of which we 
 are now so proud will be familiar to all. The marvel of the 
 future will not be that w T e should have discerned them, but 
 that our predecessors were blind to them. We may be en- 
 vied, but shall not be praised, for having been allowed first to 
 perceive and proclaim what could be concealed no longer. 
 But the misuse we made of our discoveries will be remem- 
 bered against us, in eternal history ; our ingenuity in the vin- 
 dication, or the denial, of species, will be disregarded in the 
 face of the fact that we destroyed, in civilized Europe, every 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 323 
 
 rare bird and secluded flower ; our chemistry of agriculture 
 will be taunted with the memories of irremediable famine ; 
 and our mechanical contrivance will only make the age of the 
 mitrailleuse more abhorred than that of the guillotine. 
 
 35. Yes, believe me, in spite of our political liberality, and 
 poetical philanthropy ; in spite of our almshouses, hospitals, 
 and Sunday-schools ; in spite of our missionary endeavours to 
 preach abroad what we cannot get believed at home ; and in 
 spite of our wars against slavery, indemnified by the presenta- 
 tion of ingenious bills, — we shall be remembered in history 
 as the most cruel, and therefore the most unwise, generation 
 of men that ever yet troubled the earth : — the most cruel in 
 proportion to their sensibility, — the most unwise in propor- 
 tion to their science. No people, understanding pain, ever 
 inflicted so much : no people, understanding facts, ever acted 
 on them so little. You execrate the name of Eccelin of Padua, 
 because he slew two thousand innocent persons to maintain 
 his power ; and Dante cries out against Pisa that she should 
 be sunk in the sea, because, in revenge for treachery, she put 
 to death, by the slow pangs of starvation, not the traitor only, 
 but his children. But we men of London, w r e of the modern 
 Pisa, slew, a little while since, five hundred thousand men in- 
 stead of two thousand — (I speak in official terms, and know 
 my numbers) — these we slew, all guiltless ; and these we 
 slew, not for defence, nor for revenge, but most literally in 
 cold blood ; and these we slew, fathers and children together, 
 by slow starvation — simply because, while we contentedly 
 kill our own children in competition for places in the Civil 
 Service, we never ask, when once they have got the places, 
 whether the Civil Service is done. 
 
 36. That was our missionary work in Orissa, some three or 
 four years ago ;— our Christian miracle of the five loaves, 
 assisted as we are in its performance, by steam-engines for 
 the threshing of the corn, and by railroads for carrying it, 
 and by proposals from English noblemen to cut down all the 
 trees in England, for better growing it. That, I repeat, is 
 what we did, a year or two ago ; what are we doing now ? 
 Haye any of you chanced to hear of the famine in Persia ? 
 
324 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 Here, with due science, we arrange the roses in our botanie 
 garden, thoughtless of the country of the rose. "With due 
 art of horticulture, we prepare for our harvest of peaches * 
 it might perhaps seriously alarm us to hear, next autumn, of 
 a coming famine of peaches. But the famine of all things, in 
 the country of the peach — do you know of it, care for it : — 
 quaint famine that it is, in the fruitfullest, fairest, richest of 
 the estates of earth ; from which the Magi brought their 
 treasures to the feet of Christ ? 
 
 How much of your time, scientific faculty, popular litera- 
 ture, have been given, since this year began, to ascertain what 
 England can do for the great countries under her command, 
 or for the nations that look to her for help : and how much 
 to discuss the chances of a single impostor's getting a few 
 thousand a year ? 
 
 Gentlemen, if your literature, popular and other ; or your 
 art, popular and other ; or your science, popular and other, 
 is to be eagle-eyed, remember that question I to-day solemnly 
 put to you — will you hawk at game or carrion ? Shall it be 
 only said of the thoughts of the heart of England — " "Where- 
 soever the carcase is, thither shall the eagles be gathered to- 
 gether?" 
 
 LECTURE HL 
 
 THE RELATION OF WISE ART TO WISE SCIENCE. 
 
 " The morrow after St. Valentine's^ 1872. 
 
 37. Our task to-day is to examine the relation between art 
 and science, each governed by sophia, and becoming capable, 
 therefore, of consistent and definable relation to each other. 
 Between foolish art and foolish science, there may indeed be 
 all manner of reciprocal mischievous influence ; but between 
 wise art and wise science there is essential relation, for each 
 other's help and dignity. 
 
 You observe, I hope, that I always use the term ' science, 
 merely as the equivalent of * knowledge/ I take the Latin 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST, 
 
 325 
 
 word, rather than the English, to mark that it is knowledge 
 of constant things, not merely of passing events : but you had 
 better lose even that distinction, and receive the word " sci- 
 entia" as merely the equivalent of our English "knowledge," 
 than fall into the opposite error of supposing that science 
 means systematization or discovery. It is not the arrange- 
 ment of new systems, nor the discovery of new facts, which 
 constitute a man of science ; but the submission to an eternal 
 system ; and the proper grasp of facts already known. 
 
 38. And, at first, to-day, I use the word " art " only of that 
 in which it is my special office to instruct you ; graphic imi- 
 tation ; or, as it is commonly called, Fine art. Of course, 
 the arts of construction, — building, carpentering, and the 
 like, are directly dependent on many sciences, but in a man- 
 ner which needs no discussion, so that we may put that part 
 of the business out of our way. I mean by art, to-day, only 
 imitative art ; and by science, to-day, not the knowledge of 
 general laws, but of existent facts. I do not mean by science, 
 for instance, the knowledge that triangles with equal bases 
 and between parallels, are equal, but the knowledge that the 
 stars in Cassiopeia are in the form of a W. 
 
 Now, accepting the terms ' science ' and * art ' under these 
 limitations, wise art is only the reflex or shadow of wise 
 science. Whatever it is really desirable and honourable to 
 know, it is also desirable and honourable to know as com- 
 pletely and as long as possible ; therefore, to present, or re- 
 present, in the most constant manner ; and to bring again 
 and again, not only within the thoughts, but before the eyes ; 
 describing it, not with vague words, but distinct lines, and 
 true colours, so as to approach always as nearly as may be to 
 the likeness of the thing itself. 
 
 39. Can anything be more simple, more evidently or indis» 
 putably natural and right, than such connection of the two 
 powers ? That you should desire to know what you ought ; 
 what is worthy of your nature, and helpful to your life : to 
 know that ; — nothing less, — nothing more ; and to keep rec- 
 ord and definition of such knowledge near you, in the most 
 vivid and explanatory form ? 
 
326 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 Nothing, surely, can be more simple than this ; yet the 
 sum of art judgment and of art practice is in this. You are 
 to recognize, or know, beautiful and noble things — notable, 
 notabilia, or nobilia ; and then you are to give the best possi- 
 ble account of them you can, either for the sake of others, or 
 for the sake of your own forgetful or apathetic self, in the 
 future. 
 
 Now as I gave you and asked you to remember without 
 failing, an aphorism which embraced the law of wise knowl- 
 edge, so, to-day, I will ask you to remember, without fail, 
 one, which absolutely defines the relation of wise art to it. I 
 have, already, quoted our to-day's aphorism to you, at the end 
 of my 4th lecture on sculpture. Read the few sentences at 
 the end of that lecture now, down to 
 
 "the best, in this kind, aee but shadows." 
 
 That is Shakspeare's judgment of his own art. And by 
 strange coincidence, he has put the words into the mouth of 
 the hero whose shadow or semblance in marble, is admittedly 
 the most ideal and heroic we possess, of man ; yet, I need 
 not ask you, whether of the two, if it were granted you to 
 see the statue by Phidias, or the hero Theseus himself, you 
 would choose rather to see the carved stone, or the living 
 King. Do you recollect how Shakspeare's Theseus concludes 
 his sentence, spoken of the poor tradesmen's kindly offered 
 art, in the Midsummer Night's Dream ? 
 
 " The best in this kind are but shadows ; and the worst are 
 no worse, if imagination amend them." 
 
 It will not burden your memories painfully, I hope, though 
 it may not advance you materially in the class list, if you will, 
 learn this entire sentence by heart, being, as it is, a faultless 
 and complete epitome of the laws of mimetic art. 
 
 40. "But Shadows ! " Make them as beautiful as you can ; 
 use them only to enable you to remember and love what they 
 are cast by. If ever you prefer the skill of them to the sim- 
 plicity of the truth, or the pleasure of them to the power of 
 the truth, you have fallen into that vice of folly, (whether you 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 327 
 
 call her kolklol or /moypia,) which concludes the subtle description 
 of her given by Prodicus, that she might be seen continually 
 cis tyjv eavrrjs vklolv aTTofi\i-iT€iv — to look with love, and exclusive 
 wonder, at her own shadow. 
 
 41. There in nothing that I tell you with more eager desire 
 that you should believe — nothing with wider ground in my 
 experience for requiring you to believe, than this, that you 
 never will love art well, till you love what she mirrors better. 
 
 It is the widest, as the c clearest experience I have to give 
 you ; for the beginning of all my own right art work in life, 
 (and it may not be unprofitable that I should tell you this), 
 depended, not on my love of art, but of mountains and sea. 
 All boys with any good in them are fond of boats, and of 
 course I liked the mountains best when they had lakes at the 
 bottom ; and I used to walk always in the middle of the loos- 
 est gravel I could find in the roads of the midland counties, 
 that I might hear, as I trod on it, something like the sound 
 of the pebbles on seabeach. No chance occurred for some 
 time to develope what gift of drawing I had ; but I would 
 pass entire days in rambling on the Cumberland hill-sides, or 
 staring at the lines of surf on a low sand ; and when I was 
 taken annually to the Water-colour Exhibition, I used to get 
 hold of a catalogue before-hand, mark all the Eobsons, which 
 I knew would be of purple mountains, and all the Copley 
 Fieldings, which I knew would be of lakes or sea ; and then 
 go deliberately round the room to these, for the sake, observe, 
 not of the pictures, in any wise, but only of the things painted. 
 
 And through the whole of following life, whatever power of 
 judgment I have obtained, in art, which I am now confident 
 and happy in using, or communicating, has depended on my 
 steady habit of always looking for the subject principally, and 
 for the art, only as the means of expressing it. 
 
 42. At first, as in youth one is almost sure to be, I was led 
 too far by my certainty of the lightness of this principle : and 
 provoked into its exclusive assertion by the pertinacity with 
 which other writers denied it : so that, in the first volume of 
 Modern Painters, several passages occurred setting the subject 
 or motive of the picture so much above the mode of its ex- 
 
328 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 pression, tliat some of my more feebly gifted disciples sup- 
 posed they were fulfilling my wishes by choosing exactly the 
 subjects for painting which they were least able to paint. But 
 the principle itself, I maintain, now in advanced life, with 
 more reverence and firmness than in earliest youth : and 
 though I believe that among the teachers who have opposed 
 its assertion, there are few who enjoy the mere artifices of 
 composition or dexterities of handling so much as I, the time 
 which I have given to the investigation of these has only 
 farther assured me that the pictures were noblest which com- 
 pelled me to forget them. 
 
 43. Now, therefore, you see that on this simple theory, you 
 have only to ask what will be the subjects of wise science ; 
 these also, will be, so far as they can be imitatively or sug- 
 gestively represented, the subjects of wise art : and the wis- 
 dom of both the science and art will be recognized by their 
 being lofty in their scope, but simple in their language ; clear 
 in fancy, but clearer in interpretation ; severe in discernment, 
 but delightful in display. 
 
 44. For example's sake, since we have just been listening 
 to Shakspeare as a teacher of science and art, we will now 
 examine him as a subject of science and art. 
 
 Suppose we have the existence and essence of Shakspeare 
 to investigate, and give permanent account of ; we shall see 
 that, as the scope and bearing of the science become nobler, 
 art becomes more helpful to it ; and at last, in its highest 
 range, even necessary to it ; but still only as its minister. 
 
 We examine Shakspeare, first, with the science of chemis- 
 try, which informs us that Shakspeare consists of about sev- 
 enty-five parts in the hundred of water, some twelve or fifteen 
 of nitrogen, and the rest, lime, phosphorus, and essential 
 earthy salts. 
 
 We next examine him by the science of anatomy, which 
 tells us (with other such matters,) that Shakspeare has seven 
 cervical, twelve dorsal, and five lumbar vertebrae ; that his fore- 
 arm has a wide sphere of rotation ; and that he differs from 
 other animals of the ape species by being more delicately pre- 
 hensile in the fingers, and less perfectly prehensile in the toes. 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 329 
 
 We next approach Shakspeare with the science of natural 
 history, which tells us the colour of his eyes and hair, his 
 habits of life, his temper, and his predilection for poaching. 
 
 There ends, as far as this subject is concerned, our possible 
 science of substantial things. Then we take up our science 
 of ideal things : first of passion, then of imagination ; and we 
 are told by these that Shakspeare m capable of certain emo- 
 tions, and of mastering or commanding them in certain modes. 
 Finally, we take up our science of theology, and ascertain that 
 he is in relation, or in supposed relation, with such and such 
 a Being, greater than himself. 
 
 45. Now, in all these successive stages of scientific descrip- 
 tion, we find art become powerful as an aid or record, in pro- 
 portion to the importance of the inquiry. For chemistry, she 
 can do scarcely anything : merely keep note of a colour, or of 
 the form of a crystal. For anatomy, she can do somewhat 
 more ; and for natural history, almost all things : while in re- 
 cording passion, and affectionate intellect, she walks hand in 
 hand with the highest science ; and to theology, can give 
 nobler aid even than the verbal expression of literature. 
 
 46. And in considering this power of hers, remember that 
 the theology of art has only of late been thought deserving of 
 attention : Lord Lindsay, some thirty years ago, was the first 
 to recognize its importance ; and when I entered upon the 
 study of the schools of Tuscany in 1845, his " Christian myth- 
 ology " was the only guide I could trust. Even as late as 
 1860, 1 had to vindicate the true position, in Christian science, 
 of Luini, the despised pupil of Leonardo. But only assum- 
 ing, what with general assent I might assume, that Raphael's 
 dispute of the Sacrament — (or by its less frequently given, 
 but true name — Raphael's Theologia,) is the most perfect ef- 
 fort yet made by art to illustrate divine science, I am prepared 
 hereafter to show you that the most finished efforts of theo- 
 logic literature, as compared with that piece of pictorial inter- 
 pretation, have expressed less fully the condition of wise re- 
 ligious thought ; and have been warped more dangerously 
 into unwise religious speculation. 
 
 4?. Upon these higher fields of inquiry we are not yet to 
 
330 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 enter. I shall endeavour for some time only to show you the 
 function of modest art, as the handmaid of natural science ; 
 and the exponent, first of the beauty of the creatures subject 
 to your own human life ; and then of the history of that life 
 in past time ; of which one chief source of illustration is to 
 be found in the most brilliant, and in its power on character, 
 hitherto the most practically effective of the arts — Heraldry. 
 
 In natural history, I at first intended to begin with the 
 lower types of life ; but as the enlarged schools now give me 
 the means of extending the use of our examples, w r e will at 
 once, for the sake of more general service, take up ornithol- 
 ogy, of the uses of which, in general culture, I have one or 
 two grave words to say. 
 
 48. Perhaps you thought that in the beginning of my lect- 
 ure to-day I too summarily dismissed the arts of construction 
 and action. But it was not in disrespect to them ; and I must 
 indeed ask you carefully to note one or two points respecting 
 the arts of which an example is set us by birds ; — building, 
 and singing. 
 
 The other day, as I was calling on the ornithologist whose 
 collection of birds is, I suppose, altogether unrivalled in Eu- 
 rope, — (at once a monument of unwearied love of science, and 
 an example, in its treatment, of the most delicate and patient 
 art)- — Mr. Gould — he showed me the nest of a common Eng- 
 lish bird ; a nest which, notwithstanding his knowledge of 
 the dexterous building of birds in all the world, was not with- 
 out interest even to him, and was altogether amazing and de- 
 lightful to me. It was a bullfinch's nest, which had been set in 
 the fork of a sapling tree, where it needed an extended foun- 
 dation. And the bird had built this first story of her nest 
 with withered stalks of clematis blossom ; and with nothing 
 else. These twigs it had interwoven lightly, leaving the 
 branched heads all at the outside, producing an intricate 
 Gothic boss of extreme grace and quaintness, apparently ar- 
 ranged both with triumphant pleasure in the art of basket- 
 making, and with definite purpose of obtaining ornamental 
 form. 
 
 49. I fear there is no occasion to tell you that the bird had 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 331 
 
 no purpose of the kind. I say that I fear this, because I 
 would much rather have to undeceive you in attributing too 
 much intellect to the lower animals, than too little. But I 
 suppose the only error which, in the present condition of 
 natural history, you are likely to fall into, is that of supposing 
 that a bullfinch is merely a mechanical arrangement of nervous 
 fibre, covered with feathers by a chronic cutaneous eruption ; 
 and impelled by a galvanic stimulus to the collection of 
 clematis. 
 
 50. You would be in much greater, as well as in a more 
 shameful, error, in supposing this, than if you attributed to 
 the bullfinch the most deliberate rivalship with Mr. Street's 
 prettiest Gothic designs. The bird has exactly the degree of 
 emotion, the extent of science, and the command of art, which 
 are necessary for its happiness ; it had felt the clematis twigs 
 to be lighter and tougher than any others within its reach, 
 and probably found the forked branches of them convenient 
 for reticulation. It had naturally placed these outside, because 
 it w T anted a smooth surface for the bottom of its nest ; and 
 the beauty of the result was much more dependent on the 
 blossoms than the bird. 
 
 51. Nevertheless, I am sure that if you had seen the nest, — 
 much more, if you had stood beside the architect at work 
 upon it, — you would have greatly desired to express your ad- 
 miration to her ; and that if Wordsworth, or any other simple 
 and kindly person, could even wish, for a little flower's sake, 
 
 " That to this mountain daisy's self were known, 
 The beauty of its star-shaped shadow, thrown 
 On the smooth surface of this naked stone," 
 
 much more you would have yearned to inform the bright 
 little nest-builder of your sympathy ; and to explain to her, 
 on art principles, what a pretty thing she was making. 
 
 52. Does it never occur to you, then, that to some of the 
 best and wisest artists among ourselves, it may not be always 
 possible to explain what pretty things they are making ; and 
 that, perhaps, the very perfection of their art is in their know- 
 ing so little about it ? 
 
332 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 Whether it has occurred to you or not, I assure you that it 
 is so. The greatest artists, indeed, will condescend, occasion- 
 ally, to be scientific ; — will labour, somewhat systematically, 
 about what they are doing, as vulgar persons do ; and are 
 privileged, also, to enjoy what they have made more than 
 birds do ; yet seldom, observe you, as being beautiful, but 
 very much in the sort of feeling which we may fancy the bull- 
 finch had also, — that the thing, whether pretty or ugly, could 
 not have been better done ; that they could not have made it 
 otherwise, and are thankful it is no worse. And, assuredly, 
 they have nothing like the delight in their own work which it 
 gives to other people. 
 
 53. But putting the special simplicities of good artists out 
 of question, let me ask you, in the second place, whether it is 
 not possible that the same sort of simplicity might be desir- 
 able in the whole race of mankind ; and that we ought all to 
 be doing human work which would appear better done to 
 creatures much above us, than it does to ourselves. "Why 
 should not our nests be as interesting things to angels, as 
 bullfinches' are to us ? 
 
 You will, probably, both smile at, and shrink from, such a 
 supposition, as an insolent one. But to my thought, it seems, 
 on the contrary, the only modest one. That we should be 
 able to admire the work of angels seems to me the imperti- 
 nent idea ; not, at all, that they should be able to admire ours. 
 
 54. Under existing circumstances, I confess the difficulty. 
 It cannot be imagined that either the back streets of our man- 
 ufacturing towns, or the designs of our suburban villas, are 
 things which the angels desire to look into : but it seems to 
 me an inevitably logical conclusion that if we are, indeed, the 
 highest of the brute creation, we should, at least, possess as 
 much unconscious art as the lower brutes ; and build nests 
 which shall be, for ourselves, entirely convenient ; and may, 
 perhaps, in the eyes of superior beings, appear more beautiful 
 than to our own. 
 
 55. " Which shall be for ourselves, entirely convenient." 
 Note the word ; — becoming, decorous, harmonious, satisfying. 
 We may not be able to build anything sublime ; but, at all 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 333 
 
 events, we should, like other flesh-invested creatures, be able 
 to contrive what was decent, and it should be an human priv- 
 ilege to think that we may be admired in heaven for our con- 
 trivance. 
 
 I have some difficulty in proceeding with what I want to 
 say, because I know you must partly think I am jesting with 
 you. I feel indeed some disposition to smile, myself ; not be- 
 cause I jest, but in the sense of contrast between what, logi- 
 cally, it seems, ought to be ; and what we must confess, not 
 jestingly, to be the facts. How great also, — how quaint, the 
 confusion of sentiment in our minds, as to this matter ! We 
 continually talk of honouring God with our buildings ; and 
 yet, we dare not say, boldly, that, in His sight, we in the least 
 expect to honour ourselves by them ! And admitting, though 
 I by no means feel disposed to admit, that here and there we 
 may, at present, be honouring Him by work that is worthy of 
 the nature He gave us, in how many places, think you, are we 
 offending Him by work that is disgraceful to it ? 
 
 56. Let me return, yet for an instant, to my bird and her 
 nest. If not actually complacent and exultant in her archi- 
 tecture, we may at least imagine that she, and her mate, and 
 the choir they join with, cannot but be complacent and exult- 
 ant in their song. I gave you, in a former lecture, the sky- 
 lark as a type of mastership in music ; and remembering — 
 some of you, I suppose, are not likely soon to forget, — the 
 saint to whom yesterday was dedicated, let me read to you to- 
 day some of the prettiest English words in which our natural 
 feeling about such song is expressed. 
 
 " And anone, as I the day espide, 
 No lenger would I in my bed abide, 
 But unto a wood that was fast by, 
 I went forth alone boldely, 
 And held the way downe by a brook side, 
 
 Till I came to a laund of white and green, 
 
 So faire one had I never in been, 
 
 The ground was green, ypoudred with daisie, 
 
 The floures and the greves like hie, 
 
 All greene and white, was nothing els seene. 
 
334 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 There sat I downe among the faire flours, 
 And saw the birds trip out of hir hours, 
 There as they rested hem all the night, 
 They were so joyfull of the dayes light, 
 They began of May for to done honours. 
 
 They coud that service all by rote, 
 There was many a lovely note, 
 Some sang loud, as they had plained, 
 And some in other manner voice yfained, 
 And some all out with the full throte. 
 
 They pinned hem and made hem right gay, 
 And daunceden and lepten on the spray, 
 And evermore two and two in fere, 
 Right so as they had chosen hem to yere 
 In Feverere, upon saint Valentines day." 
 
 You recollect, perhaps, the dispute that follows between 
 the cuckoo and the nightingale, and the promise which the 
 sweet singer makes to Chaucer for rescuing her. 
 
 " And then came the Nightingale to me 
 And said Friend, forsooth I thanke thee 
 That thou hast liked me to rescue, 
 And one avow to Love make I now 
 That all this May, I will thy singer be. 
 
 I thanked her, and was right well apaied, 
 Yea, quoth she, and be not thou dismaied, 
 Tho' thou have heard the cnckoo erst than me ; 
 For, if I live, it shall amended be, 
 The next May, if I be not alfraied." 
 
 c< If I be not affraied." Would she not put the " if " mora 
 timidly now, in making the same promise to any of you, or in 
 asking for the judgment between her and her enemy, which 
 was to be past, do you remember, on this very day of the year, 
 so many years ago, and within eight miles of this very spot? 
 
 1 * And this shall be without any Nay 
 On the morrow after St. Valentine's day, 
 Under a maple that is faire and green 
 Before the chamber window of the Queen 
 At Woodstcke, upon the greene lawn. 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 335 
 
 She thanked them, and then her leave took 
 And into an hawthorne by that broke. 
 And there she sate, and sang upon that tree 
 4 Terme of life love hath withheld me 1 
 So loud, that I with that song awoke." 
 
 57. " Terme of life love hath withheld me!" Alas, how 
 have we men reversed this song of the nightingale ! so that 
 our words must be "Terme of life, hatred hath withheld me." 
 
 This, then, was the old English science of the song of 
 birds ; and perhaps you are indignant with me for bringing 
 any word of it back to you ? You have, I doubt not, your 
 new science of song, as of nest-building : and I am happy to 
 think you could all explain to me, or at least you will be able 
 to do so before you pass your natural science examination, 
 how, by the accurate connection of a larynx with a bill, and 
 by the action of heat, originally derived from the sun, upon 
 the muscular fibre, an undulatory motion is produced in the 
 larynx, and an opening and shutting one in the bill, which is 
 accompanied, necessarily, by a piping sound. 
 
 58. I will not dispute your statement ; still less do I wish 
 to answer for the absolute truth of Chaucer's. You will find 
 that the complete truth embraces great part of both ; and 
 that you may study, at your choice, in any singing bird, the 
 action of universal heat on a marvellous mechanism, or of in- 
 dividual life, on a frame capable of exquisite passion. ' But 
 the point I wish you to consider is the relation, to this lower 
 creature's power, of your own human agencies in the produc- 
 tion of sound, where you can best unite in its harmony. 
 
 59. I had occasion only the other day to wait for half an 
 hour at the bottom of Ludgate Hill. Standing as much out of 
 the way as I could, under the shadow of the railroad bridge, 
 I watched the faces, all eager, many anxious, and some in- 
 tensely gloomy, of the hurried passers by ; and listened to the 
 ceaseless crashing, whistling, and thundering sounds which 
 mingled with the murmur of their steps and voices. And in 
 the midst of the continuous roar, which differed only from 
 that of the wildest sea in storm by its complexity and its dis- 
 cordance, I was wondering, if the sum of what all these peo- 
 
336 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 pie were doing, or trying to do, in the course of the day, 
 could be made manifest, what it would come to. 
 
 GO. The sum of it would be, I suppose, that they had all 
 contrived to live through the day in that exceedingly unpleas- 
 ant manner, and that nothing serious had occurred to prevent 
 them from passing the following day likewise. Nay, I knew 
 also that what appeared in their way of life painful to me, 
 might be agreeable to them ; and it chanced, indeed, a little 
 while afterwards, that an active and prosperous man of busi- 
 ness, speaking to one of my friends of the disappointment he 
 had felt in a visit to Italy, remarked, especially, that he was 
 not able to endure more than three days at Venice, because 
 there was no noise there. 
 
 61. But, granting the contentment of the inhabitants of 
 London in consistently producing these sounds, how shall we 
 say this vocal and instrumental art of theirs may compare, in 
 the scheme of Nature, with the vocal art of lower animals ? 
 We may indeed rank the danger- whistle of the engines on 
 the bridge as an excruciating human improvement on that of 
 the marmot ; and the trampling of feet and grinding of wheels, 
 as the human accentuation of the sounds produced by insects, 
 by the friction of their wings or thighs against their sides : 
 but, even in this comparison, it may cause us some humilia- 
 tion to note that the cicada and the cricket, when pleased to 
 sing *in their vibratory manner, have leisure to rest in their 
 delight ; and that the flight of the firefly is silent. But how 
 will the sounds we produce compare with the song of birds ? 
 This London is the principal nest of men in the world ; and 
 I was standing in the centre of it. In the shops of Fleet 
 Street and Ludgate Hill, on each side of me, I do not doubt 
 I could have bought any quantity of books for children, which 
 by way of giving them religious, as opposed to secular, in- 
 struction, informed them that birds praised God in their 
 songs. Now, though on the one hand, you may be very cer- 
 tain that birds are not machines, on the other hand it is just 
 as certain that they have not the smallest intention of prais- 
 ing God in their songs ; and that we cannot prevent the re- 
 ligious education of our children more utterly than by begin- 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 337 
 
 ning it in lies. But it might be expected of ourselves that we 
 should do so, in the songs we send up from our principal 
 nest ! And although, under the dome at the top of Ludgate 
 Hill, some attempt of the kind may be made every seventh 
 day, by a limited number of persons, we may again reflect, 
 with humiliation, that the birds, for better or worse, sing all, 
 and every day ; and I could not but ask myself, with moment- 
 arily increasing curiosity, as I endeavoured to trace the emo- 
 tions and occupations of the persons who passed by me, in 
 the expression of their faces — what would be the effect on 
 them, if any creatures of higher order were suddenly to ap- 
 pear in the midst of them with any such message of peace, 
 and invitation to rejoicing, as they had all been professing to 
 commemorate at Christmas. 
 
 62. Perhaps you recollect, in the lectures given on land- 
 scape during the spring of this year, my directing your atten- 
 tion to a picture of Mantegna s, in the loan exhibition, repre- 
 senting a flight of twelve angels in blue sky, singing that 
 Christmas song. I ought to tell you, however, that one of 
 our English artists of good position dissented from my opin- 
 ion about the picture ; and remarked that in England " we 
 wanted good art, and not funny art." Whereas, to me, it is 
 this vocal and architectural art of Ludgate Hill which appears 
 funny art ; and not Mantegna's. But I am compelled to admit 
 that could Mantegna's picture have been realized, the result 
 would, in the eyes of most men, have been funnier still. For 
 suppose that over Ludgate Hill the sky had indeed suddenly 
 become blue instead of black ; and that a flight of twelve an- 
 gels, " covered with silver wings, and their feathers with gold," 
 had alighted on the cornice of the railroad bridge, as the 
 doves alight on the cornices of St. Mark's at Venice ; and had 
 invited the eager men of business below, in the centre of a 
 city confessedly the most prosperous in the world, to join 
 them for five minutes in singing the first five verses of such a 
 psalm as the 103rd — " Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all 
 that is within me," (the opportunity now being given for the 
 expression of their most hidden feelings) "all that is within 
 me, bless His holy name, and forget not all his benefits." Da 
 
338 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 you not even thus, in mere suggestion, feel shocked at the 
 thought, and as if my now reading the words were profane ? 
 And cannot you fancy that the sensation of the crowd at so 
 violent and strange an interruption of traffic, might be some- 
 what akin to that which I had occasion in my first lecture on 
 sculpture to remind you of, — the feeling attributed by Goethe 
 to Mephistopheies at the song of the angels: "Discord I 
 hear, and intolerable jingling ? " 
 
 63. Nay, farther, if indeed none of the benefits bestowed 
 on, or accomplished by, the great city, were to be forgotten, 
 and if search were made, throughout its confines, into the re- 
 sults of its wealth, might not the literal discord in the words 
 themselves be greater than the felt discord in the sound of 
 them ? 
 
 I have here in my hand a cutting from a newspaper, which 
 I took with me three years ago, to a meeting in the interest 
 of social science, held in the rooms of the Society of Arts, and 
 under the presidency of the Prime Minister of England. "Un- 
 der the (so-called) £ classical ' paintings of Barry, representing 
 the philosophy and poetry of the ancients, Mr. Gladstone was 
 in the chair : and in his presence a member of the society for 
 the promotion of Social Science propounded and supported 
 the statement, not irrelevant to our present inquiry, that the 
 essential nature of man was that of a beast of prey. Though, 
 at the time, (suddenly called upon by the author of Tom 
 Broivn at Oxford), I feebly endeavoured to contradict that 
 Socially Scientific person, I do not at present desire to do so. 
 I have given you a creature of prey for comparison of knowl- 
 edge. " Doth the eagle know what is in the pit ? " and in. 
 this great nest of ours in London, it would be w T eli if to all 
 our children the virtue of the creature of prey were fulfilled, 
 and that, indeed, the stir and tumult of the city were " as the 
 eagle stirreth up her nest, and fluttereth over her young." 
 But the slip of paper I had then, and have now, in my hand,* 
 contains information about the state of the nest, inconsistent 
 with such similitude. I am not answerable for the juxtaposi- 
 
 * Pall Mall Gazette, January 29th, 1869- 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 339 
 
 tion of paragraphs in it. The first is a proposal for the build- 
 ing of a new church in Oxford, at the cost of twenty thousand 
 pounds ; the second is the account of the inquest on a woman 
 and her child who were starved to death in the Isle of Dogs. 
 The bodies were found lying, without covering, on a bed 
 made of heaped rags ; and there was no furniture in the room 
 but a wooden stool, on which lay a tract entitled " The Good- 
 ness of God" The husband, who had been out of work for 
 six months, went mad two days afterwards ; and being re- 
 fused entrance at the workhouse because it was " full of mad 
 people," was carried off, the Pall Mall Gazette says not where. 
 
 64. Now, gentlemen, the question I wish to leave with you 
 to-day is whether the Wisdom, which rejoices in the habitable 
 parts of the earth, and whose delights are with the sons of 
 men, can be supposed, under circumstances such as these, to 
 delight herself in that most closely and increasingly inhabited 
 portion of the globe which we ourselves now dwell on ; and 
 whether, if she cannot grant us to surpass the art of the swal- 
 low or the eagle, she may not require of us at least, to reach 
 the level of their happiness. Or do you seriously think that, 
 either in the life of Ludgate Hill, or death of the Isle of 
 Dogs ; in the art of Ludgate Hill, or idleness of the Isle of 
 Dogs ; and in the science and sanity of Ludgate Hill, or 
 nescience and insanity of the Isle of Dogs, we have, as matters 
 stand now, any clear encouragement to repeat, in that 103rd 
 psalm, the three verses following the five I named ; and to 
 believe in our hearts, as we say with our lips, that we have 
 yet, dwelling among us, unoffended, a God " who forgive th 
 all our iniquities, who healeth all our diseases ; who redeem- 
 eth our life from destruction, who crowneth us with loving 
 kindness and tender mercies, and who satisfieth our mouth with 
 good things, so that our youth is renewed like the eagle's ? " 
 
340 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST, 
 
 LECTUEE IV. 
 
 THE POWER OF MODESTY IN SCIENCE AND ART. 
 
 Vfm February, 1372. 
 
 65. I believe, gentlemen, that some of you must have been 
 surprised, — and, if I succeeded in making my last lecture 
 clearly intelligible, many ought to have been surprised, — at 
 the limitations I asked you to admit with respect to the idea 
 of science, and the position wfaida I asked you to assign to it. 
 We are so much, by the chances of our time, accustomed to 
 think of science as a process of discovery, that I am sure some 
 of you must have been gravely disconcerted by my requesting, 
 and will to-day be more disconcerted by my firmly recom- 
 mending, you to use the word, and reserve the thought, of 
 science, for the acquaintance with things long since discovered, 
 and established as true. We have the misfortune to live in 
 an epoch of transition from irrational dulness to irrational 
 excitement ; and while once it was the highest courage of 
 science to question anything, it is now an agony to her to 
 leave anything unquestioned. So that, unawares, we come to 
 measure the dignity of a scientific person by the newness of 
 his assertions, and the dexterity of his methods in debate ; 
 entirely forgetting that science cannot become perfect, as an 
 occupation of intellect, while anything remains to be discov- 
 ered ; nor wholesome as an instrument of education, while 
 anything is permitted to be debated. 
 
 66. It appears, doubtless, a vain idea to you that an end 
 should ever be put to discovery ; but remember, such impos- 
 sibility merely signifies that mortal science must remain im- 
 perfect. Nevertheless, in many directions, the limit to prac- 
 tically useful discovery is rapidly being approached ; and you, 
 as students, would do w r ell to suppose that it has been already 
 attained. To take the science of ornithology, for instance : I 
 suppose you would have very little hope of shooting a bird in 
 England, which should be strange to any master of the 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 341 
 
 science, or of shooting one anywhere, which would not fall 
 under some species already described. And although at the 
 risk of life, and by the devotion of many years to observation, 
 some of you might hope to bring home to our museum a tit- 
 mouse with a spot on its tail which had never before been seen, 
 I strongly advise you not to allow your studies to be disturbed 
 by so dazzling a hope, nor your life exclusively devoted even 
 to so important an object. In astronomy, the fields of the sky 
 have not yet, indeed, been ransacked by the most costly in- 
 struments ; and it may be in store for some of you to an- 
 nounce the existence, or even to analyze the materials, of 
 some luminous point which may be seen two or three times 
 in the course of a century, by any one who will journey to 
 India for the purpose ; and, when there, is favoured by the 
 weather. But, for all practical purposes, the stars already 
 named and numbered are as many as we require to hear of ; 
 and if you thoroughly know the visible motions, and clearly 
 conceive the known relations, even of those which can be seen 
 by the naked eye, you will have as much astronomy as is 
 necessary, either for the occupation of thought, or the direc- 
 tion of navigation. 
 
 67. But, if you were discontented with the limit I proposed 
 for your sciences, much more, I imagine, you were doubtful 
 of the ranks I assigned to them. It is not, \ know, in your 
 modern system, the general practice to put chemistry, the 
 science of atoms, lowest, and theology, the science of Deity, 
 highest : nay, many of us have ceased to think of theology as 
 a science at all, but rather as a speculative pursuit, in subject, 
 separate from science ; and in temper, opposed to her. 
 
 Yet it can scarcely be necessary for me to point out to you, 
 in so many terms, that what we call theology, if true, is a 
 science ; and if false, is not theology ; or that the distinction 
 even between natural science and theology is illogical ; for you 
 might distinguish indeed between natural and unnatural 
 science, but not between natural and spiritual, unless you had 
 determined first that a spirit had no nature. You will find 
 the facts to be, that entirely true knowledge is both possible 
 and necessary— -first of facts relating to matter, and then 
 
342 
 
 TEE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 of the forces and passions that act on or in matter ;— <. 
 that, of all these forces, the noblest we can know is the 
 energy which either imagines, or perceives, the existence 
 of a living power greater than its own ; and that the study 
 of the relations which exist between this energy, and 
 the resultant action of men, are as much subjects of pure 
 science as the .curve of a projectile. The effect, for instance, 
 upon your temper, intellect, and conduct during the day, of 
 your going to chapel with or without belief in the efficacy of 
 prayer, is just as much a subject of definite science, as the 
 effect of your breakfast on the coats of your stomach. Which | 
 is the higher knowledge, I have, with confidence, told you ; 
 and am not afraid of any test to which you may submit my 
 assertion. 
 
 68, Assuming such limitation, then, and such rank, for our 
 knowledge ; assuming, also, what I have now, perhaps to your 
 weariness, told you, that graphic art is the shadow, or image, 
 of knowledge, — I wish to point out to you to-day the func- 
 tion, with respect to both, of the virtue called by the Greeks 
 * o-(o6poavvr},' ' safeness of mind,' corresponding to the ' salus 9 
 or ' sanitas ' mentis, of the Latins ; ' health of heart ' is, per- 
 haps, the best English ; if we receive the words ' mens,' 
 e pfjvLs,' or S£/>ipv as expressing the passionate soul of the 
 human being, distinguished from the intellectual ; the ' mens 
 sana 1 being possible to all of us, though the contemplative 
 range of the higher wisdom may be above our capacities ; so 
 that to each of us Heaven only permits the ambition of being 
 crowds, but commands the resolution to be o-ax^pan/. 
 
 69. And, without discussing the use of the word by differ- 
 ent writers, I will tell you that the clearest and safest idea of 
 the mental state itself is to be gained from the representations 
 of it by the words of ancient Christian religion, and even 
 from what you may think its superstitions. Without any dis- 
 cussion also as to the personal existence or traditional char- 
 acter of evil spirits, you will find it a practical fact, that 
 external temptations and inevitable trials of temper, have 
 power against you which your health and virtue depend on 
 your resisting ; that, if not resisted, the evil energy of them 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 343 
 
 will pass into your own heart, (^prjv, or tirjvis ; and that the 
 ordinary and vulgarized phrase " the Devil, or betraying 
 Spirit, is in him " is the most scientifically accurate which you 
 can apply to any person so influenced. You will find also 
 that, in the compass of literature, the casting out of, or cleans- 
 ing from, such a state is best symbolized for you by the 
 image of one who had been wandering wild and naked among 
 tombs, sitting still, clothed, and in his right mind, and that in 
 whatever literal or figurative sense you receive the Biblical 
 statement of what followed, this is absolutely certain, that the 
 herd of swine hastening to their destruction, in perfect sym- 
 pathy with each other's fury, is the most accurate symbol ever 
 
 given, in literature, of consummate human a^poa-vv-q. 
 
 % * % * 
 
 (The conditions of insanity,* delighting in scenes of death, 
 which affect at the present time the arts of revolutionary Eu- 
 rope, were illustrated in the sequel of this lecture : but I 
 neither choose to take any permanent notice of the examples 
 I referred to, nor to publish any part of what I said, until I 
 can enter more perfectly into the analysis of the elements of 
 evil passion which always distorted and polluted even the 
 highest arts of Greek and Christian loyal religion ; and now oc- 
 cupy in deadly entireness, the chambers of imagination, devas- 
 tated, and left desolate of joy, by impiety, and disobedience. 
 
 In relation to the gloom of gray colour characteristic esj:>e- 
 cially of the modern French Revolutionary school, I entered 
 into some examination of the conditions of real temperance 
 and reserve in colour, showing that it consisted not in refusing 
 colour, but in governing it ; and that the most pure and bright 
 colours might be thus perfectly governed, while the most dull 
 were probably also the most violent and intemperate. But it 
 would be useless to print this part of the lecture without the 
 colour-illustrations used. 
 
 Passing to the consideration of intemperance and immodesty 
 in the choice even of landscape subjects, I referred thus, for 
 contrast, to the quietude of Turner's " Greta and Tees.") 
 
 * I use this word always meaning it to be understood literally and in 
 its full force. 
 
344 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 70. If you wish to feel the reserve of this drawing, look, 
 first, into the shops at their display of common chromo-litho- 
 tints ; see how they are made up of Matterhorns, Monte Eosas, 
 blue glaciers, green lakes, white towers, magnificent banditti, 
 romantic peasantry, or always-successful sportsmen or fisher- 
 men in Highland costume ; and then see what Turner is con- 
 tent with. No Matterhorns are needful, or even particularly 
 pleasing to him. A bank, some eight or ten feet high, of 
 Yorkshire shale is enough. He would not thank you for giv- 
 ing him all the giant forests of California ; — would not be so 
 much interested in them, nor half so happy among them, as 
 he is here with a swdtch of oak sapling, which the Greta has 
 pulled down among the stones, and teased awhile, and which, 
 now that the water is lower, tries to get up again, out of its 
 way. 
 
 He does not want any towers or towns. Here you are to be 
 contented with three square windows of a country gentleman's 
 house. He does not want resplendent banditti. Behold ! 
 here is a brown cow and a white one : what would you have 
 more? And this scarcely-falling rapid of the Tees — here 
 pausing to circle round a pool, and there laughing as it trips 
 over a ledge of rock, six or seven inches high, is more to him 
 — infinitely more — than would be the whole colossal drainage 
 of Lake Erie into Lake Ontario, which Carlyle has justly taken 
 for a type of the Niagara of our national precipitous a<bpoavvy]. 
 
 71. I need not point out to you the true temperance of col- 
 oar in this drawing — how slightly green the trees are, how 
 softly blue the sky. 
 
 Now I put a chromo-lithotint beside it. 
 
 Well, why is that good, this bad ? Simply because if you 
 think, and work, and discipline yourselves nobly, you will 
 come to like the Greta and Tees ; if not, you will come to like 
 this. The one is what a strong man likes ; the other what a 
 weak one likes : that is modest, full of true cu'Sws, noble re- 
 straint, noble reverence ; — this has no atStbs, no fear, no 
 measure : — not even purpose, except, by accumulation of what- 
 ever it can see or snatch, to move the vile apathy of the pub- 
 lic acj>poovv7] into sensation. 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 345 
 
 72. The apathy of d^poavv-q — note the expression ! Yon 
 might think that it was awc^poa-vvrj, which was apathetic, and 
 that intemperance was full of passion. No ; the exact con- 
 trary is the fact. It is death in ourselves which seeks the ex- 
 aggerated external stimulus. I must return for a moment to 
 the art of modern France. 
 
 The most complete rest and refreshment I can get, when I 
 am overworked, in London (for if I try to rest in the fields, I 
 find them turned into villas in the course of the week before), 
 is in seeing a French play. But the French act so perfectly 
 that I am obliged to make sure beforehand that all is to end 
 well, or it is as bad as being helplessly present at some real 
 misery. 
 
 I was beguiled the other day, by seeing it announced as a 
 " Comedie," into going to see "Frou-Frou." Most of you 
 probably know that the three first of its five acts are comedy, 
 or at least playful drama, and that it plunges down, in the 
 two last, to the sorrowfullest catastrophe of all conceivable — 
 though too frequent in daily life — in which irretrievable grief 
 is brought about by the passion of a moment, and the ruin of 
 all that she loves, caused by the heroic error of an entirely 
 good and unselfish person. The sight of it made me thoroughly 
 ill, and I was not myself again for a week. 
 
 But, some time afterwards, I was speaking of it to a lady 
 who knew French character well ; and asked her how it was pos- 
 sible for a people so quick in feeling to endure the action be- 
 fore them of a sorrow so poignant. She said, " It is because 
 they have not sympathy enough : they are interested only by 
 the external scene, and are, in truth, at present, dull, not 
 quick in feeling. My own French maid went the other even- 
 ing to see that very play : when she came home, and I asked 
 her what she thought of it, she said ' it was charming, and she 
 bad amused herself immensely.' ' Amused ! but is not the story 
 Very sad ? ' ' Oh, yes, mademoiselle, it is bien triste, but it is 
 charming ; and then, how pretty Fron-Frou looks in her silk 
 dress ! ' " 
 
 73. Gentlemen, the French maid's mode of regarding the 
 Iragedy is, if you think of it, a most true image of the way in 
 
346 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 which fashionable society regards the world-suffering, in the 
 midst of which, so long as it can amuse itself, all seems to it 
 well. If the ball-room is bright, and the dresses pretty, what 
 matter how much horror is beneath or around ? Nay, this 
 apathy checks us in our highest spheres of thought, and chills 
 our most solemn purposes. You know that I never join in 
 the common outcries against Ritualism ; yet it is too painfully 
 manifest to me that the English Church itself has withdrawn 
 her eyes from the tragedy of all churches, to perk herself up 
 anew with casement and vestment, and say of herself, compla- 
 cently, in her sacred TroiKikLa, " How pretty Frou-Frou is, in 
 her silk dress ! " 
 
 74. We recognize, however, without difficulty, the peril of 
 insatiableness and immodesty in the pleasures of Art. Less 
 recognized, but therefore more perilous, the insatiableness 
 and immodesty of Science tempt us through our very vir- 
 tues. 
 
 The fatallest furies of scientific d^poavyrj are consistent with 
 the most noble powers of self-restraint and self-sacrifice. It 
 is not the lower passions, but the loftier hopes and most hon- 
 ourable desires which become deadliest when the charm of 
 them is exalted by the vanity of science. The patience of the 
 wisest of Greek heroes never fails, when the trial is by danger 
 or pain ; but do you recollect that before his trial by the song 
 of the Sirens, the sea becomes calm ? And in the few words 
 which Homer has told you of their song, you have not per- 
 haps yet with enough care observed that the form of tempta- 
 tion is precisely that to which a man victorious over every 
 fleshly trial would be likely to yield. The promise is not that 
 his body shall be gratified, but that his soul shall rise into 
 rapture ; he is not urged, as by the subtlety of Comus, to dis- 
 dain the precepts of wisdom, but invited, on the contrary, to 
 learn, — as you are all now invited by the acppoavvr) of your 
 age, — better wisdom from the wise. 
 
 " For we know all " (they say) " that was done in Troy ac- 
 cording to the will of the gods, and we know everything that 
 is upon the all-nourishing earth." 
 
 All heavenly and earthly knowledge, you see. I will read 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 347 
 
 you Pope's expansion of the verses ; for Pope never alters 
 idly, but always illustrates when he expands. 
 
 Oh stay, oh pride of Greece ! 
 
 (You hear, they begin by flattery). 
 
 Ulysses, stay, 
 Oh cease thy course, and listen to our lay, 
 Blest is the man ordained our voice to hear, 
 The song instructs the soul, and charms the ear, 
 Approach ! Thy soul shall into raptures rise ; 
 Approach ! and learn new wisdom from the wise. 
 We know whate'er the kings of mighty name 
 Achieved at Ilion in the field of Fame, 
 Whate'er beneath the Sun's bright journey lies, 
 Oh, stay, and learn new wisdom from the wise." 
 
 Is it not singular that so long ago the danger of this novelty 
 of wisdom should have been completely discerned ? Is it not 
 stranger still that three thousand years have passed by, and 
 we have not yet been able to learn the lesson, but are still eager 
 to add to our knowledge, rather than to use it ; and every 
 day more passionate in discovering, — more violent in compe- 
 tition, — are every day more cold in admiration, and more dull 
 \n reverence. 
 
 75. But, gentlemen, Homer's Ulysses, bound to the mast, 
 Survives. Dante's Ulysses is bound to the mast in another 
 fashion. He, notwithstanding the protection of Athena, and 
 after all his victories over fate, is still restless under the 
 temptation to seek new wisdom. He goes forth past the 
 pillars of Hercules, cheers his crew amidst the uncompassed 
 solitudes of the Atlantic, and perishes in sudden Chary bdis 
 of the infinite sea. In hell, the restless flame in which he is 
 wrapt continually, among the advisers of evil, is seen, from 
 the rocks above, like the firefly's flitting to and fro ; and the 
 waving garment of torture, which quivers as he speaks, and 
 aspires as he moves, condemns him to be led in eternal temp- 
 tation, and to be delivered from evil never more. 
 
848 
 
 TH& EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 LECTURE V. 
 
 THE POWER OF CONTENTMENT IN SCIENCE AND ART, 
 
 22 nd February, 1872. 
 
 76. I must ask you, in order to make these lectures of any 
 permanent use, to be careful in keeping note of the main con- 
 clusion at which we arrive in the course of each, and of the 
 sequence of such results. In the first, I tried to show you 
 that Art was only wise, when unselfish in her labour ; in the 
 second, that Science was only wise when unselfish in her 
 statement ; in the third, that wise Art was the shadow, or vis- 
 ible reflection, of wise Science ; and in the fourth, that all 
 these conditions of good must be pursued temperately and 
 peacefully. I have now farther to tell you that they must be 
 pursued independently. 
 
 77. You have not often heard me use that word " inde- 
 pendence. " And, in the sense in which of late it has been 
 accepted, you have never heard me use it but with contempt. 
 For the true strength of every human soul is to be dependent 
 on as many nobler as it can discern, and to be depended 
 upon, by as many inferior as it can reach. 
 
 But to-day I used the word in a widely different sense. I 
 think you must have felt, in what amplification I was able to 
 give you of the idea of "Wisdom as an unselfish influence in 
 Art and Science, how the highest skill and knowledge were 
 founded in human tenderness, and that the kindly Art-wis- 
 dom which rejoices in the habitable parts of the earth, is only 
 another form of the lofty Scientific charity, which ' rejoices in 
 the truth/ And as the first order of "Wisdom is to know thy- 
 self — though the least creature that can be known — so the 
 first order of Charity is to be sufficient for thyself, though the 
 least creature that can be sufficed ; and thus contented and 
 appeased, to be girded and strong for the ministry to others. 
 If sufficient to thy day is the evil thereof, how much more 
 should be the good ! 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 349 
 
 78. I have asked you to recollect one aphorism respecting 
 Science, one respecting Art ; let me — and I will ask no more 
 at this time of asking — press you to learn, farther, by heart, 
 those lines of the Song of the Sirens : six lines of Homer, I 
 trust, will not be a weariness to you : — 
 
 oil ydp ttco ris r?}5e TraprjXaffe vr\1 fAeXctlvy, 
 
 irpiv y rj/jJoou (ie\lyr]pvy airh croadroov bir clkovotcu • 
 
 ctAA' oye rep^/dfxeujs ve7rai, teal irKeiova et5c£s. 
 
 3f5/uey ydp rot tt6.v&\ ua £v\ Tpoir) eupeirj 
 
 'Apyeioi Tpooes re &eci/> ioT7]ri p.oyqaau • 
 
 ffi/xev 5\ '6craa yeprjrai eirl x^ ov ^ TrovKvfioreipY). 
 
 " No one ever rowed past this way in his black ship, before 
 he had listened to the honey-sweet singing of our lips. But 
 he stays pleased, though he may know much. For we know 
 all things which the Greeks and Trojans did in the wide Tro- 
 jan plain, by the will of the gods, and we know what things 
 take place in the much nourishing earth." And this, remem- 
 ber, is absolutely true. No man ever went past in the black 
 ship ; obeying the grave and sad law of life by which it is ap- 
 pointed for mortals to be victors on the ocean, but he was 
 tempted, as he drew near that deadly island, wise as he might 
 be, (kcu TrXetWa eiSu)$), — by the voices of those who told him 
 that they knew everything which had been done by the will 
 of God, and everything which took place on earth for the ser- 
 vice of man. 
 
 79. Now observe those two great temptations. You are 
 to know everything that has been done by the will of God : 
 and to know everything that is vital in the earth. And try to 
 realize to yourselves, for a little while, the way in which these 
 two siren promises have hitherto troubled the paths of men. 
 Think of the books that have been written in false explana- 
 tion of Divine Providence : think of the efforts that have 
 been made to show that the particular conduct which we ap- 
 prove in others, or wish ourselves to follow, is according to 
 the will of God. Think what ghastly convulsions In thought, 
 and vilenesses in action, have been fallen into by the sects 
 which thought they had adopted, for their patronage, the 
 
350 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST 
 
 perfect purposes of Heaven. Think of the vain research, 
 the wasted centuries of those who have tried to penetrate 
 the secrets of life, or of its support. The elixir vitas, the 
 philosopher's stone, the germ-cells in meteoric iron, ' cixi ^dfi 
 irovXvfioTt'iQr}' But at this day, when we have loosed the 
 last band from the masts of the black ship, and when, in- 
 stead of plying every oar to escape, as the crew of Homer's 
 Ulysses, we row like the crew of Dante's Ulysses, and of our 
 oars make wings for our foolish flight, 
 
 E, volta nostra po2)pe nel mattino 
 De' remi facemmo ale al folle volo — 
 
 the song of the sirens becomes fatal as never yet it has been 
 in time. We think ourselves privileged, first among men, to 
 know the secrets of Heaven, and fulfil the economy of earth ; 
 and the result is, that of all the races that yet have been put 
 to shame by their false wisdom or false art, — which have given 
 their labour for that which is not bread, and their strength 
 for that which satisfieth not, — we have most madly abandoned 
 the charity which is for itself sufficing, and for others service- 
 able, and have become of all creatures the most insufficient to 
 ourselves, and the most malignant to our neighbours. Granted 
 a given degree of knowledge — granted the * koi trXelovd elSw 9 
 in science, in art, and in literature, — and the present relations 
 of feeling between France and Germany, between England and 
 America, are the most horrible at once in their stupidity and 
 malignity, that have ever taken place on the globe we inhabit, 
 even though all of its great histories are of sin, and all its 
 great songs, of death. 
 
 80. Gentlemen, I pray you very solemnly to put that idea 
 of knowing all things in Heaven and Earth out of your hearts 
 and heads. It is very little that we can ever know, either of 
 the ways of Providence, or the laws of existence. But that 
 little is enough, and exactly enough : to strive for more than 
 that little is evil for us ; and be assured that beyond the need 
 of our narrow being,— beyond the range of the kingdom over 
 which it is ordained for each of us to rule in serene avrapKua 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST, 
 
 351 
 
 and self-possession, he that increaseth toil, increaseth folly ; 
 and he that increaseth knowledge, increaseth sorrow. 
 
 81. My endeavour, therefore, to-day will be to point out 
 to you how in the best wisdom, that there may be happy ad- 
 vance, there must first be happy contentment ; that, in one 
 sense, we must always be entering its kingdom as a little child, 
 and pleased yet for a time not to put away childish things. 
 And while I hitherto have endeavoured only to show how 
 modesty and gentleness of disposition purified Art and Sci- 
 ence, by permitting us to recognize the superiority of the work 
 of others to our own — to-day, on the contrary, I wish to indi- 
 cate for you the uses of infantile self-satisfaction ; and to show 
 you that it is by no error or excess in our nature, by no cor- 
 ruption or distortion of our being, that we are disposed to take 
 delight in the little things that we can do ourselves, more than 
 in the great things done by other people. So only that we 
 recognize the littleness and the greatness, it is as much a part 
 of true Temperance to be pleased with the little that we know, 
 and the little that we can do, as with the little that we have. 
 On the one side Indolence, on the other Covetousness, are as 
 much to be blamed, with respect to our Arts, as our posses- 
 sions ; and every man is intended to find an exquisite persona] 
 happiness in his own small skill, just as he is intended to find 
 happiness in his own small house or garden, while he respects, 
 without coveting, the grandeur of larger domains. 
 
 82. Nay, more than this : by the wisdom of Nature, it has 
 been appointed that more pleasure may be taken in small 
 things than in great, and more in rude Art than in the finest. 
 Were it otherwise, we might be disposed to complain of the 
 narrow limits which have been set to the perfection of human 
 skill. 
 
 I pointed out to you, in a former lecture, that the excel- 
 lence of sculpture had been confined in past time to the Athe- 
 nian and Etrurian vales. The absolute excellence of painting 
 lias been reached only by the inhabitants of a single city in 
 the whole world ; and the faultless manner of religious archi- 
 tecture holds only for a period of fifty years out of six thou- 
 sand. We are at present tormenting ourselves with the vain 
 
352 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 effort to teach men everywhere to rival Venice and Athens,-^, 
 with the practical result of having lost the enjoyment of Art 
 altogether ; — instead of being content to amuse ourselves still 
 with the painting and carving which were possible once, and 
 would be pleasant always, in Paris, and London, at Stras- 
 bourg, and at York. 
 
 I do not doubt that you are greatly startled at my saying 
 that greater pleasure is to be received from inferior Art than 
 from the finest. But what do you suppose makes all men look 
 back to the time of childhood with so much regret, (if their 
 childhood has been, in any moderate degree, healthy or peace- 
 ful) ? That rich charm, which the least possession had for us, 
 was in consequence of the poorness of our treasures. That 
 miraculous aspect of the nature around us, was because we 
 had seen little, and knew less. Every increased possession 
 loads us with a new weariness ; every piece of new knowledge 
 diminishes the faculty of admiration ; and Death is at last ap- 
 pointed to take us from a scene in which, if we were to stay 
 longer, no gift could satisfy us, and no miracle surprise. 
 
 83. Little as I myself know, or can do, as compared with 
 an} r man of essential power, my life has chanced to be one of 
 gradual progress in the things which I began in childish 
 choice ; so that I can measure with almost mathematical ex- 
 actitude the degree of feeling with which less and greater de- 
 grees of wealth or skill affect my mind. 
 
 I well remember the delight with which, when I was be- 
 ginning mineralogy, I received from a friend, who had made 
 a voyage to Peru, a little bit of limestone about the size of a 
 hazel nut, with a small film of native silver adhering to its 
 surface. I was never weary of contemplating my treasure, 
 and could not have felt myself richer had I been master of the 
 mines of Copiapo. 
 
 I am now about to use as models for your rock drawing 
 stones which my year s income, when I was a boy, w T ould not 
 have bought. But I have long ceased to take any pleasure in 
 their possession ; and am only thinking, now, to whom else 
 they can be of use, since they can be of no more to me. 
 
 84. But the loss of pleasure to me caused by advance in 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 353 
 
 knowledge of drawing has been far greater than that induced 
 by my riches in minerals. 
 
 I have placed, in your reference series, one or two draw- 
 ings of architecture, made when I was a youth of twenty, 
 with perfect ease to myself, and some pleasure to other peo- 
 ple. A day spent in sketching them brought w T ith it no weari- 
 ness, and infinite complacency. I know better now what 
 drawing should be ; the effort to do my work rightly fatigues 
 me in an hour, and I never care to look at it again from that 
 day forward. 
 
 85. It is true that men of great and real power do the best 
 things with comparative ease ; but you will never hear them 
 express the complacency which simple persons feel in partial 
 success. There is nothing to be regretted in this ; it is ap- 
 pointed for all men to enjoy, but for few to achieve. 
 
 And do not think that I am wasting your time in dwelling 
 on these simple moralities. From the facts I have been stat- 
 ing we must derive this great principle for all effort. That 
 we must endeavour to do, not what is absolutely best, but 
 what is easily within our power, and adapted to our temper 
 and condition. 
 
 86. In your educational series is a lithographic drawing, 
 by Prout, of an old house in Strasbourg. The carvings of its 
 woodwork are in a style altogether provincial, yet of which 
 the origin is very distant. The delicate Kenaissance archi- 
 tecture of Italy was affected, even in its finest periods, by a 
 tendency to throw out convex masses at the bases of its pillars ; 
 the wood-carvers of the 16th century adopted this bulged 
 form as their first element of ornamentation, and these win- 
 dows of Strasbourg are only imitations by the German peas- 
 antry of what, in its finest type, you must seek as far away as 
 the Duomo of Bergamo. 
 
 But the burgher, or peasant, of Alsace enjoyed his rude 
 imitation, adapted, as it was, boldly and frankly to the size of 
 his house and the grain of the larch logs of which he built it, 
 infinitely more than the refined Italian enjoyed the floral 
 luxuriance of his marble : and ail the treasures of a great ex- 
 hibition could not have given him the tenth part of the exul- 
 
354 
 
 THE EA G LE '£ NEST. 
 
 tation with which he saw the gable of his roof completed over 
 its jutting fret-work ; and wrote among the rude intricacies 
 of its sculpture, in flourished black letter, that "He and his 
 wife had built their house with God's help, and prayed Him 
 to let them live long in it, — they, and their children." 
 
 87. But it is not only the rustic method of architecture 
 which I wish you to note in this plate ; it is the rustic method 
 of drawing also. The manner in which these blunt timber 
 carvings are drawn by Prout is just as provincial as the carv- 
 ings themselves. Born in a far-away district of England, and 
 learning to draw, unhelped, with fishing-boats for his models ; 
 making his way instinctively until he had command of his 
 pencil enough to secure a small income by lithographic draw- 
 ing ; and finding picturesque character in buildings from which 
 all the finest lines of their carving had been effaced by time ; — 
 possessing also an instinct in the expression of such subjects so 
 peculiar as to win for him a satisfying popularity, and, far bet- 
 ter, to enable him to derive perpetual pleasure in the seclu- 
 sion of country hamlets, and the quiet streets of deserted 
 cities, — Prout had never any motive to acquaint himself with 
 the refinements, or contend with the difficulties, of a more ac- 
 complished art. So far from this, his manner of work was, 
 by its very imperfection, in the most perfect sympathy with 
 the subjects he enjoyed. The broad chalk touches in which 
 he has represented to us this house at Strasbourg are entirely 
 sufficient to give true idea of its effect. To have drawn its 
 ornaments with the subtlety of Leonardesque delineation 
 w T ould only have exposed their faults, and mocked their rustic- 
 ity. The drawing would have become painful to you from 
 the sense of the time which it had taken to represent what 
 was not worth the labour, and to direct your attention to what 
 could only, if closely examined, be matter of offence. But 
 here you have a simple and provincial draughtsman hap- 
 pily and adequately expressing a simple and provincial archi- 
 tecture ; nor could either builder or painter have become 
 wiser, but to their loss. 
 
 88. Is it then, you will ask me, seriously to be recom- 
 mended, and, however recommendable, is it possible, that 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 355 
 
 men should remain contented with attainments which they 
 know to be imperfect? and that now, as in former times, 
 large districts of country, and generations of men, should be 
 enriched or amused by the products of a clumsy ignorance ? 
 I do not know how far it is possible, but I know that wher- 
 ever you desire to have true art, it is necessary. Ignorance, 
 which is contented and clumsy, will produce what is imperfect, 
 but not offensive. But ignorance cfas-contented, and dexter- 
 ous, learning what it cannot understand, and imitating what 
 it cannot enjoy, produces the most loathsome forms of manu- 
 facture that can disgrace or mislead humanity. Some years 
 since, as I was looking through the modern gallery at the quiet 
 provincial German School of Diisseldorf, I was fain to leave 
 all their epic and religious designs, that I might stay long be- 
 fore a little painting of a shepherd boy carving his dog out of 
 a bit of deal. The dog was sitting by, with the satisfied and 
 dignified air of a personage about for the first time in his life 
 to be worthily represented in sculpture ; and his master was 
 evidently succeeding to his mind in expressing the features of 
 his friend. The little scene was one which, as you know, 
 must take place continually among the cottage artists who 
 supply the toys of Nuremberg and Berne. Happy, these ! so 
 long as, undisturbed by ambition, they spend their leisure 
 time in work pretending only to amuse, yet capable, in its 
 own way, of showing accomplished dexterity, and vivid per- 
 ception of nature. We, in the hope of doing great things, 
 have surrounded our workmen with Italian models, and 
 tempted them with prizes into competitive mimicry of all that 
 is best, or that we imagine to be best, in the work of every 
 people under the sun. And the result of our instruction is 
 only that we are able to produce, — I am now quoting the state- 
 ment I made last May, " the most perfectly and roundly ill- 
 done things " that ever came from human hands. I should 
 thankfully put upon my chimney-piece the wooden dog cut by 
 the shepherd boy : but I should be willing to forfeit a large 
 sum, rather than keep in my room the number 1 of the Ken- 
 sington Museum — thus described in its catalogue — "Statue 
 in black and white marble, of a Newfoundland dog standing 
 
356 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 on a serpent, which rests on a marble cushion ; — the pedestal 
 ornamented with Pietra Dura fruits in relief." 
 
 89. You will, however, I fear, imagine me indulging in my 
 usual paradox, when I assure you that all the efforts we have 
 been making to surround ourselves with heterogeneous means 
 of instruction, will have the exactly reverse effect from that 
 w T hich we intend ; — and that, whereas formerly we were able 
 only to do a little well, we are qualifying ourselves now to do 
 everything ill. Nor is the result confined to our workmen 
 only. The introduction of French dexterity and of German 
 erudition has been harmful chiefly to our most accomplished 
 artists— and in the last Exhibition of our Royal Academy 
 there was, I think, no exception to the manifest fact that 
 every painter of reputation painted worse than he did ten 
 years ago. 
 
 90. Admitting, however, (not that I suppose you will at 
 once admit, but for the sake of argument, supposing,) that 
 this is true ? what, we have farther to ask, can be done to dis- 
 courage ourselves from calamitous emulation, and withdraw 
 our workmen from the sight of what is too good to be of use 
 to them ? 
 
 But this question is not one which can be determined by 
 the needs, or limited to the circumstances of Art. To live 
 generally more modest and contented lives ; to win the great- 
 est possible pleasure from the smallest things ; to do what is 
 likely to be serviceable to our immediate neighbours, whether 
 it seem to them admirable or not ; to make no pretence of 
 admiring what has really no hold upon our hearts ; and to be 
 resolute in refusing all additions to our learning, until we 
 have perfectly arranged and secured what learning we have 
 got ; — these are conditions, and laws, of unquestionable cro^ta 
 and o-axfrpoavvr), which will indeed lead us up to fine art if we 
 are resolved to have it fine ; but will also do what is much 
 better, make rude art precious. 
 
 91. It is not, however, by any means necessary that provin- 
 cial art should be rude, though it may be singular. Often it 
 is no less delicate than quaint, and no less refined in grace 
 than original in character. This is likely always to take place 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 357 
 
 when a people of naturally fine artistic temper work with the 
 respect which, as I endeavoured to show you in a former 
 lecture, ought always to be paid to local material and cir- 
 cumstance. 
 
 I have placed in your educational series the photograph of 
 the door of a wooden house in Abbeville, and of the winding 
 stair above ; both so exquisitely sculptured that the real vine- 
 leaves which had wreathed themselves about their pillars, 
 cannot, in the photograph, be at once discerned from the 
 carved foliage. The latter, quite as graceful, can only be 
 known for art by its quaint setting. 
 
 Yet this school of sculpture is altogether provincial. It 
 could only have risen in a richly-wooded chalk country, 
 where the sapling trees beside the brooks gave example to 
 the workmen of the most intricate tracery, and the white 
 cliffs above the meadow r s furnished docile material to his 
 hand. 
 
 92. I have now, to my sorrow, learned to despise the elab- 
 orate intricacy, and the playful realizations, of the Norman 
 designers ; and can only be satisfied by the reserved and 
 proud imagination of the master schools. But the utmost 
 pleasure I now take in these is almost as nothing, compared 
 to the joy I used to have, when I knew no better, in the 
 fretted pinnacles of Rouen-;- and white lace, rather than stone- 
 work, of the chapels of Reu and Amboise. 
 
 Yet observe that the first condition of this really precious 
 provincial work is its being the best that can be done under 
 the given circumstances ; and the second is, that though 
 provincial, it is not in the least frivolous or ephemeral, but as 
 definitely civic, or public, in design, and as permanent in the 
 manner of it, as the work of the most learned academies : 
 while its execution brought out the energies of each little 
 state, not necessarily in rivalship, but severally in the per- 
 fecting of styles which Nature had rendered it impossible for 
 their neighbours to imitate. 
 
 93. This civic unity, and the feeling of the workman that 
 he is performing his part in a great scene which is to endure 
 for centuries, while yet, within the walls of his city, it is to 
 
358 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 be a part of his own peculiar life, and to be separate from all 
 the world besides, developes, together, whatever duty he 
 acknowledges as a patriot, and whatever complacency he feels 
 as an artist. 
 
 We now build, in our villages, by the rules of the Academy 
 of London ; and if there be a little original vivacity or genius 
 in any provincial workman, he is almost sure to spend it in 
 making a ridiculous toy. Nothing is to me much more pa- 
 thetic than the way that our neglected workmen thus throw 
 their lives away. As I was walking the other day through 
 the Crystal Palace, I came upon a toy which had taken the 
 leisure of five years to make ; you dropped a penny into the 
 chink of it, and immediately a little brass steam-engine in the 
 middle started into nervously hurried action : some bell- 
 ringers pulled strings at the bottom of a church steeple 
 which had no top ; two regiments of cavalry marched out 
 from the sides, and manoeuvred in the middle ; and two well- 
 dressed persons in a kind of opera-box expressed their satis- 
 faction by approving gestures. 
 
 In old Ghent, or Bruges, or York, such a man as the one 
 who made this toy, with companions similarly minded, w r ould 
 have been taught how to employ himself, not to their less 
 amusement, but to better purpose ; and in their five years of 
 leisure hours they would have carved a flamboyant crown for 
 the belfry-tower, and would have put chimes into it that would 
 have told the time miles away, with a pleasant tune for the 
 hour, and a variation for the quarters, and cost the passers-by 
 in all the city and plain not so much as the dropping of a 
 penny into a chink. 
 
 94. Do not doubt that I feel, as strongly as any of you can 
 feel, the utter impossibility at present of restoring provincial 
 simplicity to our country towns. 
 
 My despondency respecting this, and nearly all other mat- 
 ters which I know to be necessary, is at least as great, — it is 
 certainly more painful to me, in the decline of life, — than that 
 which any of my younger hearers can feel. But what I have 
 to tell you of the unchanging principles of nature, and of art, 
 must not be affected by either hope or fear. And if I succeed 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 359 
 
 in convincing you what these principles are, there are many 
 practical consequences which you may deduce from them, if 
 ever you find yourselves, as young* Englishmen are often likely 
 to find themselves, in authority over foreign tribes of peculiar 
 or limited capacities. 
 
 Be assured that you can no more drag or compress men 
 into perfection than you can drag or compress plants. If 
 ever you find yourselves set in positions of authority, and are 
 entrusted to determine modes of education, ascertain first 
 what the people you would teach , have been in the habit of 
 doing, and encourage them to do that better. Set no other 
 excellence before their eyes ; disturb none of their reverence 
 for the past ; do not think yourselves bound to dispel their 
 ignorance, or to contradict their superstitions ; teach them 
 only gentleness and truth ; redeem them by example from 
 habits which you know to be unhealthy or degrading ; but 
 cherish, above all things, local associations, and hereditary skill. 
 
 It is the curse of so-called civilization to pretend to origi- 
 nality by the wilful invention of new methods of error, while 
 it quenches wherever it has power, the noble originality of 
 nations, rising out of the purity of their race, and the love of 
 their native land. 
 
 95. I could say much more, but I think I have said enough 
 to justify for the present what you might otherwise have 
 thought singular in the methods I shall adopt for your exer- 
 cise in the drawing schools. I shall indeed endeavour to 
 write down for you the laws of the art which is centrally best ; 
 and to exhibit to you a certain number of its unquestionable 
 standards : but your own actual practice shall be limited to 
 objects which will explain to you the meaning, and awaken 
 you to the beauty, of the art of your own country. 
 
 The first series of my lectures on sculpture must have 
 proved to you that I do not despise either the workmanship 
 or the mythology of Greece ; but I must assert with more 
 distinctness than even in my earliest works, the absolute un- 
 fitness of all its results to be made the guides of English 
 students or artists. 
 
 Every nation can represent, with prudence, or success, 
 
360 
 
 TEE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 only the realities in which it delights. What you have with 
 you, and before you, daily, dearest to your sight and heart, 
 that, by the magic of your hand, or of your lips, you can 
 gloriously express to others ; and what you ought to have in 
 your sight and heart, — what, if you have not, nothing else 
 can be truly seen or loved, — is the human life of your own 
 people, understood in its history, and admired in its presence. 
 
 And unless that be first made beautiful, idealism must be 
 false, and imagination monstrous. 
 
 It is your influence on the existing world which, in yom* 
 studies here, you ought finally to consider ; and although 
 it is not, in that influence, my function to direct you, I hope 
 you will not be discontented to know that I shall ask no effort 
 from your art-genius, beyond the rational suggestion of what 
 we may one day hope to see actually realized in England, in 
 the sweetness of her landscape, and the dignity of her people. 
 
 In connection with the subject of this lecture, I may men- 
 tion to you that I have received an interesting letter, request • 
 ing me to assist in promoting some improvements designed 
 in the city of Oxford. 
 
 But as the entire charm and educational power of the city 
 of Oxford, so far as that educational power depended on rev- 
 erent associations, or on visible solemnities and serenities of 
 architecture, have been already destroyed ; and, as far as our 
 own lives extend, destroyed, I may say, for ever, by the manu- 
 facturing suburb which heaps its ashes on one side, and the 
 cheap-lodging suburb which heaps its brick-bats on the other ; 
 I am myself, either as antiquary or artist, absolutely indiffer 
 ent to what happens next ; except on grounds respecting the 
 possible health, cleanliness, and decency which may yet be 
 obtained for the increasing population. 
 
 How far cleanliness and decency bear on art and science, 
 or on the changed functions of the university to its crowd of 
 modern students, I have partly to consider in connection with 
 the subject of my next lecture, and I will reserve therefore 
 any definite notice of these proposed improvements in the 
 city, until the next occasion of meeting you. 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST, 
 
 361 
 
 LECTUEE VI 
 
 THE RELATION TO ART OF THE SCIENCE OF LIGHT. 
 
 Mth February, 1872. 
 
 96. I have now, perhaps to the exhaustion of your patience, 
 but you will find, not without real necessity, denned the man- 
 ner in which the mental tempers, ascertained by philosojDhy 
 to be evil or good, retard and advance the parallel studies of 
 science and art. 
 
 In this and the two next following lectures I shall endeav- 
 our to state to you the literal modes in which the virtues of 
 art are connected with the principles of exact science ; but 
 now, remember, I am speaking, not of the consummate sci- 
 ence of which art is the image ; but only of what science we 
 have actually attained, which is often little more than termin- 
 ology (and even that uncertain), with only a gleam of true 
 science here and there. 
 
 I will not delay you by any defence of the arrangement 
 of sciences I have chosen. Of course we may at once dismiss 
 chemistry and pure mathematics from our consideration. 
 Chemistry can do nothing for art but mix her colours, and 
 tell her what stones will stand weather ; (I wish, at this day, 
 she did as much ;) and with pure mathematics we have noth- 
 ing whatever to do ; nor can that abstract form of high 
 mathesis stoop to comprehend the simplicity of art. To a 
 first wrangler at Cambridge, under the present conditions of 
 his trial, statues will necessarily be stone dolls, and imagina- 
 tive work unintelligible. We have, then, in true fellowship 
 with art, only the sciences of light and form, (optics and 
 geometry). If you will take the first syllable of the word 
 ' geometry ' to mean earth in the form of flesh, as well as of 
 clay, the two words sum every science that regards graphic 
 art, or of which graphic art can represent the conclusions. 
 
 97. To-day we are to speak of optics, the science of seeing ; 
 •—of that power, whatever it may be, which (by Plato's defini- 
 tion), "through the eyes, manifests colour to us." 
 
382 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 Hold that definition always, and remember that 'light' 
 means accurately the power that affects the eyes of animals 
 with the sensation proper to them. The study of the effect 
 of light on nitrate of silver is chemistry, not optics ; and what 
 is light to us may indeed shine on a stone ; but is not light 
 to the stone. The " fiat lux " of creation is, therefore, in the 
 deep sense of it, "fiat animal 
 
 We cannot say that it is merely " fiat oculus," for the effect 
 of light on living organism, even when sightless, cannot be 
 separated from its influence on sight. A plant consists essen- 
 tially of two parts, root and leaf : the leaf by nature seeks 
 light, the root by nature seeks darkness : it is not warmth or 
 cold, but essentially light and shade, which are to them, as to 
 us, the appointed conditions of existence. 
 
 98. And you are to remember still more distinctly that the 
 words "fiat lux" mean indeed "fiat anima," because even the 
 power of the eye itself, as such, is in its animation. You do 
 not see ivith the lens of the eye. You see through that, and 
 by means of that, but you see with the soul of the eye. 
 
 99. A great physiologist said to me the other day — it w r as 
 in the rashness of controversy, and ought not to be remem- 
 bered as a deliberate assertion, therefore I do not give his 
 name—still he did say — that sight was " altogether mechan- 
 ical." The words simply meant, if they meant anything, that 
 all his physiology had never taught him the difference between 
 eyes and telescopes. Sight is an absolutely spiritual phenom- 
 enon ; accurately, and only, to be so defined : and the " Let 
 there be light," is as much, when you understand it, the or- 
 dering of intelligence, as the ordering of vision. It is the ap- 
 pointment of change of what had been else only a mechanical 
 effluence from things unseen to things unseeing, — from stars 
 that did not shine to earth that could not perceive ; — the 
 change, I say, of that blind vibration into the glory of the sun 
 and moon for human eyes ; so rendering possible also the 
 communication out of the unfathomable truth, of that portion 
 of truth which is good for us, and animating to us, and is set 
 to rule over the day and night of our jo} r and sorrow. 
 
 100. The sun was set thus ' to rule the day.' And of lata 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 363 
 
 you have learned that he was set to rule everything else that 
 we know of. You have been taught that, by the Syrens, as a 
 piece of entirely new knowledge, much to be exulted over. 
 We painters, indeed, have been for some time acquainted with 
 the general look of the sun, and long before there were paint- 
 ers there were wise men, — Zoroastrian and other, — who had 
 suspected that there was power in the sun ; but the Sirens of 
 yesterday have somewhat new, it seems, to tell } r ou of his au- 
 thority, err! ypovl 7rov\v/3oT€Lprj. I take a passage, almost at 
 random, from a recent scientific work. 
 
 " Just as the phenomena of water-formed rocks all owe their 
 existence directly or indirectly chiefly to the sun's energy, so 
 also do the phenomena interwoven with life. This has long 
 been recognized by various eminent British and foreign physic- 
 ists ; and in 1854 Professor , in his memoir on the method 
 
 of palaeontology, asserted that organisms were but manifesta- 
 tions of applied physics and applied chemistry. Professor 
 
 puts the generalizations of physicists in a few words : when 
 speaking of the sun, it is remarked — 6 He rears the whole 
 vegetable world, and through it the animal ; the lilies of the 
 field are his workmanship, the verdure of the meadows, and 
 the cattle upon a thousand hills. He forms the muscle, he 
 urges the blood, he builds the brain. His fleetness is in the 
 lion's foot ; he springs in the panther, he soars in the eagle, 
 he slides in the snake. He builds the forest and hews it down, 
 the power which raised the tree and that which wields the 
 axe being one and the same.' " 
 
 All this is exceedingly true ; and it is new in one respect, 
 namely, in the ascertainment that the quantity of solar force 
 necessary to produce motive power is measurable, and, in its 
 sum, unalterable. For the rest, it was perfectly well known in 
 Homer's time, as now, that animals could not move till they 
 were warm ; and the fact that the warmth which enables them 
 to do so is finally traceable to the sun, would have appeared to 
 a Greek physiologist, no more interesting than, to a Greek poet, 
 would have been the no less certain fact, that " Tout ce qui 
 se peut dire de beau est dans les dictionnaires ; il n'y a que 
 les mots qui sont transposees " — Everything fine, that can be 
 
364 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 Baicl, is in the dictionaries ; it is only that the words are trans- 
 posed. 9 
 
 Yes, indeed ; but to the iroirfr^^ the gist of the matter is in 
 the transposition. The sun does, as the delighted physicist 
 tells you, unquestionably " slide in the snake ; " but how 
 comes he to adopt that manner, we artists ash, of (literally) 
 transposition ? 
 
 101. The summer before last, as I was walking in the woods 
 near the Giesbach, on the Lake of Brientz, and moving very 
 quietly, I came suddenly on a small steel-grey serpent, lying 
 in the middle of the path ; and it was greatly surprised to see 
 me. Serpents, however, always have complete command of 
 their feelings, and it looked at me for a quarter of a minute 
 without the slightest change of posture : then, with an almost 
 imperceptible motion, it began to withdraw itself beneath a 
 cluster of leaves. Without in the least hastening its action, it 
 gradually concealed the whole of its body. I was about to 
 raise one of the leaves, when I saw what I thought was the 
 glance of another serpent, in the thicket at the path side ; but 
 it was the same one, which, having once withdrawn itself from 
 observation beneath the leaves, used its utmost agility to 
 spring into the wood ; and with so instantaneous a flash of 
 motion, that I never saw it leave the covert, and only caught the 
 gleam of light as it glided away into the copse. 
 
 102. Now T , it was to me a matter of supreme indifference 
 whether the force which the creature used in this action was 
 derived from the sun, the moon, or the gas-works at Berne. 
 What was, indeed, a matter of interest to me, was just that 
 which would have struck a peasant, or a child ; — namely, the 
 calculating wisdom of the creature's device ; and the exquisite 
 grace, strength, and precision of the action by which it was 
 accomplished. 
 
 103. I was interested then, I say, more in the device of the 
 creature, than in its source of motion. Nevertheless, I am 
 pleased to hear, from men of science, how necessarily that 
 motion proceeds from the sun. But where did its device 
 come from ? There is no wisdom, no device in the dust, any 
 more than there is warmth in the dust. The springing of the 
 
. THE EAGLE'S NEST. g$5 
 
 serpent is from the sun : — the wisdom of the serpent,— 
 whence that? 
 
 104 From the sun also, is the only answer, I suppose, pos- 
 sible to physical science. It is not a false answer : quite true, 
 like the other, up to a certain point. To-day, in the strength 
 of your youth, you may know what it is to have the power of 
 the sun taken out of your arms and legs. But when you are 
 old, you will know what it is to have the power of the sun 
 taken out of your minds also. Such a thing may happen to 
 you, sometimes, even now ; but it will continually happen to 
 you when you are my age. You will no more, then, think over 
 a matter to any good purpose after twelve o'clock in the day. 
 It may be possible to think over, and, much more, to talk 
 over, matters, to little, or to bad, purpose after twelve o'clock 
 in the day. The members of your national legislature do 
 their work, we know, by gaslight ; but you don't suppose the 
 power of the sun is in any of their devices ? Quite seriously, 
 ail the vital functions, — and, like the rest and with the rest, 
 the pure and wholesome faculties of the brain, — rise and set 
 with the sun : your digestion and intellect are alike dependent 
 on its beams ; your thoughts, like your blood, flow from the 
 force of it, in all scientific accuracy and necessity. Sol illu- 
 minatio nostra est ; Sol saius nostra ; Sol sapientia nostra. 
 
 And it is the final act and outcome of lowest national athe- 
 ism, since it cannot deny the sun, at least to strive to do 
 without it ; to blast the day in heaven with smoke, and pro- 
 long the dance, and the council, by night, with tapers, until 
 at last, rejoicing— Dixit insipiens in corcle suo, non est Sol. 
 
 105. Weil, the sliding of the serpent, and the device of the 
 serpent, we admit, come from the sun. The flight of the 
 dove, and its harmlessness, — do they also ? 
 
 The flight, — yes, assuredly. The Innocence ? — It is a new 
 question. How of that ? Between movement and non-move- 
 ment — nay, between sense and non-sense — the difference rests, 
 we say, in the power of Apollo ; but between malice and in- 
 nocence, where shall we find the root of that distinction ? 
 
 106. Have you ever considered how much literal truth there 
 is in the words—" The light of the body is the eye. If, there- 
 
366 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 fore, thine eye be evil " — and the rest ? How com the eye be 
 evil ? How, if evil, can it fill the whole body with darkness ? 
 
 What is the meaning of having one's body full of darkness? 
 It cannot mean merely being blind. Blind, you may fall in 
 the ditch if you move ; but you may be well, if at rest. But 
 to be evil-eyed, is not that worse than to have no eyes ? and 
 instead of being only in darkness, to have darkness in tiki 
 portable, perfect, and eternal ? 
 
 107. Well, in order to get at the meaning we may, indeed, 
 now appeal to physical science, and ask her to help us. How 
 many manner of eyes are there ? You physical-science stu- 
 dents should be able to tell us painters that. We only know, 
 in a vague way, the external aspect and expression of eyes. 
 We see, as we try to draw the endlessly-grotesque creatures 
 about us, what infinite variety of instruments the} 7 have ; but 
 you know, far better than we do, how those instruments are 
 constructed and directed. You know how some play in their 
 sockets with independent revolution, — project into near-sight- 
 edness on pyramids of bone, — are brandished at the points of 
 horns, — studded over backs and shoulders, — thrust at the 
 ends of antennae to pioneer for the head, or pinched up into 
 tubercles at the corners of the lips. But how do the creat- 
 ures see out of all these eyes ? 
 
 108. No business of ours, you may think ? Pardon me. 
 This is no Siren's question — this is altogether business of 
 ours, lest, perchance, any of us should see partly in the same 
 manner. Comparative sight is a far more important question 
 than comparative anatomy. It is no matter, though we some- 
 times walk — and it may often be desirable to climb — like 
 apes ; but suppose we should only see like apes, or like lower 
 creatures ? I can tell you, the science of optics is an essential 
 one to us ; for, exactly according to these infinitely grotesque 
 directions and multiplications of instrument, you have corre- 
 spondent, not only intellectual but moral, faculty in the soul 
 of the creatures. Literally, if the eye be pure, the body is 
 pure ; but, if the light of the body be but darkness, how great 
 is that darkness ! 
 
 109. Have you ever looked attentively at the study I gave 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 367 
 
 you of the head of the rattlesnake ? The serpent will keep its 
 eyes fixed on you for an hour together, a vertical slit in each 
 admitting such image of you as is possible to the rattlesnake 
 retina, and to the rattlesnake mind. How much of you do 
 you think it sees ? I ask that, first, as a pure physical ques- 
 tion. I do not know : it is not my business to know. You, 
 from your schools of physical science, should bring me an- 
 swer. How much of a man can a snake see ? What sort of 
 image of him is received through that deadly vertical cleft in 
 the iris ; — through the glazed blue of the ghastly lens ? Make 
 me a picture of the appearance of a man, so far as you can 
 judge it can take place on the snake's retina. Then ask your- 
 selves, farther, how much of speculation is possible to the 
 snake, touching this human aspect ? 
 
 110. Or, if that seem too far beneath possible inquiry, how 
 say you of a tiger's eye, or a cat's ? A cat may look at a 
 king ; — yes ; but can it see a king when it looks at him ? The 
 beasts of prey never seem to me to look, in our sense, at all. 
 Their eyes are fascinated by the motion of anything, as a kit- 
 ten's by a ball ; they fasten, as if drawn by an inevitable at- 
 traction, on their food. But when a cat caresses you, it never 
 looks at you. Its heart seems to be in its back and paws, not 
 its eyes. It will rub itself against you, or pat you with velvet 
 tufts instead of talons ; but you may talk to it an hour to- 
 gether, yet not rightly catch its eye. Ascend higher in the 
 races of being— to the fawn, the dog, the horse ; you will find 
 that, according to the clearness of sight, is indeed the kind- 
 ness of sight, and that at least the noble eyes of humanity 
 look through humanity, from heart into heart, and with no 
 mechanical vision. And the Light of the body is the eye — 
 yes, and in happy life, the light of the heart also. 
 
 111. But now note farther : there is a mathematical power 
 in the eye which may far transcend its moral power. When 
 the moral power is feeble, the faculty of measurement, or of 
 distinct delineation, may be supreme ; and of comprehension 
 none. But here, again, I want the help of the physical science 
 schools. I believe the eagle has no scent, and hunts by sight, 
 yet flies higher than any other bird. Now, I want to know 
 
3G8 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 what the appearance is to an eagle, two thousand feet up, of 
 a sparrow in a hedge, or of a partridge in a stubble-field. 
 What kind of definition on the retina do these brown spots 
 take to manifest themselves as signs of a thing eatable ; and 
 if an eagle sees a partridge so, does it see everything else so ? 
 And then tell me, farther, does it see only a square yard at a 
 time, and yet, as it flies, take summary of the square yards 
 beneath it ? When next you are travelling by express sixty 
 miles an hour, past a grass bank, try to see a grasshopper, 
 and you will get some idea of an eagle's optical business, if it 
 takes only the line of ground underneath it. Does it take 
 more ? 
 
 112. Then, besides this faculty of clear vision, you have to 
 consider the faculty of metric vision. Neither an eagle, nor 
 a kingfisher, nor any other darting bird, can see things with 
 both their eyes at the same time as completely as you and I 
 can ; bat think of their faculty of measurement as compared 
 with ours ! You will find that it takes you months of labour 
 before you can acquire accurate power, even of deliberate es- 
 timate of distances with the eye ; it is one of the points to 
 which, most of all, I have to direct your work. And the curi- 
 ous thing is that, given the degree of practice, you will meas- 
 ure ill or well with the eye in proportion to the quantity of life 
 in you. No one can measure with a glance, when they are 
 tired. Only the other day I got half an inch out on a foot, 
 in drawing merely a coat of arms, because I was tired. But 
 fancy what would happen to a swallow, if it was half an inch 
 out in a foot, in flying round a corner ! 
 
 113. Well, that is the first branch of the questions which 
 we want answered by optical science ; — the actual distortion, 
 contraction, and other modification, of the sight of different 
 animals, as far as it can be known from the forms of their eyes. 
 Then, secondly, we ourselves need to be taught the connec- 
 tion of the sense of colour with health ; the difference in the 
 physical conditions which lead us to seek for gloom, or bright- 
 ness of hue ; and the nature of purity in colour, first in the 
 
 object seen, and then in the eye which prefers it. 
 
 * * # * * 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 363 
 
 (The portion of lecture here omitted referred to illlustra- 
 tions of vulgarity and delicacy in colour, showing that the vul- 
 gar colours, even when they seemed most glaring, w-ere in 
 reality impure and dull ; and destroyed each other by con- 
 tention ; while noble colour, intensely bright and pure, was 
 nevertheless entirely governed and calm, so that every colour 
 bettered and aided all the rest.) 
 
 114 You recollect how I urged you in my opening course 
 of lectures rather to work in the school of crystalline colour 
 than in that of shade. 
 
 Since I gave that first course of lectures, my sense of the 
 necessity of this study of brightness primarily, and of purity 
 and gaiety beyond all other qualities, has deeply been con- 
 firmed by the influence which the unclean horror and impious 
 melancholy of the modern French school — most literally the 
 school of death — has gained over the popular mind. I will 
 not dwell upon the evil phrenzy to-day. But it is in order at 
 once to do the best I can, in counteraction of its deadly in- 
 fluence, though not without other and constant reasons, that 
 I give you heraldry, with all its splendour and its pride, its 
 brightness of colour, and honourableness of meaning, for 
 your main elementary practice. 
 
 115. To-day I have only time left to press on your thoughts 
 the deeper law of this due joy in colour and light. 
 
 On any morning of the year, how many pious supplications, 
 do you suppose, are uttered throughout educated Europe for 
 "light?" How many lips at least pronounce the word, and, 
 perhaps, in the plurality of instances, with some distinct idea 
 attached to it ? It is true the speakers employ it only as a 
 metaphor. But why is their language thus metaphorical? 
 If they mean merely to ask for spiritual knowledge or guid- 
 ance, why not say so plainly instead of using this jaded 
 figure of speech ? No boy goes to his father when he wants 
 to be taught, or helped, and asks his father to give him 
 'light.' 
 
 He asks what he wants, advice or protection. Why are not 
 we also content to ask our Father for what we want, in plain 
 English? 
 
370 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 The metaphor, you will answer, is put into our mouths, and 
 felt to be a beautiful and necessary one. 
 
 I admit it. In your educational series, first of all examples 
 of iriodern art, is the best engraving I could find of the pict- 
 ure which, founded on that idea of Christ's being the Giver 
 of Light, contains, I believe, the most true and useful piece 
 of religious vision which realistic art has yet embodied. But 
 why is the metaphor so necessary, or, rather, how far is it a 
 metaphor at all ? Do you think the words ' Light of the 
 "World ' mean only ' Teacher or Guide of the World ? • When 
 the Sun of Justice is said to rise with health in its wings, do 
 you suppose the image only means the correction of error ? 
 Or does it even mean so much? The Light of Heaven is 
 needed to do that perfectly. But what we are to pray for is 
 the Light of the World ; nay, the Light "that lighteth every 
 man that cometh into the ivorld-." 
 
 116. You will find that it is no metaphor — nor has it ever 
 been so. 
 
 To the Persian, the Greek, and the Christian, the sense of 
 the power of the God of Light, has been one and the same. 
 That power is not merely in teaching or protecting, but in 
 the enforcement of purity of body, and of equity or justice in 
 the heart ; and this, observe, not heavenly purity, nor final 
 justice ; but, now, and here, actual purity in the midst of the 
 worlds foulness, — practical justice in the midst of the world's 
 iniquity. And the physical strength of the organ of sight, — 
 the physical purity of the flesh, the actual love of sweet light 
 and stainless colour, — are the necessary signs, real, inevitable, 
 and visible, of the prevailing presence, with any nation, or in 
 any house, of the ' 'Light that lighteth every man that cometh 
 into the world." 
 
 117. Physical purity ; — actual love of sweet light, and of fair 
 colour. This is one palpable sign, and an entirely needful one, 
 that we have got what we pretend to pray for every morning. 
 That, you will find, is the meaning of Apollo's war with the 
 Python— of your own St. George's war with the dragon. You 
 have got that battle stamped again on every sovereign in your 
 pockets, but do you think the sovereigns are helping, at this 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 371 
 
 instant, St. George in his battle ? Once, on your gold of the 
 Henrys' times, you had St. Michael and the dragon, and called 
 your coins ' angels.' How much have they done lately, of an- 
 gelic work, think you, in purifying the earth ? 
 
 118. Purifying, literally, purging and cleansing. That is the 
 first " sacred art " all men have to learn. And the words I de- 
 ferred to the close of this lecture, about the proposed improve- 
 ments in Oxford, are very few. Oxford is, indeed, capable of 
 much improvement, but only by undoing the greater part of 
 what has been done to it within the last twenty years ; and, 
 at present, the one thing that I would say to well-meaning 
 persons is, 'For Heaven's sake — literally for Heaven's sake — 
 let the place alone, and clean it.' I walked last week to Iffley 
 — not having been there for thirty years. I did not know the 
 church inside ; I found it pitch-dark with painted glass of 
 barbarous manufacture, and the old woman who showed it 
 infinitely proud of letting me in at the front door instead of 
 the side one. But close by it, not fifty yards down the hill, 
 there was a little well — a holy well it should have been ; beauti- 
 ful in the recess of it, and the lovely ivy and weeds above it, 
 had it but been cared for in a human way ; but so full of frogs 
 that you could not have dipped a cup in it without catching 
 one. 
 
 What is the use of pretty painted glass in your churches 
 when you have the plagues of Egypt outside of them ? 
 
 119. I walked back from Iffley to Oxford by what was once 
 the most beautiful approach to an academical city of any in 
 Europe. Now it is a wilderness of obscure and base build- 
 ings. You think it a fine thing to go into Ifiiey church by 
 the front door ; — and you build cheap lodging-houses over 
 all the approach to the chief university of English literature ! 
 That, forsooth, is your luminous cloister, and porch of Polyg- 
 notus to your temple of Apollo. And in the centre of that 
 temple, at the very foot of the dome of the Eadclyffe, be- 
 tween two principal colleges, the lane by which I walked from 
 my own college half an hour ago, to this place, — Brasen-nose 
 Lane, — is left in a state as loathsome as a back-alley in the 
 East end of London. 
 
37k 
 
 TEE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 120. These, I suppose are the signs of extending liberality, 
 and disseminated advantages of education. 
 
 Gentlemen, if, as was lately said by a leading member of 
 your Government, the function of a university be only to ex- 
 amine, it may indeed examine the whole mob of England in 
 the midst of a dunghill ; but it cannot teach the gentlemen 
 of England in the midst of a dunghill ; no, nor even the peo- 
 ple of England. How many of her people it ought to teach 
 is a question. We think, now-a-days, our philosophy is to 
 light every man that cometh into the world, and to light every 
 man equally. Well, when indeed you give up all other com- 
 merce in this island, and, as in Bacon's New Atlantis, only buy 
 and sell to get God's first creature, which was light, there 
 may be some equality of gain for us in that possession. But 
 until then, — and we are very far from such a time, — the light 
 cannot be given to all men equally. Nay, it is becoming 
 questionable whether, instead of being equally distributed to 
 all, it may not be equally withdrawn from us all : whether the 
 ideas of purity and justice, — of loveliness which is to sanctify 
 our peace, — and of justice which is to sanctify our battle, are 
 not vanishing from the purpose of our policy, and even from 
 the conception of our education. 
 
 The uses, and the desire, of seclusion, of meditation, of re- 
 straint, and of correction — are they not passing from us in 
 the collision of worldly interests, and restless contests of mean 
 hope, and meaner fear ? What light, what health, what peace, 
 or what security, — youths of England — do you come here 
 now to seek ? In what sense do you receive— with what sin- 
 cerity do you adopt for yourselves — the ancient legend of your 
 schools, "Dominus illuminatio mea, et salus mea ; quern 
 timebo ? " 
 
 121. Bemember that the ancient theory on which this uni- 
 versity was founded, — not the theory of any one founder, ob- 
 serve, nor even the concluded or expressed issue of the wis- 
 dom of many ; but the tacit feeling by which the work and 
 hope of all were united and completed — was, that England 
 should gather from among her children a certain number of 
 purest and best, whom she might train to become, each in 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 373 
 
 their day of strength, her teachers and patterns in religion, 
 her declarers and doers of justice in law, and her leaders in 
 battle. Bred, it might be, by their parents, in the fond pov« 
 erty of learning, or amidst the traditions and discipline of il- 
 lustrious houses, — in either manner separate, from their youth 
 up, to their glorious offices — they came here to be kindled 
 into the lights that were to be set on the hills of England, 
 brightest of the pious, the loyal, and the brave. Whatever 
 corruption blighted, whatever worldliness buried, whatever 
 sin polluted their endeavour, this conception of its meaning 
 remained ; and was indeed so fulfilled in faithfulness, that to 
 the men whose passions were tempered, and whose hearts 
 confirmed, in the calm of these holy places, you, now living, 
 owe all that is left to you of hope in heaven, and all of safety 
 or honour that you have to trust and defend on earth. 
 
 Their children have forfeited, some by guilt, and many in 
 folly, the leadership they inherited ; and every man in Eng- 
 land now is to do and to learn what is right in his own eyes. 
 How much need, therefore, that we should learn first of all 
 what eyes are ; and what vision they ought to possess — science 
 of sight granted only to clearness of soul ; but granted in its 
 fulness even to mortal eyes : for though, after the skin, worms 
 may destroy their body, happy the pure in heart, for they, 
 yet in their flesh, shall see the Light of Heaven, and know 
 the will of God. 
 
 LECTURE VH. 
 
 THE RELATION TO ART OF THE SCIENCES OF INORGANIC 
 FORM. 
 
 February 29th, 1872. 
 
 122. I did not wish in my last lecture, after I had directed 
 your attention to the special bearing of some of the principles 
 I pleaded for, to enforce upon you any farther general conclu- 
 sions. But it is necessary now to collect the gist of what I en- 
 deavoured to show you respecting the organs of sight ; namely, 
 
374 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 that in proportion to the physical perfectness or clearness of 
 thern is the degree in which they are raised from the percep- 
 tion of prey to the perception of beauty and of affection. The 
 imperfect and brutal instrument of the eye may be vivid with 
 malignity, or wild with hunger, or manifoldly detective with 
 microscopic exaggeration, assisting the ingenuity of insects 
 with a multiplied and permanent monstrosity of all things 
 round them ; but the noble human sight, careless of prey, 
 disdainful of minuteness, and reluctant to anger, becomes 
 clear in gentleness, proud in reverence, and joyful in love. 
 And finally, the physical splendour of light and colour, so far 
 from being the perception of a mechanical force by a mechani- 
 cal instrument, is an entirely spiritual consciousness, accu- 
 rately and absolutely proportioned to the purity of the moral 
 nature, and to the force of its natural and wise affections. 
 
 123. That was the sum of what I wished to show you in 
 my last lecture ; and observe, that what remains to me doubt- 
 ful in these things. — and it is much — I do not trouble you 
 With'. Only what I know that on experiment you can ascer- 
 tain for yourselves, I tell you, and illustrate, for the time, as 
 well as I can. Experiments in art are difficult, and take years 
 to try ; you may at first fail in them, as you might in a chemi- 
 cal analysis ; but in all the matters which in this place I shall 
 urge on your attention I can assure you of the final results. 
 
 That, then, being the sum of what I could tell you with 
 certainty respecting the methods of sight, I have next to assure 
 you that this faculty of sight, disciplined and pure, is the 
 only proper faculty which the graphic artist is to use in his 
 inquiries into nature. His office is to show her appearances ; 
 his duty is to know them. It is not his duty, though it may 
 be sometimes for his convenience, while it is always at his 
 peril, that he knows more ; — knows the causes of appearances, 
 or the essence of the things that produce them. 
 
 124. Once again, therefore, I must limit my application of 
 the word science with respect to art. I told you that I did 
 not mean by 'science' such knowledge as that triangles on 
 equal bases and between parallels are equal, but such knowl- 
 edge as that the stars in Cassiopeia are in the form of a W. 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 375 
 
 But, farther still, it is not to be considered as science, for an 
 artist, that they are stars at all. What he has to know is that 
 they are luminous points which twinkle in a certain mariner, 
 and are pale yellow, or deep yellow, and may be quite decep- 
 tively imitated at a certain distance by brass-headed nails. 
 This he ought to know, and to remember accurately, and his 
 art knowledge — the science, that is to say — of which his art 
 is to be the reflection, is the sum of knowledges of this sort ; 
 his memory of the look of the sun and moon at such and such 
 times, through such and such clouds ; his memory of the look 
 of mountains, — of the look of sea, — of the look of human faces. 
 
 125. Perhaps you would not call that ' science ' at all. It 
 is no matter what either you or I call it. It is science of a 
 certain order of facts. Two summers ago, looking from Verona 
 at sunset, I saw the mountains beyond the Lago di Garda of 
 a strange blue, vivid and rich like the bloom of a damson. I 
 never saw a mountain-blue of that particular quality before 
 or since. My science as an artist consists in my knowing that 
 sort of blue from every other sort, and in my perfect recollec- 
 tion that this particular blue had such and such a green asso- 
 ciated with it in the near fields. I have nothing whatever to 
 do with the atmospheric causes of the colour : that knowledge 
 would merely occupy my brains wastefully, and warp my ar- 
 tistic attention and energy from their point. Or to take a 
 simpler instance yet : Turner, in his early life, was sometimes 
 good-natured, and would show people what he was about. 
 He was one day making a drawing of Plymouth harbour, with 
 some ships at the distance of a mile or two, seen against the 
 light. Having shown this drawing to a naval officer, the naval 
 officer observed with surprise, and objected with very justi- 
 fiable indignation, that the ships of the line had no port-holes. 
 "No," said Turner, 4 4 certainly not. If you will walk up to 
 Mount Edgecumbe, and look at the ships against the sunset, 
 you will find you can't see the port-holes." " Well, but," said 
 the naval officer, still indignant, " you know the port-holes 
 are there." " Yes," said Turner, " I know that well enough ; 
 but my business is to draw what I see, and not what I know 
 is there." 
 
376 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 126. Now, that is the law of all fine artistic work whatso* 
 ever ; and, more than that, it is, on the whole, perilous to yon, 
 and undesirable, that you should know what is there. If, in- 
 deed, you have so perfectly disciplined your sight that it can- 
 not be influenced by prejudice ; — if you are sure that none of 
 your knowledge of what is there will be allowed to assert it- 
 self ; and that you can reflect the ship as simply as the sea 
 beneath it does, though you may know it with the intelligence 
 of a sailor, — then, indeed, you may allow yourself the pleas- 
 ure, and what will sometimes be the safeguard from error, 
 of learning what ships, or stars, or mountains, are in reality ; 
 but the ordinary powers of human perception are almost cer- 
 tain to be disturbed by the knowledge of the real nature of 
 what they draw : and, until you are quite fearless of your 
 faithfulness to the appearances of things, the less you know 
 of their reality the better. 
 
 127. And it is precisely in this passive and naive simplicity 
 that art becomes, not only greatest in herself, but most useful 
 to science. If she knew anything of what she was represent- 
 ing, she would exhibit that partial knowledge with compla- 
 cency ; and miss the points beside it, and beyond it. Two 
 painters draw the same mountain ; the one has got unluckily 
 into his head some curiosity about glacier marking ; and the 
 other has a theory of cleavage. The one will scratch his 
 mountain all over ; — the other split it to pieces ; and both 
 drawings will be equally useless for the purposes of honest 
 science. 
 
 128. Any of you who chance to know my books cannot but 
 be surprised at my saying these things ; for, of all writers on 
 art, I suppose there is no one who appeals so often as I do to 
 physical science. But observe, I appeal as a critic of art, 
 never as a master of it. Turner made drawings of mountains 
 and clouds which the public said were absurd. I said, on the 
 contrary, they were the only true drawings of mountains and 
 clouds ever made yet : and I proved this to be so, as only it 
 could be proved, by steady test of physical science : but 
 Turner had drawn his mountains rightly, long before their 
 firucture was known to any geologist in Europe ; and has 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 377 
 
 painted perfectly truths of anatomy in clouds which I chal- 
 lenge any meteorologist in Europe to explain at this day. 
 
 129. And indeed I was obliged to leave Modern Painters 
 incomplete, or, rather, as a mere sketch of intention, in anal- 
 ysis of the forms of cloud and wave, because I had not scien- 
 tific data enough to appeal to. Just reflect for an instant how 
 absolutely whatever has been done in art to represent these 
 most familiar, yet most spectral forms of cloud — utterly inor- 
 ganic, yet, by spiritual ordinance, in their kindness fair, and in 
 their anger frightful, — how all that has yet been done to rep- 
 resent them, from the undulating bands of blue and white which 
 give to heraldry its nebule bearing, to the finished and decep- 
 tive skies of Turner, has been done without one syllable of 
 help from the lips of science.* 
 
 130. The rain which flooded pur fields the Sunday before 
 last, was followed, as you will remember, by bright days, of 
 which Tuesday the 20th was, in London, notable for the 
 splendour, towards the afternoon, of its white cumulus clouds. 
 There has been so much black east wind lately, and so much 
 fog and artificial gloom, besides, that I find it is actually some 
 two years since I last saw a noble cumulus cloud under full 
 light. I chanced to be standing under the Victoria Tower at 
 Westminster, when the largest mass of them floated past, that 
 day, from the north-west ; and I was more impressed than 
 ever yet by the awfulness of the cloud-form, and its unac- 
 countableness, in the present state of our knowledge. The 
 Victoria Tower, seen against it, had no magnitude : it was 
 like looking at Mont Blanc over a lamp-post. The domes of 
 cloud-snow were heaped as definitely ; their broken flanks 
 were as grey and firm as rocks, and the whole mountain, of a 
 compass and height in heaven which only became more and 
 
 ♦Rubens' rainbow, in the Loan Exhibition this year, was of dull 
 blue, darker than the sky, in a scene lighted from the side of the rain- 
 bow. Rubens is not to be blamed for ignorance of optics, but for never 
 having so much as looked at a rainbow carefully : and I do not believe 
 that my friend Mr. Alfred Hunt, whose study of rainbow, in the rooms 
 of the Water Colour Society last year, was unrivalled, for vividness and 
 truth, by any I know, learned how to paint it by studying optics. 
 
378 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 more inconceivable as the eye strove to ascend it, was passing 
 behind the tower with a steady march, whose swiftness must 
 in reality have been that of a tempest : yet, along all the ra- 
 vines of vapour, precipice kept pace with precipice, and not 
 one thrust another. 
 
 131. What is it that hews them out? Why is the blue 
 sky pure there, — cloud solid here ; and edged like marble : 
 and why does the state of the blue sky pass into the state of 
 cloud, in that calm advance ? 
 
 It is true that you can more or less imitate the forms of 
 cloud with explosive vapour or steam ; but the steam melts 
 instantly, and the explosive vapor dissipates itself. The cloud, 
 of perfect form, proceeds unchanged. It is not an explosion, 
 but an enduring and advancing presence. The more you 
 think of it, the less explicable it will become to you. 
 
 132. That this should yet be unexplained in the kingdom of 
 the air is, however, no marvel, since aspects of a simpler kind 
 are unexplained in the earth, which we tread, and in the 
 water which we drink and wash with. You seldom pass a 
 day without receiving some pleasure from the cloudings in 
 marble ; can you explain how the stone was clouded ? You 
 certainly do not pass a day without washing your hands. 
 Can you explain the frame of a soap-bubble ? 
 
 133. I have allowed myself, by way of showing at once 
 what I wanted to come to, to overlook the proper arrange- 
 ment of my subject, and I must draw back a little. 
 
 For all his own purposes, merely graphic, we say, if an art-, 
 ist's eye is fine and faithful, the fewer points of science he has 
 in his head, the better. But for purposes more than graphic, 
 in order that he may feel towards things as he should, and 
 choose them as we should, he ought to know something about 
 them ; and if he is quite sure that he can receive the science 
 of them without letting himself become uncandid and narrow 
 in observation, it is very desirable that he should be acquaint- 
 ed with a little of the alphabet of structure, — just as much as 
 may quicken and certify his observation, without prejudicing 
 it. Cautiously, therefore, and receiving it as a perilous in* 
 clulgence, he may venture to learn, perhaps, as much astron- 
 
THE EAGLE S NEST, 379 
 
 oniy as may prevent his carelessly putting the new moon 
 wrong side upwards ; and as much botany as will prevent him 
 from confusing, which I am sorry to say Turner did, too 
 often, Scotch firs with stone pines. He may concede so much 
 to geology as to choose, of two equally picturesque views, one 
 that illustrates rather than conceals the structure of a crag : 
 and perhaps, once or twice in his life, a portrait painter might 
 advantageously observe how unlike a skull is to a face. And 
 for you, who are to use your drawing as one element in gen- 
 eral education, it is desirable that physical science should as- 
 sist in the attainment of truth which a real painter seizes by 
 practice of eye. 
 
 134. For this purpose I shall appeal to your masters in 
 science to furnish us, as they have leisure, with some simple 
 and readable accounts of the structure of things which we 
 have to draw continually. Such scientific accounts will not 
 usually much help us to draw them, but will make the draw- 
 ing, when done, far more valuable to us. 
 
 I have told you, for instance, that nobody — at least, no 
 painter — can at present explain the structure of a bubble. 
 To know that structure will not help you to draw sea-foam, 
 but it will make you look at sea-foam with greater interest. 
 
 I am not able now to watch the course of modern science, 
 and may perhaps be in error in thinking that the frame of a 
 bubble is still unexplained. But I have not yet met by any 
 chance, with an account of the forces which, under concussion, 
 arrange the particles of a fluid into a globular film ; though, 
 from what I know of cohesion, gravity, and the nature of the 
 atmosphere, I can make some shift to guess at the kind of 
 action that takes place in forming a single bubble. But how 
 one bubble absorbs another without breaking it ; or what 
 exact methods of tension prepare for the change of form, and 
 establish it in an instant, I am utterly at a loss to conceive. 
 
 Here, I think, then, is one familiar matter which, up to the 
 possible point, science might condescendingly interpret for 
 us. The exhaustion of the film in preparation for its change ; 
 the determination of the smaller bubble to yield itself up to 
 the larger ; the instantaneous flash into the new shape, and the 
 
880 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 swift adjustment of the rectangular lines of intersection in the 
 marvellous vaulting — all this I want to be explained to us, so 
 that, if we cannot understand it altogether, we may at least 
 know exactly how far we do, and how far we do nof. 
 
 135. And, next to the laws of the formation of a bubble, I 
 want to see, in simple statement, those of the formation of a 
 bottle. Namely, the laws of its resistance to fracture, from 
 without and within, by concussion or explosion ; and the due 
 relations of form to thickness of material ; so that, putting 
 the problem in a constant form, we may know, out of a given 
 quantity of material, how to make the strongest bottle under 
 given limitations as to shape. For instance, — you have so 
 much glass given you : your bottle is to hold two pints, to be 
 flat-bottomed, and so narrow and long in the neck that you 
 can grasp it with your hand. What will be its best ultimate 
 form ? 
 
 136. Probably, if you thought it courteous, you would 
 laugh at me just now ; and, at any rate, are thinking to your- 
 selves that this art problem at least needs no scientific investi- 
 gation, having been practically solved, long ago, by the im- 
 perative human instinct for the preservation of bottled stout. 
 But you are only feeling now, gentlemen, and recognizing in 
 one instance, what I tell you of all. Every scientific investi- 
 gation is, in the same sense as this would be, useless to the 
 trained master of any art. To the soap-bubble blower, and 
 glass-blower, — to the pot-maker and bottle-maker,— if dex- 
 terous craftsmen, jour science is of no account ; and the imp 
 of their art may be imagined as always looking triumphantly 
 and contemptuously, out of its successfully-produced bottle, 
 on the vain analysis of centrifugal impulse and inflating 
 breath. 
 
 137. Nevertheless, in the present confusion of instinct and 
 opinion as to beautiful form, it is desirable to have these two 
 questions more accurately dealt with. For observe what they 
 branch into. The coloured segments of globe out of which 
 form is constituted, are portions of spherical vaults constructed 
 of fluent particles. You cannot have the principles of spheri- 
 cal vaulting put in more abstract terms. 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 381 
 
 Then considering the arch as the section of a vault, the 
 greater number of Gothic arches may be regarded as the in- 
 tersections of two spherical vaults. 
 
 Simple Gothic foliation is merely the triple, quadruple, or 
 variously multiple repetition of such intersection. 
 
 And the beauty — (observe this carefully) — the beauty of 
 Gothic arches, and of their foliation, always involves reference 
 to the strength of their structure ; but only to their structure 
 as self-sustaining ; not as sustaining superincumbent weight. 
 In the most literal of senses, "the earth hath bubbles as the 
 water hath ; and these are of them." 
 
 138. What do you think made Michael Angelo look back to 
 the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore, saying, " Like thee I will 
 not build one, better than thee I cannot ? " To you or to me 
 there is nothing in that dome different from hundreds of 
 others. Which of you, who have been at Florence, can tell 
 .me honestly he saw anything wonderful in it ? But Michael 
 Angelo knew the exact proportion of thickness to weight and 
 curvature which enabled it to stand as securely as a mountain 
 of adamant, though it was only a film of clay, as frail, in pro- 
 portion to its bulk, as a sea-shell. Over the massy war 
 towers of the city it floated ; fragile, yet without fear. "Bet- 
 ter than thee I cannot." 
 
 139. Then think what the investigation of the bottle 
 branches into, joined with that of its necessary companion, 
 the cup. There is a sketch for you of the cup of cups, the 
 pure Greek KavOapos, which is always in the hand of Dion- 
 usos, as the thunderbolt is in that of Zeus. Learn but to 
 draw that thoroughly, and you won't have much more to 
 learn of abstract form ; for the investigation of the kinds of 
 line that limit this will lead you into all the practical geome- 
 try of nature ; the ellipses of her sea-bays in perspective ; the 
 parabolas of her waterfalls and fountains in profile ; the 
 catenary curves of their falling festoons in front ; the in- 
 finite variety of accelerated or retarded curvature in every 
 condition of mountain debris. But do you think mere 
 science can measure for you any of these things ? That book 
 on the table is one of the four volumes of Sir W T illiam Hamil- 
 
382 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 ton's Greek Vases. He has measured every important vass 
 vertically and horizontally, with precision altogether admira- 
 ble, and which may, I hope, induce you to have patience with 
 me in the much less complex, though even more scrupulous, 
 measurements which I shall require on my own examples. 
 Yet English pottery remains precisely where it was, in spite 
 of all this investigation. Do you fancy a Greek workman 
 ever made a vase by measurement ? He dashed it from his 
 hand on the wheel, and it was beautiful : and a Venetian 
 glass-blower swept you a curve of crystal from the end of his 
 pipe ; and Reynolds or Tintoret swept a curve of colour from 
 their pencils, as a musician the cadence of a note, unerring, 
 and to be measured, if you please, afterwards, with the 
 exactitude of Divine law. 
 
 140. But, if the truth and beauty of art are thus beyond 
 attainment by help of science, how much more its invention ? 
 I must defer what I have chiefly to say on this head till next 
 lecture ; but to-day I can illustrate, simply, the position of in- 
 vention with respect to science in one very important group 
 of inorganic forms — those of drapery. 
 
 141. If you throw at random over a rod, a piece of drapery 
 of any material which will fall into graceful folds, you will 
 get a series of sinuous folds in catenary curves : and any 
 given disposition of these will be nearly as agreeable as any 
 other ; though, if you throw the stuff on the rod a thousand 
 times, it will not fall twice alike. 
 
 142. But suppose, instead of a straight rod, you take a 
 beautiful nude statue, and throw the piece of linen over that. 
 You may encumber and conceal its form altogether ; you 
 may entirely conceal portions of the limbs, and show others ; 
 or you may leave indications, under the thin veil, of the con- 
 tours which are hidden ; but in ninety-nine cases out of a hun- 
 dred you will wish the drapery taken off again ; you will feel 
 that the folds are in some sort discrepant and harmful, and 
 eagerly snatch them away. However passive the material, 
 however softly accommodated to the limbs, the wrinklings 
 will always look foreign to the form, like the drip of a heavy 
 shower of rain falling off it, and will load themselves in the 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST, 
 
 383 
 
 hollows uncomfortably. You will have to pull them about ; 
 to stretch them one way, loosen them in another, and supply 
 the quantity of government which a living person would have 
 given to the dress, before it becomes at all pleasing to you. 
 
 143. Doing your best, you will still not succeed to your 
 mind, provided you have, indeed, a mind worth pleasing. No 
 adjustment that you can make, on the quiet figure, will give 
 any approximation to the look of drapery wdiich has previously 
 accommodated itself to the action which brought the figure 
 into the position in which it stays. On a really living person, 
 gracefully dressed, and who has paused from graceful motion, 
 you will get, again and again, arrangements of fold which 
 you can admire : but they will not remain to be copied, the 
 first following movement alters all. If you had your photo- 
 graphic plate ready and could photograph — I don't know if it 
 has been tried — girls, like waves, as they move, you would 
 get what was indeed lovely ; and yet, when you compared 
 even such results with fine sculpture, you would see that there 
 was something wanting ; — that, in the deepest sense, all was 
 yet wanting. 
 
 144. Yet this is the most that the plurality of artists can do, 
 or think of doing. They draw the nude figure with careful 
 anatomy ; they put their model or their lay figure into the re- 
 quired position ; they arrange draperies on it to their mind, 
 and paint them from the reality. All such work is absolutely 
 valueless, — worse than valueless in the end of it, blinding us 
 to the qualities of fine work. ~ 
 
 In true design it is in this matter of drapery as in all else. 
 There is not a fold too much, and all that are given aid the 
 expression, whether of movement or character. Here is a bit 
 of Greek sculpture, with many folds ; here is a bit of Chris- 
 tian sculpture with few. From the many, not one could be 
 removed without harm, and to the few, not one could be 
 added. This alone is art, and no> science will ever enable you 
 to do this, but the poetic and fabric instincts only. 
 
 145. Nevertheless, however far above science, your work 
 must comply with all the requirements of science. The first 
 thing you have to ask is, Is it scientifically right ? That is 
 
384 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 still nothing, but it is essential. In modern imitations o{ 
 Gothic work the artists think it religious to be wrong, and 
 that Heaven will be propitious only to saints whose stoles or 
 petticoats stand or fall into incredible angles. 
 
 All that nonsense I will soon get well out of your heads by 
 enabling you to make accurate studies from real drapery, so 
 that you may be able to detect in a moment whether the folds 
 in any design are natural and true to the form, or artificial 
 and ridiculous. 
 
 146. But this, which is the science of drapery, will never 
 do more than guard you in your first attempts in the art of it. 
 Nay, when once you have mastered the elements of such sci- 
 ence, the most sickening of all work to you will be that in 
 which the draperies are all right, — and nothing else is. In 
 the present state of our schools one of the chief mean merits 
 against which I shall have to warn you is the imitation of 
 what milliners admire : nay, in many a piece of the best art I 
 shall have to show you that the draperies are, to some extent, 
 intentionally ill-done, lest you should look at them. Yet, 
 through every complexity of desirableness, and counter-peril, 
 hold to the constant and simple law I have always given you 
 —that the best work must be right in the beginning, and 
 lovely in the end. 
 
 147. Finally, observe that what is true respecting these 
 simple forms of drapery is true of all other inorganic form. 
 It must become organic under the artist's hand by his inven- 
 tion. As there must not be a fold in a vestment too few or 
 too many, there must not, in noble landscape, be a fold in a 
 mountain, too few or too many. As you will never get from 
 real linen cloth, by copying it ever so faithfully, the drapery 
 of a noble statue, so you will never get from real mountains, 
 copy them never so faithfully, the forms of noble landscape. 
 Anything more beautiful than the photographs of the Valley 
 of Chamouni, now in your print- sellers' windows, cannot be 
 conceived. For geographical and geological purposes they 
 are worth anything ; for art purposes, worth — a good deal less 
 than zero. You may learn much from them, and will mislearn 
 more. But in Turner's ' 6 Valley of Chamouni" the moun- 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 385 
 
 tains have not a fold too much, nor too little. There are no 
 such mountains at Chamouni : they are the ghosts of eternal 
 mountains, such as have been, and shall be, for evermore. 
 
 148. So now in sum, for I may have confused you by illus- 
 tration, — 
 
 I. You are, in drawing, to try only to represent the appear- 
 ances of things, never what you know the things to be. 
 
 II. Those appearances you are to test by the appliance of 
 the scientific laws relating to aspect ; and to learn, by accu- 
 rate measurement, and the most fixed attention, to represent 
 with absolute fidelity. 
 
 III. Having learned to represent actual appearances faith- 
 fully, if you have any human faculty of your own, visionary 
 appearances will take place to you which will be nobler and 
 more true than any actual or material appearances ; and the 
 realization of these is the function of every fine art, which is 
 founded absolutely, therefore, in truth, and consists abso- 
 lutely in imagination. And once more we may conclude with, 
 but now using them in a deeper sense, the words of our mas- 
 ter — "The best in this kind are but shadows." 
 
 It is to be our task, gentlemen, to endeavour that they may 
 be at least so much. 
 
 LECTURE VTEI. 
 
 THE RELATION TO ART OF THE SCIENCES OF ORGANIC FORM. 
 
 March 2nd, 1872. 
 
 149. I have next in order to speak of the relation of art to 
 science, in dealing with its own principal subject— organic 
 form, as the expression of life. And, as in my former lecture, 
 I will tell you at once what I wish chiefly to enforce upon 
 you. 
 
386 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 First. — but this I shall have no time to dwell upon, — That 
 the true power of art must be founded on a general knowl- 
 edge of organic nature, not of the human frame only. 
 
 Secondly. — That in representing this organic nature, quite 
 as much as in representing inanimate things, Art has nothing 
 to do with structures, causes, or absolute facts ; but only with 
 appearances. 
 
 Thirdly. — That in representing these appearances, she is 
 more hindered than helped by the knowledge of things which 
 do not externally appear ; and therefore, that the study .of 
 anatomy generally, whether of plants, animals, or man, is an 
 impediment to graphic art. 
 
 Fourthly. — That especially in the treatment and conception 
 of the human form, the habit of contemplating its anatomical 
 structure is not only a hindrance, but a degradation ; and 
 farther yet, that even the study of the external form of the 
 human body, more exposed than it may be healthily and de- 
 cently in daily life, has been essentially destructive to every 
 school of art in which it has been practised. 
 
 150. These four statements I undertake, in the course of 
 our future study, gradually to confirm to you. In a single 
 lecture I, of course, have time to do little more than clearly 
 state and explain them. 
 
 First, I tell you that art should take cognizance of all living 
 things, and know them, so as to be able to name, that is to 
 say, in the truest distinctive way, to describe them. The 
 Creator daily brings, before the noblest of His creatures, 
 every lower creature, that whatsoever Man calls it, may be 
 the name thereof. 
 
 Secondly. — In representing, nay, in thinking of, and caring 
 for, these beasts, man has to think of them essentially with 
 their skins on them, and with their souls in them. He is to 
 know how they are spotted, wrinkled, furred, and feathered ; 
 and what the look of them is, in the eyes ; and what grasp, 
 or cling, or trot, or pat, in their paws and claws. He is to 
 take every sort of view of them, in fact, except one, — the 
 Butcher's view. He is never to think of them as bones an(J 
 meat. 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 387 
 
 Thirdly. — In the representation of their appearance, the 
 knowledge of bones and meat, of joint and muscle, is more a 
 hindrance than a help. 
 
 Lastly — With regard to the human form, such knowledge 
 is a degradation as well as a hindrance ; and even the study 
 of the nude is injurious, beyond the limits of honour and 
 decency in daily life. 
 
 Those are my four positions. I will not detain you by 
 dwelling on the first two— that we should know every sort of 
 beast, and know it with its skin on it, and its soul within it. 
 What you feel to be a paradox — perhaps you think an in- 
 credible and insolent paradox — is my telling you that you will 
 be hindered from doing this by the study of anatomy. I ad- 
 dress myself, therefore, only to the last two points. 
 
 151. Among your standard engravings, I have put that of 
 the picture by Titian, in the Strozzi Palace, of a little Strozzi 
 maiden feeding her dog. I am going to put in the Rudi- 
 mentary Series, where you can always get at it (R 125), this 
 much more delightful, though not in all points standard, pict- 
 ure by Reynolds, of an infant daughter of George the Third's, 
 with her Skye terrier. 
 
 I have no doubt these dogs are the authentic pets, given in 
 as true portraiture as their mistresses ; and that the little 
 Princess of Florence and Princess of England were both 
 shown in the company which, at that age, they best liked ; — 
 the elder feeding her favourite, and the baby with her arms 
 about the neck of hers. 
 
 But the custom of putting either the dog, or some inferior 
 animal, to be either in contrast, or modest companionship, 
 with the nobleness of human form and thought, is a piece of 
 what may be called mental comparative anatomy, which has 
 its beginning very far back in art indeed. One of quite the 
 most interesting Greek vases in the British Museum is that 
 of which the painting long went under the title of " Anacreon 
 and his Dog." It is a Greek lyric poet, singing with lifted 
 head, in the action given to Orpheus and Philammon in their 
 moments of highest inspiration ; while, entirely unaffected 
 by, and superior to the music, there walks beside him a sharp- 
 
388 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 nosed and curly-tailed dog, painted in what the exclusive ad* 
 mirers of Greek art would, I suppose, call an ideal manner ; 
 that is to say, his tail is more like a display of fireworks than 
 a tail ; but the ideal evidently founded on the material exist- 
 ence of a charming, though supercilious animal, not unlike 
 the one which is at present the chief solace of my labours in 
 Oxford, Dr. Aclands dog Bustle. I might go much farther 
 back than this ; but at all events, from the time of the golden 
 dog of Pandareos, the faw T n of Diana, and the eagle, owl and 
 peacock of the great Greek gods, you find a succession of 
 animal types — centralized in the Middle Ages, of course, by 
 the hound and the falcon — used in art either to symbolize, 
 or contrast with, dignity in human persons. In modern por- 
 traiture, the custom has become vulgarized by the anxiety of 
 everybody who sends their picture, or their children's, to the 
 Eoyal Academy, to have it demonstrated to the public by the 
 exhibition of a pony, and a dog with a whip in its mouth, 
 that they live, at the proper season, in a country house. But 
 by the greater masters the thing is done always with a deep 
 sense of the mystery of the comparative existences of living 
 creatures, and of the methods of vice and virtue exhibited by 
 them. Albert Diirer scarcely ever draws a scene in the life 
 of the Virgin, without putting into the foreground some idle 
 cherubs at play with rabbits or kittens ; and sometimes lets 
 his love of the grotesque get entirely the better of him, as in 
 the engraving of the Madonna with the monkey. Veronese 
 disturbs the interview of the queen of Sheba with Solomon, 
 by the petulance of the queen of Sheba's Blenheim spaniel, 
 whom Solomon has not treated with sufficient respect ; 
 and when Veronese is introduced himself, with all his fam- 
 ily, to the Madonna, I am sorry to say that his own pet 
 dog turns its back to the Madonna, and walks out of the 
 room. 
 
 152. But among all these symbolic playfulnesses of the higher 
 masters, there is not one more perfect than this study by Rey- 
 nolds of the infant English Princess with her wire-haired ter- 
 rier. He has put out his whole strength to show the infinite 
 differences, yet the blessed harmonies, between the human 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 389 
 
 and the lower nature. First, having a blue-eyed,* soft baby 
 to paint, he gives its full face, as round as may be, and rounda 
 its eyes to complete openness, because somebody is coming 
 whom it does not know. But it opens its eyes in quiet wonder, 
 and is not disturbed, but behaves as a princess should. Be- 
 side this soft, serenely-minded baby, Reynolds has put the 
 roughest and roughest-minded dog he could think of. Instead 
 of the full round eyes, you have only the dark places in the 
 hair where you know the terrier's eyes must be — sharp enough, 
 if you could see them — and very certainly seeing you, but not 
 at all wondering at you, like the baby's. For the terrier has 
 instantly made up his mind about you ; and above all, that 
 you have no business there ; and is growling and snarling in 
 his fiercest manner, though without moving from his mis- 
 tress's side, or from under her arm. You have thus the full 
 contrast between the grace and true charm of the child, who 
 " thinketh no evil " of you, and the uncharitable narrowness 
 of nature in the grown-up dog of the world, who thinks noth- 
 ing but evil of you. But the dog's virtue and faithfulness are 
 not told less clearly ; the baby evidently uses the creature just 
 as much for a pillow as a playmate ; — buries its arm in the 
 rough hair of it with a loving confidence, half already convert- 
 ing itself to protection : and baby will take care of dog, and 
 dog of baby, through all chances of time and fortune. 
 
 153. Now the exquisiteness with which the painter has ap- 
 jolied all his skill in composition, all his dexterity in touch of 
 pencil, and all his experience of the sources of expression, to 
 complete the rendering of his comparison, cannot, in any of 
 the finest subtleties of it, be explained ; but the first steps of 
 its science may be easily traced ; and with little pains you 
 may see how a simple and large mass of white is opposed to a 
 rugged one of grey ; how the child's face is put in front light, 
 that no shadow may detract from the brightness which makes 
 her, as in Arabian legends, "a princess like to the full moon" 
 — how, in this halo, the lips and eyes are brought out in deep 
 and rich colour, while scarcely a gleam of reflection is allowed 
 
 * I have not seen the picture : in the engraving the tint of the eyea 
 would properly represent grey or blue. 
 
390 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 to disturb the quietness of the eyes ; — (the terrier's, you feel, 
 would glitter enough, if you could see them, and flash back 
 in shallow fire ; but the princess's eyes are thinking, and do 
 not flash ;) — how the quaint cap surrounds, with its not wholly 
 painless formalism, the courtly and patient face, opposed to 
 the rugged and undressed wild one ; and how the easy grace 
 of soft limb and rounded neck are cast, in repose, against 
 the uneasily gathered up crouching of the short legs, and 
 petulant shrug of the eager shoulders, in the ignobler creat- 
 ure. 
 
 154. Now, in his doing of all this, Sir Joshua was thinking 
 of, and seeing, whatever was best in the creatures, within and 
 without. "Whatever was most perfectly doggish — perfectly 
 childish — in soul and body. The absolute truth of outer as- 
 pect, and of inner mind, he seizes infallibly ; but there is one 
 part of the creatures which he never, for an instant, thinks of, 
 or cares for, — their bones. Do you suppose that, from first 
 to last, in painting such a picture, it would ever enter Sir 
 Joshua's mind to think what a dog's skull would look like, 
 beside a baby's? The quite essential facts to him are those 
 of which the skull gives no information — that the baby has a 
 flattish pink nose, and the dog a bossy black one. You might 
 dissect all the dead dogs in the water supply of London with- 
 out finding out what, as a painter, it is here your only busi- 
 ness precisely to know, — what sort of shininess there is on the 
 end of a terrier's nose ; and for the position and action of the 
 creatures, all the four doctors together, who set Bustle's leg 
 for him the other day, when he jumped out a two-pair-of- 
 stairs window to bark at the volunteers, could not have told 
 Sir Joshua how to make his crouching terrier look ready to 
 snap, nor how to throw the child's arm over its neck in com- 
 plete, yet not languid, rest. 
 
 155. Sir Joshua, then, does not think of, or care for, anat- 
 omy, in this picture ; but, if he had, would it have done him 
 harm? You may easily see that the child's limbs are not 
 drawn with the precision that Mantegna, Durer, or Michael 
 Angelo would have given them. Would some their science 
 not have bettered the picture ? 
 
THE EAGLE'S IV EST, 
 
 391 
 
 lean show you exactly the sort of influence their science 
 would have had. 
 
 In your Rudimentary Series, I have placed in sequence two 
 of Diirer's most celebrated plates, (E. 65, E. 66,) the coat of 
 arms with the skull, and the Madonna crowned by angels ; 
 and that you may see precisely what qualities are, and are not, 
 in this last, I have enlarged the head by photography, and 
 placed it in your Eeference Series (117). You will find the 
 skull is perfectly understood, and exquisitely engraved, but 
 the face, imperfectly understood and coarsely engraved. No 
 man who had studied the skull as carefully as Diirer did, ever 
 could engrave a face beautifully, for the perception of the 
 bones continually thrusts itself upon him in wrong places, and 
 in trying to conquer or modify it, he distorts the flesh. Where 
 the features are marked, and full of character, he can quit 
 himself of the impression ; but in the rounded contour of 
 women's faces he is always forced to think of the skull ; and 
 even in his ordinary work often draws more of bones and hair, 
 than face. 
 
 156. I could easily give you more definite, but very dis- 
 agreeable, proofs of the evil of knowing the anatomy of the 
 human face too intimately : but will rather give you further 
 evidence by examining the skull and face of the creature who 
 has taught us so much already, — the eagle. 
 
 Here is a slight sketch of the skull of the golden eagle. It 
 may be interesting to you sometimes to make such drawings 
 roughly, for the sake of the points of mechanical arrangement 
 ■ — as here in the circular bones of the eye-socket ; but don't 
 suppose that drawing these a million of times over will ever 
 help you in the least to draw an eagle itself. On the contrary, 
 it would almost to a certainty hinder you from noticing the 
 essential point in an eagle's head — the projection of the brow. 
 All the main work of the eagle's eye is, a3 we saw, in looking 
 down. To keep the sunshine above from teasing it, the eye is 
 put under a triangular penthouse, which is precisely the most 
 characteristic thing in the bird's whole aspect. Its hooked 
 beak does not materially distinguish it from a cockatoo, but 
 its hooded eye does. But that projection is not accounted 
 
392 
 
 THE EAGLE'S JSTEST. 
 
 for in the skull ; and, so little does the anatomist care about 
 it 3 that you may hunt through the best modern works on or- 
 nithology ; and you will find eagles drawn with all manner of 
 dissections of skulls, claws, clavicles, sternums, and gizzards ; 
 but you won't find so much as one poor falcon drawn with a 
 falcon's eye. 
 
 157. But there is another quite essential point in an eagle's 
 head, in comprehending which, again, the skull will not help 
 us. The skull in the human creature fails in three essential 
 points. It is eyeless, noseless, and lipless. It fails only in 
 an eagle in the two points of eye and lip ; for an eagle has no 
 nose worth mentioning ; his beak is only a prolongation of 
 his jaws. But he has lips very much worth mentioning, and 
 of which his skull gives no account. One misses them much 
 from a human skull: — "Here hung those lips that I have 
 kissed, I know not how oft," — but from an eagle's you miss 
 them more, for he is distinct from other birds in having with 
 his own eagle's eye, a dog's lips, or very nearly such ; an en- 
 tirely fleshy and ringent mouth, bluish pink, with a perpetual 
 grin upon it. 
 
 So that if you look, not at his skull, but at him, attentively 
 enough, you will precisely get iEschylus's notion of him, es- 
 sential in the Greek mind — Trrrjvos /aW Sa<£otvos cueros — and 
 then, if you want to see the use of his beak or bill, as dis- 
 tinguished from a dog's teeth, take a drawing from the fal- 
 conry of the middle ages, and you will see how a piece of flesh 
 becomes a rag to him, a thing to tear up, — Siapra^crci a-o^aTo? 
 fiiya paxes. There you have it precisely, in a falcon I got out 
 of Mr. Coxe's favourite fourteenth century missal. 
 
 Now look through your natural history books from end to 
 end ; see if you can find one drawing, with all their anatomy, 
 which shows you either the eagle's eye, his lips, or this es- 
 sential use of his beak, so as to enable you thoroughly to 
 understand those two lines of iEschylus : then, look at this 
 Greek eagle on a coin of Elis, R. 50, and this Pisan one, in 
 marble, Edu. 131, and you will not doubt any more that it is 
 better to look at the living birds, than to cut them to pieces. 
 
 158. Anatomy, then, — I will assume that you grant, for the 
 
THE EAGLE' 8 NEST, 
 
 393 
 
 moment, as I will assuredly prove to you eventually, — will not 
 help us to draw the true appearances of things. But may it 
 not add to our intelligent conception of their nature ? 
 
 So far from doing this, the anatomical study which has, to 
 our much degradation and misfortune, usurped the place, and 
 taken the name, at once of art and of natural history, has pro* 
 duced the most singularly mischievous effect on the faculty of 
 delineation with respect to different races of animals. In ail 
 recent books on natural history, you will find the ridiculous 
 and ugly creatures done well, the noble and beautiful crea- 
 tures done, I do not say merely ill, but in no wise. You will 
 find the law hold universally that apes, pigs, rats, weasels, 
 foxes, and the like, — but especially apes, — are drawn admira- 
 bly ; but not a stag, not a lamb, not a horse, not a lion ; — the 
 nobler the creature, the more stupidly it is always drawn, not 
 from feebleness of art power, but a far deadlier fault than 
 that — a total want of sympathy with the noble qualities of any 
 creature, and a loathsome delight in their disgusting qualities. 
 And this law is so thoroughly carried out that the great 
 French historian of the mammalia, St. Hilaire, chooses, as his 
 single example of the highest of the race, the most nearly 
 bestial type he can find, liuman, in the world. Let no girl 
 ever look at the book, nor any youth who is willing to take 
 my word ; let those who doubt me, look at the example he 
 has given of womankind. 
 
 159. But admit that this is only French anatomy, or ill- 
 studied anatomy, and that, rightly studied, as Dr. Acland, for 
 instance, would teach it us, it might do us some kind of good. 
 
 I must reserve for my lectures on the school of Florence 
 any analysis of the effect of anatomical study on European 
 art and character ; you will find some notice of it in my lect- 
 ure on Michael Angelo ; and in the course of that analysis, it 
 will be necessary for me to withdraw the statement made in 
 the Stones of Venice, that anatomical science was helpful to 
 great men, though harmful to mean ones. I am now certain 
 that the greater the intellect, the more fatal are the forms of 
 degradation to which it becomes liable in the course of ana- 
 tomical study : and that to Michael Angelo, of all men, the 
 
394 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 mischief was greatest, in destroying his religious passion and 
 imagination, and leading him to make every spiritual concep- 
 tion subordinate to the display of his knowledge of the body. 
 To-day, however, I only wish to give you my reasons for with- 
 drawing anatomy from your course of study in these schools. 
 
 160. I do so, first, simply with reference to our time, con- 
 venience, and systematic method. It has become a habit 
 with drawing-masters to confuse this particular science of 
 anatomy with their own art of drawing, though they confuse 
 no other science with that art. Admit that, in order to draw 
 a tree, you should, have a knowledge of botany : Do you ex- 
 pect me to teach you botany here ? Whatever I want you to 
 know of it I shall send you to your Professor of Botany, and 
 to the Botanic Gardens, to learn. I may, perhaps, give you a 
 rough sketch of the lines of timber in a bough, but nothing 
 more. 
 
 So again, admit that, to draw a stone, you need a knowl- 
 edge of geology. I have told you that you do not, but admit 
 it. Do you expect me to teach you, here, the relations be- 
 tween quartz and oxide of iron ; or between the Silurian and 
 Permian systems ? If you care about them, go to Professor 
 Phillips, and come back to me when you know them. 
 
 And, in like manner, admit that, to draw a man, you want 
 the knowledge of his bones : — you do not ; but admit that 
 you do. Why should you expect me, here, to teach you the 
 most difficult of all the sciences ? If you want to know it, go 
 to an hospital, and cut dead bodies to pieces till you are sat- 
 isfied ; then come to me, and I'll make a shift to teach you to 
 draw, even then — though your eyes and memory will be full 
 of horrible things which Heaven never meant you so much as 
 a glance at. But don't expect me to help you in that ghastly 
 work ; any more than among the furnaces and retorts in Pro- 
 fessor Maskelyne's laboratory. 
 
 161. Let us take one more step in the logical sequence. 
 You do not, I have told you, need either chemistry, botany, 
 geology, or anatomy, to enable you to understand art, or pro- 
 duce it. But there is one science which you must be 
 acquainted with. You must very intensely and thoroughly 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 395 
 
 know — how to behave. You cannot so much as feel the dif- 
 ference between two casts of drapery, between two tenden- 
 cies of line, — how much less between dignity and baseness 
 of gesture, — but by your own dignity of character. Bat, 
 though this is an essential science, and although I cannot 
 teach you to lay one line beside* another rightly, unless you 
 have this science, you don't expect me in these schools to 
 teach you how to behave, if you happen not to know it be- 
 fore ! 
 
 162. Well, here is one reason, and a sufficiently logical one, 
 as you will find it on consideration, for the exclusion of ana- 
 tomical study from all drawing schools. But there is a more 
 cogent reason than this for its exclusion, especially from ele- 
 mentary drawing-schools. It may be sometimes desirable that 
 a student should see, as I said, how very unlike a face a skull 
 is ; and at a leisure moment he may, without much harm, ob- 
 serve the equivocation between knees and ankles by which 
 it is contrived that his legs, if properly made at the joints, 
 will only bend backwards, but a crane's forwards. But that 
 a young boy, or girl, brought up fresh to the schools of art 
 from the country, should be set to stare, against every particle 
 of wholesome grain in their natures, at the Elgin marbles, 
 and to draw them with dismal application, until they imagine 
 they like them, makes the whole youthful temper rotten with 
 affectation, and sickly with strained and ambitious fancy. It is 
 still worse for young persons to be compelled to endure the 
 horror of the dissecting-room, or to be made familiar with 
 the conditions of actual bodily form, in a climate where the 
 restraints of dress must forever prevent the body from being- 
 perfect in contour, or regarded with entirely simple feeling. 
 
 163. I have now, perhaps too often for your patience, told 
 you that you must always draw for the sake of your subject — 
 never for the sake of your picture. What you wish to see in 
 reality, that you should make an effort to show, in pictures 
 and statues ; what you do not wish to see in reality, you should 
 not try to draw. 
 
 But there is, I suppose, a very general impression on the 
 mind of persons interested in the arts, that because nations 
 
396 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 living in cold climates are necessarily unfamiliar with the sight 
 of the naked body, therefore, art should take it upon herself 
 to show it them ; and that they will be elevated in thought, 
 and made more simple and grave in temper, by seeing, at 
 least in colour and marble, what the people of the south saw 
 in its verity. 
 
 164. I have neither time nor inclination to enter at present 
 into discussion of the various effects, on the morality of na- 
 tions, of more or less frank showing of the nude form. There 
 is no question that if shown at all, it should be shown fear- 
 lessly, and seen constantly ; but I do not care, at present, to 
 debate the question : neither will I delay you by any expres- 
 sion of my reasons for the rule I am about to give. Trust me, 
 I have many ; — and I can assert to you as a positive and per- 
 petual law, that so much of the nude body as in the daily life 
 of the nation may be shown with modesty, and seen with rev- 
 erence and delight, — so much, and no more, ought to be shown 
 by the national arts, either of painting or sculpture. What, 
 more than this, either art exhibits, will, assuredly, pervert 
 taste, and, in all probability, morals. 
 
 165. It will, assuredly, pervert taste, in this essential point, 
 that the polite ranks of the nation will come to think the lip* 
 ing creature and its dress exempt from the highest laws of 
 taste ; and that w4iile a man or woman must, indeed, be seen 
 dressed or undressed with dignity, in marble, they may be 
 dressed or undressed, if not with indignity, at least, with less 
 than dignity, in the ball-room, and the street. Now the law 
 of all living art is that the living man and woman must be 
 more beautiful than their pictures, and their pictures as dec- 
 orous as the living man or woman ; and that real dress, and 
 gesture, and behaviour, should be more graceful than any 
 marble or colour can effect similitude of. 
 
 166. Thus the idea of a different dress in art and reality, of 
 which that of art is to be the ideal one, perverts taste in dress ; 
 and the study of the nude which is rarely seen, as much per- 
 verts taste in art. 
 
 Of all pieces of art that I know, skilful in execution, and 
 not criminal in intention ; — without any exception, quite the 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 397 
 
 roost vulgar, and in the solemn sense of the word, most abom- 
 inable, are the life studies which are said to be the best made 
 in modern times, — those of Mulready, exhibited as models in 
 the Kensington Museum. 
 
 167. How far the study of the seldom-seen nude leads to 
 perversion of morals, I will not, to-day, inquire ; but I beg 
 you to observe that even among the people where it was most 
 frank and pure, it unquestionably led to evil far greater than 
 any good which demonstrably can be traced to it. Scarcely 
 any of the moral power of Greece depended on her admira- 
 tion of beauty, or strength in the body. The power of Greece 
 depended on practice in military exercise, involving severe and 
 continual ascetic discipline of the senses ; on a perfect code 
 of military heroism and patriotic honour ; on the desire to live 
 by the laws of an admittedly divine justice ; and on the vivid 
 conception of the presence of spiritual beings. The mere ad- 
 miration of physical beauty in the body, and the arts which 
 sought its expression, not only conduced greatly to the fall of 
 Greece, but w T ere the cause of errors and crimes in her great- 
 est time, which must for ever sadden our happiest thoughts of 
 her, and have rendered her example almost useless to the 
 future. 
 
 168. I have named four causes of her power : discipline of 
 senses ; romantic ideal of heroic honour ; respect for justice ; 
 and belief in God. There was a fifth — the most precious of 
 all — the belief in the purity and force of life in man ; and 
 that true reverence for domestic affection, which, in the 
 strangest way, being the essential strength of every nation 
 under the sun, has yet been lost sight of as the chief element 
 of Greek virtue, though the Iliad itself is nothing but the 
 story of the punishment of the rape of Helen ; and though 
 every Greek hero called himself chiefly by his parental name, — 
 Tydides, rather than Diomed ;— Pelides, rather than Achilles. 
 
 Among the new knowledges which the modern sirens tempt 
 you to pursue, the basest and darkest is the endeavour to 
 trace the origin of life, otherwise than in Love. Pardon me, 
 therefore, if I give you a piece of theology to-day : it is a 
 science much closer to your art than anatomy. 
 
398 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NE8T. 
 
 169. All of you who have ever read your Gospels carefully 
 must have wondered, sometimes, what could be the meaning 
 of those words, — "If any speak against the Son of Man it 
 shall be forgiven ; but if against the Holy Spirit, it shall not 
 be forgiven, neither in this world nor in the next." 
 
 The passage may have many meanings which I do not 
 snow ; but one meaning I know positively, and I tell you so 
 just as frankly as I would that I knew the meaning of a verse 
 in Homer. 
 
 Those of you who still go to chapel say every day your 
 creed ; and, I suppose, too often, less and less every day 
 believing it. Now, you may cease to believe two articles of 
 it, and, — admitting Christianity to be true, — still be forgiven. 
 But I can tell you — you must not cease to believe the third ! 
 
 You begin by saying that you believe in an Almighty 
 Father. Well, you may entirely lose the sense of that Father- 
 hood, and yet be forgiven. 
 
 You go on to say that you believe in a Saviour Son. You 
 may entirely lose the sense of that Sonship, and yet be forgiven. 
 
 But the third article — disbelieve if you dare ! 
 
 " I believe in the Holy Ghost, Tlie Lord and Giver of Life." 
 
 Disbelieve that ! and your own being is degraded into the 
 state of dust driven by the wind ; and the elements of disso- 
 lution have entered your very heart and soul. 
 
 All Nature, with one voice — with one glory, is set to teach 
 you reverence for the life communicated to you from the 
 Father of Spirits. The song of birds, and their plumage ; the 
 scent of flowers, their colour, their very existence, are in direct 
 connection with the mystery of that communicated life : and 
 all the strength, and all the arts of men, are measured by, and 
 founded upon, their reverence for the passion, and their guar- 
 dianship of the purity, of Love. 
 
 170. Gentlemen, — the word by which I at this moment ad- 
 dress you — by which it is the first of all your duties through 
 life, to permit all men to address you with truth — that epithet 
 of ' gentle,' as you well know, indicates the intense respect 
 for race and fatherhood, — for family dignity and chastity, — 
 which w r as visibly the strength of Eome, as it had been, more 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 399 
 
 disguisedly, the strength of Greece. But have you enough 
 noticed that your Saxon word ' kindness ' has exactly the 
 same relation to 'kin/ and to the Chaucerian ' kinde,' that 
 ' gentle ' has to c gentilis ' ? 
 
 Think out that matter a little, and you will find that — much 
 as it looks like it — neither chemistry, nor anatomy, nor repub- 
 licanism, are going to have it all their own way — in the mak- 
 ing of either beasts, or gentlemen. They look sometimes, 
 indeed, as if they had got as far as two of the Mosaic plagues, 
 and manufactured frogs in the ditches, and lice on the land ; 
 but their highest boasters will not claim, yet, so much even 
 as that poor victory. 
 
 171. My friends, let me very strongly recommend you to 
 give up that hope of finding the principle of life in dead 
 bodies ; but to take all pains to keep the life pure and holy 
 in the living bodies you have got ; and, farther, not to seek 
 your national amusement in the destruction of animals, nor 
 your national safety in the destruction of men ; but to look 
 for all your joy to kindness, and for all your strength to do- 
 mestic faith, and law of ancestral honour. Perhaps you will 
 not now any more think it strange that in beginning your 
 natural history studies in this place, I mean to teach you 
 heraldry, but not anatomy. For, as you learn to read the 
 shields, and remember the stories, of the great houses of Eng- 
 land, and find how all the arts that glorified them were 
 founded on the passions that inspired, you will learn assur- 
 edly, that the utmost secret of national power is in living with 
 honour, and the utmost secrets of human art are in gentleness 
 and truth. 
 
 LECTUBE IX. 
 
 THE STORY OF THE HALCYON. 
 
 March 7fh 9 1872. 
 
 172. I must to-day briefly recapitulate the purport of the 
 preceding lectures, as we are about now to enter on a new 
 branch of our subject. 
 
400 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 I stated, in the first two, that the wisdom of art and the 
 wisdom of science consisted in their being each devoted un- 
 selfishly to the service of men: in the third, that art was only 
 the shadow of our knowledge of facts ; and that the reality 
 was always to be acknowledged as more beautiful than the 
 shadow. In the fourth lecture I endeavoured to show that the 
 wise modesty of art and science lay in attaching due value to 
 the power and knowledge of other people, when greater than 
 our own ; and in the fifth, that the wise self-sufficiency of art 
 and science lay in a proper enjoyment of our own knowledge 
 and power, after it was thus modestly esteemed. The sixth 
 lecture stated that sight was a distinctly spiritual power, and 
 that its kindness or tenderness was proportioned to its clear- 
 ness. Lastly, in the seventh and eighth lectures, I asserted 
 that this spiritual sight, concerned with external aspects of 
 things, was the source of all necessary knowledge in art ; and 
 that the artist has no concern with invisible structures, or- 
 ganic or inorganic. 
 
 173. No concern with invisible structures. But much with 
 invisible things ; with passion, and with historical associa- 
 tion. And in these two closing lectures, I hope partly to 
 justify myself for pressing on your attention some matters as 
 little hitherto thought of in drawing-schools, as the exact sci- 
 ences have been highly, and, I believe, unjustly, esteemed ; 
 — mythology, namely, and heraldry. 
 
 I can but in part justify myself now. Your experience of 
 the interest which may be found in these two despised sci- 
 ences will be my best justification. But to-day (as we are 
 about to begin our exercises in bird-drawing) I think it may 
 interest you to review some of the fables connected with the 
 natural history of a single bird, and to consider what effect 
 the knowledge of such tradition is likely to have on our mode 
 of regarding the animated creation in general. 
 
 174. Let us first take an instance of the feeling towards 
 birds which is especially characteristic of the English temper 
 at this day, in its entire freedom from superstition. 
 
 You will find in your Eudimentary Series (225), Mr. 
 GoukVs plate of the lesser Egret,— the most beautiful, I sup- 
 
THE EAGLE' 8 NEST. 
 
 401 
 
 pose, of all birds that visit, or, at least, once visited, our Eng- 
 lish shores, Perfectly delicate in form, snow-white in plu- 
 mage, the feathers like frost-work of dead silver, exquisitely 
 slender, separating in the wind like the streams of a fountain, 
 the creature looks a living cloud rather than a bird. 
 
 It may be seen often enough in South France and Italy. 
 The last (or last but one ?) known of in England came thirty 
 years ago, and this was its reception, as related by the present 
 happy possessor of its feathers and bones : — 
 
 " The little Egret in my possession is a most beautiful 
 specimen ; it was killed by a labourer with a stick, in Ake 
 Carr, near Beverly, about 1840, and w T as brought to me, tied 
 up in a pocket-handkerchief, covered with black wet mud and 
 blood, in which state it was sent to Mr. Reed, of Doncaster, 
 and restored by him in a most marvellous manner." 
 
 175. Now, you will feel at once that, while the peasant was 
 beating this bird into a piece of bloody flesh with his stick, 
 he could not, in any true sense, see the bird ; that he had no 
 pleasure either in the sight of that, or of anything near it. 
 
 You feel that he would become capable of seeing it in exact 
 proportion to his desire not to kill it ; but to watch it in its life. 
 
 Well, that is a quite general law : in the degree in which 
 you delight in the life of any creature, you can see it ; no 
 otherwise. 
 
 And you would feel, would you not, that if you could en- 
 able the peasant rightly to see the bird, you had in great part 
 educated him ? 
 
 176. You would certainly have gone, at least, the third of 
 the way towards educating him. Then the next thing to be 
 contrived would be that he should be able' to see a man 
 rightly, as well as a bird ; to understand and ]ove what was 
 good in a man, so that, supposing his master was a good man, 
 the sight of his master should be a joy to him. You would 
 say that he was therein better educated than if he wanted to 
 put a gun through a hedge and shoot his master. 
 
 Then the last part of education will be — whatever is meant 
 by that beatitude of the pure in heart — seeing God rightly, 
 of which I shall not speak to-day. 
 
402 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 177. And in ail these phases of education, the main point, 
 you observe, is that it should be a beatitude : and that a man 
 should learn c< x a ^P eiV opOtbs : " and this rejoicing is above all 
 things to be in actual sight ; you have the truth exactly in 
 the saying of Dante when he is brought before Beatrice, in 
 heaven, that his eyes " satisfied themselves for their ten years' 
 thirst." 
 
 This, then, I repeat, is the sum of education. All literature, 
 art, and science are vain, and worse, if they do not enable you 
 to be glad ; and glad justly. 
 
 And I feel it distinctly my duty, though with solemn and 
 true deference to the masters of education in this university, 
 to say that I believe our modern methods of teaching, and es- 
 pecially the institution of severe and frequent examination, to 
 be absolutely opposed to this great end ; and that the result 
 of competitive labour in youth is infallibly to make men know 
 all they learn wrongly, and hate the habit of learning ; so 
 that instead of coming to Oxford to rejoice in their work, 
 men look forward to the years they are to pass under her 
 teaching as a deadly agony, from which they are fain to es- 
 cape, and sometimes for their life, must escape, into any 
 method of sanitary frivolity. 
 
 178. I go back to my peasant and his egret. You all think 
 with some horror of this man, beating the bird to death, as a 
 brutal person. He is so ; but how far are we English gentle- 
 men, as a body, raised above him ? We are more delicately 
 nurtured, and shrink from the notion of bruising the creature 
 and spoiling its feathers. That is so far right, and well. 
 But in all probability this countryman, rude and cruel though 
 he might be, had some other object in the rest of his day 
 than the killing of birds. And very earnestly I ask you, have 
 English gentlemen, as a class, any other real object in their 
 whole existence than killing birds ? If they discern a duty, 
 they will indeed do it to the death ; but have the English 
 aristocracy at this moment any clear notion of their duty ? I 
 believe solemnly, and without jest, their idea of their caste is 
 that its life should be, distinctively from inferior human lives 
 spent in shooting. 
 
THE EAGLE'S JSTEST. 
 
 403 
 
 And that is not an idea of caste with which England, at this 
 epoch, can any longer be governed. 
 
 179. I have no time to-day to push my argument farther ; 
 but I have said enough, I think, to induce you to bear with 
 me in the statement of my main theorem — that reading and 
 writing are in no sense education, unless they contribute to 
 this end of making us feel kindly towards all creatures ; but 
 that drawing, and especially physiologic drawing, is vital ed- 
 ucation of a most precious kind. Farther, that more good 
 would be done by any English nobleman who would keep his 
 estate lovely in its native wildness ; and let every animal live 
 upon it in peace that chose to come there, than will be done, 
 as matters are going now, by the talk of all the Lords in Par- 
 liament, as long as we live to listen to them ; and, I will even 
 venture to tell you my hope, though I shall be dead long 
 before its possible fulfilment, that one day the English people 
 will, indeed, so far recognize what education means as to sur- 
 round this university with the loveliest park in England, 
 twenty miles square ; that they will forbid, in that environ- 
 ment, every unclean, mechanical, and vulgar trade and manu- 
 facture, as any man would forbid them in his own garden ; — 
 that they will abolish every base and ugly building, and nest 
 of vice and misery, as they would cast out a devil ; — that the 
 streams of the Isis and Cherwell will be kept pure and quiet 
 among their fields and trees ; and that, within this park, every 
 English wild fiow r er that can bloom in lowland will be suffered 
 to grow in luxuriance, and every living creature that haunts 
 wood and stream know that it has happy refuge. 
 
 And now to our immediate work. 
 
 180. The natural history of anything, or of any creature, 
 divides itself properly into three branches. 
 
 We have first to collect and examine the traditions respect- 
 ing the thing, so that we may know what the effect of its 
 existence has hitherto been on the minds of men, and may 
 have at our command what data exist to help us in our 
 own inquiries about it, or to guide us in our own thoughts 
 of it. 
 
 We have secondly to examine and describe the thing, or 
 
404 
 
 THE EAGLE'S JSFEST. 
 
 creature, in its actual state, with utmost attainable veracity of 
 observation. 
 
 Lastly, we have to examine under what laws of chemistry 
 and physics the matter of which the thing is made has been 
 collected and constructed. 
 
 Thus we have first to know the poetry of it — t. e. 3 what it 
 has been to man, or what man has made of it. 
 
 Secondly, the actual facts of its existence. 
 
 Thirdly, the physical causes of these facts, if we can dis- 
 cover them. 
 
 181. Now, it is customary, and may be generally advisable, 
 to confine the term ' natural history ' to the last two branches 
 of knowledge only. I do not care what we call the first 
 branch ; but, in the accounts of animals that I prepare for 
 my schools at Oxford, the main point with me will be the 
 mythology of them ; the second, their actual state and aspect, 
 (second, this, because almost always hitherto only half known) ; 
 and the anatomy and chemistry of their bodies, I shall very 
 rarely, and partially, as I told you, examine at all : but I shall 
 take the greatest pains to get at the creature's habits of life ; 
 and know all its ingenuities, humours, delights, and intellect- 
 ual powers. That is to say, what art it has, and what affec- 
 tion ; and how these are prepared for in its external form. 
 
 182. I say, deliberately and energetically, i prepared for,' 
 in opposition to the idea, too prevalent in modern philosophy, 
 of the form's being fortuitously developed by repetition of 
 impulse. It is of course true that the aspects and characters 
 of stones, flowers, birds, beasts, and men, are inseparably con- 
 nected with the conditions under which they are appointed to 
 have existence ; but the method of this connection is infi- 
 nitely varied ; so far from fortuitous, it appears grotesquely, 
 often terrifically, arbitrary ; and neither stone, flower, beast, 
 nor man can understand any single reason of the arbitrament, 
 or comprehend why its Creator made it thus. 
 
 183. To take the simplest of instances, — which happens 
 also to be one of the most important to you as artists, — it is 
 appointed that vertebrated animals shall have no more than 
 four legs, and that, if they require to fly, the two legs in front 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 405 
 
 must become wings, it being against law that they should 
 have more than these four members in ramification from the 
 spine. 
 
 Can any law be conceived more arbitrary, or more appar- 
 ently causeless ? What strongly planted three-legged animals 
 there might have been ! what symmetrically radiant five- 
 legged ones ! what volatile six-winged ones ! what circun> 
 spect seven-headed ones ! Had Darwinism been true, wo 
 should long ago have split our heads in two with foolish 
 thinking, or thrust out, from above our covetous hearts, a 
 hundred desirous arms and clutching hands ; and changed 
 ourselves into Briarean Cephalopoda. But the law is around 
 us, and within ; unconquerable ; granting, up to a certain limit, 
 power over our bodies to circumstance and will : beyond that 
 limit, inviolable' inscrutable, and, so far as we know, eternal. 
 
 184. For every lower animal, similar laws are established ; 
 under the grasp of these it is capable of change, invisibly 
 permitted oscillation between certain points f beyond which, 
 according to present experience, it cannot pass. The adapta- 
 tion of the instruments it possesses in its members to the 
 conditions of its life is always direct, and occasionally beauti- 
 ful ; but in the plurality of instances, partial, and involving 
 painful supplementary effort. Some animals have to dig with 
 their noses, some to build with their tails, some to spin with 
 their stomachs : their dexterities are usually few — their awk- 
 wardnesses numberless ; — a lion is continually puzzled how 
 to hold a bone ; and an eagle can scarcely pull the meat off 
 one, without upsetting himself. 
 
 185. Respecting the origin of these variously awkward, 
 imperfectly, or grotesquely developed phases of form and 
 power, you need not at present inquire : in all probability the 
 race of man is appointed to live in wonder, and in acknowl- 
 edgment of ignorance ; but if ever he is to know any of the 
 secrets of his own or of brutal existence, it will surely be 
 through discipline of virtue, not through inquisitiveness of 
 science. I have just used the expression, "had Darwinism 
 been true," implying its fallacy more positively than is justi- 
 fiable in the present state of our knowledge ; but very posi- 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 tively I can say to you that I have never heard yet one logical 
 argument in its favour, and I have heard, and read, many that 
 were beneath contempt. For instance, by the time you have 
 copied one or two of your exercises on the feathei of the hal- 
 cyon, you will be more interested in the construction and dis- 
 position of plume-filaments than heretofore ; and you may 
 perhaps, refer, in hope of help, to Mr. Darwin's account of 
 the peacock's feather. I went to it myself, hoping to learn 
 some of the existing laws of life which regulate the local dis- 
 position of the colour. But none of these appear to be known ; 
 and I am informed only that peacocks have grown to be pea- 
 cocks out of brown pheasants, because the young feminine 
 brown pheasants like fine feathers. Whereupon I say to 
 myself, "Then either there was a distinct species of brown 
 pheasants originally born with a taste for fme feathers ; and 
 therefore with remarkable eyes in their heads, — which would 
 be a much more wonderful distinction of species than being 
 born with remarkable eyes in their tails, — or else all pheasants 
 would have been peacocks by this time ! " And I trouble my- 
 self no more about the Darwinian theory. 
 
 "When you have drawn some of the actual patterns of plume 
 and scale with attention, I believe you will see reason to think 
 that spectra of organic species may be at least as distinct as 
 those of metals or gases ; but learn at all events what they are 
 now, and never mind what they have been. 
 
 186. Nor need you care for methods of classification any 
 more than for the origin of classes. Leave the physiologists 
 to invent names, and dispute over them ; your business is to 
 know the creature, not the name of it momentarily fashion- 
 able in scientific circles. What practical service you can get 
 from the order at present adopted, take, without contention ; 
 and as far as possible, use English words, or be sure you 
 understand the Latin ones. 
 
 187. For instance, the order at present adopted in arrang- 
 ing the species of birds is, as you know, founded only on their 
 ways of using their feet. 
 
 Some catch or snatch their prey, and are called " Snatch- 
 ers " — raptohes. 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 407 
 
 Some perch on branches, and are called " In-sitters," or 
 (Jpon-sitters — insessores. 
 Some climb and cling on branches, and are called Climbers 
 
 — SCANSORES. 
 
 Some scratch the ground, and are called " Scratchers" — 
 
 RASORES. 
 
 Some stand or wade in shallow water, and, having long 
 legs, are called " Stilt- walkers " — grallatores. 
 
 Some float, and make oars of their feet, and are called 
 " Swimmers " — natatores. 
 
 188. This classification is unscholarly, because there are 
 many snatchers and scratchers who perch as well as the sit- 
 ters ; and many of the swimmers sit, when ashore, more neatly 
 than the sitters themselves ; and are most grave insessors, in 
 long rows, on rock or sand : also, £ insessor ' does not mean 
 properly a sitter, but a besieger ; and it is awkward to call a 
 bird a 'Rasor.' Still, the use of the feet is on the whole 
 characteristic, and convenient for first rough arrangement ; 
 only, in general reference, it will be better to use plain Eng- 
 lish words than those stiff Latin ones, or their ugly trans- 
 lations. Linnseus, for all his classes except the stilt-walkers, 
 used the name of the particular birds which were the best 
 types of their class ; he called the snatchers "hawks" (Accip- 
 itres), the swimmers, geese, (Anseres), the scratchers, fowls, 
 (Gallinae), and the perchers, sparrows, (Passeres). He has no 
 class of climbers ; but he has one since omitted by Cuvier, 
 " pies," which, for certain mythological reasons presently to 
 be noted, I will ask you to keep. This will give you seven 
 orders, altogether, to be remembered ; and for each of these 
 we will take the name of its most representative bird. The 
 hawk has best right undoubtedly to stand for the snatchers ; 
 we will have his adversary, the heron, for the stilt-walkers ; 
 you will find this very advisable, no less than convenient ; be- 
 cause some of the beaks of the stilt-walkers turn down, and 
 some turn up ; but the heron's is straight, and so he stands 
 well as a pure middle type. Then, certainly, gulls will better 
 represent the swimmers than geese ; and pheasants are a 
 prettier kind of scratchers than fowls. We will take parrots 
 
408 
 
 TEE EAGLE' £ NEST. 
 
 for the climbers, magpies for the pies, and sparrows for the 
 perchers. Then take them in this order : Hawks, parrots, 
 pies, sparrows, pheasants, gulls, herons ; and you can then 
 easily remember them. For you have the hawks at one end, 
 the herons at the other, and sparrows in the middle, with pies 
 on one side and pheasants opposite, for which arrangement 
 you will find there is good reason ; then the parrots necessarily 
 go beside the hawks, and the gulls beside the herons. 
 
 189. The bird whose mythic history I am about to read to 
 you belongs essentially and characteristically to that order of 
 pies, picae, or painted birds, which the Greeks continually 
 opposed in their thoughts and traditions to the singing birds, 
 representing the one by the magpie, and the other by the night- 
 ingale. The myth of Autolycus and Philammon, and Pindar's 
 exquisite story of the infidelity of Coronis, are the centres of 
 almost countless traditions, all full of meaning, dependent on 
 the various 7roi/aAta, to eye and ear, of these opposed races of 
 birds. The Greek idea of the Halcyon united both these 
 sources of delight. I will read you what notices of it I find 
 most interesting, not in order of date, but of brevity ; the 
 simplest first. 
 
 190. "And the King of Trachis, the child of the Morning 
 Star, married Alcyone. And they perished, both of them, 
 through their pride ; for the king called his w T ife, Hera ; and 
 she her husband, Zeus : but Zeus made birds of them (avrovs 
 airwpviieare), and he made the one a Halcyon, and the other a 
 a Sea-mew." — Apollodorus, L 7, 4. 
 
 "When the King of Trachis, the son of Hesperus, or of 
 Lucifer, and Philonis, perished in shipwreck, his wife Alcyone, 
 the daughter of iEolus and iEgiale, for love of him, threw 
 herself into the sea ; — who both, by the mercy of the gods, 
 were turned into the birds called Halcyons. These birds, in the 
 winter-time, build their nests, and lay their eggs, and hatch 
 their young on the sea ; and the sea is quiet in those days, 
 which the sailors call the Halcyonia." — FTyginus, Fab. LXV. 
 
 191. "Now the King of Trachis, the son of Lucifer, had to 
 wife Halcyone. And he, wishing to consult the oracle of 
 Apollo concerning the state of his kingdom, was forbidden to 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 409 
 
 go, by Halcyone, nevertheless lie went ; and perished by ship- 
 wreck. And when his body was brought to his wife Halcyone, 
 she threw herself into the sea. Afterwards, by the mercy of 
 Thetis and Lucifer, they were both turned into the sea-birds 
 called Halcyons. And you ought to know that Halcyone is 
 the woman's name, and is always a feminine noun ; but the 
 bird's name is Halcyon, masculine and feminine, and so also 
 its plural, Halcyones. Also those birds make their nests in 
 the sea, in the middle of winter ; in which days the calm is so 
 deep that hardly anything in the sea can be moved. Thence, 
 also, the days themselves are called Haleyonia." — Servius, in 
 Virg. Georg. i. 399. 
 
 192. ' 4 And the pairing of birds, as I said, is for the most 
 part in spring time, and early summer ; except the halcyon's. 
 For the halcyon has its young about the turn of days in win- 
 ter, wherefore, when those days are fine, they are called ' Hal- 
 ey onine ' (akKvovetoi) ; seven, indeed, before the turn, and 
 seven after it, as Simonides poetized, (eW^o-cy). 
 
 ' As, when in the wintry month 
 Zeus gives the wisdom of calm to fourteen days, 
 Then the people of the land call it 
 The hour of wind- hiding, the sacred 
 Nurse of the spotted Halcyon. ' 
 
 <c And in the first seven days the halcyon is said to lay her 
 eggs, and in the latter seven to bring forth and nourish her 
 young. Here, indeed, in the seas of Greece, it does not 
 always chance that the Haley onid days are at the solstice ; 
 hut in the Sicilian sea, almost always. But the aethuia and 
 the laros bring forth their young, (two, or three) among the 
 rocks by the sea-shore ; but the laros in summer, the lethuia 
 in first spring, just after the turn of days ; and they sit on 
 them as other birds do. And none of these birds lie torpid 
 in holes during the winter ; but the halcyon is, of all, seen 
 the seldomest, for it is seen scarcely at all, except just at the 
 setting and turn of Pleias, and then it will but show itself 
 once and away ; flying, perhaps, once round a ship at anchor, 
 and then it is gone instantly." — Aristotle, Hist A v., v. 8, 9. 
 
 193. " Now we are ready enough to extol the bee for a wise 
 
410 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 creature, and to consent to the laws by which it cares for the 
 yellow honey, because we adore the pleasantness and tickling 
 to our palates that is in the sweetness of that ; but we take 
 no notice of the wisdom and art of other creatures in bring- 
 ing up their young, as for instance, the halcyon, who as soon 
 as she has conceived, makes her nest by gathering the thorns 
 of the sea-needle-fish ; and, weaving these in and out, and 
 joining them together at the ends, she finishes her nest ; 
 round in the plan of it, and long, in the proportion of a fish- 
 erman's net ; and then she puts it where it will be beaten by 
 the waves, until the rough surface is all fastened together and 
 made close. And it becomes so hard that a blow with iron or 
 stone will not easily divide it ; but, what is more wonderful 
 still, is that the opening of the nest is made so exactly to the 
 size and measure of the halcyon that nothing larger can get 
 into it, and nothing smaller! — so they say ; — "no, not even 
 the sea itself, even the least drop of it." — Plutarch : Be Amove 
 Prolis. 
 
 I have kept to the last Lucian's dialogue, "the Halcyon," 
 to show you how the tone of Christian thought, and tradition 
 of Christ's walking on the sea, began to steal into heathen 
 literature. 
 
 Socrates — Chaerephon. 
 
 194. " Chaerephon. What cry is that, Socrates, which came 
 to us from the beach ; how sweet it was ; what can it be ? the 
 things that live in the sea are all mute. 
 
 "Socrates. Yet it is a sea-creature, Chaerephon ; the bird 
 called Halcyon, concerning which the old fable runs that she 
 was the daughter of iEolus, and, mourning in her youth for 
 her lost husband, was winged, by divine power, and now flies 
 over the sea, seeking him whom she could not find, sought 
 throughout the earth. 
 
 "Chaerephon. And is that indeed the Halcyon's cry ? I 
 never heard it yet ; and in truth it is very pitiful. How large 
 is the bird, Socrates ? 
 
 " Socrates. Not great ; but it has received great honour 
 from the Gods, because of its lovingness ; for while it is mak- 
 ing its nest, all the world has the happy days which it calls 
 
THJC EAGLE" 8 NEST. 
 
 411 
 
 halcyonida?, excelling* all others in their calmness, though in 
 the midst of storm ; of which you see this very day is one, if 
 ever there was. Look how clear the sky is, and the sea wave- 
 less and calm, like a mirror ! 
 
 " Chaerephon. You say truly, and yesterday was just such 
 another. But in the name of the Gods, Socrates, how is one 
 to believe those old sayings, that birds were ever changed 
 into women, or women into birds, for nothing could seem 
 more impossible ? 
 
 195. " Socrates. Ah, dear Chaerephon, it is likely that we 
 are poor and blunt judges of what is possible and not : for 
 we judge by comparing to human power a power unknown 
 to us, unimaginable, and unseen. Many things, therefore, 
 that are easy, seem to us difficult ; and many things unat- 
 tainable that may be attained ; being thus thought of, some 
 through the inexperience, and some through the infantine 
 folly, of our minds. For in very deed every man may be 
 thought of as a child — even the oldest of us,- — since the full 
 time of life is little, and as a baby's, compared to universal 
 time. And what should we have to say, my good friend, who 
 know nothing of the power of gods or of the spirits of Nature, 
 whether any of such things are possible or not ? You saw, 
 Chaerephon, what a storm there was, the clay before yester- 
 day ; it makes one tremble even to think of it again ; — that 
 lightning, and thunder, and sudden tempest, so great that 
 one would have thought all the earth falling to ruin ; and yet, 
 in a little while, came the wonderful establishing of calm, 
 which has remained even till now. Whether, then, do you 
 think it the greater w r ork to bring such a calm out of that 
 tormenting whirlwind, and reduce the universe to peace, or 
 to change the form of a woman into that of a bird ? For in- 
 deed we see how very little children, who know how 7 to knead 
 clay, do something like this also ; often out of one lump they 
 will make form after form, of different natures : and surely to 
 the spirit-powers of Nature, being in vast and inconjecturable 
 excess beyond ours, all such things must be in their hands 
 easy. Or how much do you think heaven greater than thy- 
 self — can you say, perchance ? 
 
412 
 
 TEE EAGLE'S WEST. 
 
 " Chaerephon. Who of men, 0 Socrates, could imagine 01 
 name any of these things ? 
 
 196. "Socrates. Nay; do we not see also, in comparing 
 man with man, strange differences in their powers and imbe- 
 cilities : for complete manhood, compared with utter infancy, 
 as of a child five or ten days old, has difference in power, 
 which we may well call miraculous : and when we see man 
 excel man so far, what shall we say that the strength of the 
 whole heaven must appear, against ours, to those who can see 
 them together, so as to compare them ? Also, to you and me, 
 and to many like us, sundry things are impossible that are 
 easy to other people ; as singing to those ignorant of music, 
 and reading or writing to those ignorant of letters ; — more 
 impossible than to make women birds, or birds of women. 
 For Nature, as with chance throw, and rough parable, making 
 the form of a footless and wingless beast in changeable mat- 
 ter ; then putting on feet and wings, and making it glitter all 
 over with fair variegation and manifold colour, at last brings 
 out, for instance, the wise bee, maker of the divine honey ; 
 and out of the voiceless and spiritless egg she brings many 
 kinds of flying and foot-going and swimming creatures, using 
 besides (as runs the old Logos), the sacred art of the great 
 Aether.* Y^e then, being altogether mortal and mean, and 
 neither able to see clearly great things nor small, and, for the 
 most part being unable to help ourselves even in our own 
 calamities. — what can we have to say about the powers of the 
 immortals, either over halcyons or nightingales ? But the 
 fame of fable such as our fathers gave it to us, this, to my 
 children, O thou bird singing of sorrow, I will deliver con- 
 cerning thy hymns : and I myself will sing often of this re- 
 ligious and human love of thine, and of the honour thou hast for 
 it from the Gods. Wilt not thou do likewise, O Chaerephon '? 
 
 " Chaerephon. It is rightly due indeed, O Socrates, for 
 there is two-fold comfort in this, both for men and women, 
 in their relations with each other. 
 
 \\ Socrates. Shall we not then salute the halcyon, and so 
 go back to the city by the sands, for it is time. 
 
 * iS r ote this sentence respecting the power of the creative Athena. 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 413 
 
 " Chaerephon. Indeed let us do so." 
 
 197. The note of the scholiast on this dialogue is the only 
 passage in which I can find any approximately clear descrip- 
 tion of the Greek halcyon. It is about as large, he says, as a 
 small sparrow : (the question how large a Greek sparrow was 
 we must for the present allow to remain open ;) and it is 
 mixed of green and blue, with gleaming of purple above, and 
 it has a slender and long beak : the beak is said to be " chlo- 
 ros," which I venture to translate "green," when it is used of 
 the feathers, but it may mean anything, used of the beak. 
 Then follows the same account as other people's, of the nest- 
 building, except that the nest is compared in shape to a medi- 
 cinal gourd. And then the writer goes on to say that there 
 are two species of halcyons — one larger than the other, and 
 silent, but the smaller, fond of singing (wSik^) ; and that the 
 females of these are so true to their mates that, when the lat- 
 ter grow old, the female bird flies underneath them, and car- 
 ries them wherever they would like to go ; and after they die 
 mil not eat nor drink anything, and so dies too. " And there 
 is a certain kind of them, of which, if any one hear the voice, 
 it is an altogether true sign to him that he will die in a short 
 time." 
 
 198. You will, I think, forgive me, if, after reading to you 
 these lovely fables, I do not distract you, or detain, with ih& 
 difficult investigation of the degree in which they are f ouncied 
 on the not yet sufficiently known facts of the Kingfisher's life. 
 
 I would much rather that you should remain impressed with 
 the effect which the lovely colour and fitful appearance of the 
 bird have had on the imagination of men. I may satisfy you 
 by the assurance that the halcyon of England is also the com- 
 monest halcyon of Greece and of Palestine ; and I may at once 
 prove to you the real gain of being acquainted with the tradi- 
 tions of it, by reading to you two stanzas, certainly among 
 the most familiar to your ears in the whole range of English 
 poetry : yet which, I am well assured, will sound, after what 
 we have been reflecting upon to-day, almost as if they were 
 new to you. Note especially how Milton's knowledge that 
 Halcyon was the daughter of the Winds, and Ceyx the son of 
 
414 
 
 THE EAGLE'S JYEST. 
 
 the Morning Star, affects the course of his thought in the suc- 
 cessive stanzas — 
 
 *' But peaceful was the night, 
 Wherein the Prince of light 
 
 His reign of peace upon the earth began : 
 The winds with wonder whist, 
 Smoothly the waters kist, 
 
 Whispering new joys to the mild ocean, 
 Who now hath quite forgot to rave, 
 While birds of calm sit brooding on the charmed wave. 
 
 14 The stars, with deep amaze, 
 Stand fix'd in steadfast gaze, 
 
 Bending one way their precious influence ; 
 And will not take their flight, 
 For all the morning light 
 
 Of Lucifer, that often warn'd them thence ; 
 But in their glimmering orbs did glow, 
 Until their Lord himself bespake, and bid them go." 
 
 199. I should also only weary you if I attempted to give 
 you any interpretation of the much-entangled web of Greek 
 fables connected with the story of Halcyone. You observe 
 that in all these passages I have said " King of Trachis " in- 
 stead of Ceyx. That is partly because I don't know how to 
 pronounce Ceyx, either in Greek or English : but it is chiefly 
 to make you observe that this story of the sea-mew and Hal- 
 cyon, now known through all the world like the sea-mew's 
 cry, has its origin in the " Rough country," or crag-country, 
 under Mount (Eta, made sacred to the Greek mind by the 
 death of Heracles ; and observe what strange connection that 
 death has with the Halcyon's story. Heracles goes to this 
 " Rough country 99 to seek for rest ; all the waves and billows 
 of his life having — as he thinks now — gone over him. But he 
 finds death. 
 
 As far as I can form any idea of this " rough, or torn, coun- 
 try" from the descriptions of Colonel Leake or any other 
 traveller, it must resemble closely the limestone cliffs just 
 above Altorf, which break down to the valley from the ridge 
 of the Windgelle, and give source at their foot, to faultlessly 
 clear streams, — green-blue among the grass. 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 415 
 
 You will find Pausanias noting the springs of Thermopylae 
 as of the bluest water he ever saw ; and if you fancy the Lake 
 Lucerne to be the sea bay running inland from Artemisinm, 
 you will have a clear and useful, nor in any serious way, in- 
 accurate, image of the scene where the Greeks thought their 
 best hero should die. You may remember also, with ad- 
 vantage, that Morgarten — the Thermopylae of Switzerland — ■ 
 lies by the little lake of Egeri, not ten miles from this bay of 
 Altorf ; and that the Heracles of Switzerland is born under 
 those Trachinian crags. 
 
 If, farther, you remember that the Halcyon would actually 
 be seen flitting above the blue water of the springs, like one of 
 their waves caught up and lighted by the sun ; and the sea-mews 
 haunting the cliffs, you will see how physical circumstances 
 modify the under-tone of the words of every mythic tradition. 
 
 I cannot express to you how strange — how more and more 
 strange every day — it seems to me, that I cannot find a single 
 drawing, nor definite account, of scenes so memorable as this, 
 to point you to ; but must guess and piece their image to- 
 gether for you as best I can from their Swiss similitudes. No 
 English gentleman can pass through public school-life with- 
 out knowing his Trachinise ; yet, I believe, literally, we could 
 give better account of the forms of the mountains in the 
 moon, than we could of (Eta. And what has art done to 
 help us ? How many Skiddaws or Benvenues, for one (Eta, 
 — if one ! And when the English gentleman becomes an art- 
 patron, he employs his painter-servant only to paint himself 
 and his house ; and when Turner was striving, in his youth, 
 to enforce the mythology, and picture these very scenes in 
 Greece, and putting his whole strength into the endeavour to 
 conceive them, the noble pictures remained in his gallery ; — 
 
 and for bread, he had to paint Hall, the seat of , 
 
 Esquire, with the carriage drive, the summer-house, and the 
 squire going out hunting. 
 
 If, indeed, the squire would make his seat worth painting, 
 and would stay there, and would make the seats, or, shall we 
 call them, forms, of his peasantry, worth painting too, he 
 would be interpreting the fable of the Halcyon to purpose. 
 
416 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 But you must, at once, and without any interpreter, feel 
 for yourselves how much is implied in those wonderful w r ords 
 of Simonides — written six hundred years before Christ ; — 
 " when in the wild winter months, Zeus gives the wisdom of 
 calm ; " and how much teaching there is for us in this imagi- 
 nation of past days, — this dream-picture of what is true in days 
 that are, and are to come, — that perfect domestic love not 
 only makes its nest upon the waves, but that the waves will 
 be calm that it may. 
 
 200. True, I repeat, for all ages, and all people, that, in- 
 deed, are desirous of peace, and loving in trouble ! But what 
 fable shall we invent, what creature on earth or sea shall we 
 find, to symbolize this state of ours in modern England? 
 To what sorrowful birds shall we be likened, who make the 
 principal object of our lives dispeace, and unrest ; and turn 
 our wives and daughters out of their nests, to work for them- 
 selves ? 
 
 Nay, strictly speaking, we have not even got so much as 
 nests to turn them out of. I was infinitely struck, only the 
 other day, by the saying of a large landed proprietor (a good 
 man, who was doing all he could for his tenantry, and build- 
 ing new cottages for them), that the best he could do for 
 them, under present conditions of wages, and the like, was, 
 to give them good drainage and bare walls. 
 
 u Iam obliged," he said to me, "to give up all thought of 
 anything artistic, and even then, I must lose a considerable 
 sum on every cottage I build." 
 
 201. Now, there is no end to the confused states of wrong 
 and misery which that landlord's experience signifies. In the 
 first place, no landlord has any business with building cot- 
 tages for his people. Every peasant should be able to build 
 his own cottage, — to build it to his mind ; and to have a mind 
 to build it to. In the second place, note the unhappy notion 
 which has grown up in the modern English mind, that whole- 
 some and necessary delight in what is pleasant to the eye, is 
 artistic affectation. You have the exponent of it all in the 
 central and mighty affectation of the Houses of Parliament. 
 A number of English gentlemen get together to talk ; they 
 
THE EA GLE ' S NEST. 
 
 417 
 
 have no delight whatever in any kind of beauty ; but they 
 have a vague notion that the appointed place for their con- 
 versation should be dignified and ornamental ; and they build 
 over their combined heads the absurdest and emptiest pieco 
 of filigree, — and, as it were, eternal foolscap in freestone, — > 
 which ever human beings disgraced their posterity by. Well, 
 all that is done, partly, and greatly, in mere jobbery ; but 
 essentially also in a servile imitation of the Hotel-de-Yille 
 builders of old time ; but the English gentleman has not the 
 remotest idea that when H6tel-de-Villes were built, the ville 
 enjoyed its hotel ; — the town had a real pride in its town hall, 
 and place of council, and the sculptures of it had precious 
 meaning for all the populace. 
 
 202. And in like manner, if cottages are ever to be wisely 
 built again, the peasant must enjoy his cottage, and be him- 
 self its artist, as a bird is. Shall cock-robins and yellowham- 
 mers have wit enough to make themselves comfortable, and 
 bullfinches peck a Gothic tracery out of dead clematis, — and 
 your English yeoman be fitted by his landlord with four dead 
 walls and a drain-pipe ? That is the result of your spending 
 300,000/. a year at Kensington in science and art, then ? You 
 have made beautiful machines, too, wherewith you save the 
 peasant the trouble of ploughing and reaping, and threshing ; 
 and, after being saved all that time and toil, and getting, one 
 would think, leisure enough for his education, you have to 
 lodge him also, as you drop a puppet into a deal box, and you 
 lose money in doing it ! and, two hundred years ago, without 
 steam, without electricity, almost without books, and alto- 
 gether without help from GasselVs Educator or the morning 
 newspapers, the Swiss shepherd could build himself a chalet, 
 daintily carved, and with flourished inscriptions, and with red 
 and blue and white TroiKikla ; and the burgess of Strasburg 
 could build himself a house like this I showed you, and aspire 
 such as all men know ; and keep a precious book or two in 
 his public library, and praise God for all : while we, — what 
 are we good for, but to damage the spire, knock down half 
 the houses, and burn the library, — and declare there is no 
 God but Chemistry ? 
 
418 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 203. What are we good for ? Are even our machines of de* 
 struction useful to us ? Do they give us real power ? Once, 
 indeed, not like halcyons, but like sea-eagles, we had our 
 homes upon the sea ; fearless alike of storm or enemy, w r inged 
 like the wave petrel ; and as Arabs of an indeed pathless des- 
 ert, we dwelt in the presence of all our brethren. Our pride 
 is fallen ; no reed shaken with the wind, near the little sing- 
 ing halcyon's nest, is more tremulous than we are now ; 
 though we have built iron nests on the sea, with walls impreg- 
 nable. "We have lost our pride — but have we gained peace ? 
 Do we even care to seek it, how much less strive to make it ? 
 
 204. Have you ever thought seriously of the meaning of 
 that blessing given to the peacemakers ? People are always 
 expecting to get peace in heaven ; but you know whatever 
 peace they get there will be ready-made. Whatever making 
 of peace they can be blest for, must be on the earth here : not 
 the taking of arms against, but the building of nests amidst, 
 its " sea of troubles." Difficult enough, you think? Perhaps 
 so, but I do not see that any of us try. We complain of the 
 want of many things — we want votes, we want liberty, we 
 want amusement, we want money. Which of us feels, or 
 knows, that he wants peace ? 
 
 205. There are two ways of getting it, if you do want it. 
 The first is wholly in your own power ; to make yourselves 
 nests of pleasant thoughts. Those are nests on the sea in- 
 deed, but safe beyond all others ; only they need much art in 
 the building. None of us yet know, for none of us have yet 
 been taught in early youth, what fairy palaces we may build 
 of beautiful thought — proof against all adversity. Bright 
 fancies, satisfied memories, noble histories, faithful sayings, 
 treasure-houses of precious and restful thoughts, which care 
 cannot disturb, nor pain make gloomy, nor poverty take away 
 from us — houses built without hands, for our souls to live in. 
 
 206. And in actual life, let me assure you, in conclusion, 
 the first ' wisdom of calm/ is to plan, and resolve to labour 
 for, the comfort and beauty of a home such as, if we could 
 obtain it, we would quit no more. Not a compartment of a 
 model lodging-house, not the number so-and-so of Paradise 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 419 
 
 Row ; but a cottage all of our own, with its little garden, its 
 pleasant view, its surrounding fields, its neighbouring stream, 
 its healthy air, and clean kitchen, parlours, and bedrooms. 
 Less than this, no man should be content with for his nest ; 
 more than this few should seek : but if it seem to you impos- 
 sible, or wildly imaginary, that such houses should ever be 
 obtained for the greater part of the English people, again be- 
 lieve me, the obstacles which are in the way of our obtaining 
 them are the things which it must be the main object now of 
 all true science, true art, and true literature to overcome. 
 Science does its duty, not in telling us the causes of spots in 
 the sun ; but in explaining to us the laws of our own life, and 
 the consequences of their violation. Art does its duty, not in 
 filling monster galleries with frivolous, or dreadful, or inde- 
 cent pictures ; but in completing the comforts and refining 
 the pleasures of daily occurrence, and familiar service : and 
 literature does its duty, not in wasting our hours in political 
 discussion, or in idle fiction ; but in raising our fancy to the 
 height of what may be noble, honest, and felicitous in actual 
 life ; — in giving us, though we may ourselves be poor and un- 
 known, the companionship of the wisest fellow-spirits of every 
 age and country, — and in aiding the communication of clear 
 thoughts and faithful purposes, among distant nations, which 
 will at last breathe calm upon the sea of lawless passion, and 
 change into such halcyon days the winter of the world, that the 
 birds of the air may have their nests in peace, and the Son of 
 Man, where to lay his head. 
 
 LECTUEE X. 
 
 THE HERALDIC ORDINARIES. 
 
 March 9th, 1872. 
 
 207. In my last lecture, I endeavoured to illustrate you the 
 use of art to the science of physiology. I am to-day to intro- 
 duce to you its elementary forms as an exponent of the sci- 
 ence of history. Which, speaking with perfect accuracy, we 
 
420 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 ought to call, also, ' ' physiology/' or natural history of man; 
 for it ought to be in truth the history of his Nature ; and not 
 merely of the accidents which have befallen him. Do we not 
 too much confuse the important part of the science with the 
 unimportant ? 
 
 In giving the natural history of the lion, you do not care 
 materially where such and such a lion was trapped, or how 
 many sheep it had eaten. You want to know what sort of a 
 minded and shaped creature it is, or ought to be. But in all 
 our books of human history we only care to tell what has hap- 
 pened to men, and how many of each other they have, in a 
 manner, eaten, when they are, what Homer calls Srjfxofiopoi, 
 people-eaters ; and we scarcely understand, even to this day, 
 how they are truly minded. Nay, I am not sure that even 
 this art of heraldry, which has for its main object the telling 
 and proclamation of our chief minds and characters to each 
 other, and keeping record of our descent by race, as far as it 
 is possible, (or, under the present aspect of Darwinism, pleas- 
 ant,) to trace it ; — I am not sure that even heraldry has al- 
 ways understood clearly what it had to tell. But I am very 
 sure it has not been understood in the telling. 
 
 208. Some of you have, I hope, looked at this book* of 
 Arthur Helps, on £ War and Culture,' about which I cannot 
 now say what I would, because he has done me the grace of 
 dedicating it to me ; but you will find in it, directly bearing 
 on our present subject, this story about heraldry : 
 
 " A friend of mine, a physician, became entangled in the 
 crowd at Kennington on that memorable evening when a great 
 Chartist row w r as expected, and when Louis Napoleon armed 
 himself with a constable's staff to support the cause of order. 
 My friend observed a young man of pleasant appearance, who 
 was very busy in the crowd, and appeared to be a leader 
 amongst thorn. Gradually, by the pressure of the crowd, the 
 two w r ere brought near together, and the good doctor had some 
 talk with this fiery partisan. They exchanged confidences ; 
 and to his astonishment, the doctor found that this furious 
 young Chartist gained his livelihood, and a very good livelihood 
 * Conversations on War and General Culture. 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 421 
 
 too, by heraldic painting — by painting the coats-of-arms upon 
 carriages. Now, if you can imagine this young man's darling 
 enterprise to have been successful, if Chartism had prevailed,, 
 what would have become of the painting of arms upon car- 
 riage-panels ? I believe that my good doctor insinuated this 
 suggestion to the young man, and that it was received with 
 disdain. I must own, therefore, that the utile, even when 
 brought home to a man's self, has much less to do with peo« 
 pie's political opinions and desires, than might at first be sup- 
 posed. Indeed, I would venture to maintain, that no great 
 change has ever been produced in the world by motives of self- 
 interest. Sentiment, that thing which many wise people affect 
 to despise, is the commanding thing as regards popular im- 
 pulses and popular action." 
 
 209. This last sentence would have been wholly true, had 
 Mr. Helps written ' no great living change.' The changes of 
 Dissolution are continually produced by self-interest, — for in- 
 stance, a great number of the changes in your methods of 
 life in England just now, and many of those in your moral 
 temper, are produced by the percentage on the sale of iron. 
 And I should have otherwise interpreted the heroism of the 
 young Chartist, and said that he was moved on the 10th of 
 April, by a deep under-current of self-interest ; that by over- 
 throwing Lordship, he expected to get much more for him- 
 self than his salary as an heraldic painter ; and that he had 
 not, in painting his carriage-panels, sentiment enough, or even 
 sentiment at all. 
 
 " Paint me my arms, — "said Giotto, as the youth threw 
 him his white shield, with that order, — " he speaks as if he 
 were one of the Bardi ! " Our English panel-painter had lost 
 the consciousness that there yet remained above him, so much 
 as one, of the Bardi. 
 
 May not that be somewhat the Bardi's fault ? in that they 
 have not taught their Giottos, lately, the function of heraldry, 
 or of any other higher historical painting. 
 
 W e have, especially, to-day, to consider what that function is. 
 
 210. I said that the function of historical painting, in rep- 
 resenting animals, is to discern and record what is best and 
 
422 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 most beautiful in their ways of life, and their forms ; so also, 
 in representing man, it is to record of man what has been 
 best in his acts and way of life, and fairest in his form. 
 
 But this way of the life of man has been a long one. It is 
 difficult to know it — more difficult to judge ; to do either with 
 complete equity is impossible ; but it is always possible to do 
 it with the charity which does not rejoice in iniquity. 
 
 211. Among the many mistakes we have lately fallen into, 
 touching that same charit}-, one of the worst is our careless 
 habit of always thinking of her as pitiful, and to be concerned 
 only with miserable and wretched persons ; whereas her chief 
 joy is in being reverent, and concerned mainly with noble and 
 venerable persons. Her poorest function is the giving of 
 pity ; her highest is the giving of praise. For there are many 
 men, who, however fallen, do not like to be pitied ; but all 
 men, however far risen, like to be praised. 
 
 212. I had occasion in my last lecture to express my regret 
 that the method of education in this country has become so 
 distinctly competitive. It is necessary, however, to distin- 
 guish carefully between the competition which is for the 
 means of existence, and that which is for the praise of learn- 
 ing. For my own part, so far as they affect our studies here, 
 I equally regret both : but competition for money I regret ab- 
 solutely ; competition for praise, only when it sets the reward 
 for too short and narrow a race. I want you to compete, not 
 for the praise of what you know, but for the praise of what 
 you become ; and to compete only in that great school, where 
 death is the examiner, and God the judge. For you will find, 
 if you look into your own hearts, that the two great delights, 
 in loving and praising, and the two great thirsts, to be loved 
 and praised, are the roots of all that is strong in the deeds 
 of men, and happy in their repose. We yet, thank Heaven, 
 are not ashamed to acknowledge the power of love ; but we 
 confusedly and doubtfully allege that of honour ; and though 
 we cannot but instinctively triumph still, over a won boat-race, 
 I suppose the best of us would shrink somewhat from declar- 
 ing that the love of praise was to be one of the chief motives 
 of their future lives. 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 423 
 
 213. But I believe you will find it, if you think, not only 
 one of the chief, but absolutely the chief, motive of human 
 action ; nay, that love itself is, in its highest state, the ren- 
 dering of an exquisite praise to body and soul ; and our Eng- 
 lish tongue is very sacred in this ; for its Saxon word, love, is 
 connected, through the old French verb, loer, (whence lou- 
 ange), with the Latin, ' laus/ not * amor.' 
 
 And you may sum the duty of your life in the giving of 
 praise worthily, and being yourselves worthy of it. 
 
 214. Therefore in the reading of all history, your first pur- 
 pose must be to seek what is to be praised ; and disdain the 
 rest : and in doing so, remember always that the most im- 
 portant part of the history of man is that of his imagination. 
 What he actually does, is always in great part accidental ; it 
 is at best a partial fulfilment of his purpose ; and what we 
 call history is often, as I said, merely a record of the exter- 
 nal accidents which befall men getting together in large 
 crowds. The real history of mankind is that of the slow ad- 
 vance of resolved deed following laboriously just thought ; 
 and all the greatest men live in their purpose and effort more 
 than it is possible for them to live in reality. If you would 
 praise them worthily, it is for what they conceived and felt ; 
 not merely for what they have done. 
 
 215. It is therefore a true historian's work diligently to 
 separate the deed from the imagination ; and when these be- 
 come inconsistent, to remember that the imagination, if pre- 
 cious at all, is indeed the most precious. It is no matter how 
 much, or how little of the two first books of Livy may be lit- 
 erally true. The history of the Romans is the history of the 
 nation which could conceive the battle of the Lake Eegillus. 
 I have rowed in rough weather on the Lake of the four can- 
 tons often enough to know that the legend of Tell is, in literal 
 detail, absurd : but the history of Switzerland is that of the 
 people who expressed their imagination of resistance to in- 
 justice by that legend, so as to animate their character vitally 
 to this day. 
 
 216. But in no part of history does the ideal separate itself 
 bo far from the reality ; and in no part of it is the ideal so 
 
424 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 necessary and noble, as in your own inherited history — that 
 of Christian Chivalry. 
 
 For all English gentlemen, this is the part of the tale of 
 the race of man which it is most essential for them to know. 
 They may he proud that it is also the greatest part. All that 
 hitherto has been achieved at best, — all that has been in 
 noble preparation instituted, — is begun in the period, and 
 rooted in the conception, of Chivalry. 
 
 You must always carefully distinguish that conception from 
 the base strength of the resultless passions which distort and 
 confuse it. Infinitely weaker, the idea is eternal and creative ; 
 the clamorous rages pass away, — ruinous it may be, prosper- 
 ous it may be, for their time ; — but insignificant for ever. 
 You find kings and priests alike, always inventing expedients 
 to get money ; you find kings and priests alike, always invent- 
 ing pretexts to gain power. If you want to write a practical 
 history of the Middle Ages, and to trace the real reasons of 
 the things that actually happened, investigate first the history 
 of the money ; and then of the quarrels for office and terri- 
 tory. But the things that actually happened w r ere of small 
 consequence — the thoughts that were developed are of infinite 
 consequence. 
 
 217. As I was walking back from Hincksey last evening, 
 somewhat discomforted by the look of bad weather, and more 
 in myself, as I thought over this closing lecture, wondering 
 how far you thought I had been talking idly to you, instead 
 of teaching you to draw, through this term, I stopped before 
 Messrs. Wyatt's window ; caught — as it was intended every 
 one should be, — by its display of wonderful things. And I 
 was very unhappy as I looked, for it seemed to me you could 
 not but think the little I could show you how to do quite 
 valueless ; while here were produced, by mysteries of craft 
 which you might expect me at once to explain, brilliant water- 
 colours in purple and gold, and photographs of sea- waves, and 
 chromolithotints of beautiful young ladies, and exquisitely 
 finished engravings of all sorts of interesting scenes, and sub- 
 lime personages ; patriots, saints, martyrs, penitents, and who 
 not ! and what not ! all depicted with a dexterity which it has 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 425 
 
 cost the workmen their life's best energy to fearn, and re- 
 quires great cleverness thus to apply. While, in your room for 
 study, there are only ugly photographs of D'urers and Hoi- 
 beins, and my rude outlines from leaves, and you scarcely ever 
 hear me say anything in praise of that delightful and elaborate 
 modern art at all. 
 
 218. So I bought this Madonna,* which was the prettiest 
 thing I saw ; and it will enable me to tell you why this mod- 
 ern art is, indeed, so little to be studied, even at its best. I 
 think you will all like the plate, and you ought to like it ; but 
 observe in what its beauty consists. First, in very exquisite 
 line engraving : against that I have nothing to say, feeling 
 the greatest respect for the industry and skill it requires. 
 Next, in a grace and severity of action which we all are ready 
 to praise ; but this is not the painter's own bestowing ; the 
 trick of it is learned from Memling and Van Eyck, and other 
 men of the northern religious school. The covering of the 
 robe with jewels is pleasing to you ; but that is learned from 
 Angelico and John Bellini ; and if you will compare the 
 jewel-painting in the John Bellini (Standard No. 5), you will 
 find this false and formal in comparison. Then the face is 
 much dignified by having a crown set on it — which is copied 
 from the ordinary thirteenth century form, and ill done. The 
 face itself is studied from a young German mother's, and is 
 only by the painter's want of skill made conventional in ex- 
 pression, and formal in feature. It would have been wiser 
 and more difficult to have painted her as Kaphael or Reynolds 
 would, with true personal resemblance, perfected in expression. 
 
 219. Nevertheless, in its derivative way, this is very lovely. 
 But I wish you to observe that it is derivative in all things. 
 The dress is derivative ; the action, derivative : above all, the 
 conception is derivative altogether, from that great age oi 
 Christian chivalry, which, in art and thought alike, surpassed 
 the Greek chivalry, because it added to their enthusiasm of 
 patriotism the enthusiasm of imaginative love, sanctioned by 
 this ruling vision of the Madonna, as at once perfect maid 
 and perfect mother. 
 
 * Now, Ref. 104, 
 
426 
 
 TEE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 And your study of the art of the middle ages must begin 
 in your understanding how the men of them looked on Love 
 as the source of all honour, as of life ; and how, from the 
 least thing to the greatest, the honouring of father and 
 mother, the noble esteem of children, and the sincere respect 
 for race, and for the courtesies and prides that graced and 
 crowned its purity, were the sources of all their virtue, and all 
 their joy. 
 
 220. From the least things, I say, to the greatest. I am to 
 speak to-day of one of apparently the least things ; which is, 
 indeed, one of the greatest. How much of the dignity of this 
 Madonna, do you suppose, depends on the manner she bears 
 her dress, her crown, her jewels, and her sceptre ? 
 
 In peasant and prince alike, you will find that ultimately, 
 character is truly heralded in dress ; and that splendour m 
 dress is as necessary to man as colour to birds and flowers, 
 but splendour with more meaning. Splendour, observe, how- 
 ever, in the true Latin sense of the word ; brightness of colour ; 
 not gaudiness : what I have been telling you of colour in pict- 
 ures will apply equally to colour in dress : vulgarity consists 
 in the insolence and discord of it, not in brightness. 
 
 221. For peasant and prince alike, in healthy national order, 
 brightness of dress and beautiful arrangement of it are need- 
 ful. No indication of moral decline is more sure than the 
 squalor of dress among the lower orders, and the fear or 
 shame of the higher classes to bear their proper insignia. 
 
 Such fear and shame are singularly expressed, here in Ox- 
 ford, at this hour. The nobleman ceases to wear the golden 
 tassel in his cap, so accepting, and publicly heralding his ac- 
 ceptance of, the popular opinion of him that he has ceased to 
 be a nobleman, or noteworthy person.* And the members of 
 
 * "Another stride that has been taken appears in the perishing of 
 heraldry. Whilst the privileges of nobility are passing to the middle 
 class, the badge is discredited, and the titles of lordship are getting 
 musty and cumbersome. I wonder that sensible men have not been 
 already impatient of them. They belong, with wigs, powder, and 
 scarlet coats, to an earlier age, and may be advantageously consigned 
 with paint and tattoo, to the dignitaries of Australia and Polynesia."- 
 R. W. Emerson (English Traits.) 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 427 
 
 the University, generally, shrink from wearing their academi- 
 cal dress, so accepting, and publicly heralding their acceptance 
 of, the popular opinion that everybody else may be as good 
 scholars as they. On the other hand, I see continually in the 
 streets young men in bright costumes of blue and white ; in 
 such evidently proud heraldry proclaiming their conviction 
 that the chief object of residence in Oxford is learning to 
 row ; the rowing itself being, I imagine, not for real boat 
 service, but for purposes of display. 
 
 222. All dress is thus heraldic ; a soldier's dress only more 
 definitely so, in proclaiming the thing he means to die as well 
 as to live for ; but all is heraldic, from the beggar's rag to the 
 king's diadem ; it may be involuntarily, it may be, insolently ; 
 but when the characters of men are determined, and wise, their 
 dress becomes heraldic reverently, and in order. " Togam e 
 tugurio proferre uxorem Raciliam jubet ; " and Edie Ochil- 
 tree's blue gown is as honourably heraldic as a knight's ermine. 
 
 223. The beginning of heraldry, and of all beautiful dress, 
 is, however, simply in the wearing of the skins of slain ani- 
 mals. You may discredit, as much as you choose, the literal 
 meaning of that earliest statement, " Unto Adam also, and to 
 his wife, did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed 
 them ; " but the figurative meaning of it only becomes the 
 stronger. For if you think of the skins of animals as giving 
 the four great materials of dress — leather, fur, wool, and 
 down, you will see in this verse the summary of what has ever 
 since taken place in the method of the providence of the 
 Maker of Man and beast, for the clothing of the naked creat- 
 ure who was to rule over the rest. 
 
 224. The first practical and savage use of such dress was 
 that the skin of the head of the beast became a covering for 
 the head of its sla}^er : the skin of its body his coat ; the skin 
 of the fore legs was knotted in front, and the skin of the hind 
 legs and tail became tassels, the jags of the cut edges forming 
 a kind of fringe here and there. 
 
 You have thus the first conception of a helmet, with the 
 mane of the animal for its crest or plume, and the first con- 
 ception of a cuirass, variously fringed, striped, or spotted : in 
 
428 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 complete accoutrement for war, you have to add spear, (or ar- 
 row), and shield. The spear is properly a beam of wood, iron 
 pointed ; the shield a disk of leather, iron fronted. 
 
 And armed strength for conduct is symbolized for all future 
 time by the Greeks, under the two types of Heracles and 
 Athena ; the one with the low lion's crest and the arrow, the 
 other with the high horse's crest, and the spear ; one with the 
 lion-skin, the other with the goat-skin ; — both with the round 
 shield. 
 
 225. The nebris of Dionusos, and leopard-skin of the 
 priests of Egypt relate to astronomy, not war ; and the inter- 
 est in their spots and bars, as variously symbolic, together 
 with real pleasure in their grotesqueness, greatly modified the 
 entire system of Egyptian colour-decoration. On the earliest 
 Greek vases, also, the spots and bars of the animals are car- 
 ried out in spots or chequers upon the ground (sometimes 
 representing flowers), and the delight in c 4 divers colours of 
 needlework," and in fantasy of embroidery, gradually refine 
 and illumine the design of Eastern dress. But only the pat- 
 terns derived from the colours of animals become classical in 
 heraldry under the general name of "furres," one of them 
 " vaire " or " verrey " ( (i the variegated fur,") rudely figuring 
 the material composed of the skins of small animals sewn to- 
 gether, alternately head to tail ; the other, ermine, peculiarly 
 honourable, from the costliness, to southern nations, of the 
 fur it represents. 
 
 226. The name of the principal heraldic colour has a simi- 
 lar origin : the " rams • skins dyed red " which were used for 
 the curtains of the Jewish tabernacle, were always one of the 
 principal articles of commerce between the east and west : in 
 mediaeval Latin they were called Ci gulae," and in the French 
 plural " gules," so that to be dressed in " gules " came grad- 
 ually to mean being dressed in the particular red of those 
 skins, which was a full soft scarlet, not dazzling, but warm 
 and glowing. It is used, in opposition to darker purple, in 
 large masses in the fresco painting of later Rome ; — is the 
 dominant colour of ornamental writing in the middle ages 
 (giving us the ecclesiastical term " rubric "), and asserts itself 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 429 
 
 finally, arid most nobly, in the fresco paintings of Ghirlandajo 
 and Luini. I have tried to represent very closely the tint of 
 it Luini has given to St. Catherine's mantle, in my study in 
 your schools. Titian keeps it also as the key-note of his fres- 
 coes ; so also Tintoret ; but Eaphael, Correggio, and Michael 
 Angelo, all substituted orange for it in opposition to purple ; 
 and the entire scheme of colour in the Vatican frescoes is of 
 orange and purple, broken by green and white, on a ground of 
 grey. This orange and purple opposition in meaner hands be- 
 came gaudy and feeble, and the system of mediaeval colour was 
 at last totally destroyed by it; the orange remaining to this day 
 the favourite, and most distinctive, hue in bad glass painting. 
 
 227. The forms of dress, however, derived from the skins of 
 animals are of much more importance than the colours. Of 
 these the principal is the crest, which is properly the mane of 
 lion or horse. The skin of the horse was neither tough, nor 
 of convenient size for wearing ; but the classical Greek helmet 
 is only an adaptation of the outline of its head, with the mane 
 floating behind : many Etruscan helmets have ears also, 
 while, in mediaeval armour, light plates, cut into the shape of 
 wings of birds, are often placed on each side of the crest, 
 which then becomes not the mane of the animal merely, but 
 the image of the entire creature which the warrior desires to 
 be renowned for having slain. 
 
 228. The Heraldic meaning of the crest is accordingly, first, 
 that the Knight asserts himself to have prevailed over the an- 
 imal it represents ; and to be stronger than such a creature 
 would be, therefore, against his human enemies. Hence, 
 gradually, he considers himself invested with the power and 
 character of the slain creature itself ; and, as it were, to have 
 taken from it, for his spoil, not its skin only, but its strength. 
 The crest, therefore, is the heraldic indication of personality, 
 and is properly to be distinguished from the bearing on the 
 shield, because that indicated race ; but the crest, personal 
 character and valour. 
 
 229. I have traced the practical truth which is the founda- 
 tion of this idea of the transmitted strength of the slain creat- 
 ure becoming the inheritance of its victor, in the account 
 
430 
 
 THE EAGLES NEST. 
 
 given of the coins of Camarina, in the Queen of the Air. But 
 it is strange and sad to reflect how much misery has resulted, 
 in the history of man, from the imaginative excuse for cruelty 
 afforded by the adopted character of savage animals ; and how 
 many wolves, bears, lions, and eagles, have been national sym- 
 bols, instead of gentler creatures. Even the heraldic symbol of 
 Christ is in Italy oftener the lion than the lamb : and among the 
 innumerable painters of his Desert Prophet, only Filippo 
 Lippi understood the full meaning of the raiment of camel's 
 hair, and made him wear the camel's skin, as Heracles the 
 Lion's. 
 
 230. Although the crest is thus essentially an expression of 
 personal character, it practically becomes hereditary ; and the 
 sign on shield and helmet is commonly the same. But the 
 shield has a system of bearings peculiar to itself, to which I 
 wish especially to direct your attention to-day. 
 
 Our word c shield ' and the German ' schild ' mean ' the cov- 
 ering thing/ that behind which you are sheltered, but you 
 must be careful to distinguish it from the word shell, which 
 means properly a scale or plate, developed, like a fish's scale, 
 for the protection of the body. 
 
 There are properly only two kinds of shields, one round and 
 the other square, passing into oval and oblong ; the round 
 one being for use in free action, the square one for adjustment 
 to ground or walls ; but, on horseback, the lower part of the 
 shield must be tapered off, in order to fall conveniently on 
 the left side of the horse. 
 
 And, therefore, practically, you have two great forms of 
 shield ; the Greek round one, for fighting on foot, or in the 
 chariot, and the Gothic pointed one for fighting on horseback. 
 The oblong one for motionless defence is, however, almost 
 always given to the mythic figure of Fortitude, and the bear- 
 ings of the Greek and Gothic shields are always designed with 
 reference to the supposed figures of the circle and square. 
 
 The Greek word for the round shield is *• aspis.' I have no 
 doubt merely a modification of 'apsis' the potter's wheel; 
 the proper word for the Gothic shield is ' ecu ' from the Latin 
 ' scutum,' meaning a shield covered with leather. From ' ecu ? 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 431 
 
 you have 4 ecuyer ; ' — from scutum ' scutiger/ both passing 
 into our English ' squire/ 
 
 231. The aspis of the Greeks might be much heavier than 
 the Gothic shield, because a Greek never rode fully armed ; 
 his object was to allow both to his horse and to himself the 
 most perfect command of limb compatible with protection ; 
 if, therefore, he was in full armour, and wanted his horse to 
 carry him, he put a board upon wheels, and stood on that, 
 harnessing sometimes to it four horses of the highest breed 
 abreast. Of all hitherto practised exertions of manual dex- 
 terity, the driving thus at full speed over rough ground, stand- 
 ing in the chariot, is, as far as I know, the greatest ever at- 
 tained by general military discipline. 
 
 It is true that to do anything perfectly well is about equally 
 difficult ; and I suppose that in a chariot race, a tournament, 
 or a modern game at cricket, the manual art of the most 
 highly-trained men would be almost equally fine ; still, prac- 
 tically, in Gothic chivalry, the knight trusted more to his 
 weight and less to his skill than a Greek did ; nor could a 
 horse's pace under armour ever render precision of aim so 
 difficult as at unarmed speed. 
 
 232. Another great difference of a parallel kind exists in 
 the knight's body-armour. A Greek never hopes to turn a 
 lance by his cuirass, nor to be invulnerable, except by en- 
 chantment, in his body armour, because he will not have it 
 cumbrous enough to impede his movements ; but he makes 
 his shield, if possible, strong enough to stop a lance, and car- 
 ries it as he would a piece of wall : a Gothic knight, on the 
 contrary, endeavoured to make his coat armour invulnerable, 
 and carried the shield merely to ward thrusts on the left side, 
 never large enough to encumber the arm that held the reins. 
 All fine design in Gothic heraldry is founded, therefore, on 
 the form of a short, but pointed shield, convex enough to 
 throw the point of a spear aside easily ; a form roughly ex- 
 tending from the beginning of the twelfth to the middle of 
 the fifteenth century, but of which the most beautiful types 
 are towards the end of the thirteenth. 
 
 233. The difference in method of device between the Gothic 
 
432 
 
 THE EAGLE'S WEST. 
 
 and classic shields resulted partly from this essential differ, 
 ence in form. The pointed shield, having definitely two sides, 
 like a pointed arch, and a determined position, naturally sug- 
 gested an arrangement of bearings definitely on one side or 
 the other, or above, or below the centre, while the Greek 
 shield had its boss, or its main bearing, in the centre always, 
 with subordinate decoration round. Farther, the Gothic fine- 
 ness of colour-instinct seized at once on this division of parts 
 as an opportunity for inlaying or counterchanging colours ; 
 and finally, the respect for race, carried out by registry of the 
 remotest branches of noble families, compelled the Gothic 
 heralds of later times to use these methods of dividing or 
 quartering in continually redoubled complexity. 
 
 234. Essentially, therefore, as distinguished from the classic 
 shield, the Gothic one is parti-coloured beneath its definite 
 bearings, or rather, bi-coloured ; for the tinctures are never 
 more than two in the main design of them ; and the specific 
 methods of arrangement of these two masses of colour have 
 deeper and more ancient heraldic significance than, with few 
 exceptions, their superimposed bearings. I have arranged 
 the twelve principal ones * in the 7th of your rudimentary ex- 
 ercises, and they will be entirely fixed in your minds by once 
 drawing it. 
 
 235. Observe respecting them. 
 
 1. The Chief e ; a bar of colour across the upper part of the 
 shield, signifies authority or chief -dom, as the source of all or- 
 der, power, and peace. 
 
 2. The Cross, as an ordinary, distinguished from the cross 
 as a bearing, consists simply of two bars dividing the shield 
 into four quarters ; and, I believe, that it does not in this 
 form stand properly as a symbol of Christian faith, but only 
 as one of Christian patience and fortitude. The cross as a 
 symbol of faith is terminated within the field. 
 
 * Charges which 14 doe peculiarly belong to this art, and are of ordi- 
 nary use therein, in regard whereof they are called 'ordinaries.' " — See 
 Guillim, sect. ii. chap. iii. (Ed. 1638.) 
 
 ' ' They have also the title of honourable ordinaries in that the court 
 armour is much honoured thereby." The French call them ''pieces 
 honorables. " 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 433 
 
 3. The Fesse, a horizontal bar across the middle of the 
 shield, represents the knight's girdle, or anything that binds 
 and secures, or continues. The word is a corruption of fascia. 
 Sir Francis Drake received for arms from Queen Elizabeth a 
 Fesse waved between two pole-stars, where it stands for the 
 waved surface of the sea, and partly, also, to signify that Sir 
 Francis put a girdle round the earth ; and the family of 
 Drummond carries three diminutive Fesses, or bars, waved, 
 because their ancestor brought Queen Margaret safe through 
 many storms. 
 
 4. The Bend, an oblique bar descending from right to left 
 of the holder of the shield, represents the sword-belt. The 
 Latin balteus and balteum are, I believe, the origin of the 
 word. They become bendellus and bendellum ; then bandeau 
 and bande. Ben da is the word used for the riband round the 
 neck of St. Etheldreda, in the account of her death quoted 
 by Du Cange. I believe, also, the fesse stands often for the 
 cross-bar of the castle gate, and the bend for its very useful 
 diagonal bar : this is only a conjecture, but I believe as likely 
 to be true as the idea, certainly admitted in heraldry, that the 
 bend sometimes stands for a scaling ladder : so also the next 
 four most important ordinaries have all an architectural sig- 
 nificance. 
 
 5. The Pale, an upright bar dividing the shield in half, is 
 simply an upright piece of timber in a palisade. It signifies 
 either defence or enclosure. 
 
 . 6. The Pile, a wedge-shaped space of colour with the point 
 downwards, represents what we still call a pile ; a piece of 
 timber driven into moist ground to secure the foundation of 
 any building. 
 
 7. The Canton, a square space of colour in either of the 
 upper corners of the shield, signifies the corner-stone of a 
 building. The origin and various use of this word are very 
 interesting. The Greek Kav#os, used by Aristotle for the 
 corner of the eyes, becomes canto, and then cantonus. The 
 French coin (corner), is usually derived from the Latin cu- 
 neus ; but I have nc doubt it is one corruption of canton : the 
 mediaeval-Latin cantonus is either an angle or recess, or a four- 
 
434 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 square corner-stone. The heraldic canton is the corner-stone 
 of a building, and the French cantonnier is a road- mender, 
 because the essential thing in repairing a road is to get its 
 corner or edge firm. 
 
 8. The Chevron, a band bent at an angle (properly a right 
 angle), with its point upwards, represents the gable or roof of 
 a house. Thus the four last-named ordinaries represent the 
 four essentials of a fixed habitation : the pale, its enclosure 
 w 7 ithin a given space of ground ; the pile, its foundation ; the 
 canton its wall, and the chevron its roof. 
 
 9. The Orle, a narrow band following the outline of the 
 shield midway between its edge and centre, is a more definite 
 expression of enclosure or fortification by moat or rampart. 
 The relations of this word, no less than that of the canton, 
 are singular, and worth remembering. Du Cange quotes un- 
 der it an order of the municipality of Piacenza, that always, 
 in the custom-house where the salt-tax was taken, " a great 
 orled disk" should be kept ; " dischus magnus orlatus," fc e., 
 a large plate with a rim, in which every day fresh salt should 
 be placed. Then note that the word disk is used in the mid- 
 dle ages, either for a plate, or a table, (the " holy disk " is the 
 patina of the sacrament), but most generally for a table, 
 whence you get the old German disch ; our dish, the French 
 disner, diner ; and our dinner. The disk cut out into a ring 
 becomes a quoit, which is the simplest form of orle. The 
 word ' orle ' itself comes, I believe, from ora, in old Latin, 
 which took a diminutive, orula ; or perhaps the 1 was put in 
 merely to distinguish, to the ear, a margined thing, ' orlatus/ 
 from a gilded thing, 'auratus.' It stands for the hem of a 
 robe, or the fillet of a crown, as well as for any margin ; and 
 it is given as an ordinary to such as have afforded protection 
 and defence, because it defends what is within it. Reduced 
 to a narrow band, it becomes a 'Treasure.' If you have a 
 sovereign of 1860 to 1870 in your pocket, and look at the 
 right hand upper corner of the Queen's arms, you will see 
 the Scottish Lion within the tressure decorated with fleur-de- 
 lys, which Scotland bears in memory of her treaty with Char- 
 lemagne. 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 435 
 
 10. The Gyron, a triangular space of colour with its point 
 in the centre of the shield, derives its name from the old 
 Latin gyro, a fold, "pars vestis qua laxior fit, et in superiori 
 parte contracta, in largiorem formam in imo se explicat." 
 The heraldic ' gyron/ however, also has a collateral reference 
 to, and root in, the word ' gremium/ bosom or lap ; and it 
 signifies properly the chief fold or fall of the dress either over 
 the bosom, or between the knees ; and has whatever symbolic 
 expression may be attributed to that fold, as a sign of kind- 
 ness or protection. The influence of the lines taken by softly 
 falling drapery in giving gentleness to the action of figures 
 was always felt by the Gothic artists as one of the chief ele- 
 ments of design ; and the two constantly repeated figures of 
 Christ holding souls in the ' gremium ' of his robe, and of the 
 Madonna casting hers over suppliants, gave an inevitably rec- 
 ognized association to them. 
 
 11. The Flasque, a space of colour terminated by a curved 
 line on each flank of the shield, derives its name from the Latin 
 flecto, and is the bearing of honour given for successful em- 
 bassy. It must be counted among the ordinaries, but is of 
 rare occurrence in what groups of authentic bearings I have 
 examined. 
 
 12. The Sal tire, from salir, represents the securest form 
 of machine for mounting walls ; it has partly the same signif- 
 icance as the ladder of the Scaligers, but, being properly an 
 ordinary, and not a bearing, has the wider general meaning 
 of successful ascent, not that of mere local attack. As a bear- 
 ing, it is the St. Andrew's Cross. 
 
 236. These twelve forms of ordinary then, or first colour 
 divisions of the shield, represent symbolically the establish- 
 ment, defence, and exaltation of the Knight's house by his 
 Christian courage ; and are in this symbolism, different from 
 all other military bearings. They are throughout essentially 
 founded on the "quartering" or division of the field into four 
 spaces by the sign of the Cross ; and the history of the chiv- 
 alry of Europe is absolutely that of the connection of do* 
 mestic honour with Christian faith, and of the exaltation of 
 
436 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 these two sentiments into the highest enthusiasm by cultivated 
 imagination. 
 
 The means of this culture by the finer arts ; the errors, or 
 falls, of the enthusiasm so excited ; its extinction by avarice, 
 pride, and lust, in the period of the (so called) Renaissance, 
 and the possibility of a true Renaissance or Restoration of 
 courage and pure hope to Christian men in their homes and 
 industries, must form the general subject of the study into 
 which I have henceforth to lead you. In a future course of 
 lectures it will be my endeavour to show you, in the elementary 
 forms of Christian architecture, the evidence of such mental 
 development and decline in Europe from the tenth to the 
 seventeenth century; but remember that my power, or any one 
 else's, to show you truths of this kind, must depend entirely 
 on the degree of sympathy you have in yourselves with what is 
 decorous and generous. I use both these words advisedly, 
 and distinctively, for every high quality of art consists either 
 in some expression of what is decent, — becoming, — or disci- 
 plined in character, or of what is bright and generous in the 
 forces of human life. 
 
 I need not say that I fear no want of such sympathy in you ; 
 yet the circumstances in which you are placed are in many 
 respects adverse to it. 
 
 237. I find, on returning to the University after a period 
 of thirty years, the scope of its teaching greatly extended, the 
 zeal of its masters certainly undiminished ; and, as far as I 
 can judge, the feeling of the younger members of the Univer- 
 sity better, and their readiness to comply with all sound ad- 
 vice, greater, than in my time. What scandals there have 
 been among us, I think have been in great part accidental, 
 and consequent chiefly on the intense need for excitement of 
 gome trivial kind, which is provoked by our restless and com- 
 petitive work. In temper, in general amenability to right 
 guidance, and in their sense of the advantages open to them, 
 more may now be hoped than ever yet from the students of 
 Oxford — one thing only I find wanting to them altogether- 
 distinctness of aim. 
 
 238. In their new schools of science they learn the power 
 
THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 43i 
 
 of machinery and of physical elements, but not that of the 
 Boul ; I am afraid, in our new schools of liberal religion they 
 learn rather to doubt their own faiths than to look with pa- 
 tience or respect on those of others ; and in our new schools 
 of policy, to efface the canons of the past, without having 
 formed any distinct conception of those which must regulate 
 the institutions of the future. 
 
 239. It is therefore a matter of very deep rejoicing to rne 
 that, in bringing before your examination the best forms of 
 English art, I am necessarily leading you to take interest in 
 the history of your country at the time when, so to speak, it 
 became England. You see how, in every college which is now 
 extending or renewing its buildings, the adopted style is ap- 
 proximately that of the thirteenth century ; — it being felt, and 
 rightly felt, by a continually-extending instinct, that only then 
 the national mind had unimpaired power of ideal conception. 
 Whatever else we may have advanced in, there is no dis- 
 pute that, in the great arts, we have steadily, since that thir- 
 teenth century, declined : and I have, therefore, since accept- 
 ing this professorship, partly again taken up my abandoned 
 idea of writing the story of that century, at least in England ; 
 — of writing it, or, at all events, collecting it, with the help of 
 my pupils, if they care to help me. T>y myself, I can do noth- 
 ing ; yet I should not ask them to help me if I were not cer- 
 tain that at this crisis of our national existence the fixing 
 the minds of young and old upon the customs and concep- 
 tion of chivalry is the best of all moral education. One thing 
 I solemnly desire to see all children taught — obedience ; and 
 one to all persons entering into life — the power of unselfish 
 admiration. 
 
 240. The incident which I have related in my fourth lect- 
 ure on sculpture, seen by me last year on the bridge of Wal- 
 lingford, is a sufficient example of the courtesies in which we 
 are now bringing up our peasant children. Do you think 
 that any science or art we can teach them will make them 
 happy under such conditions ? Nay, in what courtesy or in 
 what affection are we even now carefully training ourselves ; 
 — above all, in what form of duty or reverence to those to 
 
438 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST. 
 
 whom we owe all our power of understanding even what duty 
 or reverence mean? I warned you in my former lecture 
 against the base curiosity of seeking for the origin of life in 
 the dust ; in earth instead of heaven : how much more must 
 I warn you against forgetting the true origin of the life that 
 is in your own souls, of that good which you have heard with 
 your ears, and your fathers have told you. You buy the pict- 
 ure of the Virgin as furniture for your rooms ; but you de- 
 spise the religion, and you reject the memory, of those who 
 have taught you to love the aspect of whatsoever things and 
 creatures are good and pure : and too many of you, entering 
 into life, are ready to think, to feel, to act, as the men bid 
 you who are incapable of worship, as they are of creation ; — 
 whose power is only in destruction ; whose gladness only in 
 disdain ; whose glorying is in their shame. You know well, 
 I should think, by this time, that I am not one to seek to con- 
 ceal from you any truth of nature, or superstitiously decorate 
 for you any form of faith ; but I trust deeply — (and I will 
 strive, for my poor part, wholly, so to help you in steadfast- 
 ness of heart) — that you, the children of the Christian chiv- 
 alry which was led in England by the Lion-Heart, and in 
 France by Koland, and in Spain by the Cid, may not stoop 
 to become as these, whose thoughts are but to invent new 
 foulness with which to blaspheme the story of Christ, and to 
 destroy the noble works and laws that have been founded in 
 His name. 
 
 Will you not rather go round about this England, and tell 
 the towers thereof, and mark well her bulwarks, and consider 
 her palaces, that you may tell it to the generation following ? 
 Will you not rather honour with all your strength, with all 
 your obedience, with all your holy love and never-ending wor- 
 ship, the princely sires, and pure maids, and nursing mothers, 
 who have bequeathed and blest your life ? — that so, for you 
 also, and for your children, the days of strength, and the light 
 of memory, may be long in this lovely land which the Lord 
 your God has given you. 
 
ARROWS OF THE CHACE 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHASE. 
 Volume I. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Author's Preface, V 5 
 
 Editor's Preface, . . . . . , 9 
 
 Chronological List of the Letters in Volume I, . . 14 
 
 LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 I. Art Criticism and Art Education, . . . 17 
 
 " Modern Painters ;" a Reply. 1843, . . T7 
 
 Art Criticism. 1843, ..... 24 
 
 The Arts as a Branch of Education. 1857, . . 39 
 
 Art-Teaching by Correspondence, i860, . . 46 
 
 II. Public Institutions and the National Gallery, . 47 
 
 Danger to the National Gallery. 1847, . . 47 
 
 The National Gallery. 1852, . . . .56 
 
 The British Museum. 1866, . . . . 62 
 
 On the Purchase of Pictures. 1880, . . 65 
 
 311. Pre-Raphaelitism, ..... 66 
 
 The Pre-Raphaelite Brethren. 185 1 (May 13), . . 66 
 
 The Pre-Raphaelite Brethren. 1851 (May 30), . 70 
 
 " The Light of the World," Holman Hunt. 1854, • 74 
 
 * ' The Awakening Conscience," Holman Hunt. 1854, 77 
 
 Pre-Raphaelitism in Liverpool. 1858, . . 79 
 
 Generalization and the Scotch Pre-Raphaelites. 1858, 81 
 
PAGE 
 
 IV. Turner, . , , . . . .84 
 
 The Turner Bequest. 1856, . . , 84 
 
 [Turner's Sketch Book. 1858, . . .87, note] 
 
 The Turner Bequest and the National Gallery. 1857, 88 
 
 The Turner Sketches and Drawings. 1858, . . 91 
 
 [The Liber Studiorum. 1858, . . 100, note] 
 
 The Turner Gallery at Kensington. 1859, . . 101 
 
 Turner's Drawings. 1876 (July 5), , . 102 
 
 Turner s Drawings. 1876 (July 19), . , . 107 
 
 Copies of Turner's Drawings. 1876, . , 4 108 
 
 [Copies of Turner's Drawings — Extract. 1857, . 108, note] 
 [Copy of Turner's Fluellen, .... ibidS\ 
 
 " Turners," False and True. 1871, . . . 109 
 
 The Character of Turner. 1857, . . . 110 
 
 [Thornbury's Life of Turner. 1861, . . . 111] 
 
 V e Pictures and Artists,. . . . . . m 
 
 John Leech's Outlines. 1872, .... in 
 Ernest George's Etchings. 1873, . , . 113 
 
 The Frederick Walker Exhibition. 1876, . . 116 
 
 VI. Architecture and Restoration, . . . 122 
 
 Gothic Architecture and the Oxford Museum. 1858, . 122 
 Gothic Architecture and the Oxford Museum. 1859, . 128 
 The Castle Rock (Edinburgh). 1857 (Sept. 14), . . 143 
 
 Edinburgh Castle. 1857 (Sept. 27), . . . 144 
 
 Castles and Kennels. 1871 (Dec. 22)* . . . 148 
 
 Verona v. Warwick. 1871 (Dec. 24), . . . 149 
 
 Notre Dame de Paris. 1871, .... 150 
 Mr. Ruskin's Influence — A Defence. 1872 (March 15), 151 
 Mr. Ruskin's Influence — A Rejoinder. 1872 (March 21), 153 
 Modern Restorations. 1877, . . . .154 
 
 Ribbesford Church. 1877, . . t .155 
 
 Circular relating to St. Mark's, Venice. 1879, . 156 
 
 [Letters relating to St. Mark's, Venice. 1879, . ibi^ note] 
 
LETTERS ON SCIENCE. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. Geological, . . . . . .169 
 
 The Conformation of the Alps. 1864, • . . . 169 
 
 Concerning Glaciers. 1864, . . . . 171 
 
 English versus Alpine Geology. 1864, . . . 177 
 
 Concerning Hydrostatics. 1864, . . . 181 
 
 James David Forbes : His Real Greatness, 1874, . . 182 
 
 II. Miscellaneous, . . . . . .186 
 
 On Reflections in Water. 1844, .... 186 
 
 On the Reflection of Rainbows. 1861, . , 106 
 
 A Landslip near Giagnano. 1841, .... 197 
 
 On the Gentian. 1857, ..... 198 
 
 On the Study of Natural History (undated), , . 199 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHASE. 
 Volume II. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Chronological List of the Letters contained in Vol. II, 204 
 LETTERS ON POLITICS AND WAR. 
 
 The Italian Question. 1859 . . . . 209 
 
 Three Letters : June 6, . . . . . 209 
 
 June 15, . . . . 214 
 
 August 1, . . . . .219 
 
 The Foreign Policy of England. 1863, . . . 221 
 The Position of Denmark. 1864, .... 223 
 
 The Jamaica Insurrection. 1865, . . . 226 
 
 The Franco-Prussian War. 1870, E 228 
 
 Two Letters : October 6, . . . . . 228 
 
 October 7, . . . 231 
 
 Modern Warfare. 1876, ..... 234 
 
 LETTERS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 The Depreciation of Gold. 1863, .... 240 
 
 The Law of Supply and Demand. 1864, . . 241 
 
 Three Letters : October 26, . . . . 241 
 
 October 29, .... 243 
 
 November 2, . , , , . 246 
 
l'AGE 
 
 Mr. Ruskin and Professor Hodgson. 1873, . . 246 
 
 Two Letters : November 8, . . , . 246 
 
 November 15, . . . . 247 
 
 Strikes v. Arbitration. 1865, .... 249 
 
 Work and Wages. 1865, . . . . 251 
 
 Five Letters : April 20, ..... 251 
 
 April 22, .... 253 
 April 29, . . . ; .255 
 
 May 4, .... 260 
 
 May 20, ..... 263 
 
 The Standard of Wages. 1S67, .... 266 
 
 How the Rich spend their Money. 1873, . . . 267 
 
 Three Letters : January 23, .... 267 
 
 January 28, . . . . 268 
 
 January 30, . . ' . . 269 
 
 Commercial Morality. 1875, ..... 271 
 
 The Definition of Wealth. 1875, . , . 271 
 
 The Principles of Property. 1877, .... 272 
 
 On Co-Operation. 1879-80, .... 273 
 
 Two Letters : August, 1879, ..... 273 
 
 April 12, 1880, .... 274 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 I. The Management of Railways, . . . . 275 
 
 Is England Big Enough ? 1868, . . . 275 
 The Ownership of Railways. 1868, . . .277 
 Railway Economy. 1868, . . . .279 
 
 Our Railway System. 1865, . . . . 283 
 
 Railway Safety. 1870, . . . . 285 
 
PAGE 
 
 II. Servants and Houses, 
 
 Domestic Servants — Mastership. 1&65, 
 Domestic Servants — Experience. 1865, 
 Domestic Servants — Sonship and Slavery, 
 Modem Houses. 1865, 
 
 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, 
 
 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, ....... 317 
 
 Notes on the General Principles of Employment for the 
 
 Destitute and Criminal Classes (a Pamphlet). 1868, . 318 
 
 Blindness and Sight. 1879, .... 325 
 
 The Eagle's Nest. 1879, ..... 326 
 
 Politics in Youth. 1879, .... 326 
 
 " Act, Act in the Living Present." 1873, . . 327 
 
 " Laborare est Orare." 1874, .... 328 
 
 A Pagan Message. 1878, ..... 329 
 
 The Foundations of Chivalry. 1877-78, . . 329 
 Five Letters : February 8, 1877, . . .329 
 
 February 10, 1877, . . . 330 
 
 February II, 1877, . . . 332 
 
 February 12, 1877, . . . 333 
 July 3; 1.878, . . . .333 
 
 286 
 . 287 
 
 1865, . 289 
 
 . 296 
 
 300 
 
 . 300 
 301 
 
 • 303 
 304 
 
 . 307 
 
 309 
 
 . 309 
 310 
 
 • 312 
 312 
 
 • 313 
 315 
 
 . 116 
 
V. Women : Their Work and Their Dress, . . '335 
 
 Woman's Work. 1873, ..... 335 
 
 Female Franchise. 1870, . . . [ 335 
 
 Proverbs on Right Dress. 1862, .... 336 
 
 Sad-colored Costumes. 1870, .... 338 
 
 Oak Silkworms. 1862, ..... 340 
 
 VI. Literary Criticism, ..... 341 
 
 The Publication of Books. 1875, . . . .341 
 
 A Mistaken Review. 1875, .... 343 
 
 The Position of Critics. 1875, . . . . 345 
 
 Coventry Patmore's " Faithful for Ever." i860, . 346 
 
 " The Queen of the Air." 1871, .... 349 
 
 The Animals of Scripture : a Review. 1855, . . 350 
 
 '* Limner " and Illumination. 1854, . . . 352 
 
 Notes on a Word in Shakespeare. 1878, . . 353 
 
 Two Letters : September, .... 353 
 
 September 29, . . . 354 
 
 11 The Merchant of Venice." 1880, . . . 356 
 
 Recitations. 1880, . 357 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Letter to W. C. Bennett, LL.D. 1852, . . . 359 
 
 Letter to Thomas Guthrie, D.D. 1853, . e 360 
 
 The Sale of Mr. Windus' Pictures. 1859, . . . 361 
 
 At the Play. 1867, ...... 361 
 
 An Object of Charity. 1868, .... 362 
 
 Excuses from Correspondence. 1868, . . 362 
 
 Letter to the Author of a Review. 1872, . . 363 
 
 An Oxford Protest. 1874, .... 364 
 
 Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Lowe. 1877, , , , .365 
 
PAGK 
 
 The Bibliography of Ruskin. 1878, , . .365 
 
 Two Letters : September 30, .... 365 
 October 23, .... 366 
 
 The Society of the Rose. 1879, .... 366 
 
 Letter to W. H. Harrison. 1865, . . . 367 
 
 Dramatic Reform. 1880. (Two Letters), . . . 368 
 The Lord Rectorship of Glasgow University. 1880. (Five 
 
 Letters), . . . . . . .37° 
 
 Epilogue, ........ 373 
 
 Chronological List of the Letters contained in Both 
 
 Volumes, . ... 376 
 
 Index, , , «, « a 0 , 3S3 
 
u l never wrote a letter In my life which all the world are not welcome 
 *eftd if they will."— Fors Clavigera, Letter lix., 1875. 
 
AUTHORS PEEFACE. 
 
 My good Editor insists that this book must have an 
 Author's Preface ; and insists further that it shall not contain 
 compliments to him on the editorship. I must leave, there- 
 fore, any readers who care for the book, and comprehend the 
 trouble that has been spent on it, to pay him their own com- 
 pliments, as the successive service of his notes may call for 
 them : but my obedience to his order, not in itself easy to 
 me, doubles the difficulty I have in doing what nevertheless, 
 I am resolved to do — pay, that is to say, several extremely 
 fine compliments to myself, upon the quality of the text. 
 
 For of course I have read none of these letters since they 
 were first printed : of half of them I had forgotten the con- 
 tents, of some, the existence ; all come fresh to me ; and here 
 in Rouen, where I thought nothing could possibly have kept 
 me from drawing all I could of the remnants of the old town, 
 I find myself, instead, lying in bed in the morning, reading 
 these remnants of my old self — and that with much content- 
 ment and thankful applause. 
 
 For here are a series of letters ranging over a period of, 
 broadly, forty years of my life ; most of them written hastily, 
 and all in hours snatched from heavier work : and in the en- 
 tire mass of them there is not a word I wish to change, not 
 a statement I have to retract, and, I believe, few pieces of ad- 
 vice, which the reader will not find it for his good to act upon. 
 
6 
 
 AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 With which brief preface I am, for my own part, content ; 
 but as it is one of an unusual tenor, and may be thought by 
 some of my friends, and all my foes, more candid than grace- 
 ful, I permit myself the apologetic egotism of enforcing one 
 or two of the points in which I find these letters so well 
 worth — their author's — reading. 
 
 In the building of a large book, there are always places 
 where an indulged diffuseness weakens the fancy, and pro- 
 longed strain subdues the energy : when we have time to say 
 all we wish, we usually wish to say more than enough ; and 
 there are few subjects we can have the pride of exhausting, 
 without wearying the listener. But all these letters were 
 written with fully provoked zeal, under strict allowance of 
 space and time : they contain the choicest and most needful 
 things I could within narrow limits say, out of many con- 
 tending to be said ; expressed with deliberate precision ; and 
 recommended by the best art I had in illustration or emphasis. 
 At the time of my life in which most of them were composed, 
 I was fonder of metaphor, and more fertile in simile, than I 
 am now ; and I employed both with franker trust in the 
 reader's intelligence. Carefully chosen, they are always a 
 powerful means of concentration ; and I could then dismiss 
 in six words, " thistledown without seeds, and bubbles without 
 color," forms of art on which I should now perhaps spend 
 half a page of analytic vituperation ; and represent, with a 
 pleasant accuracy which my best methods of outline and ex- 
 position could now no more achieve, the entire system of mod- 
 ern plutocratic policy, under the luckily remembered image of 
 the Arabian bridegroom, bewitched with his heels uppermost. 
 
 It is to be remembered also that many of the subjects han- 
 dled can be more conveniently treated controversially than 
 directly ; the answer to a single question may be made clearer 
 
AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 7 
 
 than a statement which endeavors to anticipate many ; and the 
 crystalline vigor of a truth is often best seen in the course of 
 its serene collision with a trembling and dissolving fallacy. 
 But there is a deeper reason than any such accidental ones for 
 the quality of this book. Since the letters cost me, as afore- 
 said, much trouble ; since they interrupted me in pleasant 
 work which was usually liable to take harm by interruption ; 
 and since they were likely almost, in the degree of their force, 
 to be refused by the editors of the adverse journals, I never 
 was tempted into writing a word for the public press, unless 
 concerning matters which I had much at heart. And the 
 issue is, therefore, that the two following volumes contain very 
 nearly the indices of everything I have deeply cared for dur- 
 ing the last forty years ; while not a few of their political 
 notices relate to events of more profound historical importance 
 than any others that have occurred during the period they 
 cover ; and it has not been an uneventful one. 
 
 Nor have the events been without gravity ; the greater, 
 because they have all been inconclusive. Their true conclu- 
 sions are perhaps nearer than any of us apprehend ; and the 
 part I may be forced to take in them, though I am old, — per- 
 haps I should rather say, because I am old, — will, as far as I 
 can either judge or resolve, be not merely literary. 
 
 Whether I am spared to put into act anything here designed 
 for my country's help, or am shielded by death from the sight 
 of her remediless sorrow, I have already done for her as much 
 service as she has will to receive, by laying before her facts 
 vital to her existence, and unalterable by her power, in words 
 of which not one has been warped by interest nor weakened 
 by fear ; and which are as pure from selfish passion as if they 
 were spoken already out of another world. 
 
 J. RUSKIN. 
 
 Rouen, St. Firmin's Day, 1880. 
 
EDITOE'S PEEFAOE. 
 
 Some words are needed by -way of a general note to the 
 present volumes in explanation of the principles upon which 
 they have been edited. It is, however, first due to the com- 
 piler of the ^Bibliography of Mr. Buskin's writings, 1 to state 
 in what measure this book has been prompted and assisted by 
 his previous labors. Already acquainted with some few of 
 the letters which Mr. Euskin had addressed at various times 
 to the different organs of the daily press, or which had in- 
 directly found their way there, it was not until I came across 
 the Bibliography that I was encouraged to complete and ar- 
 range a collection of these scattered portions of his thought. 
 When I had done this, I ventured to submit the whole num- 
 ber of the letters to their author, and to ask him if, after tak- 
 ing two or three of them as examples of the rest, he would 
 not consider the advisability of himself republishing, if not 
 all, at least a selected few. In reply, he was good enough to 
 put me in communication with his publisher, and to request 
 me to edit any or all of the letters without further reference 
 to him. 
 
 I have, therefore, to point out that except for that request, 
 or rather sanction ; for the preface which he has promised to 
 
 1 The Bibliography of Ruskin : a bibliographical list, arranged La 
 chronological order, of the published writings of John Ruskin, M,* 
 (From 1834 to 1879.) By Richard Heme Shepherd. 
 
10 
 
 EDITOR'S PREFACE, 
 
 add after my work upon the volumes is finished ; and for the 
 title which it bears, Mr. Ruskin is in no way responsible for 
 this edition of his letters. I knew, indeed, from the words of 
 " Fors Clavigera " which are printed as a motto to the book, 
 that I ran little risk of his disapproval in determining to print, 
 not a selection, but the whole number of letters in question ; 
 and I felt certain that the completeness of the collection would 
 be considered a first essential by most of its readers, who are 
 thus assured that the present volumes contain, with but two 
 exceptions, every letter mentioned in the last edition of the 
 bibliography, and some few more beside, which have been 
 either printed or discovered since its publication. 
 
 The two exceptions are, first, the series of letters on the 
 Lord's Prayer which appeared in the pages of the Contem- 
 porary Review last December ; and, secondly, some half-dozen 
 upon "A Museum or Picture Gallery," printed in the Art 
 Journal of last June and August. It seemed that both these 
 sets of letters were really more akin to review articles cast in 
 an epistolary form, and would thus find fitter place in a col- 
 lection of such papers than in the present volumes ; and for 
 the omission of the second set there was a still further reason 
 in the fact that the series is not yet completed. 1 On the 
 other hand, the recent circular on the proposed interference 
 
 1 The letter out of which it took its rise, however, will be found on 
 the 82d page of the first volume ; and with regard to it, and especially 
 to the mention of Mr. Frith's picture in it, reference should be made to 
 part of a further letter in the Art Journal of this month. 
 
 " I owe some apology, by the way, to Mr. Frith, for the way I spoke 
 of his picture in my letter to the Leicester committee, not intended for 
 publication, though I never write what I would not allow to be pub- 
 lished, and was glad that they asked leave to print it. ? (Art Journal, 
 August, 1880, where this sentence is further explained.) 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 11 
 
 with St. Mark's, Venice, is included in the first, and one or 
 two other extraneous matters in the second volume, for rea- 
 sons which their connection with the letters amongst which 
 they are placed will make sufficiently clear. 
 
 The letters are reprinted word for word, and almost stop 
 for stop, from the newspapers and other pages in which they 
 first appeared. To ensure this accuracy was not an easy mat- 
 ter, and to it there are a few intentional exceptions. A few 
 misprints have been corrected, such as that of " Fat Bard " for 
 " Fort Bard " (vol. i. p. 147) ; and now and then the punctua- 
 tion has been changed, as on the 256th page of the same vol- 
 ume, where a comma, placed in the original print of the letter 
 between the words "visibly " and "owing," quite confused the 
 sentence. To these slight alterations may be added others 
 still less important, such as the commencement of a fresh para- 
 graph, or the closing up of an existing one, to suit the com- 
 position of the type, which the number of notes rendered 
 unusually tiresome. The title of a letter, too, is not always 
 that provided it by the newspaper ; in some cases it seemed 
 well to rechristen, in others it was necessary to christen a let- 
 ter, though the former has never been done where it was at 
 all possible that the existing title (for which reference can 
 always be made to the bibliography) was one given to it by 
 Mr. Ruskin himself. 
 
 The classification of the letters is well enough shown by the 
 tables of contents. The advantages of a topical over a chrono- 
 logical arrangement appeared beyond all doubt ; whilst the 
 addition to each volume of a chronological list of the letters 
 contained in it, and the further addition to the second volume 
 of a similar list of all the letters contained in the book, and 
 of a full index, will, it is hoped, increase the usefulness of the 
 work. 
 
EDITOR'S PREFACE. 
 
 The beautiful engraving which forms the frontispiece of 
 the first volume originally formed that of " The Oxford 
 Museum." The plate was but little used in the apparently 
 small edition of that book, and was thus found to be in excel- 
 lent state for further use here. The woodcut of the chestnut 
 spandril (vol. i. p. 141) is copied from one which may also be 
 found in "The Oxford Museum." The facsimile of part of 
 one of the letters is not quite satisfactory, the lines being 
 somewhat thicker than they should be, but it answers its pres- 
 ent purpose. 
 
 Lastly, the chief difficulty of editing these letters has been 
 in regard to the notes, and has lain not so much in obtaining 
 the necessary information as in deciding what use to make of 
 it when obtained. The first point was, of course, to put the 
 reader of the present volumes in possession of every fact which 
 would have been common knowledge at the time when such 
 and such a letter was written ; but beyond this there were 
 various allusions, which might be thought to need explanation ; 
 quotations, the exact reference to which might be convenient ; 
 and so forth. Some notes, therefore, of this character have 
 been also added ; whilst some few which were omitted, either 
 intentionally or by accident, from the body of the work, may 
 be found on reference to the index. 1 
 
 The effort to make the book complete has induced the no- 
 tice of slight variations of text in one or two cases, especially 
 in the reprint of the St. Mark's Circular. The space occupied 
 by such notes is small, the interest which a few students take 
 
 1 Some of the notes, it will be remarked, are in larger type than the 
 rest ; these are Mr. Ruskin's original notes to the letters as first published, 
 and are in fact part of them ; and they are so printed to distinguish them 
 from the other notes, for which I am responsible. 
 
EDITOR* 8 PREFACE. 
 
 13 
 
 in the facts they notice really great, and the appearance of 
 pedantry to some readers is thus risked in order to meet the 
 special wish of others. The same effort will account for the 
 reappearance of one or two really unimportant letters in the 
 Appendix to the second volume, which contains also some few 
 letters the nature of which is rather personal than public. 
 
 I have asked Mr. Euskin to state in his preface to the book 
 the value he may set upon it in relation to his other and more 
 connected work ; and for the rest, I have only to add that the 
 editing of it has been the pleasant labor of my leisure for more 
 than two years past, and to express my hope that these scat- 
 tered arrows, some from the bow of "An Oxford Graduate," 
 some from that of an Oxford Professor, may not have been 
 vainly winged anew by 
 
 An Oxford Pupil. 
 
 October, 1880. 
 
14 
 
 Note.- 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE LETTERS 
 
 . — In the second and third columns the bracketed words and figures are more or 
 
 Title of Letter. 
 
 A Landslip near Giagnano 
 
 Modern Painters : a Reply 
 
 Art Criticism 
 
 On Reflections in Water 
 
 Danger to the National Gallery 
 
 The Pre-Raphaelite Brethren, I 
 
 The Pre-Raphaelite Brethren, II 
 
 The National Gallery 
 
 " The Light of the World " 
 
 " The Awakening Conscience " 
 
 The Turner Bequest 
 
 On the Gentian 
 
 The Turner Bequest & National Gallery 
 
 The Castle Rock (Edinburgh) 
 
 The Arts as a Branch of Education 
 
 Edinburgh Castle 
 
 The Character of Turner 
 
 Pre-Raphaelitism in Liverpool 
 
 Generalization & Scotch Pre-Raphaelites .... 
 Gothic Architecture & Oxford Museum, I. . . 
 
 The Turner Sketches and Drawings 
 
 Turner's Sketch Book (extract) 
 
 The Liber Studiorum (extract) 
 
 Gothic Architecture & Oxford Museum, II. . 
 
 The Turner Gallery at Kensington 
 
 Mr. Thornbury's u Life of Turner " (extract) 
 
 Art Teaching by Correspondence 
 
 On the Reflection of Rainbows 
 
 The Conformation of the Alps 
 
 Concerning Glaciers 
 
 English versus Alpine Geology 
 
 Concerning Hydrostatics 
 
 The British Museum 
 
 Copies of Turner's Drawings (extract) 
 
 Notre Dame de Paris 
 
 " Turners," False and True 
 
 Castles and Kennels 
 
 Verona v. Warwick 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's Influence : a Defence 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's Influence : a Rejoinder 
 
 John Leech's Outlines 
 
 Ernest George's Etchings 
 
 James David Forbes : his Real Greatness. . . . 
 
 The Frederick Walker Exhibition 
 
 Copies of Turner's Drawings 
 
 Turner's Drawings, I 
 
 Turner's Drawings, II 
 
 Modern Restoration 
 
 Ribbesford Church 
 
 St. Mark's, Venice — Circular relating to. . 
 
 St. Mark's, Venice — Letters 
 
 On the Purchase of Pictures 
 
 Copy of Turner's "Fluelen" 
 
 The Study of Natural History 
 
 Where Written 
 
 Naples 
 
 [Denmark Hill 
 
 [Denmark Hill 
 
 [Denmark Hill 
 
 [Denmark Hill] 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Heme Hill, Dulwich. . . 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 [Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 [Denmark Hill , 
 
 Dunbar 
 
 Penrith 
 
 Penrith 
 
 [ 
 
 [ 
 
 [ 
 
 [ 
 
 [ 
 
 [ 
 
 [ 
 
 [ 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Lucerne 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 [ ] 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Norwich 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 [ 
 
 [Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill, S. E. . . . 
 
 [Denmark Hill 
 
 [Denmark Hill 
 
 [Denmark Hill 
 
 C 
 
 Peterborough 
 
 Brantwood 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston, 
 
 Lancashire 
 
 Venice 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston, 
 
 Lancashire 
 
 [Brantwood 
 
 [Brantwood 
 
 [Brantwood 
 
 London 
 
 r ] 
 
CONTAINED IN THE FIRST VOLUME. 15 
 
 less certainly conjectured ; whilst those unbracketed give the actual dating of the letter. 
 
 When Written. 
 
 February 7, 1841 
 
 About Sept. 17, 1843 
 
 December, 1843] 
 
 January, 1844] 
 
 January 6 [1847] 
 
 May 9 [1851] 
 
 May ::0 [1851] 
 
 December 27 [1852] 
 
 May 4 [1854] 
 
 May 24 [1854] 
 
 October 27 [1856] 
 
 February 10 [1857] 
 
 July 8, 1857] 
 
 14th September, 1857 .... 
 
 September 25, 1857 
 
 27th September [1857] 
 
 1857] 
 
 January, 185S] 
 
 March, 1858] 
 
 June, 1858] 
 
 November, 1858] 
 
 ] 1858 
 
 ] 1858 
 
 January 20, 1859 
 
 October 20 [1859] 
 
 December 2, 1861 
 
 November, 1860 
 
 7th May, 1861 
 
 10th November, 1864 
 
 November 21 [1864] 
 
 29th November [1864] 
 
 5th December [1 864] 
 
 Jan. 26 [1866] 
 
 ] 1867 
 
 January 18, 1871] 
 
 January 23 [1871] 
 
 December 20 [1871] 
 
 24th (for 25th) Dec. [1871] 
 
 March 15 [1872] 
 
 March 21 [1872] 
 
 1872] 
 
 December, 1873] 
 
 1874] 
 
 January, 1876] 
 
 April 23 [1876] 
 
 July 3 [1876] 
 
 July 16 [1876] 
 
 15th April, 1877 
 
 July 24, 1877 
 
 Winter 1879] 
 
 Winter 1879] 
 
 January, 1880] 
 
 20th March, 1880. 
 
 Undated 
 
 Where and when first Published. 
 
 Proceedings of the Ashmolean Society 
 
 The Weekly Chronicle, Sept. 23, 1843 
 
 The Artist and Amateur's Magazine, 1844.. 
 The Artist and Amateur's Magazine, 1844. . 
 
 The Times, January 7, 1847 
 
 The Times, May 13, 1851 
 
 The Times, May 30, 1851 „ 
 
 The Times, December 29, 1852 
 
 The Times, May 15, 1854 
 
 The Times, May 25, 1854 
 
 The Times, October 28, 1856 
 
 The Athenaeum, February 14, 1 857 
 
 The Times, July 9, 1857 
 
 The Witness (Edinburgh), Sept. 16, 1857 . . 
 " New Oxford Examinations, etc.," 1858 . . 
 The Witness (Edinburgh), Sept. 30, 1857. . . 
 Thornbury's Life of Turner. Preface, 1861 
 The Liverpool Albion, January 11, 1858 . . . 
 The Witness (Edinburgh), March 27, 1858 
 
 "The Oxford Museum," 1859 
 
 The Literary Gazette, Nov. 13, 1858 
 
 List of Turner's Drawings, Boston, 1874. . . 
 List of Turner's Drawings, Boston, 1874. . . 
 
 64 The Oxford Museum," 1859 
 
 The Times, October 21, 1859 
 
 Thornbury's Life of Turner. Ed. 2, Pref. 
 
 Nature and Art, December 1, 1866 .• 
 
 The London Review, May 16, 1861 
 
 The Reader, November 12, 1864 
 
 The Reader, November 26, 1864 
 
 The Reader, December 3, 1864 
 
 The Reader, December 10, 1864 
 
 The Times, January 27, 1866 
 
 List of Turner's Drawings, Boston, 1874 . . 
 The Daily Telegraph, January 19, 1871 
 
 The Times, January 24, 1871 
 
 The Daily Telegraph, December 22, 1871.. 
 The Daily Telegraph, December 25, 1871 . . 
 The PailMall Gazette, March 16, 1872 .... 
 The Pall Mall Gazette, March 21, 1872 .... 
 The Catalogue to the Exhibition, 1 872 .... 
 
 The Architect, December 27, 1873 
 
 " Rendu's Glaciers of Savoy," 1874 
 
 The Times, January 20, 1876 
 
 The Times, April 25, 1876 
 
 The Daily Telegraph, July 5, 1876 
 
 The Daily Telegraph, July 19, 1876 
 
 The Liverpool Daily Post, June 9, 1877 .... 
 The Kidderminster Times, July 28, 1877 . . 
 
 See the Circular 
 
 Birmingham Daily Mail, Nov. 27, 1879 
 
 Leicester Chronicle, January 31, 1880 
 
 Lithograph copy issued by Mr. Ward, 1880 
 Letter to Adam White [unknown] 
 
 Page. 
 
 197 
 
 1.7 
 
 24 
 186 
 
 47 
 
 66 
 
 70 
 
 56 
 
 74 
 
 77 
 
 84 
 198 
 
 87 
 143 
 
 39 
 144 
 110 
 
 79 
 
 81 
 122 
 
 91 
 
 88n. 
 ilOOn. 
 |128 
 101 
 111 
 
 46 
 196 
 169 
 171 
 177 
 181 
 
 62 
 
 108n. 
 
 150 
 
 109 
 
 148 
 
 149 
 
 151 
 
 153 
 
 111 
 
 113 
 
 182 
 
 116 
 
 108 
 
 102 
 
 107 
 154 
 155 
 
 156 
 166 
 65 
 
 108n. 
 199 
 
VOLUME ONE 
 
 LETTERS ON ART AND SCIENCE 
 
ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 LETTEES ON AET. 
 L— ART CRITICISM AND ART EDUCATION. 
 
 [From "The Weekly Chronicle," September 23, 1843.] 
 
 "MODERN PAINTERS " ; A REPLY. 
 
 To the Editor of " Tlie Weekly Chronicle." 
 
 Sir : I was much gratified by reading in your columns of 
 the 15th 1 instant a piece of close, candid, and artistical criti- 
 cism on my work entitled "Modern Painters." Serious and 
 well-based criticism is at the present day so rare, and our peri- 
 odicals are filled so universally with the splenetic jargon or 
 meaningless praise of ignorance, that it is no small pleasure 
 to an author to meet either with praise which he can view with 
 patience, or censure which he can regard with respect. I sel- 
 dom, therefore, read, and have never for an instant thought 
 of noticing, the ordinary animadversions of the press ; but the 
 critique on " Modern Painters" in your pages is evidently the 
 work of a man both of knowledge and feeling ; and is at once 
 so candid and so keen, so honest and so subtle, that I am 
 desirous of offering a few remarks on the points on which it 
 principally touches — they are of importance to art ; and I feel 
 convinced that the writer is desirous only of elucidating truth, 
 not of upholding a favorite error. With respect first to Gas- 
 
 1 It should be the 16th, the criticism having appeared in the preced* 
 ing weekly issue. 
 
18 
 
 ARROWS OF THE OR ACE. 
 
 par's painting of the "Sacrifice of Isaac." It is not on the 
 faith of any single shadow that I have pronounced the time in- 
 tended to be near noon 1 — though the shadow of the two figures 
 being very short, and cast from the spectator, is in itself con- 
 clusive. The whole system of chiaroscuro of the picture is 
 lateral ; and the light is expressly shown not to come from 
 the distance by its breaking brightly on the bit of rock and 
 waterfall on the left, from which the high copse wood alto- 
 gether intercepts the rays proceeding from the horizon. There 
 are multitudes of pictures by Gaspar with this same effect- 
 leaving no doubt whatever on my mind that they are all man- 
 ufactured by the same approved recipe, probably given him 
 by Nicholas, but worked out by Gaspar with the clumsiness 
 and vulgarity which are invariably attendant on the efforts of 
 an inferior mind to realize the ideas of a greater. The Italian 
 masters universally make the horizon the chief light of their 
 picture, whether the effect intended be of noon or evening. 
 Gaspar, to save himself the trouble of graduation, washes his 
 sky half blue and half yellow, and separates the two colors by 
 a line of cloud. In order to get his light conspicuous and clear, 
 he washes the rest of his sky of a dark deep blue, without any 
 thoughts about time of day or elevation of sun, or any such 
 minutiae ; finally, having frequently found the convenience of 
 a black foreground, with a bit of light coming in round the 
 corner, and probably having no conception of the possibility 
 of painting a foreground on any other principle, he naturally 
 falls into the usual method — blackens it all over, touches in a 
 few rays of lateral light, and turns out a very respectable 
 article ; for in such language only should we express the com- 
 pletion of a picture painted throughout on conventional prin- 
 ciples, without one reference to nature, and without one idea 
 
 1 See Modern Painters, vol. i. p. 229 (Pt. II. § 2, cap. 2, § 5). '« Again, 
 take any important group of trees, I do not care whose,— Claude's, Sal- 
 vator's, or Poussin's,— with lateral light (that in the Marriage of Isaac 
 and Rebecca, or Gaspar' s Sacrifice of Isaac, for instance); can it be sup- 
 posed that those murky browns and melancholy greens are representa- 
 tive of the tints of leaves under full noonday sun ? " The picture in 
 question is, it need hardly be said, in the National Gallery (No. 31). 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 19 
 
 of the painter's own. With respect to Salvator's "Mercury 
 and the Woodman," 1 your critic has not allowed for the effect 
 of time on its blues. They are now, indeed, sobered and 
 brought down, as is every other color in the picture, until it is 
 scarcely possible to distinguish any of the details in its darker 
 parts ; but they have been pure and clean, and the mountain 
 is absolutely the same color as the open part of the sky. When 
 I say it is "in full light," I do not mean that it is the highest 
 light of the picture (for no distant mountain can be so, when 
 compared with bright earth or white clouds), but that no acci- 
 dental shadow is cast upon it ; that it is under open sky, and 
 so illumined that there must necessarily be a difference in hue 
 between its light and dark sides, at which Salvator has not 
 even hinted. 
 
 Again, with respect to the question of focal distances, 2 
 your critic, in common with many very clever people to whom 
 I have spoken on the subject, has confused the obscurity of 
 objects which are laterally out of the focal range, with that of 
 objects which are directly out of the focal distance. If all ob- 
 jects in a landscape were in the same plane, they should be 
 represented on the plane of the canvas with equal distinctness, 
 
 1 See Modern Painters, vol. i., pp. 227-28 (Pt. II. § ii., cap. 2, § 4). The 
 critic of the Chronicle had written that the rocky mountains in this pict- 
 ure 4 'are not sky-blue, neither are they near enough for detail of crag 
 to be seen, neither are they in full light, but are quite as indistinct as 
 they would be in nature, and just the color." The picture is No. 84 in 
 the National Gallery. 
 
 2 See Modern Painters, vol. i. pp. 260-61 (Pt. II. § ii. cap. 4, § 6). 
 " Turner introduced a new era in landscape art, by showing that the 
 foreground might be sunk for the distance, and that it was possible to 
 express immediate proximity to the spectator, without giving anything 
 like completeness to the forms of the near objects. This, observe, is 
 not done by slurred or soft lines (always the sign of vice in art), but by 
 a decisive imperfection, a firm but partial assertion of form, which the 
 eye feels indeed to be close home to it, and yet cannot rest upon, nor 
 cling to, nor entirely understand, and from which it is driven away of 
 necessity to those parts of distance on which it is intended to repose. 1 ' 
 To this the critic of the Chronicle had objected, attempting to show that 
 it would result in Nature being " represented with just half the quan- 
 tity of light and color that she possesses." 
 
20 
 
 ARROWS OF THE OH AGE. 
 
 because the eye has no greater lateral range on the canvas 
 than in the landscape, and can only command a point in each. 
 But this point in the landscape may present an intersection 
 of lines belonging to different distances — as when a branch of 
 a tree, or tuft of grass, cuts against the horizon : and yet 
 these different distances cannot be discerned together : we 
 lose one if we look at the other, so that no painful intersec- 
 tion of lines is ever felt. But on the canvas, as the lines of 
 foreground and of distance are on the same plane, they will 
 be seen together whenever they intersect, painfully and dis- 
 tinctly ; and, therefore, unless we make one series, whether 
 near or distant, obscure and indefinite, we shall always repre- 
 sent as visible at once that which the eye can only perceive 
 by two separate acts of seeing. Hold up your finger before 
 this page, six inches from it. If you look at the edge of your 
 finger, you cannot see the letters ; if you look at the letters, 
 you cannot see the edge of your finger, but as a confused, 
 double, misty line. Hence in painting, you must either take 
 for your subject the finger or the letters ; you cannot paint 
 both distinctly without violation of truth. It is of no conse- 
 quence how quick the change of the eye may be ; it is not one 
 whit quicker than its change from one part of the horizon to 
 another, nor are the two intersecting distances more visible at 
 the same time than two opposite portions of a landscape to 
 which it passes in succession. Whenever, therefore, in a land- 
 scape, we look from the foreground to the distance, the fore- 
 ground is subjected to two degrees of indistinctness : the first, 
 that of an object laterally out of the focus of the eye ; and the 
 second, that of an object directly out of the focus of the eye ; 
 being too near to be seen with the focus adapted to the dis- 
 tance. In the picture, when we look from the foreground to 
 the distance, the foreground is subjected only to one degree 
 of indistinctness, that of being out of the lateral range ; for 
 as both the painting of the distance and of the foreground 
 are on the same plane, they are seen together with the same 
 focus. Hence we must supply the second degree of indistinct- 
 ness by slurring with the brush, or we shall have a severe and 
 painful intersection of near and distant lines, impossible in 
 
LETTERS ON ART 
 
 21 
 
 nature. Finally, a very false principle is implied by part of 
 what is advanced by your critic — which has led to infinite 
 error in art, and should therefore be instantly combated when- 
 ever it were hinted — that the ideal is different from the true. 
 It is, on the contrary, only the perfection of truth. The 
 Apollo is not a false representation of man, but the most per- 
 fect representation of all that is constant and essential in man 
 ■ — free from the accidents and evils which corrupt the truth 
 of his nature. 1 Supposing we are describing to a naturalist 
 some animal he does not know, and we tell him we saw one 
 with a hump on its back, and another with strange bends in 
 its legs, and another with a long tail, and another with no 
 tail, he will ask us directly, But what is its true form, what is 
 its real form ? This truth, this reality, which he requires of 
 us, is the ideal form, that which is hinted at by all the indi- 
 viduals — aimed at, but not arrived at. But never let it be 
 said that, when a painter is defying the principles of nature 
 at every roll of his brush, as I have shown that Gaspar does, 
 when, instead of working out the essential characters of spe- 
 cific form, and raising those to their highest degree of nobility 
 and beauty, he is casting all character aside, and carrying out 
 imperfection and accident ; never let it be said, in excuse for 
 such degradation of nature, that it is done in pursuit of the 
 ideal. As well might this be said in defence of the promising 
 sketch of the human form pasted on the wainscot behind the 
 hope of the family— artist and musician of equal power — in 
 the " Blind Fiddler." 2 Ideal beauty is the generalization of 
 
 1 The passage in the Chronicle ran thus : " The Apollo is hut an ideal 
 of the human form ; no figure ever moulded of flesh and blood was like 
 it." With the objection to this criticism we may compare Modern 
 Painters (vol. i., where the ideal is defined as " the utmost degree 
 of beauty of which the species is capable." See also vol. ii. : " The 
 perfect idea of the form and condition in which all the properties of 
 the species are fully developed is called the Ideal of the species ; " 
 and " That unfortunate distinctness between Idealism and Realism 
 which leads most people to imagine that the Ideal is opposed to the 
 Heal, and therefore false." 
 
 2 This picture of Sir David Wilkie's was presented to the National 
 Gallery (No. 99) by Sir George Beaumont, in 1826. 
 
22 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHAVES. 
 
 I 
 
 consummate knowledge, the concentration of perfect truth—* 
 not the abortive vision of ignorance in its study. Nor was 
 there ever yet one conception of the human mind beautiful, 
 but as it was based on truth. Whenever we leave nature, we 
 fall immeasurably beneath her. So, again, I find fault with 
 the 4 £ ropy wreath'' of Gaspar, 1 not because he chose massy 
 cloud instead of light cloud ; but because he has drawn his 
 massy cloud falsely, making it look tough and powerless, like 
 a chain of Bologna sausages, instead of gifting it with the 
 frangible and elastic vastness of nature's mountain vapor. 
 
 Finally, Sir, why must it be only "when he is gone from 
 us " 2 that the power of our greatest English landscape painter 
 is to be acknowledged"? It cannot, indeed, be fully under- 
 stood until the current of years has swept away the minor 
 lights which stand around it, and left it burning alone ; but 
 at least the scoff and the sneer might be lashed into silence, 
 if those only did their duty by whom it is already perceived. 
 And let us not think that our unworthiness has no effect on 
 the work of the master. I could be patient if I thought that 
 no effect was wrought on his noble mind by the cry of the 
 populace ; but, scorn it as he may, and does, it is yet impos- 
 sible for any human mind to hold on its course, with the same 
 energy and life, through the oppression of a perpetual hissing, 
 as when it is cheered on by the quick sympathy of its fellow- 
 men. It is not in art as in matters of political duty, where 
 the path is clear and the end visible. The springs of feeling 
 may be oppressed or sealed by the want of an answer in other 
 bosoms, though the sense of principle cannot be blunted ex- 
 cept by the individual's own error ; and though the knowl- 
 edge of what is right, and the love of what is beautiful, may 
 
 1 The bank of cloud in the " Sacrifice of Isaac" is spoken of in^Mod- 
 ern Painters (vol. i., p. 304, Pt. IE, § iii., cap. 3, § 7), as " a ropy, 
 tough-looking wreath." On this the reviewer commented. 
 
 2 "We agree, wrote the Chronicle, " with the writer in almost every 
 word he says about this great artist ; and we have no doubt that, when 
 he is gone from among us, his memory will receive the honor due to 
 his living genius." See also the postscript to the first volume of Mod- 
 ern Painters, written hi June, 1851. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 23 
 
 still support our great painter through the languor of age— 
 and Heaven grant it may for years to come — yet we cannot 
 hope that he will ever cast his spirit upon the canvas with the 
 same freedom and fire as if he felt that the voice of its in- 
 spiration was waited for among men, and dwelt upon with 
 devotion. Once, in ruder times, the work of a great painter * 
 was waited for through days at his door, and attended to its 
 place of deposition by the enthusiasm of a hundred cities ; 
 and painting rose from that time, a rainbow upon the Seven 
 Hills, and on the cypressed heights of Fiesole, guiding them 
 and lighting them forever, even in the stillness of their decay. 
 How can we hope that England will ever win for herself such 
 a crown, while the works of her highest intellects are set for 
 the pointing of the finger and the sarcasm of the tongue, and 
 the sole reward for the deep, earnest, holy labor of a devoted 
 life, is the weight of stone upon the trampled grave, where 
 
 * Cimabue. The quarter of the town is yet named, from 
 the rejoicing of that day, Borgo Allegri. 1 {Original note to the 
 letter ■: see editor's preface.} 
 
 * The picture thus honored was that of the Virgin, painted for the 
 Church of Santa Maria Novella, where it now hangs in the Rucellai 
 Chapel. u This work was an object of so much admiration to the peo- 
 ple, . . . that it was carried in solemn procession, with the sound of 
 trumpets and other festal demonstrations, from the house of Cimabue to 
 the church, he himself being highly rewarded and honored for it. It is 
 further reported, and may be read in certain records of old painters, 
 that whilst Cimabue was painting this picture in a garden near the gate 
 of San Pietro, King Charles the Elder, of Anjou, passed through Flor - 
 ence, and the authorities of the city, among other marks of respect, con- 
 ducted him to see the picture of Cimabue. When this work was shown 
 to the king, it had not before been seen by any one ; wherefore a]l the 
 men and women of Florence hastened in great crowds to admire it, 
 making all possible demonstrations of delight. The inhabitants of the 
 neighborhood, rejoicing in this occurrence, ever afterwards called that 
 place Borgo Allegri ; and this name it has since retained, although in 
 process of time it became enclosed within the walls of the city — Vasari, 
 Lives of Painters. Bonn's edition. London, 1850. Vol. i. p. 41. This 
 well-known anecdote may also be found in Jameson's Early Italian 
 Painters, p. 12. 
 
24 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHAGE. 
 
 the vain and idle crowd will come to wonder liow the brushes 
 are mimicked in the marble above the dust of him who 
 wielded them in vain ? 
 
 I have the honor to be, Sir, 
 
 Your most obedient servant, 
 The Author of " Modern Painters." 
 
 [From the- "Artist and Amateur's Magazine" (edited by E. V. Rippingille), January, 
 
 1843, pp. 280-287.] 
 
 ART CRITICISM. 
 
 To the Editor of the u Artist and Amateur's Magazine" 
 
 Sir — Anticipating, with much interest, your reply to the 
 candid and earnest inquiries of your unknown correspondent, 
 Matilda Y., 1 I am led to hope that you will allow me to have 
 some share with you in the pleasant task of confirming an 
 honest mind in the truth. Subject always to your animadver- 
 sion and correction, so far as I may seem to you to be led 
 astray by my peculiar love for the works of the artist to whom 
 her letter refers, I yet trust that in most of the remarks I have 
 to make on the points which have perplexed her, I shall be 
 expressing not only your own opinions, but those of every 
 other accomplished artist who is really acquainted — and which 
 of our English masters is not? — with the noble system of 
 
 1 This letter was written in reply to one signed " Matilda Y.," which 
 had been printed in the Artist and Amateur's Magazine, p. 265, Decem- 
 ber, 1843, and which related to the opposite opinions held by different 
 critics of the works of Turner, which were praised by some as " beauti- 
 ful and profoundly truthful representations of nature," whilst others 
 declared them to be " executed without end, aim, or principle/' ''May 
 not these contradictions," wrote the correspondent, in the passage 
 alluded to by Mr. Buskin, "be in a great measure the result of extreme 
 ignorance of art in the great mass of those persons who take upon them- 
 selves the office of critics and reviewers ? Can any one be a judge of art 
 whose judgment is not founded on an accurate knowledge of nature ? 
 It is scarcely possible that a mere knowledge of pictures, however ex- 
 tensive, can qualify a man for the arduous and responsible duties of 
 public criticism of art" 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 25 
 
 poetry and philosophy which has been put fortli on canvas, 
 during the last forty years, by the great painter who has pre- 
 sented us with the almost unparalleled example of a man 
 winning for himself the unanimous plaudits of his generation 
 and time, and then casting them away like dust, that he may 
 build his monument — sere perennius. 
 
 Your correspondent herself, in saying that mere knowledge 
 of pictiwes cannot qualify a man for the office of a critic, has 
 touched the first source of the schisms of the present, and of 
 all time, in questions of pictorial merit. We are overwhelmed 
 with a tribe of critics who are fully imbued with every kind of 
 knowledge which is useful to the picture-dealer, but with none 
 that is important to the artist. They know where a picture 
 has been retouched, but not where it ought to have been ; they 
 know if it has been injured, but not if the injury is to be 
 regretted. They are unquestionable authorities* in all matters 
 relating to the panel or the canvas, to the varnish or the 
 vehicle, while they remain in entire ignorance of that which 
 the vehicle conveys. They are well acquainted with, the tech- 
 nical qualities of every masters touch ; and when their dis- 
 crimination fails, plume themselves on indisputable tradition, 
 and point triumphantly to the documents of pictorial geneal- 
 ogy. But they never go quite far enough back ; they stor one 
 step short of the real original ; they reach the human one, but 
 never the Divine. Whatever, under the present system of 
 study, the connoisseur of the gallery may learn or know, th^re 
 is one thing he does not know — and that is nature. It is a 
 pitiable thing to hear a man like Dr. Waagen, 1 about to set 
 
 1 Gustav Friedrich Waagen, Director of the Berlin Gallery from 1832 
 until liis death in 1868. He was the author of various works on art, 
 amongst them one entitled Works of Art and Artists in England (Lon^ 
 don, 1838), which is that alluded to here. The passage quoted concludes 
 a description of his u first attempt to navigate the watery paths," in a 
 voyage from Hamburg to the London Docks (vol. i. p. 13). His criticism 
 of Turner may be found in the same work (vol. ii. p 80), where com- 
 menting on Turner's " Fishermen endeavoring to put their fish on 
 board," then, as now, in the gallery of Bridgewater House (No. 169), 
 and Which was painted as a rival to the great sea-storm of Vandevelde, 
 he writes, that k 'in the truth of clouds and waves" ... it is inferior 
 
26 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 the seal of his approbation, or the brand of his reprobation, 
 on all the pictures in our island, expressing his insipid aston- 
 ishment on his first acquaintance with the sea. "For the first 
 time I understood the truth of their pictures (Backhuysen's 
 and Van de Velde's), and the refined art with which, by inter- 
 vening dashes of sunshine, near or at a distance, and ships to 
 animate the scene, they produce such a charming variety on the 
 surface of the sea." For the first time ! — and yet this gallery- 
 bred judge, this discriminator of colored shreds and canvas 
 patches, who has no idea how ships animate the sea, until — 
 charged with the fates of the Eoyal Academy — he ventures his 
 invaluable person from Rotterdam to Greenwich, will walk up 
 to the work of a man whose brow is hard with the spray of a 
 hundred storms, and characterize it as "wanting in truth of 
 clouds and waves " ! Alas for Art, while such judges sit en- 
 throned on their apathy to the beautiful, and their ignorance 
 of the true, and with a canopy of canvas between them and 
 the sky, and a wall of tradition, which may not be broken 
 through, concealing from them the horizon, hurl their dark- 
 ened verdicts against the works of men, whose night and noon 
 have been wet with the dew of heaven — dwelling on the deep 
 sea, or wandering among the solitary places of the earth, until 
 they have " made the mountains, waves, and skies a part of 
 them and of their souls." 
 
 to that picture, compared with which " it appears like a successful piece 
 of scene-painting. The great crowd of amateurs, who ask nothing more 
 of the art, will always far prefer Turner's picture." Dr. Waagen re- 
 vised and re-edited his book in a second, entitled, Treasures of Art in 
 Great Britain (1854), in which these passages are repeated with slight 
 verbal alterations (vol. i. p. 3, vol. ii. p. 53). In this work he acknowl- 
 edges his ignorance of Turner at the time the first was written, and gives 
 a high estimate of his genius. " Buildings, *' he writes, " he treats with 
 peculiar felicity, while the sea in its most varied aspects is equally subser- 
 vient to his magic brush 99 ! ! He adds, that but for one deficiency, the 
 want of a sound technical basis, he "should not hesitate to recognize 
 Turner as the greatest landscape painter of all time " ! With regard, 
 however, to the above-named picture, it may be remembered that Mr. 
 Ruskin has himself instanced it as one of the marine pictures which 
 Turner spoiled by imitation of Vandevelde (Pre-Raphaelitism, p. 45). 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 27 
 
 When information so narrow is yet the whole stock in trade 
 of the highest authorities of the day, what are we to expect 
 from the lowest ? Dr. Waagen is a most favorable specimen 
 of the tribe of critics ; a man, we may suppose, impartial, 
 above all national or party prejudice, and intimately acquaint- 
 ed with that half of his subject (the technical half) which is all 
 we can reasonably expect to be known by one who has been 
 trained in the painting-room instead of in the fields. No author- 
 ity is more incontrovertible in all questions of the genuineness 
 of old pictures. He has at least the merit — not common 
 among those who talk most of the old masters — of knowing 
 what he does admire, and will not fall into the same raptures 
 before an execrable copy as before the original. If, then, we 
 find a man of this real judgment in those matters to which 
 his attention has been directed, entirely incapable, owing to 
 his ignorance of nature, of estimating a modern picture, what 
 can we hope from those lower critics who are unacquainted 
 even with those technical characters which they have oppor- 
 tunities of learning ? What, for instance, are we to anticipate 
 from the sapient lucubrations of the critic — for some years 
 back the disgrace of the pages of " Blackwood" — who in one 
 breath displays his knowledge of nature, by styling a painting 
 of a furze bush in the bed of a mountain torrent a specimen 
 of the "high pastoral," and in the next his knowledge of Art, 
 by informing us that Mr. Lee " reminds him of Gainsborough's 
 best manner, but is inferior to him in composition " ! 1 We 
 do not mean to say anything against Mr. Lee ; but can we for- 
 bear to smile at the hopeless innocence of the man's novitiate, 
 who could be reminded by them of landscapes powerful 
 enough in color to take their place beside those of Kembrandt 
 or Kubens ? A little attention will soon convince your corre- 
 spondent of the utter futility or falsehood of the ordinary cri- 
 tiques of the press ; and there could, I believe, even at present 
 be little doubt in her mind as to the fitting answer to the 
 question, whether we are to take the opinion of the accom- 
 
 1 See the Preface to the second edition of Modern Painters (vol. i. p, 
 xix., etc.) Frederick Richard Lee, R.A., died in June, 1879. 
 
28 
 
 ARROWS OF THE -Oil ACE. 
 
 plished artist or of the common newsmonger, were it not 
 for a misgiving which, be she conscious of it or not, is prob- 
 ably floating in her mind — whether that can really be greed 
 Art which has no influence whatsoever on the multitude, 
 and is appreciable only by the initiated few. And this is 
 the real question of difficulty. It is easy to prove that such 
 and such a critic is wrong ; but not so, to prove that what 
 everybody dislikes is right. It is fitting to pay respect to 
 Sir Augustus Callcott, but is it so to take his word against 
 ail the world ? 
 
 This inquiry requires to be followed with peculiar caution ; 
 for by setting at defiance the judgment of the public, we in 
 some sort may appear to justify that host of petty scribblers, 
 and contemptible painters, who in all time have used the same 
 plea in defence of their rejected works, and have received in 
 consequence merciless chastisement from contemporary and 
 powerful authors or painters, whose reputation was as universal 
 as it was just. " Mes ouvrages," said Kubens to his challenger, 
 Abraham Janssens, "ont ete exposes en Italie, et enEspagne, 
 sans que j'aie recti la nouvelle de leur condamnation. Vous 
 n'avez qu'a soumettre les votres a la mcme epreuve." 1 "Je 
 defie," says Boileau, "tous les amateurs les plus mecontents 
 du public, de me citer un bon livre que le public ait jamais 
 rebute, a moins qu'ils ne mettent en ce rang leur ecrits, de la 
 bonte desquels eux seuls sont persuades." 
 
 Now the fact is, that the whole difficulty of the question is 
 caused by the ambiguity of this word — the " public. " Whom 
 does it include ? People continually forget that there is a 
 separate public for every picture, and for every book. Ap- 
 pealed to with reference to any particular work, the public is 
 that class of persons who possess the knowledge which it pre- 
 
 1 Abraham Janssens, in his jealousy of Rubens, proposed to him that 
 they should each paint a picture, and submit the rival works to the de- 
 cision of the public. Mr. Ruskin gives Rubens' reply, the tenor of 
 which may be found in any life of the artist. See Hasselt's Histoire de 
 Rubens (Brussels, 1840), p. 48, from which Mr. Raskin quotes ; Des- 
 camps, vol. i. p. 804 ; Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting, Bohn's octavo 
 edition, p. 306. 
 
LETTERS OK ART. 
 
 suppose^ and the faculties to which it is addressed. With 
 reference to a new edition of Newton's Principia, the " public " 
 means little more than the Royal Society. With reference tp 
 one of Wordsworth's poems, it means all who have hearts. 
 With reference to one of Moore's, all who have passions. 
 With reference to the works of Hogarth, it means those wliG 
 have w T orldly knowledge — to the works of Giotto, those who 
 have religious faith. Each work must be tested exclusively by 
 the fiat of the particular public to whom it is addressed. We 
 will listen to no comments on Newton from people who have 
 no mathematical knowledge ; to none on Wordsworth from 
 those who have no hearts ; to none on Giotto from those who 
 have no religion. Therefore, when we have to form a judg- 
 ment of any new work, the question "What do the public say 
 to it ? " is' indeed of vital importance ; but we must always in- 
 quire, first, who are Us public? We must not submit a 
 treatise on moral philosophy to a conclave of horse-jockeys, 
 nor a work of deep artistical research to the writers for the 
 Art Union. 
 
 The public, then, we repeat, when referred to with respect 
 to a particular work, consist only of those who have knowl- 
 edge of its subject, and are possessed of the faculties to 
 which it is addressed. 
 
 If it fail of touching these, the work is a bad one ; but it in 
 no degree militates against it that it is rejected by those to 
 whom it does not appeal. To whom, then, let us ask, and 
 to what public do the works of Turner appeal ? To those 
 only we reply, who have profound and disciplined acquaintance 
 with nature, ardent poetical feeling, and keen eye for color 
 (a faculty far more rare than an ear for music). They are 
 deeply-toned poems, intended for all who love poetry, but not 
 for those who delight in mimicries of wine-glasses and nut- 
 shells. The}' are deep treatises on natural phenomena, in- 
 tended for all who are acquainted with such phenomena, but 
 not for those who, like the painter Barry, are amazed at find- 
 ing the realities of the Alps grander than the imaginations of 
 Salvator, and assert that they saw the moon from the Mont 
 Cenis four times as big as usual, " from being so much nearer 
 
30 
 
 ARROWS OF THE Oil ACE. 
 
 to it " ! * And they are studied melodies of exquisite color, 
 intended for those who have perception of color ; not for 
 those who fancy that all trees are Prussian green. Then comes 
 the question, Were the works of Turner ever rejected by any 
 person possessing even partially these qualifications? We 
 answer boldly, never. On the contrary, they are universally 
 hailed by this public with an enthusiasm not undeserving in 
 appearance — at least to those who are debarred from sharing 
 in it, of its usual sobriquet — the Turner mania. 
 
 Is, then, the number of those who are acquainted with the 
 truth of nature so limited ? So it has been asserted by one 
 who knew much both of Art and Nature, and both were 
 glorious in his country, f 
 
 * This is a singular instance of the profound ignorance of 
 landscape in which great and intellectual painters of the 
 human form may remain ; an ignorance, which commonly ren- 
 ders their remarks on landscape painting nugatory, if not 
 false. 1 
 
 f Plato. — " Hippias. Men do not commonly say so. 
 
 Socrates. Who do not say so — those who know, 
 
 or those who do not know ? 
 Hippias. The multitude. 
 
 Socrates. Are then the multitude acquainted 
 
 with truth ? 
 Hippias. Certainly not." 
 The answer is put into the mouth of the sophist ; but put 
 as an established fact, which he cannot possibly deny. 2 
 
 1 The amazement of the painter is underrated : " You will believe me 
 much nearer heaven upon Mount Cenis than I was before, or shall prob- 
 ably be again for some time. We passed this mountain on Sunday last, 
 and about seven in the morning were near the top of the road over it, 
 on both sides of which the mountain rises to a very great height, yet so 
 high were we in the valley between them that the moon, which was 
 above the horizon of the mountains, appeared at least five times as big 
 as usual, and much more distinctly marked than I ever saw it through 
 some very good telescopes." — Letter to Edmund Burke, dated Turin, 
 Sept. 24, 1706. Works of James Barry, R.A., 2 vols., quarto (London, 
 1809), vol. i. p. 58. He died in 1806. 
 
 * Plato : Hippias Major, 284 E. Steph. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 31 
 
 46 HI. Ov fievTOL ct{jiOa(TiV avOpiairoi dvofjid&iv ovrws. 
 212. HoTcpov, w "linria, ol ciSoVes rj ol txrj ellSores ; 
 III. Ol ttoXXol. 
 
 SO. Etcrl 8' ovtol ol ctSores raX-qOi^, ol ttoXXol; 
 in. Ov 8r)Ta." 
 
 Hippias Major. 
 
 Now, we are not inclined to go quite so far as this. There 
 are many subjects with respect to which the multitude are 
 cognizant of truth, or at least of some truth ; and those sub- 
 jects may be generally characterized as everything which ma- 
 terially concerns themselves or their interests. The public 
 are acquainted with the nature of their own passions and the 
 point of their own calamities — can laugh at the weakness they 
 feel, and weep at the miseries they have experienced ; but all 
 the sagacity they possess, be it how great soever, will not en- 
 able them to judge of likeness to that which they have never 
 seen, nor to acknowledge principles on which they have never 
 reflected. Of a comedy or a drama, an epigram or a ballad, 
 they are judges from whom there is no appeal ; but not of 
 the representation of facts which they have never examined, 
 of beauties which they have never loved. It is not sufficient 
 that the facts or the features of nature be around us, while 
 they are not within us. We may walk day by day through 
 grove and meadow, and scarcely know more concerning them 
 than is known by bird and beast, that the one has shade for 
 the head, and the other softness for the foot. It is not true 
 that "the eye, it cannot choose but see," unless we obey the 
 following condition, and go forth "in a wise passiveness," 1 
 free from that plague of our own hearts which brings the 
 shadow of ourselves, and the tumult of our petty interests 
 and impatient passions, across the light and calm of Nature. 
 We do not sit at the feet of our mistress to listen to her 
 teachings ; but we seek her only to drag from her that which 
 may suit our purpose, to see in her the confirmation of a theory, 
 or find in her fuel for our pride. Nay, do we often go to her 
 
 1 Wordsworth. Poems of Sentiment and Reflection, i. Expostulation 
 and Reply. 
 
32 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHAOE. 
 
 even thus ? Have we not rather cause to take to ourselves 
 the full weight of Wordsworth's noble appeal — 
 
 " Vain pleasures of luxurious life ! 
 Forever with yourselves at strife, 
 Through town and country, both deranged 
 By affections interchanged, 
 And all the perishable gauds 
 That heaven -deserted man applauds. 
 When will your hapless patrons learn 
 To watch and ponder, to discern 
 The freshness, the eternal youth 
 Of admiration, sprung from truth, 
 From beauty infinitely growing 
 Upon a mind with love o'erflowing : 
 To sound the depths of every art 
 That seeks its wisdom through the heart ? " 1 
 
 When will they learn it? Hardly, we fear, in this age of 
 steam and iron, luxury and selfishness. We grow more and 
 more artificial day by day, and see less and less worthiness in 
 those pleasures which bring with them no morbid excitement, 
 in that knowledge which affords us no opportunity of display. 
 Your correspondent may rest assured that those who do not 
 care for nature, who do not love her, cannot see her. A few 
 of her phenomena lie on the surface ; the nobler number lie 
 deep, and are the reward of watching and of thought. The 
 artist may choose ivhich he will render : no human art can 
 render both. If he paint the surface, he will catch the crowd ; 
 if he paint the depth, he will be admired only — but with how 
 deep and fervent admiration, none but they who feel it can 
 tell — by the thoughtful and observant few. 
 
 There are some admirable observations on this subject in your 
 December number ( u An Evening's Gossip with a Painter" 2 ) ; 
 
 1 Memorials of a Tour in Scotland. 1814. iii. Effusion. 
 
 2 See the Artist and Amateur's Magazine, p. 248. The article named 
 was written in dialogue, and in the passage alluded to u Palette,' an 
 artist, points out to his companion u Chat worthy,'' who represents the 
 general public, that " next to the highest authorities in Art are the 
 pure, natural, untainted, highly educated, and intelligent/^." The 
 argument is continued over some pages, but although the Magazine is 
 not now readily accessible to the ordinary reader, it will not be thought 
 necessary to go further into the discussion. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 33 
 
 hut there is one circumstance with respect to the works 
 of Turner which yet further limits the number of their ad- 
 mirers. They are not prosaic statements of the phenomena 
 of nature — they are statements of them under the influence 
 of ardent feeling ; they are. in a word, the most fervent and 
 real poetry which the English nation is at present producing. 
 Now not only is this proverbially an age in which poetry is 
 little cared for ; but even with those who have most love of 
 it, and most need of it, it requires, especially if high and philo- 
 sophical, an attuned, quiet, and exalted frame of mind for its 
 enjoyment ; and if dragged into the midst of the noisy inter- 
 ests of every-day life, may easily be made ridiculous or offen- 
 sive. Wordsworth recited, by Mr. Wakley, in the House of 
 Commons, in the middle of a financial debate, would sound, 
 in all probability, very like Mr. Wakley's 1 own verses. Words- 
 worth, read in the stillness of a mountain hollow, has the force 
 of the mountain waters. What would be the effect of a pas- 
 sage of Milton recited in the middle of a pantomime, or of a 
 dreamy stanza of Shelley upon the Stock Exchange ? Are we 
 to judge of the nightingale by hearing it sing in broad day- 
 light in Cheapside ? Eor just such a judgment do we form of 
 Turner by standing before his pictures in the Koyal Academy. 
 It is a strange thing that the public never seem to suspect 
 that there may be a poetry in painting, to meet which, some 
 preparation of sympathy, some harmony of circumstance, is 
 required ; and that it is just as impossible to see half a dozen 
 great pictures as to read half a dozen great poems at the same 
 time, if their tendencies or their tones of feeling be contrary 
 or discordant. Let us imagine what would be the effect on 
 the mind of any man of feeling, to whom an eager friend, de- 
 sirous of impressing upon him the merit of different poets, 
 should read successively, and without a pause, the following 
 
 1 Mr. Thomas Wakley, at this time M.P. for Finsbury, and coroner 
 for Middlesex. He was the founder of the Lancet, and took a deep in- 
 terest in medicine, which he at one time practised. I do not find, how- 
 ever, that he published any volume of poems, though he may well have 
 been the author, as the letter seems to imply, of some occasional verses. 
 He died in 1862. 
 
ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 passages, in which lie something of the prevailing character 
 of the works of six of our greatest modern artists : 
 
 Landseer. 
 
 " His hair, liis size, his mouth, his lugs, 
 Show'd he was nane o 1 Scotland's dougs, 
 But whalpit some place far abroad 
 Whar sailors gang to fish for cod." 1 
 
 Martin. 
 
 14 Far in the horizon to the north appeared, 
 From skirt to skirt, a fiery region, stretched 
 In battailous aspect, and nearer view 
 Bristled with upright beams innumerable 
 Of rigid spears, and helmets throng' d, and shields 
 Various, with boastful argument portray 'd." 
 
 WlLKIE. 
 
 " The risin' moon began to glowr 
 The distant Cumnock hills out owre ; 
 To count her horns, wi' a' my pow'r, 
 
 I set mysel' ; 
 But whether she had three or fowr, 
 
 I couldna tell." 
 
 Eastlake. 
 
 " And thou, who tell'st me to forget, 
 Thy looks are wan, thine eyes are wet." 
 
 Stanfield. 
 
 " Ye mariners of England, 
 Who guard our native seas, 
 Whose flag has braved a thousand years 
 The battle and the breeze." 
 
 Turner. 
 
 " The point of one white star is quivering still, 
 Deep in the orange light of widening dawn, 
 Beyond the purple mountains. Through a chasm 
 Of wind-divided mist the darker lake 
 Reflects it, now it fades : it gleams again, 
 
 1 The references to this and the five passages following are (1) Burns, 
 The Twa Dogs ; (2) Milton, Paradise Lost, vi. 79 ; (3) Burns, Death 
 and Doctor Hornbook ; (4) Byron, Hebrew Melodies, Oh ! snatched 
 away in beauty's bloom ; (5) Campbell ; and (6) Shelley, Prometheus 
 Unbound, Act. ii. sc. 1. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 35 
 
 As the waves fall, and as the burning threads 
 
 Of woven cloud unravel in pale air, 
 
 'Tis lost ! and through yon peaks of cloud-like snow 
 
 The roseate sunlight quivers/' 
 
 Precisely to sucli advantage as the above passages, so 
 placed, 1 appear, are the works of any painter of mind seen in 
 the Academy. None suffer more than Turner's, which are 
 not only interfered with by the prosaic pictures around them, 
 but neutralize each other. Two works of his, side by side, 
 destroy each other to a dead certainty, for each is so vast, so 
 complete, so demandant of every power, so sufficient for every 
 desire of the mind, that it is utterly impossible for two to 
 be comprehended together. Each must have the undivided 
 intellect, and each is destroyed by the attraction of the other ; 
 and it is the chief power and might of these pictures, that 
 they are works for the closet and the heart — works to be 
 dwelt upon separately and devotedly, and then chiefly when 
 the mind is in its highest tone, and desirous of a beauty 
 which may be food for its immortality. It is the very stamp 
 and essence of the purest poetry, that it can only be so met 
 and understood ; and that the clash of common interests, 
 and the roar of the selfish world, must be hushed about the 
 heart, before it can hear the still, small voice, wherein rests 
 the power communicated from the Holiest.* 
 
 Can, then, — will be, if I mistake not, the final inquiry of 
 
 1 It will be felt at once that Hie more serious and higher passages 
 generally suffer most. But Stanfield, little as it may be thought, suffers 
 grievously in the Academy, just as the fine passage from Campbell is 
 ruined by its position between the perfect tenderness of Byron and 
 Shelley. The more vulgar a picture is, the better it bears the Academy. 
 
 * Although it is inverse that the most consummate skill 
 in composition is to be looked for, and all the artifices of lan- 
 guage displayed, yet it is in verse only that we throw off the 
 yoke of the world, and are, as it were, privileged to utter our 
 deepest and holiest feelings. Poetry in this respect may be 
 called the salt of the earth. We express in it, and receive in 
 it, sentiments for which, were it not for this permitted me- 
 dium, the usages of the world would neither allow utterance 
 
36 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CM ACE, 
 
 your correspondent, — can, then, we ordinary mortals, — can \ 
 who am not Sir Augustus Callcott, nor Sir Francis Chantrey, 
 ever derive any pleasure from works of this lofty character ? 
 Heaven forbid, we reply, that it should be otherwise. Nothing 
 more is necessary for the appreciation of them, than that which 
 is necessary for the appreciation of any great writer — the 
 quiet study of him with an humble heart. There are, indeed, 
 technical qualities, difficulties overcome and principles devel- 
 oped, which are reserved for the enjoyment of the artist ; but 
 these do not add to the influence of the picture. On the con- 
 trary, we must break through its charm, before we can com- 
 prehend its means, and " murder to dissect." The picture is 
 intended, not for artists alone, but for all who love what it 
 portrays ; and so little doubt have we of the capacity of all to 
 understand the works in question, that we have the most con- 
 fident expectation, within the next fifty years, of seeing the 
 name of Turner placed on the same impregnable height with 
 that of Shakespeare. 1 Both have committed errors of taste 
 
 nor acceptance." — Southeys Colloquies.' 1 Such allowance is 
 never made to the painter. In him, inspiration is called in- 
 sanity — in him, the sacred fire, possession. 
 
 1 u This Turner, of whom you have known so little while he was liv- 
 ing among you, will one day take his place beside Shakespeare and 
 Verulam, in the annals of the light of England. 
 
 44 Yes: beside Shakespeare and Verulam, a third star in that central 
 constellation, round which, in the astronomy of intellect, all other stars 
 make their circuit. By Shakespeare, humanity was unsealed to you ; 
 by Verulam the principles of nature ; and by Turner, her aspect. All these 
 were sent to unlock one of the gates of light, and to unlock it for the 
 first time. But of all the three, though not the greatest, Turner was 
 the most unprecedented in his work. Bacon did what Aristotle had at- 
 tempted ; Shakespeare did perfectly what iEschylus did partially ; but 
 none before Turner had lifted the veil from the face of nature ; the 
 majesty of the hills and forests had received no interpretation, and the 
 clouds passed unrecorded from the face of the heavens which they 
 adorned, and of the earth to which they ministered."- — Lectures on Ar- 
 chitecture and Painting, by John Ruskin ; published 1854 ; pp. 180, 181. 
 
 8 Sir Thomas More ; or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of 
 Society. Colloquy xiv. (vol. ii. p. 399, in Murray's edition, 1829). 
 
LETTERS ON ART.. 
 
 37 
 
 and judgment. In both it is, or will be, heresy even to feei 
 tnose errors, so entirely are they overbalanced by the gigantis 
 powers of whose impetuosity they are the result. So soon aa 
 the public are convinced, by the maintained testimony of high 
 authority, that Turner is worth understanding, they will try to 
 understand him ; and if they try, they can. Nor are they, 
 now, as is commonly thought, despised or defied by him. He 
 has too much respect for them to endeavor to please them by 
 falsehood. He will not win for himself a hearing by the be- 
 trayal of his message. 
 
 Finally, then, we would recommend your correspondent, 
 first, to divest herself of every atom of lingering respect or 
 regard for the common criticism of the press, and to hold fast 
 by the authority of Callcott, Chantrey, Landseer, and Stanfield ; 
 and this, not because we would have her slavishly subject to 
 any authority but that of her own eyes and reason, but because 
 we would not have her blown about w T ith every wind of doc- 
 trine, before she has convinced her reason or learned to use 
 her eyes. And if she can draw at all, let her make careful 
 studies of any natural objects that may happen to come in her 
 way, — sticks, leaves, or stones, — and of distant atmospheric 
 effects on groups of objects ; not for the sake of the drawing 
 itself, but for the sake of the powers of attention and accurate 
 observation which thus only can be cultivated. And let her 
 make the study, not thinking of this artist or of that ; not 
 conjecturing what Harding would have done, or Stanneld, or 
 Callcott, with her subject ; nor trying to draw in a bold style, 
 or a free style, or any other style ; but drawing all she sees, as 
 far as may be in her power, earnestly, faithfully, unseiectingly ; 
 and, which is perhaps the more difficult task of the two, not 
 drawing what she does not see. Oh, if people did but know 
 how many lines nature suggests without showing, w T hat differ- 
 ent art should we have ! And let her never be discouraged by 
 ill success. She will seldom have gained more knowledge than 
 when she most feels her failure. Let her use every oppor- 
 tunity of examining the works of Turner ; let her try to copy 
 them, then try to copy some one else's, and observe which 
 presents most of that kind of difficulty which she found iii 
 
38 
 
 ARROWS OF THE OH AGE. 
 
 copying nature. Let her, if possible, extend her acquaintance 
 with wild natural scenery of every kind and character, endeav- 
 oring in each species of scenery to distinguish those features 
 which are expressive and harmonious from those which are 
 unaffecting or incongruous ; and after a year or two of such 
 discipline as this, let her judge for herself. No authority need 
 then, or can then, be very influential with her. Her own 
 pleasure in works of true greatness 1 will be too real, too 
 instinctive, to be persuaded or laughed out of her. We bid 
 her, therefore, heartily good-speed, with this final warning : 
 Let her beware, in going to nature, of taking with her the 
 commonplace dogmas or dicta of art. Let her not look for 
 what is like Titian or like Claude, for composed form or ar- 
 ranged chiaroscuro ; but believe that everything which God has 
 made is beautiful, and that everything which nature teaches 
 is true. Let her beware, above everything, of that wicked 
 pride which makes man think he can dignify God's glorious 
 creations, or exalt the majesty of his universe. Let her be 
 humble, we repeat, and earnest. Truth w r as never sealed, if so 
 sought. And once more we bid her good- speed in the words 
 of our poet-moralist ; 
 
 " Enough of Science and of Art : 
 Seal up these barren leaves ; 
 Come forth, and bring with you a heart 
 That watches, and receives." 2 
 
 I have the honor to be, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient humble servant, 
 
 The Author of " Modern Painters. '* 
 
 1 VV^e have not sufficiently expressed our concurrence in the opinion 
 of her friend, that Turner's modern works are his greatest. His early 
 ones are nothing but amplifications of what others have done, or hard 
 studies of every-day truth. His later works no one but himself could 
 have conceived : they are the result of the most exalted imagination, 
 acting with the knowledge acquired by means of his former works. 
 
 2 Wordsworth. Poems of Sentiment and Reflection, ii. The Tables 
 Turned (1798), being the companion poem to that quoted ante, p. 32. 
 The second line should read, # Close up these barren Jleaves.*' 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 39 
 
 [From "Some Account of the Origin and Objects of the New Oxford Examinations for 
 the Title of Associate in Arts and Certificates," by T. D. Aciand, late Fellow of All 
 Souls' College, Oxford, ' 1858, pp. 54-00.] 
 
 THE ARTS AS A BRANCH OF EDUCATION. 
 
 Penrith, Sept 25, 1857. 
 My dear Sir : I have just received your most interesting 
 letter, and will try to answer as shortly as I can, saying nothing 
 of what I feel, and what you must well know I should feel, 
 respecting the difficulty of the questions and their importance ; 
 except only this, that I should not have had the boldness to 
 answer your letter by return of post, unless, in consequence of 
 conversations on this subject with Mr. Aciand and Dr. Aciand, 
 two months ago, I had been lately thinking of it more than of 
 any other. 2 
 
 Your questions fall under two heads : (1) The range which 
 an art examination can take ; (2) The connection in which it 
 should be placed with other examinations. 
 
 I think the art examination should have three objects : 
 (1) To put the happiness and knowledge which the study 
 of art conveys within the conception of the youth, so that he 
 may in after-life pursue them, if he has the gift. 
 
 1 This work related to University co-operation with schemes for mid- 
 dle-class education, and included letters from various authorities, 
 amongst others one from Mr. Hullah on Music. The present letter was 
 addressed to the Rev. F. Temple (now Bishop of Exeter), and was writ- 
 ten in reply to a statement of certain points in debate between him and 
 Mr. (now Sir Thomas) Aciand. In forwarding it to his opponent, Mr. 
 Temple wrote as follows: k 'The liberal arts are supreme over their 
 sciences. Instead of the rules being despotic, the great artist usually 
 proves his greatness by rightly setting aside rules ; and the great critic 
 is he who, while he knows the rule, can appreciate the 1 law within the 
 law ' which overrides the rule. In no other way does Ruskin so fully 
 show his greatness in criticism as in that fine inconsistency for which he 
 has been so often attacked by men who do not see the real consistency 
 that lies beneath, " 
 
 2 In the following year Mr. Ruskin wrote a paper for the National 
 Association for the Promotion of Social Science, on Education in Art 
 (Transactions, 1858, pp. 311-316), now reprinted in the eleventh vol- 
 ume of Mr. Ruskin's works, A Joy for Ever, pages 119-126. To thia 
 paper the reader of the present letter is referred. 
 
40 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CI1ACE. 
 
 (2) To enforce, as far as possible, such knowledge of art 
 among those who are likely to become its patrons, or the 
 guardians of its works, as may enable them usefully to fulfil 
 those duties. 
 
 (3) To distinguish pre-eminent gift for the production of 
 works of art, so as to get hold of all the good artistical faculty 
 born in the country, and leave no Giotto lost among hill-shep- 
 herds. 1 
 
 In order to accomplish the first object, I think that, accord- 
 ing to Mr. Acland's proposal, preliminary knowledge of draw- 
 ing and music should be asked for, in connection with writ- 
 ing and arithmetic ; but not, in the preliminary examination, 
 made to count towards distinction in other schools. I think 
 drawing is a necessary means of the expression of certain 
 facts of form and means of acquaintance with them, as arith- 
 metic is the means of acquaintance with facts of number. I 
 think the facts which an elementary knowledge of drawing 
 enables a man to observe and note are often of as much im- 
 portance to him as those which he can describe in words or 
 calculate in numbers. And I think the cases in which mental 
 deficiency would prevent the acquirement of a serviceable 
 power of drawing would be found as rare as those in which 
 no progress could be made in arithmetic. I would not desire 
 this elementary knowledge to extend far, but the limits which 
 I would propose are not here in question. While I feel the 
 force of all the admirable observations of Mr. Hullah on the 
 use of the study of music, I imagine that the cases of physi- 
 cal incapacity of distinguishing sounds would be too frequent 
 to admit of musical knowledge being made a requirement ; I 
 would ash for it, in Mr. Acland's sense ; but the drawing 
 might, I think, be required, as arithmetic would be. 
 
 1 Giotto passed tho first ten years of his life, a shepherd-boy. among 
 these hills (of Fie sole) ; was found by Ciiuabue, near his native village, 
 drawing one of his sheep upon a smooth stone ; was yielded up by his 
 father, ( a simplu person, a laborer of the earth,' to the guardianship of 
 the painter, who, by his own work, had already made the streets of 
 Florence ring with joy ; attended him to Florence, and became his dis* 
 (?iple. ,? — Giotto and his Works in Padua, by John Ruskin, 1854- p. 12. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 41 
 
 2. To accomplish the second object is the main difficulty. 
 Touching which I venture positively to state : 
 
 First. That sound criticism of art is impossible to young 
 men, for it consists principally, and in a far more exclusive 
 sense than has yet been felt, in the recognition of the facts 
 represented by the art. A great artist represents many and 
 abstruse facts ; it is necessary, in order to judge of his works, 
 that all those facts should be experimentally (not by hearsay) 
 known to the observer ; whose recognition of them consti- 
 tutes his approving judgment. A young man cannot know 
 them. 
 
 Criticism of art by young men must, therefore, consist 
 either in the more or less apt retailing and application of re- 
 ceived opinions, or in a more or less immediate and dextrous 
 use of the knowledge they already possess, so as to be able to 
 assert of given works of art that they are true up to a certain 
 point ; the probability being then that they are true farther 
 than the young man sees. 
 
 The first kind of criticism is, in general, useless, if not 
 harmful ; the second is that which the youths will employ 
 who are capable of becoming critics in after years. 
 
 Secondly. All criticism of art, at whatever period of life, 
 must be partial ; warped more or less by the feelings of the 
 person endeavoring to judge. Certain merits of art (as en- 
 ergy, for instance) are pleasant only to certain temperaments ; 
 and certain tendencies of art (as, for instance, to religious 
 sentiment) can only be sympathized with by one order of 
 minds. It is almost impossible to conceive of any mode of 
 examination which would set the students on anything like 
 equitable footing in such respects ; but their sensibility to art 
 may be generally tested. 
 
 Thirdly. The history of art, or the study, in your accurate 
 words, "about the subject," is in nowise directly connected 
 with the studies which promote or detect art-capacity or art- 
 judgment. It is quite possible to acquire the most extensive 
 and useful knowledge of the forms of art existing in different 
 ages, and among different nations, without thereby acquiring 
 any power whatsoever of determining respecting any of them 
 
42 
 
 ARROWS OF TEE GRACE. 
 
 (much less respecting a modern work of art) whether it is good 
 or bad. 
 
 These three facts being so, we had perhaps best consider, 
 first, what direction the art studies of the youth should take, 
 as that will at once regulate the mode of examination. 
 
 First. He should be encouraged to carry forward the prac- 
 tical power of drawing he has acquired in the elementary 
 school. This should be done chiefly by using that power as a 
 help in other work : precision of touch should be cultivated 
 by map-drawing in his geography class ; taste in form by flower- 
 drawing in the botanical schools ; and bone and limb drawing 
 in the physiological schools. His art, kept thus to practical 
 service, will always be right as far as it goes ; there will be no 
 affectation or shallowness in it. The work of the drawing-mas- 
 ter would be at first little more than the exhibition of the 
 best means and enforcement of the most perfect results in the 
 collateral studies of form. 
 
 Secondly. His critical power should be developed by the 
 presence around him of the best models, into the excellence of 
 which his knowledge permits him to enter. He should be en- 
 couraged, above all things, to form and express judgment of 
 his own ; not as if his judgment were of any importance as 
 related to the excellence of the thing, but that both his master 
 and he may know precisely in what state his mind is. He 
 should be told of an Albert Diirer engraving, " That is good, 
 whether you like it or not ; but be sure to determine whether 
 you do or do not, and why." All formal expressions of reasons 
 for opinion, such as a boy could catch up and repeat, should 
 be withheld like poison ; and all models which are too good 
 for him should be kept out of his way. Contemplation of 
 works of art without understanding them jades the faculties and 
 enslaves the intelligence. A Eembrandt etching is a better 
 example to a boy than a finished Titian, and a cast from a leaf 
 than one of the Elgin marbles. 
 
 Thirdly. I would no more involve the art-schools in the 
 study of the history of art than surgical schools in that of the 
 history of surgery. But a general idea of the influence of art 
 on the human mind ought to be given by the study of historv 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 43 
 
 in the historical schools ; the effect of a picture, and power of 
 a painter, being examined just as carefully (in relation to its 
 extent) as the effect of a battle and the power of a general. 
 History, in its full sense, involves subordinate knowledge of 
 all that influences the acts of mankind ; it has hardly yet been 
 written at all, owing to the want of such subordinate knowl- 
 edge in the historians ; it has been confined either to the re- 
 lation of events by eye-witnesses (the only valuable form of it), 
 or the more or less ingenious collation of such relations. And 
 it is especially desirable to give history a more archaeological 
 range at this period, so that the class of manufactures pro- 
 duced by a city at a given date should be made of more im- 
 portance in the student's mind than the humors of the factions 
 that governed, or details of the accidents that preserved it, 
 because every day renders the destruction of historical memo- 
 rials more complete in Europe owing to the total want of in- 
 terest in them felt by its upper and middle classes. 
 
 Fourthly. Where the faculty for art was special, it ought to 
 be carried forward to the study of design, first in practical 
 application to manufacture, then in higher branches of com- 
 position. The general principles of the application of art to 
 manufacture should be explained in all cases, whether of spe- 
 cial or limited faculty. Under this head we may at once get 
 rid of the third question stated in the first page — how to de- 
 tect special gift. The power of drawing from a given form 
 accurately would not be enough to prove this : the additional 
 power of design, with that of eye for color, which could be 
 tested in the class concerned with manufacture, would justify 
 the master in advising and encouraging the youth to under- 
 take special pursuit of art as an object of life. 
 
 It seems easy, on the supposition of such a course of study, 
 to conceive a mode of examination which would test relative 
 excellence. I cannot suggest the kind of questions which 
 ought to be put to the class occupied with sculpture ; but in 
 my own business of painting, I should put, in general, such 
 tasks and questions as these : 
 
 (1) " Sketch such and such an object " (given a difficult 
 one, as a bird, complicated piece of drapery, or foliage) 
 
44 
 
 ARROWS OF THE GRACE. 
 
 "as completely as you can in light and shade in half an 
 hour." 
 
 (2) " Finish such and such a portion of it " (given a very 
 small portion) " as perfectly as you can, irrespective of time." 
 
 (3) " Sketch it in color in half an hour." 
 
 (4) " Design an ornament for a given place and purpose.' 1 
 
 (5) "Sketch a picture of a given historical event in pen and 
 ink." 
 
 (6) "Sketch it in colors." 
 
 (7) " Name the picture you were most interested in in the 
 Royal Academy Exhibition of this year. State in writing what 
 you suppose to be its principal merits — faults — the reasons of 
 the interest you took in it." 
 
 I think it is only the fourth of these questions which would 
 admit of much change ; and the seventh in the name of the 
 exhibition ; the question being asked, without previous knowl- 
 edge by the students, respecting some one of four or five given 
 exhibitions which should be visited before the examination. 
 
 This being my general notion of what an Art-Examination 
 should be, the second great question remains of the division 
 of schools and connection of studies. 
 
 Now I have not yet considered — I have not, indeed, knowl- 
 edge enough to enable me to consider — what the practical 
 convenience or results of given arrangements would be. But 
 the logical and harmonious arrangement is surely a simple one ; 
 and it seems to me as if it would not be inconvenient, name- 
 ly (requiring elementary drawing with arithmetic in the pre- 
 liminary Examination), that there should then be three ad- 
 vanced schools : 
 
 a. The School of Literature (occupied chiefly in the study 
 
 of human emotion and history). 
 
 b. The School of Science (occupied chiefly in the study of 
 
 external facts and existences of constant kind). 
 
 c. The School of Art (occupied in the development of 
 
 active and productive human faculties). 
 
 In the school a, I would include Composition in all lan* 
 guages, Poetry, History, Archaeology, Ethics. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 45 
 
 In the school b, Mathematics, Political Economy, the Physi- 
 cal Sciences (including Geography and Medicine). 
 
 In the school c, Painting, Sculpture, including Architecture, 
 Agriculture, Manufacture, W ar, Music, Bodily Exercises (Nav- 
 igation in seaport schools,) including laws of health. 
 
 I should require, for a first class, proficiency in two schools ; 
 not, of course, in all the subjects of each chosen school, but 
 in a well chosen and combined group of them. Thus, I should 
 call a very good first-class man one who had got some such 
 range of subjects, and such proficiency in each, as this : 
 
 English, Greek, and Mediaeval-Italian Literature cHigli. 
 
 English and French History, and Archaeology Average. 
 
 Conic Sections , Thorough, as far as learnt, 
 
 Political Economy Thorough, as far as learnt. 
 
 Botany, or Chemistry, or Physiology High. 
 
 Painting Average. 
 
 Music. Average. 
 
 Bodily Exercises High. 
 
 I have written you a sadly long letter, but I could not man- 
 age to get it shorter. 
 
 Believe me, my dear Sir, 
 
 Very faithfully and respectfully yours, 
 
 J. RUSKIN. 
 
 Rev. F. Temple. 
 
 Perhaps I had better add what to you, but not to every one 
 who considers such a scheme of education, would be palpable 
 — that the main value of it would be brought out by judicious 
 involution of its studies. This, for instance, would be the 
 kind of Examination Paper I should hope for in the Botanical 
 Class : 
 
 1. State the habit of such and such a plant. 
 
 2. Sketch its leaf, and a portion of its ramifications 
 (memory). 
 
 3. Explain the mathematical laws of its growth and struct- 
 ure. 
 
 4. Give the composition of its juices in different seasons. 
 
 5. Its uses? Its relations to other families of plants, and 
 conceivable uses beyond those known ? 
 
40 
 
 ARROWS OF THE C II ACE. 
 
 G. Its commercial value in London ? Mode of cultivation ? 
 
 7. Its mythological meaning ? The commonest or most 
 beautiful fables respecting it ? 
 
 8. Quote any important references to it by great poets' 
 
 9. Time of its introduction. 
 
 10. Describe its consequent influence on civilization. 
 
 Of all these ten questions, there is not one which does not 
 test the student in other studies than botany. Thus, 1, Geog- 
 raphy ; 2, Drawing ; 3, Mathematics ; 4, 5, Chemistry ; 6, 
 Political Economy ; 7, 8, 9, 10, Literature. 
 
 Of course the plants required to be thus studied could be 
 but few, and would rationally be chosen from the most useful 
 of foreign plants, and those common and indigenous in Eng- 
 land. All sciences should, I think, be taught more for the 
 sake of their facts, and less for that of their system, than here- 
 tofore. Comprehensive and connected views are impossible to 
 most men ; the systems they learn are nothing but skeletons 
 to them ; but nearly all men can understand the relations of a 
 few facts bearing on daily business, and to be exemplified in 
 common substances. And science will soon be so vast that the 
 most comprehensive men will still be narrow, and we shall see 
 the fitness of rather teaching our youth to concentrate their 
 general intelligence highly on given points than scatter it 
 towards an infinite horizon from which they can fetch nothing, 
 and to which they can carry nothing. 
 
 [From "Nature and Art," December 1, 1S66.] 
 
 ART-TEACHING BY CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 Dear Mr. Williams : 1 I like your plan of teaching by letter 
 exceedingly : and not only so, but have myself adopted it 
 largely, with the help of an intelligent under-master, whose 
 operations, however, so far from interfering with, you will 
 
 1 This letter was, it appears, originally addressed to an artist, Mr. 
 Williams (of Southampton), and was then printed, some years later, in 
 the number of Nature and Art above referred to. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 47 
 
 much facilitate, if you can bring this literary way of teaching 
 into more accepted practice. I wish we had more drawing- 
 masters who were able to give instruction definite enough to 
 be expressed in writing : many can teach nothing but a few 
 tricks of the brush, and have nothing to write, because noth- 
 ing to tell. 
 
 With every wish for your success, — a wish which I make 
 quite as much in your pupils' interest as in your own, — 
 Believe me, always faithfully yours, 
 
 J. RlJSKIN. 
 
 Denmark Hill, November, 1860. 
 
 II. — PUBLIC INSTITUTIONS AND THE NATIONAL 
 GALLERY. 
 
 [From " The Times," January 7, 1847.] 
 
 DANGER TO THE NATIONAL GALLERY.' 
 
 To the Editor of " The Times." 
 
 Sir : As I am sincerely desirous that a stop may be put to 
 the dangerous process of cleaning lately begun in our National 
 Gallery, and as I believe that what is right is most effectively 
 when most kindly advocated, and what is true most convinc- 
 
 1 Some words are necessary to explain this and the following letter. In 
 the antumn of 1846 a correspondence was opened in the columns of The 
 Times on the subject of the cleaning and restoration of the national pict- 
 ures during the previous vacation. Mr. (afterwards Sir Charles) East- 
 lake was at this time Keeper of the Gallery, though he resigned office 
 soon after this letter was written, partly in consequence of the attacks 
 which had been made upon him. He was blamed, not only for restor- 
 ing good pictures, but also for buying bad oues, and in particular the 
 purchase of a 1 'libel on Holbein" was quoted against him. The attack 
 was led by the picture-dealer, and at one time artist, Mr. Morris Moore, 
 writing at first under the pseudonym of " Verax," and afterwards in his 
 own name. He continued his opposition through several years, espe- 
 cially during 1850 and 1852. He also published some pamphlets on the 
 subject, amongst them one entitled " The Revival of Vandalism at the 
 National Gallery, a reply to John Ruskin and others " (London, Olli- 
 vier, 1853). The whole discussion may be gathered in all its details 
 from the Parliamentary Report of the Select Committee on the National 
 Gallery in 1853. 
 
48 
 
 ARROWS OF TEE C II ACE. 
 
 ingly when least passionately asserted, I was grieved to sea 
 the violent attack upon Mr. Eastlake in your columns of Fri- 
 day last ; yet not less surprised at the attempted defence 
 which appeared in them yesterday. 1 The outcry which has 
 arisen upon this subject has been just, but it has been too 
 loud ; the injury done is neither so great nor so wilful as has 
 been asserted, and I fear that the respect which might have 
 been paid to remonstrance may be refused to clamor. 
 
 I was inclined at first to join as loudly as any in the hue 
 and cry. Accustomed, as I have been, to look to England as 
 the refuge of the pictorial as of all other distress, and to hope 
 that, having no high art of her own, she would at least pro- 
 tect what she could not produce, and respect what she could 
 not restore, 1 could not but look upon the attack which has 
 been made upon the pictures in question as on the violation 
 of a sanctuary. I had seen in Venice the noblest works of 
 Veronese painted over with flake-white with a brush fit for 
 tarring ships ; I had seen in Florence Angelico's highest in- 
 spiration rotted and seared into fragments of old wood, burn fc 
 into blisters, or blotted into glutinous maps of mildew ; 2 I 
 had seen in Paris Raphael restored by David and Vernet ; and 
 I returned to England in the one last trust that, though her 
 National Gallery was an European jest, her art a shadow, and 
 her connoisseurship an hypocrisy, though she neither knew 
 how to cherish nor how to choose, and lay exposed to the 
 cheats of every vender of old canvas — yet that such good pict- 
 ures as through chance or oversight might find their w T ay be- 
 neath that preposterous portico, and into those melancholy 
 and miserable rooms, were at least to be vindicated thence- 
 forward from the mercy of publican, priest, or painter, safe 
 alike from musketry, monkery, and manipulation. 
 
 1 The u violent attack " alludes to a letter of u Verax " in The Times 
 of Thursday (not Friday), December 31, 1846, and the " attempted de- 
 fence" to another letter signed "A. G." in The Times of January 4, 
 two days (not the day) before Mr. Ruskin wrote the present letter. 
 
 2 The Crucifixion, or Adoration of the Cross, in the church of San 
 Marco. An engraving of this picture may be found in Mrs. Jameson's 
 History of our Lord, vol. i. p. 189. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 49 
 
 But whatever pain I may feel at the dissipation of this 
 dream, I am not disposed altogether to deny the necessity of 
 some illuminatory process with respect to pictures exposed to 
 a London atmosphere and populace. Dust an inch thick, ac- 
 cumulated upon the panes in the course of the day, and dark- 
 ness closing over the canvas like a curtain, attest too forcibly 
 the influence on floor and air of the ' ' mutable, rank-scented, 
 many. " It is of little use to be over-anxious for the preserva- 
 tion of pictures which we cannot see ; the only question is, 
 whether in the present instance the process may not have 
 been carried perilously far, and whether in future simpler and 
 safer means may not be adopted to remove the coat of dust 
 and smoke, without affecting either the glazing of the picture, 
 or what is almost as precious, the mellow tone left by time. 
 
 As regards the " Peace and War," 1 I have no hesitation in 
 asserting that for the present it is utterly and forever par- 
 tially destroyed. I am not disposed lightly to impugn the judg- 
 ment of Mr. Eastlake, but this was indisputably of all the 
 pictures in the Gallery that which least required, and least 
 could endure the process of cleaning. It was in the most ad- 
 vantageous condition under which a work of Eubens can be 
 seen ; mellowed by time into more perfect harmony than when 
 it left the easel, enriched and warmed, without losing any of 
 its freshness or energy. The execution of the master is always 
 so bold and frank as to be completely, perhaps even most 
 agreeably, seen under circumstances of obscurity, which would 
 be injurious to pictures of greater refinement ; and, though 
 this was, indeed, one of his most highly finished and careful 
 works (to my mind, before it suffered this recent injury, far 
 superior to everything at Antwerp, Marines, or Cologne), this 
 was a more weighty reason for caution than for interference. 
 Some portions of color have been exhibited which were for- 
 merly untraceable; but even these have lost in power what 
 they have gained in definiteness — the majesty and precious- 
 ness of ail the tones are departed, the balance of distances lost. 
 Time may perhaps restore something of the glow, but never 
 
 1 No. 46 in the National Gallery. 
 
50 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHAOE. 
 
 the subordination ; and the more delicate portions of flesh 
 tint, especially the back of the female figure on the left, and 
 of the boy in the centre, are destroyed forever. 
 
 The large Cuyp 1 is, I think, nearly uninjured. Many por- 
 tions of the foreground painting have been revealed, which 
 were before only to be traced painfully, if at all. The dis- 
 tance has indeed lost the appearance of sunny haze, which 
 was its chief charm, but this I have little doubt it originally 
 did not possess, and in process of time may recover. 
 
 The "Bacchus and Ariadne" 2 of Titian has escaped so scot 
 free that, not knowing it had been cleaned, I passed it with- 
 out noticing any change. I observed only that the blue of 
 the distance was more intense than I had previously thought 
 it, though, four years ago, I said of that distance that it was 
 " difficult to imagine anything more magnificently impossible, 
 not from its vividness, but because it is not faint and aerial 
 enough to account for its purity of color. There is so total a 
 want of atmosphere in it, that but for the difference of form 
 it would be impossible to distinguish the mountains from the 
 robe of Ariadne." * 
 
 Your correspondent is alike unacquainted with the previous 
 condition of this picture, and with the character of Titian dis- 
 tances in general, when he complains of a loss of aerial quality 
 resulting in the present case from cleaning. 
 
 I unfortunately did not see the new Velasquez 3 until it had 
 undergone its discipline ; but I have seldom met with an ex- 
 ample of the master which gave me more delight, or which I 
 believe to be in more genuine or perfect condition. I saw no 
 
 1 Landscape, with Cattle and Figures— Evening (No. 53). Since the 
 bequest of the somewhat higher " large Dort" in 1876 (No. 961), it has 
 ceased to be "the large (^nyp." 
 
 2 No. 35 in the National Gallery. This and the two pictures already 
 mentioned were the typical instances of " spoilt pictures," quoted by 
 " Verax." 
 
 3 Philip IV. of Spain, hunting the Wild Boar (No. 197), purchased 
 in 1846. 
 
 * Modern Painters, vol. i. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 51 
 
 traces of the retouching which is hinted at by your corre- 
 spondent "Verax," nor are the touches on that canvas such as 
 to admit of very easy or untraceable interpolation of meaner 
 handling. His complaint of loss of substance in the figures of 
 the foreground is, I have no doubt, altogether groundless. He 
 has seen little southern scenery if he supposes that the brill- 
 iancy and apparent nearness of the silver clouds is in the 
 slightest degree overcharged ; and shows little appreciation of 
 Velasquez in supposing him to have sacrificed the solemnity 
 and might of such a distance to the inferior interest of the 
 figures in the foreground. Had he studied the picture atten- 
 tively, he might have observed that the position of the horizon 
 suggests, and the lateral extent of the foreground proves, such 
 a distance between the spectator and even its nearest figures 
 as may well justify the slightness of their execution. 
 
 Even granting that some of the upper glazings of the figures 
 had been removed, the tone of the whole picture is so light, 
 gray, and glittering, and the dependence on the power of its 
 whites so absolute, that I think the process hardly to be re- 
 gretted which has left these in lustre so precious, and restored 
 to a brilliancy which a comparison with any modern work of 
 of similar aim would render apparently supernatural, the 
 sparkling motion of its figures and the serene snow of its sky. 
 
 I believe I have stated to its fullest extent all the harm that 
 has }'et been done, yet I earnestly protest against any con- 
 tinuance of the treatment to which these pictures have been 
 subjected. It is useless to allege that nothing but discolored 
 varnish has been withdrawn, for it is perfectly possible to 
 alter the structure and continuity, and so destroy the aerial 
 relations of colors of which no part has been removed. I have 
 seen the dark blue of a water-color drawing made opaque and 
 pale merely by mounting it ; and even supposing no other in- 
 jury were done, every time a picture is cleaned it loses, like 
 a restored building, part of its authority ; and is thenceforward 
 liable to dispute and suspicion, every one of its beauties open 
 to question, while its faults are screened from accusation. It 
 cannot be any more reasoned from with security ; for, though 
 allowance may be made for the effect of time, no one can cal- 
 
52 
 
 ARROWS OF THE GRACE. 
 
 culate the arbitrary and accidental changes occasioned by 
 violent cleaning. None of the varnishes should be attacked ; 
 whatever the medium used, nothing but soot and dust should 
 be taken away, and that chiefly by delicate and patient fric- 
 tion ; and, in order to protract as long as possible the neces- 
 sity even for this all the important pictures in the gallery 
 should at once be put under glass, 1 and closed, not merely 
 by hinged doors, like the Correggio, but permanently and 
 securely. I should be glad to see this done in all rich gal- 
 leries, but it is peculiarly necessary in the case of pictures 
 exposed in London, and to a crowd freely admitted four days 
 in the week : it would do good also by necessitating the en- 
 largement of the rooms, and the bringing down of all the 
 pictures to the level of the eye. Every picture that is worth 
 buying or retaining is worth exhibiting in its proper place, 
 and if its scale be large, and its handling rough, there is the 
 more instruction to be gained by close study of the various 
 means adopted by the master to secure his distant effect. We 
 can certainly spare both the ground and the funds which 
 would enable us to exhibit pictures for which no price is 
 thought too large, and for all purposes of study and for most 
 of enjoyment pictures are useless when they are even a little 
 above the line. The fatigue complained of by most persons 
 in examining a picture gallery is attributable, not only to the 
 number of works, but to their confused order of succession, 
 and to the straining of the sight in endeavoring to penetrate 
 the details of those above the eye. Every gallery should be 
 long enough to admit of its whole collection being hung in 
 one line, side by side, and wide enough to allow of the specta- 
 
 1 On this and other collateral subjects the reader is referred to the 
 next letter ; to Mr. Ruskin s evidence before the National Gallery Com- 
 mission in 1857 ; and to the Appendix to his Notes on the Turner Gallery 
 at Marlborough House, 185G-7. It is hardly necessary to state that a 
 very large number of the national pictures, especially the Turners, are 
 now preserved under glass. Of the other strictures here pronounced, 
 some are no longer deserved ; and it may well be remembered that at 
 the time this letter was written the National Gallery had been founded 
 less than five-and-twenty years. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 53 
 
 tors retiring to the distance at which the largest picture was 
 intended to be seen. The works of every master should be 
 brought together and arranged in chronological order ; and 
 such drawings or engravings as may exist in the collection, 
 either of, or for, its pictures, or in any way illustrative of 
 them, should be placed in frames opposite each, in the middle 
 of the room. 
 
 But, Sir, the subjects of regret connected with the present 
 management of our national collection are not to be limited 
 either to its treatment or its arrangement. The principles of 
 selection which have been acted upon in the course of the last 
 five or six years have been as extraordinary as unjustifiable. 
 Whatever may be the intrinsic power, interest, or artistical 
 ability of the earlier essays of any school of art, it cannot be 
 disputed that characteristic examples of every one of its most 
 important phases should form part of a national collection : 
 granting them of little value individually, their collective 
 teaching is of irrefragable authority ; and the exhibition of 
 perfected results alone, while the course of national progress 
 through which these were reached is altogether concealed, is 
 more likely to discourage than to assist the efforts of an unde- 
 veloped school. Granting even what the shallowest material- 
 ism of modern artists would assume, that the works of Perugino 
 were of no value, but as they taught Kaphael ; that John 
 Bellini is altogether absorbed and overmastered by Titian ; 
 that Nino Pisano was utterly superseded by Bandinelli or 
 Cellini, and Ghirlandajo sunk in the shadow of Buonaroti : 
 granting Van Eyck to be a mere mechanist, and Giotto a mere 
 child, and Angelico a superstitious monk, and whatever you 
 choose to grant that ever blindness deemed or insolence 
 affirmed, still it is to be maintained and proved, that if we wish 
 to have a Buonaroti or a Titian of our own, we shall with more 
 wisdom learn of those of whom Buonaroti and Titian learned, 
 and at whose knees they were brought up, and whom to the day 
 of their death they ever revered and worshipped, than of those 
 wretched pupils and partisans who sank every high function of 
 art into a form and a faction, betrayed her trusts, darkened her 
 traditions, overthrew her throne, and left us where we now are, 
 
54 
 
 ARROWS OF THE OH AGE. 
 
 stumbling among its fragments. Sir, if the canvases of 
 Guido, lately introduced into the gallery, 1 had been works 
 of the best of those pupils, which they are not ; if they had 
 been good works of even that bad master, which they are not ; 
 if they had been genuine and untouched works, even though 
 feeble, which they are not ; if, though false and retouched 
 remnants of a feeble and fallen school, they had been endura- 
 bly decent or elementarily instructive — some conceivable excuse 
 might perhaps have been by ingenuity forged, and by impu- 
 dence uttered, for their introduction into a gallery where we 
 previously possessed two good Guidos, 2 and no Perugino (for 
 the attribution to him of the wretched panel which now bears 
 his name is a mere insult), no Angelico, no Fra Bartolomeo, 
 no Albertinelli, no Ghirlandajo, no Verrochio, no Lorenzo di 
 Credi — (what shall I more say, for the time would fail me ?) 
 But now, Sir, what vestige of apology remains for the cum- 
 bering our walls with pictures that have no single virtue, no 
 color, no drawing, no character, no history, no thought ? Yet 
 2,000 guineas were, I believe, given for one of those encum- 
 brances, and 5,000 for the coarse and unnecessary Bubens, 3 
 added to a room half filled with Bubens before, while a mighty 
 and perfect work of Angelico was sold from Cardinal Fesch's 
 
 1 Lot and his Daughters Leaving Sodom (No. 193), bequeathed to the 
 gallery in 1844 ; and Susannah and the Elders (No. 19G), purchase^ in 
 the same year. 
 
 2 The "two good Guidos" previously possessed are the St. Jerome 
 (No. 11) and the Magdalen (No. 177). The " wretched panel " is No. 
 181, The Virgin and Infant Christ with St. John. For the rest, the gal- 
 lery now includes two other Peruginos, The Virgin adoring the Infant 
 Christ, the Archangel Michael, the Archangel Raphael and Tobias (No, 
 288), three panels, purchased in 1856, and the very recent (1879) pur- 
 chase of the Virgin and Child with St. Jerome and St. Francis (No. 1075). 
 It boasts also of two Angelicos— The Adoration of the Magi (No. 582) and 
 Christ amid the Blessed (No. 663), purchased in 1857 and 1860 ; one 
 Albertinelli, Virgin and Child (No. 645), also purchased in 1860 ; and two 
 Lorenzo di Credis, both of the Virgin and Child (Nos. 593 and 648), pur- 
 chased in J 857 and 1865. But it still possesses no Fra Bartolomeo, no 
 Ghirlandajo, and no Verrochio. 
 
 • The Judgment of Paris (No. 194), purchased from Mr. Penrice's 
 collection in 1846. 
 
LETTERS ON ART 
 
 55 
 
 collection for 1,500. 1 I do not speak of the spurious Holbein, 8 
 for though the veriest tyro might well be ashamed of such a 
 purchase, it would have been a judicious addition had it been 
 genuine ; so was the John Bellini, so was the Van Eyck ; but 
 the mighty Venetian master, who alone of all the painters of 
 Italy united purity of religious aim with perfection of artistical 
 power, is poorly represented by a single head ; 3 and I ask, in 
 the name of the earnest students of England, that the funds 
 set apart for her gallery may no longer be played with like 
 pebbles in London auction-rooms. Let agents be sent to all 
 the cities of Italy ; let the noble pictures which are perishing 
 there be rescued from the invisibility and ill-treatment which 
 their position too commonly implies, and let us have a national 
 collection which, however imperfect, shall be orderly and con- 
 tinuous, and shall exhibit with something like relative candor 
 and justice the claims to our reverence of those great and 
 ancient builders, whose mighty foundation has been for two 
 centuries concealed by wood, and hay, and stubble, the dis- 
 torted growing, and thin gleaning of vain men in blasted fields. 
 I have the honor to be, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 The Author of "Modern Painters." 
 
 January 6. 
 
 1 The Last Judgment ; its purchaser was the Earl of Dudley, in whose 
 possession the picture, now hanging at Dudley House in London, lias 
 ever since remained. An engraving of this work (pronounced the finest 
 of Angelico's four representations of this subject), may be found in Mrs. 
 Jameson's History of our Lord, vol. ii. p. 414. Cardinal Fesch was 
 Archbishop of Lyons, and the uncle of Napoleon Buonaparte. His gal- 
 lery contained in its time the finest private collection of pictures in 
 Rome. 
 
 2 The " libel on Holbein'' was bought as an original, from Mr. 
 Rochard, in 1845. It now figures in -the National Gallery as A Medical 
 Professor — artist unknown (No. 195). 
 
 3 The Bellini is tho portrait of Doge Leonardo Loredano (No. 189), 
 purchased in 1844 : four more examples (Nos. 280, 726, 808, 812) of 
 the same u mighty Venetian master" have since been introduced, so 
 that he is no longer ''poorly represented by a single head." The Van 
 Eyck is the Portrait of Jean Arnolfini and his Wife (No. 186), purchased 
 in 1842. 
 
56 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 [From "The Times,' 1 December 29, 1852.] 
 
 THE NATIONAL GALLERY, 
 
 To the Editor of 11 The Times.' 1 
 
 Sir : I trust that the excitement which has been caused by 
 the alleged destruction of some of the most important pict- 
 ures in the National Gallery will not be without results, 
 whatever may be the facts in the case with respect to the 
 works in question. Under the name of 4 £ restoration," the 
 ruin of the noblest architecture and painting is constant 
 throughout Europe. We shall show ourselves w T iser than our 
 neighbors if the loss of two Claudes and the injury of a Paul 
 Veronese 1 induce us to pay so much attention to the preser- 
 vation of ancient art as may prevent it from becoming a dis- 
 j3uted question in future whether they are indeed pictures 
 which we possess or their skeletons. 
 
 As to the facts in the present instance, I can give no opin- 
 ion. Sir Charles Eastlake and Mr. Uwins 2 know more than 
 I of oil paintings in general, and have far more profound re- 
 spect for those of Claude in particular. I do not suppose they 
 would have taken from him his golden armor that Turner 
 might bear away a dishonorable victory in the noble passage 
 of arms to which he has challenged his rival from the grave.* 
 
 1 Clp.ude's Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca (No 12\ and his Queen of 
 Sheba picture (No, 14, Seaport, with figures). The only pictures of 
 Veronese which the Gallery at this time contained, were the Consecra- 
 tion of St. Nicholas (No, 26), and the Rape of Europa (No. 97). It is 
 the former of these two that is here spoken of as injured (see the Re- 
 port of the National Gallery Committee in 1853). 
 
 2 Mr. Thomas Uwins, R.A., had succeeded Sir Charles Eastlake as 
 Keeper of the National Gallery in 1847 ; and resigned, for a similar 
 reason, in 1855. 
 
 * The public may not, perhaps, be generally aware that the 
 condition by which the nation retains the two pictures be- 
 queathed to it by Turner, and now in the National Gallery, is 
 that " they shall be hung beside Claude's." 3 
 
 3 Dido building Carthage (No. 498), and The Sun rising in a Mist (No. 
 479). The actual wording of Turner's will on the matter ran thus : "J 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 57 
 
 Nor can the public suppose that the Curators of the National 
 Gallery have any interest in destroying the works with which 
 they are intrusted. If, acting to the best of their judgment, 
 they have done harm, to whom are we to look for greater 
 prudence or better success ? Are the public prepared to 
 withdraw their confidence from Sir C. Eastlake and the mem- 
 bers of the Royal Academy, and entrust the national property 
 to Mr. Morris Moore, or to any of the artists and amateurs 
 who have inflamed the sheets of The Times with their indigna- 
 tion ? Is it not evident that the only security which the na- 
 tion can possess for its pictures must be found in taking such 
 measures as may in future prevent the necessity of their being 
 touched at all ? For this is very certain, that all question 
 respecting the effects of cleaning is merely one of the amount 
 of injury. Every picture which has undergone more friction 
 than is necessary at intervals for the removal of dust or dirt, 
 has suffered injury to some extent. The last touches of the 
 master leave the surface of the color with a certain substan- 
 tial texture, the bloom of wMeli, if once reached under the 
 varnish, must inevitably be more or less removed by friction 
 of any kind — how much more by friction aided by solvents ? 
 I am well assured that every possessor of pictures who truly 
 loves them, would keep — if it might be — their surfaces from 
 being so much as breathed upon, which may, indeed, be done, 
 and done easily. 
 
 Every stranger who enters our National Gallery, if he be a 
 thoughtful person, must assuredly put to himself a curious 
 question. Perceiving that certain pictures — namely, three 
 Correggios, two Raphaels and a John Bellini — are put under 
 glass, 1 and that all the others are left exposed, as oil pictures 
 are in general, he must ask himself, " Is it an ascertained fact 
 that glass preserves pictures ; and are none of the pictures here 
 
 direct that the said pictures, or paintings, shall be hung, kept, and 
 placed, that is to say, always between the two pictures painted by 
 Claude, the Seaport and the Mill." Accordingly they now hang sido 
 by side with these two pictures (Nos. 5 and 12) in the National Gallery. 
 1 See p. 52, note. 
 
58 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHAGR 
 
 thought worth a pane of glass but these five ? Or is it un« 
 ascertained whether glass is beneficial or injurious, and have 
 the Raphaels and Correggios been selected for the trial — ' Fiat 
 experiment mn in corpore vili ? ' " Some years ago it might 
 have been difficult to answer him ; now the answer is easy, 
 though it be strange. The experiment has been made. The 
 Eaphaels and Correggios have been under glass for many 
 years : they are as fresh and lovely as when they were first 
 enclosed ; they need no cleaning, and will need none for half 
 a century to come ; and it must be, therefore, that the rest of 
 the pictures are left exposed to the London atmosphere, and 
 to the operations which its influence renders necessary, 
 simply because they are not thought worth a pane of plate 
 glass. No : there is yet one other possible answer — that many 
 of them are hung so high, or in such lights, that they could 
 not be seen if they were glazed. Is it then absolutely neces- 
 sary that they should be hung so high ? We are about to build 
 a new National Gallery ; may it not be so arranged as that 
 the pictures we place therein may at once be safe and visible ? 
 
 I know that this has never yet been done in any gallery in 
 Europe, for the European public have never yet reflected that 
 a picture which was worth buying was also worth seeing. 
 Some time or other they will assuredly awake to the percep- 
 tion of this wonderful truth, and it would be some credit to 
 our English common-sense if we were the first to act upon it. 
 
 I say that a picture which is worth buying is also worth 
 seeing ; that is, worth so much room of ground and wall as 
 shall enable us to see it to the best advantage. It is not com- 
 monly so understood. Nations, like individuals, buy their 
 pictures in mere ostentation ; and are content, so that their 
 possessions are acknowledged that they should be hung in any 
 d irk or out-of-the-way corners which their frames will fit. 
 Or, at best, the popular idea of a national gallery is that of a 
 magnificent palace, whose walls must be decorated with col- 
 ored panels, every one of which shall cost £1,000, and be dis< 
 cernible, through a telescope, for the work of a mighty hand 
 
 Query, a misprint ? as s/s? pictures are mentioned. 
 
LETTERS ON ART 
 
 59 
 
 I have no doubt that in a few years more there will be a 
 change of feeling in this matter, and that men will begin to 
 perceive, what is indeed the truth — that every noble picture is 
 a manuscript book, of which only one copy exists, or ever can 
 exist ; that a national gallery is a great library, 1 of which the 
 books must be read upon their shelves ; that every manuscript 
 ought, therefore, to be placed where it can be read most easily ; 
 and that the style of the architecture and the effect of the 
 saloons are matters of no importance whatsoever, but that our 
 solicitude ought to begin and end in the two imperative re- 
 quirements — that every picture in the gallery should be per- 
 fectly seen and perfectly safe ; that none should be thrust up, 
 or down, or aside, to make room for more important ones ; 
 that all should be in a good light, all on a level with the eye, 
 and all secure from damp, cold, impurity of atmosphere, and 
 every other avoidable cause of deterioration. 
 
 These are the things to be accomplished ; and if we set 
 ourselves to do these in our new National Gallery, 2 we shall 
 have made a greater step in art-teaching than if we had built 
 a new Parthenon. I know that it will be a strange idea to 
 most of ns that Titians and Tintorets ought, indeed, all to 
 have places upon " the line," as well as the annual productions 
 of our Eoyal Academicians ; and I know that the coup cTceil 
 of the Gallery must be entirely destroyed by such an arrange- 
 ment. But great pictures ought not to be subjects of " coups 
 cCceil" In the last arrangement of the Louvre, under the Re- 
 public, all the noble pictures in the gallery were brought into 
 
 1 "The Art of a nation is, I think, one of the most important points 
 of its history, and a part which, if once destroyed, no history will ever 
 supply the place of ; and the first idea of a National Gallery is that it 
 should be a Library of Art, in which the rudest efforts are, in some 
 cases, hardly less important than the noblest." — National Gallery Com- 
 mission, 1857 : Mr. Ruskin's evidence. 
 
 2 It was at this time proposed to remove the national pictures from 
 Trafalgar Square to some new building to be erected for them else- 
 where. This proposal was, however, negatived by the commission 
 ultimately appointed (1857) to consider the matter, and to some extent 
 rendered unnecessary by the enlargement of the gallery, decided upou 
 in 1866. 
 
60 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 one room, with a Napoleon-like resolution to produce effect 
 by concentration of force ; and, indeed, I would not part will- 
 ingly with the memory of that saloon, whose obscurest shad- 
 ows were full of Correggio ; in whose out-of-the-way angles 
 one forgot, here and there, a Eaphael ; and in which the best 
 Tintoret on this side of the Alps was hung sixty feet from the 
 ground ! 1 But Cleopatra dissolving the pearl was nothing to 
 this ; and I trust that, in our own Gallery, our poverty, if not 
 our will, may consent to a more modest and less lavish man- 
 ner of displaying such treasures as are intrusted to us; and that 
 the very limitation of our possessions may induce us to make 
 that the object of our care, which can hardly be a ground of 
 ostentation. It might, indeed, be a matter of some difficulty 
 to conceive an arrangement of the collections in the Louvre 
 or the Florence Gallery which should admit of every picture 
 being hung upon the line. But the works in our own, includ- 
 ing the Vernon and Turner bequests, 2 present no obstacle in 
 their number to our making the building which shall receive 
 them a perfect model of what a National Gallery ought to be. 
 And the conditions of this perfection are so simple that if we 
 only turn our attention to these main points it will need no 
 great architectural ingenuity to attain all that is required. 
 
 It is evident, in the first place, that the building ought to 
 consist of a series of chambers or galleries lighted from 
 above, and built with such reference to the pictures they are 
 to contain, as that opposite a large picture room enough 
 should be allowed for the spectator to retire to the utmost 
 distance at which it can ever "be desirable that its effect should 
 
 1 The galleries of the Louvre were reorganized on their being de- 
 clared national instead of crown property, after the Revolution of 1848 ; 
 and the choicest pictures were then collected together in the ' ' grand 
 salon carre," which, although since rearranged, still contains a similar 
 selection. The "best Tintoret on this side of the Alps " is the Susannah 
 and the Elders, now No. 349 in that room, 
 
 2 The gift of Mr. Robert Vernon, in 1847, consisted of 157 pictures, 
 all of them, with two exceptions only, of the British school. The 
 Turner bequest included 105 finished oil paintings, in addition to the 
 numerous sketches and drawings. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 61 
 
 be seen ; but, as economy of space would become a most im- 
 portant object when every picture was to be hung on a level 
 with the eye, smaller apartments might open from the larger 
 ones for the reception of smaller pictures, one condition being, 
 however, made imperative, whatever space was sacrificed to it 
 — namely, that the works of every master should be collected 
 together, either in the same apartment or in contiguous ones. 
 Nothing has so much retarded the advance of art as our miser- 
 able habit of mixing the works of every master and of every 
 century. More would be learned by an ordinarily intelligent 
 observer in simply passing from a room in which there were 
 only Titians, to another in which there were only Caraccis, 
 than by reading a volume of lectures on color. Few minds 
 are strong enough first to abstract and then to generalize 
 the characters of paintings hung at random. Few minds are 
 so dull as not at once to perceive the points of difference, were 
 the works of each painter set by themselves. The fatigue of 
 which most persons complain in passing through a picture 
 gallery, as at present arranged, is indeed partly caused by the 
 straining effort to see what is out of sight, but not less by the 
 continual change of temper and of tone of thought demanded 
 in passing from the work of one master to that of another. 
 
 The works of each being, therefore, set by themselves,* and 
 the whole collection arranged in chronological and ethnologi- 
 cal order, let apartments be designed for each group large 
 enough to admit of the increase of the existing collection to 
 any probable amount. The whole gallery would thus become 
 of great length, but might be adapted to any form of ground- 
 plan b} r disposing the whole in a labyrinthine chain, return- 
 ing upon itself. Its chronological arrangement would neces- 
 sitate its being continuous, rather than divided into many 
 branches or sections. Being lighted from above, it must be 
 all on the same floor, but ought at least to be raised one story 
 
 * An example of a cognate school might, however, be occa- 
 sionally introduced for the sake of direct comparison, as in 
 one instance would be necessitated by the condition above 
 mentioned attached to part of the Turner bequest. 
 
62 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 above the ground, and might admit any number of keepers 1 
 apartments, or of schools, beneath ; though it would be bettei 
 to make it quite independent of these, in order to diminish 
 the risk of fire. Its walls ought on every side to be surround- 
 ed by corridors, so that the interior temperature might be 
 kept equal, and no outer surface of wall on which pictures 
 were hung exposed to the weather. Every picture should be 
 glazed, and the horizon which the painter had given to it 
 placed on a level with the eye. 
 
 Lastly, opposite each picture should be a table, containing, 
 under glass, every engraving that had ever been made from it, 
 and any studies for it, by the master's own hand, that remain- 
 ed, or were obtainable. The values of the study and of the 
 picture are reciprocally increased — of the former more than 
 doubled — by their being seen together ; and if this system 
 were once adopted, the keepers of the various galleries of 
 Europe would doubtless consent to such exchanges of the 
 sketches in their possession as would render all their collec- 
 tions more interesting. 
 
 I trust, Sir, that the importance of this subject will excuse 
 the extent of my trespass upon your columns, and that the 
 simplicity and self-evident desirableness of the arrangement 
 I have described may vindicate my proposal of it from the 
 charge of presumption. 
 
 I have the honor to be, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 The Author of " Modern Painters. " 
 
 Herne Hill, Dulwich, Dec. 27. 
 
 [From M Tho Times," January 27, 1866.] 
 
 1HE BRITISH MUSEUM. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Times:' 
 
 Sir : As I see in your impression of yesterday that my name 
 was introduced in support of some remarks made, at the 
 meeting of the Society of Arts, on the management of the 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 63 
 
 British Museum, 1 and as the tendency of the remarks I refer 
 to was depreciatory of the efforts and aims of several officers 
 of the Museum — more especially of the work done on the 
 collection of minerals by my friend Mr. Nevil S. Maskeiyne 2 — 
 you will, I hope, permit me, not having been present at the 
 meeting, to express my feeling on the subject briefly in your 
 columns. 
 
 There is a confused notion in the existing public mind that 
 the British Museum is partly a parish school, partly a circu- 
 lating library, and partly a place for Christmas entertainments. 
 
 It is none of the three, and, I hope, will never be made any 
 of the three. But especially and most distinctly it is not a 
 "preparatory school," nor even an " academy for young gen- 
 tlemen/' nor even a " working-men's college." A national 
 museum is one thing, a national place of education another ; 
 and the more sternly and unequivocally they are separated, 
 the better will each perform its office — the one of treasuring 
 and the other of teaching. I heartily wish that there were al- 
 ready, as one day there must- be, large educational museums 
 in every district of London, freely open every day, and well 
 lighted and w r armed at night, with all furniture of comfort, 
 and full aids for the use of their contents by all classes. But 
 you might just as rationally send the British public to the 
 Tower to study mineralogy upon the Crown jewels as make 
 the unique pieces of a worthy national collection (such as, 
 owing mainly to the exertions of its maligned officers, that of 
 our British Museum has recently become) the means of ele- 
 mentary public instruction. After men have learnt their 
 science or their art, at least so far as to know a common and 
 
 1 At the meeting of the Society, in the Hall, Adelphi, Lord Henry 
 Lennox read a paper on " The Uses of National Museums to Local In- 
 stitutions," in which he spoke of Mr. Ruskin's suggestions "adopted 
 and recommended to Parliament in annual reports, and in obedience to 
 distinct Commissions," as having been unwarrantably disregarded since 
 1858. See Mr. Ruskin's official report on the Turner Bequest, printed 
 in the Report of the Director of the National Gallery to the Lords of the 
 Treasury, 1858, Appendix vil. 
 
 ' 2 Professor Nevil Story-Maskt lyne (now M.P. for Cricklade) was then, 
 and tiil his recent resignation, Keeper of Mineralogy at the Museum. 
 
64: 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 a rare example in either, a national museum is useful, and 
 ought to be easily accessible to them ; but until then, unique 
 or selected specimens in natural history are without interest 
 to them, and the best art is as useless as a blank wall. For 
 all those who can use the existing national collection to any 
 purpose, the Catalogue as it now stands is amply sufficient : 
 it would be difficult to conceive a more serviceable one. But 
 the rapidly progressive state of (especially mineralogical) 
 science, renders it impossible for the Curators to make their 
 arrangements in all points satisfactory or for long periods 
 permanent. It is just because Mr. Maskelyne is doing more 
 active, continual, and careful work than, as far as I know, is 
 at present done in any national museum in Europe — because 
 he is completing gaps in the present series by the intercala- 
 tion of carefully sought specimens, and accurately reforming 
 its classification by recently corrected analyses — that the col- 
 lection cannot yet fall into the formal and placid order in 
 which an indolent Curator would speedily arrange and will- 
 ingly leave it. 
 
 I am glad that Lord H. Lennox referred to the passage in 
 my report on the Turner Collection in which I recommended 
 that certain portions of that great series should be distributed, 
 for permanence, among our leading provincial towns. 1 But 
 I had rather see the whole Turner Collection buried, not 
 merely in the cellars of the National Galleiy, but with Pros- 
 perous staff fathoms in the earth, than that it should be the 
 
 1 In Mr. Raskin's official report already mentioned, and which was 
 made at the close of his labors in arranging the Turner drawings, and 
 dated March 27, 1858, he divided the collection into three classes, of 
 which the third consisted of drawings available for distribution among 
 provincial Schools of Art. The passage of the report referred to is as fol- 
 lows : u The remainder of the collection consists of drawings of miscel- 
 laneous character, from which many might be spared with little loss 
 to the collection in London, and great advantage to students in the 
 provinces. Five or six collections, each completely illustrative of 
 Turner's modes of study, and successions of practice, might easily he 
 prepared for the academies of Edinburgh, Dublin, and the principal 
 English manufacturing towns." — See also the similar recommendation 
 with regard to the Outlines of John Leech, in the letter on that subject 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 65 
 
 means of inaugurating the fatal custom of carrying great 
 works of art about the roads for a show. If you must make 
 them educational to the public, hang Titian's Bacchus up for 
 a vintner's sign, and give Henry VI. 's Psalter ] for a spelling- 
 book to the Bluecoat School ; but, at least, hang the one from 
 a permanent post, and chain the other to the boys' desks, and 
 do not send them about in caravans to every annual Barthol- 
 omew Fair. 
 
 I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 J. Buskin. 
 
 Denmark Hill, Jan. 26. 
 
 [From "The Leicester Chronicle and Mercury," January 31, and reprinted in "The 
 Times," February 2, 1880.] 
 
 ON THE PURCHASE OF PICTURES. 11 
 
 Dear Sir : Your letter is deeply interesting to me, but what 
 use is there in my telling you what to do ? The mob won't 
 let you do it. It is fatally true that no one nowadays can ap- 
 preciate pictures by the Old Masters ! and that every one can 
 understand Frith's " Derby Day" — that is to say, everybody 
 is interested in jockeys, harlots, mountebanks, and men about 
 town ; but nobody in saints, heroes, kings, or wise men — 
 either from the east or west. What can you do ? If your 
 Committee is strong enough to carry such a resolution as the 
 appointment of any singly responsible person, any well-in- 
 formed gentleman of taste in your neighborhood, to buy for 
 the Leicester public just what he would buy for himself — that 
 is to say, himself and Ms family — children being the really 
 most important of the untaught public — and to answer simply 
 to all accusation — that is, a good and worthy piece of art 
 
 1 Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne — already mentioned, p. 40. Henry 
 VI. 's Psalter is in the British Museum ( u Domitian A. 17," in the Cot- 
 tonian Catalogue). It is of early fifteenth century work, and was exe- 
 cuted in England by a French artist for the then youthful king, from 
 whom it takes its name. 
 
 2 This letter was written in reply to one requesting Mr. Huskin's views 
 on the best means of forming a public Gallery at Leicester. 
 
66 
 
 ARROWS OF THE MlACtt. 
 
 (past or present, no matter which) — make the most and best 
 you can of it. That method so long as tenable will be usef uL 
 I know of no other. 
 
 Faithfully yours, J. Buskin. 
 
 HI. — PKE-E APH AELITISM. 
 
 [From " The Times," May 13, 1851.] 
 
 THE PRE-RAPHAELITE BRETHREN. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Times." 
 
 Sir : Your usual liberality will, I trust, give a place in your 
 columns to this expression of my regret that the tone of the 
 critique which appeared in Tae Times of Wednesday last on 
 the works of Mr. Millais and Mr. Hunt, now in the Royal 
 Academy, should have been scornful as well as severe. 1 
 
 I regret it, first, because the mere labor bestowed on those 
 Works, and their fidelity to a certain order of truth (labor and 
 fidelity which are altogether indisputable), ought at once to 
 have placed them above the level of mere contempt ; and, sec- 
 ondly, because I believe these young artists to be at a most 
 critical period of their career — at a turning-point, from which 
 they may either sink into nothingness or rise to very real 
 greatness ; and I believe also, that whether they choose the 
 upward or the downward path, may in no small degree de- 
 pend upon the character of the criticism which their works 
 have to sustain. I do not wish in any way to dispute or in- 
 
 1 That the critique was sufficiently bitter, may be gathered from the 
 following portions of it : " These young artists have unfortunately be* 
 come notorious by addicting themselves to an antiquated style and an 
 affected simplicity in painting. . . . We can extend no toleration 
 to a mere senile imitation of the cramped style, false perspective, and 
 crude color of remote antiquity. We want not to see what Fuseli termed 
 drapery 4 snapped instead of folded ; ' faces bloated into apoplexy, or 
 extenuated to skeletons ; color borrowed from the jars in a druggist's 
 shop, and expression forced into caricature. . . . That morbid in- 
 fatuation which sacrifices truth, beauty, and genuine feeling to mere 
 eccentricity, deserves no quarter at the hands of the public." 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 67 
 
 ralidate the general truth of your critique on the Koyal Acad- 
 emy ; nor am I surprised at the estimate which the writer 
 formed of the pictures in question when rapidly compared 
 with works of totally different style and aim ; nay, when I 
 first saw the chief picture by Millais in the Exhibition of last 
 year, 1 I had nearly come to the same conclusion myself. But 
 I ask your permission, in justice to artists who have at least 
 given much time and toil to their pictures, to institute some 
 more serious inquiry into their merits and faults than your 
 general notice of the Academy could possibly have admitted. 
 
 Let me state, in the first place, that I have no acquaintance 
 with any of these artists, and very imperfect sympathy with 
 them. No one who has met with any of my writings will sus- 
 pect me of desiring to encourage them in their Romanist and 
 Tractarian tendencies. 2 I am glad to see that Mr. Millais* 
 lady in blue 3 is heartily tired of her painted window and 
 idolatrous toilet-table ; and I have no particular respect for 
 
 1 A sacred picture (No. 518) upon the text, ' 1 And one shall say unto 
 him. What are these wounds in thine hands ? Then he shall answer, 
 Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends " (Zecha- 
 riah xiii. 6). He had two other pictures in the Academy of 1850, 
 namely, Portrait of a gentleman and his grandchild (No. 429), and 
 Ferdinand lured by Ariel (No. 504) — Shakespeare, Tempest, Act ii. 
 sc. 2. 
 
 2 See the next letter, p. 70. With regard to the religious tone of 
 some parts of Mr. Ruskin's early writings, it is worth noting that in the 
 recent reissue (1880) of the Seven Lamps of Architecture, " some pieces 
 of rabid and utterly false Protestantism . . . are cut from text and 
 appendix alike." — (Preface, p. 1 ; and see the note on one such omission 
 on p. 19). So again in the preface to the final edition of Modern 
 Painters, issued in 1873, Mr. Ruskin stated that his objection to repub- 
 lishing unrevised the first two volumes of that work was that 1 4 they are 
 written in a narrow enthusiasm, and the substance of their metaphysi- 
 cal and religious speculation is only justifiable on the ground of its ab- 
 solute sincerity." — See also Sesame and Lilies, 1871 ed., Preface, p. 2. 
 
 3 The pre-Raphaelite pictures exhibited in the Academy of this year, 
 and referred to here and in the following letter, were the Mariana 
 (No. 561) of Millais, The Return of the Dove to the Ark (No. 65), and 
 The Woodman's Daughter (No. 799), (see Coventry Patmore's Poems, 
 vol. i. p. 184—4 vol. ed., 1879), both also by Millais; the Valentine re- 
 ceiving (rescuing ?) Sylvia from Proteus (No. 594), of Holman Hunt; 
 
88 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 Mr. Collins' lady in white, because her sympathies are limited 
 by a dead wall, or divided between some gold fish and a tad- 
 pole — (the latter Mr. Collins may, perhaps, permit me to sug- 
 gest en passant, as he is already half a frog, is rather too small 
 for his age). But I happen to have a special acquaintance 
 with the water plant Alisma Plantago, among which the said 
 gold fish are swimming ; and as I never saw it so thoroughly 
 or so well drawn, I must take leave to remonstrate with you, 
 when you say sweepingly that these men " sacrifice truth as 
 well as feeling to eccentricity." For as a mere botanical study 
 of the water-lily and Alisma, as well as of the common lily and 
 several other garden flowers, this picture 'would be invaluable 
 to me, and I heartily wish it were mine. 
 
 But, before entering into such particulars, let me correct an 
 impression which your article is likely to induce in most 
 minds, and which is altogether false. These pre-Baphaelites 
 (I cannot compliment them on common-sense in choice of a 
 nom de guerre) do not desire nor pretend in any \yay to imi- 
 tate antique painting as such. They know very little of an- 
 cient paintings who suppose the works of these young artists to 
 resemble them. 1 As far as I can judge of their aim — for, as I 
 
 and the Convent Thoughts (No. 493) of Mr. C. Collins, to which were 
 alrixed the lines from Midsummer Night's Dream (Act i. sc. 1) 
 
 u Thrice blessed they, that master so their blood 
 To undergo such maiden pilgrimage ; " 
 
 and the verse (Psalm cxliii. 5), "I meditate on all Thy works ; I muse 
 on the work of Thy hands." The last-named artist also had a portrait 
 of Mr. William Bennett (No. 718) in the Exhibition — not, however, al- 
 luded to in this letter. Mr. Charles Allston Collins, who was the son of 
 "William Collins, R. A. , and the younger brother of Mr. Wilkie Collins, sub- 
 sequently turned his attention to literature, and may be remembered as 
 the author of a Cruise upon Wheels, The Eye-Witness, and other writings. 
 
 1 Compare Modern Painters, vol. i. p. 415, note, where allusion is 
 made to the painters of a society which unfortunately, or rather un- 
 wisely, has given itself the name of ' Pre-Raphaelite ; ? unfortunately, 
 because the principles on which its members are working are neither 
 pre- nor post-Raphaelite, but everlasting. They are endeavoring to paint 
 with the highest possible degree of completion, what they see in nature, 
 without reference to conventional established rules ; but by no means ta 
 imitate the style of any past epoch. 
 
LETTERS ON ART, 
 
 69 
 
 said, I do not know the men themselves — the pre-Raphaelites 
 intend to surrender no advantage which the knowledge or in- 
 ventions of the present time can afford to their art. They in- 
 tend to return to early days in this one point only — that, as 
 far as in them lies, they will draw either what they see, or what 
 they suppose might have been the actual facts of the scene they 
 desire to represent, irrespective of any conventional rules of 
 picture-making ; and they have chosen their unfortunate 
 though not inaccurate name because all artists did this before 
 Raphael's time, and after Raphael's time did not this, but sought 
 to paint fair pictures, rather than represent stern facts ; of 
 which the consequence has been that, from Raphael's time to 
 this day, historical art has been in acknowledged decadence. 
 
 Now, sir, presupposing that the intention of these men was 
 to return to archaic art instead of to archaic honesty, your 
 critic borrows Fuseli's expression respecting ancient draperies 
 " snapped instead of folded," and asserts that in these pictures 
 there is a "servile imitation of false perspective." To which I 
 have just this to answer : 
 
 That there is not one single error in perspective in four 
 out of the five pictures in question ; and that in. Millais* 
 " Mariana" there is but this one — that the top of the green 
 curtain in the distant window has too low a vanishing-point ; 
 and that I will undertake, if need be, to point out and prove a 
 dozen worse errors in perspective in any twelve pictures, con- 
 taining architecture, taken at random from among the works 
 of the popular painters of the day. 
 
 Secondly : that, putting aside the small Muiready, and the 
 works of Thorburn and Sir W. Ross, and perhaps some others 
 of those in the miniature room which I have not examined, 
 there is not a single study of drapery in the whole Academy, 
 be it in large works or small, which for perfect truth, power, 
 and finish could be compared for an instant with the black 
 sleeve of the Julia, or with the velvet on the breast and the 
 chain mail of the Valentine, of Mr. Hunt's picture ; or with 
 the white draperies on the table of Mr. Millais' " Mariana," 
 and of the right-hand figure in the same painter's " Dove re- 
 turning to the Ark" 
 
70 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 And further : that as studies both of drapery and of every 
 minor detail, there has been nothing in art so earnest or so 
 complete as these pictures since the days of Albert Durer. 
 This I assert generally and fearlessly. On the other hand, I 
 am perfectly ready to admit that Mr. Hunt's " Sylvia" is not 
 a person whom Proteus or any one else would have been likely 
 to fall in love with at first sight ; and that one cannot feel very 
 sincere delight that Mr. Millais' " "Wives of the Sons of Noah " 
 should have escaped the Deluge ; with many other faults 
 besides, on which I will not enlarge at present, because I have 
 already occupied too much of your valuable space, and I hope 
 to enter into more special criticism in a future letter. 
 
 I have the honor to be, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 The Author of " Modern Painters." 
 
 Denmark Hill, May 9. 
 
 [From " The Times, 1 ' May 30, 1851.1 
 
 THE PRE-RAPHAELITE BRETHREN. 
 
 To the Editor of "The Times: 1 
 
 Sir : Your obliging insertion of my former letter encour- 
 ages me to trouble you with one or two further notes respect- 
 ing the pre-Raphaelite pictures. I had intended, in continu- 
 ation of my first letter, to institute as close an inquiry as I 
 could into the character of the morbid tendencies which pre- 
 vent these works from favorably arresting the attention of the 
 public ; but I believe there are so few pictures in the Academy 
 whose reputation would not be grievously diminished by a 
 deliberate inventory of their errors, that I am disinclined to 
 undertake so ungracious a task with respect to this or that 
 particular work. These points, however, may be noted, partly 
 for the consideration of the painters themselves, partly that 
 forgiveness of them may be asked from the public in consid- 
 eration of high merits in other respects. 
 
 The most painful of these defects is unhappily also the 
 most prominent— the commonness of feature in many of the 
 
LETTERS ON AHT. 
 
 71 
 
 principal figures. In Mr. Hunt's " Valentine defending Syl* 
 via," this is. indeed, almost the only fault. Further examina- 
 tion of this picture has even raised the estimate I had pre- 
 viously formed of its marvellous truth in detail and splendor 
 in color ; nor is its general conception less deserving of praise ; 
 the action of Valentine, his arm thrown round Sylvia, and his 
 hand clasping hers at the same instant as she falls at his feet, 
 is most faithful and beautiful, nor less so the contending of 
 doubt and distress with awakening hope in the half -shadowed, 
 half -sunlit countenance of Julia. Nay, even the momentary 
 struggle of Proteus with Sylvia just past, is indicated by the 
 trodden grass and broken fungi of the foreground. But all 
 this thoughtful conception, and absolutely inimitable execu- 
 tion, fail in making immediate appeal to the feelings, owing 
 to the unfortunate type chosen for the face of Sylvia. Cer- 
 tainly this cannot be she whose lover was 
 
 " As ricli in having such a jewel, 
 As twenty seas, if all their sands were pearl." 1 
 
 Nor is it, perhaps, less to be regretted that, while in Shak- 
 speare's play there are nominally " Two Gentlemen," in Mr. 
 Hunt's picture there should only be one — at least, the kneeling 
 figure on the right has by no means the look of a gentleman. 
 But this may be on purpose, for any one who remembers the 
 conduct of Proteus throughout the previous scenes will, I think, 
 be disposed to consider that the error lies more in Shakspeare's 
 nomenclature than in Mr. Hunt's ideal. 
 
 No defence can, however, be offered for the choice of feat- 
 ures in the left-hand figure of Mr. Millais' ? 'Dove returning 
 to the Ark." I cannot understand how a painter so sensible 
 of the utmost refinement of beauty in other objects should 
 deliberately choose for his model a type far inferior to that of 
 average humanity, and unredeemed by any expression save 
 that of dull self-complacency. Yet, let the spectator who 
 desires to be just turn away from this head, and contemplate 
 
 1 Two Gentlemen of Verona, Act ii. sc. 4. The scene of the picture 
 was taken from Act v. sc. 4. 
 
72 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 rather the tender and beautiful expression of the stooping 
 figure, and the intense harmony of color in the exquisitely 
 finished draperies ; let him note also the ruffling of the plu- 
 mage of the wearied dove, one of its feathers falling on the 
 arm of the figure which holds it, and another to the ground, 
 where, by the bye, the hay is painted not only elaborately, but 
 with the most perfect ease of touch and mastery of effect, es- 
 pecially to be observed because this freedom of execution is a 
 modern excellence, which it has been inaccurately stated that 
 these painters despise, but which, in reality, is one of the re- 
 markable distinctions between their painting and that of Van 
 Eyck or Hemling, which caused me to say in my first letter 
 that " those knew little of ancient painting who supposed the 
 works of these men to resemble it." 
 
 Next to this false choice of feature, and in connection with 
 it, is to be noted the defect in the coloring of the flesh. The 
 hands, at least in the pictures in Millais, are almost always 
 ill painted, and the flesh tint in general is wrought out of 
 crude purples and dusky yellows. It appears just possible 
 that much of this evil may arise from the attempt to obtain 
 too much transparency — an attempt w 7 hich has injured also 
 not a few of the best works of Mulready. I believe it will be 
 generally found that close study of minor details is unfavor- 
 able to flesh painting ; it was noticed of the drawing by John 
 Lewis, in the old water-color exhibition of 1850, 1 (a work 
 which, as regards its treatment of detail, may be ranged iu 
 the same class with the pre-Raphaelite pictures), that the 
 faces were the worst painted portions of the whole. 
 
 The apparent want of shade is, however, perhaps the fault 
 which most hurts the general eye. The fact is, nevertheless, 
 that the fault is far more in the other pictures of the Academy 
 than in the pre-Raphaelite ones. It is the former that are 
 
 1 The Hhareem (No. 147), noticed, partly to the above effect, in The 
 Times, May 1, 1850. It will be remembered that John Lewis is, with 
 Turner, Millais, Prout, Mulready, and Edwin Landseer, one of the 
 artists particularly mentioned in Mr. Buskin* s pamphlet on "Pre- 
 Raphaelism " (1851), p. 33 ; and see also Academy Notes, III, 1857, p. 
 48. • • 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 73 
 
 false, not the latter, except so far as every picture must be 
 false which endeavors to represent living sunlight with dead 
 pigments. I think Mr. Hunt has a slight tendency to exag- 
 gerate reflected lights ; and if Mr. Millais has ever been near 
 a piece of good painted glass, he ought to have known that its 
 tone is more dusky and sober than that of his Mariana's win- 
 dow. But for the most part these pictures are rashly con- 
 demned because the only light w r hich w 7 e are accustomed to 
 see represented is that which falls on the artist's model in 
 his dim painting room, not that of sunshine in the fields. 
 
 I do not think I can go much further in fault-finding. I 
 had, indeed, something to urge respecting what I supposed to 
 be the Romanizing tendencies of the painters ; but I have 
 received a letter assuring me that I was wrong in attributing 
 to them anything of the kind ; whereupon, all that I can say 
 is that, instead of the " pilgrimage " of Mr. Collins' maiden 
 over a plank and round a fish-pond, that old pilgrimage of 
 Christiana and her children towards the place wdiere they 
 should "look the Fountain of Mercy in the face," would have 
 been more to the purpose in these times. And so I wish 
 them all heartily good-speed, believing in sincerity that if 
 they temper the courage and energy which they have shown 
 in the adoption of their systems with patience and discretion 
 in framing it, and if they do not suffer themselves to be 
 driven by harsh or careless criticism into rejection of the 
 ordinary means of obtaining influence over the minds of 
 others, they may, as they gain experience, lay in our England 
 the foundations of a school of art nobler than the world has 
 seen for three hundred years, 1 
 
 I have the honor to be, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 The Author of "Modern Painters. " 
 
 Denmark Hill, May 26. 
 
 1 " I have great hope that they may become the foundation of a more 
 earnest and able school of art than we have seen for centuries.'' — Mod- 
 ern Painters, vol. i, , p. 415, note. 
 
74 
 
 ARROWS OF THE GRACE. 
 
 [From " The Times,"' May 5. 1854.] 
 
 THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD. 
 By Holman Hunt. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Times. 1 ' 
 
 Sir : I trust that, with your usual kindness and liberality; 
 you will give me room in your columns for a few words re- 
 specting the principal prse-Raphaelite picture in the Exhibition 
 of the Royal Academy this year. Its painter is travelling in 
 the Holy Land, and can neither suffer nor "benefit by criticism. 
 But I am solicitous that justice should be done to his work, 
 not for his sake, but for that of the large number of persons 
 who, during the year, will have an opportunity of seeing it, 
 and on whom, if rightly understood, it may make an impres- 
 sion for which they will ever afterwards be grateful. 1 
 
 I speak of the picture called " the Light of the World," by 
 Mr. Holman Hunt. Standing by it yesterday for upwards 
 of an hour, I watched the effect it produced upon the pnssers- 
 by. Few stopped to look at it, and those who did almost in- 
 variably with some contemptuous expression, founded on 
 what appeared to them the absurdity of representing the 
 Saviour with a lantern in his hand. Now, it ought to be re- 
 membered that, whatever may be the faults of a prae-Raphael- 
 ite picture, it must at least have taken much time ; and there- 
 fore it may not unwarrantably be presumed that conceptions 
 which are to be laboriously realized are not adopted in the 
 first instance without some reflection. So that the spectator 
 may surely question w T ith himself whether the objections which 
 now strike every one in a moment might not possibly have 
 occurred to the painter himself, either during the time devoted 
 to the design of the picture, or the months of labor required 
 
 1 Of the two pictures described in this and the following letter, The 
 Light of the World is well known from the engraving of it by W. H. 
 Simmons. It was originally purchased by Mr. Thomas Combe, of Ox- 
 ford, whose widow has recently presented it to Keble College, where it 
 now hangs, in the library. The subject of the second picture, which is 
 less well known, and which has never been engraved, sufficiently ap- 
 pears from the letter describing it. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 75 
 
 for its execution ; and whether, therefore, there may not be 
 some reason for his persistence in such an idea, not discover- 
 able at the first glance. 
 
 Mr. Hunt has never explained his work to me. I give what 
 appears to me its palpable interpretation. 
 
 The legend beneath it is the beautiful verse, " Behold, I 
 stand at the door and knock. If any man hear my voice, and 
 open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, 
 and he with me." — Rev. iii. 20. On the left-hand side of the 
 picture is seen this door of the human soul. It is fast barred : 
 its bars and nails are rusty ; it is knitted and bound to its 
 stanchions by creeping tendrils of ivy, showing that it has 
 never been opened. A bat hovers about it ; its threshold is 
 overgrown with brambles, nettles, and fruitless corn — the wild 
 grass " whereof the mower filleth not his hand, nor he that 
 bindeth the sheaves his bosom." Christ approaches it in the 
 night-time — Christ, in his everlasting offices of prophet, priest, 
 and king. He wears the white robe, representing the power 
 of the Spirit upon him ; the jewelled robe and breast-plate, 
 representing the sacerdotal investiture ; the rayed crown of 
 gold, inwoven with the crown of thorns ; not dead thorns, but 
 now bearing soft leaves, for the healing of the nations. 
 
 Now, when Christ enters any human heart, he bears with 
 him a twofold light : first, the light of conscience, which dis- 
 plays past sin, and afterwards the light of peace, the hope of 
 salvation. The lantern, carried in Christ's left hand, is this 
 light of conscience. Its fire is red and fierce ; it falls only on 
 the closed door, on the weeds which encumber it, and on an 
 apple shaken from one of the trees of the orchard, thus mark- 
 ing that the entire awakening of the conscience is not merely 
 to committed, but to hereditary guilt. 
 
 The light is suspended by a chain, wrapt about the wrist 
 of the figure, showing that the light which reveals sin appears 
 to the sinner also to chain the hand of Christ. 
 
 The light which proceeds from the head of the figure, on 
 the contrary, is that of the hope of salvation ; it springs from 
 the crown of thorns, and, though itself sad, subdued, and 
 full of softness, is yet so powerful that it entirely melts into 
 
7G 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACK 
 
 the glow of it the forms of the leayes and boughs, which it 
 crosses, showing that every earthly object must be hidden by 
 this light, where its sphere extends. 
 
 I believe there are very few persons on whom the picture, 
 thus justly understood, will not produce a deep impression. 
 For my own part, I think it one of the very noblest works of 
 sacred art ever produced in this or any other age. 
 
 It may, perhaps, be answered, that works of art ought not 
 to stand in need of interpretation of this kind. Indeed, we 
 have been so long accustomed to see pictures painted without 
 any purpose or intention whatsoever, that the unexpected 
 existence of meaning in a work of art may very naturally at 
 first appear to us an unkind demand on the spectator's under- 
 standing. But in a few years more I hope the English pub- 
 lic may be convinced of the simple truth, that neither a great 
 fact, nor a great man, nor a great poem, nor a great picture, 
 nor any other great thing, can be fathomed to the very bottom 
 in a moment of time ; and that no high enjoyment, either in 
 picture-seeing or any other occupation, is consistent with a 
 total lethargy of the powers of the understanding. 
 
 As far as regards the technical qualities of Mr. Hunt's 
 painting, I would only ask the spectator to observe this dif- 
 ference between true prse-Raphaelite work and its imitations. 
 The true work represents all objects exactly as they would 
 appear in nature in the position and at the distances which 
 the arrangement of the picture supposes. The false work 
 represents them with all their details, as if seen through a 
 microscope. Examine closely the ivy on the door in Mr. 
 Hunt's picture, and there will not be found in it a single clear 
 outline. All is the most exquisite mystery of color ; becom- 
 ing reality at its due distance. In like manner examine the 
 small gems on the robe of the figure. Not one will be made 
 out in form, and yet there is not one of all those minute 
 points of green color, but it has two or three distinctly varied 
 shades of green in it, giving it mysterious value and lustre. 
 
 The spurious imitations of prse-Eaphaelite work represent 
 the most minute leaves and other objects with sharp outlines, 
 but with no variety of color, and with none of the conceal- 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 77 
 
 ment, none of the infinity of nature. With this spurious 
 work the walls of the Academy are half covered ; of the true 
 school one very small example may be pointed out, being 
 hung so low that it might otherwise escape attention. It is 
 not by any means perfect, but still very lovely — the study of 
 a calm pool in a mountain brook, by Mr. J. Dearie, No. 191 3 
 £i Evening, on the Marchno, North Wales." 1 
 I have the honor to be, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 The Author of " Modern Painters.' 5 
 Denmark Hill, May 4. 
 
 [From "The Times," May 25, 1854.] 
 
 " THE AWAKENING CONSCIENCE" 
 
 By Holman Hunt. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Times:' 
 
 Sir : Your kind insertion of my notes on Mr. Hunt's prin- 
 cipal picture encourages me to hope that you may yet allow 
 me room in your columns for a few words respecting his sec 
 ond work in the Royal Academy, the "Awakening Conscience. " 
 Not that this picture is obscure, or its story feebly told. I 
 am at a loss to know how its meaning could be rendered more 
 distinctly, but assuredly it is not understood. People gaze 
 at it in a blank wonder, and leave it hopelessly ; so that, 
 though it is almost an insult to the painter to explain his 
 thoughts in this instance, I cannot persuade myself to leave it 
 thus misunderstood. The poor girl has been sitting singing 
 with her seducer ; some chance words of the song, " Oft in 
 the stilly night," have struck upon the numbed places of her 
 heart ; she has started up in agony ; he, not seeing her face, 
 
 1 Mr. Dearie informs me that tliis picture was bought from the walls 
 of the Academy by a prize-holder in the Art Union of London. He 
 adds that the purchaser resided in either America or Australia, and 
 that the picture is now, therefore, presumably in one or other of those 
 countries. 
 
78 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CIIACE. 
 
 goes on singing, striking the keys carelessly with his gloved 
 hand. 
 
 I suppose that no one possessing the slightest knowledge of 
 expression could remain untouched by the countenance of the 
 lost girl, rent from its beauty into sudden horror ; the lips 
 ha]f open, indistinct in their purple quivering ; the teeth set 
 hard ; the eyes filled with the fearful light of futurity, and 
 with tears of ancient days. But I can easily understand that 
 to many persons the careful rendering of the inferior details in 
 this picture cannot but be at first offensive, as calling their at- 
 tention away from the principle subject. It is true that detail 
 of this kind has long been so carelessly rendered, that the 
 perfect finishing of it becomes a matter of curiosity, and there- 
 fore an interruption to serious thought. But, without enter- 
 ing into the question of the general propriety of such treat- 
 ment, I would only observe that, at least in this instance, it is 
 based on a truer principle of the pathetic than any of the com- 
 mon artistical expedients of the schools. Nothing is more 
 notable than the way in which even the most trivial objects 
 force themselves upon the attention of a mind which has been 
 fevered by violent and distressful excitement. They thrust 
 themselves forward with a ghastly and unendurable distinct- 
 ness, as if they would compel the sufferer to count, or meas- 
 ure, or learn them by heart. Even to the mere spectator a 
 strange interest exalts the accessories of a scene in which he 
 bears witness to human sorrow. There is not a single object 
 in all that room — common, modern, vulgar (in the vulgar 
 sense, as it may be), but it becomes tragical, if rightly read. 
 That furniture so carefully painted, even to the last vein of 
 the rosewood — is there nothing to be learnt from that terrible 
 lustre of it, from its fatal newness ; nothing there that has 
 the old thoughts of home upon it, or that is ever to become a 
 part of home ? Those embossed books, vain and useless, — 
 they also new, — marked with no happy wearing of beloved 
 leaves ; the torn and dying bird upon the floor ; the gilded 
 tapestry, with the fowls of the air feeding on the ripened 
 corn ; the picture above the fireplace, with its single drooping 
 figure—the woman taken in adultery ; nay, the very hem of the 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 79 
 
 poor girl's dress, at which the painter has labored so closely, 
 thread by thread, has story in it, if we think how soon its 
 pure whiteness may be soiled with dust and rain, her outcast 
 feet failing in the street ; and the fair garden flowers, seen in 
 that reflected sunshine of the mirror — these also have their 
 language — 
 
 " Hope not to find delight in us, they say, 
 For we are spotless, Jessy — we are pure." 1 
 
 I surely need not go on. Examine the whole range of the 
 walls of the Academy, — nay, examine those of all our public 
 and private galleries, — and while pictures will be met with by 
 the thousand which literally tempt to evil, by the thousand 
 which are directed to the meanest trivialities of incident or 
 emotion, by the thousand to the delicate fancies of inactive 
 religion, there will not be found one powerful as this to meet 
 full in the front the moral evil of the age in which it is 
 painted ; to waken into mercy the cruel thoughtlessness of 
 youth, and subdue the severities of judgment into the sanctity 
 of compassion. 
 
 I have the honor to be, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient servant, 
 The Author of " Modern Painters." 
 
 Denmark Hill. 
 
 [From " The Liverpool Albion, 11 January 11, 1858.] 
 
 PRE- RA PIIA ELITISM m LIVERPOOL.' 1 
 
 I believe the Liverpool Academy has, in its decisions of late 
 years, given almost the first instance on record of the entirely 
 just and beneficial working of academical system. Usually 
 
 1 Shenstone : Elegy xxvi. The subject of the poem is that of the 
 picture described here. The girl speaks — 
 
 " If through the garden's flowery tribes I stray, 
 Where bloom the jasmines that could once allure, 
 Hope not, 11 etc. 
 
 2 The prize of the Liverpool Academy was awarded in 1858 to Millais's 
 Blind Girl. Popular feeling, however, favored another picture, the 
 Waiting for the Verdict of A. Solomon, and a good deal of discussion 
 
80 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACB. 
 
 such systems have degenerated into the application of formal 
 rules, or the giving partial votes, or the distribution of a par- 
 tial patronage ; hut the Liverpool awards have indicated at 
 once the keen perception of new forms of excellence, and the 
 frank honesty by which alone such new forms can be con- 
 fessed and accepted. I do not, however, wonder at the outcry. 
 People who suppose the pre-Raphaelite work to be only a con- 
 dition of meritorious eccentricity, naturally suppose, also, that 
 the consistent preference of it can only be owing to clique. 
 Most people look upon paintings as they do on plants or 
 minerals, and think they ought to have in their collections 
 specimens of everybody's work, as they have specimens of all 
 earths or flowers. They have no conception that there is such 
 a thing as a real right and wrong, a real bad and good, in the 
 question. However, you need not, I think, much mind. Let 
 the Academy be broken up on the quarrel ; let the Liverpool 
 people buy whatever rubbish they have a mind to ; and 
 when they see, as in time they will, that it is rubbish, 
 and find, as find they will, every pre-Raphaelite picture 
 gradually advance in influence and in value, you will be ac- 
 knowledged to have borne a witness all the more noble and 
 useful, because it seemed to end in discomfiture ; though it 
 will not end in discomfiture. I suppose I need hardly say 
 anything of my own estimate of the two pictures on which the 
 arbitrament has arisen. I have surely said often enough, in 
 good black type already, what I thought of pre-Raphaelite 
 works, and of other modern ones. Since Turner's death I 
 consider that any average work from the hand of any of the 
 four leaders of pre-Raphaelitism (Rossetti, Millais, Hunt, John 
 Lewis) is, singly, worth at least three of any other pictures 
 whatever by living artists. John Ruskin. 
 
 arose as to whether the prize had been rightly awarded. As one of the 
 judges, and as a member of the Academy, Mr. Alfred Hunt addressed a 
 letter on the matter to Mr. Ruskin, the main portion of whose reply was 
 sent by him to the Liverpool Albion and is now reprinted here. Mr. 
 Solomon's picture had been exhibited in the Royal Academy of 1857 
 (No. 562), and is mentioned in Mr. Ruskin's Notes to the pictures of 
 that year (p. 32). 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 81 
 
 [From '* The Witness" (Edinburgh), March 27, 1858.] 
 
 GENERALIZATION AND THE SCOTCH PRE-RAPHAELITES. 
 
 To the Editor of the ^ Witness." 
 
 I was very glad to see that good and firm defence of the 
 pre-Raphaelite Brothers in the Witness 1 the other day ; only 
 my dear Editor, it appears to me that you take too much 
 trouble in the matter. Such a lovely picture as that of Wal- 
 ler Paton's must either speak for itself, or nobody can speak 
 for it. If you Scotch people don't know a bit of your own 
 country when you see it, who is to help you to know it ? If, 
 in that mighty wise town of Edinburgh, everybody still likes 
 flourishes of brush better than ferns, and dots of paint better 
 than birch leaves, surely there is nothing for it but to leave 
 them in quietude of devotion to dot and faith in flourish. At 
 least I can see no other way of dealing. All those platitudes 
 from the Scotsman, which you took the pains to answer, have 
 been answered ten thousand times already, without the small- 
 est effect — the kind of people who utter them being always 
 too misty in their notions ever to feel or catch an answer. 
 You may as well speak to the air, or rather to a Scotch misfc. 
 The oddest part of the business is, that all those wretched 
 fallacies about generalization might be quashed or crushed 
 in an instant, by reference to any given picture of any great 
 master who ever lived. There never was anybody who gen- 
 eralized, since paint was first ground, except Opie, and Ben- 
 jamin "West, and Fuseli, and one or two other such modern 
 stars — in their own estimates, — night-lights, in fact, extin- 
 guishing themselves, not odoriferously at daybreak, in a sput- 
 ter in the saucer. Titian, . Giorgione, Veronese, Tintoret, 
 Raphael, Leonardo, Correggio — never any of them dreamt of 
 
 1 The defence was made in a second notice (March 6, 1858) of the 
 Exhibition of the Royal Scottish Academy, then open to the public. 
 The picture of Mr. Waller Paton (now R. S. A.) alluded to here was en- 
 titled Wild Water Inveruglass (161); he also exhibited one of Arrochar 
 Road, Tarbet (314). The platitudes of the Scotsman against the pre- 
 Raphaelites were contained in its second notice of the Exhibition (Feb* 
 ruary 20, 1858,. 
 
82 
 
 ARROWS OF TUB GRACE. 
 
 generalization, and would have rejected the dream as having 
 come by the horn gate, 1 if they had. The only difference be- 
 tween them and the pre-Raphaelites is, that the latter love 
 nature better, and don't yet know their artist's business so 
 well, having everything to find out for themselves athwart 
 all sorts of contradiction, poor fellows ; so they are apt to put 
 too much into their pictures — for love's sake, and then not to 
 bring this much into perfect harmony ; not yet being able to 
 bridle their thoughts entirely with the master's hand. I don't 
 say therefore — I never have said — that their pictures are fault- 
 less — many of them have gross faults ; but the modern pict- 
 ures of the generalist school, which are opposed to them, 
 have nothing else but faults : they are not pictures at all, but 
 pure daubs and perfect blunders ; nay, they have never had 
 aim enough to be called anything so honorable as blunders ; 
 they are mere emptinesses and idlenesses — thistledown with- 
 out seeds, and bubbles without color ; whereas the worst pre- 
 Raphaelite picture has something in it ; and the great ones, 
 such as Windus's "Burd Helen," 2 will hold their own with 
 the most noble pictures of all time. 
 
 Always faithfully yours, 
 
 J. RUSKIN. 
 
 1 There must be some error here, as it is the true dreams that come 
 through the horn gate, while the fruitless ones pass through the gate of 
 ivory. The allusion is to Homer (Odyssey, xix. 562). 
 
 2 In illustration of the old Scottish ballad of u Burd Helen," who, 
 fearing her lover's desertion, followed him, dressed as a foot-page, 
 through flood, if not through fire — 
 
 "Lord John he rode, Burd Helen ran, 
 The live-lang sumer's day, 
 Until they cam' to Clyde's Water, 
 Was filled frae bank to brae. 
 
 M 4 Sce'st thou yon water, Helen,' quoth he, 
 4 That flows frae bank to brim ? 1 
 4 1 trust to God, Lord John,' she said, 
 4 You ne'er will see me swim.' V 
 
 This picture (No. 141 in the Edinburgh Exhibition of 1858) was first 
 exhibited in the Koyal Academy of 1856. In the postscript to his 
 Academy Notes of that year, Mr, Ruskin, after commenting on the 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 83 
 
 By the way, what ails you at our pre-Kaphaelite Brothers' 
 conceits ? Windus's heart's-ease might have been a better 
 conceit, I grant you ; 1 but for the conceits themselves, as such, 
 I always enjoy them particularly ; and I don't understand why 
 I shouldn't. What's wrong in them ? 
 
 " crying error of putting it nearly out of sight," so that he had at first 
 hardly noticed it, estimates this picture as second only to the Autumn 
 Leaves of Mr. Millais in that exhibition. The following is a portion of 
 his comment on it : "I see just enough of the figures to make me sure 
 that the work is thoughtful and intense in the highest degree. The 
 pressure of the girl's hand on her side ; her wild, calm, firm, desolate look 
 at the stream — she not raising her eyes as she makes her appeal, for fear 
 of the greater mercilessness in the human look than in the glaze of the 
 gliding water — the just choice of the type of the rider's cruel face, and 
 of the scene itself — so terrible in haggardness of rattling stones and 
 ragged heath, — are all marks of the action of the very grandest imag- 
 inative power, shortened only of hold upon our feelings, because deal- 
 ing with a subject too fearful to be for a moment believed true.'' 
 
 The picture was originally purchased by Mr. John Miller, of Liver- 
 pool ; at the sale of whose collection by Christie and Manson, two years 
 later, in 1858, it fetched the price of two hundred guineas. At the 
 same sale the Blind Girl, alluded to in the previous letter, was sold for 
 three hundred. 
 
 For the poem illustrated by the picture, see Aytoun's Ballads of Scot- 
 land, i. 239, where a slightly different version of it is given : it may also 
 be found in Percy's Reliques (vol. iii. p. 59), under the title of Child 
 Waters. Other versions of this ballad, and other ballads of the same 
 name, and probable origin may be found in Jameson's collection, vol. i. 
 p. 117, vol. ii. p. 376, in Buchan's Ancient Ballads of the North, ii. 29 
 (1879 ed.) and in Four Books of Scottish Ballads, Edin., 1868, Bk. ii. p. 
 21, where it is well noted that " Burd Helen " corresponds to the Proud 
 Elise" of northern minstrels, u La Prude Dame Elise " of the French, 
 and the " Gentle Lady Elise " of the English— (Burd, Prud, Preux). It 
 is also possible that it is a corruption of Burdalayn, or Burdalane, mean- 
 ing an only child, a maiden, etc. 
 
 1 The Witness had objected to the " astonishing fondness " of the pre- 
 Baphaelite school for " conceits," instancing as typically far-fetched 
 that in the picture of u Burd Helen,'' where the Lord John was repre- 
 sented pulling to pieces a hearts-ease," as he crosses the stream. 
 
84 
 
 ARROWS OF THE GRACE. 
 
 IV. — TURNER. 
 
 [From "The Times," October 28, 1858.] 
 
 THE TURNER BEQUEST. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Times:' 
 
 Sir : As active measures are being now 1 taken to give the 
 public access to the pictures and drawings left by the late Mr. 
 Turner, you will perhaps allow me space in your columns for 
 a few words respecting them. 
 
 I was appointed by Mr. Turner one of his executors. I 
 examined the will, and the state of the property needing 
 administration, and, finding that the questions arising out of 
 the obscurity of the one and the disorder of the other would 
 be numerous and would involve a kind of business in which I 
 had no skill or knowledge, I resigned the office ; but in the 
 course of the inquiry I catalogued the most interesting of the 
 drawings which are now national property, and respecting 
 these the public will, I think, be glad of more definite infor- 
 mation than they at present possess. They are referable 
 mainly to three classes. 
 
 1. Finished water-color drawings. 
 
 2. Studies from nature, or first thoughts for pictures ; in 
 color. 
 
 3. Sketches in pencil or pen and ink. 
 
 The drawings belonging to the two latter classes are in 
 various stages of completion, and would contain, if rightly ar- 
 ranged, a perfect record of the movements of the masters 
 mind during his whole life. Many of them were so confused 
 among prints and waste-paper that I could neither collect nor 
 catalogue them all in the time I had at my disposal ; some 
 portfolios I was not able even to open. The following state- 
 
 1 The first exhibition of Turner's pictures after his death was opened 
 at Marlborough House early in November, 1856, seven months subse- 
 quent to the final decision as to the proper distribution of the property, 
 which was the subject of Turner's will. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 85 
 
 ment, therefore, omits mention of many, and I believe even of 
 some large water-color drawings. There are in the first class 
 forty-five drawings of the " Eivers of France ; " fifty-seven 
 illustrating Kogers' Poems ; twenty-three of the " Eiver 
 Scenery " and " Harbors of England ; " four marine vignettes ; 
 five middle-sized drawings (including the beautiful "Ivy 
 Bridge ") ; and a drawing, some three feet by two, finished 
 with exquisite care, of a scene in the Val d'Aosta ; total, 135. 
 
 It would occupy too much of your space if I were to specify 
 all the various kinds of studies forming the second class. 
 Many are far carried, and are, to my mind, more precious and 
 lovely than any finished drawings ; respecting some, there 
 may be question whether Turner regarded them as finished 
 or not. The larger number are light sketches, valuable only 
 to artists, or to those interested in the processes of Turner's 
 mind and hand. The total number of those which I cata- 
 logued as important is 1,757. 
 
 The sketches of the third class are usually more elaborate 
 than the colored ones. They consist of studies from nature, 
 or for composition, in firm outline, usually on gray paper, 
 heightened with white. They include, among other subjects, 
 more or less complete, fifty of the original drawings for the 
 Liber Studiorum, and many of the others are of large folio 
 size. The total of those I consider important is 1,322. Now 
 the value of these sketches to the public consist greatly, first, 
 in the preservation of each, as far as possible, in the state in 
 which Turner left it ; secondly, in their careful arrangement 
 and explanation ; thirdly, in convenience of general access to 
 them. Permit me a word on each of these heads. 
 
 Turner was in the habit of using unusual vehicles, and in 
 the colored studies many hues are wrought out by singular 
 means and with singular delicacy — nearly always in textures 
 which the slightest damp (to which the drawings would nec- 
 essarily be subjected in the process of mounting) would as- 
 suredly alter. I have made many experiments in mounting, 
 putting colored drawings, of which I had previously examined 
 the tones, into the hands of the best mounters, and I have 
 never yet had a drawing returned to me without alteration. 
 
8G 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CRACK 
 
 The vast mass of these sketches, and the comparative slight- 
 ness of many, would but too probably induce a carelessness 
 and generalization in the treatment they might have to un- 
 dergo still more fatally detrimental to them. 
 
 Secondly, a large number are without names, and so slight 
 that it requires careful examination and somewhat extended 
 acquaintance with Turner's works to ascertain their intention. 
 The sketches of this class are nearly valueless, till their mean- 
 ing is deciphered, but of great interest when seen in their 
 proper connection. Thus there are three progressive studies 
 for one vignette in Rogers Italy 1 (Hannibal passing the Alps), 
 which I extricated from three several heaps of other mountain 
 sketches with which they had no connection. Thirdly, a large 
 number of the drawings are executed with body color, the 
 bloom of which any friction or handling would in a short 
 period destroy. Their delicate tones of color would be equally 
 destroyed by continuous exposure to the light or to smoke 
 and dust. 
 
 Drawings of a valuable character, when thus destructible, 
 are in European museums hardly accessible to the general 
 public. But there is no need for this seclusion. They should 
 be inclosed each in a light wooden frame, under a glass the 
 surface of which a raised mount should prevent them from 
 touching. These frames should slide into cases containing 
 about twelve drawings each, which would be portable to any 
 part of the room where they were to be seen. I have long 
 kept my own smaller Turner drawings in this manner ; fifteen 
 frames going into the depth of about a foot. Men are usually 
 accused of "bad taste," if they express any conviction of their 
 own ability to execute any given work. But it would perhaps 
 be better if in people's sayings in general, whether concerning 
 others or themselves, there were less taste, and more truth ; 
 and I think it, under the circumstances, my duty to state that 
 I believe none would treat these drawings with more scrupu- 
 lous care, or arrange them with greater patience, than I should 
 myself; that I am ready to undertake the task, and enter upon 
 
 See Rogers' Italy, p. 29. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 87 
 
 it instantly ; that I will furnish, in order to prove the working 
 of the system proposed, a hundred of the frames, with their 
 cases, at my own cost ; and that within six weeks of the day 
 on which I am permitted to begin work (illness or accident 
 not interfering), I will have the hundred drawings arranged, 
 framed, accompanied by a printed explanatory catalogue, and 
 ready for public inspection. It would then be in the power 
 of the commissioners intrusted with the administration of this 
 portion of the national property to decide if any, or how 
 man}' more of the sketches, should be exhibited in the same 
 manner, as a large mass of the less interesting ones might be 
 kept as the drawings are at the British Museum, and shown 
 only on special inquiry. 
 \ I will only undertake this task on condition of the entire 
 management of the drawings, in every particular, being in- 
 trusted to me ; but I should ask the advice of Mr. Carpenter, 
 of the British Museum, 1 on all doubtful points, and intrust 
 any necessary operations only to the person who mounts the 
 drawings for the British Museum. 
 
 I make this offer 2 in your columns rather than privately, 
 
 1 William Hookham Carpenter, for many years Keeper of the prints 
 and drawings at the British Museum. He died in 1866. 
 
 2 Mr. Ruskin's offer was accepted, and he eventually arranged the 
 drawings, and, in particular, the four hundred now exhibited in one of 
 the lower rooms of the National Gallery, and contained in the kind of 
 cases above proposed, presented by Mr. Ruskin to the Gallery. Mr. 
 Buskin also printed, as promised, a descriptive and explanatory cata- 
 logue of a hundred of these four hundred drawings. (Catalogue of the 
 Turner Sketches in the National Gallery. For private circulation. 
 Part I. 1857. — Only one hundred copies printed, and no further parts 
 issued.) 
 
 Writing (1858) to Mr. Norton of his whole work in arranging the 
 Turner drawings, Mr. Ruskin said: "To show yo r x a little what my 
 work has been, I have fac-similed for you, as nearly as I could, one of 
 the nineteen thousand sketches (comprised in the Turner bequest). It, 
 like most of them, is not a sketch, but a group of sketches, made on 
 both sides of the leaf of the note-book. The note-books vary in contents 
 from sixty to ninety leaves : there are about two hundred books of the 
 kind — three hundred and odd note -books in all ; and each leaf has on 
 an average this quantity of work, a great many leaves being slighter- 
 
88 
 
 ARROWS OF THE GRACE. 
 
 first, because I wish it to be clearly known to the public ; and 
 also because I have no time to make representations in official 
 ways, the very hours which I could give to the work needing 
 to be redeemed by allowing none to be wasted in formalities 
 I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 J. RuSKIN, 
 
 Denmark Hill, Oct. 27. 
 
 [From 44 The Times," July 9, 1857,] 
 
 THE TURNER BEQUEST AND THE NATIONAL GALLERY. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Times:'' 
 
 Sir : — I am sorry that accident has prevented my seeing the 
 debate of Friday last 1 on the vote for the National Gallery 
 until to-day. Will you permit me, thus late, to correct the 
 statement made by Lord Elcho, that I offered to arrange Tur- 
 ner's pictures, or could have done so as well as Mr. Wornum ? 2 
 I only offered to arrange the sketches, and that I am doing ; 
 but I never would have undertaken the pictures, "which were 
 in such a state of decay that I had given up many for lost | 
 while, also, most of them belonged to periods of Turner's work 
 with which I was little acquainted. Mr. Wornum's patience 
 and carefulness of research in discovering their subjects, dates 
 of exhibition, and other points of interest connected with 
 them, have been of the greatest service ; and it will be long 
 
 some blank, but a great many also elaborate in the highest degree, some 
 containing ten exquisite compositions on each side of the leaf, thus (see 
 facsimile), each no bigger than this — and Wifch about that quantity o( 
 work in each, but every touch of it inestimable, done with his wholo 
 soul in it. Generally the slighter sketches are written over it every-* 
 where, as in the example inclosed, every incident being noted that was 
 going on at the moment of the sketch." — List of Turner's Drawings 
 shown in connection with Mr. Norton's Lectures. Boston : 1874. p. 11. 
 The facsimile alluded to by Mr. Norton is reproduced opposite. 
 
 1 July 3, 1857, upon the* vote of £23,165 for the National Gallery. 
 
 2 The late Mr. Ralph Nicholson Wornum, who succeeded Mr. Uwins 
 as Keeper of the National Gallery in 1855, and retained that office till 
 his death in 1078. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 89 
 
90 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 before the labor and judgment which he has shown in compil- 
 ing, not only this, but all the various catalogues now used by 
 the public at our galleries, will be at all justly appreciated. I 
 find more real, serviceable, and trustworthy facts in one of 
 these catalogues, than in half a dozen of the common collec- 
 tions of lives of painters. 
 
 Permit me to add further, that during long residence in 
 Venice I have carefully examined the Paul Veronese lately 
 purchased by the Government. 1 "When I last saw it, it was 
 simply the best Veronese in Italy, if not in Europe (the 
 " Marriage in Cana " of the Louvre is larger and more magnifi- 
 cent, but not so perfect in finish) ; and, for my own part, I 
 should think no price too large for it ; but putting my own 
 deep reverence for the painter wholly out of the question, and 
 considering the matter as it will appear to the most persons at 
 all acquainted with the real character and range of Venetian 
 work, I believe the market value of the picture ought to be 
 estimated at perhaps one-third more than the Government 
 have paid for it. Without doubt the price of the Murillo 
 lately purchased at Paris was much enhanced by accidental 
 competition ; under ordinary circumstances, and putting both 
 the pictures to a fair trial of market value, I believe the Ver- 
 
 1 The Family of Darius at the feet of Alexander after the Battle of 
 Issus, purchased at Venice from the Pisani collection in 1857. Lord 
 Elcho had complained in the course of the debate that the price, £18,- 
 650, paid for this picture, had been excessive ; and in reply allusion 
 was made to the still higher price (£23,000) paid for the Immaculate 
 Conception of Murillo, purchased for the Louvre by Napoleon III., in 
 1852, from the collection of Marshal Soult. Of the great Veronese, Mr. 
 Ruskin also wrote thus: ' 'It at once, to my mind, raises our National 
 Gallery from a second-rate to a first-rate collection. I have always loved 
 the master, and given much time to the study of his works, but this is 
 the best I have ever seen." (Turner Notes, 1857, ed. v. p. 89, note.) 
 So again before the National Gallery Commission, earlier in the same 
 year, he had said, " I am rejoiced to hear (of its rumored purchase). If 
 it is confirmed, nothing will have given me such pleasure for a long 
 time. I think it is the most precious Paul Veronese in the world, as 
 far as the completeness of the picture goes, and quite a priceless pict- 
 ure." 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 91 
 
 onese to be worth at least double the Murillo ; in an artistical 
 point of view, the latter picture could not be put in any kind 
 of comparison whatever with the Veronese. 
 
 I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 J. RUSKIN. 
 
 Oxford, July 7. 
 
 [From " The Literary Gazette," November 13, 1858 — partly reprinted in " The Tw« 
 Paths," Appendix iv.] 
 
 THE TURNER SKETCHES AND DRAWINGS. 1 
 
 To the Editor of " The Literary Gazette:' 
 
 Sir : I do not think it generally necessary to answer criti- 
 cism ; yet as yours is the first sufficient notice which has been 
 taken of the important collection of sketches at Marlborough 
 House, and as your strictures on the arrangement proposed 
 for the body of the collection, as well as on some statements 
 in my catalogue, are made with such candor and good feeling, 
 will you allow me to offer one or two observations in reply to 
 them ? The mode of arrangement to which you refer as de- 
 termined on by the trustees has been adopted, not to discour- 
 age the study of the drawings by the public, but to put all 
 more completely at their service. Drawings so small in size 
 and so delicate in execution cannot be seen, far less copied, 
 when hung on walls. As now arranged, they can be put 
 into the hands of each visitor, or student, as a book is into 
 those of a reader ; he may examine them in any light, or in 
 any position, and copy them at his ease. The students who 
 work from drawings exhibited on walls will, I am sure, bear 
 willing witness to the greater convenience of the new system, 
 
 1 Tlie present letter was written in reply to a criticism, contained in 
 the Literary Gazette of November 6, 1858, on Mr. Ruskin's Catalogue 
 of the Turner Sketches and Drawings exhibited at Marlborough House 
 1857-8. The subjects of complaint made by the Gazette sufficiently ap- 
 pear from this letter. They were, briefly, first, the mode of exhibition 
 of the Turner Drawings proposed by Mr. Ruskin in his official report al- 
 already alluded to, pp. 84 and 88. note ; and, secondly, two alleged 
 hyperboles and one omission in the Catalogue itself. 
 
92 
 
 ARROWS OF THE GRACE. 
 
 Four hundred drawings are already thus arranged for public 
 use ; framed, and disposed in eighty portable boxes, each con- 
 taining five sketches, so that eighty students might at once be 
 supplied with five drawings apiece. The oil paintings at Marl- 
 borough House, comprising as they do the most splendid 
 works which Turner ever produced, and the 339 drawings ex- 
 hibited beside them, are surely enough for the amusement of 
 loungers — for do you consider as anything better than loung- 
 ers those persons who do not care enough for the Turner 
 drawings to be at the trouble of applying for a ticket of ad- 
 mission, and entering their names in a book — that is to say, 
 who will not, to obtain the privilege of quiet study of perfect 
 art, take, once for all, as much trouble as would be necessary 
 to register a letter, or book, or parcel ? 
 
 I entirely w T aive for the moment the question of exposure 
 to light. I put the whole issue on the ground of greatest 
 public convenience. I believe it to be better for the public to 
 have two collections of Turner's drawings than one ; nay, it 
 seems to me just the perfection of all privilege to have one 
 gallery for quiet, another for disquiet ; one into w 7 hich the 
 curious, idle, or speculative may crowd on wet or weary days, 
 and another in which people desirous of either thinking or 
 working seriously may always find peace, light, and elbow- 
 room. I believe, therefore, that the present disposition of 
 these drawings will be at once the most convenient and the 
 most just, even supposing that the finest works of Turner 
 w T ouicl not be injured by constant exposure. But that they 
 would be so admits of no debate. It is not on my judgment 
 nor on any other unsupported ojDmion, that the trustees have 
 acted, but in consideration of facts now universally admitted 
 by persons who have charge of drawings. You will find that 
 the officers both of the Louvre and of the British Museum re- 
 fuse to expose their best drawings or missal-pages to light, in 
 consequence of ascertained damage received by such drawings 
 as have been already exposed ; and among the works of Tur- 
 ner I am prepared to name an example in which, the frame 
 having protected a portion while the rest was exposed, the 
 covered portion is still rich and lovely in colors, while the 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 93 
 
 exposed spaces are reduced in some parts nearly to white 
 paper, and the color in general to a dull brown. 
 
 You allude to the contrary chance that some hues may be 
 injured by darkness. I believe that some colors are indeed 
 liable to darken in perpetual shade, but not while occasionally 
 exposed to moderate light, as these drawings will be in daily 
 Use ; nor is any liability to injury, even by perpetual shade, as 
 yet demonstrable with respect to the Turner drawings ; on the 
 contrary, those which now form the great body of the national 
 collection were never out of Turner's house until his death, 
 and were all kept by him in tight bundles or in clasped books ; 
 and all the drawings so kept are in magnificent preservation, 
 appearing as if they had j ust been executed, while every one of 
 those which have been in the possession of purchasers and 
 exposed in frames are now faded in proportion to the time and 
 degree of their exposure ; the lighter hues disappearing, espe- 
 cially from the skies, so as sometimes to leave hardly a trace 
 of the cloud-forms. For instance, the great Yorkshire series 
 is, generally speaking, merely the wreck of what it once was.* 
 That water-colors are not injured by darkness is also suffi- 
 ciently proved by the exquisite preservation of missal paintings, 
 when the books containing them have been little used. Ob- 
 serve, then, you have simply this question to put to the public : 
 "Will you have your Turner drawings to look at when you 
 are at leisure, in a comfortable room, under such limitations 
 as will preserve them to you forever, or will you make an 
 amusing exhibition of them (if amusing, which I doubt) for 
 children and nursery-maids ; dry your wet coats by them, and 
 shake off the dust from your feet upon them, for a score or 
 two of years, and then send them to the waste-paper mer- 
 chant ? " That is the simple question ; answer it, for the 
 public, as you think best. 
 
 Permit me to observe farther, that the small interest mani- 
 fested in the existing Turner collection at Marlborough House 
 does not seem to justify any further effort at exhibition. 
 
 * The cloud-forms which have disappeared from the drawings 
 may be seen in the engravings. 
 
94 
 
 ARROWS OF THE C II ACE. 
 
 There are already more paintings and drawings placed in 
 those rooms than could be examined properly in years of 
 labor. But how placed ? Thrust into dark corners, nailed on 
 spare spaces of shutters, backs of doors, and tottering elonga- 
 tions of screens ; hung with their faces to the light, or with 
 their backs to the light, or with their sides to the light, so that 
 it " rakes" them (I use an excellent expression of Sir Charles 
 Eastlake's), throwing every irregularity of surface into view as 
 if they were maps in relief of hill countries ; hung, in fine, in 
 every conceivable mode that can exhibit their faults, or con- 
 ceal their meaning, or degrade their beauty. Neither Mr. 
 Wornum nor I are answerable for this ; we have both done 
 the best we could under the circumstances ; the public are 
 answerable for it, who suffer such things without care and 
 without remonstrance. If they want to derive real advantage 
 from the treasures they possess, let them show some regard 
 for them, and build, or at least express some desire to get 
 built, a proper gallery for them. I see no way at present out 
 of the embarrassments which exist respecting the disposition 
 of the entire national collection ; but the Turner gallery was 
 intended by Turner himself to be a distinct one, and there is 
 no reason why a noble building should not be at once pro- 
 vided for it. Place the oil pictures now at Marlborough 
 House in beautiful rooms, each in a light fit and sufficient for 
 it, and all on a level with the eye ; range them in chronologi- 
 cal order ; place the sketches at present exhibited, also in 
 chronological order, in a lateral gallery ; let illustrative en- 
 gravings and explanations be put in cases near them ; furnish 
 the room richly and gracefully, as the Louvre is furnished, 
 and 1 do not think the public would any longer complain of 
 not having enough to amuse them on rainy days. 
 
 That w r e ought to do as much for our whole national col- 
 lection is as certain as that we shall not do it for many a year 
 to come, nor until w r e have wasted twice as much money as 
 would do it nobly in vain experiments on a mean scale. I 
 have no immediate hope in this matter, else I might perhaps 
 ask you to let me occupy your columns with some repetition, 
 in other words (such repetition being apparently always 
 
LETTERS ON ART 
 
 95 
 
 needed in these talking days), of what I have already stated in 
 the Appendix to my Notes on the oil-pictures 1 at Marlborough 
 House. But I will only, being as I say hopeless in the matter, 
 ask you for room for a single sentence. 
 
 a If ever we come to understand that the function of a pict- 
 ure, after all, with respect to mankind, is not merely to be 
 bought, but to be seen, it will follow that a picture which de- 
 serves a price deserves a place ; and that all paintings which 
 are worth keeping, are worth, also, the rent of so much wall 
 as shall be necessary to show them to the best advantage, and 
 in the least fatiguing way for the spectator. 
 
 " It would be interesting if we could obtain a return of the 
 sum which the English nation pays annually for park walls to 
 inclose game, stable walls to separate horses, and garden walls 
 to ripen peaches ; and if we could compare this ascertained 
 sum with what it pays for walls to show its art upon." 
 
 I ask you to reprint this, because the fact is that if either 
 Mr. Wornum at the National Gallery, or Mr. Carpenter at the 
 British Museum, had as much well-lighted wall at their dis- 
 posal as most gentlemen's gardeners have, they could each 
 furnish the public with art enough to keep them gazing from 
 one year's end to another's. Mr. Carpenter has already made 
 a gallant effort with some screens in a dark room ; but in the 
 National Gallery, whatever mode of exhibition may -be deter- 
 mined upon for the four hundred framed drawings, the great 
 mass of the Turner sketches (about fifteen thousand, without 
 counting mere color memoranda) must lie packed in parcels 
 in tin cases, simply for w 7 ant of room to show them. It is true 
 that many of these are quite slight, and would be interesting 
 to none but artists. There are, however, upwards of five 
 thousand sketches in pencil outline,* which are just as inter- 
 
 1 " Notes on the oil pictures," to be distinguished from the later cata- 
 logue of the Turner sketches and drawings with which this letter di- 
 rectly deals. See ante, p. 91, note. 
 
 * By the way, you really ought to have given me some credit 
 for the swivel frames in the desks of Marlborough House, 
 
96 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CI1A0E. 
 
 esting as those now exhibited at Marlborough House ; an<3 
 which might be constantly exhibited, like those, without any 
 harm, if there were only walls to put them on. 
 
 I have already occupied much of your space. I do not say 
 too much, considering the importance of the subject, but 2 I 
 must [with more diffidence] ask you to allow me yet leave to 
 reply to the objections you make to two statements [and to 
 one omission] in my Catalogue, as those objections would 
 otherwise diminish its usefulness. I have asserted that in a 
 given drawing (named as one of the chief in the series), 
 Turner's pencil did not move over the thousandth of an inch 
 without meaning ; and you charge this expression with ex- 
 travagant hyperbole. On the contrary, it is much within the 
 truth, being merely a mathematically accurate description of 
 fairly good execution in either drawing or engraving. It is 
 only necessary to measure a piece of any ordinarily good work 
 to ascertain this. Take, for instance, Finden's engraving at 
 the 180th page of Rogers' poems, 3 in which the face of the 
 figure, from the chin to the top of the brow, occupies just a 
 quarter of an inch, and the space between the upper lip and 
 chin as nearly as possible one-seventeenth of an inch. The 
 whole mouth occupies one-third of this space, say, one-fiftieth 
 of an inch ; and within that space botli the lips and the much 
 more difficult inner corner of the mouth are perfectly drawn 
 and rounded, with quite successful and sufficiently subtle ex- 
 
 which enable the public, however rough-handed, to see the 
 drawings on both sides of the same leaf. 1 
 
 1 The identical frames, eacli containing examples of the sketches in 
 pencil outline to which the letter alludes, may be seen in the windows 
 of the lower rooms of the National Gallery, now devoted to the exhibi- 
 tion of the Turner drawings. 
 
 2 The rest of this letter may, with the exception of its two last para- 
 graphs, and the slight alterations noted, be also found in The Two Paths, 
 Appendix iv., Subtlety of Hand (pp. 226-0 of the now, and pp. 263-6 of 
 the original edition), where the words bracketed [sic] in this reprint of 
 it are, it will be seen, omitted. 
 
 3 From a vignette design by Stothard of a single figure, to illustrate 
 the poem On a Tear. (Hogers' Poems, London, 1834 ed.) 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 97 
 
 pression. Any artist will assure you, that in order to draw a 
 mouth as well as this, there must be more than twenty gra- 
 dations of shade in the touches ; that is to say, in this case, 
 gradations changing, with meaning, within less than the 
 thousandth of an inch. 
 
 But this is mere child's play compared to the refinement of 
 any first-rate mechanical work, much more of brush or pencil 
 drawing by a master's hand. In order at once to furnish you 
 with authoritative evidence on this point, I wrote to Mr. 
 Kingsley, tutor of Sidney-Sussex College, a friend to whom I 
 always have recourse when I want to be precisely right in any 
 matter ; for his great knowledge both of mathematics and of 
 natural science is joined, not only with singular powers of 
 delicate experimental manipulation, but with a keen sensitive- 
 ness to beauty in art. His answer, in its final statement 
 respecting Turner's work, is amazing even to me ; and will, I 
 should think, be more so to your readers. Observe the suc- 
 ' cessions of measured and tested refinement ; here is No. 1 : 
 
 " The finest mechanical work that I know of is that done by 
 Nobert in the way of ruling lines. I have a series of lines 
 ruled by him on glass, giving actual scales from .000024 and 
 .000016 of an inch, perfectly correct to these places of deci- 
 mals ; [*] and he has executed others as fine as .000012, though 
 I do not know how far he could repeat these last with 
 accuracy." 
 
 This is No. 1, of precision. Mr. Kingsley proceeds to 
 No. 2 : 
 
 " But this is rude work compared to the accuracy necessary 
 for the construction of the object glass of a microscope such 
 as Eosse turns out." 
 
 I am sorry to omit the explanation which follows of the 
 ten lenses composing such a glass, " each of which must be 
 exact in radius and in surface, and all have their axes coinci- 
 
 [* That is to say, accurate in measures estimated in miliionths 
 of inches.] 
 
98 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 dent ; " but it would not be intelligible without the figure by 
 which it is illustrated, so I pass to Mr. Kingsley's No. 3 : 
 
 "I am tolerably familiar/' he proceeds, "with the actual 
 grinding and polishing of lenses and specula, and have pro- 
 duced by my own hands some by no means bad optical work ; 
 and 1 have copied no small amount of Turner's work, and I 
 still look with awe at the combined delicacy and precision of 
 his hand ; it beats optical work out of sight* In optical work, 
 as in refined drawing, the hand goes beyond the eye, [*] and 
 one has to depend upon the feel ; and when one has once 
 learned what a delicate affair touch is, one gets a horror of all 
 coarse work, and is ready to forgive any amount of feebleness, 
 sooner than the boldness which is akin to impudence. In 
 optics the distinction is easily seen when the work is put to 
 trial ; but here too, as in drawing, it requires an educated eye 
 to tell the difference when the work is only moderately bad ; 
 but with ' bold ' work nothing can be seen but distortion and 
 fog, and I heartily wish the same result would follow the same 
 kind of handling in drawing ; but here, the boldness cheats 
 the unlearned by looking like the precision of the true man. 
 It is very strange how much better our ears are than our eyes 
 in this country : if an ignorant man were to be e bold ' with a 
 violin, he would not get many admirers, though his boldness 
 was far below that of ninety-nine out of a hundred drawings 
 one sees." 
 
 The words which I have italicized 3 in the above extract are 
 those which were surprising to me. I knew that Turner's 
 
 [* In case any of your readers should question the use, in 
 drawing of work too fine for the touches to be individually, I 
 quote a sentence from my Elements of Drawing. 1 "All fine 
 coloring, like fine drawing, is delicate ; so delicate, that if at 
 last you see the color you are putting on, you are putting on 
 too much. You ought to feel a change wrought in the genera! 
 tone by touches which are individually too pale to be seen."] 
 
 1 See the Elements of Drawing, Letter III. on Color and Composition/ 
 p. 132. 
 
 2 Doubly emphasized in The Two Paths, where the words are printed 
 thus : 44 1 still look with awe at the combined delicacy and precision of hit 
 hand ; it beats optical work out of sight. " 
 
 3 The Two Paths reprint has " put in italics.' 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 99 
 
 was as refined as any optical work, but had no idea of its 
 going beyond it. Mr. Kingsley's word "awe," occurring just 
 before, is, however, as I have often felt, precisely the right one. 
 When once we begin at all to understand the work of any 
 truly great executor, such as that of any of the three great 
 Venetians [(Tintoret, Titian, and Veronese)], Correggio, or 
 Turner, the awe of it is something greater than can be felt 
 from the most stupendous natural scenery. For the creation 
 of such a system as a high human intelligence, endowed with 
 its ineffably perfect instruments of eye and hand, is a far more 
 appalling manifestation of Infinite Power than the making 
 either of seas or mountains. After this testimony to the com- 
 pletion of Turner's work, I need not at length defend myself 
 from the charge of hyperbole in the statement that, " as far as 
 I know, the galleries of Europe may be challenged to pro- 
 duce one sketch 1 that shall equal the chalk study No. 45, or 
 the feeblest of the memoranda in the 71st and following 
 frames ; " 2 which memoranda, however, it should have been 
 observed, are stated at the forty-fourth page to be in some re- 
 spects " the grandest work in gray that he did in his life." 
 
 For I believe that, as manipulators, none but the four men 
 whom I have just named (the three Venetians and Correggio) 
 w r ere equal to Turner ; and, as far as I know, none of these 
 four men put their full strength into sketches. But whether 
 they did or not, my statement in the Catalogue is limited by 
 my own knowledge, and as far as I can trust that knowledge : 
 
 1 The following note is here added to the reprint in The Two Paths: 
 " A sketch, observe — not a printed drawing. Sketches are only proper 
 subjects of comparison with each other when they coiuain about the 
 same quantity of work : the test of their merit is the quantity of truth 
 told with a given number of touches. The assertion in the Catalogue 
 which this letter was written to defend was made respecting the sketch 
 of Rome, No. 101." 
 
 2 No. 45 was a Study of a Cutter. Mr. Ruskins note to it in the Cat- 
 alogue is partly as follows : " I have never seen any chalk sketch which 
 for a moment could be compared with this for soul and power. ... I 
 should think that the power of it would be felt by most people ; but if 
 not, let those who do not* feel its strength, try to copy it." See the 
 Catalogue under No. 45, as also under No. 71, referred to above. 
 
100 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 it is not an enthusiastic statement, but an entirely calm and 
 considered one. It may be a mistake, but it is not an hyper* 
 bole. 
 
 Lastly, you object that the drawings for the " Liber Stu- 
 diorum " are not included in my catalogue. They are not so, 
 because I did not consider them as, in a true sense, drawings 
 at all ; they are merely washes of color laid roughly to guide 
 the mezzotint engraver in his first process ; the drawing, 
 properly so called, was all put in by Turner when he etched 
 the plates, or superadded by repeated touchings on the proofs. 
 These brown " guides," for they are nothing more, are entirely 
 unlike the painter's usual work, and in every way inferior to 
 it ; so that students wishing to understand the composition of 
 the " Liber " must always work from the plates, and not from 
 these first indications of purpose. 1 I have put good impres- 
 sions of two of the plates in the same room, in order to show 
 their superiority ; and for the rest, thought it useless to in- 
 crease the bulk of the Catalogue by naming subjects which 
 have been published and well known these thirty years. 2 
 
 Permit me, in conclusion, to thank you for drawing atten- 
 tion to the subject of this great national collection ; and, again 
 
 1 In a letter to Mr. Norton written in the same year as this one to the 
 Literary Gazette, Mr. Ruskin thus speaks of the value of these plates: 
 u Even those who know most of art may at first look be disappointed with 
 the Liber Studiorum. For the nobleness of these designs is not more in 
 what is done than in what is not done in them. Every touch in these 
 plates is related to every other, and has no permission of withdrawn, 
 monastic virtue, but is only good in its connection with the rest, and in 
 that connection infinitely and inimitably good. The showing how each 
 of these designs is connected by all manner of strange intellectual chords 
 and nerves with the pathos and history of this old English country of 
 our, and with the history of European mind from earliest mythology 
 down to modern rationalism and irrationalism — all this was what I meant 
 to try and show in my closing work ; but long before that closing I felt 
 it to be impossible." — Extract from a letter of Mr. Ruskin, 1858, quoted 
 in the "List of Turner Drawings, etc." already mentioned, p. 19. 
 
 2 The Literary Gazette of November 20, 1858, contains a reply to this 
 letter, but as it did not provoke a further letter from Mr. Ruskin, it is 
 not noticed in detail here. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 101 
 
 asking your indulgence for trespassing so far upon your space, 
 to subscribe myself, 
 
 Very respectfully yours, 
 
 J. RUSKIN. 
 
 [From " The Times,' 1 October 21, 1859.] 
 
 THE TURNER GALLERY AT KENSINGTON. 1 
 
 To the Editor of "The Times:' 
 
 Sir : At the time of my departure for the Continent some 
 months ago I had heard it was proposed to light the Turner 
 Galleiy, at Kensington, with gas ; but I attached no im- 
 portance to the rumor, feeling assured that a commission 
 would be appointed on the subject, and that its decision would 
 be adverse to the mode of exhibition suggested. 
 
 Such a commission has, I find been appointed ; and has, 
 contrary to my expectations, approved and confirmed the plan 
 of lighting proposed. 
 
 It would be the merest presumption in me to expect weight 
 to be attached to any opinion of mine, opposed to that of any 
 one of the gentlemen who formed the commission ; but as I 
 was officially employed in some of the operations connected 
 with the arrangement of the Turner Gallery at Marlborough 
 House, and as it might therefore be supposed by the public 
 that I at least concurred in recommending the measures now 
 taken for exhibition of the Turner pictures in the evening, at 
 Kensington, I must beg your permission to state in your 
 columns that I take no share in the responsibility of lighting 
 the pictures either of Eeynolds or Turner with gas ; that, on 
 the contrary, my experience would lead me to apprehend seri- 
 ous injury to those pictures from such a measure ; and that it 
 is with profound regret that I have heard of its adoption. 
 
 1 There was at the date of this and the following letter an exhibition 
 of Turner drawings at the South Kensington Museum. These pictures 
 have, however, been since removed to the National Gallery, and the 
 only works of Turner now at Kensington, are some half a dozen oil 
 paintings belonging to the Sheepshanks collection, and about the same 
 number of water-color drawings, which form part of the historical series 
 of British water-color paintings. 
 
102 
 
 ARROWS OF THE OH ACE. 
 
 I specify the pictures of Reynolds and Turner, because the 
 combinations of coloring material employed by both these 
 painters are various, and to some extent unknown ; and also 
 because the body of their colors shows peculiar liability to 
 crack, and to detach itself from the canvas. I am glad to be 
 able to bear testimony to the fitness of the gallery at Ken- 
 sington, as far as could be expected under the circumstances, 
 for the exhibition of the Turner pictures by daylight, as well 
 as to the excellence of Mr. Wornum's chronological arrange- 
 ment of them in the three principal rooms. 
 
 I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 J. RUSKIN. 
 
 Denmark Hill, Oct. 20. 
 
 p.S. — I wish the writer of the admirable and exhaustive 
 letter which appeared in your columns of yesterday on the 
 subject of Mr. Scott's design for the Foreign Office would 
 allow me to know his name. 1 
 
 [From " The Daily Telegraph," July 5, 1876.] 
 
 TURNERS DRAWINGS. 
 
 To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph.'' 1 
 
 Sm : I am very heartily glad to see the subject of Turner's 
 drawings brought more definitely before the public in your 
 
 1 This refers to a letter signed " E. A. F." which appeared in The 
 Times of October 19, 1859, advising the adoption of Mr. Gilbert Scott's 
 Gothic design for the Foreign Office in preference to any Classic design. 
 The writer entered at some length into the principles of Gothic and 
 Classic architecture, which he briefly summed up in the last sentence 
 of his letter : " Gothic, then, is national ; it is constructively real ; it is 
 equally adapted to all sorts of buildings ; it is convenient ; it is cheap. 
 In none of these does Italian surpass it ; in most of them it is very in- 
 ferior to it. ? See the letters on the Oxford Museum as to the adapta- 
 bility of Gothic— included in Section vi. of these Letters on Art. With 
 regard to the cheapness of Gothic, the correspondent of The Times had 
 pointed out that while it may be cheap and yet thoroughly good so far 
 as it goes, Italian must always be costly. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 103 
 
 remarks on the recent debate 1 in Parliament. It is indeed 
 highly desirable that these drawings should be made more 
 accessible, and I will answer your reference to me by putting 
 you in possession of all the facts which it is needful that the 
 public should know or take into consideration respecting 
 them, in either judging what has been hitherto done by those 
 entrusted with their care, or taking measures for obtaining 
 greater freedom in their use. Their use, I say, as distin- 
 guished from the mere pleasure of seeing them. This pleas- 
 ure, to the general public, is very small indeed. You appear 
 not to be aware that three hundred of the finest examples, 
 including all the originals of the Liber Studiorum, were 
 framed by myself, especially for the public, in the year 1858, 
 and have been exhibited every day, and all day long, ever 
 since in London. But the public never stops a moment in 
 the room at Kensington where they hang ; and the damp, 
 filth, and gas (under the former management of that institu- 
 tion)* soiled their frames and warped the drawings, "by 
 friend remembered not." 
 
 You have been also misinformed in supposing that "for 
 some years these aquarelles were unreservedly shown, and in 
 all the fulness of daylight." Only the " Seine" series (rivers 
 of France), the rivers of England, the harbors of England, and 
 the Rogers' vignettes (about a hundred drawings in all), were 
 exhibited in the dark under-room of Marlborough House, and 
 a few larger and smaller examples scattered up and down in 
 the room of the National Gallery, including Fort Bard, Edin- 
 
 * Now I trust, under Mr. Poynter and Mr. Sparkes under- 
 going thorough reform. 2 
 
 1 Hardly a debate. Lord Francis Hervey had recently (June 30, 
 1876) put a question in the House of Commons to Lord Henry Lennox 
 (First Commissioner of Works) as to whether it was the fact that many 
 of Turner's drawings were at that time stowed in the cellars of the Na- 
 tional Gallery, and had never been exhibited. The Daily Telegraph in 
 a short article on the matter (July 1, 1876) appealed to Mr. Ruskin for 
 his opinion on the exhibition of these drawings. 
 
 s Mr. Poynter, R.A., was then, as now, Director, and Mr. Sparkes 
 Head Master, of the Art School at the South Kensington Museum. 
 
104 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 burgh, and Ivy Bridge. 1 These drawings are all finished, 
 most of them have been engraved ; they were shown as the 
 choicest of the collection, and there is no question but that 
 they should always be perfectly accessible to the public. There 
 are no other finished drawings in the vast mass of the remain- 
 ing material for exhibition and means of education. But these 
 are all the drawings which Turner made during his lifetime, 
 in color, chalk, pencil, and ink, for his own study or delight ; 
 that is to say, pencil sketches to be counted by the thousand 
 (how many thousands I cannot safely so much as guess), and 
 assuredly upwards of two thousand colored studies, many of 
 exquisite beauty ; and all instructive as no other water-color 
 work ever was before, or has been since : besides the ink and 
 chalk studies for all his great Academy pictures. 2 
 
 There are in this accumulation of drawings means of educa- 
 tion in the noblest principles of elementary art and in the 
 most accomplished science of color for every drawing-school 
 in England, were they properly distributed. Besides these, 
 there are the three hundred chosen drawings already named, 
 now at Kensington, and about two hundred more of equal value, 
 now in the lower rooms of the National Gallery, which the 
 Trustees permitted me to choose out of the mass, and frame 
 for general service. 
 
 They are framed as I frame exercise-drawings at Oxford, 
 for my own schools. They are, when in use, perfectly secure 
 from dust and all other sources of injury ; slide, when done 
 with, into portable cabinets ; are never exposed to light, but 
 when they are being really looked at ; and can be examined 
 at his ease, measured, turned in whatever light he likes, by 
 
 1 For notes of these drawings seethe Catalogue of the Turner Sketches 
 and Drawings already mentioned — (a) The Battle of Fort Bard, Val 
 d'Aosta, p. 32 ; (b) the Edinburgh, p. 80 and (c) the Ivy Bridge, Devon, 
 p. 32. 
 
 * I have omitted to add to my note (p. 84) on Mr. Ruskin's arrange- 
 ment of the Turner drawings a reference to his own account of the labor 
 which that arrangement involved, and of the condition in which he 
 found the vast mass of the sketches. See Modem Painters, vol. v., 
 Preface, p. vi. 
 
LETTERS OJS r ART. 
 
 105 
 
 every student or amateur who takes the smallest interest in 
 them. But it is necessary, for this mode of exhibition, that 
 there should be trustworthy persons in charge of the drawings, 
 as of the MSS. in the British Museum, and that there should 
 be attendants in observation, as in the Print Room of the 
 Museum, that glasses may not be broken, or drawings taken 
 out of the frames. 
 
 Thus taken care of, and thus shown, the drawings may be 
 a quite priceless possession to the people of England for the 
 next five centuries ; whereas those exhibited in the Manchester 
 Exhibition were virtually destroyed in that single summer. 1 
 There is not one of them but is the mere wreck of what it 
 was. I do not choose to name destroyed drawings in the 
 possession of others ; but I will name the vignette of the 
 Plains of Troy in my own, which had half the sky baked out 
 of it in that fatal year, and the three drawings of Richmond 
 (Yorkshire), Egglestone Abbey, and Langharne Castle, 2 which 
 have had by former exposure to light their rose-colors entirely 
 destroyed, and half of their blues, leaving nothing safe but 
 the brown. 
 
 I do not think it necessary to repeat my former statements 
 respecting the injurious power of light on certain pigments 
 rapidly, and on all eventually. The respective keepers of the 
 Print Room and of the Manuscripts in the British Museum 
 are the proper persons to be consulted on that matter, their 
 
 1 The Art Treasures Exhibition in 1857, being the year in which the 
 lectures contained in the Political Economy of Art were delivered. (See 
 A Joy for Ever — Ruskin's Works, vol. xi., p. 80.) 
 
 2 The Plains of Troy ;— see for a note of this drawing Mr. Raskin's 
 Notes on his own Turners, 1878, p. 45, where he describes it as " One of 
 1 lie most elaborate of the Byron vignettes, and full of beauty," adding 
 that " the meaning of the sunset contending with the storm is the con- 
 test of the powers of Apollo and Athene ; " and for the engraving of it, see 
 Murray's edition of Byron's Life and Works (1832, seventeen volumes), 
 where it forms the vignette title page of vol. vii. For the Richmond and 
 the Egglestone Abbey, also in the possession of Mr. Ruskin, see the 
 above mentioned Notes p 29 (Nos. 26 and 27). The Langharne Castle 
 was formerly in the possession of Mr. W. M. Bigg, at the sale of whose 
 collection in 1808 it was sold for £451. 
 
106 
 
 ARROWS OF THiiS CHACE. 
 
 experience being far larger than mine, and over longer epochs. 
 I will, however, myself undertake to show from my own col- 
 lection a water-color of the eleventh century absolutely aa 
 fresh as when it was laid — having been guarded from light ; 
 and water-color burnt by sunlight into a mere dirty stain on 
 the paper, in a year, with the matched piece from which it 
 was cut beside it. 
 
 The public may, therefore, at their pleasure treat their 
 Turner drawings as a large exhibition of fireworks, see them 
 explode, clap their hands, and have done with them ; or they 
 may treat them as an exhaustless library of noble learning- 
 To this end, they need, first, space and proper light — north 
 light, as clear of smoke as possible, and large windows ; and 
 then proper attendance — that is to say, well-paid librarians 
 and servants. 
 
 The space will, of course, be difficult to obtain, for while 
 the British public of the upper classes are always ready to 
 pay any money whatever for space to please their pride in 
 their own dining-rooms and ball-rooms, they would not, most 
 of them, give five shillings a year to get a good room in the 
 National Gallery to show the national drawings in. As to the 
 room in which it is at present proposed to place them in the 
 new building, they might just as well, for any good that will 
 ever be got out of them there, be exhibited in a railway 
 tunnel. 
 
 And the attendants will also be difficult to obtain. For — 
 and this is the final fact to which I beg your notice — these 
 drawings now in question were, as I above stated, framed by 
 me in 1858. They have been perfectly "accessible" ever 
 since, and are so now, as easily as any works 1 in the shops of 
 Regent Street are accessible over the counter, if you have got 
 a shopman to hand them to you. And the British public 
 have been whining and growling about their exclusion from 
 the sight of these drawings for the last eighteen years, simply 
 because, while the}' are willing to pay for any quantity of 
 {sentinels to stand in boxes about town and country, for any 
 
 A misprint for i( wares; " see next letter, p. 107. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 107 
 
 quantity of flunkeys to stand on boards for additional weight 
 to carriage horses, and for any quantity of footmen to pour 
 out their wine and chop up their meat for them, they would 
 not for all these eighteen years pay so much as a single 
 attendant to hand them the Turner drawings across the 
 National Gallery table ; but only what was needful to obtain 
 for two days in the week the withdrawal from his other duties 
 in the Gallery of the old servant of Mr. Samuel Kogers. 
 
 I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 J. RUSKIN. 
 
 Brantwood, July 3. 
 
 [From "The Daily Telegraph," July 19, 1876.] 
 
 TURNER'S DRAWINGS. 
 
 To the Editor of" The Daily Telegraph." 
 
 Sir : In justice to our living water-color artists, will you 
 favor me by printing the accompanying letter, 1 which I think 
 will be satisfactory to many of your readers, on points re- 
 specting which my own may have given some of them a false 
 impression ? In my former letter, permit me to correct the 
 misprint of " works " in Eegent Street for " wares." 
 
 I have every reason to suppose Mr. Collingwood Smith's 
 knowledge of the subject entirely trustworthy ; but when all 
 is conceded, must still repeat that no water-color work of value 
 should ever be constantly exposed to light, or even to the air 
 of a crowded metropolis, least of all to gaslight or its fumes. 
 
 I am, Sir, yours, etc., 
 
 J. KlJSKIN. 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire, July 16. 
 
 1 Addressed to Mr. Ruskin by Mr. Collingwood Smith, and requesting 
 Mr. Ruskin to state in a second letter that the remarks as to the effect 
 of light on the water-colors of Turner did not extend to water-color 
 drawings in general ; but that the evanescence of the colors in Turner's 
 drawings was due partly to the peculiar vehicles with which he painted, 
 and -Dartly to the gray paper (saturated with indigo) on which he fre- 
 quently worked. Mr. Ruskin complied with this request by thus for- 
 warding for publication Mr. Collingwood Smith's letter. 
 
108 
 
 ARR0W8 OF THE CHACE. 
 
 [From " The Times," April 25, 1876.] 
 
 COPIES OF TURNER'S DRAWINGS. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Times:' 
 
 Sir : You will oblige me by correcting the misstatement 
 in your columns of the 22c!, 1 that "only copies of the copies" 
 of Turner exhibited at 148 New Bond Street, are for sale. 
 The drawings offered for sale by the company will, of course, 
 be always made by Mr. Ward from the originals, just as much 
 as those now exhibited as specimens. 
 
 Tou observe in the course of your article that " surely such 
 attempts could not gratify any one who had a true insight for 
 
 1 Tlie references to The Times allude to an article on the "Copies 
 of Turner Drawings, 7 by Mr. William Ward, of 2 Church Terrace, Rich- 
 mond, Surrey, which were then, as now, exhibited for sale in the rooms 
 of the Fine Art Society. 
 
 Of these copies of Turner, Mr. Ruskin says : u They are executed with 
 extreme care under my own eye by the draughtsman trained by me for 
 the purpose, Mr. Ward. Everything that can be learned from the smaller 
 works of Turner may be as securely learned from these drawings. I 
 have been more than once in doubt, seeing original and copy together, 
 which was which ; and I think them about the best works that can now 
 be obtained for a moderate price, representing the authoritative forms 
 of art in landscape." — Extract from letter of Mr. Ruskin, written in 
 1867. List of Turner Drawings, etc., shown in connection with Mr. 
 Norton's lectures. Boston, 1874, p. 9. (See also Ariadne Florentina, p. 
 152, note.) 
 
 The following comment of Mr. Ruskin on one of Mr. Ward's most 
 recent copies is also interesting as evidence that the opinions expressed 
 in this letter are still retained by its writer: " London, 20th March, 
 J 880. — The copy of Turner's drawing of Fluelen, which has been just 
 completed by Mr. Ward, and shown to-day, is beyond my best hopes iix 
 every desirable quality of execution ; and is certainly as good as it is 
 possible for care and skill to make it. I am so entirely satisfied with it 
 that, for my own personal pleasure — irrespective of pride, I should feel 
 scarcely any loss in taking it home with me instead of the original ; and 
 for all uses of artistic example or instruction, it is absolutely as good as 
 the original. — John Ruskin." — The copy in question is from a drawing 
 in the possession of Mr. Ruskin (see the Turner Notes, 1878, No. 70), 
 and was executed for its present proprietor, Mr. T. S. Kennedy, ©f 
 Meanwoods, Leeds, 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 109 
 
 Mr. Turner's works r " But the reason that the drawings now 
 at 148 New Bond Street are not for sale is that they do gratify 
 me, and are among my extremely valued possessions ; and if 
 among the art critics on your staff there be, indeed, any one 
 whose " insight for Mr. Turner's work " you suppose to be 
 greater than mine, I shall have much pleasure in receiving any 
 instructions with which he may favor me, at the National 
 Gallery, on the points either in which Mr. Ward's work may 
 be improved, or on those in which Turner is so superior to 
 Titian and Correggio, that while the public maintain, in Italy, 
 a nation of copyists of these second-rate masters, they are not 
 justified in hoping any success whatever in representing the 
 work of the Londoner, whom, while he was alive, I was always 
 called mad for praising. 
 
 I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 John Buskin. 
 
 Peterborough, April 23. 
 
 [From " The Times," January 24, 1871.] 
 
 " TURNERS," FALSE AND TRUE. 
 
 To the Editor of <; The Times." 
 
 Sir : I have refused until now to express any opinion 
 respecting the picture No. 40 1 in the Exhibition of the Old 
 Masters, feeling extreme reluctance to say anything which its 
 kind owner, to whom the Exhibition owes so much, might 
 deem discourteous. 
 
 But I did not suppose it was possible any doubt could long 
 exist among artists as to the character of the work in ques- 
 tion ; and, as I find its authenticity still in some quarters 
 maintained, I think no other course is open to me than to 
 state that the picture is not by Turner, nor even by an imi- 
 tator of Turner acquainted with the essential qualities of the 
 master. 
 
 1 Italy, a reputed Turner, lent by the late Mr. Wynn Ellis. No. 285 
 S Landscape with Cattle* in the possession of Lord Leconfield. 
 
110 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CEACE. 
 
 I am able to assert this on internal evidence only. I neve? 
 saw the picture before, nor do I know anything of the chan- 
 nels through which it came into the possession of its present 
 proprietor. 
 
 No. 235 is, on the contrary, one of the most consummate 
 and majestic works that ever came from the artist's hand, and 
 it is one of the very few now remaining which have not been 
 injured by subsequent treatment. 
 
 I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 John Buskin. 
 
 Denmark Hill, Jan. 23. 
 
 [From "The Life of Turner," by Walter Thornbury.] 
 
 THE CHARACTER OF TURNER. 1 
 
 [The following admonition, sent by Mr. Buskin in 1857 to 
 Mr. Thornbury, and coupled with the advice that for the 
 biographer of Turner there was no time to be lost, " for those 
 who knew him when young are dying daily," forms a fit con- 
 clusion to this division of the letters.] 
 
 Fix at the beginning the following main characteristics of 
 Turner in your mind, as the keys to the secret of all he said 
 and did : 
 
 Uprightness. 
 Generosity. 
 
 Tenderness of heart (extreme). 
 
 Sensuality. 
 
 Obstinacy (extreme). 
 
 Irritability. 
 
 Infidelity. 
 
 1 See also Modem Painters, vol. v. pp. 365-367, and Lectures on 
 Architecture and Painting, pp. 181-188, where the character of Turner is 
 further explained, and various anecdotes given in special illustration of 
 his truth, generosity, and kindness of heart. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 Ill 
 
 And be sure that he knew his own power, and felt himself 
 utterly alone in the world from its not being understood. 
 Don't try to mask the dark side. . . . 
 
 Yours most truly, 
 
 J. Ruskin. 
 
 [See the preface to the first edition of the " Life of Turner ;* 
 that to the second contains the following estimate of Mr. 
 Thornbury's book: 1 " Lucerne, Dec. 2, 1861. — I have just 
 received and am reading your book with deep interest. I am 
 much gratified by the view you have taken and give of Turner. 
 It is quite what I hoped. What beautiful things you have 
 discovered about him ! Thank you for your courteous and 
 far too flattering references to me,"] 
 
 V.— PICTURES AND ARTISTS. 
 
 [From the " Catalogue of the Exhibition of Outlines by the late John Leech, at the Gal- 
 lery, 9 Conduit Street, Regent Street/' 1872.*] 
 
 JOHN LEECH'S OUTLINES. 
 
 I am honored by the request of the sister of John Leech 
 that I should give some account of the drawings of her 
 brother, which remain in her possession ; and I am able to 
 fulfil her request without departing from the rule which has 
 always bound me, not to allow any private interest to weigh 
 with me in speaking of matters which concern the public. It 
 is merely and simply a matter of public concern that the value 
 of these drawings should be known and measures taken for 
 their acquisition, or, at least, for obtaining a characteristic 
 selection from them, as a National property. It cannot be 
 necessary for me, or for any one, now to praise the work of 
 
 1 The book was also referred to in Modern Painters, vol. v. p. 365, 
 where Mr. Euskin speaks of this Life of Turner, then still unpublished, 
 as being written i 4 by a biographer, who will, I believe, spare no pains 
 in collecting the few scattered records which exist of a career so un- 
 eventful and secluded." 
 
 2 Nearly eight years after Leech's death on October 29, 1864. 
 
112 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 John Leech. Admittedly it contains the finest definition and 
 natural history of the classes of our society, the kindest and 
 subtlest analysis of its foibles, the tenderest flattery of its 
 pretty and well-bred ways, with which the modesty of subser- 
 vient genius ever amused or immortalized careless masters. 
 But it is not generally known how much more valuable, as art, 
 the first sketches for the woodcuts, were than the finished draw- 
 ings, even before those drawings sustained any loss in engraving. 
 
 John Leech was an absolute master of the elements of 
 character, — but not by any means of those of chiaroscuro,— 
 and the admirableness of his work diminished as it became 
 elaborate. The first few lines in which he sets down his pur- 
 pose are invariably of all drawing that I know the most won- 
 derful in their accurate felicity and prosperous haste. It is 
 true that the best possible drawing, whether slight or elabo- 
 rate, is never hurried. Holbein or Titian, if they lay only a 
 couple of lines, yet lay them quietly, and leave them entirely 
 right. But it needs a certain sternness of temper to do this. 
 
 Most, in the prettiest sense of the word, gentle artists in- 
 dulge themselves in the ease, and even trust to the felicity of 
 rapid — and even in a measure inconsiderate — work in sketch- 
 ing, so that the beauty of a sketch is understood to be consist- 
 ent with what is partly unintentional. 
 
 There is, however, one condition of extreme and exquisite 
 skill in which haste may become unerring. It cannot be ob- 
 tained in completely finished work ; but the hands of Gains- 
 borough, Beynolds, or Tintoret often nearly approach comple- 
 tion at full speed, and the pencil sketches of Turner are 
 expressive almost in the direct ratio of their rapidity. 
 
 But of all rapid and condensed realization ever accom- 
 plished by the pencil, John Leech's is the most dainty, and 
 the least fallible, in the subjects of which he was cognizant 
 Not merely right in the traits which he seizes, but refined in 
 the sacrifice of what he refuses. 
 
 The drawing becomes slight through fastidiousness not 
 indolence, and the finest discretion has left its touches rare. 
 
 In flexibility and lightness of pencilling, nothing but the 
 best outlines of Italian masters with the silver point can be 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 113 
 
 compared to tliem. That Leech sketched English squires in- 
 stead of saints, and their daughters instead of martyrs, does 
 not in the least affect the question respecting skill of pencil- 
 ling ; and I repeat deliberately that nothing but the best work 
 of sixteenth century Italy with the silver point exists in art, 
 which in rapid refinement these playful English drawings do 
 not excel. There are too many of them (fortunately) to be 
 rightly exemplary — I want to see the collection divided, dated 
 carefully, and selected portions placed in good light, in a quite 
 permanent arrangement in each of our great towns in connec- 
 tion with their drawing schools. 
 
 I will not indeed have any in Oxford while I am there, be- 
 cause I am afraid that my pupils should think too lightly of 
 their drawing as compared with their other studies, and I doubt 
 their studying anything else but John Leech if they had him 
 to study. But in our servile schools of mechanical drawing, to 
 see what drawing was indeed, which could represent something 
 better than machines, and could not be mimicked by any ma- 
 chinery, would put more life into them than any other teach- 
 ing I can conceive. 
 
 It is, therefore, with the greatest pleasure that I accept the 
 honor of having my name placed on the committee for obtain- 
 ing funds for the purchase of these drawings ; and I trust that 
 the respect of the English public for the gentle character of 
 the master, and their gratitude for the amusement with which 
 he has brightened so many of their days, will be expressed in 
 the only way in which expression is yet possible by due care 
 and wise use of the precious possessions he has left to them. 
 
 (Signed) J. Kuskin, 
 
 [From "The Architect," December 27, 1873.] 
 
 ERNEST GEORGE'S ETCHINGS. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Architect:' 
 
 My dear Sir : I am entirely glad you had permission to 
 publish some of Mr. Ernest George's etchings ; 1 they are the 
 
 1 The number of the Architect in which this letter was printed con* 
 tained two sketches from Mr. George's Etchings on the Mosel— those, 
 
114 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHAGE. 
 
 most precious pieces of work I have seen for many a day, 
 though they are still, like nearly everything the English do 
 best in art, faultful in matters which might have been easily 
 conquered, and not a little wasteful, sometimes of means and 
 time ; I should be glad, therefore, of space enough in your 
 columns to state, with reference to these sketches, some of tlit* 
 principles of etching which I had not time to define in the lect- 
 ures on engraving I gave this year, at Oxford, 1 and which 
 are too often forgotten even by our best draughtsmen. 
 
 I call Mr. George's work precious, chiefly because it indi- 
 cates an intense perception of points of character in architec- 
 ture, and a sincere enjoyment of them for their own sake. 
 His drawings are not accumulative of material for future use ; 
 still less are they vain exhibitions of his own skill. He draws 
 the scene in all its true relations, because it delights him, and 
 he perceives what is permanently and altogether characteristic 
 in ifc. As opposed to such frank and joyful work, most modern 
 architectural drawings are mere diagram or exercise. 
 
 I call them precious, in the second place, because they show 
 very great powers of true composition. All their subjects are 
 made delightful more by skill of arrangement than by any 
 dexterities of execution ; and this faculty is very rare amongst 
 landscape painters and architects, because nearly every man 
 who has any glimmering of ifc naturally takes to figure paint- 
 ing — not that the ambition to paint figures is any sign of the 
 faculty, but that, when people have the faculty, they nearly 
 always have also the ambition. And, indeed, this is quite 
 
 viz., of the Elector's Palace, Coblentz, and of the interior of Metz Cathe- 
 dral. The intention of the Architect to reproduce these etchings had 
 apparently been previously communicated to Mr. Ruskin, who wrote 
 the present letter for the issue in which the etchings were to be given. 
 Mr. George has since published other works of the same kind— e.g , 
 Etchings in Belgium, Etchings on the Loire (see Mr. Buskin's advice to 
 him at the end of this letter, p. 116). 
 
 1 The reference must, I think, be to Ariadne Florentina: Six Lectures 
 on Wood and Metal Engraving given before the University of Oxford, 
 Michaelmas Term, 1872, and afterwards published, 1873-6. The lectures 
 given in the year 1873 were upon Tuscan Art, now published in Val 
 d'Arno. 
 
LETTERS OJST ART 
 
 115 
 
 right, if they would not forsake their architecture afterwards, 
 but apply their power of figure design, when gained, to the 
 decoration of their buildings. 
 
 To return to Mr. George's work. It is precious, lastly, in 
 its fine sense of serene light and shade, as opposed to the 
 coruscations and horrors .of modern attempts in that direction. 
 But it is a pity — and this is the first grand principle of etching 
 which I feel it necessary to affirm — when the instinct of chia- 
 roscuro leads the artist to spend time in producing texture on 
 his plate which cannot be ultimately perfect, however labored. 
 All the common raptures concerning blots, burr, delicate bit- 
 ing, and the other tricks of the etching trade, merely indicate 
 imperfect feeling for shadow. 
 
 The proper instrument of chiaroscuro is the brush ; a wash 
 of sepia, rightly managed, will do more in ten minutes than 
 Eembrandt himself could do in ten days of the most ingenious 
 scratching, or blurt out by the most happy mixtures of art 
 and accident.* As soon as Mr. George has learned what true 
 light and shade is (and a few careful studies with brush or 
 chalk would enable him to do so), he will not labor his etched 
 subjects in vain. The virtue of an etching, in this respect, is 
 to express perfectly harmonious sense of light and shade, but 
 not to realize it. All fine etchings are done with few lines. 
 
 Secondly — and this is a still more important general prin- 
 ciple (I must let myself fall into dictatorial terms for brevity's 
 sake) — Let your few lines be sternly clear, however delicate, 
 or however dark. All burr and botch is child's play, and a 
 true draughtsman must never be at the mercy of his copper 
 and ink. Drive your line well and fairly home ; don't scrawl 
 or zigzag ; know where your hand is going, and what it is 
 doing, to a hairbreadth ; then bite clear and clean, and let the 
 last impression be as good as the first When it begins to 
 fail break your plate. 
 
 * The value of Rembrandt's etchings is always in the inverse 
 ratio of the labor bestowed on them after his first thoughts 
 have been decisively expressed ; and even the best of his chia- 
 roscuros (the spotted shell, for instance) are mere child's play 
 compared to the disciplined light and shade of Italian masters. 
 
116 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 Third general principle. 
 
 Don't depend much on various biting. For a true master, 
 and a great purpose, even one biting is enough. By no flux 
 or dilution of acid can you ever etch a curl of hair or a cloud ; 
 and if you think you can etch the gradations of coarser things, 
 it is only because you have never seen them. Try, at your 
 leisure, to etch a teacup or a tallow candle, of their real size ; 
 see what you can make of the gradations of those familiar 
 articles ; if you succeed to your mind, you may try something 
 more difficult afterwards. 
 
 Lastly. For all definite shades of architectural detail, use 
 pencil or charcoal, or the brush, never the pen point. You 
 can draw a leaf surface rightly in a minute or two with these 
 i — with the pen point, never, to all eternity. And on you 
 knowing what the surface of a form is depends your entire 
 power of recognizing good work. The difference between 
 thirteenth century work, wholly beautiful, and a cheap imita- 
 tion of it, wholly damnable, lies in gradation of surface as 
 subtle as those of a rose-leaf, and which are, to modern sculpt- 
 ure, what singing is to a steam-whistle. 
 
 For the rest, the limitation of etched work to few lines 
 enables the sketcher to multiply his subjects, and make his 
 time infinitely more useful to himself and others. I would 
 most humbly solicit, in conclusion, such advantageous use of 
 his gifts from Mr. George. He might etch a little summer 
 tour for us every year, and give permanent and exquisite 
 record of a score of scenes, rich in historical interest, with no 
 more pains than he has spent on one or two of these plates in 
 drawing the dark sides of a wall. Yours faithfully, 
 
 John Euskin, 
 
 [From " The Times," January 20, 1876.] 
 
 THE FREDERICK WALKER EXHIBITION. 
 
 Dear Mr. Marks : 1 You ask me to say what I feel of Fred- 
 erick Walker's work, now seen in some collective mass, as far 
 
 'This letter was written to Mr. H. Stacy Marks, A.R.A., in answer to 
 a request that Mr. Ruskin would in some way record his impression of 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 117 
 
 as anything can be seen in black-veiled London. You have 
 long known my admiration of his genius, my delight in many 
 passages of his art. These, while he lived, were all I cared to 
 express. If you will have me speak of him now, I will speak 
 the whole truth of what I feel — namely, that every soul in 
 London interested in art ought to go to see that Exhibition, 
 and, amid all the beauty and the sadness of it, very diligently 
 to try and examine themselves as to the share they have had, 
 in their own busy modern life, in arresting the power of this 
 man at the point where it stayed. Very chief share they have 
 had, assuredly. But he himself, in the liberal and radical 
 temper of modern youth, has had his own part in casting down 
 his strength, following wantonly or obstinately his own fancies 
 wherever they led him. For instance, it being Nature's opin- 
 ion that sky should usually be blue, and it being Mr. Walker's 
 opinion that it should be the color of buff plaster, he reso- 
 lutely makes it so, for his own isolated satisfaction, partly in 
 affectation also, buff skies being considered by the public 
 more sentimental than blue ones. Again, the laws of all good 
 painting have been long ago determined by absolute masters, 
 whose work cannot be bettered nor departed from — Titian 
 having determined forever what oil-painting is, Angelico what 
 what tempera-painting is, Perugino what fresco-painting is, 
 two hundred years of noble miniature-painting what minutest 
 work on ivory is, and, in modern times, a score of entirely 
 skilful and disciplined draughtsmen what pure water-color 
 and pure body-color painting on paper are (Turner's York- 
 shire drawing of Hornby Castle, now at Kensington, and John 
 Lewis's " Encampment under Sinai," 1 being namable at once 
 as unsurpassable standards), here is Mr. Walker refusing to 
 learn anything from any of those schools or masters, but in- 
 
 the Frederick Walker Exhibition, then open to the public. Frederick 
 Walker died in June, 1875, at the early age of thirty-five, only four years 
 after having been elected an Associate of the Royal Academy. 
 
 1 The Hornby Castle was executed, together with the rest of the 
 "great Yorksnire series," for Whitaker's History of Richmondshire 
 (Longman, 1823). — The picture of John Lewis here alluded to is de- 
 scribed in Mr. Ruskin's Academy Notes, 1856, No. II., p. 37. 
 
lis 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 venting a semi-miniature, quarter fresco, quarter wash mannei 
 of his own — exquisitely clever, and reaching, under such clever 
 management, delightfullest results here and there, but which 
 betrays his genius into perpetual experiment instead of achieve- 
 ment, and his life into woful vacillation between the good, old, 
 quiet room of the Water-Color Society, and your labyrinthine 
 magnificence at Burlington House. 
 
 Lastly, and in worst error, the libraries of England being 
 full of true and noble books — her annals of true and noble 
 history, and her traditions of beautiful and noble — in these 
 scientific times I must say, I suppose, " mythology " — not re- 
 ligion — from all these elements of mental education and sub- 
 jects of serviceable art, he turns recklessly away to enrich the 
 advertisements of the circulating library, to sketch whatever 
 pleases his fancy, barefooted, or in dainty boots, of modern 
 beggary and fashion, and enforce, with laboriously symbolical 
 pathos, his adherence to Justice Shallow's sublime theology 
 that "all shall die." 
 
 That theology has indeed been preached by stronger men, 
 again and again, from Horace's days to our own, but never to 
 so little purpose. "Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we 
 die," said wisely in his way, the Latin farmer : ate his beans 
 and bacon in comfort, had his suppers of the gods on the fair 
 earth, with his servants jesting round the table, and left eter- 
 nal monuments of earthly wisdom and of cricket- song. "Let 
 us labor and be just, for to-morrow we die, and after death 
 the Judgment," said Holbein and Durer, and left eternal monu- 
 ments of upright human toil and honorable gloom of godly 
 fear. "Let us rejoice and be exceeding glad, for to-morrow 
 we die, and shall be with God," said Angelico and Giotto, and 
 left eternal monuments of divinely-blazoned heraldry of 
 Heaven. "Let us smoke pipes, make money, read bad nov- 
 els, walk in bad air, and say sentimentally how sick we are in 
 the afternoon, for to-morrow we die, and shall be made our- 
 selves clay pipes," says the modern world, and drags this 
 poor bright painter down into the abyss with it, vainly clutch- 
 ing at a handful or two of scent and flowers in the May gar- 
 dens. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 119 
 
 Under which sorrowful terms, being told also by your 
 grand Academicians that he should paint the nude, and> ac- 
 cordingly, wasting a year or two of his life in trying to paint 
 schoolboys' backs and legs without their shirts or breeches, 
 and with such other magazine material as he can pick up of 
 sick gypsies, faded gentlewomen, pretty girls disguised as 
 paupers, and red-roofed or gray remnants of old English vil- 
 lages and manor-house, last wrecks of the country's peace and 
 honor, remaining yet visible among the black ravages of its 
 ruin, he supplies the demands of his temporary public, 
 scarcely patient, even now that he has gone, to pause beside 
 his delicate tulips or under his sharp-leaved willows, and re- 
 pent for the passing tints and fallen petals of the life that 
 might have been so precious, and, perhaps, in better days, 
 prolonged. 
 
 That is the main moral of the Exhibition. Of the beauty 
 of the drawings, accepting them for what they aim at being, 
 there is little need that I should add anything to what has 
 been already said rightly by the chief organs of the London 
 Press. Nothing can go beyond them in subtlety of exhibited 
 touch (to be distinguished, however, observe always from the 
 serene completion of masters w T ork, disdaining the applause 
 to be gained by its manifestation ;) their harmonies of amber- 
 color and purple are full of exquisite beauty in their chosen 
 key ; their composition always graceful, often admirable, and 
 the sympathy they express with all conditions of human life 
 most kind and true ; not without power of rendering charac- 
 ter which would have been more recognized in an inferior ar- 
 tist, because it would have been less restrained by the love of 
 beauty. 
 
 I might, perhaps, in my days of youth and good fortune, 
 have written what the public would have called " eloquent- 
 passages" on the subjects of the Almshouse and the Old 
 Gate ; 1 being now myself old and decrepit (besides being 
 
 1 The following are the pictures, as catalogued, mentioned here : 
 fa The Almshouse— No. 52— called the House of Kefuge. Oil on can- 
 vas. A garden and terrace in quadrangle of almshouses ; on left an old 
 
120 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACK 
 
 much bothered with beggars, and in perpetual feud with par- 
 ish officers), and having seen every building I cared for in the 
 world ruined, I pass these two pictures somewhat hastily by, 
 and try to enjoy myself a little in the cottage gardens. Only 
 one of them, however, — No. 71, — has right sunshine in it, and 
 that is a sort of walled paddock where I begin directly to feel 
 uncomfortable about the lamb, lest, perchance, some front 
 shop in the cottages belong to a butcher. If only it and I 
 could get away to a bit of thymy hill-side, we should be so 
 much happier, leaving the luminous — perhaps too ideally lu- 
 minous — child to adorn the pathetic paddock. I am too shy 
 to speak to either of those two beautiful ladies among the 
 lilies (37, 67), and take refuge among the shy children before 
 the " Chaplain's Daughter" (20) — deiightfullest, it seems to me, 
 of the minor designs, and a piece of most true and wise satire. 
 The sketches of the " Daughter of Heth " go far to tempt me 
 to read the novel ; and ashamed of this weakness, I retreat 
 resolutely to the side of the exemplary young girl knitting in 
 the u 01d Farm Garden" (33), and would instantly pick up 
 
 woman and girl ; on right a mower cutting grass. Exhibited R. A. 
 1872. 
 
 2. The Old Gate— No. 48— oil on canvas. Lady in black and servant 
 with basket coming through the gate of old mansion ; four children at 
 play at foot of steps ; two villagers and dog in foreground. Exhibited 
 R. A. 1889. 
 
 3. The Cottage Gardens— No. 71, The Spring of Life. Water-color. 
 Lady in a garden with two children and a lamb ; a cherry tree in blos- 
 som. Exhibited at the Water-Color Society, Winter 1866-7. See also 
 Nos. 14 and 21. 
 
 4. Ladies and Lilies— No. 37, A Lady in a Garden, Perthshire. 
 Water-color. A lady seated on a knoll on which is a sun-dial ; grey 
 hound on left ; background, old manor-house. No. 67, Lilies. Water- 
 color. Lady in a garden watering flowers, chiefly lilies. Exhibited at 
 the Water-Color Society, Winter, 1869-70 and 1868-9 respectively. 
 
 5. The Chaplain's Daughter— No. 20, subject from Miss Thackeray's 
 Jack the Giant-killer. Exhibited at the Water-Color Society, Summer 
 1868. 
 
 6. Daughter of Heth, by W. Black. No. 87. Do ye no ken this is 
 the Sabbath ? Young lady at piano ; servant enters hurriedly. (Study 
 in black and white, executed in 1872.)— [See vol. i. p. 41. " 4 Preserve 
 
LETTERS ON ART 
 
 121 
 
 her ball of worsted for her, but that I wouldn't for the world 
 disappoint the cat. No drawing in the room is more delicately 
 completed than this unpretending subject, and the flower- 
 painting in it, for instantaneous grace of creative touch, cannot 
 be rivalled ; it is worth all the Dutch flower-pieces in the world. 
 
 Much instructed, and more humiliated, by passage after 
 passage of its rapidly-grouped color, I get finally away into 
 the comfortable corner beside the salmon-fishers and the 
 mushrooms ; and the last-named drawing, despise me who 
 may, keeps me till I've no more time to stay, for it entirely 
 beats my dear old William Hunt in the simplicity of its exe- 
 cution, and rivals him in the subtlest truth. 
 
 I say nothing of the "Fishmonger's Stalls" (952), though 
 there are qualities of the same kind in these also, for they 
 somewhat provoke me by their waste of time — the labor spent 
 on one of them would have painted twenty instructive studies 
 of fish of their real size. And it is well for artists in general 
 to observe that when they do condescend to paint still life 
 carefully — whether fruit, fungi, or fish — it must at least be of 
 
 us a', lassie, do ye ken what ye' re doing ? Do ye no ken that this is the 
 Sabbath, and that you're in a respectable house ? ' The girl turned round 
 with more wonder than alarm in her face : ; Ts it not right to play music 
 on Sunday ? ' "] — No. 131. Three more studies for the same novel.) 
 
 7. The Old Farm Garden— No. 33— Water-color. A girl, with cat on 
 lawn, knitting ; garden path bordered by tulips ; farm buildings in 
 background. Painted in 1871. 
 
 8. Salmon-fishers — No. 47 — Fisherman and Boy — Water-color. 
 Keeper and boy on bank of river. Glen Spean. Salmon in foreground. 
 Exhibited at the Water-Color Society, Summer 1867. 
 
 9. Mushrooms and Fungi — No. 41— Water-color. Painted in 1873. 
 
 10. Fishmonger's Stalls— Nos. 9 and 62 (not 952)— viz., No. 9, A Fish- 
 monger's Shop. Water-color. Painted in 1873 ; and No. 62, also A 
 Fishmonger's Shop. Water-color. Fishmongers selling fish ; lady and 
 boy in costumes of about 1800. Exhibited at Water-Color Society, Win- 
 ter 1872-3. (The Tobias of Perugino has been already alluded to, p. 
 54, note). 
 
 11. No. 68. The Ferry. Water-color. Sight size, Il£xl8 in. A 
 ferry boat, in which are two figures, a boatman and a lady, approaching 
 a landing-place ; on the bank figures of villagers, and children, feeding 
 swans. Exhibited at Water-Color Society, Winter 1870-71- 
 
ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 the real size. The portrait of a man or woman is only justi- 
 fiably made small that it may be portable, and nobody wants 
 to carry about the minature of a cod ; and if the reader will 
 waste five minutes of his season in London in the National 
 Gallery, he may see in the hand of Perugino's Tobias a fish 
 worth all these on the boards together. 
 
 Some blame of the same kind attaches to the marvellous 
 drawing No. 68. It is all very well for a young artist to show 
 how much work he can put into an inch, but very painful for 
 an old gentleman of fifty-seven to have to make out all the 
 groujos through a magnifying-glass. I could say something 
 malicious about the boat, in consequence of the effect of this 
 exertion on my temper, but will not, and leave with unquali- 
 fied praise the remainder of the lesser drawings to the atten- 
 tion which each will variously reward. 
 
 Nor, in what I have already, it may be thought, too bluntly 
 said, ought the friends of the noble artist to feel that I am 
 unkind. It is because I know his real power more deeply 
 than any of the admirers who gave him indiscriminate ap- 
 plause, that I think it right distinctly to mark the causes 
 which prevented his reaching heights they did not conceive, 
 and ended by placing one more tablet in the street of tombs, 
 which the passionate folly and uninstructed confusion of mod- 
 ern English society prolong into dark perspective above the 
 graves of its youth. 
 
 I am, dear Marks, always very faithfully yours, 
 
 J. Buskin. 
 
 VI. — A ECHITECTUEE. 
 
 [From u The Oxford Museum," by H. W. Acland and J. Ruskin. 1859. pp. 44-56.] 
 
 GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE AND THE OXFORD MUSEUM? 
 
 Dear Acland : I have been very anxious, since I last heard 
 from you, respecting the progress of the works at the Museum, 
 as I thought I could trace in your expressions some doubt of 
 an entirely satisfactory issue. 
 
 1 In 1858 the Oxford Museum was in course of building^ its architects 
 being Sir Thomas Deane and Mr. Woodward, and its style modem 
 
LETTERS ON AR7 . 
 
 123 
 
 Entirely satisfactory very few issues are, or can be ; and 
 when the enterprise, as in ibis instance, involves the develop- 
 ment of many new and progressive principles* we mast always 
 be prepared for a due measure of disappointment, — due partly 
 to human weakness, and partly to what the ancients would 
 have called fate, — and we may, perhaps, most wisely call the 
 law of trial, which forbids an}' great good beiug usually ac- 
 complished without various compensations and deductions, 
 probably not a little humiliating. 
 
 Perhaps in writing to you what seems to me to be the bear- 
 ing of matters respecting your Museum, I may be answering 
 a few of the doubts of others, as well as fears of your own. 
 
 I am quite sure that when you first used your influence to 
 advocate the claims of a Gothic design, you did so under the 
 conviction, shared by all the seriously-purposed defenders of 
 the Gothic style, that the essence and power of Gothic, prop- 
 erly so called, lay in its adaptability to all need ; in that per- 
 fect and unlimited flexibility which would enable the architect 
 to provide all that was required, in the simplest and most 
 
 Gothic, whilst amongst those chiefly interested in it were Dr. Acland 
 (the Regius Professor of Medicine) and Mr. Rnskin. The present letter, 
 written in June, 1858, was read by Dr. Acland at a lecture given by him 
 in that summer <k to the members of tlie Architectural Societies that met 
 in Oxford at that time. I am permitted to reprint the following pas- 
 sage from Dr. Acland's preface to the printed lecture, as well as oue or 
 two passages from the lecture itself (s<^e below, pp. 128 and 129) ; 
 "Many have yet to learn the apparently simple truth, that to an Artist 
 his Art is his means of probation in this life ; and that, whatever it 
 may have of frivolity to us, to him it is as the two or the five talents, to 
 be accounted for hereafter. I might say much on this point, for the full 
 scop« of the word Art seems by some to be even now unrecognized Be- 
 fore the period of printing, Art was the largest mode of permanently 
 recording human thought ; it was spoken in every epoch, in all 
 countries, and delivered in almost every material. In buildings, on 
 medals and coins, in porcelain and earthenware, on wood, ivory, parch- 
 ment, paper and canvas, the graver or the pencil has recorded the ideas 
 of every form of society, of every variety of race and of every character. 
 What wonder that the Artist is jealous of his craft, and proud of his 
 brotherhood ? ' — See The Oxford Museum, p. 4. The reader is also re- 
 ferred to Sesame and Lilies, 1871 ed., 103-4. 
 
ARROWS OF THE CHAGE. 
 
 convenient way ; and to give you the best offices, the best 
 lecture-rooms, laboratories, and museums, which could be 
 provided with the sum of money at his disposal. 
 
 So far as the architect has failed in doing this ; so far as 
 you find yourself, with the other professors, in anywise incon- 
 venienced by forms of architecture ; so far as pillars or piers 
 come in your way, when you have to point, or vaults in the 
 way of your voice, when you have to speak, or mullions in the 
 way of your light, when you want to see — just so far the 
 architect has failed in expressing his own principles, or those 
 of pure Gothic art. I do not suppose that such failure has 
 taken place to any considerable extent ; but so far as it has 
 taken place, it cannot in justice be laid to the score of the 
 style, since precedent has shown sufficiently, that very uncom- 
 fortable and useless rooms may be provided in all other styles 
 as well as in Gothic ; and I think if, in a building arranged 
 for many objects of various kinds, at a time when the practice 
 of architecture has been somewhat confused by the inventions 
 of modern science, and is hardly yet organized completely 
 with respect to the new means at his disposal ; if, under such 
 circumstances, and with somewhat limited funds, you have 
 yet obtained a building in all main points properly fulfilling 
 its requirements, you have, I think, as much as could be 
 hoped from the adoption of any style whatsoever. 
 
 But I am much more anxious about the decoration of the 
 building ; for I fear that it will be hurried in completion, and 
 that, partly in haste and partly in mistimed economy, a great 
 opportunity may be lost of advancing the best interest of 
 architectural, and in that, of all other arts. For the principles 
 of Gothic decoration, in themselves as simple and beautiful as 
 those of Gothic construction, are far less understood, as yet, 
 by the English public, and it is little likely that any effective 
 measures can be taken to carry them out. You know as well 
 as I, what those principles are ; yet it may be convenient to 
 you that I should here state them briefly as I accept them my- 
 self, and have reason to suppose they are accepted by the 
 principal promoters of the Gothic revival. 
 
 I. The first principle of Gothic decoration is that a given 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 125 
 
 quantity of good art will be more generally useful when ex- 
 hibited on a large scale, and forming part of a connected sys- 
 tem, than when it is small and separated. That is to say, a 
 piece of sculpture or painting, of a certain allowed merit, will 
 be more useful when seen on the front of a building, or at 
 the end of a room, and therefore by many persons, than if it 
 be so small as to be only capable of being seen by one or two 
 at a time ; and it will be more useful when so combined with 
 other work as to produce that kind of impression usually 
 termed " sublime," — as it is felt on looking at any great series 
 of fixed paintings, or at the front of a cathedral, — than if it be 
 so separated as to excite only a special wonder or admiration, 
 such as we feel for a jewel in a cabinet. 
 
 The paintings by Meissonier in the French Exhibition of 
 this year were bought, I believe, before the Exhibition opened, 
 for 250 guineas each. Thej r each represented one figure, 
 about six inches high — one, a student reading ; the other, 
 a courtier standing in a dress-coat. Neither of these paintings 
 conveyed any information, or produced any emotion whatever, 
 except that of surprise at their minute and dextrous execution. 
 They will be placed by their possessors on the walls of small 
 private apartments, wdiere they will probably, once or twice a 
 week, form the subject of five minutes' conversation while 
 people drink their coffee after dinner. The sum expended on 
 these toys would have been amply sufficient to cover a large 
 building with noble frescoes, appealing to every passer-by, and 
 representing a large portion of the history of any given period. 
 But the general tendency of the European patrons of art is 
 to grudge all sums spent in a way thus calculated to confer 
 benefit on the public, and to grudge none for minute treasures 
 of which the principal advantage is that a lock and key can 
 always render them invisible. 
 
 I have no hesitation in saying that an acquisitive selfishness, 
 rejoicing somewhat even in the sensation of possessing what 
 can not be seen by others, is at the root of this art-patronage. 
 It is, of course, coupled with a sense of securer and more con- 
 venient investment in what may be easily protected and easily 
 carried from place to place, .than in large and immovable 
 
126 
 
 ARROWS OF THE OHACK 
 
 works ; and also with a vulgar delight in the minute curiosities 
 of productive art, rather than in the exercise of inventive 
 genius, or the expression of great facts or emotions. 
 
 The first aim of the Gothic Revivalists is to counteract, as 
 far as possible, this feeling on all its three grounds. We 
 desire (a) to make art large and publicly beneficial, instead 
 of small and privately engrossed or secluded ; (b) to make art 
 fixed instead of portable, associating it with local character 
 and historical memory ; (c) to make art expressive instead of 
 curious, valuable for its suggestions and teachings, more than 
 for the mode of its manufacture. 
 
 II. The second great principle of the Gothic Revivalists is 
 that ail art employed in decoration should be informative, con- 
 veying truthful statements about natural facts, if it conveys 
 any statement. It may sometimes merely compose its decora- 
 tions of mosiacs, checkers, bosses, or other meaningless orna- 
 ments : but if it represents organic form (and in all important 
 places it will represent it), it will give that form truthfully, 
 with as much resemblance to nature as the necessary treatment 
 of the piece of ornament in question will admit of. 
 
 This principle is more disputed than the first among the 
 Gothic Revivalists themselves. I, however, hold it simply 
 and entirely, believing that ornamentation is always cceteris 
 paribus, most valuable and beautiful when it is founded on 
 the most extended knowledge of natural forms, and conveys 
 continually such knowledge to the spectator. 1 
 
 HI. The third great principle of the Gothic Revival is that 
 all architectural ornamentation should be executed by the 
 men who design it, and should be of various degrees of ex- 
 cellence, admitting, and therefore exciting, the intelligent co- 
 operation of various classes of workmen ; and that a great 
 public edifice should be, in sculpture and painting, somewhat 
 the same as a great chorus of music, in which, while, perhaps, 
 there may be only one or two voices perfectly trained, and of 
 perfect sweetness (the rest being in various degrees weaker 
 and less cultivated), yet all being ruled in harmony, and each 
 
 1 See next letter, pp. 128 seqq. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 127 
 
 sustaining a part consistent with its strength, the body of 
 sound is sublime, in spite of individual weaknesses. 
 
 The Museum at Oxford was, I know, intended by its de- 
 signer to exhibit in its decoration the working of these three 
 principles ; but in the very fact of its doing so, it becomes 
 exposed to chances of occasional failure, or even to serious 
 discomfitures, such as would not at all have attended the 
 adoption of an established mode of modern work. It is easy 
 to carve capitals on models known for four thousand years, 
 and impossible to fail in the application of mechanical meth- 
 ods and formalized rules. But it is not possible to appeal 
 vigorously to new canons of judgment without the chance of 
 giving offence ; nor to summon into service the various phases 
 of human temper and intelligence, without occasionally find- 
 ing the tempers rough and the intelligence feeble. The Ox- 
 ford Museum is, I believe, the first building in this country 
 which has had its ornamentation, in any telling parts, trusted 
 to the invention of the workman ; the result is highly satis- 
 factory, the projecting windows of the staircases being as 
 beautiful in effect as anything I know in civil Gothic : but 
 far more may be accomplished for the building if the comple- 
 tion of its carving be not hastened ; many men of high artis- 
 tic J30 wer might be brought to take an interest in it, and vari- 
 ous lessons and suggestions given to the workmen which 
 would materially advantage the final decoration of leading 
 features. No very great Gothic building, so far as I know, 
 was ever yet completed without some of this wise deliberation 
 and fruitful patience. 
 
 I was in hopes from the beginning that the sculpture might 
 have been rendered typically illustrative of the English Flora : 
 how far this idea has been as yet carried out I do not know ; 
 but I know that it cannot be properly carried out without a 
 careful examination of the available character of the principal 
 genera, such as architects have not hitherto undertaken. The 
 proposal which I heard advanced the other day, of adding a 
 bold entrance-porch to the facade, appeared to me every way 
 full of advantage, the blankness of the facade having been, to 
 my mind, from the first, a serious fault in the design. If a 
 
128 
 
 ARROWS OF THE Gil AGE. 
 
 subscription were opened for the purpose of erecting one, 1 
 should think there were few persons interested in modern art 
 who would not be glad to join in forwarding such an object. 
 
 I think I could answer for some portions of the design be- 
 ing superintended by the best of our modern sculptors and 
 painters ; and I believe that, if so superintended, the porch 
 might and would become the crowning beauty of the building, 
 and make all the difference between its being only a satisfactory 
 and meritorious work, or a most lovely and impressive one. 
 
 The interior decoration is a matter of much greater diffi- 
 culty ; perhaps you will allow me to defer the few words I 
 have to say about it till I have time for another letter : which, 
 however, I hope to find speedily. 
 
 Believe me, my dear Acland, ever affectionately yours, 
 
 J. Buskin. 1 
 
 [From tf The Oxford Museum/' pp. 60-90.] 
 
 GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE AND THE OXFORD MUSEUM. 
 
 January 20, 1859. 
 My dear Acland : I was not able to write, as I had hoped, 
 from Switzerland, for I found it impossible to lay down any 
 principles respecting the decoration of the Museum which did 
 
 1 After reading this letter to his audience, Dr. Acland thus continued : 
 li The principles thus clearly enumerated by Mr. Ruskin are, in the main, 
 those that animate the earnest student of Gothic. It is not for me es- 
 pecially to advocate Gothic Art, but only to urge, that if called into life, 
 it should be in conformity to its own proper laws of vitality. If week 
 after week, in my youth, with fresh senses and a docile spirit, I have 
 drank in each golden glow that is poured by a Mediterranean sun from 
 over the blue Mgem upon the Athenian Parthenon,— if, day by day, 
 sitting on Mars' Hill, I have watched each purple shadow, as the temple 
 darkened in majesty against the evening sky, —if so, it has been to teach 
 me, as the alphabet of all Art, to love all truth and to hate all false- 
 hood, and to kiss the hand of every Master who has brought down, 
 under whatever circumstance, and in whatever age, one spark of true 
 light from the Beauty and the subtle Law, which stamps the meanest 
 work of the Ever-living, Ever-working Artist. "—The Oxford Museum ? 
 pp. 56-7. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 129 
 
 not in one way or other involve disputed points, too many, 
 and too subtle, to be discussed in a letter. Nor do I feel the 
 difficulty less in writing to you now, so far as regards the 
 question occurring in our late conversations, respecting the 
 best mode of completing these interior decorations. Yet I 
 must write, if only to ask that I may be in some way associ- 
 ated with you in what you are now doing to bring the Museum 
 more definitely before the public mind — that I may be as- 
 sociated at least in the expression of my deep sense of the 
 noble purpose of the building — of the noble sincerity of effort 
 in its architect — of the endless good which the teachings to 
 which it will be devoted must, in their ultimate issue, accom- 
 plish for mankind. How vast the range of that issue, you 
 have shown in the lecture which I have just read, in which you 
 have so admirably traced the chain of the physical sciences as 
 it encompasses the great concords of thi3 visible universe. 1 
 
 1 See The Oxford Museum, pp. 17-23. The following is a portion of 
 the passage alluded to : "Without the Geologist on one side, and the 
 Anatomist and Physiologist on the other, Zoology is not worthy of its 
 name. The student of life, bearing in mind the more general laws 
 which in the several departments above named he will have sought to 
 appreciate, will find in the collections of Zoology, combined with the 
 Geological specimens and the dissections of the Anatomist, a boundless 
 field of interest and of inquiry, to which almost every other science 
 lends its aid : from each science he borrows a special light to guide him 
 through the ranges of extinct and existing animal forms, from the low- 
 est up to the highest types, which, last and most perfect, but pre- 
 shadowed in previous ages, is seen in Man. By the aid of |3hysiological 
 illustrations he begins to understand how hard to unravel are the com- 
 plex mechanisms and prescient intentions of the Maker of all ; and he 
 slowly learns to appreciate what exquisite care is needed for discover- 
 ing the real action of even an apparently comprehended machine. And 
 so at last, almost bewildered, but not cast down, he attempts to scruti- 
 nize in the rooms devoted to Medicine, the various injuries which man is 
 doomed to undergo in his progress towards death ; he begins to revere 
 the beneficent contrivances which shine forth in the midst of suffering 
 and disease, and to veil his face before the mysterious alterations of 
 structure, to which there seem attached pain, with scarce relief, and a 
 steady advance, without a check, to death. He will look, and as he 
 looks, will cherish hope, not unmixed with prayer, that the great Art of 
 Healing may by all these things advance and that by the progress of 
 
130 
 
 ARROWS OF THE GRACE. 
 
 But how deep the workings of these new springs of knowL 
 edge are to be, and how great our need of them, and how far 
 the brightness and the beneficence of them are to reach among 
 all the best interests of men — perhaps none of us can yet con- 
 ceive, far less know or say. For, much as I reverence physi- 
 cal science as a means of mental education (and you know 
 how I have contended for it, as such, now these twenty years, 
 from the sunny afternoon of spring when Ehrenberg and you 
 and I went hunting for infusoria in Christchurch meadow 
 streams, to the hour when the prize offered by Sir "Walter 
 Trevelyan and yourself for the best essay on the Fauna of 
 that meadow, marked the opening of a new era in English 
 education ] ) — much, I say, as I reverence physical science in 
 this function, I reverence it, at this moment, more as the 
 source of utmost human practical power, and the means by 
 which the far-distant races of the world, who now sit in dark- 
 ness and the shadow 7 of death, are to be reached and regener- 
 ated. At home or far away — the call is equally instant — 
 here, for want of more extended physical science, there is 
 plague in our streets, famine in our fields ; the pest strikes 
 root and fruit over a hemisphere of the earth, we know not 
 why ; the voices of our children fade away into silence of 
 venomous death, we know not why ; the population of this 
 most civilized country resists every effort to lead it into purity 
 of habit and habitation — to give it genuineness of nourish- 
 
 profouncler science, by the spread among the people of the resultant 
 practical knowledge, by stricter obedience to physiological laws, by a 
 consequent more self-denying spirit, some disorders may at a future day 
 be cured, which cannot be prevented, and some, perhaps, pre vented, 
 which never can be cured." 
 
 1 Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg, the naturalist and author of many 
 works, of which those on infusoria may be especially noted here. He 
 was born in 1795, and in 1842 was elected Principal Secretary to the 
 Berlin Academy of Science, which post he held till his death in 1876. 
 The late Sir Walter Calverley Trevelyan, Bart., will also be remembered 
 in connection with the study of natural science, as well as for his efforts 
 in philanthropy. He died in March, 1879. I have been unable to find 
 any further information as to the prize mentioned by Mr. Ruskin, or aa 
 to the essay which obtained it. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 131 
 
 ment, and wholesomeness of air, as a new interference with its 
 liberty ; and insists vociferously on its right to helpless death. 
 All this is terrible ; but it is more terrible yet that dim, phos- 
 phorescent, frightful superstitions still hold their own over 
 two-thirds of the inhabited globe, and that all the phenomena 
 of nature which were intended by the Creator to enforce His 
 eternal laws of love and judgment, and which, rightly under- 
 stood, enforce them more strongly by their patient beneficence, 
 and their salutary destructiveness, than the miraculous dew 
 on Gideon's fleece, or the restrained lightnings of Horeb — 
 that all these legends of God's daily dealing with His creatures 
 remain unread, or are read backwards, into blind, hundred- 
 armed horror of idol cosmogony. 
 
 How strange it seems that physical science should ever have 
 been thought adverse to religion ! The pride of physical 
 science is, indeed, adverse, like every other pride, both to re- 
 ligion and truth ; but sincerity of science, so far from being 
 hostile, is the path-maker among the mountains for the feet 
 of those who publish peace. 
 
 Now, therefore, and now only, it seems to me, the Univer- 
 sity has become complete in her function as a teacher of the 
 youth of the nation to which every hour gives wider authority 
 over distant lands ; and from which every rood of extended 
 dominion demands new, various, and variously applicable 
 knowledge of the laws which govern the constitution of the 
 globe, and must finally regulate the industry, no less than dis* 
 cipline the intellect, of the human race. I can hardly turn 
 my mind from these deep causes of exultation to the minor 
 difficulties which beset or restrict your undertaking. The 
 great work is accomplished ; the immediate impression made 
 by it is of little importance ; and as for my own special sub- 
 jects of thought or aim, though many of them are closely in- 
 volved in what has been done, and some principles which I 
 believe to be, in their way, of great importance, are awkwardly 
 compromised in what has been imperfectly done — all these I am 
 tempted to waive, or content to compromise when only I know 
 that the building is in main points fit for its mighty work. Yet 
 you will not think that it was matter of indifference to me 
 
132 
 
 ARROWS OF THE OH ACE, 
 
 when I saw, as I went over Professor Brodie's 1 chemical lab* 
 oratories the other day, how closely this success of adaptation 
 was connected with the choice of the style. It was very 
 touching and wonderful to me. Here was the architecture 
 which I had learned to know and love in pensive ruins, de- 
 serted by the hopes and efforts of men, or in dismantled for- 
 tress-fragments recording only their cruelty — here was this 
 very architecture lending itself, as if created only for these, to 
 the foremost activities of human discovery, and the tenderest 
 functions of human mercy. No other architecture, as I felt 
 in an instant, could have thus adapted itself to a new and 
 strange office. No fixed arrangements of frieze and pillar, 
 nor accepted proportions of wall and roof, nor practised re- 
 finement of classical decoration, could have otherwise than ab- 
 surdly and fantastically yielded its bed to the crucible, and its 
 blast to the furnace ; but these old vaultings and strong but- 
 tresses — ready always to do service to man, whatever his bid- 
 ding — to shake the waves of war back from his seats of rock, 
 or prolonged through faint twilights of sanctuary, the sighs 
 of his superstition — he had but to ask it of them, and they 
 entered at once into the lowliest ministries of the arts of heal- 
 ing, and the sternest and clearest offices in the service of sci- 
 ence. 
 
 And the longer I examined the Museum arrangements, the 
 more I felt that it could be only some accidental delay in the 
 recognition of this efficiency for its work which had caused 
 any feeling adverse to its progress among the members of the 
 University. The general idea about the Museum has perhaps 
 been, hitherto, that it is a forced endeavor to bring decorative 
 forms of architecture into uncongenial uses ; whereas, the real 
 fact is, as far as I can discern it, that no other architecture 
 would, under the required circumstances, have been possible ; 
 and that any effort to introduce classical types of form into 
 these laboratories and museums must have ended in ludicrous 
 discomfiture. But the building has now reached a point of 
 
 1 Mr. Brodie, who succeeded his father as Sir Benjamin Brodie in 
 1867, was appointed Professor of Chemistry at Oxford in 1855. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 133 
 
 crisis, and it depends upon the treatment which its rooms now 
 receive in completion, whether the facts of their propriety and 
 utility be acknowledged by the public, or lost sight of in the 
 distraction of their attention to matters wholly external. 
 
 So strongly I feel this, that, whatever means of decoration 
 had been at your disposal, I should have been inclined to 
 recommend an exceeding reserve in that matter. Perhaps I 
 should even have desired such reserve on abstract grounds of 
 feeling. The study of Natural History is one eminently ad- 
 dressed to the active energies of body and mind. Nothing is 
 to be got out of it by dreaming, not always much by thinking 
 — everything by seeking and seeing. It is work for the hills 
 and fields, — work of foot and hand, knife and hammer, — so 
 far as it is to be afterwards carried on in the house, the 
 more active and workmanlike our proceedings the better, fresh 
 air blowing in from the windows, and nothing interfering with 
 the free space for our shelves and instruments on the walls. I 
 am not sure that much interior imagery or color, or other ex- 
 citing address to any of the observant faculties, would be de- 
 sirable under such circumstances. You know best ; but I 
 should no more think of painting in bright colors beside you, 
 while you were dissecting or analyzing, than of entertaining 
 you by a concert of fifes and cymbals. 
 
 But farther : Do you suppose Gothic decoration is an easy 
 thing, or that it is to be carried out with a certainty of suc- 
 cess at the first trial, under new and difficult conditions ? The 
 system of the Gothic decorations took eight hundred years 
 to mature, gathering its power by undivided inheritance of 
 traditional method, and unbroken accession of systematic 
 power ; from its culminating point in the Sainte Chapelle, it 
 faded through four hundred years of splendid decline ; now 
 for two centuries it has lain dead — and more than so — buried ; 
 and more than so, forgotten, as a dead man out of mind ; do 
 you expect to revive it out of those retorts and furnaces of 
 yours, as the cloud-spirit of the Arabian sea rose from beneath 
 the seals of Solomon ? Perhaps I have been myself faultfully 
 answerable for this too eager hope in your mind (as well as 
 in that of others) by what I have urged so often respecting 
 
134 
 
 ARROWS OF THE OH ACE. 
 
 the duty of bringing out the power of subordinate workmen 
 in decorative design. But do you think I meant workmen 
 trained (or untrained) in the way that ours have been until 
 lately, and then cast loose on a sudden, into unassisted con- 
 tentions with unknown elements of style ? I meant the pre- 
 cise contrary of this ; I meant workmen as we have yet to 
 create them : men inheriting the instincts of their craft 
 through many generations, rigidly trained in every mechani- 
 cal art that bears on their materials, and familiarized from in- 
 fancy with every condition of their beautiful and perfect 
 treatment ; informed and refined in manhood, by constant 
 observation of all natural fact and form ; then classed, accord- 
 ing to their proved capacities, in ordered companies, in which 
 every man shall know his part, and take it calmly and without 
 effort or doubt, — indisputably well, unaccusably accomplished, 
 — mailed and weaponed cap-d-pie for his place and function. 
 Can you lay your hand on such men ? or do you think that 
 mere natural good- will and good-feeling can at once supply 
 their place ? Not so : and the more faithful and earnest the 
 minds you have to deal with, the more careful you should be 
 not to urge them towards fields of effort, in which, too early 
 committed, they can only be put to unserviceable defeat. 
 
 Nor can you hope to accomplish by rule or system what 
 cannot be done by individual taste. The laws of color are 
 definable up to certain limits, but they are not yet defined. 
 So far are they from definition, that the last, and, on the 
 w T hole, best work on the subject (Sir Gardner Wilkinson's) 
 declares the " color concords 5 ' of preceding authors to be dis- 
 cords, and vice versdJ 
 
 Much, therefore, as I love color decoration when it is 
 rightly given, and essential as it has been felt by the great 
 architects of all periods to the completion of their work, I 
 would not, in your place, endeavor to carry out such decora- 
 tion at present, in any elaborate degree, in the interior of the 
 Museum. Leave it for future thought ; above all, try no 
 
 1 Sir Gardner Wilkinson's book On Color and the Diffusion of Taste 
 was published in 1858. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 135 
 
 experiments. Let small drawings be made of the proposed 
 arrangements of color in every room ; have them altered on 
 the paper till you feel they are right ; then carry them out 
 firmly and simply ; but, observe, with as delicate execution 
 as possible. Bough work is good in its place, three hundred 
 feet above the eye, on a cathedral front, but not in the in- 
 terior of rooms, devoted to studies in which everything 
 depends upon accuracy of touch and keenness of sight. 
 
 With respect to this finishing, by the last touches bestowed 
 on the scutyture of the building, I feel painfully the harmfnl- 
 ness of any ill-advised parsimony at this moment. For it 
 may, perhaps, be alleged by the advocates of retrenchment, 
 that so long as the building is fit for its uses (and your report 
 is conclusive as to its being so), economy in treatment of ex- 
 ternal feature is perfectly allowable, and will in nowise dimin- 
 ish the serviceabieness of the building in the great objects 
 which its designs regarded. To a certain extent this is true. 
 You have comfortable rooms, I hope sufficient apparatus ; and 
 it now depends much more on the professors than on the or- 
 naments of the building, whether or not it is to become a 
 bright or obscure centre of public instruction. Yet there are 
 other points to be considered. As the building stands at 
 present, there is a discouraging aspect of parsimony about it. 
 One sees that the architect has done the utmost he could with 
 the means at his disposal, and that just at the point of reach- 
 ing what was right, he has been stopped for want of funds. 
 This is visible in almost every stone of the edifice. It separates 
 it with broad distinctiveness from all the other buildings in 
 the University. It may be seen at once that our other public 
 institutions, and all our colleges — though some of them simply 
 designed — are yet richly built, never pinchingly. Pieces of 
 princely costliness, every here and there, mingle among the 
 simplicities or severities of the student's life. What practical 
 need, for instance, have we at Christchurch of the beautiful 
 fan-vaulting under which we ascend to dine ? We might have 
 as easily achieved the eminence of our banquets under a plain 
 vault. What need have the readers in the Bodleian of the 
 ribbed traceries which decorate its external walls ? Yet, which 
 
136 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 of those readers would not think that learning was insulted by 
 their removal ? And are there any of the students of Balliol 
 devoid of gratitude for the kindly munificence of the man 
 who gave them the beautiful sculptured brackets of their oriel 
 window, when three massy projecting stones would have 
 answered the purpose just as well? In these and also other 
 regarded and pleasant portions of our colleges, we find always 
 a wealthy and worthy completion of all appointed features, 
 which I believe is not without strong, though untraced effect, 
 on the minds of the younger scholars, giving them respect for 
 the branches of learning which these buildings are intended 
 to honor, and increasing, in a certain degree, that sense of 
 the value of delicacy and accuracy which is the first condition 
 of advance in those branches of learning themselves. 
 
 Your Museum, if you now bring it to hurried completion, 
 will convey an impression directly the reverse of this. It will 
 have the look of a place, not where a revered system of in- 
 struction is established, but where an unadvised experiment is 
 being disadvantageously attempted. It is yet in your power 
 to avoid this, and to make the edifice as noble in aspect as in 
 function. "Whatever chance there may be of failure in interior 
 work, rich ornamentation may be given, without any chance 
 of failure, to just that portion of the exterior which will give 
 pleasure to every passer-by, and express the meaning of the 
 building best to the eyes of strangers. There is, I repeat, no 
 chance of serious failure in this external decoration, because 
 your architect has at his command the aid of men, such as 
 worked with the architects of past times. Not only has the 
 art of Gothic sculpture in part remained, though that of 
 Gothic color has been long lost, but the unselfish — and, I re- 
 gret to say, in part self-sacrificing — zeal of two first-rate sculp- 
 tors, Mr. Munro and Mr. Woolner, which has already given 
 you a series of noble statues, is still at your disposal, to head 
 and systematize the efforts of inferior workmen. 
 
 I do not know if you will attribute it to a higher estimate 
 than yours of the genius of the O'Shea family, 1 or to a lower 
 
 1 See note to p, 139. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 137 
 
 estimate of what they have as yet accomplished, that I believe 
 they will, as they proceed, produce much better ornamental 
 sculpture than any at present completed in the Museum. It 
 is also to be remembered that sculptors are able to work for 
 us with a directness of meaning which none of our painters 1 
 could bring to their task, even were they disposed to help us, 
 A painter is scarcely excited to his strength, but by subjects 
 full of circumstance, such as it would be difficult to suggest 
 appropriately in the present building ; but a sculptor has room 
 enough for his full power in the portrait statues, which are 
 necessarily the leading features of good Gothic decoration. 
 Let me pray you, therefore, so far as you have influence with 
 the delegacy, to entreat their favorable consideration of the 
 project stated in Mr. Gres well's appeal — the enrichment of the 
 doorway, and the completion of the sculpture of the West 
 Front. There is a reason for desiring such a plan to be carried 
 out, of wider reach than any bearing on the interest of the 
 Museum itself. I believe that the elevation of all arts in Eng- 
 land to their true dignity, depends principally on our recover- 
 ing that unity of purpose in sculptors and architects, which 
 characterized the designers of all great Christian buildings. 
 Sculpture, separated from architecture, always degenerates 
 into effeminacies and conceits ; architecture, stripped of sculpt- 
 ure, is at best a convenient arrangement of dead walls ; 
 associated, they not only adorn, but reciprocally exalt each 
 other, and give to all the arts of the country in which they 
 thus exist, a correspondent tone of majesty. 
 
 But I would plead for the enrichment of this doorway by 
 portrait sculpture, not so much even on any of these important 
 grounds, as because it w r ould be the first example in modern 
 English architecture of the real value and right place of 
 commemorative statues. We seem never to know at present 
 where to put such statues. In the midst of the blighted trees 
 of desolate squares, or at the crossings of confused streets, or 
 balanced on the pinnacles of pillars, or riding across the tops 
 of triumphal arches, or blocking up the aisles of cathedrals — 
 in none of these positions, I think, does the portrait statue 
 answer its purpose. It may be a question whether the erec- 
 
138 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 tion of such statues is honorable to the erectors, but assuredly 
 it is not honorable to the persons whom it pretends to com- 
 memorate ; nor is it any wise matter of exultation to a man 
 who has deserved well of his country to reflect that he may 
 one day encumber a crossing, or disfigure a park gate. But 
 there is no man of worth or heart who would not feel it a 
 high and priceless reward that his statue should be placed 
 Where it might remind the youth of England of what had been 
 exemplary in his life, or useful in his labors, and might be 
 regarded with no empty reverence, no fruitless pensiveness, 
 but with the emulative, eager, unstinted passionateness of 
 honor, which youth pays to the dead leaders of the cause it 
 loves, or discoverers of the light by which it lives. To be 
 buried under weight of marble, or with splendor of ceremo- 
 nial, is still no more than burial ; but to be remembered 
 daily, with profitable tenderness, by the activest intelligences 
 of the nation we have served, and to have power granted even 
 to the shadows of the poor features, sunk into dust, still to 
 warn, to animate, to command, as the father's brow rules and 
 exalts the toil of his children. This is not burial, but im- 
 mortality. 
 
 There is, however, another kind of portraiture, already 
 richly introduced in the works of the Museum ; the portrait- 
 ure, namely, of flowers and animals, respecting which I must 
 ask you to let me say a few selfish, no less than congratulatory 
 words — selfish, inasmuch as they bear on this visible exposition 
 of a principle which it has long been one of my most earnest 
 aims to maintain. We English call ourselves a practical 
 people ; but, nevertheless, there are some of our best and most 
 general instincts which it takes us half-centuries to put into 
 practice. Probably no educated Englishman or English- 
 woman has ever, for the last forty years, visited Scotland, with 
 leisure on their hands, without making a pilgrimage to Mel- 
 rose ; nor have they ever, 1 suppose, accomplished the pil- 
 grimage without singing to themselves the burden of Scott/s 
 description of the Abbey. Nor in that description (may it 
 not also be conjectured?) do they usually feel any couplets 
 more deeply than the— 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 139 
 
 " Spreading herbs and flowerets bright 
 Glistened with the dew of night. 
 No herb nor floweret glistened there 
 But was carved in the cloister arches as fair." 
 
 And yet, though we are raising every year in England new 
 examples of every kind of costly and variously intended build- 
 ings, — ecclesiastical, civil, and domestic, — none of us, through 
 all that period, had boldness enough to put the pretty couplets 
 into simple practice. We went on, even in the best Gothic 
 work we attempted, clumsily copying the rudest ornaments of 
 previous buildings ; we never so much as dreamed of learn- 
 ing from the monks of Melrose, and seeking for help beneath 
 the dew that sparkled on their "gude kail" garden. 1 
 
 Your Museum at Oxford is literally the first building raised 
 in England since the close of the fifteenth century, which has 
 fearlessly put to new trial this old faith in nature, and in the 
 genius of the unassisted workman, who gathered out of nature 
 the materials he needed. I am entirely glad, therefore, that 
 you have decided on engraving for publication one of O'Shea's 
 capitals ; 2 it will be a complete type of the whole work, in its 
 inner meaning, and far better to show one of them in its com- 
 pleteness than to give any reduced sketch of the building. 
 Nevertheless, beautiful as that capital is, and as all the rest of 
 O'Shea's work is likely to be, it is not yet perfect Gothic 
 sculpture ; and it might give rise to dangerous error, if the 
 admiration given to these carvings were unqualified. 
 
 I cannot, of course, enter in this letter into any discussion 
 of the question, more and more vexed among us daily, respect- 
 
 1 ' f The monks of Melrose made good kail 
 On Friday, when they fasted.* 1 
 The kail leaf is the one principally employed in the decorations of the 
 abbey. (Original note to The Oxford Museum, p. 83.) 
 
 ' 2 This engraving, which formed the frontispiece of The Oxford 
 Museum, will be found facing the title-rjage of the present volume, the 
 original plate having proved in excellent condition. O'Shea was, to- 
 gether with others of his name and family, amongst the principal work- 
 men on the building. The capital represents the following ferns : the 
 common bart's-tongue 'scolopendrium vulgare), the northern hard-fern 
 (blechnum boreale), and the male fern (filix mas;. 
 
140 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACK 
 
 ing the due meaning and scope of conventionalism in treat- 
 ment of natural form ; but I may state briefly what, I trust, 
 will be the conclusion to which all this "vexing" will at last 
 lead our best architects. 
 
 The highest art in all kinds is that which conveys the most 
 truth ; and the best ornamentation possible would be the 
 painting of interior walls with frescos by Titian, representing 
 perfect Humanity in color ; and the sculpture of exterior walls 
 by Phidias, representing perfect Humanity in form. Titian 
 and Phidias are precisely alike in their conception and treat- 
 ment of nature — everlasting standards of the right. 
 
 Beneath ornamentation, such as men like these could be- 
 stow, falls in various rank, according to its subordination to 
 vulgar uses or inferior places, what is commonly conceived as 
 ornamental art. The lower its office, and the less tractable its 
 material, the less of nature it should contain, until a zigzag 
 becomes the best ornament for the hem of a robe, and a 
 mosaic of bits of glass the best design for a colored window. 
 But all these forms of lower art are to be conventional only 
 because they are subordinate — not because conventionalism is 
 in itself a good or desirable thing. All right conventionalism 
 is a wise acceptance of, and compliance with, conditions of 
 restraint or inferiority : it may be inferiority of our knowledge 
 or power, as in the art of a semi-savage nation ; or restraint 
 by reason of material, as in the way the glass painter should 
 restrict himself to transparent hue, and a sculptor deny him- 
 self the eyelash and the film of flowing hair, which he cannot 
 cut in marble : but in all cases whatever, right conventional- 
 ism is either a wise acceptance of an inferior place, or a noble 
 display of power under accepted limitation ; it is not an im- 
 provement of natural form into something better or purer 
 than Nature herself. 
 
 Now this great and most precious principle may be com- 
 promised in two quite opposite ways. It is conrproniised on 
 one side when men suppose that the degradation of a natural 
 form which fits it for some subordinate place is an improvement 
 of it ; and that a black profile on a red ground, because it is 
 proper on a' water-jug, is therefore an idealization of Humanity, 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 141 
 
 and nobler art than a picture of Titian. And it is compro- 
 mised equally gravely on the opposite side, when men refuse 
 to submit to the limita- 
 tion of material and the 
 fitnesses of office — when 
 they try to produce fin- 
 ished pictures in colored 
 glass, or substitute the 
 inconsiderate imitation 
 of natural objects for the 
 perfectness of adapted 
 and disciplined design. 
 
 There is a tendency 
 in the work of the Ox- 
 ford Museum to err on 
 this last side ; unavoid- 
 able, indeed, in the pres- 
 ent state of our art- 
 knowledge — and less to 
 be regretted in a build- 
 ing devoted to natural 
 science than in any 
 other : nevertheless, I 
 cannot close this letter 
 without pointing it out, 
 and warning the general 
 reader against suppos- 
 ing that the ornamenta- 
 tion of the Museum is, 
 or can be as yet, a rep- 
 resentation of what 
 Gothic work will be, 
 when its revival is com- 
 plete. Far more Severe, £i7 r om " The Oxford Museum/ p. 89.] 
 
 yet more perfect and lovely, that work will involve, under 
 sterner conventional restraint, the expression nqt only of 
 natural form, but of all vital and noble natural law. For 
 the truth of decoration is never to be measured by its imita- 
 
142 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CIIACE. 
 
 tive power, but by its suggestive and informative power. In 
 the spandril of the iron-work of our roof, for instance, on p. 141, 
 the horse-chestnut leaf and nut are used as the principal ele- 
 ments of form ; they are not ill-arranged, and produce a more 
 agreeable effect than convolutions of the iron could have given, 
 unhelped by any reference to natural objects. Nevertheless, 
 I do not call it an absolutely good design ; for it would have 
 been possible, with far severer conventional treatment of the 
 iron bars, and stronger constructive arrangement of them, to 
 have given vigorous expression, not of the shapes of leaves and 
 nuts only, but of their peculiar radiant or fanned expansion, 
 and other conditions of group and growth in the tree ; which 
 would have been just the more beautiful and interesting, as 
 they would have arisen from deeper research into nature, and 
 more adaptive modifying power in the designer's mind, than 
 the mere leaf termination of a riveted scroll. 
 
 I am compelled to name these deficiences, in order to pre- 
 vent misconception of the principles we are endeavoring to 
 enforce ; but I do not name them as at present to be avoided, 
 or even much to be regretted. They are not chargeable either 
 on the architect, or on the subordinate workmen ; but only 
 on the system which has for three centuries withheld all of us 
 from healthy study ; and although I doubt not that lovelier 
 and juster expressions of the Gothic principle will be ulti- 
 mately aimed at by us, than any which are possible in the Ox- 
 ford Museum, its builders will never lose their claim to our 
 chief gratitude, as the first guides in a right direction ; and 
 the building itself— the first exponent of the recovered truth 
 —will only be the more venerated the more it is excelled. 
 Believe me, my dear Acland, 
 
 Ever affectionately yours, 
 
 J. BuSKES* 
 
LETTERS ON ART 
 
 143 
 
 [From ;< The Witness," (Edinburgh), September 16, 1857.] 
 
 THE CASTLE ROCK. 
 
 Dunbar, lAtli September, 1857. 
 
 To the Editor of tl The Witness." 
 
 My dear Sir : As I was leaving Edinburgh, this morning, I 
 heard a report which gave me more concern than I can easily 
 express, and very sufficiently spoiled the pleasure of my drive 
 here. If there be no truth in the said report, of course take 
 no notice of this letter ; but if there be real ground for my 
 fears, I trust you will allow me space in your columns for a 
 few words on the subject. 
 
 The whisper — I hope I may say, the calumny — regarded 
 certain proceedings which are taking place at the Castle. It 
 was said to be the architect's intention to cut down into the 
 brow of the Castle rock, in order to afford secure foundation 
 for some new buildings. 1 
 
 Now, the Castle rock of Edinburgh is, as far as I know, 
 simply the noblest in Scotland conveniently approachable by 
 any creatures but sea-gulls or peewits. Ailsa and the Bass are 
 of course more wonderful ; and, I suppose, in the West High- 
 lands there are masses of crag more wild and fantastic ; but 
 people only go to see these once or twice in their lives, while 
 the Castle rock has a daily influence in forming the taste, or 
 kindling the imagination, of every promising youth in Edin- 
 burgh. Even irrespectively of its position, it is a mass of 
 singular importance among the rocks of Scotland. It is not 
 easy to find among your mountains a " craig " of so definite a 
 form, and on so magnificent a scale. Among the central hills 
 of Scotland, from Ben Wyvis to the Lammermuirs, I know of 
 none comparable to it ; while, besides being bold and vast, its 
 bars of basalt are so nobly arranged, and form a series of 
 curves at once so majestic and harmonious, from the turf at 
 their base to the roots of the. bastions, that as long as your 
 artists have that crag to study, I do not see that they need 
 casts from Michael Angelo, or any one else, to teach them 
 the laws of composition or the sources of sublimity. 
 
 1 A new armory was to be added to the Castle. 
 
144 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CITACE. 
 
 But if you once cut into the brow of it, all is over. Dis. 
 turb, in any single point, the simple lines in which the walla 
 now advance and recede upon the tufted grass of its summit, 
 and you may as well make a quarry of it at once, and blast 
 away rock, Castle, and all. It admits of some question 
 whether the changes made in the architecture of your city of 
 late years are in every case improvements ; but very certainly 
 you cannot improve the architecture of your volcanic crags by 
 any explosive retouches. And your error will be wholly ir- 
 remediable. You may restore Trinity Chapel, or repudiate 
 its restoration, at your pleasure, but there will be no need to 
 repudiate restoration of the Castle rock. You cannot re-face 
 nor re-rivet that, nor order another in a "similar style." It 
 is a dangerous kind of engraving which you practise on so 
 large a jewel. But I trust I am wasting my time in writing 
 of this : I cannot believe the report, nor think that the people 
 of Edinburgh, usually so proud of their city, are yet so un- 
 aware of what constitutes its chief nobleness, and so utterly 
 careless of the very features of its scenery, which have been 
 the means of the highest and purest education to their greatest 
 men, as to allow this rock to be touched. If the works are con- 
 fined to the inside of the wall, no harm will be done ; but let 
 a single buttress, or a single cleft, encumber or divide its outer 
 brow, and there is not a man of sensibility or sense in Edin- 
 burgh who will not blush and grieve for it as long as he lives. 
 Believe me, my dear Sir, very faithfully yours, 
 
 J. EUSKIN. 
 
 [From " The Witness 1 '' (Edinburgh), September 30, 1857.] 
 
 EDINBURGH CASTLE. 
 
 Penrith, 21th September. 
 
 To the Editor of ' 5 The Witness:' 
 
 My dear Sir : I see by some remarks in the Literary Gazette 1 
 on the letter of mine to which you gave a place in your col- 
 
 1 The Literary Gazette of September 26, 1857, after quoting a great 
 part of the previous letter, stated that the new armory was not to be 
 built without all due regard to the preservation of the rock, and that 
 there was therefore no real cause for alarm. 
 
LETTERS 0A r ART. 
 
 145 
 
 umns of the 16th, that the design of the proposed additions 
 to Edinburgh Castle is receiving really serious consideration. 
 Perhaps, therefore, a few words respecting the popular but 
 usually unprofitable business of castle-building may be of some 
 interest to your readers. We are often a little confused in our 
 ideas respecting the nature of a castle — properly so called. A 
 " castle " is a fortified dwelling-house containing accommoda- 
 tion for as many retainers as are needed completely to defend 
 its position. A ' "fortress" is a fortified military position, gen- 
 erally understood to be extensive enough to contain large 
 bodies of troops. And a " citadel," a fortified military position 
 connected with a fortified town, and capable of holding out 
 even if the town were taken. 
 
 It is as well to be clear on these points : for certain condi- 
 tions of architecture are applicable and beautiful in each case, 
 according to the use and character of the building ; and cer- 
 tain other conditions are in like manner inapplicable and ugly, 
 because contrary to its character, and unhelpful to its use. 
 
 Now this helpfulness and unhelpfulness in architectural 
 features depends, of course, primarily on the military practice 
 of the time ; so that forms which were grand, because rational, 
 before gunpowder was invented, are ignoble, because ridicu- 
 lous, in days of shell and shot. The very idea and possibility 
 of the castle proper have passed away with the arms of the 
 middle ages. A man's house might be defended by his ser- 
 vants against a troop of cavalry, if its doors were solid and it& 
 battlements pierced. But it cannot be defended against a 
 couple of field-pieces, whatever the thickness of its oak, or 
 number of its arrow-slits. 
 
 I regret, as much as any one can regret, the loss of castel- 
 lated architecture properly so called. Nothing can be more 
 noble or interesting than the true thirteenth or fourteenth cen- 
 tury castle, when built in a difficult position, its builder taking 
 advantage of every inch of ground to gain more room, and of 
 every irregularity of surface for purposes of outlook and de- 
 fence ; so that the castle sate its rock as a strong rider sits his 
 horse — fitting its limbs to every writhe of the flint beneath it ; 
 and fringing the mountain promontory far into the sky with 
 
146 
 
 ARROWS OF TEE CHACE. 
 
 the wild crests of its fantastic battlements. Of such castles we 
 can see no more ; and it is just because I know them well and 
 love them deeply that I say so. I know that their power and 
 dignity consists, just as a soldier's consists, in their knowing 
 and doing their work thoroughly ; in their being advanced on 
 edge or lifted on peak of crag, not for show nor pride, but for 
 due guard and outlook ; and that all their beautiful irregular* 
 ities and apparent caprices of form are in reality their fulfil- 
 ments of need, made beautiful by their compelled association 
 with the wild strength and grace of the natural rock. All 
 attempts to imitate them now are useless — mere girl's play. 
 Mind, I like girl's play, and child's play, in its place, but not 
 in the planning of military buildings. Child's play in many 
 cases is the truest wisdom. I accept to the full the truth of 
 those verses of Wordsworth's 1 beginning — 
 
 " Who fancied what a pretty sight 
 This rock would be, if edged around 
 With living snowdrops V— circlet bright I 
 How glorious to this orchard ground ! 
 Was it the humor of a child ? " etc. 
 
 But I cannot apply the same principles to more serious 
 matters, and vary the reading of the verses into application to 
 the works of Edinburgh Castle, thus : 
 
 " Who fancied what a pretty sight 
 This rock would be, if edged around 
 With tiny turrets, pierced and light, 
 How glorious to this warlike ground ! ]' 
 
 Therefore, though I do not know exactly what you have got 
 to do in Edinburgh Castle, whatever it may be, I am certain 
 the only right way to do it is the plain way. Build what is 
 needed — chapel, barracks, or dwelling-house — in the best 
 places, in a military point of view, of dark stone, and bomb- 
 
 1 Poems of the Fancy, xiv. (1803). The quotation omits two lines ai'tci 
 the fourth : 
 
 " Who loved the little rock, and set 
 Upon its head this coronet 
 
 The second stanza then begin* : " Was it the humor of a child ?'" etc 
 
LETTERS ON ART 
 
 147 
 
 proof, keeping them low, and within the existing lines of 
 ramparts. 
 
 That is the rational thing to do ; and the inhabitants of 
 Edinburgh will find it in the end the picturesque thing. It 
 would be so under any circumstances : but it is especially so 
 in this instance ; for the grandeur of Edinburgh Castle de- 
 pends eminently on the great, unbroken, yet beautifully varied 
 parabolic curve in which it descends from the Round Tower on 
 the Castle Hill to the terminating piece of impendent preci- 
 pice on the north. It is the last grand feature of Edinburgh 
 left as yet uninjured. You have filled up your valley with a 
 large chimney, a mound, and an Institution ; broken in upon 
 the Old Town with a Bank, a College, and several fires ; 
 dwarfed the whole of Princes Street by the Scott Monument ; 
 and cut Arthur's Seat in half by the Queen's Drive. It only 
 remains for .you to spoil the curve of your Castle, and your 
 illustrations of the artistic principle of breadth will be com- 
 plete. 
 
 It may appear at first that I depart from the rule of use- 
 fulness I have proposed, in entreating for the confinement of 
 all buildings undertaken within the existing ramparts, in order 
 to preserve the contour of the outside rock. But I presume 
 that in the present state of military science, and of European 
 politics, Edinburgh Castle is not a very important military 
 position ; and that to make it a serviceable fortress or citadel, 
 many additional works would be required, seriously interfer- 
 ing with the convenience of the inhabitants of the New Town, 
 and with the arrangements of the Railroad Company. And, 
 as long as these subordinate works are not carried out, I do 
 not see any use in destroying your beautiful rock, merely to 
 bring another gun to bear, or give accommodation to another 
 company. But I both see, and would earnestly endeavor to 
 advocate, the propriety of keeping the architecture of the 
 building within those ramparts masculine and simple in style, 
 and of not allowing a mistaken conception of picturesqueness 
 to make a noble fortress look like a child's toy. 
 
 Believe me, my dear Sir, very faithfully yours, 
 
 J. RUSKIN. 
 
148 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CIIACE. 
 
 [From " The Daily Telegraph," December 22, 1871.] 
 
 CASTLES AND KENNELS. 
 
 To the Editor of' 1 The Daily Telegraph:' 
 
 Sir : I was astonished the other day by your article on 
 taverns, but never yet in my life was so much astonished by 
 anything in print as by your to-day's article on castles. 1 
 
 I am a castle-lover of the truest sort. I do not suppose 
 any man alive has felt anything like the sorrow or anger with 
 which I have watched the modern destruction by railroad and 
 manufacture, helped by the wicked improvidence of our great 
 families, of half the national memorials of England, either 
 actually or in effect and power of association — as Conway, for 
 instance, now vibrating to ruin over a railroad station. For 
 Warwick Castle, I named it in my letter of last October, in 
 " Fors Clavigera," 2 as a type of the architectural treasures of 
 
 1 The article on taverns occurred in the Daily Telegraph of the 8th 
 December, and commented on a recent meeting of the Licensed Victual- 
 lers' Protection Society. There was also a short article upon drunken- 
 ness as a cause of crime in the Daily Telegraph of December 9 — referred 
 to by Mr. Ruskin in a letter which will be found in the second volume 
 of this book. The article on castles concluded with an appeal for pub- 
 lic subscriptions towards the restoration of Warwick Castle, then recently 
 destroyed by fire. 
 
 2 The passage alluded to is partly as follows: 1 'It happened also, 
 which was the real cause of my bias in after-life, that my father had a 
 real love of pictures. . . . Accordingly, wherever there was a gallery to 
 be seen, we stopped at the nearest town for the night ; and in reverent- 
 est manner I thus saw nearly all the noblemen's houses in England ; 
 not indeed myself at that age caring for the pictures, but much for castles 
 and ruins, feeling more and more, as I grew older, the healthy delight 
 of uncovetous admiration, and perceiving, as soon as I could perceive 
 any political truth at all, that it was probably much happier to live in a 
 small house and have Warwick Castle to be astonished at, than to live 
 in Warwick Castle, and have nothing to be astonished at ; and that, at 
 all events, it would not make Brunswick Square in the least more pleas- 
 antly habitable to pull W T arwick Castle down. And, at this day, though 
 J have kind invitations enough to visit America, I could not, even for a 
 couple of months, live in a country so miserable as to possess no 
 castles." 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 149 
 
 this England of ours known to me and beloved from child- 
 hood to this hour. 
 
 But, Sir, I am at this hour endeavoring to find work and 
 food for a boy of seventeen, one of eight people — two married 
 couples, a woman and her daughter, and this boy and his sis- 
 ter — who all sleep together in one room, some 18 ft. square, 
 in the heart of London ; and you call upon me for a subscrip- 
 tion to help to rebuild Warwick Castle. 
 
 Sir, I am an old and thoroughbred Tory, and as such I say, 
 " If a noble family cannot rebuild their own castle, in God's 
 name let them live in the nearest ditch till they can." 
 
 I am, Sir, your faithful servant, 
 
 J. RlJSKIN. 
 
 Denmark Hill, Dec. 20. 
 
 [From " The Daily Telegraph, 1 ' December 25, 1871.] 
 
 VERONA v. WARWICK 
 
 To the Editor of " The Daily Telegraph." 
 
 Sir : — Of lodging for poor and rich you will perhaps permit 
 a further word or two from me, even in your close columns 
 for Christmas morning. You think me inconsistent because I 
 wanted to buy Verona, and do not want to restore Warwick. 1 
 
 I wanted, and still want, to buy Verona. I would give half 
 my fortune to buy it for England, if any other people would 
 help me. But I would buy it, that what is left of it might 
 not be burned, and what is lost of it not restored. It would 
 indeed be very pleasant — not to me only, but to many other 
 sorrowful persons — if things could be restored when we chose, 
 I would subscribe willingly to restore, for instance, the man- 
 ger wherein the King of Judah lay cradled this day some 
 years since, and not unwillingly to restore the poorer cradle 
 of our English King-maker, were it possible. But for the 
 
 1 In a second article npon the same subject the Daily Telegraph had 
 expressed surprise at Mr. Ruskin's former letter. " Who does not re- 
 member," it wrote, " his proposal to buy Verona, so as to secure from 
 decay the glorious monuments in it ? " 
 
150 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CBACE. 
 
 making of a new manger, to be exhibited for the edification 
 of the religious British public, I will not subscribe. No ; nor 
 for the building of mock castles, or mock cathedrals, or mocks 
 of anything. And the sum of what I have to say in this pres- 
 ent matter may be put in few words. 
 
 As an antiquary — which, thank Heaven, I am — I say, "Part 
 of Warwick Castle is burnt — 'tis pity. Take better care of 
 the rest." 
 
 As an old Tory — which, thank Heaven, I am — I say, " Lord 
 Warwick's house is burned. Let Lord Warwick build a better 
 if he can — a worse if he must ; but in any case, let him neither 
 beg nor borrow." 
 
 As a modern renovator and Liberal — which, thank Heaven, 
 I am not — I would say, "By all means let the public subscribe 
 to build a spick-and-span new Warwick Castle, and let the pict- 
 ures be touched up, and exhibited by gaslight ; let the family 
 live in the back rooms, and let there be a table d'hote in the great 
 hall at two and six every day, 2s. 6d. a head, and let us have 
 Guy's bowl for a dinner bell." 
 
 I am, Sir, your faithful servant, 
 
 John Buskin. 
 
 Denmark Hill, S.E., 24th (for 25^) December. 
 
 [From " The Daily Telegraph, " January 19, 1871.] 
 
 "NOTRE DAME DE PARIS:' 
 
 To the Editor of " The Daily Telegraph." 
 
 Sir : It may perhaps be interesting to some of your readers, 
 in the present posture of affairs round Paris, to know, as far as 
 I am able to tell them, the rank which the Church of Notre 
 Dame holds among architectural and historical monuments. 
 
 Nearly every great church in France has some merit special 
 to itself ; in other countries, one style is common to many dis- 
 tricts ; in Prance, nearly every province has its unique and 
 precious monument. 
 
 But of thirteenth-century Gothic — the most perfect archi- 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 151 
 
 tectural style north of the Alps — there is, both in historical 
 Interest, and in accomplished perfectness of art, one unique 
 monument — the Sainte Chapelle of Paris. 
 
 As examples of Gothic, ranging from the twelfth to the 
 fourteenth century, the cathedrals of Chartres, Rouen, Amiens, 
 Eheims, and Bourges, form a kind of cinque-foil round Notre 
 Dame of Paris, of which it is impossible to say which is the 
 more precious petal ; but any of those leaves would be w r orth 
 a complete rose of any other country's work except Italy's. 
 Nothing else in art, on the surface of the round earth, could 
 represent any one of them, if destroyed, or be named as of any 
 equivalent value. 
 
 Central among these, as in position, so in its school of 
 sculpture ; unequalled in that specialty but by the porch of 
 the north transept of Rouen, and, in a somewhat later school, 
 by the western porches of Bourges ; absolutely unreplaceabie 
 as a pure and lovely source of art instruction by any future 
 energy or ingenuity, stands — perhaps, this morning, I ought 
 rather to write, stood 1 — Notre Dame of Paris. 
 
 I am, Sir, your faithful servant, 
 
 J. RUSKIN. 
 
 [Prom "The Pall Mall Gazette," March 16, 1872.] 
 
 MR. RUSKIN 8 INFLUENCE: A DEFENCE. 
 
 To the Editor of li TM Pall Mall Gazette." 
 
 Sir : I receive many letters just now requesting me to take 
 notice of the new theory respecting Turner's work put forward 
 by Dr. Liebreich in his recent lecture at the Royal Institution. 2 
 
 1 This letter, it will be noticed, was written during the bombardment 
 and a few days before the capitulation of Paris in 1871. 
 
 2 On Friday, March 8, 1872, entitled Turner and Mulready— On the 
 Effect of certain Faults of Vision on Painting, with especial reference to 
 their Works The argument of the lecturer, and distinguished oculist, 
 was that the change of style in the pictures of Turner was due to a change 
 in luseyes which developed itself during the last twenty years of his life* 
 (See Proceedings of the Royal Institution, 1872, vol. vi. r p. 450.) 
 
152 
 
 ARROWS OF THE GRACE. 
 
 Will you permit me to observe in your columns, once for all. 
 that I have no time for the contradiction of the various foolish 
 opinions and assertions which from time to time are put for- 
 ward respecting Turner or his pictures ? All that is necessary 
 for any person generally interested in the arts to know about 
 Turner was clearly stated in f? Modern Painters " twenty years 
 ago, and I do not mean to state it again, nor to contradict any 
 contradictions of it. Dr. Liebreich is an ingenious and zeal- 
 ous scientific person. The public may derive much benefit 
 from consulting him on the subject of spectacles — not on that 
 of art. 
 
 As I am under the necessity of writing to you at any rate, 
 may I say further that I wish your critic of Mr. Eastlake 's 
 book 1 on the Gothic revival would explain what he means by 
 saying that my direct influence on architecture is always 
 wrong, and my indirect influence right ; because, if that be so, 
 I will try to exercise only indirect influence on my Oxford 
 pupils. But the fact to my own notion is otherwise. I am 
 proud enough to hope, for instance, that I have had some 
 
 1 A History of the Gothic Revival. By CharlesL. Eastlake, F.R.I.B.A. 
 London, Longman and Co., 1872. — In this work Mr. Eastlake had esti- 
 mated very highly Mr. Ruskin's influence on modern architecture, 
 whilst his reviewer was " disposed to say that Mr. Ruskin's direct and 
 immediate influences had almost always been in the wrong ; and his 
 more indirect influences as often in the right." It is upon these words 
 that Mr. Ruskin comments here, and to this comment the critic replied 
 in a letter which appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette of the 20th inst. 
 The main portion of his reply was as follows: "The direct influences, 
 then, which I had principally in my mind were those which had resulted 
 in a preference for Venetian over English Gothic, in the underrating of 
 expressional character in architecture, and the overrating of sculptured 
 ornament, especially of a naturalistic and imitative character, and more 
 generally in an exclusiveness which limited the due influence of some, 
 as I think, noble styles of architecture. By the indirect influences I 
 meant the habit of looking at questions of architectural art in the light 
 of imaginative ideas ; the recognition of the vital importance of such 
 questions even in their least important details ; and generally an enthu- 
 siasm and activity which could have resulted from no less a force than 
 Mr. Ruskin's wondrously suggestive genius." To this explanation Mr. 
 Ruskin replied in his second letter on the subject. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 153 
 
 direct influence on Mr. Street ; and I do not doubt but that 
 the public will have more satisfaction from his Law Courts 1 
 than they have had from anything built within fifty years. 
 But I have had indirect influence on nearly every cheap villa- 
 builder between this 2 and Bromley ; and there is scarcely a 
 public-house near the Crystal Palace but sells its gin and bit- 
 ters under pseudo-Venetian capitals copied from the Church 
 of the Madonna of Health or of Miracles. And one of my 
 principal notions for leaving my present house is that it is 
 surrounded everywhere by the accursed Frankenstein monsters 
 of, indirectly, my own making. 
 
 I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 John Ruskin. 
 
 March 15. 
 
 [From "The Pall Mall Gazette," March 81, 1872.] 
 
 MR. RUSKIN' S INFLUENCE : A REJOINDER. 
 To the Editor of " The Pall Mall Gazette: 1 
 
 . Sir : I am obliged by your critic's reply to my question, 
 but beg to observe that, meaning what he explains himself to 
 have meant, he should simply have said that my influence on 
 temper was right, and on taste wrong ; the influence being in 
 both cases equally " direct." On questions of taste I will not 
 venture into discussion with him, but must be permitted to 
 correct his statement that I have persuaded any one to prefer 
 Venetian to English Gothic. I have stated that Italian — 
 chiefly Pisan and Florentine — Gothic is the noblest school of 
 Gothic hitherto existent, which is true ; and that one form of 
 Venetian Gothic deserves singular respect for the manner of 
 its development. I gave the mouldings and shaft measure- 
 
 1 Mr. Street's design for the New Law Courts was, after much discus- 
 sion, selected, May 30, 18G8, and approved by commission, August, 1870. 
 The building was not, however, begun till February, 1874, and the hope 
 expressed in this letter is therefore, unfortunately, no expression of 
 opinion on the work itself. 
 
 2 Denmark Hill. 
 
154 
 
 ARROWS OF THE OH A CE. 
 
 merits of that form, 1 and to so little purpose, that I challenge 
 your critic to find in London, or within twenty miles of it, a 
 single Venetian casement built on the sections which I gave 
 as normal. For Venetian architecture developed out of British 
 moral consciousness I decline to be answerable. His accusa- 
 tion that I induced architects to study sculpture more, and 
 what he is pleased to call " expressional character " less, I ad- 
 mit. I should be glad if he would tell me what, before my 
 baneful influence began to be felt, the expressional character 
 of our building was ; and I will reconsider my principles if he 
 can point out to me, on any modern building either in London 
 or, as aforesaid, within twenty miles round, a single piece of 
 good sculpture of which the architect repents, or the public 
 complains. 
 
 I am, Sir, your faithful servant, 
 
 J. Ruskin. 
 
 March 21. 
 
 [From " The Liverpool Daily Post," June 9, 1877.] 
 
 MODERN RESTORATION. 2 
 
 Venice, 15th April, 1877. 
 My Dear Sir : It is impossible for any one to know the 
 horror and contempt with which I regard modern restoration 
 — but it is so great that it simply paralyzes me in despair, — 
 and in the sense of such difference in all thought and feeling 
 between me and the people I live in the midst of, almost 
 makes it useless for me to talk to them. Of course all resto- 
 ration is accursed architect's jobbery, and will go on as long 
 as they can get their filthy bread by such business. But 
 things are worse here than in England : you have little there 
 
 1 See Arabian Windows in the Campo Santa Maria, Mater Domini, 
 Plate ii. of the Examples of the Architecture of Venice, selected and 
 drawn to measurement from the edifice, 1851. And see, too, Stones of 
 Venice, vol. ii. , chap. vii. , Gothic Palaces. 
 
 2 This letter was originally received by " a Liverpool gentleman, and 
 sent inclosed in a long letter signed "An Antiquarian," to the Liverpool 
 Daily Post. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 155 
 
 left to lose— here, every hour is ruining buildings of inesti- 
 mable beauty and historical value — simply to keep stone- 
 lawyers 1 at work. I am obliged to hide my face from it all, 
 and work at other things, or I should die of mere indignation 
 and disgust. 
 
 Ever truly yours, 
 
 J. Buskin. 
 
 [From "The Kidderminster Times," July 28, 1877.] 
 
 RIBBESFORD CHURCH 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire, 
 July 24, 1877: 
 To the Editor of M The Kidderminster Times y 
 
 Sir : It chanced that, on the morning of the Sunday, when 
 the appearances of danger in the walls of Ribbesford Church 
 began seriously to manifest themselves (according to the re- 
 port in your columns of the 21st inst.)," I was standing out- 
 side of the church, listening to the singing of the last hymn 
 as the sound came through the open door (with the Archer 
 Knight sculptured above it), and showing to the friend who 
 had brought me to the lovely place the extreme interest of 
 the old perpendicular traceries in the freehand working of the 
 apertures. 
 
 Permit me to say, with reference to the proposed restoration 
 of the church, that no modern architect, no mason either, can, 
 or would if they could, " copy " those traceries. They will 
 assuredly put up with geometrical models in their place, which 
 will be no more like the old traceries than a Kensington paper 
 pattern is like a living flower. Whatever else is added or re- 
 moved, those traceries should be replaced as they are, and left 
 
 1 An obvious misprint for 11 stone-layers. v 
 
 2 Ribbesford Church was finally closed after the morning service on 
 Sunday, July 15, 1877. It was then restored; and was reopened and 
 reconsecrated on June 15, 1879. The Kidderminster Times of the 21st 
 inst. contained an account of a meeting of the Ribbesford parishioners 
 to consider the restoration of the church. Hence the allusions in this 
 letter to l * copying" the traceries. 
 
156 
 
 ABROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 in reverence until they moulder away. If they are already 
 too much deca} r ed to hold the glass safely (which I do not be« 
 lieve), any framework which may be necessary can be arranged 
 to hold the casements within them, leaving their bars entirely 
 disengaged, and merely kept from falling by iron supports. 
 But if these are to be " copied," why in the world cannot the 
 congregation pay for a new and original church, to display 
 the genius and wealth of the nineteenth century somewhere 
 else, and leave the dear old ruin to grow gray by Severn side 
 in peace ? 
 
 I am, Sir, your faithful servant, 
 
 J. RUSKIN. 
 
 CIRCULAR 1 RESPECTING MEMORIAL STUDIES OF ST. 
 MARK'S, VENICE, NOW IN PROGRESS UNDER ME. 
 BUSKIN'S DIRECTION 
 
 This circular will be given to visitors to the Old Water-color Society's Ex- 
 hibition, Pall Mall East, or on application to the Fine Art Society, 148 
 New Bond Street. 
 
 My friends have expressed much surprise at my absence 
 from the public meetings called in defence of St. Mark's. They 
 cannot, however, be too clearly certified that I am now en- 
 tirely unable to take part in exciting business, or even, with- 
 out grave danger, to allow my mind to dwell on the subjects 
 which, having once been dearest to it, are now the sources of 
 acutest pain. The illness which all but killed me tw r o years 
 ago 2 was not brought on by overwork, but by grief at the 
 course of public affairs in England, and of affairs, public and 
 private alike, in Venice ; the distress of many an old and 
 deeply regarded friend there among the humbler classes of 
 the city being as necessary a consequence of the modern sys- 
 
 1 This circular, which was distributed as above noted during the win- 
 ter of 1879-80, is here reprinted by Mr. Ruskin's permission, in connec- 
 tion with the preceding letters upon restoration in architecture. See 
 the Notes on Prout and Hunt, 1879-80, p. 71. 
 
 2 In February, 1878 ; see the Turner Notes of that year, and Fors 
 Clavigera, New Series — Letter the Fourth, March, 1880. 
 
LETTERS ON ART 
 
 157 
 
 tern of centralization, as the destruction of her ancient civil 
 and religious buildings. 
 
 How far forces of this national momentum may be arrested 
 by protest, or mollified by petition, I know not ; what in either 
 kind I have felt myself able to do has been done two years 
 since, in conjunction with one of the few remaining represen- 
 tatives of the old Venetian noblesse. 1 All that now remains for 
 me is to use what time may be yet granted for such record as 
 hand and heart can make of the most precious building in Eu- 
 rope, standing yet in the eyes of men and the sunshine of heaven. 
 
 The drawing of the first two arches of the west front, now 
 under threat of restoration, which, as an honorary member of 
 the Old Water-color Society, I have the privilege of exhibit- 
 ing in its rooms this year, shows with sufficient accuracy the 
 actual state of the building, and the peculiar qualities of its 
 architecture. 2 The principles of that architecture are analyzed 
 at length in the second volume of the " Stones of Venice," and 
 the whole facade described there with the best care I could, in 
 hope of directing the attention of English architects to the 
 forms of Greek sculpture which enrich it. 3 The words have 
 been occasionally read for the sound of them ; and perhaps, 
 when the building is destroyed, may be some day, with amaze- 
 ment, perceived to have been true. 
 
 In the mean time, the drawing just referred to, every touch 
 of it made from the building, and left as the color dried in the 
 spring mornings of 1877, will make clear some of the points 
 chiefly insisted on in the " Stones of Venice," and which are 
 of yet more importance now. 4 Of these, the first and main 
 
 1 Count Alvise Piero Zorzi, the author of an admirable and authorita - 
 tive essay on the restoration of St. Mark's (Venice, 1877). 
 
 2 This drawing (No. 28 in the Exhibition) was of a small portion of 
 the west front. 
 
 3 Stones of Venice, vol. ii., chapter 4, of original edition, and vol. i., 
 chapter 4, of the smaller edition for the use of travellers. 
 
 4 In the first edition of this circular this sentence ran as follows : " Iiv 
 the mean time, with the aid of the drawing just referred to, every touch 
 of it from the building, and left, as the color dried in the morning light 
 of the 10th May, 1877, some of the points chiefly insisted on in the 
 'Stones of Venice,' are of importance now," 
 
158 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CIIACE. 
 
 ones are the exquisite delicacy of the work and perfection of 
 its preservation to this time. It seems to me that the English 
 visitor never realizes thoroughly what it is that he looks at 
 in the St. Mark's porches : its glittering confusion in a style 
 unexampled, its bright colors, its mingled marbles, produce on 
 him no real impression of age, and its diminutive size scarcely 
 any of grandeur. It looks to him almost like a stage scene, 
 got up solidly for some sudden testa. No mere guide-book's 
 passing assertion of date — this century or the other— can in 
 the least make him even conceive, and far less feel, that he is 
 actually standing before the very shafts and stones that were 
 set on their foundations here while Harold the Saxcn stood by 
 the grave of the Confessor under the fresh-raised vaults of the 
 first Norman Westminster Abbey, of which now a single arch 
 only remains standing. He cannot, by any effort, imagine that 
 those exquisite and lace-like sculptures of twined acanthus — 
 every leaf-edge as sharp and fine as if they were green weeds 
 fresh springing in the dew, by the Pan-droseion 1 — were, in- 
 deed, cut and finished to their perfect grace while the Norman 
 axes were hewing out rough zigzags and dentils round the 
 aisles of Durham and Lindisfarne. Or nearer, in what is left 
 of our own Canterbury — it is but an hour's journey in pleasant 
 Kent — you may compare, almost as if you looked from one to 
 the other, the grim grotesque of the block capitals in the crypt 
 with the foliage of these flexile ones, and with their marble 
 doves — scarcely distinguishable from the living birds that 
 nestle between them. Or, going down two centuries (for the 
 fillings of the portico arches were not completed till after 
 1204), what thirteenth-century work among our gray lime- 
 stone walls can be thought of as wrought in the same hour 
 with that wreath of intertwined white marble, relieved by gold, 
 of which the tenderest and sharpest lines of the pencil cannot 
 finely enough express the surfaces and undulations? For in- 
 deed, without and within, St. Mark's is not, in the real nature of 
 it, a piece of architecture, but a jewelled casket and painted rel- 
 iquary, chief of the treasures of what were once the world's 
 treasuries of sacred things, the kingdoms of Christendom. 
 
 1 Printed ** Pan-choreion " in the first edition. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 159 
 
 A jewelled casket, every jewel of which was itself sacred. 
 Not a slab of it, nor a shaft, but has been brought from the 
 churches descendants of the great Seven of Asia, or from the 
 Christian Greek of Corinth, Crete, and Thrace, or the Chris- 
 tian-Israelite in Palestine — the central archivolt copied from 
 that of the church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the opposing 
 lions or phoenixes of its sculptures from the treasury of 
 Atreus and the citadel of Tyre. 
 
 Thus, beyond all measure of value as a treasury of art, it is 
 also, beyond all other volumes, venerable as a codex of re- 
 ligion. Just as the white foliage and birds on their golden 
 ground are descendants, in direct line, from the ivory and 
 gold of Phidias, so the Greek pictures and inscriptions, 
 whether in mosaic or sculpture, throughout the building, 
 record the unbroken unity of spiritual influence from the 
 Father of light — or the races whose own poets had said " We 
 also are his offspring " — down to the day when all their gods, 
 not slain, but changed into new creatures, became the types 
 to them of the mightier Christian spirits ; and Perseus became 
 St. George, and Mars St. Michael, and Athena the Madonna, 
 and Zeus their revealed Father in Heaven. 
 
 In all the history of human mind, there is nothing so won- 
 derful, nothing so eventful, as this spiritual change. So inex- 
 tricably is it interwoven with the most divine, the most dis- 
 tant threads of human thought and effort, that while none of 
 the thoughts of St. Paul or the visions of St. John can be un- 
 derstood without our understanding first the imagery familiar 
 to the Pagan worship of the Greeks ; on the other hand, no 
 understanding of the real purport of Greek religion can be 
 securely reached without watching the translation of its myths 
 into the message of Christianity. 
 
 Both by the natural temper of my mind, and by the labor 
 of forty years given to this subject in its practical issues on 
 the present state 1 of Christendom, I have become, in some 
 
 1 For u state," the first edition reads " mind," and for ''have become, 
 in some measure, able," it has " have qualified myself." So again tor 
 " am at this moment aided," it reads " am asked, and enabled to do so." 
 
160 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACR 
 
 measure, able both to show and to interpret these most pre- 
 cious sculptures ; and my health has been so far given back to 
 me that if I am at this moment aided, it will, so far as I can 
 judge, be easily possible for me to complete the work so long 
 in preparation. There will yet, I doubt not, be time to obtain 
 perfect record of all that is to be destroyed. I have entirely 
 honest and able draughtsmen at my command ; my own resig- 
 nation 1 of my Oxford Professorship has given me leisure ; 
 and all that I want from the antiquarian sympathy of England 
 is so much instant help as may permit me, while yet in avail- 
 able vigor of body and mind, to get the records made under 
 my own overseership, and registered for sufficient and true. 
 The casts and drawings which I mean to have made will be 
 preserved in a consistent series in my Museum at Sheffield, 
 where I have freehold ground enough to build a perfectly 
 lighted gallery for their reception. I have used the words " I 
 want," as if praying this thing for myself. It is not so. If 
 only some other person could and would undertake all this, 
 Heaven knows how gladly I would leave the task to him. But 
 there is no one else at present able to do it : if not now by me, 
 it can never be done more. And so I leave it to the reader's 
 grace. J. Buskin. 
 
 All subscriptions to be sent to Mr. G. Allen, Sunnyside, 
 Orpington, Kent. 
 
 POSTSCEIPT. 2 
 
 By the kindness of the Society of Painters in Water-colors 
 I am permitted this year, in view of the crisis of the fate * of 
 the facade of St. Mark's, to place in the Exhibition-room of 
 the Society ten photographs, illustrative of its past and present 
 state. I have already made use of them, both in my lectures 
 at Oxford and in the parts of Fors Glavigera intended for Art- 
 teaching at my Sheffield Museum ; and all but the eighth are 
 obtainable from my assistant, Mr. Ward (2 Church Terrace, 
 
 1 Early in 1879. 
 
 2 Printed in the second edition only. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 161 
 
 Richmond), who is my general agent for photographs, either 
 taken under my direction (as here, Nos. 4, 9, and 10,) or 
 specially chosen by me for purposes of Art Education. The 
 series of views here shown are all perfectly taken, with great 
 clearness, from the most important points, and give, consecu- 
 tively, complete evidence respecting the facade. 
 They are arranged in the following order : 
 
 1. The Central Porch. V . _ . 
 
 4. The Northern Portico. 
 
 5. The Southern Portico. Before restoration. 
 
 6. The "West Front, in Perspective. Seen from the North. 
 
 7. The West Front, in Perspective. Seen from the South. 
 
 8. The South Side. Before restoration. 
 
 9. Detail of Central Archivolt. 
 
 10. The Cross op the Merchants of Venice. 
 
 This last photograph is not of St. Mark's, but is of the in* 
 scription which I discovered, in 1877, on the Church of St. 
 James of the Kialto. It is of the 9th or 10th century (accord- 
 ing to the best antiquarians of Venice), and is given in this 
 series, first, to confirm the closing paragraph in my notes on 
 the Prout drawings in Bond Street ; 1 and secondly, to show 
 
 1 The reference is to the closing paragraph of the Preface to the 
 Notes, which runs as follows : i ' Athena, observe, of the Agora, or 
 Market Place. And St. James of the Deep Stream or Market River. 
 The Angels of Honest Sale and Honest Porterage ; such honest porterage 
 being the grandeur of the Grand Canal, and of all other canals, rivers, 
 sounds, and seas that ever moved in wavering morris under the night. 
 And the eternally electric light of the embankment of that Rialto stream 
 was shed upon it by the Cross— know you that for certain, you dwellers 
 by high-embanked and steamer-burdened Thames. And learn from 
 your poor wandering painter this lesson — for the sum of the best he had 
 to give you (it is the Alpha of the Laws of true human life) — that no 
 city is prosperous in the sight of Heaven, unless the peasant sells in its 
 market — adding this lesson of Gentile Bellini's for the Omega, that no 
 city is ever righteous in the Sight of Heaven unless the Noble walks in 
 iw street."— Notes on Prout and Hunt, p. 44, 
 
 2. The Two Northern Porches. 
 
 3. The Two Southern Porches. 
 
 Arranged in one 
 frame. 
 
ARROWS OF THE OR ACE. 
 
 the perfect preservation even of the hair-strokes in letters 
 carved in "the Istrian marble used at Venice a thousand years 
 ago. The inscription on the cross is — 
 
 " Sit crux vera salus huic tua Christe loco." 
 (Be Thy Cross, O Christ, the true safety of this place.) 
 
 And on the band beneath — 
 
 44 Hoc circa templum sit jus mercantibus aequum, 
 Pondera nec vergant nec sit conventio prava." 
 (Around this temple let the merchants' law be just, 
 Their weights true, and their contracts fair.) 
 
 The bearing of this inscription on the relations of Antonio to 
 Shylock may perhaps not be perceived by a public which now 
 — consistently and naturally enough, but ominously — con- 
 siders Shylock a victim to the support of the principles of 
 legitimate trade, and Antonio a " speculator and sentimental- 
 ist." From the series of photographs of St. Mark's itself, I 
 cannot but think even the least attentive observer must re- 
 ceive one strong impression — that of the singular preservation 
 of the minutest details in its sculpture. Observe, this is a 
 quite separate question from the stability of the fabric. In 
 our northern cathedrals the stone, for the most part, moulders 
 away ; and the restorer usually replaces it by fresh sculpture, 
 on the faces of walls of which the mass is perfectly secure. 
 Here, at St. Mark's, on the contrary, the only possible pretence 
 for restoration has been, and is, the alleged insecurity of the 
 masses of inner wall — the external sculptures remaining in 
 faultless perfection, so far as unaffected by direct human 
 violence. Both the Greek and Istrian marbles used at Venice 
 are absolutely defiant of hyposthral influences, and the edges 
 of their delicatest sculpture remain to this day more sharp 
 than if they had been cut in steel — for then they would have 
 rusted away. It is especially, for example, of this quality that 
 I have painted the ornament of the St. Jean d'Acre pillars, No. 
 107, which the reader may at once compare with the daguer- 
 rotype (No. 108) beside it, which are exhibited, with the Prout 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 103 
 
 and Hunt drawings, at the Fine Art Society's rooms. 1 These 
 pillars are known to be not later than the sixth century, yet 
 wherever external violence has spared their decoration it is 
 sharp as a fresh-growing thistle. Throughout the whole facade 
 of St. Mark's, the capitals have only here and there by casualty 
 lost so much as a volute or an acanthus leaf, and whatever re- 
 mains is perfect as on the day it was set in its place, mellowed 
 and subdued only in color by time, but white still, clearly 
 white ; and gray, still softly gray ; its porphyry purple as an 
 Orleans plum, and the serpentine as green as a greengage. 
 Note also, that in this throughout perfect decorated surface 
 there is not a loose joint. The appearances of dislocation, which 
 here and there look like yielding of masonry, are merely care- 
 lessness in the replacing or resetting of the marble armor at 
 the different times when the front has been retouched — in 
 several cases quite wilful freaks of arrangement. The slope 
 of the porphyry shaft, for instance, on the angle at the left of 
 my drawing, looks like dilapidation. Were it really so, the 
 building would be a heap of ruins in twenty-four hours. These 
 porches sustain no w r eight above — their pillars carry merely 
 an open gallery ; and the inclination of the red marble pilasters 
 at the angle is not yielding at all, but an originally capricious 
 adjustment of the marble armor. It will be seen that the in- 
 vesting marbles between the arch and pilaster are cut to the 
 intended inclination, which brings the latter nearly into con- 
 tact with the upper archivolt ; the appearance of actual con- 
 tact being caused by the projection of the dripstone. There 
 are, indeed, one or two leaning towers in Venice whose founda- 
 tions have partly yielded ; but if anything were in danger on 
 St. Mark's Place, it would be the campanile — three hundred 
 feet high — and not the little shafts and galleries within reach 
 — too easy reach — of the gaslighter's ladder. And the only 
 dilapidations I have myself seen on this porch, since I first 
 drew it forty-six years ago, have been, first, those caused by 
 the insertion of the lamps themselves, and then the breaking 
 away of the marble network of the main capital by the habitual 
 
 1 See tlie Notes on Prout and Hunt, p, 78. 
 
164 
 
 ARROWS OF THE OH ACE. 
 
 clattering of the said gaslighter's ladder against it. A piece 
 of it which I saw so broken off, and made an oration over to 
 the passers-by in no less broken Italian, is in my mineral cabi- 
 net at Brantwood. 
 
 Before leaving this subject of the inclined angle, let me note 
 — usefully, though not to my present purpose — that the en- 
 tire beauty of St. Mark's campanile depends on this structure, 
 there definitely seen to be one of real safety. This grace and 
 apparent strength of the whole mass would be destroyed if 
 the sides of it were made vertical. In Gothic towers, the 
 same effect is obtained by the retiring of the angle buttresses, 
 without actual inclination of any but the coping lines. 
 
 In the Photograph No. 5 the slope of the angles. in the 
 correspondent portico, as it stood before restoration, is easily 
 visible and measurable, the difference being, even on so small 
 a scale, full the twentieth of an inch between the breadth at 
 base and top, at the angles, while the lines bearing the inner 
 arch are perfectly vertical. 
 
 There was, indeed, as will be seen at a glance, some dis- 
 placement of the pillars dividing the great window above, 
 immediately to the right of the portico. But these pillars 
 were exactly the part of the south front which carried no 
 weight The arch above them is burdened only by its own 
 fringes of sculpture : and the pillars carried only the bit of 
 decorated panelling, which is now bent — not outwards, as it 
 would have been by pressure, but inwards. The arch has not 
 subsided ; it was always of the same height as the one to the 
 right of it (the Byzantine builders throwing their arches al- 
 ways in whatever lines they chose) ; nor is there a single 
 crack or displacement in the sculpture of the investing fringe. 
 
 In No. 3 (to the right hand in the frame) there is dilapida- 
 tion and danger enough certainly ; but that is wholly caused 
 by the savage and brutal carlessness with which the restored 
 parts are joined to the old. The photograph bears deadly 
 and perpetual witness against the system of " making work," 
 too well known now among English as well as Italian opera- 
 tives ; but it bears witness, as deadly, against the alleged 
 accuracy of the restoration itself. The ancient dentils are 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 165 
 
 bold, broad, and cut with the free hand, as all good Greek 
 work is ; the new ones, little more than half their size, are 
 cut with the servile and horrible rigidity of the modern 
 mechanic. 
 
 This quality is what M. Meduna, in the passage quoted 
 from his defence of himself 1 in the Standard, has at once the 
 dulness and the audacity actually to boast of as "plus exacte " / 
 
 Imagine a Kensington student set to copy a picture by 
 Velasquez, and substituting a Nottingham lace pattern, traced 
 with absolute exactness, for the painter's sparkle and flow and 
 flame, and boasting of his improvements as " plus exacte " ! 
 That is precisely what the Italian restorer does for his origi- 
 nal ; but, alas ! he has the inestimable privilege also of 
 destroying the original ; as he works, and putting his stu- 
 dent's caricature in its place ! Nor are any words bitter 
 or contemptuous enough to describe the bestial stupidities 
 which have thus already replaced the floor of the church, in 
 my early days the loveliest in Italy, and the most sacred. 
 
 In the Photograph No. 7 there is, and there only, one piece 
 of real dilapidation — the nodding pinnacle propped on the 
 right. Those pinnacles stand over the roof gutters, and their 
 bracket supports are, of course, liable to displacement, if the 
 gutters get choked by frost or otherwise neglected. The pin- 
 nacle is not ten feet high, and can be replaced and secured as 
 easily as the cowl on a chimney-pot. The timbers underneath 
 were left there merely to give the wished-for appearance of 
 repairs going on. They defaced the church front through the 
 whole winter of 1876. I copied the bills stuck on them one 
 Sunday, and they are printed in the 78th number of Fors Cla- 
 vigera, the first being the announcement of the Keunited 
 agencies for information on all matters of commercial enter- 
 prise and speculation, and the last the announcement of the loss 
 of a cinnamon-colored little bitch, with rather long ears (coW 
 orecchie piiitosto lunghe). I waited through the winter to see 
 how much the Venetians really cared for the look of their 
 
 1 See the Standard (Dec. 3, 1879). M. Meduna was the architect who 
 carried out the 4 ' restoration " of the south facade of the Cathedral. 
 
166 
 
 ARR0W8 OF THE CIIACK 
 
 church ; but lodged a formal remonstrance in March with one 
 of the more reasonable civic authorities, who presently had 
 them removed. The remonstrance ought, of course, to have 
 come from the clergy ; but they contented themselves with 
 cutting flower- wreathes on paper to hang over the central door 
 at Christmas-time. For the rest, the pretence of rottenness 
 in the walls is really too gross to be answered. There are 
 brick buildings in Italy by tens of thousands, Roman, Lom- 
 bardic, Gothic, on all scales and in all exposures. Which of 
 them has rotted or fallen, but by violence ? Shall the tower 
 of Garisenda stand, and the Campanile of Verona, and the 
 tower of St. Mark's, and, forsooth, this little fifty feet of un- 
 weighted wall be rotten and dangerous? 
 
 Much more I could say, and show ; but the certainty of the 
 ruin of poor Bedlamite Venice is in her own evil will, and not 
 to be averted by any human help or pleading. Her Sabba delle 
 streghe has truly come ; and in her own words (see Fors, letter 
 77th) ; "Finalniente la Piazza di S. Marcoa sar invasa e com- 
 pletamente illuminata dalle Fiamme di Belzebu. Ferche il 
 Sabba possa riuscire piu completo, si raccomanda a tutti gli 
 spettatori di fischiare durante le fiamme come anime dannate." 
 
 Meantime, in what Saturday pause may be before this 
 Witches' Sabbath, if I have, indeed any English friends, let 
 them now help me, and my fellow- workers, to get such casts, 
 and colorings, and measurings, as may be of use in time to 
 come. I am not used to the begging tone, and will not say 
 more than that what is given me will go in mere daily bread 
 to the workers, and that next year, if I live, there shall be 
 some exposition of what we have got done, with the best ac- 
 count I can render of its parts and pieces. Fragmentary 
 enough they must be, — poor fallen plumes of the winged 
 lion's wings, — yet I think I can plume a true shaft or two with 
 them yet. 
 
 Some copies of the second edition of this circular had printed 
 at the top of its last and otherwise blank page the words, 
 " Present State of Subscription Lists : — ," a printer's error, mis- 
 taken by some readers for a piece of dry humor. 
 
LETTERS ON ART. 
 
 167 
 
 Subscriptions were collected by Mr. G. Allen, as above in- 
 timated, and also by Mr. F. W. Pullen, secretary to the Ras- 
 kin Society of Manchester, under the authority of the follow- 
 ing letter, which was printed and distributed by him : " No- 
 vember 29, 1879. — Dear Mr. Pullen : I am very glad to have 
 your most satisfactory letter, and as gladly give you authority 
 to receive subscriptions for drawings and sculptures of St. 
 Mark's. Mr. Bunney's large painting of the whole west facade, 
 ordered by me a year and a half ago, and in steady progress 
 ever since, is to be completed this spring. It was a £500 
 commission for the Guild, but I don't want to have to pay it 
 with Guild capital. I have the power of getting casts, also, 
 in places where nobody else can, and have now energy enough 
 to give directions, but can no more pay for them out of my own 
 pocket. Ever gratefully yours, J. R. As a formal authority, 
 this had better have my full signature — John Ruskin." In a 
 further letter to Manchester on the subject, Mr. Ruskin wrote 
 as follows : " It is wholly impossible for me at present to take 
 any part in the defence — at last, though far too late — under- 
 taken by the true artists and scholars of England — of the most- 
 precious Christian building in Europe ; . . . nor is there any 
 occasion that I should, if only those who care for me will refer 
 to what I have already written, and will accept from me the 
 full ratification of all that was said by the various speakers, 
 all without exception men of the most accurate judgment and 
 true feeling, at the meeting held in Oxford. All that I think 
 necessary for you to lay, directly from myself, before the meet- 
 ing you are about to hold, is the explicit statement of two 
 facts of which I am more distinctly cognizant from my long- 
 residences in Italy at different periods, and in Venice during 
 these last years than any other person can be — namely, the 
 Infidel— (malignantly and scornfully Infidel and anti-religion- 
 ist) aim of Italian ' restoration ' — and the totality of the de- 
 struction it involves, of whatever it touches." So again, in a 
 second and despairing letter, he wrote : " You cannot be too 
 strongly assured of the total destruction involved, in the res- 
 toration of St. Mark's. . . . Then the plague of it all is, What 
 can you do ? Nothing w T ould be effectual, but the appoint- 
 ment of a Procurator of St. Mark's, with an enormous salary, 
 dependent on the Church's being let alone. What you can 
 do by a meeting at Manchester, I have no notion. The only 
 really practical thing that I can think of would be sending me 
 lots of money to spend in getting all the drawings I can of the 
 old thing before it goes. I don't believe we can save it by 
 
168 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 any protests/' See the Birmingham Daily Mail, Nov. 27, 1879, 
 The reader is also referred to " Fors Clavigera," New Series, 
 Letter the Fourth, pp. 289-90. 
 
 The meeting in Oxford alluded to above was held in the 
 Sheldonian Theatre on November 15, 1879. Among the prin- 
 cipal speakers were the Dean of Christ Church (in the chair), 
 Dr. Acland, the Professor of Fine Art (Mr. W. B. Kichmond), 
 Mr. Street, Mr. William Morris, and Mr. Burne Jones. 
 
LETTERS OJN* SCIENCE. 
 
 I— GEOLOGICAL. 
 
 [From " The Reader, 11 November 12, 1864.] 
 
 THE CONFORMATION OF THE ALPS, 
 
 Denmark Hill, KMA November, 1864. 
 
 My attention has but now been directed to the letters in 
 your October numbers on the subject of the forms of the 
 Alps. 1 I have, perhaps, some claim to be heard on this ques- 
 tion, having spent, out of a somewhat busy life, eleven sum- 
 mers and two winters (the winter work being especially useful, 
 owing to the definition of inaccessible ledges of strata by new- 
 fallen snow) in researches among the Alps, directed solely to 
 the questions of their external form and its mechanical 
 causes ; while I left to other geologists the more disputable 
 and difficult problems of relative ages of beds. 
 
 I say " more disputable " because, however complex the 
 phases of mechanical action, its general nature admits, among 
 the Alps, of no question. The forms of the Alps are quite 
 visibly owing to the action (how gradual or prolonged cannot 
 yet be determined) of elevatory, contractile, and expansive 
 forces, followed by that of currents of water at various tem- 
 peratures, and of prolonged disintegration — ice having had 
 small share in modifying even the higher ridges, and none in 
 causing or forming the valleys. 
 
 1 The Reader of October 15 contained an article lt On the Conforma- 
 tion of the Alps,'' to which in the following issue of the journal (October 
 22) Sir Roderick Murchison replied in a letter dated " Torquay, 16th 
 October," and entitled "On the Excavation of Lake-Basins in solid 
 rocks by Glaciers," the possibility of which he altogether denied. 
 
170 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACK 
 
 The reason of the extreme difficulty in tracing the combi- 
 nation of these several operative causes in any given instance, 
 is that the effective and destructive drainage by no means 
 follows the leading fissures, but tells fearfully on the softer 
 rocks, sweeping away inconceivable volumes of these, while 
 fissures or faults in the harder rocks of quite primal structural 
 importance may be little deepened or widened, often even 
 unindicated, by subsequent aqueous action. I have, however, 
 described at some length the commonest structural and sculpt- 
 ural phenomena in the fourth volume of " Modern Painters,'* 
 and I gave a general sketch of the subject last year in my 
 lecture 1 at the Royal Institution (fully reported in the Jour- 
 nal de Geneve of 2d September, 1883), but I have not yet 
 thrown together the mass of material in my possession, be- 
 cause our leading chemists are only now on the point of ob- 
 taining some data for the analysis of the most important of all 
 forces — that of the consolidation and crystallization of the 
 metamorphic rocks, causing them to alter their bulk and ex- 
 ercise irresistible and irregular pressures on neighboring or 
 incumbent beds. 
 
 But, even on existing data, the idea of the excavation of 
 valleys by ice has become one of quite ludicrous untenablen ess. 
 At this moment, the principal glacier in Chamouni pours itself 
 down a slope of twenty degrees or more over a rock two thou- 
 sand feet in vertical height ; and just at the bottom of this 
 ice-cataract, where a water-cataract of equal pow T er would have 
 excavated an almost fathomless pool, the ice simply accumu- 
 lates a heap of stones, on the top of which it rests. 
 
 The lakes of any hill country lie in what are the isolated 
 low r est (as its summits are the isolated highest) portions of its 
 broken surface, and ice no more engraves the one than it 
 builds the other. But how these hollow r s were indeed first 
 
 1 " On the Forms of the Stratified Alps of Savoy," delivered on June 
 5, 1863. The subject was treated under three heads. 1. The material 
 of the Savoy Alps. 2. The mode of their formation. 3. The mode 
 of their subsequent sculpture. (See the report of the lecture In the 
 Proceedings of the Royal Institution, 1863, vol., iv., p. 142. It was also 
 printed by the Institution in a separate form, pi 4.) 
 
LETTERS ON SCIENCE. 
 
 171 
 
 dug, we know as yet no more than how the Atlantic was dug ; 
 and the hasty expression by geologists of their fancies in such 
 matters cannot be too much deprecated, because it deprives 
 their science of the respect really due to it in the minds of a 
 large portion of the public, who know, and can know, nothing 
 of its established principles, while they can easily detect its 
 speculative vanity. There is plenty of work for us all to do, 
 without losing time in speculation ; and when we have got 
 good sections across the entire chain of the Alps, at intervals 
 of twenty miles apart, from Nice to Innspruch, and exhaust' 
 ive maps and sections of the lake-basins of Lucerne, Annecy 
 Como, and Garda, we shall have won the leisure, and may 
 assume the right, to try our wits on the formative question. 
 
 J. Euskin. 1 
 
 [From " The Reader, 1 ' November 26, 1864.] 
 
 CONCERNING GLACIERS. 
 
 Denmark Hill, November 21. 
 
 I am obliged to your Scottish correspondent for the courtesy 
 with which he expresses himself towards me ; and, as his 
 letter refers to several points still (to my no little surprise) in 
 dispute among geologists, you will perhaps allow me to 
 occupy, in reply, somewhat more of your valuable space than 
 I had intended to ask for. 
 
 I sa} r "to my no little surprise," because the great princi- 
 ples of glacial action have been so clearly stated by their dis- 
 coverer, Forbes, and its minor phenomena (though in an 
 envious temper, which, by its bitterness, as a pillar of salt, 
 has become the sorrowful monument of the discovery it 
 
 1 In reply to this letter, the Reader of November 19, 1864, published 
 one from a Scottish correspondent, signed " Tain Caimbeul," the writer 
 of which declared that, whilst he looked on Mr. Ruskin " as a 
 thoroughly reliable guide in all that relates to the external aspects 
 of the Alps," he could not "accept his leadership in questions of 
 political economy or the mechanics of glacier motion/' 
 
172 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CI1A0E. 
 
 denies) 1 so carefully described by Agassiz, that I never 
 thought there would be occasion for much talk on the sub- 
 ject henceforward. As much as seems now necessary to be 
 said I will say as briefly as I can. 
 
 What a river carries fast at the bottom of it, a glacier 
 carries slowly at the top of it. This is the main distinction 
 between their agencies. A piece of rock which, falling into a 
 strong torrent, would be perhaps swept down half a mile in 
 twenty minutes, delivering blows on the rocks at the bottom 
 audible like distant heavy cannon,* and at last dashed into 
 fragments, which in a little while will be rounded pebbles 
 (having done enough damage to everything it has touched in 
 its course) — this same rock, I say, falling on a glacier, lies on 
 the top of it, and is thereon carried down, if at fullest speed, at 
 the rate of three yards in a week, doing usually damage to 
 nothing at all. That is the primal difference between the 
 work of water and ice ; these further differences, however, 
 follow from this first one. 
 
 Though a glacier never rolls its moraine into pebbles, as a 
 torrent does its shingle, it torments and teases the said 
 moraine very sufficiently, and without intermission. It is 
 always moving it on, and melting from under it, and one stone 
 is always toppling, or tilting, or sliding over another, and one 
 company of stones crashing over another, with staggering shift 
 of heap behind. Now, leaving out of all account the pulveru- 
 lent effect of original precipitation to glacier level from two 
 or three thousand feet above, let the reader imagine a mass of 
 sharp granite road-metal and paving stones, mixed up with 
 boulders of any size he can think of, and with wreck of softer 
 rocks (micaceous schists in quantities, usually), the whole, say, 
 half a quarter of a mile wide, and of variable thickness, from 
 
 * Even in lower Apennine, " Dat sonitum saxis, et torto 
 vertice torrens." 2 
 
 1 See below, Forbes: his real greatness, pp. 182 seqq., and the 
 references given in the notes there. 
 
 2 Virgil, ^Eneid, vii. 567. 
 
LETTERS ON SCIENCE. 
 
 173 
 
 mere skin-deep mock-moraine on mounds of unsuspected ice 
 — treacherous, shadow-begotten — to a railroad embankment, 
 passenger-embankment, one eternal collapse of unconditional 
 ruin, rotten to its heart with frost and thaw (in regions on the 
 edge of each), and withering sun and waste of oozing ice ; 
 fancy all this heaved and shovelled, slowly, by a gang of a 
 thousand Irish laborers, twenty miles downhill. You will 
 conjecture there may be some dust developed on the way ? — 
 Borne at the hill bottom ? Yet thus you will have but a dim 
 idea of the daily and final results of the movements of glacier 
 moraines — beautiful result in granite and slate dust, delivered 
 by the torrent at last in banks of black and white slime, recov- 
 ering itself, far away, into fruitful fields, and level floor for 
 human life. 
 
 Now all this is utterly independent of any action whatso- 
 ever by the ice on its sustaining rocks. It has an action on 
 these indeed ; but of this limited nature as compared with that 
 of water. A stone at the bottom of a stream, or deep-sea cur- 
 rent, necessarily and always presses on the bottom with the 
 weight of the column of water above it — plus the excess of its 
 own weight above that of a bulk of water equal to its own ; 
 but a stone under a glacier may be hitched or suspended in 
 the ice itself for long spaces, not touching bottom at all. 
 When dropped at last, the weight of ice may not come upon 
 it for years, for that weight is only carried on certain spaces 
 of the rock bed ; and in those very spaces the utmost a stone 
 can do is to press on the bottom with the force necessary to 
 drive the given stone into ice of a given density (usually por- 
 ous) : and, with this maximum pressure, to move at the maxi- 
 mum rate of about a third of an inch in a quarter of an hour ! 
 Iry to saw a piece of marble through (with edge of iron, not 
 :>f soppy ice, for saw, and with sharp flint sand for felspar 
 slime), and move your saw at the rate of an inch in three- 
 quarters of an hour, and see what lively and progressive work 
 you will make of it ! 
 
 I. say M a piece of marble ; " but your permanent glacier- 
 bottom is rarely so so& — for a glacier, though it acts slowly by 
 friction, can act vigorously by dead-weight on a soft rock, and 
 
174 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACR 
 
 (with fall previously provided for it) can clear masses of that 
 out of the way, to some purpose. There is a notable instance 
 of this in the rock of which your correspondent speaks, under 
 the Glacier des Bois. His idea, that the glacier is deep above 
 and thins out below, is a curious instance of the misconception 
 of glacier nature, from which all that Forbes has done cannot 
 yet quite clear the public mind, nor even the geological mind. 
 A glacier never, in a large sense, thins out at all as it expires. 
 It flows level everywhere for its own part, and never slopes 
 but down a slope, as a rapid in water. Pour out a pot of the 
 thickest old white candied, but still fluent, honey you can buy, 
 over a heap of stones, arranged as you like, to imitate rocks. 1 
 Whatever the honey does on a small scale, the glacier does on 
 a large ; and you may thus study the glacier phenomena of 
 current — though, of course, not those of structure or fissure 
 — at your ease. But note this specially : When the honey i3 
 at last at rest, in whatever form it has taken, you will see it 
 terminates in tongues with low rounded edges. The possible 
 height of these edges, in any fluid, varies as its viscosity ; it is 
 some quarter of an inch or so in water on dry ground ; the 
 most fluent ice will stand at about a hundred feet. Next, from 
 this outer edge of the stagnant honey, delicately skim or thin 
 off a little at the top, and see what it will do. It will not 
 stand in an inclined plane, but fill itself up again to a level 
 from behind. Glacier ice does exactly the same thing ; and 
 this filling in from behind is done so subtly and delicately 
 that, every winter, the whole glacier surface rises to replace 
 the summer's waste, not with progressive wave, as " twice a 
 day the Severn fills ; " but with silent, level insurrection, as of 
 ocean-tide, the gray sea-crystal passes by. And all the struct- 
 ural phenomena of the ice are modified by this mysterious 
 action. 
 
 Your correspondent is also not aware that the Glacier des 
 Bois gives a very practical and outspoken proof of its shallow- 
 ness opposite the Montanvert. Very often its torrent, under 
 wilful touch of Lucina-sceptre, leaps to the light at the top of 
 
 1 See Deucalion, vol. i. p. 93. 
 
LETTERS ON SCIENCE. 
 
 175 
 
 the rocks instead of their base. 1 That fiery Arveron, some- 
 times, hearing from reconnoitring streamlets of a nearer way 
 clown to the valley than the rounded ice-curve under the 
 Chapeau, fairly takes bit in teeth, and flings itself out over 
 the brow of the rocks, and down a ravine in them, in the 
 wildest cataract of white- thunder-clouds (endless in thun- 
 der, and with quiet fragments of rainbow for lightning), that 
 I have ever blinded myself in the skirts of. 
 
 These bare rocks, over which the main river sometimes 
 falls (and outlying streamlets always) are of firm-grained, 
 massively rounded gneiss. Above them, I have no doubt, 
 once extended the upper covering of fibrous and amianthoidal 
 schist, which forms the greater part of the south-eastern flank 
 of the valley of Chamouni. The schistose gneiss is continu- 
 ous in direction of bed, with the harder gneiss below. But 
 the outer portion is soft, the inner hard, and more granitic. 
 This outer portion the descending glaciers have always 
 stripped right off down to the hard gneiss below, and in 
 places, as immediately above the Montanvert (and elsewhere 
 at the brows of the valley), the beds of schistose gneiss are 
 crushed and bent outwards in a mass (I believe) by the weight 
 of the old glacier, for some fifty feet within their surface. 
 This looks like work ; and work of this sort when it had to be 
 done, the glaciers were well up to, bearing down such soft 
 masses as a strong man bends a poplar sapling ; but by steady 
 push far more than by friction. You may bend or break your 
 sapling with bare hands, but try to rub its bark off with your 
 bare hands ! 
 
 When once the ice, ivith strength always dependent on pre- 
 existent precipice, has cleared such obstacles out of its way, 
 and made its bed to its liking, there is an end to its manifest 
 and effectively sculptural power. I do not believe the Glacier 
 des Bois has done more against some of the granite surfaces 
 
 1 There twice a day the Severn fills ; 
 The salt sea-water passes by, 
 And hushes half the babbling Wye, 
 And makes a silence in the hills. 
 
 Tennyson. M In Memoriam," xix. 
 
17G 
 
 ARROWS OF THE C II ACE. 
 
 beneath it, for these four thousand years, than the drifts of 
 desert sand have done on Sinai. Be that as it may, its power 
 of excavation on a level is proved, as I showed in my last let- 
 ter, to be zero. Your correspondent thinks the glacier power 
 vanishes towards the extremity ; but as long as the ice exists, 
 it has the same progressive energy, and, indeed, sometimes, 
 with the quite terminal nose of it, will plough a piece of 
 ground scientifically enough ; but it never digs a hole : the 
 stream always comes from under it full speed downhill. Now, 
 whatever the dimensions of a glacier, if it dug a big hole, like 
 the Lake of Geneva, when it was big, it would dig a little hole 
 when it was little — (not that this is always safe logic, for a 
 little stone will dig in a glacier, and a large one build ; but it 
 is safe within general limits) — w r hich it never does, nor can, 
 but subsides gladly into any hole prepared for it in a quite 
 placid manner, for all its fierce looks. 
 
 I find it difficult to stop, for your correspondent, little as 
 he thinks it, has put me on my own ground. I was forced to 
 write upon Art by an accident (the public abuse of Turner) 
 when I w r as two-and- twenty ; but I had written a " Mineralogi- 
 cal Dictionary " as far as C, and invented a shorthand symbol- 
 ism for crystalline forms, before I was fourteen : and have 
 been at stony work ever since, as I could find time, silently, 
 not caring to speak much till the chemists had given me more 
 help. 1 For, indeed, I strive, as far as may be, not to speak 
 of anything till I know it ; and in that matter of Political 
 Economy also (though forced in like manner to write of that 
 by unendurable circumfluent fallacy), I know my ground ; 
 and if your present correspondent, or any other, will meet 
 me fairly, I will give them uttermost satisfaction upon any 
 point they doubt. There is free challenge ; and in the knight 
 of Snowdoun's vows (looking first carefully to see that the 
 rock be not a glacier boulder), 
 
 1 'This rock shall fly 
 From its firm base, as soon as L " 
 
 J. EUSEIN. 2 
 
 1 See Deucalion, vol. i. p. 8 (Introduction). 
 
 2 Following this letter in the same number of the Reader was one 
 
LETTERS ON SCIENCE. 
 
 177 
 
 ENGLISH versus ALPINE GEOLOGY. 
 
 |From " The Reader," December 3, 1864.] 
 
 Denmark Hill, 29th Nov. 
 I scarcely know what reply to make, or whether it is neces- 
 sary to reply at all, to the letter of Mr. Jukes in your last 
 number. There is no antagonism between his views and 
 mine, though he seems heartily to desire that there should be, 
 and with no conceivable motive but to obtain some appear- 
 ance of it suppresses the latter half of the sentence he quotes 
 from my letter. 1 It is true that he w T rites in willing ignorance 
 of the Alps, and I in unwilling ignorance of the Wicklow hills ; 
 but the only consequent discrepancy of thought or of impres- 
 sion between us is, that Mr. Jukes, examining (by his own ac- 
 count) very old hills, which have been all but washed away to 
 nothing, naturally, and rightly, attributes their present form, 
 or want of form, to their prolonged ablutions, while I, examin- 
 ing new and lofty hills, of which, though much has been car- 
 ried away, much is still left, as naturally and rightly ascribe a 
 great part of their aspect to the modes of their elevation. 
 The Alp-bred geologist has, however, this advantage, that 
 (especially if he happen at spare times to have been interested 
 in manual arts) he can hardly overlook the effects of denuda- 
 tion on a mountain-chain which sustains Venice on the delta 
 of one of its torrents, and Antwerp on that of another ; but 
 the English geologist, however practised in the detection and 
 measurement of faults filled in by cubes of fluor, may be par- 
 doned for dimly appreciating the structure of a district in 
 
 from the well-known geologist Mr. Joseph Beete Jukes, F.R.S., who, 
 writing from 44 Selly Oak, Birmingham, Nov. 22, " described as u the 
 originator of the discussion." He therefore was no doubt the author of 
 the article in the Reader alluded to above (p. 176, note). Mr. Jukes 
 died in 1869. 
 
 1 The following is the sentence from Mr. Jukes' letter alluded to : 
 4 4 Therefore when Mr. Ruskin says that 'the forms of the Alps are quite 
 visibly owing to the action of elevatory, contractile, and expansive 
 forces,' I would entreat him to listen to those who have had their vision 
 corrected by the laborious use of chain and theodolite and protractor 
 for many toilsome years over similar forms." 
 
178 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 which a people strong enough to lay the foundation of the 
 liberties of Europe in a single battle, 1 was educated in a 
 fissure of the Lower Chalk. 
 
 I think, however, that, if Mr. Jukes can succeed in allaying 
 his feverish thirst for battle, he will wish to withdraw the 
 fourth paragraph of his letter, 2 and, as a general formula, 
 even the scheme which it introduces. That scheme, suffi- 
 ciently accurate as an expression of one cycle of geological 
 action, contains little more than was known to all leading 
 geologists five-and-twenty years ago, when I was working hard 
 under Dr. Buckland at Oxford ; 3 and it is so curiously un- 
 worthy of the present state of geological science, that I believe 
 its author, in his calmer moments, will not wish to attach his 
 name to an attempt at generalization at once so narrow, and so 
 audacious. My experience of mountain-form is probably as 
 much more extended than his, as my disposition to generalize 
 respecting it is less ; 4 and, although indeed the apparent 
 limitation of the statement which he half quotes (probably 
 owing to his general love of denudation) from my last letter, 
 to the chain of the Alps, was intended only to attach to the 
 words "quite visibly," yet, had I myself expanded that state- 
 
 1 The battle of Sempach (?). See the letters on The Italian Question, 
 at the beginning of the second volume. 
 
 2 To the effect that "the form of the ground is the result wholly of 
 denudation." For the " scheme," consisting of ten articles, see the note 
 § below. 
 
 3 Dr. William Buckland, the geologist, and at one time Dean of West- 
 minster. He died in 1856. See Fors Clavigera, 1873, Letter xxxiv. p. 
 89. 
 
 4 This and the following sentences allude to parts of the above men- 
 tioned scheme. "The whole question, " wrote Mr. Jukes, "depends 
 on the relative dates of production of the lithological composition, the 
 penological structure, and the form of the surface." The scheme then 
 attempts to sketch " the order of the processes which formed these three 
 tilings,' 1 in ten articles, of which the following are specially referred to 
 by Mr. Ruskin : "1. The formation of a great series of stratified rocks 
 on the bed of a sea. ... 3. The possible intrusion of great masses 
 of granite rock " in more or less fluent state ; and 6, 7, 8, 9, which dealt 
 with alternate elevation and depression, of which there might be " even 
 more than one repetition." 
 
LETTERS OJST SCIENCE. 
 
 179 
 
 ment, I should not have assumed the existence of a sea, to re- 
 lieve me from the difficulty of accounting for the existence of 
 a lake ; I should not have assumed that all mountain-forma- 
 tions of investiture were marine ; nor claimed the possession 
 of a great series of stratified rocks without inquiring where 
 they were to come from. I should not have thought " even 
 more than one " an adequate expression for the possible num- 
 ber of elevations and depressions which may have taken place 
 since the beginning of time on the mountain-chains of the 
 world ; nor thought myself capable of compressing into Ten 
 Articles, or even into Thirty-nine, my conceptions of the 
 working of the Power which led forth the little hills like 
 lambs, while it rent or established the foundations of the 
 earth ; and set their birth-seal on the forehead of each in the 
 infinitudes of aspect and of function which range between the 
 violet-dyed banks of Thames and Seine, and the vexed Fury- 
 Tower of Cotopaxi. 
 
 Not but that large generalizations ure, indeed, possible with 
 respect to the diluvial phenomena, among which my antago- 
 nist has pursued his — scarcely amphibious ?) — investigations. 
 The effects of denudation and deposition are unvarying every- 
 where, and have been watched with terror and gratitude in all 
 ages. In physical mythology they gave tusk to the Grseae, 
 claw to the Gorgons, bull's frontlet to the floods of Aufidus 
 and Po, They gave weapons to the wars of Titans against 
 Gods, and lifeless seed of life into the hand of Deucalion. 
 Herodotus " rightly spelled " of them, where the lotus rose 
 from the dust of Nile and leaned upon its dew ; Plato rightly 
 dreamed of them in his great vision of the disrobing of the 
 Acropolis to its naked marble ; the keen eye of Horace, half 
 poet's, half farmer's (albeit unaided by theodolite), recognized 
 them alike where the risen brooks of Vallombrosa, amidst the 
 mountain-clamors, tossed their champed shingle to the Etru- 
 rian sea, and in the uncoveted wealth of the pastures, 
 
 " Quae Liris qnieta 
 Mordet aqua, tactiturnus amnis. " 1 
 
 1 See Herodotus, ii. 92 ; Plato, Critias, 112 ; and Horace, Od. i. 31. 
 
180 
 
 ARROWS OF TEE CHACE. 
 
 But the inner structure of the mountain-chains is as varied as 
 their substance ; and to this day, in some of its mightier de- 
 velopments, so little understood, that my Neptunian opponent 
 himself, in his address delivered at Cambridge in 1862, speaks 
 of an arrangement of strata which it is difficult to traverse ten 
 miles of Alpine limestone without finding an example of, as 
 beyond the limits of theoretical imagination. 1 
 
 I feel tempted to say more ; but I have at present little 
 time even for useful, and none for wanton, controversy. 
 Whatever information Mr. Jukes can afford me on these sub- 
 jects (and I do not doubt he can afford me much), I am ready 
 to receive, not only without need of his entreaty, but with 
 sincere thanks. If he likes to try his powers of sight, " as 
 corrected by the laborious use of the protractor," against mine, 
 I will in humility abide the issue. But at present the ques- 
 tion before the house is, as I understand it, simply whether 
 glaciers excavate lake-basins or not. That, in spite of measure- 
 ment and survey, here or elsewhere, seems to remain a ques- 
 tion. May we answer the first, if answerable ? That deter- 
 mined, I think I might furnish some other grounds of debate 
 in this notable cause of Peebles against Plainstanes, provided 
 that Mr. Jukes will not in future think his seniority gives him 
 the right to answer me with disparagement instead of instruc- 
 tion, and will bear with the English " student's" weakness 
 which induces me, usually, to wish rather to begin by shoot- 
 ing my elephant than end by describing it out of my moral 
 consciousness. 2 
 
 J. Kuskin. 
 
 1 The address was delivered by Mr. Jukes as President of the Geolog- 
 ical Section of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 
 which met in 1862 at Cambridge. (See the Report of the Association, 
 vol. xxxii. p. 54.) 
 
 * 2 Mr. Jukes' letter had concluded by recommending English geologists 
 to pursue their studies at home, on the ground that 11 a student, com- 
 mencing to learn comparative anatomy, does not think it necessary to go 
 to Africa and kill an elephant. " In the following number of the Reader 
 (Dec. 10) Mr. Jukes wrote, in answer to the present letter, that he had 
 not intended to imply any hostility towards Mr. Ruskin, with whose 
 next letter the discussion ended. 
 
LETTERS ON SCIENCE. 
 
 181 
 
 [From "The Reader,'' December 10, 1864.] 
 
 cojsrcEBJsrusrG hydrostatics. 
 
 Norwich, 6th December. 
 Your pages are not, I presume, intended for the dissemina- 
 tion of the elements of physical science. Your correspondent 
 "M. A. C." has a good wit, and, by purchasing any common 
 treatise on the barometer, may discover the propriety of exer- 
 cising it on subjects with which he is acquainted. " G. M." 
 deserves more attention, the confusion in his mind between 
 increase of pressure and increase of density being a very com- 
 mon one. 1 It may be enough to note for him, and for those 
 of your readers whom his letter may have embarrassed, that 
 in any incompressible liquid a body of greater specific gravity 
 than the liquid will sink to any depth, because the column 
 which it forms, together with the vertical column of the liquid 
 above it, always exceeds in total weight the column formed by 
 the equal bulk of the liquid at its side, and the vertical column 
 of liquid above that. Deep-sea soundings would be otherwise 
 impossible. " G. M." may find the explanation of the other 
 phenomena to which he alludes in any elementary work on 
 hydrostatics, and will discover on a little reflection that the 
 statement in my last letter 2 is simply true. Expanded, it is 
 merely that, when we throw a stone into water, we substitute 
 pressure of stone-surface for pressure of water-surface through- 
 
 1 "M. A. C. ,J wrote "Concerning Stones," and dealt — or attempted 
 to deal — with ''atmospheric pressure" in addition to the pressure of 
 water alluded to in Mr. Ruskin's letter of November 26. The letter 
 signed " G. M." was entitled " Mr. Ruskin on Glaciers see next note. 
 Both letters appeared in the Reader of December 3, 1864. 
 
 2 Not in the " last letter," but in the last but one—see ante, p. 17o, 
 44 A stone at the bottom of a stream," etc. The parts of " G. M.'s " letter 
 specially alluded to by Mr. Ruskin are as follows : 
 
 " It is very evident that the nearer the source of the glacier, the steeper 
 will be the angle at which it advances from above, and the greater its 
 power of excavation. . . . Mr. Ruskin gets rid of the rocks and debris 
 on the under side of the glacier by supposing that they are pressed be- 
 yond the range of action in the solid body of the ice ; but there must be 
 alimit to this, however soft the matrix." 
 
182 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACK 
 
 out the area of horizontal contact of the stone with the 
 ground, and add the excess of the stone's weight over that of 
 an equal bulk of water. 
 
 It is, however, very difficult for me to understand how any 
 person so totally ignoraDt of every circumstance of glacial 
 locality and action, as " G. M." shows himself to be in the 
 paragraph beginning "It is very evident," could have had the 
 courage to write a syllable on the subject. I will waste no 
 time in reply, but will only assure him (with reference to his 
 assertion that I " get rid of the rocks," etc.), that I never de- 
 sire to get rid of anything but error, and that I should be the 
 last person to desire to get rid of the glacial agency by friction, 
 as I was, I believe, the first to reduce to a diagram the prob- 
 able stages of its operation on the bases of the higher Alpine 
 aiguilles. 1 
 
 Permit me to add, in conclusion, that in future I can take 
 no notice of any letters to which the writers do not think tit 
 to attach their names. There can be no need of initials in 
 scientific discussion, except to shield incompetence or license 
 discourtesy. J. Euskin. 
 
 [From " Rendu's Theory of the Glaciers of Savoy," Macmillan, 1874.] 
 
 JAMES DAVID FORBES: HIS REAL GREATNESS.** 
 
 The incidental passage in " Fors," hastily written, on a con- 
 temptible issue, does not in the least indicate my sense of the 
 
 1 See Modern Painters, Part v., chap. 13, On the Sculpture Moun- 
 tains, vol. iv\ p. 175. 
 
 - In connection with the question of glacier-motion, Mr. Ruskin's esti- 
 mate of Professor Forbes and his work is here reprinted from itendu's 
 Glaciers of Savoy (Macmillan, 1874), pp. 205-207. For a passage on the 
 same subject which was reprinted in the Glaciers of Savoy, in addi- 
 tion to the new matter republished here, and for a statement of the 
 course of glacier-science, and the relation of Forbes to Agassiz, the reader 
 is referred to Fors Clavigera, 1873, Letter xxxiv. pp. 90-94 The " inci- 
 dental passage" consists of a review of Professor Tyndall s " Forms of 
 Water" (London, 1872), and the "contemptible issue" was that of his 
 position and Forbes' amongst geological discoverers. 
 
LETTERS ON SCIENCE. 
 
 183 
 
 real position of James Forbes among the men of Lis day. I 
 have asked his son's 1 permission to add a few words expressive 
 of my deeper feelings. 
 
 For indeed it seems to me that all these questions as to 
 priority of ideas or observations are beneath debate among 
 noble persons. What a man like Forbes first noticed, or de- 
 monstrated, is of no real moment to his memory. What he 
 was, and how he taught, is of consummate moment. The 
 actuality of his personal power, the sincerity and wisdom of 
 his constant teaching, need no applause from the love they 
 justly gained, and can sustain no diminution from hostility ; for 
 their proper honor is in their usefulness. To a man of no essen- 
 tial power, the accident of a discovery is apotheosis ; to kiih, 
 the former knowledge of all the sages of earth is as though it 
 were not ; he calls the ants of his own generation round him, 
 to observe how he flourishes in his tiny forceps the grain of 
 sand he has imposed upon Pelion. But from all such vindica- 
 tion of the claims of Forbes to mere discovery, I, his friend, 
 would, for my own part, proudly abstain. I do not in the 
 slightest degree care whether he was the first to see this, or 
 the first to say that, or how many common persons had seen 
 or said as much before. What I rejoice in knowing of him is 
 that he had clear eyes and open heart for all things and deeds 
 appertaining to his life ; that whatever he discerned, was dis- 
 cerned impartially ; what he said, was said securely ; and that 
 in all functions of thought, experiment, or communication, he 
 was sure to be eventually right, and serviceable to mankind, 
 whether out of the treasury of eternal knowledge he brought 
 forth things new or old. 
 
 This is the essential difference between the work of men of 
 true genius and the agitation of temporary and popular power. 
 The first root of their usefulness is in subjection of their van- 
 ity to their purpose. It is not in calibre or range of intellect 
 that men vitally differ ; every phase of mental character has 
 honorable office ; but the vital difference between the strong 
 
 1 George Forbes, B.A., Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Ander- 
 sonian University, Glasgow, and editor of The Glaciers of Savoy. 
 
184 
 
 ARROWS OF THE C II ACE. 
 
 and the weak — or let nie say rather, between the availing and 
 valueless intelligence — is in the relation of the love of self to 
 the love of the subject or occupation. Many an Alpine trav- 
 eller, many a busy man of science, volubly represent to us 
 their pleasure in the Alps ; but I scarcely recognize one who 
 would not willingly see them all ground down into gravel, on 
 condition of his being the first to exhibit a pebble of it at the 
 Royal Institution. Whereas it may be felt in any single page 
 of Forbes' writing, or De Saussure's, that they love crag and 
 glacier for their own sake's sake ; that they question their 
 secrets in reverent and solemn thirst : not at all that they may 
 communicate them at breakfast to the readers of the Daily 
 Mews — and that, although there were no news, no institutions, 
 no leading articles, no medals, no money, and no mob, in the 
 world, these men would still labor, and be glad, though all 
 their knowledge was to rest with them at last in the silence 
 of the snows, or only to be taught to peasant children sitting 
 in the shade of pines. 
 
 And whatever Forbes did or spoke during his noble life 
 was in this manner patiently and permanently true. The pas- 
 sage of his lectures in which he shows the folly of Macaulay's 
 assertion that "The giants of one generation are the pigmies 
 of the next," 1 beautiful in itself, is more interesting yet in 
 the indication it gives of the general grasp and melodious tone 
 of Forbes' reverent intellect, as opposed to the discordant inso- 
 
 1 This saying of Macaulay's occurred in an address which, as M.P. for 
 that cit}', he delivered at the opening of the Edinburgh Philosophical 
 Institution, in 1846 (Nov. 4). Forbes' criticism of it and of the whole 
 address may be found in a lecture introductory to a course on Natural 
 Philosophy, delivered before the University of Edinburgh (Nov. 1 and 
 2, 1848), and entitled " The Danger of Superficial knowledge ; " under 
 which title it was afterwards printed, together with a newspaper report 
 of Macaulay's address (London and Edinburgh, 1849). In the edition 
 of Macaulay's speeches revised by himself, the sentence in question is 
 omitted, though others of a like nature, such as "The profundity of one 
 age is the shallowness of the next," are retained, and the whole argu- 
 ment of the address remains the same. (See Macaulay's Works, 8 vol. 
 ed., Longmans, 1866. Vol. viii. p. 380, The Literature of Great Britain.) 
 For a second mention of this saying by Mr. Ruskin, see also u Remarks 
 
LETTERS ON SCIENCE, 
 
 185 
 
 lence of modernism. His mind grew and took color like an 
 Alpine flower, rooted on rock, and perennial in flower ; while 
 Macaulay's swelled like a puff-ball in an unwholesome pasture, 
 and projected itself far round in deleterious dust. 
 
 I had intended saying a few words more touching the dif- 
 ference in temper, and probity of heart, between Forbes and 
 Agassiz, as manifested in the documents now 1 laid before the 
 public. And as far as my own feelings are concerned, the 
 death of Agassiz 2 would not have caused my withholding a 
 word. For in all utterance of blame or praise, I have striven 
 always to be kind to the living — just to the dead. But in 
 deference to the wish of the son of Forbes, I keep silence : I 
 willingly leave sentence to be pronounced by time, above their 
 two graves. John Ruskin. 
 
 addressed to the Mansfield Art Night Class," 1873, now reprinted in A 
 Joy for Ever (Buskin's Works, vol. ix. p. 201). 
 
 The following are parts of the passage (extending over some pages) in 
 Forbes' lecture alluded to by Mr. Buskin : 
 
 * ; How false, then, as well as arrogant, is the self-gratulation of those, 
 who, forgetful of the struggles and painful efforts by which knowledge 
 is increased, would place themselves, by virtue of their borrowed ac- 
 quirements, in the same elevated position with their great teachers — 
 nay, who, perceiving the dimness of light and the feebleness of grasp, 
 with which, often at first, great truths have been perceived and held, 
 find food for pride in the superior clearness of their vision and tenacity 
 of their apprehension !' ' Then, after quoting some words from Dr. 
 Whe well's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, vol. ii. p. 525, and 
 after some further remarks, the lecturer thus continued : "The activity 
 of mind, the earnestness, the struggle after truth, the hopeless perplexity 
 breaking up gradually into the fulness of perfect apprehension,— the 
 dread of error, the victory over the imagination in discarding hypoth- 
 eses, the sense of weakness and humility arising from repeated disap- 
 pointments, the yearnings after a fuller revelation , and the sure conviction 
 which attends the final advent of knowledge sought amidst difficulties 
 and disappointments,— these are the lessons and the rewards of the dis- 
 coverers who first put truth within our reach, but of which we who 
 receive it at second-hand can form but a faint and lifeless conception." 
 (See pp. 39-41 of The Danger of Superficial Knowledge.) 
 
 1 In the edition of Bendu's Glaciers of Savoy already alluded to. 
 
 2 Forbes died Dec. 31, 1868; Agassiz in 1873; and De Saussure in 
 1845. 
 
186 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CIIAOE. 
 
 The following letters/ one from Forbes to myself, written 
 ten years ago, and the other from one of his pupils, received 
 by me a few weeks since, must, however, take their due place 
 among the other evidence on which such judgment is to be 
 given. J. R 
 
 II— MISCELLANEOUS. 
 
 [From "The Artist and Amateur's Magazine" (edited by E. V. Rippingille), February, 
 1844, pp. 314-319.] 
 
 REFLECTIONS IN WATERS 
 
 To the Editor of 44 The Artist and Amateur's Magazine" 
 
 Sir : The phenomena of light and shade, rendered to the eye 
 by the surface or substance of water, are so intricate and so 
 multitudinous, that had I wished fully to investigate, or even 
 fully to state them, a volume instead of a page would have been 
 
 1 The letter from Forbes to Mr. Buskin (dated December 2, 1864) was 
 presumably elicited by the allusions to Forbes in Mr. Buskin's letter 
 to the Reader of November 26, 1874 (see ante, pp. 171-176). 41 Ad- 
 vancing years and permanently depressed state of health, 7 ' ran the let- 
 ter, 44 have taken the edge off the bitterness which the injustice- 1 have 
 experienced caused me during many years. But . . . the old fire re- 
 vives within me when I see any one willing and courageous, like you, 
 to remember an old friend, and to show that you do so." The second 
 letter speaks of the writer's 44 boyish enthusiasm " for Agassiz, an expres- 
 sion to which Mr. Buskin appends this note : "The italics are mine. I 
 think this incidental and naive proof of the way in which Forbes had 
 spoken of Agassiz to his class, of the greatest value and beautiful inter- 
 est. — J. R." 
 
 2 In the first edition of Modern Painters (vol. i. p. 830) it was stated 
 that 4 4 the horizontal lines cast by clouds upon the sea are not shadows, 
 but reflections ; n and that 44 on clear water near the eye there can never 
 be even the appearance of shadow." This statement being questioned 
 in a letter to the Art Union Journal (November, 1843), and that letter 
 being itself criticised in a review of Modern Painters in the Artist and 
 Amateur's Magazine, p. 262 (December, 1843), there appeared in the 
 last-named periodical two letters upon the subject, of which one was 
 from J. H. Maw, the correspondent of the Art Union, and the other— 
 that reprinted here— a reply from " The Author of Modern Painters." 
 
LETTERS ON SCIENCE. 
 
 187 
 
 required for the task. In the paragraphs 1 which I devoted to 
 the subject I expressed, as briefly as possible, the laws which 
 are of most general application — with which artists are indeed 
 so universally familiar, that I conceived it altogether unneces- 
 sary to prove or support them : but since I have expressed them 
 in as few words as possible, I cannot afford to have any of those 
 words missed or disregarded ; and therefore when I say that 
 on clear water, near the eye, there is no shadow, I must not be 
 understood to mean that on muddy water, far from the eye 
 there is no shadow. As, however, your correspondent appears 
 to deny my position in toto, and as many persons, on their first 
 glance at the subject, might be inclined to do the same, you will 
 perhaps excuse me for occupying a page or two with a more 
 explicit statement, both of facts and principles, than my limits 
 admitted in the " Modern Painters." 
 
 First, for the experimental proof of my assertion that "on 
 clear water, near the eye, there is no shadow." Your corre- 
 spondent's trial with the tub is somewhat cumbrous and incon- 
 venient ; 2 a far more simple experiment will settle the matter. 
 Fill a tumbler with water ; throw into it a narrow strip of white 
 paper ; put the tumbler into sunshine ; dip your finger into 
 the water between the paper and the sun, so as to throw a 
 shadow across the paper and on the water. The shadow will 
 of coarse be distinct on the paper, but on the water absolutely 
 and totally invisible. 
 
 1 The passages in Modern Painters referred to in this letter were con- 
 siderably altered and enlarged in later editions of the work, and the 
 exact words quoted are not to be found in it as finally revised. The 
 reader is, however, referred to vol. i part h\, § v., chap. i. ? " Of Water 
 as painted by the Ancients," in whatever edition of the book he may 
 c hance to meet with or possess. 
 
 - See the Artist and Amateur's Magazine, p. 313, where the author of 
 the letter, to which this is a reply, adduced in support of his views the 
 following experiment, viz. : to put a tub filled with clear water in the 
 sunlight, and then taking an opaque screen with a hole cut in it, to 
 place the same in such a position as to intercept the light falling upon 
 the tub. Then, he argued, cover the hole over, and the tub will be in 
 shadow ; uncover it again, and a patch of light will fall on the water, 
 proving that water is not " insusceptible of light as well as shadow." 
 
188 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHAOM. 
 
 This simple trial of the fact, and your explanation of the 
 principle given in your ninth number, 1 are sufficient proof and 
 explanation of my assertion ; and if your correspondent re- 
 quires authority as well as ocular demonstration, he has only 
 to ask Stanfield or Copley Fielding, or any other good- painter 
 of sea ; the latter, indeed, was the person who first pointed 
 out the fact to me when a boy. What then, it remains to b6 
 determined, are those lights and shades on the sea, which, for 
 the sake of clearness, and because they appear such to the or- 
 dinary observer, I have spoken of as " horizontal lines," and 
 which have every appearance of being cast by the clouds like 
 real shadows ? I imagined that I had been sufficiently explicit 
 on this subject both at pages 330 and 363 ; 2 but your corre- 
 spondent appears to have confused himself by inaccurately re- 
 ceiving the term shadow as if it meant darkness of any kind ; 
 whereas my second sentence — " every darkness on water is re- 
 flection, not shadow " — might have shown him that I used it 
 in its particular sense, as meaning the absence of positive light 
 on a visible surface. Thus, in endeavoring to support his as- 
 sertion that the shadows on the sea are as distinct as on a 
 grass field, he says that they are so by contrast with the "light 
 reflected from its polished surface ; " thus showing at once that 
 he lias been speaking and thinking all along, not of shadow, 
 but of the absence of reflected light — an absence which is no 
 more shadow than the absence of the image of a piece of white 
 paper in a mirror is shadow on the mirror. 
 
 The question, therefore, is one of terms rather than of 
 things ; and before proceeding it will be necessary for me to 
 make your correspondent understand thoroughly what is meant 
 by the term shadow as opposed to that of reflection. 
 
 Let us stand on the sea-shore on a cloudless night, with a 
 full moon over the sea, and a swell on the water. Of course a 
 long line of splendor will be seen on the waves under the 
 
 1 In the review of Modern Painters mentioned above. 
 
 2 Of the first edition of the first volume of Modern Painters. The 
 size of the book (and consequently the paging) was afterwards altered to 
 suit the engravings contained in the last three volumes. 
 
LETTERS ON SCIENCE. 
 
 189 
 
 moon, reaching from the horizon to our very feet. But are 
 those waves between the moon and us actually more illumi- 
 nated than any other part of the sea ? Not one whit. The 
 whole surface of the sea is under the same full light, but the 
 waves between the moon and us are the only ones which are 
 in a position to reflect that light to our eyes. The sea on both 
 sides of that path of light is in perfect darkness — almost black. 
 But is it so from shadow ? Not so, for there is nothing to in- 
 tercept the moonlight from it : it is so from position, because 
 it cannot reflect any of the rays which fall on it to our eyes, 
 but reflects instead the dark vault of the night sky. Both the 
 darkness and the light on it, therefore — and they are as vio- 
 lently contrasted as may well be — are nothing but reflections, 
 the whole surface of the water being under one blaze of moon- 
 light, entirely unshaded by any intervening object whatso- 
 ever. 1 
 
 Now, then, we can understand the cause of the chiaro-scuro 
 of the sea by daylight with lateral sun. Where the sunlight 
 reaches the water, every ripple, wave, or swell reflects to the 
 eye from some of its planes either the image of the sun or 
 some portion of the neighboring bright sky. Where the cloud 
 interposes between the sun and sea, all these luminous reflec- 
 tions are prevented, and the raised planes of the waves reflect 
 only the dark under-surface of the cloud ; and hence, by the 
 multiplication of the images, spaces of light and shade are 
 produced, which lie on the sea precisely in the position of 
 real or positive lights and shadows — corresponding to the 
 outlines of the clouds — laterally cast, and therefore seen in 
 addition to, and at the same time with, the ordinary or direct 
 reflection, vigorously contrasted, the lights being often a blaze 
 of gold, and the shadows a dark leaden gray ; and yet, I re- 
 peat, they are no more real lights, or real shadows, on the sea, 
 than the image of a black coat is a shadow on a mirror, or the 
 image of white paper a light upon it. 
 
 1 It may be worth noting that the optical delusion above explained is 
 described at some length by Mr. Herbert Spencer (The Study of Sociol- 
 ogy, p. 191, London, 1874) as one of the commonest instances of popu- 
 lar ignorance. 
 
190 
 
 ARROWS OF THE GRACE. 
 
 Are there, then, no shadows whatsoever upon the sea? 
 Not so. My assertion is simply that there are none on clear 
 water near the eye. I shall briefly state a few of the circum- 
 stances which give rise to real shadow in distant effect. 
 
 I. Any admixture of opaque coloring matter, as of mud, 
 chalk, or powdered granite renders water capable of distinct 
 shadow, which is cast on the earthly and solid particles sus- 
 pended in the liquid. None of the seas on our south-eastern 
 coast are so clear as to be absolutely incapable of shade ; and 
 the faint tint, though scarcely perceptible to a near observer,* 
 is sufficiently manifest when seen in large extent from a dis- 
 tance, especially when contrasted, as your correspondent says, 
 with reflected lights. This was one reason for my introduc- 
 ing the words — " near the eye." 
 
 There is, however, a peculiarity in the appearances of such 
 shadows which requires especial notice. It is not merely the 
 transparency of water, but its polished surface, and consequent 
 reflective power, which render it incapable of shadow. A per- 
 fectly opaque body, if its power of reflection be perfect, re- 
 ceives no shadow (this I shall presently prove) ; and therefore, 
 in any lustrous body, the incapability of shadow is in propor- 
 tion to the power of reflection. Now the power of reflection 
 in water varies with the angle of the impinging ray, being of 
 course greatest when that angle is least : and thus, when we 
 look along the water at a low angle, its power of reflection 
 maintains its incapability of shadow to a considerable extent, 
 in spite of its containing suspended opaque matter ; whereas, 
 when we look down upon water from a height, as we then 
 receive from it only rays which have fallen on it at a large 
 angle, a great number of those rays are unreflected from the 
 surface, but penetrate beneath the surface, and are then re- 
 flected f from the suspended opaque matter : thus rendering 
 
 * Of course, if water be perfectly foul, like that of the Rhine 
 or Arve, it receives a shadow nearly as well as mud. Yet the 
 succeeding observations on its reflective power are applicable 
 to it, even in this state. 
 
 f It must always be remembered that there are two kinds of 
 reflection, — one from polished bodies, giving back rays of light 
 
LETTERS ON SCIENCE. 
 
 191 
 
 shadows clearly visible which, at a small angle, would have 
 been altogether unperceived. 
 
 II. But it is not merely the presence of opaque matter 
 which renders shadows visible on the sea seen from a height. 
 The eye, when elevated above the water, receives rays reflected 
 from the bottom, of which, when near the water, it is insensi- 
 ble. I have seen the bottom at seven fathoms, so that I could 
 count its pebbles, from the cliffs of the Cornish coast ; and the 
 broad effect of the light and shade of the bottom is discernible 
 at enormous depths. In fact, it is difficult to say at what 
 depth the rays returned from the bottom become absolutely 
 ineffective — perhaps not until we get fairly out into blue 
 water. Hence, with a white or sandy shore, shadows forcible 
 enough to afford conspicuous variety of color may be seen 
 from a height of two or three hundred feet. 
 
 unaltered ; the other from unpolished bodies, giving back rays 
 of light altered. By the one reflection we see the images of 
 other objects on the surface of the reflecting object ; by the 
 other we are made aware of that surface itself. The difference 
 between these two kinds of reflection has not been well worked 
 by writers on optics ; but the great distinction between them 
 is, that the rough body reflects most rays when the angle at 
 which the rays impinge is largest, and the polished body when 
 the angle is smallest. It is the reflection from polished bodies 
 exclusively which I usually indicate by the term ; and that 
 from rough bodies I commonly distinguish as "positive light :" 
 but as I have here used the term in its general sense, the ex- 
 planation of the distinction. becomes necessary. All light and 
 shade on matter is caused by reflection of some kind ; and the 
 distinction made throughout this paper between reflected and 
 positive light, and between real and pseudo shadow, is nothing 
 more than the distinction between two kinds of reflection. 
 
 I believe some of Bouguer's 1 experiments have been ren- 
 dered inaccurate — not in their general result, nor in ratio of 
 quantities, but in the quantities themselves — by the difficulty 
 of distinguishing between the two kind of reflected rays. 
 
 i Pierre Bouguer, author of, amongst other works, the Traite 
 cVOptique sur la Gradation de la Lumiere. He was born in 1698, and 
 died in 1758. 
 
192 
 
 ARROW 8 OF THE CHAGE. 
 
 III. The actual color of the sea itself is an important cause 
 of shadow in distant effect. Of the ultimate causes of local 
 color in water I am not ashamed tc confess my total ignorance, 
 for I believe Sir David Brewster himself has not elucidated 
 them. Every river in Switzerland has a different hue. The 
 lake of Geneva, commonly blue, appears, under a fresh breeze, 
 striped with blue and bright red ; and the hues of coast-sea 
 are as various as those of a dolphin ; but, whatever be the 
 cause of their variety, their intensity is, of course, dependent 
 on the presence of sunlight. The sea under shade is common- 
 ly of a cold gray hue ; in the sunlight it is susceptible of vivid 
 and exquisite coloring : and thus the forms of clouds are 
 traced on its surface, not by light and shade, but by variation 
 of color by grays opposed to greens, blues to rose-tints, etc. 
 All such phenomena are chiefly visible from a height and a 
 distance ; and thus furnished me with additional reasons for 
 introducing the words — " near the eye." 
 
 IV. Local color is, however, the cause of one beautiful kind 
 of chiaro-scuro, visible when we are close to the water — 
 shadows cast, not on the waves, but through them, as through 
 misty air. When a wave is raised so as to let the sun-light 
 through a portion of its body, the contrast of the transparent 
 chrysoprase green of the illuminated parts with the darkness 
 of the shadowed is exquisitely beautiful. 
 
 Hitherto, however, I have been speaking chiefly of the 
 transparency of water as the source of its incapability of 
 shadow. I have still to demonstrate the effect of its polished 
 surface. 
 
 Let your correspondent pour an ounce or two of quicksilver 
 into a flat white saucer, and, throwing a strip of white paper 
 into the middle of the mercury, as before into the water, inter- 
 pose an upright bit of stick between it and the sun : he will 
 then have the pleasure of seeing the shadow of the stick 
 sharply defined on the paper and the edge of the saucer, while 
 on the intermediate portion of mercury it will be totally invisi- 
 ble.* Mercury is a perfectly opaque body, and its incapability 
 
 f The mercury must of course be perfectly clean. 
 
LETTERS ON SCIENCE, 
 
 193 
 
 of shadow is entirely owing to the perfection of its polished 
 surface. Thus, then, whether water be considered as trans- 
 parent or reflective (and according to its position it is one or the 
 other, or partially both — for in the exact degree that it is the 
 one, it is not the other), it is equally incapable of shadow. But 
 as on distant water, so also on near water, when broken, pseudo 
 shadows take place, which are in reality nothing more than 
 the aggregates of reflections. In the illuminated space of the 
 wave, from every plane turned towards the sun there flashes 
 an image of the sun ; in the im-iliuminated space there is seen 
 on every such plane only the dark image of the interposed 
 body. Every wreath of the foam, every jet of the spray, re- 
 flects in the sunlight a thousand diminished suns, and refracts 
 their rays into a thousand colors ; while in the shadowed parts 
 the same broken parts of the wave appear only in dead, cold 
 white ; and thus pseudo shadows are caused, occupying the 
 position of real shadows, defined in portions of their edge with 
 equal sharpness: and yet, I repeat, they are no more real 
 shadows than the image of a piece of black cloth is a shadow 
 on a mirror. 
 
 But your correspondent will say, " What does it matter to 
 me, or to the artist, whether they are shadows or not? They 
 are darkness, and they supply the place of shadows, and that 
 it is all I contend for." Not so. They do not supply the 
 place of shadows ; they are divided from them by this broad 
 distinction, that while shadow causes uniform deepening of 
 the ground-tint in the objects which it affects, these pseudo 
 shadows are merely portions of that ground-tint itself undeep- 
 ened, but cut out and rendered conspicuous by flashes of light 
 irregularly disposed around it. The ground-tint both of shad- 
 owed and illumined parts is precisely the same — a pure pale 
 gray, catching as it moves the hues of the sky and clouds ; 
 but on this, in the illumined spaces, there fall touches and 
 flashes of intense reflected light, which are absent in the 
 shadow. If, for the sake of illustration, we consider the wave 
 as hung with a certain quantity of lamps, irregularly dis- 
 posed, the shape and extent of a shadow on that wave will 
 be marked by the Jamps being all put out within its in- 
 
194 
 
 ARROWS OF THE Gil ACE, 
 
 fluenee, while the tint of the water itself is entirely un* 
 affected by it. 
 
 The works of Stanfield will supply your correspondent with 
 perfect and admirable illustrations of this principle. His 
 water-tint is equally clear and luminous whether in sunshine 
 or shade ; but the whole lustre of the illumined parts is at- 
 tained by bright isolated touches of reflected light. 
 
 The works of Turner will supply us with still more striking 
 examples, especially in cases where slanting sunbeams are 
 cast from a low sun along breakers, when the shadows will be 
 found in a state of perpetual transition, now defined for an 
 instant on a mass of foam, then lost in an interval of smooth 
 water, then coming through the body of a transparent wave, 
 then passing off into the air upon the dust of the spray — sup- 
 plying, as they do in nature, exhaustless combinations of ethe- 
 real beauty. From Turner's habit of choosing for his sub- 
 jects sea much broken with foam, the shadows in his works 
 are more conspicuous than in Stanfield's, and may be studied 
 to greater advantage. To the works of these great painters, 
 those of Vandevelde may be opposed for instances of the im- 
 possible. The black shadows of this latter painter's neai 
 waves supply us with innumerable and most illustrative exan> 
 pies of everything which sea shadows are not. 
 
 Finally, let me recommend your correspondent, if he wishes 
 to obtain perfect knowledge of the effects of shadow on water, 
 whether calm or agitated, to go through a systematic exami- 
 nation of the works of Turner. He will find every phenome- 
 non of this kind noted in them with the most exquisite fidel- 
 ity. The Alnwick Castle, with the shadow of the bridge cast 
 on the dull surface of the moat, and mixing with the reflec- 
 tion, is the most finished piece of water-painting with which I 
 am acquainted. Some of the recent Venices have afforded ex- 
 quisite instances of the change of color in water caused by 
 shadow, the illumined water being transparent and green, 
 while in the shade it loses its own color, and takes the blue of 
 the sky. 
 
 But I have already, Sir, occupied far too many of your valu- 
 able pages, and I must close the subject, although hundreds 
 
LETTERS ON SCIENCE. 
 
 195 
 
 of points occur to me which I have not yet illustrated.* The 
 discussion respecting the Grotto of Capri is somewhat irrele- 
 vant, and I will not enter upon it, as thousands of laws re- 
 specting light and color are there brought into play, in 
 addition to the water's incapability of shadow. 1 But it is 
 somewhat singular that the Newtonian principle, which your 
 correspondent enunciates in conclusion, is the very cause of 
 the incapability of shadow which he disputes. I am not, how- 
 ever, writing a treatise on optics, and therefore can at present 
 do no more than simply explain what the Newtonian law act- 
 ually signifies, since, by your correspondent's enunciation of 
 it, " pellucid substances reflect light only from their surfaces,' , 
 an inexperienced reader might be led to conclude that opaque 
 bodies reflected light from something else than their surfaces. 
 
 The law is, that whatever number of rays escape reflection 
 at the surface of the water, pass through its body without 
 farther reflection, being therein weakened, but not reflected ; 
 but that, where they pass out of the water again, as, for in- 
 stance, if there be air-bubbles at the bottom, giving an under- 
 surface to the water, there a number of rays are reflected 
 from that under-surface, and do not pass out of the water, but 
 return to the eye ; thus causing the bright luminosity of the 
 under bubbles. Thus water reflects from both its surfaces — 
 it reflects it when passing out as well as when entering ; but 
 it reflects none whatever from its own interior mass. If it 
 did, it would be capable of shadow. 
 
 I have the honor to be, Sir, 
 
 Your most obedient servant, 
 The Author of " Modern Painters." 
 
 * Among other points, I have not explained why water, 
 though it has no shadow, has a dark side. The cause of this 
 is the Newtonian law noticed below, that water weakens the 
 rays passing through its mass, though it reflects none ; and, 
 also, that it reflects rays from both surfaces. 
 
 1 The review of Modern Painters had mentioned the Grotto of Capri, 
 near Naples, as " a very beautiful illustration of the great quantity of 
 light admitted or contained in water," and on this Mr. J. H. Maw had 
 commented. 
 
196 
 
 ARROWS OF THE GRACE. 
 
 Fig. 1. 
 
 [From u The London Review/' May 16, 1861.] 
 
 THE REFLECTION OF RAINBOWS IN WATER. 1 
 
 To the Editor of " The London Review:' 
 
 Sir : I do not think there is much difficulty in the rainbow 
 business. We cannot see the reflection of the same rainbow 
 
 which we behold in 
 the sky, but we see 
 the reflection of an- 
 other invisible one 
 within it Suppose a 
 and b, Fig. 1, are two 
 falling raindrops, and 
 the spectator is at s, 
 and x y is the water 
 surface. If r a s be 
 a sun ray giving, we 
 will say, the red ray in the visible rainbow, the ray, b c s, 
 will give the same red ray, reflected from the water at c. 
 
 It is rather a long business to examine the lateral angles, 
 and I have not time to do it ; but I presume the result would 
 be, that if a m b, Fig. 
 2, be the visible rain- 
 bow, and x y the water 
 horizon, the reflec- 
 tion will be the dotted 
 line c e d, reflecting, 
 that is to say, the in- 
 visible bow, end; 
 thus, the terminations 
 of the arcs of the vis- 
 ible and reflected 
 bows do not coincide. FlQ - 2 - 
 
 The interval, m n, depends on the position of the spectator 
 with respect to the water surface. The thing can hardly ever 
 
 1 The London Review of May 4 contained a critique of the Exhibition 
 of the Society of Water-colors, which included a notice of Mr. Duncan's 
 
LETTERS ON SCIENCE, 
 
 197 
 
 be seen in nature, for if there be rain enough to carry the 
 bow to the water surface, that surface will be ruffled by the 
 drops, and incapable of reflection. 
 
 Whenever I have seen a rainbow over water (sea, mostly), 
 it has stood on it reflectionless ; but interrupted conditions of 
 rain might be imagined which would present reflection on 
 near surfaces. 
 
 Always very truly yours, 
 
 J. RUSKIN. 
 
 7th May, 1861. 
 
 [From " The Proceedings of the Ashmolean Society," May 10, 184i.] 
 
 A LANDSLIP NEAR GIAGNANO. 
 
 "The Secretary read a letter 1 from J. Ruskin, Esq., of 
 Christ Church, dated Naples, February 7, 1841, and addressed 
 to Dr. Buckland, 2 giving a description of a recent landslip 
 near that place, which had occasioned a great loss of life : it 
 occurred at the village of Giagnano, near Castel-a-mare, on 
 the 22 d of January last. The village is situated on the slope 
 of a conical hill of limestone, not less than 1400 feet in height, 
 and composed of thin beds similar to those which form the 
 greater part of the range of Sorrento. The hill in question is 
 nearly isolated, though forming part of the range, the slope of 
 its sides uniform, and inclined at not less than 40°. Assisted 
 by projecting ledges of the beds of rock, a soil has accumulated 
 on this slope three or four feet in depth, rendering it quite 
 smooth and uniform. The higher parts are covered in many 
 places with brushwood, the lower with vines trellised over old 
 mulberry trees. There are slight evidences of recent aqueous 
 action on the sides of the hill, a few gullies descending tow- 
 ards the east side of the village. After two days of heavy 
 
 "Shiplake, on the Thames" (No. 52). In this picture the artist had 
 painted a rainbow reflected in the water, the truth of which to nature 
 was questioned by some of his critics. Mr. Ruskin's was not the only 
 letter in support of the picture's truth. 
 
 1 The present letter is the earliest in date of any in these volumes. 
 
 2 See note to p. 178. 
 
198 
 
 ARROWS OF THE GRACE. 
 
 rain, on the evening of January 22, a torrent of water burst 
 down on the village to the west of these gullies, and the soil 
 accumulated on the side of the hill gave way in a wedge- 
 shaped mass, the highest point being about 600 feet above the 
 houses, and slid down, leaving the rocks perfectly bare. It 
 buried the nearest group of cottages, and remained heaped up 
 in longitudinal layers above them, whilst the water ran in tor- 
 rents over the edge towards the plain, sweeping away many 
 more houses in its course. To the westward of this point 
 another slip took place of smaller dimensions than the first, 
 but coming on a more crowded part of the village, over- 
 whelmed it completely, occasioning the loss of 116 lives." 
 
 [From " The Athenjeum," February 14. 1857.] 
 
 THE GENTIAN} 
 
 Denmark Hill, Feb. 10. 
 If your correspondent " Y. L. Y." will take a little trouble 
 in inquiring into the history of the'gentian, he will find that, 
 as is the case with most other flowers, there are many species 
 of it. He knows the dark blue gentian (Gentiana acaulis) 
 because it grows, under proper cultivation, as healthily in 
 England as on the Alps. And he has not seen the pale blue 
 gentian (Gentiana verna) shaped like a star, and of the color 
 of the sky, because that flower grows unwillingly, if at all, 
 except on its native rocks. I consider it, therefore, as specially 
 characteristic of Alpine scenery, while its beauty, to my mind, 
 far exceeds that of the darker species. 
 
 I have, etc., 
 
 J. KlJSKIN. 
 
 1 In the Notes on the Turner Gallery at Marlborough House, 1856 
 (p. 23), Mr. Ruskin speaks of the u pale ineffable azure " of the gentian. 
 The present letter was written in reply to one signed " Y. L. Y." in the 
 Athenaeum of February 7, 1857 in which this expression was criticised. 
 In a subsequent issue of the same journal (February 21) Mr. Ruskin's 
 querist denied the ignorance imputed to him, and still questioned the 
 propriety of calling the gentian "pale," without at the same time dis- 
 tinguishing the two species. 
 
LETTERS ON SCIENCE. 
 
 199 
 
 [Date and place of original publication unknown.] 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF NATURAL HISTORY. 
 
 To Adam White, of Edinburgh. 
 
 It would be pleasing alike to my personal vanity and to the 
 instinct of making myself serviceable, which I will fearlessly 
 say is as strong in me as vanity, if I could think that any letter 
 of mine would be helpful to you in the recommendation of the 
 study of natural history, as one of the best elements of early 
 as of late education. I believe there is no child so dull or so 
 indolent but it may be roused to wholesome exertion by putting 
 some practical and personal work on natural history within its 
 range of daily occupation ; and, once aroused, few pleasures 
 are so innocent, and none so constant. I have often been 
 unable, through sickness or anxiety, to follow my own art 
 work, but I have never found natural history fail me, either 
 as a delight or a medicine. But for children it must be curtly 
 and wisely taught. We must show them things, not tell them 
 names. A deal chest of drawers is worth many books to them, 
 and a well-guided country walk worth a hundred lectures. 
 
 I heartily wish you, not only for your sake, but for that of 
 the young thistle buds of Edinburgh, success in promulgating 
 your views and putting them in practice. 
 
 Always believe me faithfully yours, 
 
 J. RUSKIN. 
 
 END OF VOLUME L 
 
VOLUME TWO 
 
 LETTERS ON POLITICS. ECONOMY, 
 
 AND 
 
 MISCELLANEOUS MATTERS 
 
NOTE TO THE SECOND VOLUME. 
 
 The letters relating to Mr. Rtiskin's Candidature for the Lord Rectorship 
 of Glasgoio University were 'published when this volume was almost out of tin 
 printers' hands. They have however been included, by Mr. Raskin' s wish, 
 and will be found at the end of this volume, where a letter to the late Mr. 
 W. H. Harrison, which has just been brought to my notice, and two very 
 recent letters on Dramatic Reform, have, at the cost of some delay* been alse 
 added. — [Ed.] 
 
 November 15, 1880. 
 
204 CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE LETTERS 
 
 Note. — In the second and third columns the bracketed words and figures are more or 
 
 Title of Letter. 
 
 Letter to W. C. Bennett, LL.D 
 
 Letter to Dr. Guthrie 
 
 Letter to W. H. Harrison 
 
 " Limner w and Illumination 
 
 The Animals of Scripture : a Review. 
 
 The Sale of Mr. Windus' Pictures , 
 
 The Italian Question , 
 
 4 1 44 
 li 44 
 
 Coventry Patm ore's " Faithful for Ever " 
 
 Proverbs on Right Dress , 
 
 Oak Silkworms 
 
 The Depreciation of Gold 
 
 The Foreign Policy of England 
 
 The Position of Denmark 
 
 The Law of Supply and Demand 
 
 U 41 44 
 
 U ti it 
 
 Strikes v. Arbitration 
 
 Work and Wages 
 
 41 44 
 
 4( 44 
 4 4 44 
 
 Domestic Servants — Mastership 
 
 44 44 Experience 
 
 44 44 Sonship and Slavery 
 
 Modern Houses 
 
 Our Railway System 
 
 The Jamaica Insurrection 
 
 At the Play 
 
 The Standard of Wages 
 
 An Object of Charity 
 
 True Education 
 
 Excuse from Correspondence. . „ 
 
 Is England Big Enough ? 
 
 The Ownership of Railways 
 
 Railway Economy 
 
 Employment for the Destitute Poor, etc.. 
 
 Notes on the Destitute Classes, etc 
 
 The Morality of Field Sports 
 
 Female Franchise 
 
 The Franco-Prussian War 
 
 41 44 a 
 
 Sad-Colored Costumes 
 
 Railway Safety 
 
 A King's First Duty 
 
 A Nation's Defences 
 
 The Waters of Comfort 
 
 The Streams of Italy 
 
 Woman's Sphere (extract) 
 
 The 44 Queen of the Air" 
 
 Drunkenness and Crime 
 
 The Streets of London , 
 
 Written. 
 
 Heme Hill, Dulwich.. 
 [Edinburgh] 
 
 [Heme Hill 
 
 [Denmark Hill 
 
 [Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Berlin 
 
 Berlin 
 
 Schaffhausen 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Geneva 
 
 Geneva 
 
 Chamounix 
 
 Zurich 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 [Denmark Hill] 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 [Denmark Hill] 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 [Denmark Hill] 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill, S 
 
 Denmark Hill, S 
 
 Denmark Hill, S 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill, S.E 
 
 [Denmark Hill] 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Venice 
 
 Denmark Hill, S.E.... 
 [Denmark Hill, S.E.]. 
 Denmark Hill, S.E. . . . 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 [Denmark Hill] 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Oxford 
 
 Oxford 
 
 [Oxford 
 
 [Denmark Hill] 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 [Denmark Hill] 
 
CONTAINED IN 
 
 less certainly conjectured ; 
 
 THE SECOND VOLUME. 205 
 
 whilst those unhracketed give the actual dating of the letters. 
 
 When Written. 
 
 Where and when first Published. 
 
 December 28th, 1852 
 
 Saturday, 26th [Nov. ?] 
 
 1853 .' 
 
 1853] 
 
 December 3, 1854] 
 
 January, 1 855] . . . . . 
 
 March 28 [1859] 
 
 June 6, 1859 
 
 June 15 [1859] 
 
 August 1, 1859 
 
 [October 21, 1860] 
 
 October 20th, 1862 
 
 October 20th [1862] 
 
 October 2 [1863] 
 
 October 25th, 1863 
 
 July 6 [1864] 
 
 October 26 [1864] 
 
 October 29 [1864] 
 
 November 2 [1864] 
 
 Easter Monday, 1865 
 
 Thursday, April 20 [1865] 
 Saturday, April 22, 1865 . . 
 Saturday, 29th April, 1865 
 
 May 4 [1865] 
 
 May 20, 1865.. 
 
 September 2 [1865] 
 
 September 6 [1865] 
 
 September 16, 1865].... 
 
 October 16 [1865] 
 
 December 7 [1865] , 
 
 December 19 [1865] .... 
 
 February 28, 1867 
 
 April 30, 1867 
 
 January 21, 1868 
 
 January 31, 1868 
 
 2d February, 1868 
 
 July 30 [1868] 
 
 August 5 [1868] 
 
 August 9 [1868] 
 
 December 24 [1868] 
 
 Autumn, 1868] 
 
 January 14 [1870] 
 
 29th May, 1870 
 
 October 6 [1870].. 
 
 October 7 [1870] 
 
 14th October, 1870 
 
 November 29, 1870 
 
 January 10 [1871] 
 
 January 19, 1871 
 
 February 3 [1871] 
 
 February 3 [1871] 
 
 February 19, 1871] 
 
 May 18, 1871 
 
 December 9 [1871] .... 
 Pecember27, 1871 
 
 44 Testimonials of W. C. Bennett," 1871. . . . 
 u Memoir of Thomas Guthrie, D.D.," 
 
 (1875) , :. 
 
 The Autographic Mirror, December 23, 
 
 1865 
 
 The Builder, December 9, 1854 
 
 The Morning Chronicle, January 20, 1855.. 
 
 The Times, March 29, 1859 
 
 The Scotsman, Julv 20, 1859 
 
 July 23, 1859 
 
 44 Aug. 6, 1859 ... 
 
 The Critic, Oct. 27, 1860 
 
 The Monthly Packet, Nov. 1863 
 
 The Times, Oct. 24, 1862 
 
 The Times, Oct. 8, 1863 
 
 The Liverpool Albion, Nov. 2, 1863 
 
 The Morning Post, July 7, 1864 
 
 The Daily Telegraph, Oct. 28, 1864 
 
 " 14 Oct. 31, 1864 
 
 " Nov. 3, 1864 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette, April 18, 1865 
 
 " 41 April 21, 1865 
 
 4 4 44 April 25, 1865 
 
 May 2, 1865 
 
 44 4 4 May 9, 1865 
 
 May 22, 1865 
 
 The Daily Telegraph, September 5, 1865. . . 
 44 ik September 7, 1865... 
 
 44 44 September 18, 1865.. 
 
 4 4 4 4 October 17, 1865.... 
 
 44 December 8, 1865..., 
 44 " December 20, 1865... 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette, March 1, 1867 
 
 May 1, 1867 
 
 The Daily Telegraph, January 22, 1868 ... . 
 The Pall Mall Gazette, January 31, 1868. . ., 
 
 Circular printed by Mr. Ruskm, 1868 
 
 The Daily Telegraph, July 31, 1868 
 
 44 4k August 6, 1868 
 
 44 August 10, 1868 
 
 14 44 December 26,1868.... 
 
 Pamphlet for private circulation, 1868 
 
 The Daily Telegraph, January 15, 1870. 
 
 Date and place of publication unknown. . . . 
 
 The Daily Telegraph, Oct. 7, 1870 
 
 Oct. 8, 1870 
 
 Macmiilan's Magazine, Nov. 1870 
 
 The Daily Telegraph, Nov. 30, 1870 
 
 *.* 41 January 12, 1871 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette, Jan. 19, 1871 
 
 The Daily Telegraph, Feb. 4, 1871 
 
 Feb. 7, 1871 
 
 Feb. 21, 1871 
 
 The Asiatic, May 23, 1871 
 
 The Daiiy Telegraph, Dec. 11, 1871 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette, Dec. 28, 1871 
 
 Page. 
 
 359 
 
 360 
 
 367 
 352 
 350 
 361 
 209 
 214 
 219 
 346 
 ,336 
 i340 
 1 240 
 1221 
 1223 
 241 
 243 
 246 
 !249 
 25i 
 ;253 
 255 
 260 
 263 
 286 
 287 
 289 
 296 
 283 
 226 
 361 
 266 
 362 
 309 
 |362 
 275 
 i277 
 |279 
 1817 
 1318 
 313 
 
 335 
 
 |227 
 
 231 
 
 338 
 
 285 
 
 300 
 
 301 
 
 303 
 
 304 
 
 836n 
 
 349 
 
 315 
 
 307 
 
206 CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE LETTERS 
 
 Title of Letter. 
 
 Madness and Crime 
 
 Letter to the Author of a Review. . , 
 
 11 Act, Act in the Living Present". , 
 How the Rich spend their Money . . 
 
 U 11 It 
 
 Woman's Work , 
 
 Mr. Ruskm and Professor Hodgson 
 
 " Laborare est Orare " , 
 
 The Value of Lectures 
 
 An Oxford Protest 
 
 A Mistaken Review 
 
 The Position of Critics 
 
 Commercial Morality 
 
 The Publication of Books 
 
 St. George's Museum 
 
 The Definition of Wealth 
 
 The Cradle of Art ! 
 
 Modern Warfare 
 
 The Foundations of Chivalry 
 
 a u u 
 
 it Ct il 
 
 u it ti 
 
 Mr. Buskin and Mr. Lowe 
 
 The Principles of Property 
 
 A Pagan Message , 
 
 Despair (extract) » , 
 
 The Foundations of Chivalry 
 
 Notes on a Word in Shakespeare . . . 
 
 The Bibliography of Ruskm 
 
 The Society of the Rose 
 
 Blindness and Sight 
 
 "The Eagle's Nest" 
 
 On Cooperation. I , 
 
 Politics in Youth 
 
 The Merchant of Venice (extract) . . 
 
 Recitations 
 
 Excuse from Correspondence 
 
 On Cooperation. II 
 
 The Glasgow Lord Rectorship 
 
 u u u 
 
 tt u vi 
 
 Dramatic Reform. I 
 
 The Glasgow Lord Rectorship 
 
 Dramatic Reform. II. , 
 
 Where Written. 
 
 Oxford 
 
 Oxford 
 
 Oxford 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston 
 
 [Brant wood, Coniston] . . . 
 Brantwood, Coniston 
 
 [ ] 
 
 Oxford 
 
 Oxford 
 
 Oxford 
 
 Rome 
 
 [Oxford 
 
 Brantwood 
 
 Brantwood 
 
 [Heme Hill 
 
 Oxford 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston. 
 
 Oxford 
 
 [Oxford] 
 
 [Brantwood] 
 
 Venice 
 
 Venice 
 
 Venice 
 
 Venice 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston. . . . 
 
 [Brantwood] 
 
 Heme Hill, London, S.E. 
 
 [Oxford 
 
 Mai ham 
 
 Brantwood 
 
 Edinburgh 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston 
 
 [Brantwood 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston 
 
 Sheffield 
 
 [Heme Hill, S.E.] 
 
 Sheffield 
 
 [Brantwood] 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston 
 
 [Brantwood] 
 
 [Brantwood] 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston 
 
 Brantwood 
 
 Rouen 
 
 Amiens 
 
CONTAINED IN THE SECOND VOLUME. 
 
 207 
 
 When Written. 
 
 November 2 [1872] 
 
 Wednesday, October 30 
 
 1872 
 
 Christmas Eve, "J2. . 
 
 January 23 [1873] 
 
 January 28 [1873] 
 
 King Charles the Martyr, 
 
 1873 
 
 [May, 1873] 
 
 November 8, 1873 
 
 November 15, 1873 
 
 December, 1873 
 
 26th May, 1874 
 
 October'29, 1874] 
 
 January 10 [1875] 
 
 Januarv 18 [1875] 
 
 February, 1875] 
 
 June 6, i875 
 
 [September, 1875] : 
 
 9th November, 1875 
 
 18th February, 1876 
 
 June, 1876 
 
 February 8th, 1877 
 
 February 10th [1877] 
 
 11th February [1877] 
 
 12th February, '77] 
 
 August 24 [1877] 
 
 10th October, 1877 
 
 19th December, 1877 
 
 February, 1878] 
 
 July 3d, 1878 
 
 [September, 1878] 
 
 29th September, 1878 
 
 September 30, 1878 
 
 October 23, 1878 
 
 Early in 1879] 
 
 18th July, 1879 
 
 August 17, 1879 
 
 [August, 1879] 
 
 October 19th, 1879 
 
 6th February, 1880 
 
 16th February, 1880 
 
 March, 1880 
 
 April 12th, 1880 
 
 10th June, 1880 
 
 13th June, 1880 
 
 24th June, 1880 
 
 [July, 1880] 
 
 July 30th, 1880 
 
 28th September, 1880 
 
 October 12th, 1880 
 
 Where and when first Published. 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette, Nov. 4, 1872. 
 
 Liverpool Weekly Albion, Nov. 9, 1872. 
 
 New Year's Address, etc., 1873 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette, Jan. 24, 1873 .... 
 u " Jan. 29, 1873 
 
 " " Jan. 31, 1873 
 
 L'Esperance, Geneve, May 8, 1873 
 
 The Scotsman, November 10, 1873 
 
 November 18, 1873 
 
 New Year's Address, etc., 1874 
 
 The Glasgow Herald, June 5, 1874 
 
 The Globe, Oct. 29, 1874 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette, January 1 1, 1875 ... . 
 
 January 19, 1875.... 
 Date and place of publication unknown .... 
 
 The World, June 9, 1875 
 
 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, Sept. 7, 1875 ... . 
 
 The Monetary Gazette, Nov. 13, 1875 
 
 Date and place of publication unknown .... 
 
 Fraser's Magazine, July, 1876 
 
 u The Science of Life" (second edition), 
 
 1878 
 
 " u (first edition), 1877 
 
 1877 
 
 u u « 1877 
 
 The Standard, August 28, 1877 
 
 The Socialist, November, 1877 
 
 New Year's Address, etc., 1878 
 
 The Times, February 12, 1878 
 
 44 The Science of Life" (second edition), 
 
 1878 
 
 New Shakspere Soc. Trans. 1878-9 
 
 44 Bibliography of Dickens " (advt.), 1880. . . 
 
 Report of Ruskin Societv, Manchester, 
 
 1880 " 
 
 The Y. M. A. Magazine, Sept., 1879 
 
 October, 1879 
 
 The Christian Life, December 20, 1879 
 
 The Y. M. A. Magazine, Nov. 1879 
 
 The Theatre, March, 1880 
 
 Circular printed by Mr. R. T. Webling 
 
 List of Mr. Ruskin's Writings, March, 1880 
 
 The Daily News, June 19, 1880 
 
 The Glasgow Herald, Oct. 7, 1880 
 
 Oct. 7,1880 
 
 4 4 4 4 Oct. 7,1880 
 
 Oct. 12, 1880 
 
 Journal of Dramatic Reform, November, 
 
 1880 
 
 The Glasgow Herald, Oct. 7, 1880 
 
 Journal of Dramatic Reform, November, 
 1880 
 
 Page. 
 
 316 
 
 363 
 327 
 207 
 268 
 
 269 
 
 OoD 
 
 246 
 247 
 328 
 310 
 364 
 343 
 345 
 271 
 34L 
 312 
 271 
 312 
 234 
 
 329 
 330 
 332 
 333 
 365 
 272 
 329 
 310rc 
 
 :>:;:> 
 
 354 
 365 
 366 
 
 6 
 325 
 
 m m 
 
 373 
 326 
 356 
 357 
 
 370 
 371 
 1 
 
 372 
 
 368 
 1 
 
 369 
 
ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 LETTEES OlST POLITICS AND WAR 
 
 [From 44 The Scotsman," July 20, 1859.] 
 
 THE ITALIAN QUESTION. 1 
 
 Berlin, June 6, 1859. 
 I have been thinking of sending a few lines about what I 
 have seen of Austrians and Italians ; but every time I took my 
 pen and turned from my own work about clouds and leafage 
 to think for a few minutes concerning political clouds and 
 thickets, I sank into a state of amazement which reduced me 
 to helpless silence. I will try and send you an incoherent line 
 to-day ; for the smallest endeavor at coherence will bring me 
 into that atmosphere of astonishment again, in which I find 
 no expression. 
 
 You northern Protestant people are always overrating the 
 value of Protestantism as such. Your poetical clergymen 
 make sentimental tours in the Vaudois country, as if there 
 were no worthy people in the Alps but the Vaudois. Did the 
 enlightened Edinburgh evangelicals never take any interest in 
 the freedom of the Swiss, nor hear of such people as Winkel- 
 
 ] This and the two following letters deal, it will be seen, with <l the 
 Italian question" in 1859, when the peace of Europe was disturbed by 
 the combined action of France and Sardinia against Austria in the cause 
 of Italian independence. Of these three letters the first was written 
 two days after the defeat of the Austrians at Magenta, followed by the 
 entrance into Milan of the French, and the second a few days before 
 the similar victory of the French and Sardinian armies at Solferino. 
 
210 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 ried or Tell ? Not but that there is some chance of Tell dis- 
 appearing one of these days under acutest historical investi- 
 gation. Still he, or somebody else, verily got Switzerland rid 
 of much evil, and made it capable of much good ; and if you 
 examine the influence of the battles of Morgarten and Sempach 
 on European history, you will find they were good and true 
 pieces of God's work. 1 Do people suppose they were done 
 by Protestants ? Switzerland owes all that she is — all that she 
 is ever likely to be — to her stout and stern Koman Catholics, 
 faithful to their faith to this day— they, and the Tyrolese, 
 about the truest Roman Catholics in Christendom and cer- 
 tainly among its worthiest people, though they laid your 
 Zuingli and a good deal of ranting Protestantism which Zuin- 
 gli in vain tried to make either rational or charitable, dead 
 together on the green meadows of Cappel, and though the 
 Tyrolese marksmen at this moment are following up their 
 rifle practice to good purpose, and with good will, with your 
 Vaudois hearts for targets. 
 
 The amazement atmosphere keeps floating with its edges 
 about me, though I write on as fast as I can in hopes of keep- 
 ing out of it. You Scotch, and we English ! ! to keep up the 
 miserable hypocrisy of calling ourselves Protestants ! And 
 here have been two of the most powerful protests (sealed with 
 quite as much blood as is usually needed for such documents) 
 
 1 Few readers need be reminded of the position of Tell in the list of 
 Swiss patriots {pace the Ci acutest historical investigation," which pats 
 him in the list of mythical personages) in the early part of the fourteenth 
 century ; of Arnold von Winkelried who met the heroic death, by which 
 he secured his country's freedom, at Sempach in 1386 ; or of TJlrich 
 Zuingli, the Swiss Protestant leader of his time, who fell at Cappel, in 
 the war of the Reformed against the Komish Cantons, in 1531. At the 
 battle of Morgarten, in 1315, twenty thousand Austrians were defeated 
 by no more than thirteen hundred Swiss, with such valor that the name 
 of the victors' canton was thereupon extended to the whole country, 
 thenceforth called Switzerland. 
 
 It may be further noted that Arnold of Sempach is, with Leonidas, 
 Curtius, and Sir Richard Grenville, named amongst the types of " the 
 divinest of sacrifices, that of the patriot for his country ,j in Mr. Rus- 
 kin's Preface, Bibliothcca Pastorum, vol. i. p, xxxiii. 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICS AND WAR. 
 
 211 
 
 that ever were made against the Papacy — one in 1848, 1 and 
 one now — twenty thousand men or thereabouts lying, at this 
 time being, in the form of torn flesh and shattered bones, 
 among the rice marshes of the Novarrese, and not one jot of 
 our precious Protestant blood gone to the signature. Not so 
 much as one noble flush of it, that I can see, on our clay 
 cheeks, besmirched, as they are, with sweat and smoke ; but 
 all for gold, and out of chimneys. Of sweat for bread that 
 perishes not, or of the old Sinai smoke for honor of God's law, 
 and revelation thereof — no drop nor shadow. Not so much 
 as a coroner's inquest on those dead bodies in the rice fields 
 — dead men who must have been murdered by somebody. If 
 a drunken man falls in a ditch, you will have your Dogberry 
 and Verges talk over him by way of doing justice ; but your 
 twenty thousand — not drunken, but honest, respectable, well- 
 meaning, and serviceable men — are made rice manure of, and 
 you think it is all right. We Protestants indeed ! The Italians 
 are Protestants, and in a measure the French — nay, even the 
 Austrian s (at all events those conical-hatted mountaineers), 
 according to their understanding of the matter. What we are, 
 Moloch or Mammon, or the Protestant devil made up of both, 
 perhaps knows. 
 
 Do not think I dislike the Austrians. I have great respect 
 and affection for them, and I have seen more of them in 
 familiar intercourse than most Englishmen. One of my best 
 friends in Venice in the winter of 1849-50 was the Artillery 
 officer w T ho had directed the fire on the side of Mestre in 1848. 
 I have never known a nobler person. Brave, kind, and gay — 
 as gentle as a lamb, as playful as a kitten — knightly in cour- 
 tesy and in all tones of thought — ready at any instant to lay 
 jwn his life for his country or his Emperor. He was by no 
 ineans a rare instance either of gentleness or of virtue among 
 the men whom the Liberal portion of our English press repre- 
 sent as only tyrants and barbarians. Eadetzky himself was 
 
 1 The year of the Lombard insurrection, when Radetzky, the Austrian 
 field-marshal, defeated the insurgents at Custozza near Verona. Radetzky 
 died in 1858. 
 
212 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHAOE. 
 
 one of the kindest of men — his habitual expression was one of 
 overflowing bonhommie, or of fatherly regard for the welfare 
 of all around hirn. All who knew him loved him. In little 
 things his kindness was almost ludicrous. I saw him at Verona 
 run out of his own supper-room and return with a plate of 
 soup in his hand, the waiters (his youngest aides de-camp) not 
 serving his lady guests fast enough to please him ; yet they 
 w r ere nimble enough, as I knew in a race with two of them 
 among the fire-flies by the Mincio, only the evening before. 
 For a long time I regarded the Austrians as the only protec- 
 tion of Italy from utter dissolution (such as that which, I see 
 to-day, it is reported that the Tuscan army has fallen into, left 
 for five weeks to itself), and I should have looked upon them 
 as such still, if the Sardinian Government had not shown itself 
 fit to take their place. And the moment that any Italian 
 Government was able to take their place, the Austrians neces- 
 sarily become an obstacle to Italian progress, for all their 
 virtues are incomprehensible to the Italians, and useless to 
 them. Unselfish individually, the Austrians are nationally 
 entirely selfish, and in this consists, so far as it is truly alleged 
 against them, their barbarism. These men of whom I have 
 been speaking would have given, any of them, life and fortune 
 unhesitatingly at their Emperor's bidding, but their magna- 
 nimity was precisely that of the Highlander or the Indian, in- 
 cognizant of any principle of action but that of devotion to 
 his chief or nation. All abstract grounds of conscience, all 
 universal and human hopes, were inconceivable by them. 
 Such men are at present capable of no feeling towards Italy 
 but scorn ; their power was like a bituminous cerecloth wrap- 
 ping her corpse— it saved her from the rottenness of revolu- 
 tion ; but it must be unwound, if the time has come for her 
 resurrection. 
 
 I do not know if that time has come, or can come. Italy's 
 true oppression is all her own. Spain is oppressed by the 
 Spaniard, not by the Austrian. Greece needs but to be saved 
 from the Greeks. No French Emperor, however mighty his 
 arm or sound his faith, can give Italy freedom. 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICS AND WAR. 
 
 213 
 
 "A gift of that which is not to be given 
 By all the associate powers of earth and heaven." 
 
 But the time is come at least to bid her be free, if she has the 
 power of freedom. It is not England, certainly, who should 
 forbid her. I believe that is what it will come to, however — 
 not so much because we are afraid of Napoleon, as because we 
 are jealous of him. But of him and us I have something more 
 to say than there is time for to-night. These good, stupid, 
 affectionate, faithful Germans, too (grand fellows under arms ; 
 I never imagined so magnificent a soldiery as 15,000 of them 
 which I made a shift to see, through sand clouds, march past 
 the Prince Frederick William 1 on Saturday morning last). 
 But to hear them fretting and foaming at the French getting 
 into Milan ! — they having absolutely no other idea on all this 
 complicated business than that French are fighting Germans ! 
 Wrong or right, why or wherefore, matters not a jot to them. 
 French are fighting Germans — somehow, somewhere, for some 
 reason — and beer and Vaterland are in peril and the English 
 in fault, as w r e are assuredly, but not on that side, for I believe 
 it to be quite true which a French friend, high in position, 
 says in a letter this morning — "If the English had not sympa- 
 thized with the Austrians there would have been no war." By 
 way of keeping up the character of incoherence to which I 
 have vowed myself, I may tell you that before that French 
 letter came, I received another from a very sagacious Scotch 
 friend (belonging, as I suppose most Scotch people do, to the 
 class of persons who call themselves "religious"), containing 
 this marvellous enunciation of moral principle, to be acted 
 upon in difficult circumstances, "Mind your own business.' 5 
 It is a serviceable principle enough for men of the w 7 orld, but 
 a surprising one in the mouth of a person who professes to be 
 a Bible obeyer. For, as far as I remember the tone of that 
 obsolete book, " our own " is precisely the last business which 
 
 1 The Prince Frederick William, now Emperor of Germany (having 
 succeeded his brother Frederick William IV. in January, 1861), was at 
 the date of this letter Regent of Prussia, and Commander-in-Chief of the 
 Prussian forces. 
 
214 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHA CM 
 
 it ever tells us to mind. It tells us often to mind God's busi- 
 ness, often to mind other people's business ; our own, in any 
 eager or earnest way, not at all. " What thy hand findeth to 
 do." Yes ; but in God's fields, not ours. One can imagine 
 the wiser fishermen of the Galilean lake objecting to Peter and 
 Andrew that they were not minding their business, much more 
 the commercial friends of Levi speaking with gentle pity of 
 him about the receipt of Custom. "A bad man of business 
 always — see what has come of it — quite mad at last." 
 
 And my astonishing friend went on to say that this was to 
 be our principle of action " where the path was not quite clear" 
 — as if any path ever was clear till you got to the end of it, or 
 saw it a long way off ; as if all human possibility of path was 
 not among clouds and brambles — often cold, always thorny — 
 misty w T ith roses occasionally, or dim with dew, often also with 
 shadow of Death — misty, more particularly in England just 
 now, with shadow of that commercially and otherwise valuable 
 smoke before spoken of. 
 
 However, if the path is not to be seen, it may be felt, or at 
 least tumbled off, without any particular difficulty. This latter 
 course of proceedimg is our probablest, of course. — But I can't 
 write any more to-night. I am, etc., 
 
 J. RlJSKIN. 
 
 Note to p. 213.— The lines quoted are from Wordsworth's " Poems dedi- 
 cated to National Independence and Liberty," Part II., Sonnet i. The 
 second line should read, "By all the blended powers of earth and 
 heaven. 5> 
 
 [From "The Scotsman," July 23, 1859.1 
 
 THE ITALIAN QUESTION. 
 
 Berlin, June 15. 
 You would have had this second letter sooner, had I not 
 lest myself, after despatching the first, in farther consideration 
 of the theory of Non-intervention, or minding one's own busi- 
 ness. What, in logical terms, is the theory ? If one sees a 
 costermonger wringing his donkey's tail, is it proper to " inter- 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICS AND WAR. 
 
 215 
 
 vene"? and if one sees an Emperor or a System wringing a 
 nation's neck, is it improper to intervene ? Or is the Interven- 
 tion allowable only in the case of hides, not of soula ? for even 
 so, I think you might find among modern Italians many quite 
 as deserving of intervention as a donkey. Or is interference 
 allowable when one person does one wrong to another person, 
 but when two persons do two wrongs to two, or three to 
 three, or a multitude to a multitude ; and is there any alge- 
 braic work on these square and cube roots of morality where- 
 in I may find how many coadjutors or commissions any given 
 crooked requires to make it straight ? Or is it a geographical 
 question ; and may one advisably interfere at Berwick but not 
 at Haddington ? Or is there any graduated scale of interven- 
 tion, practicable according to the longitude ? I see my way 
 less clearly, because the illustrations of the theory of Non- 
 Intervention are as obscure as its statement. The French are 
 at present happy and prosperous ; content with their ruler 
 and themselves ; their trade increasing, and their science and 
 art advancing ; their feelings towards other nations becoming 
 every day more just. Under which circumstances we English 
 non-interventionalists consider it our duty to use every means 
 in our power of making the ruler suspected by the nation, and 
 the nation unmanageable by the ruler. We call both all 
 manner of names : exhaust every term of impertinence and 
 every method of disturbance ; and do our best, in indirect 
 and underhand ways, to bring about revolution, assassination, 
 or any other close of the existing system likely to be satis- 
 factory to Eoyals 1 in general. This is your non-intervention 
 when a nation is prosperous. 
 
 On the other hand the Italian nation is unhappy and un- 
 prosperous ; its trade annihilated, its arts and sciences retro- 
 grade, its nerve and moral sense prostrated together ; it is 
 capable only of calling to you for help, and you will not help 
 it. The man you have been calling names, with his unruly 
 colonels, undertakes to help it, and Christian England, with 
 secret hope that, in order to satisfy her spite against the un- 
 
 1 A misprint for "Rogues." See next letter, p. 219 
 
21G 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 ruly colonels, the French army may be beaten, and the Papacy 
 fully established over the whole of Italy — Christian England, 
 I say, with this spiteful jealousy for one of her motives, and 
 a dim, stupid, short-sighted, sluggish horror of interruption 
 of business for the other, takes, declaratively and ostensibly, 
 this highly Christian position. "Let who will prospei or 
 perish, die or live — let what will be declared or believed— let 
 whatsoever iniquity be done, whatsoever tyranny be triumph- 
 ant, how many soever of faithful or fiery soldiery be laid in 
 new embankments of dead bodies along those old embank- 
 ments of Mincio and Brenta ; yet will we English, drive our 
 looms, cast up our accounts, and bet on the Derby, in peace and 
 gladness ; our business is only therewith ; for us there is no 
 book of fate, only ledgers and betting-books ; for us there is 
 no call to meddle in far-away business. See ye to it. We wash 
 our hands of it in that sea-foam of ours ; surely the English 
 Channel is better than Abana and Pharpar, or than the silver 
 basin which Pilate made use of, and our soap is of the best 
 almond-cake." 
 
 I hear the Derby w 7 as great this year. 1 I wonder, some- 
 times, whether anybody has ever calculated, in England, how 
 much taxation the nation pays aunually for the maintenance 
 of that great national institution. Observe — what I say of the 
 spirit in which the English bear themselves at present, is 
 founded on what I myself have seen and heard, not on what 
 I read in journals. I read them little at home — here I hardly 
 see them. I have no doubt that in the Liberal papers one 
 might find much mouthing about liberty, as in the Conserva- 
 tive much about order, it being neither liberty nor order which 
 is wanted, but Justice. You may have Freedom of all Abomi- 
 nation, and Order of all Iniquity — if you look for Forms in- 
 stead of Facts. Look for the facts first — the doing of justice 
 howsoever and by whatsoever forms or informalities. And 
 the. forms will come — shapely enough, and sightly enough, 
 
 1 li Magnificent weather and excellent sport made the great people's 
 meeting pass off with great eclat."" (Annual Register for 1859, p. 73.) 
 The race was won by £ir J. Hawley's Musjid. 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICS AND WAR. 
 
 217 
 
 afterwards. Yet, perhaps, not till long afterwards. Earnest 
 as I am for the freedom of Italy, no one can hope less from 
 it, for many a year to come. Even those Vaudois, whom you 
 Presbyterians admire so much, have made as yet no great 
 show of fruit out of their religious freedom. I went up from 
 Turin to Torre di Lucerna to look at them last year. I have 
 seldom slept in a dirtier inn, seldom seen peasants' cottages 
 so ill built, and never yet in my life saw anywhere paths so 
 full of nettles. The faces of the people are interesting, and 
 their voices sweet, except in howlings on Sunday evening*, 
 which they performed to a very disquieting extent in the street 
 till about half-past ten, waking me afterwards between twelve 
 and one with another " catch," and a dance through the vil- 
 lage of the liveliest character. Protestantism is apt sometimes 
 to take a gayer character abroad than with us. Geneva has 
 an especially disreputable look on Sunday evenings, and at 
 Hanover I see the shops are as wide open on Sunday as Sat- 
 urday ; here, however, in Berlin, they shut up as close as you 
 do at Edinburgh. I think the thing that annoyed me most at 
 La Tour, however, w r as the intense sectarianism of the Protes- 
 tant dogs. I can make friends generally, fast enough, with 
 any canine or feline creature ; but I could make nothing of 
 those evangelical brutes, and there was as much snarling and 
 yelping that afternoon before I got past the farmhouses to the 
 open hill-side, as in any of your Free Church discussions. It 
 contrasted very painfully with the behavior of such Roman 
 Catholic dogs as I happen to know — St. Bernard's and others — 
 who make it their business to entertain strangers. But the hill- 
 side was w r orth reaching — for though that Lucerna valley is 
 one of the least interesting I ever saw in the Alps, there is a 
 craggy ridge on the north of it which commands a notable 
 view. In about an hour and a half's walking you may get up 
 to the top of a green, saddle-shaped hill, which separates the 
 Lucerna valley from that of Angrogna ; if then, turning to 
 the left (westward), you take the steepest way you can find up 
 the hill, another couple of hours will bring you to a cone of 
 stones which the shepherds have built on the ridge, and there 
 you may see all the historical sites of the valley of Angrogna 
 
218 
 
 ARROWS OF THE GRACE. 
 
 as in a map — and as much of Monte Viso and Piedmont as 
 clouds will let you. I wish I* could draw you a map of Pied- 
 mont as I saw it that afternoon. The air was half full of white 
 cumulus clouds, lying nearly level about fifteen hundred feet 
 under the ridge ; and through every gap of them a piece of 
 Piedmont with a city or two. Turin, twenty-eight miles away 
 as the bird flies, shows through one cloud-opening like a hand- 
 ful of golden sand in a pool of blue sea. 
 
 I've no time to write any more to-day, for I've been to 
 Charlottenburg, out of love for Queen Louise. 1 I can't see a 
 good painting of her anywhere, and they show her tomb by 
 blue light, like the nun scene in Robert le Liable. A German 
 woman's face, if beautiful at all, is exquisitely beautiful ; but 
 it depends mainly on the though tfulness of the eyes, and the 
 bright hair. It rarely depends much upon the nose, which 
 has perhaps a tendency to be — if anything — a little too broad- 
 ish and flattish — perhaps one might even say in some cases, 
 knobbish. (The Hartz mountains, I see, looking at them from 
 Brunswick, have similar tendencies, less excusably and more 
 decidedly.) So when the eyes are closed — and for the soft 
 hair one has only furrowed marble — and the nose to its 
 natural disadvantages adds that of being seen under blue 
 light, the general effect is disappointing. 
 
 Frederick the Great's celebrated statue is at the least ten 
 yards too high 2 from the ground to be of any use ; one sees 
 
 1 The mother of the present Emperor, whose treatment by Napoleon 
 L, and whose own admirable qualities, have won for her the tender and 
 affectionate memory of her people. She died in 1810. Her tomb at 
 Charlottenburg is the work of the German sculptor, Christian Rauch. 
 
 2 The full height of this statue (also the work of Rauch) is, inclusive 
 of the pedestal, somewhat over forty-two feet from the ground. One of 
 the bas-relief tablets which flank the pedestal represents the Apotheosis 
 of the monarch. The visitor to Berlin may recall August Kiss's bronze 
 group, representing the combat of an Amazon with a tiger, on the right 
 side of the Old Museum steps ; and Holbein's portrait of George Gyzen, 
 a merchant of London, is No 586 in the picture galleries of the Museum. 
 It is described by Mr. Ruskin in his article on Sir Joshua and Holbein 
 in the Cornhill Magazine of March, 1860, and also in Wornum's Life and 
 Works of Holbein, p. 260 (London, 1867). 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICS AND WAR. 
 
 219 
 
 nothing but the edges of the cloak he never wore, the soles of 
 his boots, and, in a redundant manner, his horse's tail. Under 
 which vertically is his Apotheosis. In which process he sits 
 upon the back of an eagle, and wittee a palm, with appearance 
 of satisfaction to himself, and it is to be hoped no danger of 
 any damage to three stars in the neighborhood. 
 
 Kiss's Amazon makes a good grotesque for the side of the 
 Museum steps ; it was seen to disadvantage in London. The 
 interior of the gallery is very beautiful in many ways ; and 
 Holbein's portrait of George Gyzen is worth coming all the 
 way from England to see only ten minutes. I never saw so 
 noble a piece of work of its kind in my life. 
 
 Believe me, etc., 
 
 J. RlJSKIN, 
 
 [From "The Scotsman," August 6, 1859.] 
 
 THE ITALIAN QUESTION 
 
 Schafphausen, August 1, 1859. 
 Letter to tlie Editor {of " Tlie Scotsman 1 '.) 
 
 Sir : I have just received the number of the Scotsman 
 containing my second letter from Berlin, in which there is 
 rather an awkward misprint of " royals" for " rogues," which 
 must have puzzled some of your readers, no less than the 
 general tone of the letter, written as it was for publication at 
 another time, and as one of a series begun in another journal. 
 I am obliged by the admission of the letter into your col- 
 umns ; and I should have been glad to continue in those 
 columns the series I intended, had not the refusal of this let- 
 ter by the Witness 1 show^n me the liability to misapprehen- 
 
 1 After a careful and repeated search in the columns of the Witness, I 
 am still unable to certainly explain these allusions. It seems, however, 
 that the two preceding letters had been sent to the Witness, which 
 printed the first and refused to print the second. The Scotsman printed 
 both under the titles of Mr. Ruskin on the Italian Question, and Mr. 
 Ruskin on Foreign Politics, whilst it distinguished this third letter by 
 the additional heading of Letter to the Editor. It may be conjectured, 
 
220 
 
 ARBOWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 sion under which I should be writing. I had thought that, 
 seeing for these twenty years I have been more or less con- 
 versant with Italy and the Italians, a few familiar letters written 
 to a personal friend, at such times as I could win from my 
 own work, might not have been uninteresting to Scottish 
 readers, even though my opinions might occasionally differ 
 sharply from theirs, or be expressed in such rough way as 
 strong opinions must be, when one has no time to polish them 
 into more pleasing presentability. The refusal of the letter 
 by the Witness showed me that this was not so ; and as I 
 have no leisure to take up the subject methodically, I must 
 leave what I have written in its present imperfect form. It is 
 indeed not mainly a question of time, which I would spend 
 gladly, though to handle the subject of the present state of 
 Italy with any completeness would involve a total abandon- 
 ment of other work for some weeks. But I feel too deeply in 
 this matter to allow myself to think of it continuously. To 
 me, the state of the modern political mind, which hangs the 
 slaughter of twenty thousand men, and the destinies of twenty 
 myriads of human souls, on the trick that transforms a Minis- 
 try, or the chances of an enlarged or diminished interest in 
 trade, is something so horrible that I find no utterance where- 
 with to characterize it — nor any courage wherewith to face 
 the continued thought of it, unless I had clear expectation of 
 doing good by the effort — expectation which the mere exist- 
 ence of the fact forbids. I leave therefore the words I have 
 written to such work as they may ; hoping, indeed, nothing 
 from any words ; thankful if a few people here and there un- 
 stand and sympathize in the feelings with which they were 
 written ; and thankful, if none so sympathize, that I am able 
 
 therefore, that the first two letters were reprinted by the Scotsman from 
 another paper, and that, in receiving the number of the Scotsman con- 
 taining the second, Mr. Ruskin did not know that it had reprinted the 
 first also. As to the "series begun in another journal," it is, I think, 
 clear that it had not been long continued, as the letter dated ' - June 15," 
 sent to and refused by it, is spoken of as the " second letter," so that 
 that dated i( June 6" must have been the first, as this was unquestion- 
 ably the last of the series. 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICS AND WAR. 
 
 221 
 
 at least to claim some share in the sadness, though not in the 
 triumph, of the words of Farinata — 
 
 *' Fu' io sol cola, dove sofferto 
 Fu per ciascun di torre via Fiorenza, 
 Colui eke la difese a viso aperto." 1 
 
 I am, etc., J. Buskin, 
 
 [From " The Liverpool Albion,' 1 November 2, 1863.] 
 
 THE FOREIGN POLICY OF ENGLAND. 2 
 
 Zurich, Oct 25th, 1863. 
 Sir : I beg to acknowledge your favor of the 20th of Octo- 
 ber. My health does not now admit of my taking part fre- 
 quently in public business ; yet I should have held it a duty to 
 accept the invitation of the directors of the Liverpool Institute, 
 but that, for the time being, my temper is at fault, as well as 
 my health ; and I am wholly unable to go on with any of my 
 proper work, owing to the horror and shame with which I 
 regard the political position taken, or rather sunk into, by 
 England in her foreign relations — especially in the affairs of 
 
 1 u But singly there I stood, when, by consent 
 Of all, Florence had to the ground been razed, 
 The one who openly forbade the deed." 
 
 Cary's Dante— " LTnferno," x. 11. 90-93. 
 Farinata degli Uberti was a noble Florentine, and the leader of the 
 Ghibelline faction, when they obtained a signal victory over the Guelfi 
 at Montaperto, near the river Arbia. Machiavelli calls him "a man of 
 exalted soul, and great military talents" (Hist, of Florence, Bk. ii ). 
 Subsequently, when it was proposed that, in order to maintain the 
 ascendency of the Ghibelline faction in Tuscany, Florence should be 
 destroyed, Farinata alone of all the Council opposed the measure, declar- 
 ing that he had endured every hardship with no other view than that 
 of being able to pass his days in his own country. (See Cary's notes to 
 Canto x. ) 
 
 2 This letter was written in answer to a request that Mr. Ruskm would 
 come and preside afc the distribution of prizes among the students in the 
 Science and Art Department of the Liverpool Institute, on Saturday, 
 Oct. 31, 1863. It was subsequently read on the occasion of distribution, 
 in accordance with the wish expressed towards the end of the letter. 
 
222 
 
 ARROWS OF THE GRACE. 
 
 Italy and Poland. 1 What these matters have to do with Art 
 may not at first be clear, but I can perhaps make it so by a 
 short similitude. Suppose I had been engaged by an English 
 gentleman to give lectures on Art to his son. Matters at first 
 go smoothly, and I am diligent in my definitions of line and 
 color, until, on Sunday morning, at breakfast time, a ticket- 
 of-leave man takes a fancy to murder a girl in the road leading 
 round the lawn, before the house-windows. My patron, hear- 
 ing the screams, puts down his paper, adjusts his spectacles, 
 slowly apprehends what is going on, and rings the bell for his 
 smallest footman. " John, take my card and compliments to 
 that gentleman outside the hedge, and tell him that his pro- 
 ceedings are abnormal, and, I may add, to me personally — 
 offensive. Had that road passed through my property, I 
 should have felt it my duty to interfere/' John takes the 
 card, and returns with it ; the ticket-of-leave man finishes his 
 work at his leisure ; but, the screams ceasing as he fills the 
 girl's mouth with clay, the English gentleman returns to his 
 muffins, and congratulates himself on having " kept out of that 
 mess." Presently afterwards he sends for me to know if I 
 shall be ready to lecture on Monday. I am somewhat nervous, 
 and answer — I fear rudely — " Sir, your son is a good lad; I 
 hope he will grow to be a man — but, for the present, I cannot 
 teach him anything. I should like, indeed, to teach you 
 something, but have no words for the lesson." Which indeed 
 I have not. If I say any words on such matters, people ask 
 me, " Would I have the country go to war ? do I know how 
 dreadful a thing war is ? " Yes, truly, I know it. I like war 
 as ill as most people — so ill, that I would not spend twenty 
 millions a year in making machines for it, neither my holidays 
 and pocket money in playing at it ; yet I would have the 
 country go to war, with haste, in a good quarrel ; and, which 
 is perhaps eccentric in me, rather in another's quarrel than 
 in her own. We say of ourselves complacently that we will 
 
 1 See the preceding and the following letter. This one was, it will 
 be seen, written in the year of the last great struggle of Poland against 
 Russia. 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICS AND WAR. 
 
 223 
 
 not go to war for an idea ; but the phrase interpreted means 
 only, that we will go to war for a bale of goods, but not for 
 justice nor for mercy ; and I would ask you to favor me so far 
 a3 to read this letter to the students at your meeting, and say 
 to them that I heartly wish them well ; but for the present I 
 am too sad to be of any service to them ; that our wars in 
 China and Japan 1 are not likely to furnish good subjects for 
 historical pictures ; that " ideas " happen, unfortunately, to 
 be, in Art, the principal things, and that a country which will 
 not fight for its ideas is not likely to have anything worth 
 painting. 
 
 I have the honor to be, Sir, your faithful servant, 
 
 J. IlUSKIN. 
 
 The Secretary of the Liverpool Institute. 
 
 [From "The Morning Post," July 7, 1864.] 
 
 THE POSLTLON OF DENMARK. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Morning Post. 1 ' 
 
 Sir : Will you allow me, in fewest words, to say how deeply 
 I concur in all that is said in that noble letter of Lord Towns- 
 hend's published in your columns this morning — except only 
 in its last sentence, "It is time to protest." 2 Alas ! if protests 
 were of any use, men with hearts and lips would have pro- 
 
 1 The expedition of the English and French against China was begun 
 in the August of 1860 ; the war in Japan in the summer of 1863. 
 
 - Lord Townshend's letter was upon The Circassian Exodus, and 
 pointed out that a committee appointed in 1862 with the object of aiding 
 the tribes of the Caucasus against Russia had failed in obtaining sub- 
 scriptions, whilst that of 1864, for relieving the sufferers when resist- 
 ance had become impossible, was more successful. " The few bestowed 
 their sympathy upon the struggle for life ; the many reserved theirs 
 
 for the agonies of death To which side, I would ask, do reason 
 
 and justice incline ? " After commenting on the "tardy consolation for 
 an evil which we have neglected to avert," and after remarking that 
 " in the national point of view the case of Poland is an exact counter- 
 part to that of Circassia," the letter thus concluded: "Against such a 
 state of things it is surely time for all who feel as I do to protest." 
 
224 
 
 ARROWS OF THE GRACE. 
 
 tested enough by this time. But they are of none, and can 
 be of none. What true words are worth any man's utterance, 
 while it is possible for such debates as last Monday's to be, 
 and two English gentlemen can stand up before the English 
 Commons to quote Virgil at each other, and round sentences, 
 and show their fineness of wrist in their pretty little venomous 
 carte and tierce of personality, while, even as they speak, the 
 everlasting silence is wrapping the brave massacred Danes ? 1 
 I do not know, never shall know, how this is possible. If a 
 cannon shot carried off their usher's head, nay, carried off but 
 his rod's head, at their room door, they would not round their 
 sentences, I fancy, in asking where the shot came from ; but 
 because these infinite masses of advancing slaughter are a few 
 hundred miles distant from them, they can speak their stage 
 speeches out in content. Mr. Gladstone must go to places, it 
 seems, before he can feel ! Let him go to Alsen, as he went 
 to Naples, 2 and quote Virgil to the Prussian army. The 
 English mind, judging by your leaders, seems divided be- 
 tween the German-cannon nuisance and the Savoyard street- 
 organ nuisance ; but was there ever hurdy-gurdy like this dis- 
 sonance of eternal talk ? 3 The Savoyard at least grinds his 
 
 1 The debate (July 4, 1864) was upon the Danish question and the 
 policy of the Government, and took place just after the end of a tem- 
 porary armistice and the resumption of hostilities by the bombardment 
 of Alsen, in the Dano-Prussian war. Alsen was taken two days after 
 the publication of this letter. The "two English gentlemen" were Mr. 
 Disraeli and Mr. Gladstone (at that time Chancellor of the Exchequer), 
 the latter of whom had quoted the lines from the sixth ^Eneid (11. 489- 
 491): 
 
 " At Danaura proceres Agamennonigeque phalanges 
 Ut videre virum fulgentiaque arma per umbras 
 Ingenti tripedare metu." 
 
 2 In 1850, when, being at Naples, Mr. Gladstone interested himself 
 deeply in the cause and miserable condition of the political prisoners, 
 and subsequently addressed two letters on the subject to Lord Aberdeen 
 (see " Letters to Lord Aberdeen on the prisoners of the Neapolitan Gov- 
 ernment : " Murray, 1851). 
 
 3 The Morning Post of July 6 contained amongst its leaders one on 
 Denmark and Germany, and another on London street-organs, the nui- 
 sance of which had been recently brought before the House of Commons 
 by Mr. M. T. Bass (M.P. for Derby). 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICS AND WAR. 
 
 225 
 
 handle one way, but these classical discords on the double 
 pipe, like Mr. Kinglake's two tunes — past and present 1 — on 
 Savoy and Denmark, need stricter police interference, it seems 
 to me ! The cession of Savoy was the peaceful present of a few 
 crags, goats, and goatherds by one king to another ; it was 
 also fair pay for fair work, and, in the profoundest sense, no 
 business of ours. Whereupon Mr. Kinglake mewed like a 
 moonstruck cat going to be made a mummy of for Bubastis. 
 But we saw the noble Circassian nation murdered, and never 
 uttered word for them. We saw the noble Polish nation sent 
 to pine in ice, and never struck blow for them. Now the 
 nation of our future Queen calls to us for help in its last 
 agony, and we round sentences and turn our backs. Sir, I 
 have no words for these things, because I have no hope. It 
 is not these squeaking puppets who play before us whom we 
 have to accuse ; it is not by cutting the strings of them that 
 we can redeem our deadly error. 
 
 We English, as a nation, know not, and care not to know, a* 
 single broad or basic principle of human justice. We have 
 only our instincts to guide us. We will hit anybody again 
 who hits us. We will take care of our own families and our 
 own pockets ; and we are characterized in our present phase 
 of enlightenment mainly by rage in speculation, lavish expen- 
 diture on suspicion or panic, generosity whereon generosity is 
 useless, anxiety for the souls of savages, regardlessness of 
 those of civilized nations, enthusiasm for liberation of blacks, 
 apathy to enslavement of whites, proper horror of regicide, 
 polite respect for populicide, sympathy with those whom we 
 can no longer serve, and reverence for the dead, whom we 
 have ourselves delivered to death. 
 
 I am, Sir, your faithful servant, 
 
 J. KUSKIN. 
 
 Denmark Hill, July 6. 
 
 1 Mr. Alexander William Kinglake, M.P. for Bridgewater. He spoke 
 at the above-mentioned debate, and had also taken strong interest and 
 part in the cession of Savoy to France by Sardinia in 1860. 
 
226 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 [From " The Daily Telegraph," December 20, 1865.] 
 
 THE JAMAICA INSURRECTION. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Daily Telegraph." 
 
 Sir : Will you allow me, in this informal manner, to express 
 what I should have wished to express by signature of the me- 
 morial you publish to-day from Huddersfield 2 respecting the 
 Jamaica insurrection, and to thank you for your excellent ar- 
 ticle of the 15th December on the same subject. I am 
 compelled to make this request, because I see my friend Mr. 
 Thomas Hughes has been abetting the Kadical movement 
 against Governor Eyre ; and as I employed what little influ- 
 ence I have with the London workmen to aid the return of 
 Mr. Hughes for Lambeth, I may perhaps be thought to concur 
 with him in every line of action he may see fit subsequently 
 to adopt. Permit me, then, once for all, through your widely- 
 . read columns, to say that I did what I could towards the re- 
 turn both of Mr. J. S. Mill and of Mr. Hughes, 3 not because 
 I held with them in all their opinions, or even in the main 
 principle of their opinions, but because I knew they had a 
 principle of opinions ; that they were honest, thoughtful, and 
 benevolent men ; and far worthier to be in Parliament (even 
 though it might be in opposition to many causes I had at 
 heart) than any other candidates I knew. They are my 
 opponents in many things, though I thought better of them 
 both than that they would countenance this fatuous outcry 
 
 1 The outcry against Governor Eyre for the course he took in suppress- 
 ing the negro insurrection at Morant Bay, Jamaica, in 18G5, is still 
 within the memory of the general public. Mr. Ruskin attended and 
 spoke at the meetings of the Eyre Defence Fund, to which Mr. Carlyle 
 (see note at the end of this letter) gave his warm support. Amongst 
 those who most strongly deprecated the course taken by Governor Eyre 
 were, as this letter implies, Mr. John Stuart Mill (Chairman of the 
 Jamaica Committee) and Mr. Thomas Hughes. 
 
 2 Signed by 273 persons resident in and near Huddersfield. (Daily 
 Telegraph, December 19, 1865.) 
 
 * Mr. Mill had been recently returned for Westminster, and Mr. 
 Hughes for Lambeth. 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICS AND WAR. 
 
 227 
 
 against Governor Eyre. But in most directions of thought 
 and action they are for Liberty, and I am for Lordship ; they 
 are Mob's men and I am a King's man. Yes, sir, I am one of 
 those almost forgotten creatures who shrivel under your daily 
 scorn ; I am a " Conservative," and hope forever to be a Con- 
 servative in the deepest sense — a Re-former, not a De-former. 
 Not that I like slavery, or object to the emancipation of any 
 kind or number of blacks in due place and time. But I un- 
 derstand something more by " slavery " than either Mr. J. S. 
 Mill or Mr. Hughes ; and believe that white emancipation not 
 only ought to precede, but must by law of all fate precede, 
 black emancipation. I much dislike the slavery, to man, of an 
 African laborer, with a spade on his shoulder ; but I more 
 dislike the slavery, to the devil, of a Calabrian robber with a 
 gun on his shoulder. I dislike the American serf-economy, 
 which separates, occasionally, man and wife ; but I more dis- 
 like the English serf-economy, which prevents men from being 
 able to have wives at all. I dislike the slavery which obliges 
 women (if it does) to carry their children over frozen rivers ; 
 but I more dislike the slavery which makes them throw their 
 children into wells. I would willingly hinder the selling of 
 girls on the Gold Coast ; but primarily, if I might, would 
 hinder the selling of them in Mayfair. And, finally, while I 
 regret the need that may exist among savages in a distant 
 island for their governor to do his work sharply and suddenly 
 on them, I far more regret the need among men of race and 
 capacity for the work of governors when they have no gov- 
 ernor to give it them. Of all dishonorable and impious cap- 
 tivities of this age, the darkest was that of England to Russia, 
 by which she was compelled to refuse to give Greece a King- 
 when Greece besought one from her, and to permit that there 
 should be set on the Acropolis throne no Governor Eyre, nor 
 anything like him, but such a shadow of King as the black 
 fates cast upon a nation for a curse, saying, " Woe to thee, O 
 land, when thy king is a child ! " 1 
 
 1 The present king of Greece was only eighteen years of age when, 
 after the protocol of England, Russia, and France on the preceding day, 
 he accepted, June 6, 1863, the crown of Greece. 
 
228 
 
 ARROWS OF THE G II ACE. 
 
 Let the men who would now deserve well of England 
 reserve their impeachments, or turn them from those among 
 us who have saved colonies to those who have destroyed 
 nations. 
 
 I am, Sir, yours, etc., 
 
 J. RuSKIN.* 
 
 Denmark Hill,, Dec. 19. 
 
 (From " The Daily Telegraph," October 7, 1870.) 
 
 THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR, 
 
 To the Editor of " The Daily Telegraph." 
 
 Sir : My friends ask me why I speak no word about this 
 war, supposing — like vain friends as they are — that I might 
 have some poor influence of intercession for filigree-work, 
 French clocks, and other tender articles of vertu, felt at this 
 moment to be in grave danger. 
 
 But, in the first place, I know that the just Fates will 
 reward no intercession, either for human life or chinaware, 
 until their will has been accomplished upon all of us. In the 
 second, I know also that the German armies will spare what 
 they can, and think they ought, without taking advice of me. 
 In the third, I have said long ago — no one listening — the best 
 I had to say on these matters. 
 
 But, after your notice to-day of the escape of M. Edouard 
 Frere, 2 whose gentle power I was, I believe, the first to recog- 
 
 1 It is of interest to remark that Mr. Carl yle, in a letter to Mr. Hamilton 
 Hume, Hon. Sec. of the 4 'Eyre Defence Fund" (published in the Daily 
 Telegraph of September 12, 1866), expressed himself as follows: "The 
 clamor raised against Governor Eyre appears to me to be disgraceful to 
 the good sense of England ; . . . penalty and clamor are not the, 
 things this Governor merits from any of us, but honor and thanks, and 
 wise imitation. . . . The whole weight of my conviction and good 
 wishes is with you." Mr. Carlyle was, with Sir Roderick Murchison, 
 one of the two vice-presidents of the Defence Committee. (See The 
 History of the Jamaica Case, by G. W. Finlason : London, 1869, p. 369.) 
 
 2 M. Edouard Frere and Mdile. Rosa Bonheur were allowed to leave 
 Paris and pass the lines of the Prussian army after the blockade of the 
 French capital had been begun. For Mr. Ruskin's early recognition of 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICS AND WAR. 
 
 229 
 
 nize publicly in England, it is possible that some of your 
 readers may care to look back at what I wrote of modern war 
 four years ago, and to know the aspect it takes to me, now 
 that it has come to pass. 
 
 If you will reprint these few following sentences for me from 
 the " Crown of Wild Olive," 1 1 shall be able to-morrow to put 
 what I would add to them briefly enough to claim little space 
 in your columns : 
 
 If you have to take away masses of men from all industrial 
 employment — to feed them by the labor of others — to move 
 them, and provide them with destructive machines, varied 
 daily in national rivalship of inventive cost ; if you have to 
 ravage the country which you attack — to destroy for a score 
 of future years, its roads, its woods, its cities, and its harbors ; 
 and if, finally, having brought masses of men, counted by 
 hundreds of thousands, face to face, you tear those masses to 
 pieces with jagged shot, and leave fragments of living crea- 
 tures, countlessly beyond all help of surgery, to starve and 
 parch, through days of torture, down into clots of clay — what 
 book of accounts shall record the cost of your work — what 
 book of judgment sentence the guilt of it ? 
 
 That, I say, is modern war — scientific war — chemical and 
 mechanical war — worse even than the savage's poisoned arrow. 
 And yet you will tell me, perhaps, that any other war than 
 this is impossible now. It may be so ; the progress of science 
 cannot, perhaps, be otherwise registered than by new facilities 
 
 M. Fibre's power, see the Academy Notes, No. II. (1856), p. 47, where 
 some " cottage studies" are spoken of as "quite unequalled in sincerity 
 and truth of conception, though somewhat dimly painted ; " — No. III. 
 rl857), p. 58, where his pictures are said to " unite the depth of 
 Wordsworth, the grace of Reynolds, and the holiness of Angelico ; " — 
 and No. IV. (1858), p. 33, where this last expression of praise is emphasized 
 and at some length explained. 
 
 1 See for the first two paragraphs of extracts following pp. 170, 171 
 of the original, and §§ 102-3 of the 1873 edition of the Crown of 
 Wild Olive; for the third paragraph, pp. 116-118, and $ 74; and 
 for the last two paragraphs, pp. 186, 187, and §§ 113, 114, respectively, 
 of those two editions. 
 
230 
 
 ARROWS OF THE C II ACE. 
 
 of destruction ; and the brotherly love of our enlarging 
 Christianity be only proved by multiplication of murder. 
 
 But the wonder has always been great to me that heroism 
 has never been supposed consistent with the practice of sup- 
 plying people with food, or clothes, but only with that of 
 quartering one's self upon them for food, and stripping them 
 of their clothes. Spoiling of armor is an heroic deed in all 
 ages ; but the selling of clothes, old or new, has never taken 
 any color of magnanimity. Yet one does not see why feeding the 
 hungry and clothing the naked should ever become base busi- 
 nesses even when engaged in on a large scale. If one could 
 contrive to attach the notion of conquest to them anyhow ? so 
 that, supposing there were anywhere an obstinate race, who 
 refused to be comforted, one might take some pride in giving 
 them compulsory comfort, and, as it were, " occupying a 
 country " with one's gifts, instead of one's armies ? If one 
 could only consider it as much a victory to get a barren field 
 sown as to an eared field stripped ; and contend who should 
 build villages, instead of who should " carry " them ? Are 
 not all forms of heroism conceivable in doing these service- 
 able deeds ? You doubt who is strongest ? It might be ascer- 
 tained by push of spade as well as push of sword. Who is 
 wisest ? There are witty things to be thought of in planning 
 other business than campaigns. Who is bravest ? There are 
 always the elements to fight with, stronger than men ; and 
 nearly as merciless. 
 
 And, then, observe farther, this true power, the power of 
 saving, depends neither on multitude of men, nor on extent 
 of territory. We are continually assuming that nations be- 
 come strong according to their numbers. They indeed become 
 so, if those numbers can be made of one mind. But how are 
 you sure you can stay them in one mind, and keep them from 
 having north and south minds ? Grant them unanimous, how 
 know you they will be unanimous in right ? If they are 
 unanimous in wrong, the more they are, essentially the weaker 
 they are. Or, suppose that they can neither be of one mind, 
 nor of two minds, but can only be of no mind ? Suppose they 
 are a mere helpless mob, tottering into precipitant catastrophe, 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICS AND WAR. 
 
 231 
 
 like a wagon-load of stones when the wheel comes off? Dan- 
 gerous enough for their neighbors certainly, but not "power- 
 ful" 
 
 Neither does strength depend on extent of territory, any 
 more than upon number of population. Take up your masses, 
 put the cluster of the British Isles beside the mass of South 
 America, and then consider whether any race of men need 
 consider how much ground they stand upon. The strength is 
 in the men, and in their unity and virtue, not in their stand- 
 ing-room. A little group of wise hearts is better than a wil- 
 derness full of fools ; and only that nation gains true territory 
 which gains itself. 
 
 I am, Sir, your faithful servant, 
 
 J. Buskin, 
 
 Denmark Hill, S.E., Oct, §th. 
 
 [From " The Daily Telegraph," October 8, 1870.] 
 
 THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR. 
 
 Td the Editor of " The Daily Telegraphy 
 
 Sir : As I am always blamed if I approach my subject on 
 any but its picturesque side, it is well for me that in to-day's 
 Times I find it announced that at Strasburg the Picture Gal- 
 lery — with the pictures in it?— the Library— with the books 
 in it ? — and the Theatre, with certainly two hundred persons 
 in it, have been burnt to the ground under an auxiliary can- 
 nonade, the flames at night being "a tempting target." It is 
 true that in your columns I find the consolatory news that the 
 Parisians are repairing those losses by casting a bronze Stras- 
 burg ; 1 but if, as a poor art professor, I may venture an 
 opinion, I would fain suggest to them that if their own pic- 
 ture gallery, with the pictures and bits of marble in it — Venus 
 
 1 The Daily Telegraph of Oct. 7 contained amongst its Paris news 
 that of the decision of the Government of National Defence to cast a 
 statue of the city of Strasburg in bronze, in memory of its " heroic re- 
 sistance to the enemy during a murderous siege of fifty days." 
 
232 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CIIACE. 
 
 of Melos and the like — and their own Library — Royal, Im- 
 periale, Nationale, or whatever they now call it — should pres- 
 ently become tempting targets also by the light of their own 
 flames, the casting of a bronze Paris, in even the most impos- 
 ing of attitudes, will scarcely redeem their loss, were it but to 
 the admiring eyes of Paris itself. 
 
 There is yet another letter in the Times, 1 of more impor- 
 tance than the one from Strasburg. It is headed, " The Diffi- 
 culties of Neutrality," dated Bonn, and anticipates part of 
 what I was going to say ; for the rest, the lessons of the war, 
 as I read them, are briefly these. 
 
 As to its cause, neither the French nation nor their Em- 
 peror brought on war by any present will of their own. 
 Neither of them were capable of a will at all— far less of exe- 
 cuting it. The nation has since declared, by submission, with 
 acclaim, to a change of Government which for the time ren- 
 ders all political treaty with it practically impossible, that 
 during the last twenty years it has been deceived or subdued 
 into obedience to a man for whom it had no respect, and who 
 had no hereditary claim to the throne. What " will " or re- 
 sponsibility of action can be expected from a nation which 
 confesses this of itself ? On the other hand, the Emperor, be 
 his motives never so selfish, could only have hoped to save his 
 dynasty by compliance with the passions of a populace which 
 he knew would overthrow it in the first hour of their mortifi- 
 cation. It is in these vain passions and the falsehoods on 
 which they have fed that we must look for the deep roots of 
 all this misery. Since the days of the First Empire, no cot- 
 tage in France has been without its Napoleonic picture and 
 legend, fostering one and the same faith in the heart of every 
 
 1 This letter was signed " W. C. P.," who, after stating himself to be 
 an English resident in Germany, proceeded to lament the changed po- 
 sition of England in the opinion of foreign nations, and especially in 
 that of the Germans, who no longer spoke of her, as formerly, " with 
 affectionate admiration or even envious respect." u And I must con- 
 fess,' 7 concluded the letter, " that I find it difficult to answer them ; for 
 it seems to me that we have already good reason to say, in reference to 
 the present struggle, 4 All is lost save money. 1 ,1 — Times. October 7, 1870. 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICS AND WAR. 
 
 233 
 
 peasant boy, that tliere is no glory but in battle ; and since 
 the founding of the Second Empire no street of any city has 
 risen into its foolish magnificence without collateral procla- 
 mation that there was no pleasure but in vice. 
 
 Then, secondly, for the actual question of the war : it is a 
 simple and testing struggle between pure Republicanism on 
 the one side, expressed in the most exquisite, finished, and 
 exemplary anarchy, yet achieved under — earth — and one of 
 the truest Monarchies and schools of honor and obedience yet 
 organized under heaven. And the secret of its strength, we 
 have to note, is essentially pacific ; for all the wars of the 
 Great Friedrich would have passed away resultless — as great 
 wars usually do — had it not been for this pregnant fact at 
 the end of them: "All his artillery horses are parted into 
 plough-teams, and given to those who otherwise can get none " 
 (Carlyle, vol. vi., first edition, p. 350) — that 21st book on the 
 repair of Prussia being of extant literature the most important 
 piece for us to read and digest in these days of " raising the 
 poor without gifts" — never asking who first let them fall — and 
 of turning workmen out of dockyards, without any conscious- 
 ness that, of all the stores in the yard, the men were exactly 
 the most precious. You expressed, Sir, in your article on the 
 loss of the Captain, 1 a feeling common, I suppose, for once, to 
 all of us, that the principal loss was not the iron of the ship, 
 but the five hundred men in her. Perhaps, had she been of 
 gold instead of iron plate, public mourning might have in- 
 clined itself to the side of the metal. But how if the whole 
 British public should be itself at this instant afloat in a cap- 
 tuinless Captain, built of somewhat dirty yet substantial gold, 
 and in extremest peril of turning bottom upwards ? Which 
 will be the end, indeed, unless the said public quickly per- 
 ceive that their hope must be, not in docks nor ships, but in 
 men. They, and they only, are our guarantee for territory. 
 Prussia herself seems as simple as the rest of us in her talk of 
 
 1 The turret ship Captain foundered off Cape Finisterre on September 
 7, 1870. For the articles alluded to, see the Daily Telegraph of Septem- 
 ber 12 and following days. 
 
234 
 
 ARROWS OF THE C II ACE. 
 
 (i guarantees. " Alsace and Lorraine, if dishonestly come by, 
 may be honestly retaken ; but if for " guarantee." why these 
 only ? "Why not Burgundy and Anjou — Auvergne and the 
 Limousin ? Let Prance lose what she may, if she can but find 
 a Charles and Roland among her children, she will recover her 
 empire, though she had been beaten back to the Breche ; and 
 if she find them not Germany has all the guarantee she needs 
 in her own name, and in her own right hand. 
 
 Let her look to it, now, that her fame be not sullied. She 
 is pressing her victory too far — dangerously far, as uselessly. 
 The Nemesis of battle may indeed be near her ; greater glory 
 she cannot win by the taking of Paris, nor the overrunning of 
 provinces — she only prolongs suffering, redoubles death, ex- 
 tends loss, incalculable and irremediable. But let her now 
 give unconditional armistice, and offer terms that France can 
 accept with honor, and she will bear such rank among the 
 nations as never yet shone on Christian history. 
 
 For us, we ought to help France now, if we ever did any- 
 thing, but of course there remains for us only neutrality — 
 selling of coke, and silence (if we have grace enough left to 
 keep it). I have only broken mine to say that I am ashamed 
 to speak as being one of a nation regardless of its honor alike 
 in trade and policy ; poor, yet not careful to keep even the 
 treasure of probity — and rich, without being able to afford 
 itself the luxury of courage. 
 
 I am, Sir, your faithful servant, 
 
 Oct 7. J- Ruskin. 
 
 [From " Fraser's Magazine," July, 1876, pp. 121-123.] 
 
 MODERN WARFARE 
 
 To the Editor of u Eraser's Magazine.'" 
 
 Sir : The article on modern warfare in your last June num- 
 ber 1 contains statements of so great importance to public in- 
 terests, that I do not hesitate to ask you to spare me space for 
 
 1 Remarks on Modern Warfare. By a Military Officer. The article 
 was signed "P. S. C. " 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICS AND WAR. 
 
 235 
 
 a question or two respecting it, which by answering, your 
 contributor may make the facts he has brought forward more 
 valuable for practical issues. 
 
 The statistics 1 given in the second column of page 695, 
 on which P. S. C. rests his " incontestable " conclusion that 
 V battles are less sanguinary than they were," are incomplete 
 in this vital respect, that they furnish us only with the pro- 
 portion, and not with the total number, of combatants slain. 
 A barricade fight between a mob of rioters a thousand strong 
 and a battery of artillery, in which fifty reformers get shot, is not 
 " less sanguinary " than a street quarrel between three topers, 
 of whom one gets knocked on the head with a pewter pot : 
 though no more than the twentieth part of the forces on one 
 side fall in the first case, and a third of the total forces en- 
 gaged, in the second. Nor could it be proved by the exhibi- 
 tion of these proportions of loss, that the substitution of ex- 
 plosive shells, as offensive weapons, for pewter pots, rendered 
 wounds less painful, or war more humane. 
 
 Now, the practical difference between ancient and modern 
 war, as carried on by civilized nations, is, broadly, of this kind. 
 Formerly, the persons who had quarrelled settled their differ- 
 ences by the strength of their own arms, at the head of their 
 retainers, with comparatively inexpensive weapons such as they 
 could conveniently wield : weapons which they had paid for 
 out of their own pockets, and with which they struck only the 
 people they meant to strike : while, nowadays, persons who 
 quarrel fight at a distance, with mechanical apparatus, for the * 
 manufacture of which they have taxed the public, and which 
 will kill anybody who happens to be in the way ; gathering at 
 the same time, to put into the way of them, as large a quan- 
 tity of senseless and innocent mob as can be beguiled, or 
 compelled, to the slaughter. So that, in the words of your con- 
 tributor, " Modern armies are not now small fractions of the 
 population whence they are drawn ; they represent — in fact 
 are — whole nations in arms." I have only to correct this some- 
 what vague and rhetorical statement by pointing out that the 
 
 1 See the tables given in this letter (p. 236). 
 
236 
 
 ARROWS OF TEE CHACE. 
 
 persons in arms, led out for mutual destruction, are by no 
 means " the whole nation " on either side, but only the indi- 
 viduals of it who are able-bodied, honest, and brave, selected 
 to be shot, from among its invalids, rogues, and cowards. 
 
 The deficiencies in your contributor's evidence as to the 
 totality of loss do not, however, invalidate his conclusion that, 
 out of given numbers engaged, the mitrailleuse kills fewer than 
 the musket. 1 It is, nevertheless, a very startling conclusion, 
 and one not to be accepted without closer examination of the 
 statistics on which it is based. I will, therefore, tabulate them 
 in a simpler form, which the eye can catch easily, omitting 
 only one or two instances which add nothing to the force of 
 the evidence. 
 
 In the six under-named battles of bygone times, there fell, 
 according to your contributor's estimate, out of the total com- 
 batants — 
 
 At Austerlitz 1/7 
 
 Jena 1/6 
 
 Waterloo.. 1/5 
 
 Marengo 1/4 
 
 Salamanca 1/3 
 
 Eylau 1/2! 
 
 while in the under-named five recent battles the proportion 
 of loss was — 
 
 At Koniggratz 
 Gravelotte 
 Solferino .... 
 
 Worth 
 
 Sedan 
 
 Now, there is a very important difference in the character of 
 the battles named in these two lists. Every one of the first 
 six was decisive, and both sides knew that it must be so when 
 the engagement began, and did their best to win. But Konig- 
 gratz was only decisive by sudden and appalling demonstration 
 of the power of a new weapon. Solferino was only half fought, 
 
 1/15 / 
 1/12 ' . 
 1/11 
 1/11 
 1/10 
 
 * " The proportion of killed and wounded, n wrote P. S. C. H was far 
 greater with the old-fashioned weapons than it is at the present day." 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICS AND WAR. 
 
 237 
 
 and not followed up because the French Emperor had exhausted 
 his corps (T elite at Magenta, and could not (or, at least, so it is 
 reported) depend on his troops of the line. Worth was an 
 experiment ; Sedan a discouraged ruin ; Gravelotte was, I 
 believe, well contested, but I do not know on what extent of 
 the line, and we have no real evidence as to the power of 
 modern mechanics for death, until the proportions are calcu- 
 lated, not from the numbers engaged, but from those under 
 fire for equal times. Now, in all the upper list of battles, 
 probably every man of both armies was under fire, and some of 
 the regiments under fire for half the day ; while in the lower 
 list of battles, only fragments of the line were hotly engaged, 
 and the dispute on any point reaching its intensity would be 
 ended in half an hour. 
 
 That the close of contest is so rapid may indeed be one of 
 the conditions of improvement in our military system alleged 
 by your correspondent ; and the statistics he has brought 
 forward do indeed clearly prove one of two things — either that 
 modern weapons do not kill, or that modern soldiers do not 
 fight as effectually as in old times. I do not know if this is 
 thought a desirable change in military circles ; but I, as a poor 
 civilian, beg to express my strong objection to being taxed six 
 limes over what I used to be, either for the equipment of sol- 
 diers who rarely fight, or the manufacture of weapons which 
 rarely kill. It may be perfectly true that our last cruise on 
 the Baltic was " less sanguinary " than that which concluded in 
 Copenhagen. But we shook hands with the Danes after 
 fighting them, and the differences between us were ended : 
 while our expensive contemplation of the defences of Cronstadt 
 leaves us still in daily dread of an inspection by the Kussian oi 
 those of Calcutta. 
 
 It is true that the ingenuity of our inventors is far from 
 being exhausted, and that in a few years more we may be able 
 to destroy a regiment round a corner and bombard a fleet over 
 the horizon ; but I believe the effective result of these crowning 
 scientific successes will only be to confirm the at present par- 
 tial impression on the minds of military and naval officers, that 
 their duty is rather to take care of their weapons than to use 
 
238 
 
 ARROWS OF THE OH ACE. 
 
 them. "England will expect" of her generals and admirals 
 to maintain a dignified moral position as far as possible out of 
 the enemy's sight : and in a perfectly scientific era of seaman- 
 ship we shall see two adverse fleets affected by a constant law 
 of mutual repulsion at distances of two or three hundred 
 /niles ; while in either squadron, an occasional collision be- 
 tween the leading ships, or inexplicable foundering of the last 
 improved ones, will make these prudential manoeuvres on the 
 whole as destructive of the force, and about ten times more 
 costly to the pocket, of the nation, than the ancient, and, per- 
 haps, more honorable tactics of poorly-armed pugnacity. 
 
 There is, however, one point touched upon in P. S. C.'s 
 letter, to me the most interesting of all, with respect to which 
 the data for accurate comparison of our former and present 
 systems are especially desirable, though it never seems to have 
 occurred to your correspondent to collect them — the estimates, 
 namely, of the relative destruction of civil property. 
 
 Of wilful destruction, I most thankfully acknowledge the 
 cessation in Christian warfare ; and in the great change, be- 
 tween the day of the sack of Magdeburg and that of the march 
 into Paris, recognize a true sign of the approach of the reign 
 of national peace. But of inevitable destruction — of loss in- 
 flicted on the peasant by the merely imperative requirements 
 and operations of contending armies — it will materially hasten 
 the advent of such peace, if we ascertain the increasing press- 
 ure during our nominally mollified and merciful war. The 
 agricultural losses sustained by France in one year are esti- 
 mated by your correspondent at one hundred and seventy 
 millions of pounds. Let him add to this sum the agricultural 
 loss necessitated in the same year throughout Germany, 
 through the withdrawal of capital from productive industry, 
 for the maintenance of her armies ; and of labour from it by 
 their composition ; and, for third item, add the total cost of 
 weapons, horses, and ammunition on both sides ; and let him 
 then inform us whether the cost, thus summed, of a year's 
 actual war between two European States, is supposed by mil- 
 itary authorities to be fairly representative of that which the 
 settlement of political dispute between any two such Powers, 
 
LETTERS OF POLITICS AND YiAR. 
 
 239 
 
 with modern instruments of battle, will on an average, in fut- 
 ure, involve. If so, I will only venture further to suggest 
 that the nations minded thus to try their quarrel should at 
 least raise the stakes for their match before they make the 
 ring, instead of drawing bills for them upon futurity. For 
 that the money-lenders whose pockets are filled, while every- 
 body else's are emptied, by recent military finance, should oc- 
 cultly exercise irresistible influence, not only on the develop- 
 ment of our — according to your contributor — daily more 
 harmless armaments, but also on the deliberation of Cabinets, 
 and passions of the populace, is inevitable under present cir- 
 cumstances ; and the exercise of such influence, however ad- 
 vantageous to contractors and projectors, can scarcely be held 
 consistent either with the honor of a Senate or the safety of 
 a State. I am, Sir, 
 
 Your faithful servant, 
 
 J. EUSKIN. 
 
 P. S. — I wish I could get a broad approximate estimate of 
 the expenditure in money, and loss of men by France and 
 Prussia in the respective years of Jena and Sedan, and by 
 France and Austria in the respective years of Areola and Sol- 
 ferine. 
 
LETTEES ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 [From " The Times," October 8, 1863.] 
 
 THE DEPBECIA TION OF GOLD. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Times:'' 
 
 Sir : Being out of the way of my letters, I did not, till 
 now, see your excellent article of the 23d September on^fche 
 depreciation of gold. 1 Will you allow me, thus late, a very 
 few words in confirmation of your statement of the insufficiency 
 of the evidence hitherto offered on that subject? 
 
 The market value of " a pound 99 depends less on the supply 
 of gold than on the extravagance or economy of the persons 
 holding documentary currency (that is to say, claim to goods). 
 Suppose, for instance, that I hold stock to the value of £500 a 
 year ; — if I live on a hundred a year, and lay by four hundred, 
 I (for the time) keep down the prices of all goods to the dis- 
 tributed amount of £400 a year, or, in other words, neutralize 
 the effect on the market of 400 pounds in gold imported 
 annually from Australia. If, instead of laying by this sum in 
 paper, I choose to throw it into bullion (whether gold-plate or 
 coin does not matter), I not only keep down the price of goods, 
 but raise the price of gold as a commodity, and neutralize 800 
 pounds' worth of imported gold. But if I annually spend my 
 entire 500 (unproductively) I annually raise the price of goods 
 by that amount, and neutralize a correspondent diminution in 
 the supply of gold. If I spend my 500 productively, that is 
 to say, so as to produce as much as, or more than I consume, 
 I either leave the market as I find it, or by the excess of pro- 
 duction increase the value of gold. 
 
 1 See one of the leading articles in The Times of Sept. 23, 1863, upon 
 the then panic as to the depreciation of gold, excited by the considerable 
 fresh discoveries of the precious metal in California and Australia. 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 241 
 
 Similarly, whatever I lay by will, as it is ultimately spent 
 by my successors, productively or unproductively, in that 
 degree (cceteris paribus) increase or lower the value of gold. 
 These agencies of daily economy have so much more power 
 over the market than the supply from the mine that no statis- 
 tics of which we are yet in possession are (at least in their 
 existing form) sufficient to prove the dependence of any given 
 phenomena of the market on the rate of metallic supply. The 
 destruction of property in the American war and our European 
 amusements in the manufacture of monster guns and steel 
 "backings" lower the value of money far more surely and 
 fatally than an increased supply of bullion, for the latter may 
 very possibly excite parallel force of productive industry. 
 
 But the lowered value of money is often (and this is a very 
 curious case of economical back current) indicated, not so 
 much by a rise in the price of goods, as by a fall in that of 
 labor. The household lives as comfortably as it did on a 
 hundred a year, but the master has to work half as hard again 
 to get it. This increase of toil is to an active nation often a 
 kind of play ; men go into it as into a violent game ; fathers 
 of families die quicker, and the gates of orphan asylums are 
 choked with applicants ; distress and crime spread and fester 
 through a thousand silent channels ; but there is no commer- 
 cial or elementary convulsion ; no chasm opens into the abyss 
 through the London clay ; no gilded victim is asked of the 
 Guards : the Stock-Exchange falls into no hysterics ; and the 
 old lady of Threadneedle Street does not so much as ask for 
 "My fan, Peter. " I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 J. Buskin. 
 
 Chamounix, Oct. 2. 
 
 [From " The Daily Telegraph," October 28, 1864.] 
 
 THE LAW OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Daily Telegraph" 
 
 Sir : In your valuable article of to-day on the strike of the 
 colliers, while you lay down the true and just law 1 respect- 
 
 1 The strike was amongst the South Staffordshire colliers: the law 
 laid down in the article that of free trade. 
 
242 
 
 ARROWS OF THE C II ACE. 
 
 ing all such* combinations, you take your stand, in the outset, 
 on a maxim of political economy, which, however trite, stands 
 yet— if I am not deceived — in need of much examination and 
 qualification. "Labor," you say, like every other vendible 
 commodity, " depends for its value on the relation of supply 
 to demand. " But, Sir, might it not be asked by any simple 
 and practical person, who had heard this assertion for the first 
 time — as I hope all practical persons will some day hear it for 
 the last time — " Yes ; but what does demand depend upon, 
 and what does supply depend upon ? " If, for instance, all 
 death-beds came to resemble that so forcibly depicted in your 
 next following article, and in consequence, the demand for 
 gin were unlimitedly increased towards the close of human 
 life, 1 would this demand necessitate, or indicate, a relative in- 
 crease in the u value " of gin as a necessary article of na- 
 tional wealth, and liquid foundation of national prosperity ? 
 Or might we not advisably make some steady and generally 
 understood distinction between the terms " value " and 
 "price," and determine at once whether there be, or be not, 
 such a thing as intrinsic " value " or goodness in some things, 
 and as intrinsic un value or badness in other things ; and as 1 
 value extrinsic, or according to use, in all things ? and 
 whether a demand for intrinsically good things, and a corre- 
 sponding knowledge of their use, be not conditions likely, on 
 the whole, to tend towards national wealth ? and whether a 
 demand for intrinsically bad things, and relative experience 
 in their use, be not conditions likely to lead to quite the re- 
 verse of national wealth, in exact proportion to the facility of 
 the supply of the said bad things ? I should be entirely grate- 
 ful to you, Sir, or to any of your correspondents, if you or they 
 w r ould answer these short questions clearly for me. 
 
 I am, Sir, yours, etc., 
 Denmark Hill, Oct. 26. J- Buskin. 2 
 
 1 Upon the then recent and miserable death of an Irish gentleman, 
 who had been an habitual hard-drinker. • 
 
 2 To this letter an answer (Daily Telegraph, October 29) was attempted 
 by " ¥ conomist," writing from "Lloyds, Oct. 28," stating that " Value 
 in political economy means exchangeable value, not intrinsic value." 
 The rest of his letter is given in Mr. Euskin's reply to it. 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 243 
 
 [From •« The Daily Telegraph, 11 October 31, 1864.] 
 
 THE LAW OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Daihj Telegraph:' 
 
 Sir : I am grateful to your correspondent " Economist " for 
 trying* his hand on me, and will be a docile pupil ; but I hope 
 his hand is not quite untried hitherto, for it would waste your 
 space, and my time, and your readers' patience, if he taught 
 me what I had afterwards to unlearn. But I think none of 
 these will be wasted if he answers my questions clearly ; there 
 are, I am sure, many innocent persons who, like myself, will 
 be glad of the information. 
 
 h He tells me, then, in the outset, " The intrinsic value of 
 commodities is a question outside political economy." 
 
 Is that an axiom for all political economists ? and may I 
 put it down for future reference ? I particularly wish to be 
 assured of this. 
 
 2. Assuming, for the present, that I may so set it down, 
 and that exchangeable value is the only subject of politico- 
 economical inquiry, I proceed to my informant's following 
 statement : 
 
 " The " (question) " of intrinsic value belongs to the domain 
 of philosophy, morals, or statecraft. The intrinsic value of any- 
 thing depends on its qualities ; the exchangeable value depends 
 on how much there is of it, and how much people want it." 
 
 (This " want " of it never, of course, in anywise depending 
 on its qualities.) 
 
 MavOavto. Accordingly, in that ancient and rashly-specula- 
 tive adage, " Venture a sprat to catch a herring," it is only 
 assumed that people will always want herrings rather than 
 sprats, and that there will always be fewer of them. No ref- 
 erence is involved, according to economists, to the relative 
 sizes of a sprat and herring. 
 
 Farther : Were a fashionable doctor to write an essay on 
 sprats, and increase their display at West-end tables to that 
 extent that unseasonable sprats became worth a guinea a head, 
 while herrings remained at the old nursery rate of one and a 
 half for three-halfpence, would my f recognition" of the value 
 
244 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 of sprats in paying a guinea for one enable me to cline off it 
 better than I should off that mysterious eleven-pennyworth of 
 herring? Or to take a more elevated instance. There is now 
 on my room wall a water-color drawing, which was once 
 bought for £30, and for which any dealer would to-morrow 
 give me £300. The drawing is intrinsically worth about one- 
 tenth of what it was when bought for £30, the sky having 
 faded out of it, and many colors having changed elsewhere. 
 But men's minds have changed like the colors, and Lord A. or 
 Sir John B. are now ready to give me £300 instead of £30 for it. 
 
 Now, I want to know what it matters to " Economist," or 
 to the Economical Society he (as I understand) represents, or 
 to the British nation generally, whether Lord A. has the bit of 
 colored paper and I the £300, or Lord A. the £300 and I the 
 bit of paper. The pounds are there, and the paper is there : 
 what does it nationally matter which of us have which ? 
 
 Farther : What does it nationally matter whether Lord A. 
 gives me £30 or £300 on the exchange ? (Mind, I do not say 
 it does not matter — I only want " Economist " to tell me if it 
 does, and how it does.) In one case my lord has £270 more 
 to spend ; in the other I have. What does it signify which of 
 us has? 
 
 Farther : To us, the exchangers, of what use is " Econo- 
 mist's " information that the rate of exchange depends on the 
 " demand and supply" of colored paper and pounds? No 
 ghost need come from the grave to tell us that. But if any 
 economical ghost would tell my lord how to get more pounds, 
 or me how f to get more drawings, it might be to the purpose. 
 
 But yet farther, passing from specialties to generals : 
 
 Let the entire property of the nation be enumerated in the 
 several articles of which it consists — a, b, c, d, etc. ; we will 
 say only three, for convenience sake. Then all the national 
 property consists of a-\~b-\-c. 
 I ask, first, what a is worth. 
 
 "Economist" answers (suppose) 2 b. 
 I ask, next, what b is worth. 
 
 "Economist" answers (suppose) 3 e. 
 I ask ; next, what c is worth. 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 245 
 
 " Economist " answers — f . 
 
 Many thanks. That is certainly Cocker's view of it 
 I ask, finally, "What is it all worth ? 
 
 "Economist" answers, If a, or 3£ b, or 10 c. 
 
 Thanks again. But now, intrinsic value not being in 
 " Economist's " domain, but — if I chance to be a philosopher 
 --in mine, I may any day discover any given intrinsic value 
 to belong to any one of these articles. 
 
 Suppose I find, for instance, the value of c to be intrinsi- 
 cally zero, then the entire national property = 10 c = in- 
 trinsically 0. 
 
 Shall I be justified in this conclusion ? 
 
 3. In relation to the question of strikes, the difficulty, you 
 told me yourself, Mr. Editor 1 (and doubtless " Economist " 
 will tell me also), depends simply on supply and demand : that 
 is to say, on an under-supply of wages and an over-supply of 
 laborers. Profoundest thanks again ; but I, poor blundering, 
 thick-headed collier, feel disposed further to ask, " On what 
 do this underness and overness of supply depend ? " Have 
 they any remote connection with marriage, or with improvi- 
 dence, or with avarice, or with accumulativeness, or any other 
 human weaknesses out of the ken of political economy ? And, 
 whatever they arise from, how are they to be dealt with? It 
 appears to me, poor simple collier, that the shortest way of 
 dealing with this " darned " supply of laborers will be by 
 knocking some of them down, or otherwise disabling them for 
 the present. Why is this mode of regulating the supply inter- 
 dicted to me? and what have Economists to do with the 
 morality of any proceeding whatever ? and, in the name of 
 economy generally, what else can I do ? 2 
 
 I am, Sir, yours, etc., 
 
 Denmark Hill, Oct 29. [Monday.] J. Euskin. 
 
 1 See ante, p. 241. 
 
 2 " Economist " does not seem to have continued his argument. A 
 reply to this letter was however attempted by " John Plummer," writ- 
 ing from Kettering, and dealing with the over-supply of laborers and 
 under-supply of wages, and Mr. Ruskin's possible views on the matter. 
 Th« next letter ended the correspondence. 
 
246 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 [From "The Daily Telegraph," November 3, 1864.] 
 
 THE LA W OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Daily Telegraph." 
 
 Sir : Having, unfortunately, occupation enough in my own 
 business for all hours of the day, I cannot undertake to reply 
 to the general correspondence which might, in large supply 
 to my limited demand, propose itself in your columns. If 
 my first respondent, " Economist," or any other person 
 learned in his science, will give me direct answers to the 
 direct questions asked in my Monday's letter, I may, with 
 your permission, follow the points at issue farther ; if not, I 
 will trouble you no more. Your correspondent of to-day, Mr. 
 Plummer, may ascertain whether I confuse the terms " value n 
 and " price " by reference to the bottom of the second column 
 in page 787 of Eraser's Magazine for June, 1862. Of my 
 opinions respecting the treatment of the working classes he 
 knows nothing, and can guess nothing. 1 
 
 I am, Sir, yours, etc., 
 
 Denmark Hill, Nov. 2. J. Ruskjn. 
 
 [From "The Scotsman," November 10, 1873.] 
 
 MR. RUSKIN AND PROFESSOR HODGSON. 
 
 Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 
 Nov. 8th, 1873. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Scotsman." 
 
 Sir : In your impression of the 6th inst I find a report of 
 a lecture delivered by Professor Hodgson in the University of 
 Edinburgh on the subject of " Supply and Demand," in which 
 the Professor speaks of my " denunciations " of the principles 
 he had expounded. Permit me, in a matter respecting which 
 accuracy is of more importance to others than to myself, to 
 correct the Professor's expression. I have never " denounced " 
 the principles expounded by the Professor. I have simply 
 
 1 In the Essays on Political Economy, since reprinted as Munerc 
 Pulveris. See p. 24, § 12 of that book, where the passage is printed in 
 italics : 11 The reader must, by anticipation, be warned against confusing 
 value with cost, or with price. Value is the life-giving power of any- 
 thing; cost, the quantity of labor required to produce it ; price, the 
 quantity of labor which its possessor will take in exchange for it." 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 247 
 
 stated that no such principles exist ; that no "law of supply 
 and demand/' as expounded by Professor Hodgson and mod- 
 ern economists, ever did or can exist. 
 
 Professor Hodgson, as reported in your columns, states that 
 " demand regulates supply." He does not appear to entertain 
 the incomparably more important economical question, 
 " What regulates demand ? " But without pressing upon him 
 that first question of all, I am content absolutely to contradict 
 and to challenge him before the University of Edinburgh to 
 maintain his statement that " demand regulates supply," and 
 together with it (if he has ventured to advance it) the correl- 
 ative proposition, " supply regulates demand." 
 
 a. Demand does not regulate supply. 
 
 For instance — there is at this moment a larger demand for 
 champagne wine in England and Scotland than there was ten 
 years ago ; and a much more limited supply of champagne wine. 
 
 b. Supply does not regulate demand. 
 
 For instance I can name many districts in Scotland where 
 the supply of pure water is larger than in other namable lo- 
 calities, but w r here the inhabitants drink less water and more 
 whiskey than in other namable localities. 
 
 I do not therefore denounce the so-called law of supply and 
 demand, but I absolutely deny the existence of such law ; and 
 I do in the very strongest terms denounce the assertion of the 
 existence of such a law before the University of Edinburgh as 
 disgraceful both to its assertor and to the University, unless 
 immediate steps be taken to define, in scientific terms, the 
 limitations under which such statement is to be understood. 
 
 I am, etc., 
 John Kuskin. 1 
 
 [From the " Scotsman," November 18, 1873.] 
 
 MR BUSKIN AND PROFESSOR HODGSON. 
 
 Oxford, November 15, 1873. 
 
 To the Editor of l< Tlie Scotsman." 
 
 Sir : For Professor Hodgson's " undue encroachments on 
 your space and his own time," I leave you to answer to your 
 
 1 To this letter Professor Hodgson replied by one printed in the Scots- 
 man of November 14. 
 
248 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CRACK 
 
 readers, and the Professor to console his class. To his criti- 
 cisms on my language and temper I bow, their defence being- 
 irrelevant to the matter in hand. Of his harmless confusion 
 of the word " correlative " with the word " consequent " I take 
 no notice ; and his promise of a sifting examination of my 
 economic teaching I anticipate with grateful awe. 1 
 
 But there is one sentence in his letter of real significance, 
 and to that alone I reply. The Professor ventured (he says) to 
 suggest that possibly I with others " believe that economists 
 confused existing demand with wise and beneficial demand, 
 and existing supply with wise and beneficial supply. 
 
 I do believe this. I have written all my books on political 
 economy in such belief. And the entire gist of them is the 
 assertion that a real law of relation holds between the non- 
 existent wise demand and the non-existent beneficial supply, 
 but that no real law of relation holds between the existent 
 foolish demand and the existent mischievous supply. 
 
 That is to say (to follow Professor Hodgson with greater 
 accuracy into his lunar illustrations), if you ask for the moon, 
 it does not follow that you will get it ; nor is your satisfaction 
 more secure if you ask for sixpence from a Poor-Law guar- 
 dian ; but if you limit your demand to an honest penny, and 
 endeavor to turn it by honest work, the divine law of supply 
 will, in the plurality of cases, answer that rational and there- 
 fore divine demand. 
 
 Now, Professor Hodgson's statement, as reported in your 
 columns, was that " demand regulates supply." If his asser- 
 tion, in his lecture, was the qualified one, or that " wise demand 
 regulates beneficial supply," your reporter is much to be 
 blamed, the Professor's class profoundly to be congratulated, 
 and this correspondence is at an end ; while I look forward 
 with deepest interest to the necessary elucidations by the Pro- 
 fessor of the nature of wisdom and benefit ; neither of these 
 ideas having been yet familiar ones in common economical 
 treatises. But I wrote under the impression that the Professor 
 
 1 " I hereby promise Mr. Ruskin that ere very many months are over 
 he shall have in print a sifting examination of his economic teaching." 
 I do not find, however, that Professor Hodgson fulfilled his promies. 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 249 
 
 dealt hitherto, as it has been the boast of economists to deal, 
 with things existent, and not theoretical (and assuredly the 
 practical men of this country expect their children to be in- 
 structed by him in the laws which govern existing things) ; 
 and it is therefore only in the name of your practical readers 
 that I challenged him, and to-day repeat my challenge, in 
 terms from which I trust he will not again attempt to escape by 
 circumambient criticism of my works, 1 to define, in scientific 
 terms, the limits under which his general statement that 
 " supply regulates demand " is to be understood. That is te 
 say, whether he, as Professor of Political Economy, is about to 
 explain the relations (a) of rational and satiable demand with 
 beneficial and benevolently-directed supply ; or (b) of irrational 
 and insatiable demand with mischievous and malevolently- 
 directed supply ; or (c) of a demand of which he cannot ex- 
 plain the character with a supply of which he cannot predict 
 the consequence ? 
 
 I am, etc., 
 
 J. RUSKIN. 
 
 [From 4 4 The Pall Mall Gazette," April 18, 1865.] 
 
 STRIKES v. ARBITRATION 
 
 To the Editor of " The Pall Mall Gazette." 
 
 Sir: I read your Gazette so attentively that I am always 
 falling into arrears, and have only to-day arrived at your last 
 week's articles on strikes, arbitration, etc., which afford me the 
 greatest satisfaction, but nevertheless embarrass me somewhat. 
 Will you permit me to ask for a word or two of further eluci- 
 dation ? 
 
 I am an entirely selfish person, and having the means of 
 indulging myself (in moderation), should, I believe, have led a 
 comfortable life, had it not been for occasional fits and twinges 
 of conscience, to which I inherit some family predisposition, 
 and from which I suffer great uneasiness in cloudy weather. 
 
 1 Professor Hodgson's letter had quoted, with criticism, several pas* 
 sages from Fors Clavigera, Munera Pulveris, and Time and Tide. 
 
250 
 
 ARROWS OF TEE GHACB. 
 
 Articles like yours of Wednesday, 1 on the proper attention to 
 one's own interests, are very comforting and helpful to me ; 
 but, as I said, there are yet some points in them I do not 
 understand. 
 
 Of course it is right to arrange all one's business with refer- 
 ence to one's own interest ; but what will the practical differ- 
 ence be ultimately between such arrangement and the old anci 
 simple conscientious one ? In those bygone days, I remember, 
 one endeavored, with such rough estimate as could be quickly 
 made, to give one's Eoland for one's Oliver ; if a man did you 
 a service, you tried in return to do as much for him ; if he 
 broke your head, you broke his, shook hands, and were both 
 the better for it. Contrariwise, on this modern principle of 
 self-interest, I understand very well that if a man does me a 
 service, I am always to do the least I can in return for it ; but 
 I don't see how I am always to get more out of him than he 
 gets out of me. I dislike any references to abstract justice as 
 much as you do, but I cannot see my way to keeping this in- 
 justice always in my own favor ; and if I cannot, it seems to 
 me the matter may as well be settled at first, as it must come 
 to be settled at last, in that disagreeably just way. 
 
 Thus, for instance, in producing a piece of iron for the mar- 
 ket, one man digs it, another smelts it, another puddles it, and 
 I sell it. We get so much between us four ; and I suppose 
 your conscientious people would say that the division of the 
 pay should have some reference to the hardness of the work, 
 and the time spent in it. It is true that by encouraging the 
 diggers and puddlers to spend all they get in drink, and by 
 
 1 The articles alluded to were, one upon "Strikes and Arbitration 
 Courts,'' in the Gazette of Wednesday, the 12th, and one on "The Times 
 on Trade Arbitration," in the Gazette of Thursday, the loth. The former 
 dealt with the proposal to decide questions raised by strikes by reference 
 to courts of arbitration. Amongst the sentences contained in it, and 
 alluded to by Mr. Ruskin, were the following: 44 Phrases about the 
 4 principles of right and justice ' are always suspicious and generally fal- 
 lacious." 44 The rate of wages is determined exclusively by self-interest. " 
 44 There is no such thing as a k f air } rate of wages or a 'just* rate of 
 wages." 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 251 
 
 turning them off as soon as I hear they are laying by money, 
 it may yet be possible to get them for some time to take less 
 than I suppose they should have ; but I cannot hide from my- 
 self that the men are beginning to understand the game a little 
 themselves ; and if they should, with the help of those con- 
 founded — (I beg pardon ! I forgot that one does not print such 
 expressions in Pall Mall) — education-mongers, learn to be men, 
 and to look after their own business as I do mine, what am I 
 to do ? Even at present I don't feel easy in telling them that 
 I ought to have more money than they because I know better 
 how to spend it, for even this involves a distant reference to 
 notions of propriety and principle which I would gladly 
 avoid. Will you kindly tell me what is best to be done (or 
 said) ? 
 
 I am, Sir, your obliged servant, 
 
 John Buskin. 
 
 Easter Monday, 1865. 
 
 [From the » Pall Mall Gazette," April 21, 1865.] 
 
 WORK AND WAGES. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Pall Mall Gazette. 1 ' 
 
 Sir : I am not usually unready for controversy, but I dis- 
 like it in spring, as I do the east wind (pace Mr. Kingsley), 
 and I both regret having given occasion to the only dull leader 
 which has yet 1 appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette, and the 
 necessity I am involved in of dissecting the same, instead of a 
 violet, on which I was about this morning to begin operations. 
 
 But I see, Sir, that you mean fairly, and that you have 
 careful thinkers and writers on your staff. And I will accept 
 your battle, if you will fight with short swords, which is clearly 
 your interest, for such another article would sink the Gazette ; 
 
 1 The Gazette was at this time of little more than eight weeks' standing. 
 The dull leader was that in the Gazette of April 19, entitled " Masters 
 and Men," and dealt entirely with Mr. Ruskins letter on strikes. The 
 li pace Mr. Kingsley" alludes, of course, to his Ode to the North-East 
 Wind. 
 
252 
 
 ARROWS OF THE OH ACE. 
 
 and mine, for I have no time to answer speculations on what 
 you writers suppose my opinions may be, "if we understand* 
 them. 
 
 You shall understand them utterly, as I already understand 
 yours. I will not call yours " fallacies " a priori ; you shall 
 not call mine so. I will not tell you of your " unconscious " 
 meanings ; you shall not tell me of mine. 1 But I will ask you 
 the plainest questions, and make to you the plainest answers 
 my English will admit of, on one point at a time only, expect- 
 ing you also to ask or answ 7 er as briefly, without divergence 
 or deprecation. And twenty lines will always contain all I 
 would say, at any intervals of time you choose. 
 
 For example : I said I must "dissect " your leader, mean- 
 ing that I should have to take a piece of it, as I would of my 
 flower, and deal with that first ; then w r ith its sequences. 
 
 I take this sentence then : " He (Mr. E.) seems to think 
 that apart from the question of the powers of the parties, 
 there is some such thing as a just rate of wages. He seems 
 to be under the impression that the wages ought to be pro- 
 portioned, not to the supply and demand of labor and capital, 
 but ' to the hardship of the work and the time spent in it.'" 
 
 Yes, Sir, I am decisively under that impression — as deci- 
 sively as ever Greek coin w r as under its impression. You will 
 beat me out of all shape, if you can beat me out of this. Will 
 you join issue on it, and are these following statements clear 
 enough for you, either to accept or deny, in as positive 
 terms ? — 
 
 I. A man should in justice be paid for two hours' w r ork 
 twice as much as for one hour's work, and for n hours' work n 
 times as much, if the effort be similar and continuous. 
 
 H. A man should in justice be paid for difficult or danger- 
 ous work proportionately more than for easy and safe work, 
 supposing the other conditions of the w r ork similar. 
 
 1 The leader had begun by speaking of Mr. Ruskin's previous letter 
 as f* embodying fallacies, pernicious in the highest degree," and con- 
 cluded by remarking how " easily and unconsciously he glided into the 
 true result cf his principles." 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 253 
 
 III. (And now look out, for this proposition involves the 
 ultimate principle of all just wages.) If a man does a given 
 quantity of work for me, I am bound in justice to do, or pro- 
 cure to be done, a precisely equal quantity of work for him j 
 and just trade in labor is the exchange of equivalent quanti- 
 ties of labor of different kinds. 
 
 If you pause at this word " equivalent," you shall have 
 definition of it in my next letter. I am sure you will in fair- 
 ness insert this challenge, whether you accept it or decline. 
 
 I am, Sir, your obliged servant, 
 
 John Ruskin. 1 
 
 Denmark Hill, Thursday, April 20. 
 
 iFrom " The Pall Mall Gazette," April 25, 1865.] 
 
 WORK AND WAGES. 
 
 To the Editor of " TJie Pall Mall Gazette:' 
 
 Sir : I accept your terms, and reply in the fewest words I 
 can. 
 
 L You " see no injustice in hiring a fly for 2s. 6d. for the 
 first hour and Is. 6d. for each succeeding one." Nor I either ; 
 so far from it, that I never give a cabman less than a shilling ; 
 which I doubt not is your practice also, and a very proper one. 
 The cabmen make no objection, and you could not have given 
 a neater instance of the proportion of payment to labor which 
 you deny. "You pay in the first hour for the various trouble 
 involved in taking the man off his stand, and for a proportion 
 of the time during which he has waited for the chance of your 
 custom. That paid, you hire him by the formula which I 
 state, and you deny. 
 
 II. " Danger and difficulty have attractions for some men." 
 They have, and if, under the influence of those attractions, 
 they choose to make you a present of their labor, for love (in 
 
 1 In reply, the Gazette denied " each of the three propositions to be 
 true," on grounds shown in the quotations given in the following letter. 
 
254 
 
 ARROWS OF THE OH ACE. 
 
 your own terms, 1 "as you give a penny to a beggar"), you 
 may accept the gift as the beggar does, without question of 
 justice. But if they do not choose to give it you, they have a 
 right to higher payment. My guide may perhaps, for love, 
 play at climbing Mont Blanc with me ; if he will not, he has 
 a right to be paid more than for climbing the Breven. 
 
 ITT. " Mr. Kuskin can define justice, or any other word, as 
 he chooses." 
 
 It is a gracious permission ; but suppose justice be some- 
 thing more than a word ! "When you derived it from jttssum 2 
 (falsely, for it is not derived from jussum, but from the root 
 of jungo), you forgot, or ignored, that the Saxons had also a 
 word for it, by which the English workman still pleads for 
 it ; that the Greeks had a word for it, by which Plato and St. 
 Paul reasoned of it ; and that the Powers of Heaven have, pre- 
 sumably, an idea of it with which it may be well for " our in- 
 terests 99 that your definition, as well as mine, should ultimately 
 correspond, since their " definitions - are commonly not by a 
 word but a blow. 
 
 But accepting for the nonce your own conception of it as 
 "the fulfilment of a compulsory agreement" ("the wages" 
 you say "which you force the men to take, and they can force 
 you to pay "), allow me to ask your definition of force, or com- 
 pulsion. As thus : (Case 1.) I agree with my friend that we 
 will pay a visit to Mr. A. at two in the morning, My friend 
 agrees with me that he will hold a pistol to Mr. A.'s head. 
 Under those circumstances, I agree with Mr. A. that I shall 
 remove his plate without expression of objection on his part- 
 is this agreement, in your sense, "jussum?" (Case 2.) Mr. 
 B. goes half through the ice into the canal on a frosty morn- 
 ing. I, on the shore, agree with Mr. B. that I shall have a 
 hundred pounds for throwing him a rope. Is this agreement 
 validly "jussum ? " 
 
 The first of these cases expresses in small compass the gen- 
 
 1 These " terms" were simply that the Gazette should have the right 
 of determining how much of the proposed controversy was worth its 
 space. 
 
 2 In the article of April 12. 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 255 
 
 eral nature of arrangements tinder compulsory circumstances 
 over which one of the parties has entire control. The second, 
 that of arrangements made under circumstances accidentally 
 compulsory, when the capital is in one party's hands exclu- 
 sively. For you will observe Mr. B. has no right whatever to 
 the use of my rope : and that capital (though it w 7 ould proba- 
 bly have been only the final result of my operations with re- 
 spect to Mr. A.) makes me completely master of the situation 
 with reference to Mr. B. 
 
 I am, Sir, your obliged servant, 
 
 John Kuskin. 1 
 
 Denmark Hill, Saturday, April 22, 1865. 
 
 [From " The Pall Mall Gazette," May 2, 1865.] 
 
 WORK AND WAGES. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Pall Mall Gazette:' 
 
 Sir : I have not hastened my reply to your last letter, think- 
 ing that your space at present would be otherwise occupied ; 
 having also my own thoughts busied in various directions, 
 such as you may fancy ; yet busied chiefly in a sad wonder, 
 which perhaps you would not fancy. I mourn for Mr. Lin- 
 coln, 2 as man should mourn the fate of man, when it is sud- 
 den and supreme. I hate regicide as I do populicide — deeply, 
 if frenzied ; more deeply, if deliberate. But my wonder is 
 in remembering the tone of the English people and press re- 
 specting this man during his life ; and in comparing it with 
 their sayings of him in his death. They caricatured and re- 
 viled him when his cause was poised in deadly balance — w T hen 
 their praise would have been grateful to him, and their help 
 
 1 For the Gazette's reply to this, see the notes to the following letter. 
 
 2 President Lincoln was shot while in his private box at Ford's Thea- 
 tre, Washington, on the night of April 14, 1865, and died early the 
 next morning. His assassin, J. Wilkes Booth, was pursued to Caroline 
 County, Virginia, where he was fired on by the soldiery and killed. A 
 letter was found upon him ascribing his conduct to his devotion to the 
 Southern States. 
 
256 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACB. 
 
 priceless. They now declare his cause to have been just^ 
 when it needs no aid ; and his purposes to have been noble, 
 when all human thoughts of them have become vanity, and 
 will never so much as mix their murmurs in his ears with the 
 sentence of the Tribunal which has summoned him to receive 
 a j uster praise and tenderer blame than ours. 
 
 I have twice (I see) used the word " just " inadvertently, 
 forgetting that it has no meaning, or may mean (you tell me) 
 quite what we choose ; and that so far as it has a meaning, 
 6 4 the important question is not whether the action is just." 
 Indeed when I read this curious sentence in your reply on 
 Tuesday last, " Justice, as we use it, implies merely the con- 
 formity of an action to any rules whatever, good or bad," I 
 had nearly closed the discussion by telling you that there re- 
 mained no ground on which we could meet, for the English 
 workmen, in whose name I wrote to you, asked, not for con- 
 formity with bad rules, but enactment of good ones. But I 
 will not pounce upon these careless sentences, which you are 
 forced to write in all haste, and at all disadvantage, while I 
 have the definitions and results determined through years of 
 quiet labor, lying ready at my hand. You never meant what 
 you wrote (when I said I would not tell you of unconscious 
 meanings, I did not promise not to tell you of unconscious 
 wants of meanings) ; but it is for you to tell me what you mean 
 by a bad rule, and what by a good one. Of the law of the 
 Eternal Lawgiver, it is dictated that " the commandment is 
 holy, and just, and good." Not merely that it is a law ; but 
 that it is such and such a law. Are these terms senseless to 
 you ? or do you understand by them only that the observance 
 of that law is generally conducive to our interests ? And if 
 so, what are our interests? Have we ever an interest in being 
 something, as well as in getting something ; may not even all 
 getting be at last summed in being ? is it not the uttermost of 
 interest to be just rather than unjust? Let us leave catching 
 at phrases, and try to look in each other's faces and hearts ; 
 so define our thoughts ; then reason from them. [See below. J : 
 
 1 The bracketed [sic] interpolations are the remarks of the Gazette. 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 257 
 
 Yet, lest you say I evade you in generalities, here is present 
 answer point by point. 
 
 I. " The fare has nothing to do with the labor in preparing 
 the fly for being hired." — Nor, of course, the price of any 
 article with the labor expended in preparing it for being sold ? 
 This will be a useful note to the next edition of "Bicardo." 
 [The price depends on the relative forces of the buyer and 
 the seller. The price asked by the seller no doubt depends 
 on the labor expended. The price given by the buyer de- 
 pends on the degree in which he desires to possess the thing 
 sold, which has nothing to do with the labor laid out on it.] 
 
 The answer to your instances 1 is that all just price involves 
 an allowance for average necessary, not for unnecessary, labor. 
 The just price of coals at Newcastle does not involve an allow- 
 ance for their carriage to Newcastle. But the just price of a 
 cab at a stand involves an allowance to the cabman for having 
 stood there. [Why ? who is to determine w T hat is necessary ? j 
 
 II. " This admits the principle of Bargaining." No, Sir ; 
 it only admits the principle of Begging. If you like to ask 
 your guide to give you his legs for nothing, or your workman 
 his arms for nothing, or your shopkeeper his goods for noth- 
 ing, and they consent, for love, or for play — you are doubtless 
 both dignified and fortunate ; but there is no question of 
 trade in the matters ; only of Alms. [We mean by Alms 
 money or goods given merely from motives of benevolence, 
 and without return. In the case supposed the guide goes one 
 mile to please himself, and ten more for hire, which satisfies 
 him. How does he give Alms ? He goes for less money than 
 he otherwise would require, because lie likes the job, not be- 
 cause his employer likes it. The Alms are thus given by him- 
 self to himself.] 
 
 TEL It is true that " every one can affix to words any sense 
 he chooses." But if I pay for a yard of broadcloth, and the 
 shopman cuts me three-quarters, I shall not put up with my 
 
 1 One of the instances given by the Gazette on this point was that a 
 iovereign made of Calif ornian gold will not buy more wool at Sydney 
 than a sovereign made of Australian gold, although far more labor will 
 have been expended in bringing it to Sydney. 
 
258 
 
 ARROWS OF THE OH AGE. 
 
 loss more patiently on being informed that Bishop Butlei 
 meant by justice something quite different from what Bentham 
 meant by it, or that to give for every yard three-quarters, is 
 the rule of that establishment. [If the word " yard " were as 
 ambiguous as the word " justiee," Mr. Buskin ought to be 
 much obliged to the shopman for defining his sense of it, 
 especially if he gave you full notice before he cut the cloth.] 
 
 Further, it is easy to ascertain the uses of words by the best 
 scholars — [Nothing is more difficult. To ascertain what Locke 
 meant by an " idea," op Sir W. Hamilton by the word "incon- 
 ceivable," is no easy task.] — and well to adopt them, because 
 they are sure to be founded on the feelings of gentlemen. — 
 [Different gentlemen feel and think in very different ways. 
 Though we differ from Mr. Buskin, we hope he will not deny 
 this.] Thus, w r hen Horace couples his tenacem propositi with 
 justum, he means to assert that the tenacity is only noble 
 which is justified by uprightness, and shows itself by insuffer- 
 ance of the jussa "prava jubentium." And although Portia 
 does indeed accept your definition of justice from the lips of 
 Shylock, changing the divine, " who sweareth to his own hurt, 
 and change th not " into the somewhat less divine " who swear- 
 eth to his neighbor's hurt and changeth not ; " and though she 
 carries out his and your conception of such justice to the utter- 
 most, the result is not, even in Shylock's view of it, " for the 
 interest of both parties. " 
 
 IV. To your two final questions " exhausting " (by no means, 
 my dear Sir, I assure you) "the points at issue," 1 I reply in 
 both cases, "No." And to your plaintive "why should they 
 do so ? " while, observe, I do not admit it to be a monstrous 
 requirement of men that they should sometimes sacrifice 
 
 1 The Gazette's criticism on the previous letter had concluded thus : 
 
 The following questions exhaust the points at issue between Mr. Rus- 
 kin and ourselves: 
 
 Is every man bound to purchase any service or any goods offered him 
 at a " just'' price, he having the money V 
 
 if yes, there is an end of private property. 
 
 If no, the purchaser must be at liberty to refuse to buy if it suits his 
 interest to do so. Suppose he does refuse, and thereupon the sellei 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY, 
 
 259 
 
 their own interests, I would for the present merely answer 
 that I have never found my own interests seriously compro- 
 mised by my practice, which is, when I cannot get the fair 
 price of a thing, not to sell it, and when I cannot give the 
 fair price of a thing, not to buy it. The other day, a dealer 
 in want of money offered me a series of Hartz minerals for 
 two-thirds of their value. I knew their value, but did not 
 care to spend the entire sum which would have covered it. 
 I therefore chose forty specimens out of the seventy, and gave 
 the dealer what he asked for the whole. 
 
 In the example you give, it is not the interest of the guide 
 to take his fifty francs rather than nothing ; because all future 
 travellers, though they could afford the hundred, would then 
 say, " You went for fifty ; we will give you no more." [Does 
 a man say to a broker, " You sold stock yesterday at 90 ; I 
 w T ill pay no more to-day " ?] And for me, if I am not able to 
 pay my hundred francs, I either forego Mont Blanc, or climb 
 alone ; and keep my fifty francs to pay at another time, for a 
 less service, some man who also would have got nothing 
 
 offers to lower his price, it being his interest to do so, is the purchaser 
 at liberty to accept that offer ? 
 
 If yes, the whole principle of bargaining is admitted, and the " jus- 
 tice " of the price becomes immaterial. 
 
 If no, each party of the supposition is compelled by justice to sacri- 
 fice their interest. Why should they do so ? 
 
 The following is an example: The 4 ' just" price of a guide up Mont 
 Blanc is (suppose) 100 francs. I have only 50 francs to spare. May I 
 without injustice offer the 50 francs to a guide, who would otherwise 
 get nothing, and may he without injustice accept my offer ? If not, I 
 lose my excursion, and he loses his opportunity of earning 50 francs. 
 Why should this be ? 
 
 In addition to the above interpolations, the Gazette appended a note 
 to this, letter, in which it declared its definition of justice to be a quota- 
 tion from memory of Austin's definition adopted by him from Hobbes, 
 and after referring Mr. Ruskin to Austin for the moral bearings of the 
 question, concluded by summing up its views, which it doubted if Mr. 
 Ruskin understood, and insisting on the definition of " justice " as con- 
 formity with any rule whatever, good or bad," and on that of good as 
 w those which promote the general happiness of those whom they affect.*' 
 (See the next letter.) 
 
260 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 otherwise, and who will be honestly paid by what I give him 
 for what I ask of him. 
 
 I am, Sir, your obliged servant, 
 
 John Ruskin. 
 
 Saturday, 29th April, 1865. 
 
 [From 4 4 The Pall Mall Gazette," May 9, 1865.] 
 
 WORK AND WAGES. 
 
 To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette: 1 
 
 Sib : I am under the impression that we are both getting 
 prosy, or, at all events, that no one will read either my last 
 letter or your comments upon it, in the places in which you 
 have so gracefully introduced them. For which I am sorry, 
 and you, I imagine, are not. 
 
 It is true that differences of feeling may exist among 
 gentlemen ; yet I think that gentlemen of all countries agree 
 that it is rude to interrupt your opponent while he is speak- 
 ing ; for a futile answer gains no real force by becoming an 
 interjection ; and a strong one can abide its time. I will 
 therefore pray you, in future, if you publish my letters at all, 
 to practice towards them so much of old English manners as 
 may yet be found lingering round some old English dinner- 
 tables ; where, though we may be compelled by fashion to 
 turn the room into a green-house, and serve everything cold, 
 the pieces de resistance are still presented whole, and carved 
 afterwards. 
 
 Of course it is open to you to reply that I dislike close 
 argument. Which little flourish being executed, and if you 
 are well breathed — en garde, if you please. 
 
 I. Your original position was that wages (or price) bear no 
 relation to hardship of work. On that I asked you to join 
 issue. You now admit, though with apparent reluctance, that 
 "the price asked by the seller, no doubt, depends on the 
 labor expended." 
 
 The price asked by the seller has, I believe, in respectable 
 commercial houses, and respectable shops, very approximate 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 261* 
 
 relation to the price paid by the buyer. I do not know if you 
 are in the habit of asking, from your wine-merchant or tailor, 
 reduction of price on the ground that the sum remitted will 
 be " alms to themselves ; " but, having been myself in some- 
 what intimate connection with a house of business in the 
 City, 1 not dishonorably accounted of during the last forty 
 years, I know enough of their correspondents in every im- 
 portant town in the United Kingdom to be sure that they 
 will bear me witness that the difference between the prices 
 asked and the prices taken was always a very " imaginary " 
 quantity. 
 
 But urging this no farther for the present, and marking, 
 for gained ground, only your admission that " the price asked 
 depends on the labor expended," will you farther tell me, 
 whether that dependence is constant, or variable? If con- 
 stant, under what law ; if variable, within what limits ? 
 
 II. " The alms are thus given by himself to himself." I 
 never said they were not. I said it was a question of alms, 
 not of trade. And if your original leader had only been an 
 exhortation to English workmen to consider every diminution 
 of their pay, in the picturesque though perhaps somewhat 
 dim, religious light of alms paid by themselves to themselves, 
 I never should have troubled you with a letter on the subject. 
 For, singular enough, Sir, this is not one of the passages of 
 your letters, however apparently indefensible, which I care to 
 attack. 
 
 So far from it, in my own serious writings I have always 
 maintained that the best work is done, and can only be done, 
 for love. 2 But the point at issue between us is not whether 
 there should be charity, but whether there can be trade ; not 
 whether men may give away their labor, but whether, if they 
 
 1 That of Messrs. Ruskin, Telford, and Domecq, in which Mr. Ruskin's 
 father, " who began life as a wine-merchant (Fors Clavigera, Letter x., 
 p. 131, 1871), had been a partner. 
 
 2 See § 41 of The Crown of Wild Olive, p. 50 of the 1873 edition. 
 44 None of the best head-work in art, literature, or science, is ever paid 
 for. ... It is indeed very clear that God means all thoroughly good 
 work aud talk to be done for nothing. w 
 
•262 
 
 ARROWS OF THE Gil AGE. 
 
 do not choose to do so, there is such a thing as a price for it 
 And my statement, as opposed to yours, is briefly this — that 
 for all labor, there is, under given circumstances, a just price 
 appoximately determinable ; that every conscious deflection 
 from this price towards zero is either gift on the part of the 
 laborer, or theft on the part of the employer ; and that all 
 payment in conscious excess of this price is either theft on 
 the part of the laborer, or gift on that of the employer. 
 
 HI. If you wish to substitute the word " moral " for ' 6 just " 
 in the above statement, I am prepared to allow the substitu- 
 tion ; only, as you, not I, introduced this new word, I must 
 pray for your definition of it first, whether remembered from 
 Mr. Hobbes, or original. 
 
 IV. I am sorry you doubt my understanding your views ; 
 but, in that case, it may be well to ask for a word or two of 
 farther elucidation. 
 
 "Justice," you say, is "conformity with any rule whatever, 
 good or bad." And " good rules are rules which promote the 
 general happiness of those whom they affect." And bad rules 
 are (therefore) rules which promote the general misery of 
 those whom they affect ? Justice, therefore, may as often as 
 not promote the general misery of those who practice it ? Do 
 you intend this ? 1 
 
 Again: " Good rules are rules which promote the general 
 happiness of those whom they affect." But, "the greatest 
 happiness of the greatest number is best secured by laying- 
 down no rule at all" (as to the price of "labor"). 
 
 Do you propose this as a sequitur ? for if not, it is merely a 
 petitio pvincipii, and a somewhat wide one. Before, therefore, 
 we branch into poetical questions concerning happiness, we 
 will, with your permission, and according to my original stipu- 
 lation, that we should dispute only of one point at a time, 
 determine the matters already at issue. To which end, also, 
 I leave without reply some parts of your last letter ; not with* 
 
 1 1 1 Yes. But, generally speaking, rules are beneficial ; hence, gener- 
 ally speaking, justice is a good thing in fact. A state of society might 
 be imagined in which it would be a hideously bad thing." — (Foot-note 
 answer of the Gazette.) 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 2G3 
 
 out a little strain on the cp/co? oSovtwj/, for which I think, Sir, 
 you may give me openly, credit, if not tacitly, thanks. 
 
 I am, Sir, your obliged servant, 
 
 John Ruskin. 
 
 Denmark Hill, May 4. 
 
 [From "The Pall Mall Gazette," May 22, 1865.] 
 
 WORK AND WAGES. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Pall Mall Gazette." 
 
 Sis : I have long delayed my reply to your notes on my last 
 letter ; partly being otherwise busy — partly in a pause of 
 surprise and doubt how low in the elements of ethics we were 
 to descend. 
 
 Let me, however, first assure you that I heartily concur in 
 your opening remarks, and shall be glad to spare useless and 
 avoid discourteous words. "When you said, in your first reply 
 to me, that my letter embodied fallacies which appeared to 
 you pernicious in the highest degree, I also " could not con- 
 sider this sort of language well judged." When you called 
 one of your own questions an answer, and declared it to be 
 "simple and perfectly conclusive," I thought the flourish 
 might have been spared ; and for having accused you of 
 writing carelessly, I must hope your pardon ; for the dis- 
 courtesy, in my mind, would have been in imagining you 
 to be writing with care. 
 
 For instance, I should hold it discourteous to suppose you 
 unaware of the ordinary distinction between law and equity : 
 yet no consciousness of such a distinction appears in your 
 articles. I should hold it discourteous to doubt your ac- 
 quaintance with the elementary principles laid down by the 
 great jurists of all nations respecting Divine and Human 
 law ; yet such a doubt forces itself on me if I consider your 
 replies as deliberate. And I should decline to continue the 
 discussion with an opponent who could conceive of justice 
 as (under any circumstances) " an hideously bad thing," if I 
 did not suppose him to have mistaken the hideousness of 
 
264 
 
 ARROWS OF THE GRACE. 
 
 justice, in certain phases, to certain persons, for its ultimate 
 nature and power. 
 
 There may be question respecting these inaccuracies of 
 thought ; there can be none respecting the carelessness of 
 expression which causes the phrases "are" and " ought to be " 
 to alternate in your articles as if they were alike in meaning. 
 
 I have permitted this, that I might see the course of your 
 argument in your own terms, but it is now needful that the 
 confusion should cease. That wages are determined by sup- 
 ply and demand is no proof that under any circumstances they 
 must be — still less that under all circumstances they ought to 
 be. Permit me, therefore, to know the sense in which you 
 use the word " ought " in your paragraph lettered page 832 1 
 (second column), and to ask whether the words " due," 
 " duty," " devoir," and other such, connected in idea with the 
 first and third of the " prsecepta juris " of Justinian, quoted 
 by Blackstone as a summary of the w r hole doctrine of law 
 (honeste vivere, — alter um non Icedere, — suumque cuique tribuere), 
 are without meaning to you except as conditions of agree- 
 ment ? 3 Whether, in fact, there be, in your view, any honos, 
 absolutely ; or whether we are to launch out into an historical 
 investigation of the several kinds of happiness enjoyed in lives 
 of rapine, of selfish trade, and of unselfish citizenship, and to 
 decide only upon evidence whether we will live as pirates, as 
 pedlers, or as gentlemen ? If so, while I shall be glad to see 
 you undertake, independently, so interesting an inquiry, I 
 must reserve my comments on it until its close. 
 
 But if you admit an absolute idea of a " devoir " of one 
 man to another, and of every honorable man to himself, tell 
 me why you dissent from my statement of the terms of that 
 
 1 Viz., <: Wages ought to be proportioned to the supply and demand 
 of labor and capital, and not to the hardship of the work and the time 
 spent on it." 
 
 2 " Justitia est constans et perpetua voluntas suum cuique tribuendi 
 .... Jurisprudent est divinarum atque humanarum rerum notitia, 
 justi atque injusti scientia." The third precept is given above. Jus- 
 tinian, Inst. i. 1-3; and see Blackstone, vol. i. section 2, "Of the 
 Nature of Laws in General." 
 
BETTERS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 265 
 
 debt in the opening of this discussion. Observe, I asked for 
 no evangelical virtue of returning good for evil : I asked only 
 for the Sinaitic equity of return in good for good, as for Si- 
 nai tic equity of return in evil for evil. " Eye for eye," tooth 
 for tooth " — be it so ; but will you thus pray according to the 
 lex talionis and not according to the lex gratice ? Your debt i3 
 on both sides. Does a man take of your life, you take also of 
 his. Shall he give you of his life, and will you not give him 
 also of yours ? If this be not your law of duty to him, tell me 
 what other there is, or if you verily believe there is none. 
 
 But you ask of such repayment, "Who shall determine how 
 much ? 1 I took no notice of the question, irrelevant when 
 you asked it ; but in its broad bearing it is the one imperative 
 question of national economy. Of old, as at bridgefoot of 
 Florence, men regulated their revenge by the law of demand 
 and supply, and asked in measureless anger, "Who shall de- 
 termine how much?" with economy of blood, such as we 
 know. That " much " is now, with some approximate equity, 
 determined at the judgment-seat, but for the other debt, the 
 debt of love, we have no law but that of the wolf, and the 
 locust, and the " fishes of the sea, which have no ruler over 
 them." The workmen of England — of the world, ask for the 
 return — as of wrath, so of reward by law ; and for blood reso- 
 lutely spent, as for that recklessly shed ; for life devoted 
 through its duration, as for that untimely cast away ; they 
 require from you to determine, in judgment, the equities of 
 ' * Human He tribution. " 
 
 I am, Sir, your faithful servant, 
 
 J. Buskin. 2 
 
 May 20, 1865. 
 
 1 See ante, second interpolation of the Gazette, on p. 59. 
 
 2 The discussion was not continued beyond this letter, the Gazette 
 judging any continuance useless, the difference between Mr. jttuskin 
 and themselves being 44 one of nrst principles. " 
 
266 
 
 ARROWS OF THE GRACE. 
 
 [From "The Pall Mall Gazette," May 1, 1867. Reprinted also, with slight alterations, in 
 " Time and Tide." App. vii.] 
 
 THE STANDARD OF WAGES. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Pall Mall Gazette,'' 
 
 Sir : In the course of your yesterday's article on strikes 1 
 you have very neatly and tersely expressed the primal fallacy 
 of modern political economy— to wit, that the value of any 
 piece of labor cannot be denned ; and that " all that can be 
 ascertained is simply whether any man can be got to do it 
 for a certain sum." 
 
 Now, sir, the " value" of any piece of labor (/should have 
 written " price," not " value," but it is no matter) — that is to 
 say, the quantity of food and air which will enable a man to 
 perform it without eventually losing any of his flesh or nerv- 
 ous energy, is as absolutely fixed a quantity as the weight of 
 powder necessary to carry a given ball a given distance. 
 And within limits varying by exceedingly minor and unim- 
 portant circumstances, it is an ascertainable quantity. I told 
 the public this five years ago, and — under pardon of your 
 politico-economical contributor, it is not a sentimental, but a 
 chemical, fact. Let any half-dozen London physicians of 
 recognized standing state in precise terms the quantity and 
 kind of food, and space of lodging, they consider approxi- 
 mately necessary for the healthy Hfe of a laborer in any given 
 manufacture, and the number of hours he may, without short- 
 ening his life, work at such business daily, if in such manner 
 he be sustained. Let all masters be bound to give their men 
 
 1 As regards "strikes," it is of interest to note the following amend- 
 ment proposed by Mr. Ruskin at a special meeting of the National 
 Association for the Promotion of Social Science on the subject, held in 
 18GS: "That, in the opinion of this meeting, the interests of workmen 
 and their employers are at present opposed, and can only become iden- 
 tical when all are equally employed in denned labor and recognized 
 duty, and all, from the highest to the lowest, are paid fixed salaries, 
 proportioned to the value of their services and sufficient for their hon- 
 orable maintenance in the situations of life properly occupied by them." 
 —Daily Telegraph, July 16, 1868. 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 267 
 
 a choice between an order for that quantity of food and space 
 of lodging, or the market wages for that specified number of 
 hours of work. Proper laws for the maintenance of families 
 would require further concession ; but in the outset, let but 
 this law of wages be established, and if then we have more 
 strikes, you may denounce them without one word of remon- 
 strance either from sense or sensibility. 
 
 I am, Sir, with sentiments of great respect, 
 
 Your faithful servant, 
 
 John Buskin. 
 
 Denmark Hill, April 30, 1867. 
 
 [From " The Pall Mall Gazette, 1 ' January 24, 1873.] 
 
 HOW THE RICH SPEND THEIR MONEY. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Pall Mall Gazette." 
 
 Sir : Here among the hills, I read little, and withstand, 
 sometimes for a fortnight together, even the attractions of my 
 Pall Mall Gazette. A friend, however, sent me, two days ago, 
 your article signed W. E. G. on spending of money (January 
 13), 1 which, as I happened to have over-eaten myself the day 
 before, and taken perhaps a glass too much besides of quite 
 priceless port (Quarles Harris, twenty years in bottle), would 
 have been a great comfort to my mind, showing me that if I 
 
 1 The article, or rather letter, dealt with a paper on M The Labor 
 Movement " by Mr. Gold win Smith in the Contemporary Review of 
 December, 1872, and especially with the following sentences in it: 
 " When did wealth rear such enchanted palaces of luxury as it is rear- 
 ing in England at the present day ? Well do I remember one of those 
 palaces, the most conspicuous object for miles round. Its lord was, I 
 dare say, consuming the income of some hundreds of the poor laboring 
 families around him. The thought that you are spending on yourself 
 annually the income of six hundred laboring families seems to me as 
 much as a man with a heart and a brain can bear." W. R. G.'s letter 
 argued that this " heartless expenditure all goes into the pockets" of 
 the poor families, who are thus benefited by the selfish luxuries of the 
 lord in his palace. 
 
.268 
 
 ARROWS OF THE Off AGE. 
 
 had done some harm to myself, I had at least conferred bene- 
 fit upon the poor by these excesses, had I not been left in 
 some painful doubt, even at the end of W. E. G.'s most intel- 
 ligent illustrations, whether I ought not to have exerted my- 
 self further in the cause of humanity, and by the use of some 
 cathartic process, such as appears to have been without incon- 
 venience practised by the ancients, enabled myself to eat two 
 dinners instead of one. But I write to you to-day, because if 
 I were a poor man, instead of a (moderately) rich one, I am 
 nearly certain that W. R G.'s paper would suggest to me a 
 question, which I am sure he will kindly answer in your col- 
 umns, namely, " These means of living, which this generous 
 and useful gentleman is so fortunately disposed to bestow on 
 me — where does he get them himself?" 
 
 I am, Sir, your faithful servant, 
 
 J. Buskin. 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston, Jan. 23. 
 
 [From " The Pall Mall Gazette," January 29, 1873.] 
 
 HOW THE RICH SPEND THEIR MONEY. 
 
 To the Editor of "T7ie Pall Mall Gazette. 1 ' 
 
 Sir : I am disappointed of my Gazette to-day, and shall be 
 grievously busy to-morrow. I think it better, therefore, to 
 follow up my own letter, if you will permit me, with a simple 
 and brief statement of the facts, than to wait till I see your 
 correspondent W. R G.'s reply, if he has vouchsafed me one. 
 
 These are the facts. The laborious poor produce "the 
 means of life" by their labor. Rich persons possess them- 
 selves by various expedients of a right to dispense these 
 "means of life," and keeping as much means as they want of 
 it for themselves, and rather more, dispense the rest, usually 
 only in return for more labor from the poor, expended in pro- 
 ducing various delights for the rich dispenser. The idea is 
 now gradually entering poor men's minds, that they may as 
 well keep in their own hands the right of distributing " the 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 2G0 
 
 means of life " they produce ; and employ themselves, so far 
 as they need extra occupation, for their own entertainment or 
 benefit, rather than that of other people. There is something 
 to be said, nevertheless, in favor of the present arrangement, 
 but it cannot be defended in disguise ; and it is impossible to 
 do more harm to the cause of order, or the rights of property, 
 than by endeavors, such as that of your correspondent, to re- 
 vive the absurd and, among all vigorous thinkers, long since 
 exploded notion of the dependence of the poor upon the rich. 
 
 I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 January 28. J. Buskin. 
 
 [From 4i The Pall Mall Gazette," January SI, 1873.1 
 
 HOW THE RICH SPEND THEIR MONEY. 
 
 To the Editor of "T7ie Pall MaU Gazetted 
 
 Sir : I have my Pall Mall Gazette of the 28th to-day, and 
 must at once, with your permission, solemnly deny the insidi- 
 osity of my question, " Where does the rich man get his 
 means of living ? " I don't myself see how a more straightfor- 
 ward question could be put ! So straightforward indeed that 
 I particularly dislike making a martyr of myself in answering 
 it, as I must this blessed day — a martyr, at least, in the way 
 of witness ; for if we rich people don't begin to speak honestly 
 with our tongues, w r e shall, some day soon, lose them and our 
 heads together, having for some time back, most of us, made 
 false use of the one and none of the other. Well, for the 
 point in question then, as to means of living : the most exem- 
 plary manner of answer is simply to state how I got my 
 own, or rather how r my father got them for me. He and his 
 partners entered into what your correspondent mellirluously 
 styles " a mutually beneficent partnership," 1 with certain 
 laborers in Spain. These laborers produced from the earth 
 
 1 W. R. G. had declared that the rich man (or his ancestors) got the 
 money u by co-operation with the poor . . . by, in fact, entering into 
 a mutually beneficent partnership with them, and advancing them their 
 share of the joint profits . . . paying them beforehand, in a word." 
 
270 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CIIACK 
 
 annually a certain number of bottles of wine. These produc 
 tions were sold by my father and his partners, who kept nine- 
 tenths, or thereabouts, of the price themselves, and gave 
 one-tenth, or thereabouts, to the laborers. In which state of 
 mutual beneficence my father and his partners naturally be- 
 came rich, and the laborers as naturally remained poor. Then 
 my good father gave all his money to me (who never did a 
 stroke of work in my life worth my salt, not to mention my 
 dinner), and so far from finding his money "grow" in my 
 hands, I never try to buy anything with it ; but people tell me 
 "money isn't what it was in your father's time, everything is 
 so much dearer." I should be heartily glad to learn from 
 your correspondent as much pecuniary botany as will enable 
 me to set my money a-growing ; and in the mean time, as I 
 have thus given a quite indubitable instance of my notions of 
 the way money is made, will he be so kind as to give us, not 
 an heraldic example of the dark ages (though I suspect I know 
 more of the pedigree of money, if he come to that, than he 
 does), 1 but a living example of a rich gentleman who has made 
 his money by saving an equal portion of profit in some 
 mutually beneficent partnership with his laborers ? 
 
 I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 J. Ruskin. 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston, 
 
 King Charles the Martyr, 1873. 
 
 P. S. — I see by Christie & Man son's advertisement that 
 some of the best bits of work of a good laborer I once knew, 
 J. M. W. Turner (the original plates namely of the "Liber 
 Studioruin "), are just going to be destroyed by some of his 
 affectionate relations. May I beg your correspondent to ex- 
 plain, for your readers' benefit, this charming case of heredi- 
 tary accumulation ? 
 
 1 W. R. G. had written : " In nine cases out of ten, in the case of 
 acquired wealth, we should probably find, were the pedigree traced fairly 
 and far back enough, that the original difference between the now rich 
 man and the now poor man was, that the latter habitually spent all lm 
 earnings, and the former habitually saved a portion of his in order that 
 it might accumulate and fructify." 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 
 
 271 
 
 [Date and place of publication unknown.] 
 
 COMMERCIAL MORALITY. 1 
 
 My Dear Sir: Mr. Johnson's speech in the Manchester 
 Chamber of Commerce, which you favor me by sending, ap- 
 pears to me the most important event that has occurred in 
 relation to the true interests of the country during my life- 
 time. It begins an era of true civilization. I shall allude to 
 it in the "Fors" of March, and make it the chief subject of 
 the one following (the matter of this being already prepared. 2 
 It goes far beyond what I had even hoped to hear admitted — - 
 how much less enforced so gravely and weightily in the com- 
 mercial world. 
 
 Believe me, faithfully yours, 
 
 J. RUSKIN. 
 
 [From " The Monetary and Mining Gazette,' 1 November 13. 1875.] 
 
 THE DEFINITION OF WEALTH. 
 
 Corpus Chrtsti College, Oxford, 
 9th November, 1875. 
 To the Editor of u The Monetary Gazette.' 1 
 
 Sir : I congratulate you with all my mind on the sense, and 
 with all my heart on the courage, of your last Saturday's lead- 
 ing article, which I have just seen. 3 You have asserted in it 
 
 1 This letter was received from Mr. Ruskin by a gentleman in Man- 
 chester, who had forwarded to him a copy of the speech made by Mr. 
 Kichard Johnson (President) at the fifty-fourth annual meeting of the 
 Manchester Chamber of Commerce, Feb. 1, 1875. Mr. Johnson's ad- 
 dress dealt with the immorality of cheapness, the duties of merchants 
 and manufacturers as public servants, and the nobility of trade as a pro- 
 fession which, when rightly and unselfishly conducted, would yield to 
 no other "in the dignity of its nature and in the employment that it 
 offers to the highest faculties of man." 
 
 2 In Fors Clavigera, (vol. ii., p. 354) Mr. Johnson's speech is named 
 as "the first living words respecting commerce which I have ever 
 known to be spoken in England, in my time," but the discussion of it 
 is postponed. 
 
 3 The article was entitled, u What shall we do with it ?" 
 
272 
 
 ARROWS OF THE C II ACE. 
 
 the two vital principles of economy, that society cannot exist 
 by reciprocal pilfering, but must produce wealth if it would 
 have it ; and that money must not be lent, but administered 
 by its masters. 
 
 You have not yet, however, denned wealth itself, or told the 
 ingenuity of the public what it is to produce. 
 
 I have never been able to obtain this definition from econ- 
 omists ; 1 perhaps, under the pressure of facts, they may at 
 last discover some meaning in mine at the twenty-fourth and 
 twenty-fifth pages of "Munera Pulveris." 
 
 I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 J. EUSKIN. 
 
 [From "The Socialist, 11 an Advocate of Love, Truth-, Justice, etc., etc. Printed and 
 Published by the Proprietor, W. Freeland, 52 Scotland Street, Sheffield, November, 
 1877.] 
 
 THE PRINCIPLES OF PROPERTY. 
 
 mil Oct, 1877. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Socialist:' 
 
 Sir : Some Sheffield friend has sent me your fourth num- 
 ber, in the general teaching of which I am thankful to be able 
 to concur without qualification : but let me earnestly beg of 
 you not to confuse the discussion of the principles of Prop- 
 erty in Earth, Air, or Water, with the discussion of principles 
 of Property in general. 2 The things which, being our neigh- 
 bor's, the Mosaic Law commands us not to covet, are by the 
 most solemn Natural Laws, indeed our neighbor's " property," 
 and any attempts to communize these have always ended, and 
 will always end, in ruin and shame. 
 
 Do not attempt to learn from America. An Englishman 
 has brains enough to discover for himself what is good for 
 
 1 At the meeting of the Social Science Association already alluded to 
 (p. 4 note), Mr. Ruskin said that in 1858 he had in vain challenged Mr. 
 Mill to define wealth. The passages referred to in Munera Pulveris 
 consist of the statement and explanation of the definition of Value. See 
 ante, p. 68, note. 
 
 2 The references in the letter are to an article on Property entitled, 
 " What should be done?" 
 
LETTERS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY. 273 
 
 England ; and should learn, when he is to be taught anything, 
 from his Fathers, not from his children. 
 
 I observe in the first column of your 15th page the assertion 
 by your correspondent of his definition of money as if differ- 
 ent from mine. He only weakens my definition with a " cer- 
 tificate of credit " instead of a " promise to pay." What is the 
 use of giving a man " credit " — if you don't engage to pay 
 him? 
 
 But I observe that nearly all my readers stop at this more 
 or less metaphysical definition which I give in ' 'Unto this Last," 
 instead of going on to the practical statement of immediate 
 need made in "Munera Pulveris." 1 
 
 The promise to find Labor is one which meets general de- 
 mand ; but the promise to find Bread is the answer needed 
 to immediate demand ; and the only sound bases of National 
 Currency are shown both in " Munera Pulveris," and "Fors 
 Clavigera," to be bread, fuel, and clothing material, of certi- 
 fied quality. 
 
 I am Sir, your faithful servant, 
 
 J. KUSKIN. 
 
 [From " The Christian Life, 1 ' December 20, 1879.] 
 
 on co-operation: 1 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire. 
 Dear Mr. Holyoake : I am not able to write you a pretty 
 letter to-day, being sadly tired, but am very heartily glad to 
 be remembered by you. But it utterly silences me that you 
 
 1 See Unto this Last, p. 53, note. u The final and best definition of 
 money is that it is a documentary promise ratified and guaranteed by 
 the nation, to give or find a certain quantity of labor on demand. See 
 also Munera Pulveria, §§ 21-25. 
 
 2 This letter, which was reprinted in the Coventry Co-operative 
 Record of January, 1880, was written, some time in August, 1879, to 
 Mr. George Jacob Holyoake, who had sent Mr. Ruskin his History of 
 Co-operation: its Literature and its Advocates, 2 vols. London and 
 Manchester, 1875-7. 
 
274 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 should waste your time and energy in writing " Histories of 
 Co-operation " anywhere as yet. My dear Sir, you might as 
 well write the history of the yellow spot in an egg — in two 
 volumes. Co-operation is as yet — in any true sense — as im- 
 possible as the crystallization of Thames mud. 
 
 Ever faithfully yours, 
 
 J. Euskin. 
 
 [From "The Daily News," June 10, 1880.] 
 
 ON CO-OPERATION. 
 
 Bkantwood, Coniston, Lancashire, 
 AjjviI 12, 1880. 
 
 Dear Mr. Holyoake : I am very glad that you are safe 
 back in England, and am not a little grateful for your kind 
 reference to me while in America, and for your letter about 
 Sheffield Museum. 1 But let me pray for another interpreta- 
 tion of my former letter than mere Utopianism. The one 
 calamity which I perceive or dread for an Englishman is his 
 becoming a rascal, and co-operation among rascals — if it were 
 possible — would bring a curse. Every year sees our workmen 
 more eager to do bad work and rob their customers on the sly. 
 All political movement among such animals I call essentially 
 fermentation and putrefaction — not co-operation. 
 
 Ever affectionately yours, 
 
 J. EUSKIN- 
 
 1 The " kind reference to Mr. Buskin while in America " alludes to a 
 public speech made by Mr. Holyoake during his stay in that country. 
 The " letter about Sheffield Museum," was one in high praise of it, 
 written by Mr. Holyoake to the editor of the Sheffield Independent, in 
 which paper it was printed (March 8, 1880). 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTEES. 
 
 I. — THE MANAGEMENT OF KAILWAYS. 
 
 [From " The Daily Telegraph," July 31, 1868.] 
 
 IS ENGLAND BIG ENOUGH? 
 
 To the Editor of u The Daily Telegraph.'" 
 
 Sir : You terminate to-day a discussion which seems to have 
 been greatly interesting to your readers, by telling them the 
 " broad fact, that England is no longer big enough for her 
 inhabitants." 1 
 
 Might you not, in the leisure of the recess, open with 
 advantage a discussion likely to be no less interesting, and 
 much more useful — namely, how big England may be made 
 for economical inhabitants, and how little she may be made 
 for wasteful ones ? Might you not invite letters on this quite 
 radical and essential question— how money is truly made, 
 and how it is truly lost, not by one person or another, but by 
 the whole nation? 
 
 For, practically, people's eyes are so intensely fixed on the 
 immediate operation of money as it changes hands, that they 
 hardly ever reflect on its first origin or final disappearance. 
 They are always considering how to get it from somebody 
 
 1 The discussion had been carried on in a series of letters from a 
 great number of correspondents under the heading of " Marriage or 
 Celibacy," its subject being the pecuniary difficulties in the way of early 
 marriage. The Daily Telegraph of July 30 concluded the discussion 
 with a leading article, in which it characterized the general nature of 
 the correspondence and of which the final words were those quoted by 
 Mr. Ruskin. 
 
276 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACB. 
 
 else, but never how to get it where that somebody else got it. 
 Also, they very naturally mourn over their loss of it to other 
 people, without reflecting that, if not lost altogether, it may 
 still be of some reflective advantage to them. Whereas, the 
 real national question is not who is losing or gaining money, 
 but who is making and who destroying it. I do not of course 
 mean making money, in the sense of printing notes or finding 
 gold. True money cannot be so made. When an island is 
 too small for its inhabitants, it would not help them to one 
 ounce of bread more to have the entire island turned into one 
 nugget, or to find bank notes growing by its rivulets instead 
 of fern leaves. Neither, by destroying money, do I mean 
 burning notes, or throwing gold away. If I burn a five- 
 pound note, or throw five sovereigns into the sea, I hurt no 
 one but myself ; nay, I benefit others, for everybody with a 
 pound in his pocket is richer by the withdrawal of my com- 
 petition in the market. But what I want you to make your 
 readers discover is how the true money is made that will get 
 them houses and dinners ; and on the other hand how money 
 is truly lost, or so diminished in value that all they can get in 
 a year will not buy them comfortable houses, nor satisfactory 
 dinners. 
 
 Surely this is a question which people would like to have 
 clearly answered for them, and it might lead to some impor- 
 tant results if the answer were acted upon. The riband- 
 makers at Coventry, starving, invite the ladies of England to 
 wear ribands. The compassionate ladies of England invest 
 themselves in rainbows, and admiring economists declare the 
 nation to be benefited. No one asks where the ladies got 
 the money to spend in rainbows (which is the first question in 
 the business), nor whether the money once so spent will ever 
 return again, or has really faded with the faded ribands and 
 disappeared forever. Again, honest people every day lose 
 quantities of money to dishonest people. But that is merely 
 a change of hands much to be regretted ; but the money is 
 not therefore itself lost ; the dishonest people must spend it 
 at last somehow. A youth at college loses his year's income 
 to a Jew. But the Jew must spend it instead of him. Miser 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 277 
 
 or not, the day must come when his hands relax. A railroad 
 shareholder loses his money to a director ; but the director 
 must some day spend it instead of him. That is not — at least 
 in the first fact of it — national loss. But what the public 
 need to know is, how a final and perfect loss of money takes 
 place, so that the whole nation, instead of being rich, shall be 
 getting gradually poor. And then, indeed, if one man in 
 spending his money destroys it, and another in spending it 
 makes more of it, it becomes a grave question in whose hands 
 it is, and whether honest or dishonest people are likely to 
 spend it to the best purpose. Will you permit me, Sir, to lay 
 this not unprofitable subject of inquiry before your readers, 
 while, to the very best purpose, they are investing a little 
 money in sea air ? 
 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 J. RUSKIN. 
 
 Denmark Hill, July 80. 
 
 [From " The Daily Telegraph," August 6, 1868.] 
 
 THE OWNERSHIP OF RAILWAYS. 1 
 
 To the Editor of " The Daily Telegraph." 
 
 Sir : The ingenious British public seems to be discovering, 
 to its cost, that the beautiful law of supply and demand does 
 not apply in a pleasant manner to railroad transit. But if 
 they are prepared to submit patiently to the " natural " laws 
 of political economy, what right have they to complain ? The 
 railroad belongs to the shareholders ; and has not everybody 
 a right to ask the highest price he can get for his wares ? The 
 
 1 In the Daily Telegraph of August 3 appeared eight letters, all of 
 which, under the heading of ( * Increased Railway Fares,'' complained 
 of the price of tickets on various lines having been suddenly raised. In 
 the issue of August 4 eighteen letters appeared on the subject, whilst in 
 that of the 5th there were again eight letters. Mr. Ruskin's letter was 
 one of four in the issue of the 6th. It has, it will be seen, no direct 
 connection with that one entitled "Is England Big Enough?" which 
 precedes it in these volumes owing to the allusions to it in one of these 
 railway letters (p. 282). 
 
278 
 
 ARROWS OF THE Off AGE. 
 
 public have a perfect right to walk, or to make other opposi- 
 tion railroads for themselves, if they please, but not to abuse 
 the shareholders for asking as much as they think they can 
 
 get 
 
 Will you allow me to put the real rights of the matter be- 
 fore them in a few words ? 
 
 Neither the roads nor the railroads of any nation should 
 belong to any private persons. All means of public transit 
 should be provided, at public expense, by public determina- 
 tion where such means are needed, and the public should be 
 its own " shareholder." 
 
 Neither road, nor railroad, nor canal should ever pay divi- 
 dends to anybody. They should pay their working expenses, 
 and no more. All dividends are simply a tax on the traveller 
 and the goods, levied by the person to whom the road or 
 canal belongs, for the right of passing over his property. And 
 this right should at once be purchased by the nation, and the 
 original cost of the roadway — be it of gravel, iron, or adamant 
 ■ — at once defrayed by the nation, and then the whole work of 
 the carriage of persons or goods done for ascertained prices, 
 by salaried officers, as the carriage of letters is done now. 
 
 I believe, if the votes of the proprietors of all the railroads 
 in the kingdom were taken en masse, it would be found that 
 the majority would gladly receive back their original capital, 
 and cede their right of " revising " prices of railway tickets. 
 And if railway property is a good and wise investment of capi- 
 tal, the public need not shrink from taking the whole off their 
 hands. Let the public take it. (I, for one, who never held a 
 rag of railroad scrip in my life, nor ever willingly travelled 
 behind an engine where a horse could pull me, will most 
 gladly subscribe my proper share for such purchase according 
 to my income.) Then let them examine what lines pay their 
 working expenses and what lines do not, and boldly leave the 
 unpaying embankments to be white over with sheep, like Eo- 
 man camps, take up the working lines on sound principles, 
 pay their drivers and pointsmen well, keep their carriages 
 clean and in good repair, and make it as wonderful a thing 
 for a train, as for an old mail-coach, to be behind its time ; 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 279 
 
 and the sagacious British public will very soon find its pocket 
 heavier, its heart lighter, and its " passages" pleasanter, than 
 any of the three have been, for many a day. 
 
 I am, Sir, always faithfully yours, 
 
 J. RUSKIN. 
 
 Denmark Hill, Aug. 5. 
 
 [From " The Daily Telegraph," August 10, 1868.] 
 
 RAIL WA Y ECONOMY. 
 
 To the Editor of" The Daily Telegraph:' 
 
 Sir : I had not intended again to trespass on your space 
 until I could obtain a general idea of the views of your corre- 
 spondents on the questions you permitted me to lay before 
 them in my letters of the 31st July and 5th inst.; but I must 
 ask you to allow me to correct an impression likely to be cre- 
 ated by your reference to that second letter in your interest- 
 ing article on the Great Eastern Railway, and to reply briefly 
 to the question of your correspondent " S." on the same sub- 
 ject. 1 
 
 1 The Daily Telegraph of Saturday, August 8, contained an article on 
 the " Increased Railway Fares," in which, commenting on Mr. Ruskin's 
 statement that, given the law of political economy, the railways might ask 
 as much as they could get, it said that Mr. Ruskin mistook tk the charge 
 against the companies. While they neglec'ed the 1 law of supply and 
 demand,' they suffered: now that they obey that law, they prosper. " 
 The latter part of the article dealt with a long letter signed u Fair Play," 
 which was printed in the Daily Telegraph of the same day. " To Mr. 
 Ruskin, who laughs at Political Economy," concluded the article ; 
 " and to 4 Fair Play,' who thinks that Parliament is at the bottom of all 
 the nrlschief, we commend a significant fact. An agitation is now on 
 foot in Brighton to have a second railway direct to London. What is 
 the cause of this ? Not the Legislature, but the conduct of the Brighton 
 company in raising its fares. That board, by acting in the spirit of a 
 monopoly, has provoked retaliation, and the public now seeks to pro- 
 tect itself by the aid of a competing line." 
 
 The letter of the correspondent 44 S" (also in the Daily Telegraph of 
 August 8) began by asking 44 what the capitalist is to do with his money, 
 if the Government works the railways on the principle of the Post Office." 
 
280 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 You say that I mistook the charge against the railway com- 
 panies in taunting my unfortunate neighbors at Sydenham 1 
 with their complaints against the operation of the law of sup- 
 ply and demand, and that it was because the companies neg- 
 lected that law that they suffered. 
 
 But, Sir, the law of supply and demand, as believed in by 
 the British public under the guidance of their economists, is a 
 natural law regulating prices, which it is not at all in their 
 option to "neglect." And it is precisely because I have al- 
 ways declared that there is no such natural law, but that 
 prices can be, and ought to be, regulated by laws of expedi- 
 ency and justice, that political economists have thought I did 
 not understand their science, and you now say I laugh at it 
 No, Sir, I laughed only at what was clearly no science, but vain 
 endeavor to allege as irresistible natural law, what is indeed 
 a too easily resisted prudential law, rewarding and chastising 
 us according to our obedience. So far from despising true 
 political economy, based on such prudential law, I have for 
 years been chiefly occupied in defending its conclusions, hav- 
 ing given this definition of it in 1862. " Political Economy is 
 neither an art nor a science ; but a system of conduct and 
 legislature founded on the sciences, including the arts, and 
 impossible except under certain conditions of moral cult- 
 ure." 2 
 
 And, Sir, nothing could better show the evil of competition 
 as opposed to the equitable regulation of prices than the in- 
 stance to which you refer your correspondent " Fair Play " 
 — the agitation in Brighton for a second railway. True pru- 
 dential law would make one railway serve it thoroughly, and 
 fix the fares necessary to pay for thorough service. Competi- 
 tion will make two railways (sinking twice the capital really 
 required) ; then, if the two companies combine, they can op- 
 press the public as effectively as one could ; if they do not, 
 
 1 Several of the letters had been written by residents in the neighbor- 
 hood of Sydenham. 
 
 2 Essays on Political Economy (Fraser's Magazine, June, 1862, p. 7S4) } 
 now reprinted in Munera Pulveris, p. 19, § 1. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 281 
 
 they will keep the said public in dirty carriages and in danger 
 of its life, by lowering the working expenses to a minimum in 
 their antagonism. 
 
 Next, to the question of your correspondent "S.," "what I 
 expect the capitalist to do with his money," so far as it is asked 
 in good faith I gladly reply, that no one's " expectations " are 
 in this matter of the slightest consequence ; but that the moral 
 laws which properly regulate the disposition of revenue, and 
 the physical laws which determine returns proportioned to the 
 wisdom of its employment, are of the greatest consequence ; 
 and these may be briefly stated as follows : 
 
 1. All capital is justly and rationally invested which sup- 
 ports productive labor (that is to say, labor directly producing 
 or distributing good food, clothes, lodging, or fuel) ; so long as 
 it renders to the possessor of the capital, and to those whom he 
 employs, only such gain as shall justly remunerate the super- 
 intendence and labor given to the business, and maintain both 
 master and operative happily in the positions of life involved 
 by their several functions. And it is highly advantageous for 
 the nation that wise superintendence and honest labor should 
 both be highly rewarded. But all rates of interest or modes of 
 profit or capita], which render possible the rapid accumulation 
 of fortunes, are simply forms of taxation, by individuals, on 
 labor, purchase, or transport ; and are highly detrimental to 
 the national interest, being, indeed, no means of national gain, 
 but only the abstraction of small gains from many to form the 
 large gain of one. For, though inequality of fortune is not in 
 itself an evil, but in many respects desirable, it is always an 
 evil when unjustly or stealthily obtained, since the men who 
 desire to make fortunes by large interest are precisely those 
 who will make the worst use of their wealth. 
 
 2. Capital sunk in the production of objects which do not 
 immediately support life (as statues, pictures, architecture, 
 books, garden-flowers, and the like) is beneficially sunk if the 
 things thus produced are good of their kind, and honestly 
 desired by the nation for their own sake ; but it is sunk ruin- 
 ously if they are bad of their kind, or desired only for pride or 
 gain. Neither can good art be produced as an " investment. " 
 
282 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACB. 
 
 You cannot build a go v od cathedral if you only build it that yon 
 
 may charge sixpence for entrance. 
 
 3. 1 'Private enterprise'' should never be interfered with, 
 but, on the contrary, much encouraged, so long as it is indeed 
 " enterprise " (the exercise of individual ingenuity and audacity 
 in new fields of true labor), and so long as it is indeed " pri- 
 vate," paying its way at its own cost, and in nowise harmfully 
 affecting public comforts or interests. But "private enter- 
 prise " which poisons its neighborhood, or speculates for indi- 
 vidual gain at common risk, is very sharply to be interfered 
 with. 
 
 4. All enterprise, constantly and demonstrably profitable on 
 ascertained conditions, should be made public enterprise, under 
 Government administration and security ; and the funds now 
 innocently contributed, and too often far from innocently 
 absorbed, in vain speculation, as noted in your correspondent 
 "Fair Play's " excellent letter, 1 ought to be received by Gov- 
 ernment, employed by it, not in casting guns, but in growing 
 corn and feeding cattle, and the largest possible legitimate 
 interest returned without risk to these small and variously 
 occupied capitalists, who cannot look after their own money. 
 We should need another kind of Government to do this for 
 us, it is true ; also it is true that we can get it, if we choose ; 
 but we must recognize the duties of governors before we can 
 elect the men fit to perform them. 
 
 - The benefit of these several modes of right investment of 
 capital would be quickly felt by the nation, not in the increase 
 of isolated or nominal wealth, but in steady lowering of the 
 prices of all the necessaries and innocent luxuries of life, and 
 in the disciplined, orderly, and in that degree educational 
 employment of every able-bodied person. For, Sir (again with 
 your pardon), my question "Is England big enough?" was 
 not answered by the sad experience of the artisans of Poplar. 
 Had they been employed in earthbuilding instead of in ship- 
 
 1 " Fair Play's" letter noted the result of investments made in bubble 
 railways, generally by " honest country folks " or 1 - poor clergymen and 
 Widows." 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 283 
 
 building, and heaped the Isle of Dogs itself into half as much 
 space of good land, capable of growing corn instead of mosqui- 
 toes, they would actually have made habitable England a little 
 bigger by this time ; 1 and if the first principle of economy in 
 employment were understood among us — namely, always to 
 use whatever vital power of breath and muscle you have got in 
 the country before you use the artificial power of steam and 
 iron for what living arms can do, and never plough by steam 
 while you forward your ploughman to Quebec — those old 
 familiar faces need not yet have looked their last at each other 
 from the deck of the St. Lawrence. But on this subject I will 
 ask your permission to write you in a few days some further 
 words. 2 
 
 I am, Sir, your faithful servant, 
 
 J. RUSKIN. 
 
 Denmark Hill, Aug. 9. 
 
 [From " The Daily Telegraph, " December 8, 1865.] 
 
 OUR RAILWAY SYSTEM. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Daily Telegraph." 
 
 Sir : Will you allow me a few words w r ith reference to your 
 excellent article of to-day on railroads. 3 All you say is true. 
 But of what use is it to tell the public this ? Of all the eco- 
 nomical stupidities of the public — and they are many — the 
 out-and-out stupidest is underpaying their pointsmen ; but if 
 the said public choose always to leave their lines In the hands 
 of companies — that is to say practically, of engineers and 
 
 1 Alluding to an article in the Daily Telegraph of August 8, headed 
 '* East-Snd Emigrants," which, after remarking that "Mr. Buskin's 
 question, Is England big enough ?" had been just answered rather sadly 
 by a number of Poplar artisans, described the emigration to Quebec on 
 board the St. Lawrence of these inhabitants of the Isle of Dogs, and 
 how, as the ship lei t the dock, "there were many tears shed, as old, 
 familiar faces looked on each other for the last time." 
 
 2 Never, it seems, written. 
 
 3 An article which, dealing directly with some recent railway acci- 
 dents, commented especially on the overcrowding of the lines. 
 
284 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 lawyers — the money they pay for fares will always go, most 
 of it, into the engineers' and lawyers' pockets. It will be 
 spent in decorating railroad stations with black and blue 
 bricks, and in fighting bills for branch lines. I hear there are 
 more bills for new lines to be brought forward this year than 
 at any previous session. But, Sir, it might do some little 
 good if you were to put it into the engineers' and lawyers' 
 heads that they might for some time to come get as much 
 money for themselves (and a little more safety for the public) 
 by bringing in bills for doubling laterally the present lines as 
 for ramifying them ; and if you were also to explain to the 
 shareholders that it would be wiser to spend their capital in 
 preventing accidents attended by costly damages, than in run- 
 ning trains at a loss on opposition branches. It is little busi- 
 ness of mine — for I am not a railroad traveller usually more 
 then twice in the year ; but I don't like to hear of people's 
 being smashed, even when it is all their fault ; so I will ask 
 you merely to reprint this passage from my article on Politi- 
 cal Economy in Fraser's Magazine for April, 1863, and so leave 
 the matter to your handling : 
 
 " Had the money spent in local mistakes and vain private 
 litigation on the railroads of England been laid out, instead, 
 under proper Government restraint, on really useful railroad 
 work, and had no absurd expense been incurred in ornament- 
 ing stations, we might already have had — what ultimately it 
 will be found we must have — quadruple rails, two for passen- 
 gers and two for traffic, on every great line, and we might 
 have been carried in swift safety, and watched and warded by 
 well-paid pointsmen, for half the present fares." 1 
 I am, Sir, your faithful servant, 
 
 J. Ruskin. 
 
 Denmark Hill, Dec. 7. 
 
 1 Essays on Political Economy (Frazer's Magazine, April, 1863, p 
 449) ; Munera Pulveris, p. 105, § 128. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 285 
 
 [From "The Daily Telegraph, 11 November 30, 1870.] 
 
 RAILWAY SAFETY. 1 
 
 To the Editor of" The Daily Telegraph." 
 
 Sir : I am very busy, and have not time to write new 
 phrases. Would you mind again reprinting (as you were 
 good enough to do a few days ago 2 ) a sentence from one of 
 the books of mine which everybody said were frantic when I 
 wrote them ? You see the date — 1863. 
 
 I am, Sir, your faithful servant, 
 
 J. Ruskin. 
 
 Denmark Hill, Mb. 29, 1870. 
 
 I have underlined the words I want to be noticed, but, as 
 you see, made no change in a syllable. 
 
 Already the Government, not unapproved, carries letters 
 and parcels for us. Larger packages may in time follow — 
 even general merchandise ; why not, at last, ourselves ? Had 
 the money spent in local mistakes and vain private litigations 
 on the railroads of England been laid out, instead, under 
 proper Government restraint, on really useful railroad work, 
 and had no absurd expense been incurred in ornamenting sta- 
 tions, we might already have had — what ultimately it will be 
 found we must have — quadruple rails, two for passengers, and 
 two for traffic, on every great line ; and w r e might have been 
 carried in swift safety, and watched and warded by well-paid 
 pointsmen, for half the present fares. 
 
 1 This letter was elicited by a leading article in the Daily Telegraph 
 of November 29, 1870, upon railway accidents, and the means of their 
 prevention, apropos of two recent accidents which had occurred, both 
 on the same day (November 26, 1870) on the London rnd North-West- 
 ern Railway. 
 
 2 In the first letter on the Franco-Prussian War, ante, p. 32. (Daily 
 Telegraph, Oct. 7, 1870.) 
 
28G 
 
 ARROWS OF THE OH ACS. 
 
 II. — SERVANTS AKD HOUSES. 
 
 [From " The Daily Telegraph," September 5, 1885.] 
 
 DOMESTIC SERVANTS— MASTERSHIP. 
 
 To the Editor of u The Daily Telegraph: 1 
 
 Sir : You so seldom write nonsense, that you will, I am 
 sure, pardon your friends for telling you when you do. Your 
 article on servants to-day is nonsense. It is just as easy and as 
 difficult now to get good servants as it ever was. 1 You may 
 have them, as you may have pines and peaches, for the grow- 
 ing, or you may even buy them good, if you can persuade the 
 good growers to spare you them off their walls ; but you can- 
 not get them by political economy and the law of supply and 
 demand. 
 
 There are broadly two ways of making good servants ; the 
 first, a sound, wholesome, thoroughgoing slavery — which was 
 the heathen way, and no bad one neither, provided you under- 
 stand that to make real " slaves" you must make yourself a 
 real " master " (which is not easy). The second is the Chris- 
 tian's way : " whoso delicately bringeth up his servant from a 
 child, shall have him become his son at the last." 2 And as few 
 people want their servants to become their sons, this is not a 
 way to their liking. So that, neither having courage or self- 
 discipline enough on the one hand to make themselves nobly 
 dominant after the heathen fashion, nor tenderness or justice 
 enough to make themselves nobly protective after the Chris- 
 tian, the present public thinks to manufacture servants bodily 
 out of powder and hay-stuffing — mentally by early instillation 
 of Catechism and other mechanico-religious appliances — and 
 economically, as you helplessly suggest, by the law of supply 
 
 1 The article, after commenting on "the good old times," remarked 
 that it is now " a social fact, that the hardest thing in the world to find 
 is a good servant." 
 
 2 "He that delicately bringeth np his servant from a child, shall liav« 
 him become his son at the length." — Proverbs xxix. 21. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 287 
 
 and demand, 1 with such results as we all see, and most of us 
 more or less feel, and shall feel daily more and more to our 
 cost and selfish sorrow. 
 
 Sir, there is only only one way to have good servants ; that 
 is, to be worthy of being well served. Ah nature and all hu- 
 manity will serve a good master, and rebel against an ignoble 
 one. And there is no surer test of the quality of a nation 
 than the quality of its servants, for they are their masters' 
 shadows, and distort their faults in a flattened mimicry. A 
 wise nation will have philosophers in its servants' hall ; a knav- 
 ish nation will have knaves there ; and a kindly nation will 
 have friends there. Only let it be remembered that " kind- 
 ness" means as with your child, so with your servant, not in- 
 dulgence, but care. — I am, Sir, seeing that you usually write 
 good sense, and " serve " good causes, your servant to com- 
 mand. J. Kuskin. 2 
 
 Denmark Hill, Sept. 2. 
 
 [From " The Daily Telegraph, 1 ' September 7, 1865.] 
 
 DOMESTIC SERVANTS— EXPERIENCE. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Daily Telegraph.'' 
 
 Sir : I thank you much for your kind insertion of my letter, 
 and your courteous and graceful answer to it. Others will 
 thank you also ; for your suggestions are indeed much more 
 
 1 " We have really," ran the article, " no remedy to suggest ; the evil 
 seems to be curable only by some general distress which will drive more 
 people into seeking service, and so give employers a greater choice. At 
 present the demand appears to exceed the supply, and servants are care- 
 less about losing their places through bad behavior. 
 
 - To this letter the Daily Telegraph of Serjtember 6 replied by a lead- 
 er, in which, whilst expressing itself alive to u the sympathy for hu- 
 manity and appreciation of the dignity which may be made to underlie 
 all human relations," displayed by Mr. Rnskin, it complained that he 
 had only shown u how to cook the cook when we catch her," and not 
 how to catch her. After some detailed remarks on the servants of the 
 day, which seemed 1 * to be more ad rem than Mr. Buskin's eloquent 
 axioms," it concluded by expressing a hope " that he would come down 
 
288 
 
 ARROWS OF THE OH A GE. 
 
 ad rem than my mere assertions of principle ; but both are 
 necessary. Statements of practical difficulty, and the imme- 
 diate means of conquering it, are precisely what the editor of 
 a powerful daily journal is able to give ; but he cannot give 
 them justly if he ever allow himself to lose sight of the eternal 
 laws which in their imperative bearings manifest themselves 
 more clearly to the retired student of human life in the phases 
 of its history. My own . personal experience — if worth any- 
 thing — has been simply that wherever I myself knew how a 
 thing should be done, and was resolved to have it done, I 
 could always get subordinates, if made of average good human 
 material, to do it, and that, on the whole, cheerfully, thor- 
 oughly, and even affectionately ; and my wonder is usually 
 rather at the quantity of service they are willing to do for me, 
 than at their occasional indolences, or fallings below the 
 standard of seraphic wisdom and conscientiousness. That 
 they shall be of average human material, it is, as you wisely 
 point out, every householder's business to make sure. We 
 cannot choose our relations, but we can our servants ; and 
 what sagacity we have and knowledge of human nature cannot 
 be better employed. If your house is to be comfortable, your 
 servants' hearts must be sound, as the timber and stones of its 
 walls ; and there must be discretion in the choice, and time 
 allowed for the " settling " of both. The luxury of having 
 pretty servants must be paid for, like all luxuries, in the pen- 
 alty of their occasional loss ; but I fancy the best sort of 
 female servant is generally in aspect and general qualities like 
 Sydney Smith's " Bunch," 1 and a very retainable creature. 
 
 from the clouds of theory, and give to a perplexed public a few plain, 
 workable instructions how to get hold of good cooks and maids, coach- 
 men and footmen." — Mr. Ruskin replies to it, and to a large amount of 
 further correspondence on the subject, in the next two letters in the 
 Daily Telegraph. 
 
 1 u A man-servant was too expensive ; so I caught up a little garden- 
 girl, made like a milestone, put a napkin in her hand, christened her 
 Bunch, and made her my butler. The girls taught her to read, Mrs. 
 Sydney to wait, and I undertook her morals : Bunch became the best 
 butler in the county."' — Sydney Smith's Memoirs (vol. i. p. 207), where 
 several other anecdotes of Bunch are given. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 2m 
 
 And for the rest, the dearth of good service, if such there be, 
 may perhaps wholesomely teach us that, if we were all a little 
 more in the habit of serving ourselves in many matters, we 
 should be none the worse or the less happy. 
 
 I am, Sir, yours, etc., 
 Denmark Hill, Sept. 6. J. Rtjskin, 
 
 [From "The Daily Telegraph," September 18, 1865.] 
 
 DOMESTIC SERVANTS: SONSHIP AND SLAVERY. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Daily Telegraph," 
 
 Sir : I have been watching the domestic correspondence In 
 your columns with much interest, and thought of offering you 
 a short analysis of it wiien you saw good to bring it to a close, 1 
 and perhaps a note or two of my own experience, being some- 
 what conceited on the subject just now, because I have a 
 gardener who lets me keep old-fashioned plants in the green- 
 house, understands that my cherries are grown for the black- 
 birds, and sees me gather a bunch of my own grapes without 
 making a wry face. But your admirable article of yesterday 
 causes me to abandon my purpose ; the more willingly, be- 
 cause among all the letters you have hitherto published there 
 is not one from any head of a household which contains a 
 complaint worth notice. All the masters or mistresses whose 
 letters are thoughtful or well written say they get on well 
 enough with their servants ; no part has yet been taken in the 
 discussion by the heads of old families. The servants' letters, 
 hitherto, furnish the best data ; but the better class of ser- 
 vants are also silent, and must remain so. Launce, Grumio, 
 or Fairservice 2 may have something to say for themselves ; 
 but you will hear nothing from Old Adam nor from carefu 
 
 1 In the 1 1 admirable article" of September 15, in which the main 
 features of the voluminous correspondence received by the Daily Tele- 
 graph on the subject were shortly summed up. 
 
 2 Fairservice is mentioned in Mr. Ruskin's discussion of parts of the 
 Antiquary in "Fiction, Fair and Foul" (Nineteenth Century, June, 
 1880) as an " example of innate evil, unaffected by external influences." 
 
290 
 
 ARROWS OF THE C II ACE. 
 
 Mattie. One proverb from Sancho, if we could get it, would 
 settle the whole business for us ; but his master and he are 
 indeed " no more." I would have walked down to Dulwieh 
 to hear what Sam Weller had to say ; but the high-level rail- 
 way went through Mr. Pickwick's parlor two months ago, and 
 it is of no use writing to Sam, for, as you are well aware, he 
 is no penman, And, indeed, Sir, little good will come of any 
 writing on the matter. " The cat will mew, the dog will have 
 his day." You yourself, excellent as is the greater part of 
 what you have said, and to the point, speak but vainly when 
 you talk of " probing the evil to the bottom." This is no sore 
 that can be probed, no sword nor bullet wound. This is a 
 plague spot. Small or great, it is in the significance of it, not 
 in the depth, that you have to measure it. It is essentially 
 bottomless, cancerous ; a putrescence through the constitu- 
 tion of the people is indicated by this galled place. Because 
 I know this thoroughly, I say so little, and that little, as your 
 correspondents think, who know nothing of me, and as you 
 say, who might have known more of me, unpractically. Par- 
 don me, I am no seller of plasters, nor of ounces of civet. 
 The patient's sickness is his own fault, and only years of dis- 
 cipline will work it out of him. That is the only really " prac- 
 tical " saying that can be uttered to him. The relation of 
 master and servant involves every other — touches every con- 
 dition of moral health through the State. Put that right, and 
 you put all right ; but you will find it can only come ulti- 
 mately, not primarily, right ; you cannot begin with it. Some 
 of the evidence you have got together is valuable, many pieces 
 of partial advice very good. You need hardly, I think, unless 
 you wanted a type of British logic, have printed a letter in 
 which the writer accused (or would have accused, if he had 
 possessed Latinity enough) all London servants of being 
 thieves because he had known one robbery to have been com- 
 mitted by a nice-looking girl. 1 Bat on the whole there is 
 
 1 This refers to a letter in which the writer gave an account of a rob- 
 bery by a housemaid, and, drawing from her conduct the moral "put 
 not your trust in London servants, " concluded by signing his letter," 
 u Ab hoc disce omnes." 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 291 
 
 much common-sense in the letters ; the singular point in them 
 all, to my mind, being the inapprehension of the breadth and 
 connection of the question, and the general resistance to, and 
 stubborn rejection of, the abstract ideas of sonship and slavery, 
 which include whatever is possible in wise treatment of ser- 
 vants. It is very strange to see that, while everybody shrinks 
 at abstract suggestions of there being possible error in a book 
 of Scripture, 1 your sensible English housewife fearlessly re- 
 jects Solomon's opinion when it runs slightly counter to her 
 own, and that not one of your many correspondents seems 
 ever to have read the Epistle to Philemon. It is no less 
 strange that while most English boys of ordinary position 
 hammer through their Horace at one or other time of their 
 school life, no word of his wit or his teaching seems to remain 
 by them : for all the good they get out of them, the Satires 
 need never have been written. The Roman gentleman's ac- 
 count of his childhood and of his domestic life possesses no 
 charm for them : and even men of education would sometimes 
 start to be reminded that his "nodes ccenceque Deum!" meant 
 supping with his merry slaves on beans and bacon. Will you 
 allow me, on this general question of liberty and slavery, to 
 refer your correspondents to a paper of mine touching closely 
 upon it, the leader in the Art-Journal for July last? and to 
 ask them also to meditate a little over the two beautiful 
 epitaphs on Epictetus and Zosima, quoted in the last paper of 
 the Idler? 2 
 
 ! The last volume of Bishop Colenso's work on " The Pentateuch and 
 Book of Joshua critically examined " was published in the April of the 
 year in which these letters were written, and his deposition by the 
 Bishop of Capetown had but recently been reversed by the Privy 
 Council. It is to the discussion aroused by his book that Mr. Ruskia 
 indirectly refers. 
 
 2 The leader in the Art-Journal is Chapter vi. of The Cestus of Aglaia, 
 where \\ the infinite follies of modern thought, centred in the notion 
 that liberty is good for a man, irrespectively of the use he is likely to 
 make of it," are discussed at some length. The epitaphs quoted are not 
 in the Idler itself, but in the Essay on Epitaphs printed at the end of 
 some editions of it. 
 
292 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CIIACE. 
 
 " I, Epictetus, was a slave ; and sick in body, and wretched in 
 
 poverty ; and beloved by the gods." 
 "Zosima, who while she lived was a slave only in her body, 
 
 has now found deliverance for that also." 
 
 How might we, over many an " independent " Englishman 
 reverse this last legend, and write — 
 
 "This man, who while he lived was free only in his body, 
 has now found captivity for that also." 
 
 I will not pass without notice — for it bears also on wide 
 interests — your correspondent's question, how my principles 
 differ from the ordinary economist's view of supply and de- 
 mand. 1 Simply in that the economy I have taught, in oppo- 
 sition to the popular view, is the science which not merely 
 ascertains the relations of existing demand and supply, but 
 determines what ought to be demanded and what can be sup- 
 plied. A child demands the moon, and, the supply not being 
 in this case equal to the demand, is wisely accommodated 
 with a rattle ; a footpad demands your purse, and is supplied 
 according to the less or more rational economy of the State, 
 with that or a halter ; a foolish nation, not able to get into its 
 head that free trade does indeed mean the removal of taxation 
 from its imports, but not of supervision from them, demands 
 unlimited foreign beef, and is supplied with the cattle murrain 
 and the like. There may be all manner of demands, all man- 
 ner of supplies. The true political economist regulates these ; 
 the false political economist leaves them to be regulated by 
 (not Divine) Providence. For, indeed, the largest final de- 
 mand anywhere reported of, is that of hell ; and the supply 
 of it (by the broad-gauge line) would be very nearly equal to 
 the demand at this day, unless there were here and there a 
 swineherd or two who could keep his pigs out of sight of the 
 lake. 
 
 Thus in this business of servants everything depends on 
 what sort of servant you at heart wish for or " demand." If 
 
 1 This refers to a letter signed " W. B." in the Daily Telegraph of Sep- 
 tember 12. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 293 
 
 for nurses you want Charlotte Winsors, they are to be had for 
 money ; but by no means for money, such as that German 
 girl who, the other day, on her own scarce-floating fragment 
 of wreck, saved the abandoned child of another woman, keep- 
 ing it alive by the moisture from her lips. 1 What kind of 
 servant do you want ? It is a momentous question for you 
 yourself — for the nation itself. Are we to be a nation of shop- 
 keepers, wanting only shop-boys ; or of manufacturers, wanting 
 only hands ; or are there to be knights among us, who will 
 need squires — captains among us, needing crews ? Will you 
 have clansmen for your candlesticks, or silver plate ? Myrmi- 
 dons at your tents, ant-born, or only a mob on the Gillies' 
 Hill ? Are you resolved that you will never have any but your 
 inferiors to serve you, or shall Enid ever lay your trench sr 
 with tender little thumb, and Cinderella sweep your hear^i, 
 and be cherished there ? It might come to that in time, ami 
 plate and hearth be the brighter ; but if your servants are to 
 be held your inferiors, at least be sure they are so, and that 
 you are indeed wiser, and better-tempered, and more useful 
 than they. Determine what their education ought to be, and 
 organize proper servants' schools, and there give it them. So 
 they will be fit for their position, and will do honor to it, and 
 stay in it : let the masters be as sure they do honor to theirs, 
 and are as willing to stay in that. Remember that every peo- 
 ple which gives itself to the pursuit of riches, invariably, and 
 of necessity, gets the scum uppermost in time, and is set by 
 the genii, like the ugly bridegroom in the Arabian Nights, at 
 its own door with its heels in the air, showing its shoe-soles 
 instead of a Face. And the reversal is a serious matter, if re- 
 versal be even possible, and it comes right end uppermost 
 again, instead of to conclusive Wrong end. 
 
 I suppose I am getting unpractical again. Well, here is 
 one practical morsel, and I have done. One or two of your 
 correspondents have spoken of the facilities of servants for 
 
 1 Charlotte Winsor was at this time under sentence of death for the 
 murder of a child, which had been entrusted to her charge. I have 
 been unable to verify the anecdote of her heroic anti-type. 
 
294 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACB. 
 
 leaving their places. Drive that nail home, Sir. A large stray 
 branch of the difficulty lies there. Many and many a time I 
 have heard Mr. Carlyle speak of this, and too often I have felt 
 it myself as one of the evils closely accompanying the fever of 
 modern change in the habits and hopes of life. My own archi- 
 tectural work drives me to think of it continually. Bound 
 every railroad station, out of the once quiet fields, there bursts 
 lip first a blotch of brick-fields, and then of ghastly houses, 
 washed over with slime into miserable fineries of cornice and 
 portico. A gentleman would hew for himself a log hut, and 
 thresh for himself a straw bed, before he would live in such ; 
 but the builders count safely on tenants — people who know 
 no quietness nor simplicity of pleasure, who care only for the 
 stucco, and lodge only in the portico, of human life — under- 
 standing not so much as the name of House or House-Hold. 
 They and their servants are always " bettering themselves " 
 divergently. 
 
 You will do good service at least in teaching any of these 
 who will listen to ycu, that if they can once make up their 
 minds to a fixed state of life, and a fixed income, and a fixed 
 expenditure — if they can by any means get their servants to 
 stay long enough with them to fit into their places and know 
 the run of the furrows — then something like service and mas- 
 tership, and fulfilment of understood and reciprocal dut}^, may 
 become possible ; no otherwise. I leave this matter to your 
 better handling, and will trespass on your patience no more. 
 Only, as I think you will get into some disgrace with your 
 lady correspondents for your ungallant conclusions respecting 
 them 1 — which I confess surprised me a little, though I might 
 have been prepared for it if I had remembered what order the 
 husband even of so good a housewife as Penelope was obliged 
 
 1 The " admirable article" which had closed the discussion advised 
 mistresses to resemble those of the good old days, and to deserve good 
 servants, if they wished to secure them. It, somewhat inconsistently 
 with the previous articles, declared that the days of good service would 
 not be found altogether past, if it was remembered that by derivation 
 4 4 domestic" meant " homelike, ? and "family" one's servants, not 
 one's children. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 295 
 
 to take with some of her female servants after prolonged ab- 
 sence, — I have translated a short passage of Xenophon's Eco- 
 nomics 1 for you, which may make your peace if you will print 
 it. I wish the whole book were well translated ; meantime, 
 your lady readers must be told that this part of a Greek coun- 
 try gentleman's account of the conversation he had with his 
 young wife (a girl of fifteen only), a little while after their 
 marriage, when "she had got used to him," and was not 
 frightened at being spoken gravely to. First they pray to- 
 gether ; and then they have a long happy talk, of which this 
 is the close : 
 
 "But there is one of the duties belonging to you," I said, 
 " which perhaps will be more painful to you than any other, 
 namely, the care of your servants when they are ill." " Nay," 
 answered my wife, " that will be the most pleasing of all my 
 duties to me, if only my servants will be grateful when I min- 
 ister rightly to them, and will love me better." And I, pleased 
 with her answer, said, " Indeed, lady, it is in some such way 
 as this that the queen of the hive is so regarded by her bees, 
 that, if she leave the hive, none will quit her, but all will fol- 
 low her." Then she answered, " I should wonder if this office 
 of leader were not yours rather than mine, for truly my care 
 and distribution of things would be but a jest were it not for 
 your inbringing." " Yes," I said, " but what a jest would my 
 inbringing be if there were no one to take care of what I 
 
 1 See The Economist of Xenophon, since (1875) translated and pub- 
 lished in the " Bibliotheca Pastorum," edited by Mr. Buskin (vol. i. p. 
 50, chap. vii. § 37-43). Mr. Ruskin in his preface to the volume speaks 
 of the book as containing " first, a faultless definition of wealth" . , . 
 *' secondly, the most perfect ideal of kingly character and kingly govern- 
 ment given in literature.'' .... and " thirdly, the ideal of domestic 
 life.'' It may be interesting to note an earlier and quaint estimate of the 
 work, given in " Xenophon's Treatise of Householde — imprinted at Lon- 
 don, in Fleet Street, by T. Berthelet, 1534," where the dialogue is de- 
 scribed as " ryght counnyngly translated out of the Greke tongue into 
 Englysshe by Gentian Hervet at the desyre of Mayster Geffrey Pole, 
 whiche boke for the weithe of this realme I derae very profitable to bo 
 red." 
 
296 
 
 ARROWS OF THE OHACM 
 
 brought Do not you know how those are pitied of whom it 
 is fabled that they have always to pour water into a pierced 
 vessel ? " " Yes ; and they are unhappy, if in truth they do 
 it," said she. ' ' Then also," I said, " remember your other per- 
 sonal cares. Will all be sweet to you when, taking one of 
 your maidens who knows not how to spin, you teach her, and 
 make her twice the girl she was ; or one who has no method 
 nor habit of direction, and you teach her how to manage a 
 house, and make her faithful and mistress-like and every way 
 worthy, and when you have the power of benefiting those who 
 are orderly and useful in the house, and of punishing any 
 one who is manifestly disposed to evil? But what will be 
 sweetest of all, if it may come to pass, will be that you should 
 show yourself better even than me, and so make me your ser- 
 vant also : so that you need not fear in advancing age to be 
 less honored in my house ; but may have sure hope that in 
 becoming old, by how much more you have become also a 
 noble fellow-worker with me, and joint guardian of our chil- 
 dren's possessions, by so much shall you be more honored in 
 my household. For what is lovely and good increases for all 
 men — not through fairness of the body, but through strength 
 and virtue in things pertaining to life. And this is what I 
 remember chiefly of what we said in our first talk together." 
 
 I am, Sir, your faithful servant, 
 
 J. RlJSKIN. 
 
 Denmark Hill, Sept 16. 
 
 [From " The Daily Telegraph," October 17, 1865.] 
 
 MODERN HOUSES. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Daily Telegraph." 
 
 Sir : I trust you will hold the very able and interesting 
 letter from " W. H. W.," 1 which you publish to-day, excuse 
 
 1 The letter of " W. H. W." commenced by stating that the writer 
 had 14 waited till the discussion .... about domestic servants was 
 brought to a close to make a few remarks on a subject touched on in Mr. 
 Ruskin's last letter — domestic architecture." It then gave a " graphic 
 description" of "W. H. W.V own modern villa and its miseries, and 
 concluded by asking Mr. Ruskin if nothing could be done I 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 297 
 
 enough for my briefly trespassing on your space once more. 
 Indeed, it has been a discomfort to me that I have not yet 
 asked the pardon of your correspondent, "A Tenant, not at 
 will" (Sept. 21), 1 for the apparent discourtesy of thought of 
 which he accused me. He need not have done so : for al- 
 though I said " a gentleman would hew for himself a log hut" 
 rather than live in modern houses, I never said he would 
 rather abandon his family and his business than live in them ; 
 and your correspondent himself, in his previously written 
 letter, had used precisely the same words. And he must not 
 suspect that I intend to be ironical in saying that the pro- 
 longed coincidence of thought and word in the two letters 
 well deserves the notice of your readers, in the proof it gives 
 of the strength and truth of the impression on both minds. 
 "W. H. W.'s" graphic description of his house is also sor- 
 rowfully faithful to the facts of daily experience ; and I doubt 
 not that you will soon have other communications of the same 
 tenor, and all too true. 
 
 I made no attempt to answer "A Tenant, not at will," be- 
 cause the subject is much too wide for any detailed treatment 
 in a letter ; and you do not care for generalizations of mine. 
 But I am sure your two correspondents, and the large class of 
 sufferers which they represent, would be very sincerely grate- 
 ful for some generalizations of yours on this matter. For, Sir, 
 surely of all questions for the political economist, this of put- 
 
 1 u A Tenant, not at will'' had written to point out tlie coincidence 
 that he had, before the publication of Mr. Buskin's third letter, him- 
 self begun a letter to the Daily Telegraph on the subject of houses, 
 in parts of which, strangely enough, he had used expressions very simi- 
 lar to those of Mr. Buskin (see ante, pp. 144-8). 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 con- 
 cluded by saying that all the houses were the same, and that therefore, 
 until Mr. Buskin could point out honest-built dwellings neglected while 
 the " villas" were all let, it was not quite fair oC him to assume that 
 * ' suburban villains " utterly wauted the true instinct of gentlemen 
 which would lead to the preference of log huts to plaster palaces. 
 
290 
 
 ABROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 ting good houses over people's heads is the closest and 
 simplest. The first question in all economy, practically as 
 well as etymologically, must be this, of lodging. The "Eco" 
 must come before the "Nomy " You must have a house 
 before you can put anything into it ; and preparatorily to lay- 
 ing up treasure, at the least dig a hole for it. Well, Sir, here, 
 as it seems to my poor thinking, is a beautiful and simple 
 problem for you to illustrate the law of demand and supply 
 upon. Here you have a considerable body of very deserving 
 persons "demanding " a good and cheap article in the way of 
 a house. Will you or any of your politico- economic corre- 
 spondents explain to them and to me the Divinely Providential 
 law by which, in due course, the supply of such cannot but be 
 brought about for them ? 
 
 There is another column in your impression of to-day to 
 which, also, I would ask leave to direct your readers' atten- 
 tion — the 4th of the 3d page ; and especially, at the bottom 
 of it, Dr. Whitmore's account of Crawford Place, 1 and his 
 following statement that it is " a kind of property constituting 
 a most profitable investment ; " and I do so in the hope that 
 you will expand your interpretation of the laws of political 
 economy so far as to teach us how, by their beneficent and 
 inevitable operation, good houses must finally be provided for 
 the classes who live in Crawford Place, and such other places ; 
 and, without necessity of eviction, also- for the colliers oi 
 Cramlington (vide 2d column of the same 3d page). 2 I have. 
 
 1 The account consisted of a report presented by Dr. Whitmore, a* 
 Metropolitan Officer of Health to the district, to the Marylebone Kepre- 
 sentative 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 separ- 
 ate rooms to weekly tenants, constitutes a most profitable investment," 
 according to the degree of flinty determination exercised in collecting 
 the rents, 
 
 2 This alludes to an account of the position of the Cramlington col- 
 liers 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. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 299 
 
 indeed, my own notions on the subject, but I do not trouble 
 you with them, for they are unfortunately based on that wild 
 notion of there being a "just" price for all things, which you 
 sav in your article of Oct. 10, on the Sheffield strikes, " has no 
 existence but in the minds of theorists." 1 The Pall Mall 
 Gazette, with which journal I have already held some discus- 
 sion on the subject, eagerly quoted your authority on its side, 
 in its impression of the same evening ; nor do I care to pur- 
 sue the debate until I can inform you of the continuous result 
 of some direct results which I am making on my Utopian 
 principles. I have bought a little bit of property of the Craw- 
 ford Place description, and mending it somewhat according to 
 my notions, I make my tenants pay me what I hold to be a 
 "just " price for the lodging provided. That lodging I partly 
 look after, partly teach the tenants to look after for themselves ; 
 and I look a little after them, as well as after the rents. I do 
 not mean to make a highly profitable investment of their poor 
 little rooms ; but I do mean to sell a good article, in the way 
 of house room, at a fair price ; and hitherto my customers 
 are satisfied, and so am I. 2 
 
 In the mean time, being entirely busy in other directions, 
 1 must leave the discussion, if it is to proceed at all, wholly 
 between you and your readers. I will write no word more 
 till I see what they all have got to say, and until you yourself 
 have explained to me, in its anticipated results, the working — 
 as regards the keeping out of winter and rough weather — of 
 the principles of Non-iquity (I presume that is the proper 
 politico-economic form for the old and exploded word Ini- 
 quity) ; and so I remain, Sir, yours, etc., 
 
 J. Euskin. 
 
 Denmark Hill, Oct 16. 
 
 1 "Such a tiling as adjust price/ either for labor or for any other 
 commodity, has, with all submission to Mr. Xtuskin, no existence save 
 in the minds of theorists." (Daily Telegraph, Oct. 10, quoted by the 
 Pall Mall in its ki Epitome of the Morning Papers " on the same day.) 
 The discussion with the Gazette consisted of the " Work and Wages " 
 letters (see ante, pp. 55 seqq.). 
 
 2 See Fors Clavigeia, 1877, Letter 78, Notes and Correspondence, 
 p. 54. 
 
300 
 
 ARROWS OF THE C II ACE. 
 
 HI— KOMAN INUNDATIONS. 
 
 [From " The Daily Telegraph, 11 January 12, 1871. Also reprinted in " Fors Claviger**,' 
 1873, Letter xxxiii., vol. ii., p. 75.] 
 
 A KING'S FIRST DUTY. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Daily Telegraphy 
 
 Sir : May I ask you to add to your article on the inunda- 
 tion 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 dis- 
 tricts of violent and scanty waters : 
 
 M Dicar, qua violens obstrepit Aufidus, 
 Et qua, pauper aquse, Daunus agrestium 
 Regnavit populorum." 1 
 
 Now the anger and power of that " tauriformis Aufidus" is 
 precisely because " regna Dauni prsefiuit " — 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, 
 
 1 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 a Exegi 
 monumentum cere perennius" (Odes, iii. 30). 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 301 
 
 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 burn- 
 ing 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, 1 had they 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 Eed Prince look to it ; red inundation bears also its 
 fruit in time. 
 
 I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 Jan. 10. John Ruskin. 
 
 [From " The Pall Mall Gazette, 1 ' 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, i* 
 your yesterday's article on the Tiber, entered into no detail/ 
 
 1 This letter, it will be noticed, was written during the bombardment 
 of Paris in the Franco-Prussian war. 
 
 2 The Pall Mall Gazette had quoted part of the preceding letter, and 
 had spoken of 44 a remedy which Mr. Ruskin himself appears to contem- 
 plate, though he describes it in rather a nebulous manner." 
 
302 
 
 ARROWS OF THE C II ACE. 
 
 because I had already laid tlie plans spoken of before the Royal 
 Institution in my lecture there last February ; 1 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 concen- 
 trated. 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 dis- 
 charge into a reservoir large enough to contain a week's maxi- 
 mum 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 divi- 
 dend on the disbursement. Nay — you must usually wait a 
 
 1 " A Talk respecting Verona and its Rivers," February 4, 1870. (See 
 Proceedings of the Royal Institution, vol. 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 pro- 
 tection 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 happi- 
 ness depends not on the liberty, but the right government of both." 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 303 
 
 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 (per- 
 haps too economically cheap) shot at Shoeburyness are property 
 which we can only safely " realize " under similarly favorable 
 conditions. Bat 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 " volun- 
 teers " with good Engineer officers over them, and, in three 
 year's time, an Inundation of Tiber, at least, shall be Impos- 
 sible. 
 
 I am, Sir, your faithful servant. 
 
 John Ruskin. 
 
 Denmark Hill, Jan. 19, 1871. 
 
 [From " The Daily Telegraph," February 4, 1871.] 
 
 THE WATERS OF COMFORT. 
 
 To the Editor of " TJie Daily Telegraph" 
 
 Sir : I did not see your impression of yesterday until too 
 late to reply to the question of your correspondent in Rome ; 1 
 and I am hurried to-day ; but will send you to-morrow a pre- 
 cise statement of what I believe can be done in the Italian 
 aplands. 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, 
 
 1 The correspondent of the Daily Telegraph had written that Mr. 
 Ruskin's letter of January 10 had been translated into Italian and had 
 Bet people thinking, and he asked Mr. Ruskin to write and state the 
 case once more. 
 
304 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CRACK 
 
 now barren for want of water, and valueless ; and the show- 
 ing 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 sum- 
 mer, 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 de- 
 struction ? " 
 
 I am, Sir, your faithful servant, 
 
 J. RuSKIN. 
 
 Oxford, Feb. 3. 
 
 [From " The Daily Telegraph," February 7, 1ST1.] 
 
 THE STREAMS OF ITALY.* 
 
 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 
 
 1 See the date of letter on a landslip near Giagnano (vol i. p. 197.) 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS, 
 
 305 
 
 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 
 d Jwn 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, irre- 
 spective 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 har- 
 borages, and lost mountain-ground. 
 
 There is yet one further evil. The snow on the bared rock 
 slips lower and melts faster ; snows 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 sum- 
 
306 
 
 ARROWS OF THE GRACE. 
 
 nier at Bellinzona, during a draught 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 would also benefit 
 his neighbors. 
 
 But the people of Bellinzona are Swiss, not Italians. I be- 
 lieve the Boman 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 govern- 
 ment let us send over some engineer officers and a few sap- 
 pers and miners, an£ bear, for a time, with an English instead 
 of a French " occupation 99 of her barren est hills ? 
 
 But she does not need us. Good engineers she has, and 
 has had many since Leonardo designed the canals of Lorn- 
 bardy. Agriculturists she has had, I think, among her gentle- 
 men 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 rivu- 
 lets 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 aquae " are " in rotis " or rather the race- 
 course and the boulevard — the curses of England and of France, 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 307 
 
 At all events, if any one of the Princes of Eome 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 Kuskin. 
 
 Oxford, Feb. 3. 
 
 [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, 1 of the dirty state of the Lon- 
 don streets, to ask whether any of your readers would care to 
 know how such matters are managed in my neighbourhood. 
 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 pleas- 
 
 1 Quite unimportant. It simply complained of the condition of ths 
 streets. 
 
308 
 
 ARROWS OF THE OH A CB. 
 
 an try close to my door, even in the worst of the winter, wheiv 
 though I have a little garden at the back of my house, I dis- 
 like going into it, because the things look all so dead : and 
 find my walk on the whole pleasanter in the streets, these be- 
 ing 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 
 v/ay of carrying out things, when once they begin, as far as 
 the}' 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 Uto- 
 pians have always hands enough for whatever work is to be 
 done in the open air ; — they appointed a due number of 
 broomsmen to every quarter of the town ; and since then, at 
 any time of the year, it is in our little town as in great Rotter- 
 dam when Dr. Brown saw it on his journey from Norwich 
 to Colen in 1668, " the women go about in white slippers," 
 which is pretty to see. 1 Now, Sir, it would, of course, be 
 more difficult to manage anything like this in London, be- 
 cause, for one thing, in our town we have a rivulet running 
 down every street that slopes to the river ; and besides, be- 
 cause you have coal-dust and smoke and what not to deal 
 with ; and the habit of spitting, which is worst of all — in Uto- 
 pia a man would as soon vomit as spit in the street (or any- 
 where 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 em- 
 ploy with the interest of the St. George's fund, of which I 
 
 1 Dr. Edward Browne, the son of the author of the Religio Medici, 
 Sir Thomas Browne. Writing to his father from Rotterdam, in 1608, 
 he says : <l The cleanenesse and neatnesse of this towne is so new unto 
 mee, that it affoordeth great satisfaction, most persons going ahout the 
 streets in white slippers. "—Life and Works of Sir Thomas Browne, 
 Pickering, 1836. Vol. i. p. 154 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 309 
 
 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 aa 
 clean as the deck of a ship of the line. 1 
 
 I am, Sir, your faithful servant, 
 
 John Euskin. 
 
 December 27, 1871. 
 
 IV.— EDUCATION FOR RICH AND POOR. 
 
 [From "The Pall Mall Gazette/ 1 January 31, 1868.] 
 
 TRUE EDUCATION* 
 
 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 " educa- 
 tion " only meant teaching children to write or to cipher or to 
 
 1 Mr. Ruskin was as good as his word, and his sweepers were at work 
 in the following J anuary. 
 
 2 The Pall Mall Gazette of January 27 contained a leader on "Compul- 
 sory 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 4 ' Sixty Years Ago," and signed u One who has walked four miles 
 to the Parish School." It described the writer's early home, situated in 
 some lowland parish north of the Tweed, and divided into five or six 
 estates, such as * 1 Whinny-hills " and " Weary-faulds," the lairds of 
 which were shortly called u Whinny" or ' ' Weary" after their proper- 
 ties. In this primitive village, where supervision, much less compul- 
 sion, in education was never heard of, " no child grew up without learn- 
 ing 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. 
 
310 
 
 ARROWS OF THE OH AGE. 
 
 repeat catechism. You know, Sir, as you have shown by your 
 comments on the Bishop of Oxford's last speech on this sub- 
 ject, 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 them 
 in due time to their parents, worth more than their " w T eight 
 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. KUSKIN. 
 
 Denmark Hill, Jan. 31, 1868. 
 
 [From 44 The Glasgow Herald," June 5, 1874. Also reprinted in 11 The Times " of June 
 
 6, 1874.] 
 
 THE VAL UE OF LECTURES. 1 
 
 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 audi- 
 
 1 This letter was written to Mr. Chapman, of the Glasgow Athenaeum 
 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. Raskin wrote as follows : " Noth- 
 ing 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, hut only on the art of the past." (Extract given in the Times, 
 Feb. 12, 1878.) 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 311 
 
 ences 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 homceopathically 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-work- 
 ing, smooth-downy-curry-and-strawberry-ice-and-milk-punch- 
 altogether lecture is an entirely pestilent and abominable 
 ?anity ; and the miserable death of poor Dickens, when he 
 Ssiight have been writing blessed books till he was eighty, but 
 for the pestiferous demand of the mob, is a very solemn warn- 
 ing to us all, if we would take it. 1 
 
 God willing, I will go on writing, and as well as I can. 
 There are three volumes published of my Oxford lectures, 2 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. 
 
 1 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 : tk 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, un visited by some effect or 
 other of the disastrous excitement consequent on them." — Life of Charles 
 Dickens, vol. iii. p. 493. 
 
 2 Aratra Pentelici, The Eagle's Nest ; and either Val d'Arno (Orping- 
 ton, 1874) or Lectures on Art (Clarendon Press, 1870). 
 
312 
 
 ARROWS OF THE Off ACM. 
 
 [Date and place of publication unknown.] 
 
 THE CRADLE OF ART! « 
 
 10ft Feb. 1876. 
 
 My dear Sie : I lose a frightful quantity of time because 
 people won't read what I ask them to read, nor believe any- 
 thing 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 Buskin. 
 
 If for no other reason, no artist worth sixpence in a day 
 would live in Sheffield, nor would any one who cared for pict- 
 ures — for a million a year. 
 
 [From " The Sheffield Daily Telegraph," September 7, 1875.] 
 
 ST-. GEORGE'S MUSEUM* 
 
 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- 
 
 1 This letter was in answer to a request of the Sheffield Society of Ar- 
 tists similar to that replied to in the preceding letter. 
 
 2 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 din* 
 ner which followed the opening of Western Park to the public on Sep- 
 tember 6, 1875. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 313 
 
 windowed garret. But it will have in it nothing but what 
 deserves respect in art or admiration in nature. A great mu- 
 seum in the present state of the public mind is simply an exhibi- 
 tion of the possible modes of doing wrong in art, and an accu- 
 mulation of uselessly multiplied ugliness in misunderstood nafc* 
 ure. Our own museum at Oxford is full of distorted skulls, 
 and your Sheffield ironwork department will necessarily con- 
 tain 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 bom 
 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. 
 
 [From " The Daily Telegraph," January 15, 1870.] 
 
 THE MORALITY OF FIELD SPORTS. 
 
 To tlie Editor of the " The Daily Telegraph." 
 
 Sir : As, thirty years ago, 1 I publicly expressed a strong 
 opinion on the subject of field sports, and as with more accu- 
 rate knowledge I hold the same opinion still, and more strongly 
 — will you permit me to place the controversy between your 
 
 1 In various parts of Modern Painters. See vol. v. p. 281. M I wish, 
 however, the reader distinctly to understand that the expressions of rep- 
 robation of field-sports which he will find scattered through these volumes 
 o , . . refer only to the chase and the turf ; that is to say, to hunt- 
 ing 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. " 
 
314 
 
 ARROWS OF THE UHACE. 
 
 correspondents, 1 in which I have no time to take part, on 
 somewhat clearer grounds. 
 
 Eeprobation 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, mis- 
 applies 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 correspond- 
 ent " Forester " supposes, "thousands from the work-house/' 
 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, 
 
 Denmark Hill, Jan, 14. J. Buskin. 2 
 
 1 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 Hunt- 
 nig," 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 correspon- 
 dence on the subject was still appearing in the Daily Telegraph from 
 day to day at the time Mr. Ruskin wrote the present letter. 
 
 2 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 
 
MISCELLANEO US LETTERS. 
 
 315 
 
 [From u The Daily Telegraph, 11 December 11, 1871.] 
 
 DRUNKENNESS AND GRIME. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Daily Telegraph: 1 
 
 Sir : I am greatly surprised by the sliglitness of your article 
 to-day on the statistics of drunkenness and the relative sta- 
 tistics of crime. 1 
 
 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 
 
 said that " as he was somewhat concerned in the studies of the scien- 
 tific world, it might be thought that he sympathized in the resistance 
 offered, not without some ground of reason, to some of the more enthu- 
 siastic 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 sentimen- 
 tal 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 endeavoured 
 to prevent cruelty to animals ; they had not enough endeavoured to pro- 
 mote 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 ani- 
 mals around them, no gentleman's education, no Christian education, 
 could be of any possible use. In concluding, he pleaded for an expan* 
 sion of the protection extended by the society to wild birds." 
 1 A short leader to which special reference is unnecessary. 
 
BIG 
 
 ARROWS OF THE OH ACE. 
 
 statement of the crime committed. Drunkenness very slightly 
 encourages theft, very largely encourages murder, and univer- 
 sally 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 any age or country. 
 
 I am, Sir, your faithful servant, 
 
 John Ruskin. 
 
 Denmark Hill, Dec. 9. 
 
 [From " The Pall Mall Gazette," November 4, 1872. (Also reprinted in " Fors Clavigera," 
 Letter xlviii., p. 318, vol. ii.] 
 
 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 1 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 — ■ 
 
 1 The trial of Taylor was for murder, and ended in his acquittal on 
 the ground of insanity. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 317 
 
 I wish you joy of, and hope you may be able to preserve it to 
 society. Insane persons, horses, clogs, 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. EUSKIN. 
 
 Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 
 November 2. 
 
 [From "The Daily Telegraph," December 26, 1868.] 
 
 EMPLOYMENT FOR THE DESTITUTE POOR AND CRIMI- 
 NAL CLASSES. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Daily Telegraph:' 
 
 Sir : Your admirable leader of to-day 1 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 mdiscrimate 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 
 
 A Christmas article on Charity. 
 
318 
 
 ARROWS OF TEE C II ACE. 
 
 incapable of all occupation, none so faultful but that occupa- 
 tion, 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. 1 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. KuSKIN. 
 
 Denmakk Hill, S.E., Dec. 24. 
 
 NOTES ON THE GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF EMPLOY- 
 MENT 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.) 2 ] 
 
 The first great fact on which all wise and enduring legisla- 
 tion 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. Em- 
 ployment is the half, and the primal half, of education — it is 
 the warp of it ; and the fineness or the endurance of all subse- 
 
 1 See the following pages. 
 
 2 There were two editions of this pamphlet. The first was entitled 
 M First Notes on the General Principles of Employment for the Destitute 
 and Criminal Classes. By John Ruskin, A.M. For private circulation 
 only. 1868 " (pp. 11, including the title-page. London : Strangeways & 
 Walden, printers, Castle Street, Leicester Square). Mr. Ruskin enclosed 
 the second edition to the Daily Telegraph, where almost the whole of the 
 pamphlet was reprinted. The differences hetween the two editions con- 
 sisted only in one or two additions in the second (see below, pages 321 
 and 324, notes.) 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 319 
 
 quently 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 Eeform Bill by the late 
 English Parliament 1 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 inter- 
 ests, 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 intelli- 
 gence 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 prom- 
 ises 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 per- 
 form 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 propor- 
 tion 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 re- 
 called ; it has been the manner of modern philanthropy to 
 remain passive until that precise period, and to leave the rich 
 
 1 The reform bill of 1867. The late parliament had been dissolved 
 on November 11, and the new one had just sat (December 10, 1868). 
 
320 
 
 ARROWS OF THE GRACE. 
 
 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 awaken- 
 ing perception that punishment is the last and worst instru- 
 ment 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 vir- 
 tuous, and compel the idle into occupation, and there will be 
 no need for the compelling of any into the great and last indo- 
 lence of death. The beginning of all true reformation among 
 the criminal classes depends on the establishment of institu- 
 tions 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 thorough- 
 fares 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. 1 
 
 The great principles by which employment should be reg- 
 ulated 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 inex- 
 
 1 The Daily Telegraph reprinted the pamphlet from this point to the 
 end. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 321 
 
 pensive 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 dis- 
 posal. 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 1 blows steady all day long for six days out of seven 
 throughout the year, without a wind-mill, while men are con- 
 tinually 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 industri- 
 ous laborer." Why, what is " employment " but the putting 
 out of vital force instead of mechanical force ? We are con- 
 tinually in search of means of strength — to pull, to hammer, to 
 fetch, to carry ; we waste our future resources to get power, 
 while w r e leave all the living fuel to burn itself out in mere 
 
 1 In order fully to utilize this natural power, we only require ma- 
 chinery to turn the variable into a constant velocity— no insurmountable 
 difficulty. * 
 
 * This note was not contained in the first edition of the pamphlet, and was not re- 
 printed by the Daily Telegraph, 
 
322 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 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 ma- 
 chines 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 can- 
 not 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. 
 
 2o In employing all the muscular power at our disposal, we 
 are to make the employments we choose as educational as pos- 
 sible. 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 -Reformatory but Formatory. 
 
 3. The third great principle of employment is, that when- 
 ever there is pressure of poverty to be met, all enforced occu- 
 pation 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 with- 
 drawn from what would have employed lace-makers at Honi- 
 ton, or makers of something else, as useless, elsewhere. "We 
 must spend our money in some way, at some time, and it can- 
 not 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 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 323 
 
 else's pockets, or merely gone to pay navvies for making a use- 
 less embankment, instead of to pay riband or button makers 
 for making useless ribands or buttons ; we cannot lose it (un- 
 less by actually destroying it) without giving employment of 
 some kind, and therefore, whatever quantity of money ex- 
 ists, the relative quantity of employment must some day come 
 out of it ; but the distress of the nation signifies that the em- 
 ployments 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 neces- 
 sary 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 cul- 
 tivate land round Coventry makes living easier at Honiton, 
 and every house well built in Edinburgh makes lodgings 
 cheaper in Glasgow and London. 
 
 4th, and lastly. Since for every idle person some one else 
 must be working somewhere to provide him with clothes and 
 food, and doing therefore double the quantity of work that 
 would be enough for his own needs, it is only a matter of pure 
 justice to compel the idle person to work for his maintenance 
 himself. The conscription has been used in many countries 
 to take away laborers who supported their families from their 
 useful work, and maintain them for purposes chiefly of mili- 
 tary display at public expense. Since this had been long en- 
 dured by the most civilized nations, let it not be thought that 
 they would not much more gladly endure a conscription 
 which should seize only the vicious and idle already living by 
 criminal procedures at the public expense, and which should 
 discipline and educate them to labor, which would not only 
 maintain themselves, but be serviceable to the commonwealth. 
 The question is simply this : we must feed the drunkard, 
 vagabond, and thief. But shall we do so by letting them rob 
 us of their food, and do no work for it ; or shall we give them 
 their food in appointed quantity, and enforce their doing work 
 
324 
 
 ARROWS OF THE Off ACE. 
 
 which shall be worth it, and which, in process of time, will 
 redeem their own characters, and make them happy and ser* 
 viceable members of society ? 1 
 
 The different classes of w T ork for which bodies of men could 
 be consistently organized might ultimately become numerous ; 
 these following divisions of occupation may at once be sug- 
 gested. 
 
 1. Boad-Making. — Good roads to be made w T herever needed, 
 and kept in constant repair ; and the annual loss on unfre- 
 quented roads in spoiled horses, strained wheels, and time, 
 done away with. 
 
 2. Bringing in of Waste Land. — All waste lands not neces- 
 sary for public health, to be made accessible and gradually 
 reclaimed. 
 
 3. Harbour-Making. — The deficiencies of safe or convenient 
 harbourage in our smaller ports to be remedied ; other har- 
 bours built at dangerous points of coast, and a disciplined 
 body of men always kept in connection with the pilot and life- 
 boat services. There is room for every order of intelligence 
 in this work, and for a large body of superior officers. 
 
 4. Porterage. — All heavy goods not requiring speed in 
 transit, to be carried (under preventive duty on transit by 
 railroad) by canal boats, employing men for draught, and the 
 merchant shipping service extended by sea ; so that no ships 
 may be wrecked for want of hands, while there are idle ones 
 in mischief on shore. 
 
 5. Kepair of Buildings. — A body of men in various trades 
 to be kept at the disposal of the authorities in every large town 
 for consistent repair of buildings, especially the houses of the 
 poorer orders, who, if no such provision were made, could not 
 employ workmen on their own houses, but would simply live 
 with rent walls and roofs. 
 
 6. Dress-Making.— Substantial dress, of standard material 
 and kind, strong shoes, and stout bedding, to be manufact- 
 ured for the poor, so as to render it unnecessary for them, 
 
 1 Here the first edition of the pamphlet ends ; the remaining sentences 
 being contained in the second edition only. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 325 
 
 unless by extremity of improvidence, to wear cast clothes, or 
 be without sufficiency of clothing. 
 
 7. Works of Art. — Schools to be established on thoroughly 
 sound principles of manufacture and use of materials, and 
 with simple and, for given periods, unalterable modes of 
 work ; first in pottery, and embracing gradually metal work, 
 sculpture, and decorative painting ; the two points insisted 
 upon, in distinction from ordinary commercial establishments, 
 being perfectness of material to the utmost attainable degree ; 
 and the production of everything by hand- work, for the spe- 
 cial purpose of developing personal power and skill in the 
 workman. 
 
 The two last departments, and some subordinate branches 
 of the others, would include the service of women and chil- 
 dren. 
 
 [From " The Y. M. A. Magazine," conducted by the Young Men's Association, Clapham 
 Congregational Church. September. 1879. Vol. iii., No. 12, p. 242.] 
 
 BLINDNESS AND SIGHT. 1 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire, 
 mh July, 1879. 
 
 My dear Sir : The reason I never answered was — I now find 
 — the difficulty of explaining my fixed principle never to join 
 in any invalid charities. All the foolish world is ready to 
 help in them ; and will spend large incomes in trying to make 
 idiots think, and the blind read, but will leave the noblest in- 
 tellects to go to the Devil, and the brightest eyes to remain 
 spiritually blind forever ! All my work is to help those w T ho 
 have eyes and see not. 
 
 Ever faithfully yours, J. Buskin. 
 
 Thos. Pocock, Esq. 
 
 I must add that, to my mind, the prefix of " Protestant w 
 to your society's name indicates far stonier blindness than any 
 it will relieve. 
 
 1 This letter was sent by Mr. Ruskin to the Secretary of the Protestant 
 Blind Pension Society in answer to an application for subscriptions 
 which Mr. Ruskin had mislaid, and thus left unanswered. 
 
326 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 [From " The Y. M. A. Magazine," October, 1879, Vol. iv., No. 1, p. 12.) 
 
 THE EAGLE'S NEST.' 
 
 To the Editor of " Tlie Y. M. A. Magazine" 
 
 My dear Sir : There is a mass of letters on my table this 
 morning, and I am not quite sure if the " Y. M. A. Magazine," 
 among them, is the magazine which yours of the 15th speaks 
 of as " enclosed ; " but you are entirely welcome to print my 
 letter about Blind Asylums anywhere, and if in the "Y. M. 
 A." I should be glad to convey to its editor, at the same 
 time, my thanks for the article on " Growing Old," which has 
 not a little comforted me this morning — and my modest 
 recommendation that, by way of antidote to the No. III. paper 
 on the Sun, he should reproduce the 104th, 115th, and 116th 
 paragraphs of my ££ Eagle's Nest," closing them with this fol- 
 lowing sentence from the 12th Book of the Laws of Plato, 
 dictating the due time for the sittings of a Parliament seeking 
 righteous policy (and composed, they may note farther, for 
 such search, of Young Men and Old) : 
 
 €KttcrT^5 fxkv f}fjLepa<; avWeyofxevos i£ dvdyKrjs air opOpov ^XP L 
 irep av r/Xios (xvlvyrj. 
 
 Ever faithfully yours, J. Buskin. 
 Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire, August VJth 9 1879. 
 
 [From u The Y. M. A. Magazine," November, 1879, Vol. iv., No. 2, p. 36.] 
 
 POLITICS IN YOUTH. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Y. M. A. Magazine." 
 
 My dear Sir : I am heartily obliged by your publication of 
 those pieces of " Eagle's Nest," and generally interested in 
 your Magazine, papers on politics excepted. Young men have 
 
 1 The article on 44 Growing Old," (Y. M. A., August, 1879) was " a study 
 from the poets " on happiness in old age ; that upon the sun, contained 
 in the same number of the magazine, dealt with the spots in the sun, 
 and the various scientific opinions about them ; the paragraphs re- 
 printed from the Eagle's Nest are upon the sun as the Light, and 
 Health, and Guide of Life. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 327 
 
 no business with politics at all ; and when the time is come 
 for them to have opinions, they will find all political parties 
 resolve themselves at last into two — that which holds with 
 Solomon, that a rod is for the fool's back, 1 and that which 
 holds with the fool himself, that a crown is for his head, a 
 vote for his mouth, and all the universe for his belly. 
 
 Ever faithfully yours, 
 
 (Signed) J. Ruskin. 
 
 The song on " Life's Mid-day I is very beautiful, except the 
 third stanza. The river of God will one day sweep down the 
 great city, not feed it. 2 
 
 Sheffield, October 19th, 1879. 
 
 [From the t; New Year's Address and Messages to Blackfriars Bible Class." 
 Aberdeen, 1873.] 
 
 " ACT, ACT IN THE LIVING PRESENT." 3 
 
 Cokpus Christi College, Oxford, 
 Christmas Eve, '72. 
 
 My dear Sir : I am always much interested in any effort 
 such as you are making on the part of the laity. 
 
 If you care to give your class a word directly from me, say 
 to them that they will find it well, throughout life, never to 
 trouble themselves about what they ought not to do, but about 
 what they ought to do. The condemnation given from the 
 
 1 Proverbs xxvi. 3, and x. 13. 
 
 2 The following are the lines specially alluded to : 
 
 Shall the strong full-flowing river, bearing on its mighty breast 
 
 Half the wealth of some proud nation, precious spoils of East and West, 
 
 Shall it mourn its mountain cradle and its infant heathery bed, 
 
 All its youthful songs and dances, as adown the hills it sped, 
 
 When by it in yon great city half a million mouths are fed ? 
 
 [Y. M. A. Magazine, October, 1879.] 
 
 3 This and the two following letters were originally printed in differ- 
 ent annual numbers of the above-named publication, to whose editor 
 (Mr. John Leith, 75 Crown Street, Aberdeen) they were addressed. 
 Amongst the " messages " contained in them are some from Mr. Glad- 
 stone and others. 
 
328 
 
 ARROWS OF THE Oil ACE. 
 
 judgment throne — most solemnly described — is all for the 
 undones and not for the dones. 1 People are perpetually afraid 
 of doing wrong ; but unless they are doing its reverse ener- 
 getically, they do it all day long, aod the degree does not 
 matter. The Commandments are necessarily negative, be- 
 cause a new set of positive ones would be needed for every 
 person : while the negatives are constant. 
 
 But Christ sums them all into two rigorous positions, and 
 the first position for young people is active and attentive kind- 
 ness to animals, supposing themselves set by God to feed His 
 real sheep and ravens before the time comes for doing either 
 figuratively. There is scarcely any conception left of the 
 character which animals and birds might have if kindly treated 
 in a wild state. 
 
 Make your young hearers resolve to be honest in their work 
 in this life. — Heaven will take care of them for the other. 
 
 Truly yours, 
 
 John Buskin. 
 
 (From " New Year's Address and Messages to Blackfriars Bible Class." 
 Aberdeen, 1874.] 
 
 "LABORARE EST ORARE." 
 
 Corpus Curisti College, Oxford, 
 
 Deceiriber, 1873. 
 
 My dear Sir : I should much like to send your class some 
 message, but have no time for anything I like. 
 
 My own constant cry to all Bible readers is a very simple 
 one — Don't think that Nature (human or other) is corrupt ; 
 don't think that you yourself are elect out of it ; and don't 
 think to serve God by praying instead of obeying. 
 Ever, my dear Sir, very faithfully yours, 
 
 John Ruskin. 
 
 1 See the tenth of Mr. Ruskin's letters on the Lord's Prayer, Contem- 
 porary Review, December, 1879, p. 550. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 329 
 
 [From " New Year's Address," etc. (as above), 1878.] 
 
 A PAGAN MESSAGE, 
 
 Herne Hill, London, S.E. 
 19 Dee. 1877. 
 
 My dear Sir : I am sure you know as well as I that the best 
 message for any of your young men who really are trying to 
 read their Bibles is whatever they first chance to read on what- 
 ever morning. 
 
 But here's a Pagan message for them, which will be a 
 grandly harmonized bass for whatever words they get on the 
 New Year. 
 
 Inter spem curamque, timores et inter iras, 
 Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum. 1 
 
 (" Amid liope and sorrow, amid fear and wrath, believe every day that 
 has dawned on thee to be thy last.") 
 
 Ever faithfully yours, 
 
 John Buskin. 
 
 [From " The Science of Life."] 
 
 THE FOUNDATIONS OF CHIVALRY* 
 
 Venice, February 8t7i, 1877. 
 
 My dear : This is a nobly done piece of work of yours 
 
 — a fireman's duty in fire of hell ; and I would fain help you 
 in all I could, but my way of going at the thing would be 
 from the top down — putting the fire out with the sun, not 
 with vain sprinklings. People would say I wasn't practical, 
 
 1 Horace, Epistles, i. 4. 12. 
 
 2 The following letters were addressed by Mr. Ruskin to the author 
 of a pamphlet on continence, entitled The Science of Life. There were 
 two editions of the pamphlet, and of these only the second contained 
 the first and last of these letters, whilst only the first contained the last 
 letter but one. Some passages also in the other letters are omitted in 
 the first edition, and a few slight alterations arc iuad« in the seeond in 
 the letter of February 10. 
 
330 
 
 ARROWS OF TEE GRACE. 
 
 as usual of course ; but it seems to me the last thing one 
 should do in the business is to play Lord Angelo, and set bar 
 and door to deluge. Not but I should sift the windows of our 
 Oxford printsellers, if I had my full way in my Art Professor- 
 ship ; but I can't say the tenth part of what I would. I'm in 
 the very gist and main effort of quite other work, and can't 
 get my mind turned to this rightly, for this, in the heart of 
 it, involves — well, to say the whole range of moral philoso- 
 phy, is nothing ; this, in the heart of it, one can't touch 
 unless one knew the moral philosophy of angels also, and 
 what that means, "but are as the angels in heaven." For 
 indeed there is no true conqueror of Lust but Love ; and 
 in this beautifully scientific day of the British nation, in which 
 you have no God to love any more, but only an omnipotent 
 coagulation of copulation : in which you have no Law nor 
 King to love any more, but only a competition and a con- 
 stitution, and the oil of anointing for king and priest used 
 to grease your iron wheels down hill : when you have no 
 country to love any more, but "patriotism is nationally what 
 selfishness is individually," 1 such the eternally-damned mod- 
 ern view of the matter — the moral syphilis of the entire na- 
 tional blood : and, finally, when you have no true bride and 
 groom to love each other any more, but a girl looking out for 
 a carriage and a man for a position, what have you left on 
 earth to take pleasure in, except theft and adultery ? 
 
 The two great vices play into each other's hands. Ill-got 
 money is always finally spent on the harlot. Look at Ho- 
 garth's two 'prentices ; the sum of social wisdom is in that bit 
 of rude art- work, if one reads it solemnly. 
 
 Venice, February 10th. 
 Hence, if from any place in earth, I ought to be able to 
 send you some words of warning to English youths, for the 
 ruin of this mighty city was all in one word — fornication. 
 
 1 For further notice by Mr. Ruskin of this maxim, which occurs in 
 Mr. Herbert Spencer's Study of Sociology, p. 205, see the article on 
 Home and its Economies in the Contemporary Review of May, 1873, and 
 Bibliotheca Pastorum, p. xxxiv. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 331 
 
 Fools who think they can write history will tell you it was 
 " the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope," and the like ! 
 Alas it was indeed the covering of every hope she had, in God 
 and his Law. 
 
 For indeed, my dear friend, I doubt if you can fight this 
 evil by mere heroism and common-sense. Not many men are 
 heroes ; not many are rich in common-sense. They will train 
 for a boat-race ; will they for the race of life ? For the ap- 
 plause of the pretty girls in blue on the banks ; yes. But to 
 win the soul and body of a noble woman for their own for- 
 ever, will they? Not as things are going, I think, though 
 how or where they are to go or end is to me at present in- 
 conceivable. 
 
 You think, perhaps, I could help you therefore w r ith a lec- 
 ture on good taste and Titian ? No, not at all ; I might w T ith 
 one on politics, but that everybody would say was none of my 
 business. Yet to understand the real meaning of the word 
 "Sire," with respect to the rider as well as the horse, is indeed 
 the basis of all knowledge, in policy, chivalry, and social order. 
 
 All that you have advised and exposed is wisely said and 
 bravely told ; but no advice, no exposure, will be of use, un- 
 til the right relation exists again between the father and the 
 mother and their son. To deserve his confidence, to keep it 
 as the chief treasure committed in trust to them by God : to 
 be the father his strength, the mother his sanctification, and 
 both his chosen refuge, through all weakness, evil, danger, 
 and amazement of his young life. My friend, while you still 
 teach in Oxford the " philosophy," forsooth, of that poor cre- 
 tinous wretch, Stuart Mill, and are endeavouring to open other 
 "careers" to English women than that of the Wife and the 
 Mother, you won't make your men chaste by recommending 
 them to leave off tea. 1 
 
 1 I have to state that this expression regarding Stuart Mill was not 
 intended for separate publication ; and to explain that in a subsequent 
 but unpublished letter Mr. Ruskin explained it to refer to Mill's utter 
 deficiency in the powers of the imagination. — The last words of this 
 letter will be made clearer by noting that the pamphlet dealt with 
 physical, as well as mental, diet. 
 
332 
 
 ARROWS OF THE GRACE, 
 
 Venice, 11 th February. 
 
 My dear : I would say much more, if I thought any 
 
 one would believe me, of the especial calamity of this time, 
 with respect to the discipline of youth — in having no food 
 any more to offer to their imagination. Military distinction 
 is no more possible by prowess, and the young soldier thinks 
 of the hurdle-race as one of the lists and the field — but the 
 noble temper will not train for that trial with equal joy. Cler- 
 ical eminence — the bishopric or popular pastorship — may be 
 tempting to men of genial pride or sensitive conceit : but the 
 fierce blood that would have burned into a patriarch, or 
 lashed itself into a saint — what " career "has your modern 
 philosophy to offer to it f 
 
 The entire cessation of all employment for the faculty, 
 which, in the best men of former ages, was continually exer- 
 cised and satisfied in the realization of the presence of Christ 
 with the hosts of Heaven, leaves the part of the brain which 
 it employed absolutely vacant, and ready to suck in, with the 
 avidity of vacuum, whatever pleasantness may be presented 
 to the natural sight in the gas-lighted beauty of pantomimic 
 and casino Paradise. 
 
 All these disadvantages, you will say, are inevitable, and 
 need not be dwelt upon. In my own school of St. George I 
 mean to avoid them by simply making the study of Christianity 
 a true piece of intellectual work ; my boys shall at least 
 know what their fathers believed, before they make up their 
 own wise minds to disbelieve it. They shall be infidels, if 
 they choose, at thirty ; but only students, and very modest 
 ones, at fifteen. But I shall at least ask of modern science so 
 much help as shall enable me to begin to teach them at that 
 age the physical laws relating to their own bodies, openly, 
 thoroughly, and with awe ; and of modern civilization, I shall 
 ask so much help as may enable me to teach them what is iflk 
 deed right, and what wrong, for the citizen of a state of nobie 
 humanity to do, and permit to be done, by others, unac- 
 cused. 
 
 And if you can found two such chairs in Oxford — one, of 
 the Science of Physical Health ; the other, of the Law of 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 333 
 
 Human Honor — you need not trim your Horace, nor forbid 
 us our chatty afternoon tea. 
 
 I could say ever so much more, of course, if there were 
 only time, or if it would be of any use — about the misappli- 
 ance of the imagination. But really, the essential thing is the 
 founding of real schools of instruction for both boys and girls 
 — first, in domestic medicine and all that it means ; and sec- 
 ondly, in the plain moral law of all humanity : "Thou shait 
 not commit adultery," with all that it means. 
 
 Ever most truly yours, 
 
 J. RuSKIN. 
 
 Venice, 12th February, '77. 
 
 My dear : Two words more, and an end. I have just 
 
 re-read the paper throughout. There are two omissions which 
 seem to me to need serious notice. 
 
 The first, that the entire code of counsel which you have 
 drawn up, as that which a father should give his son, must be 
 founded on the assumption that, at the proper time of life, the 
 youth will be able, no less than eager, to marry. You ought 
 certainly to point out, incidentally, what in my St. George's 
 work I am teaching primarily, that unless this first economical 
 condition of human society be secured, all props and plasters 
 of its morality will be in vain. 
 
 And in the second place, you have spoken too exclusively 
 of Lust, as if it were the normal condition of sexual feeling, 
 and the only one properly to be called sexual. But the great 
 relation of the sexes is Love, not Lust ; that is the relation in 
 which " male and female created He them ; " putting into 
 them, indeed, to be distinctly restrained to the office of fruit- 
 fulness, the brutal passion of Lust : but giving them the 
 spiritual power of Love, that each spirit might be greater and 
 purer by its bond to another associate spirit, in this world, and 
 that which is to come ; help-mates, and sharers of each other's 
 joy forever. Ever most truly yours, 
 
 J. Buskin. 
 
 Malham, July 3d, 1878. 
 
 Dear : I wish I were able to add a few more words, 
 
 with energy and clearness, to my former letters, respecting a 
 
334 
 
 ARROWS OF THE Gil A CM 
 
 subject of which my best strength — though in great part lately 
 given to it, has not yet enforced the moment — the function, 
 namely, of the arts of music and dancing as leaders and gov- 
 ernors of the bodily, and instinctive mental, passions. No 
 nation will ever bring up its youth to be at once refined and 
 pure, till its masters have learned the use of all the arts, and 
 primarily of these ; till they again recognize the gulf that 
 separates the Doric and Lydian modes, and perceive the great 
 ordinance of Nature, that the pleasures which, rightly ordered, 
 exalt, discipline, and guide the hearts of men, if abandoned to 
 a reckless and popular Dis-order, as surely degrade, scatter, 
 and deceive alike the passions and intellect. 
 
 I observe in the journals of yesterday, announcement that 
 the masters of many of our chief schools are at last desirous of 
 making the elements of Greek art one of the branches of their 
 code of instruction : but that they imagine such elements may 
 be learned from plaster casts of elegant limbs and delicate 
 noses. 
 
 They will find that Greek art can only be learned from 
 Greek law, and from the religion which gives law of life to all 
 the nations of the earth. Let our youth once more learn the 
 meaning of the words " music," " chorus, " and " hymn " prac- 
 tically ; and with the understanding that all such practice, 
 from lowest to highest, is, if rightly done, always in the pres- 
 ence and to the praise of God ; and we shall have gone far to 
 shield them in a noble peace and glorious safety from the 
 darkest questions and the foulest sins that have perplexed and 
 consumed the youth of past generations for the last four hun- 
 dred years. 
 
 Have you ever heard the charity children sing in St. Paul's ? 
 Suppose we sometimes allowed God the honor of seeing our 
 noble children collected in like manner to sing to Him, what 
 think you might be the effect of such a festival — even if only 
 held once a year — on the national manners and hearts ? 
 
 Ever faithfully and affectionately yours, 
 
 J. EUSKIN. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS, 
 
 335 
 
 V.—WOMEN : THEIR WORK AND THEIR DRESS. 
 
 [From " L'Esperance, Journel Merisuel, organe de l 1 Association des FemmeB." Geneve, 
 
 le 8 Mai, 1873.] 
 
 WOMAN'S WORK 
 Lettre a la Presidente. 1 
 
 Ma chere Madame : Je vous remercie de votre lettre si in- 
 teressante, car je sympathise de tout mou coeur avec la plu- 
 part des sentiments et des soubaits que vous y exprimez. 
 Mais arriver a rendre des femmes plus nobles et plus sages est 
 une chose ; les clever de facon a ce qu'elles entretiennent 
 leurs maris est une autre ! 
 
 Je ne puis trouver des termes assez forts pour exprimer la 
 haine et le mepris que je ressens pour Tidce moderne qu'une 
 femme doit cesser d'etre mere, nlle, ou femme pour qu'elle 
 puisse devenir commis ou ingenieur. 
 
 Vous ctes toutes entitlement sottes dans cette matiere. Le 
 devoir d'un homme est d'entretenir sa femme et ses enfants, 
 celui d'une femme est de le rendre heureux chez lui, et 
 d'elever ses enfants sagement. Aucune femme n'est capable 
 de faire plus que cela. Aucune femme ne doit faire moins, 
 et un homme qui ne peut pas nourrir sa femme, et desire 
 qu'elle travaille pour lui, merite d'etre pendu au-dessus de sa 
 porte. 
 
 Je suis, Madame, fidelement a vous, 
 
 J. RUSKIN. 
 
 [Date and place of publication unknown.] 
 
 FEMALE FRANCHISE. 
 
 Venice, 29th May, 1870, 
 Sir : I am obliged by your note. I have no time for private 
 correspondence at present, but you are quite right in your 
 
 1 1 have been unable to get access to the paper from which this letter 
 is taken, and must therefore leave without explanation the fortunately 
 unimportant references in its first paragraph 
 
336 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CH ACE. 
 
 supposition as to my views respecting female franchise. So 
 far from wishing to give votes to women, I would fain take 
 them away from most men. 1 
 
 Very sincerely yours, 
 
 J. RUSKIN. 
 
 [From "The Monthly Packet," November, 1863, p, 556.] 
 
 PROVERBS ON RIGHT DRESS* 
 
 Geneva, October 20th, 1862. 
 
 My dear Sir : I am much obliged by your letter : pardon 
 me if for brevity's sake I answer with appearance of dogma- 
 tism. You will see the subject treated as fully as I am able 
 in the course of the papers on political economy, of which the 
 two first have already appeared in Fraser's Magazine? 
 
 The man and woman are meant by God to be perfectly 
 noble and beautiful in each other's eyes. The dress is right 
 which makes them so. The best dress is that which is beau- 
 tiful in the eyes of noble and wise persons. 
 
 Right dress is therefore that which is fit for the station in 
 life, and the work to be done in it ; and which is otherwise 
 graceful — becoming — lasting — healthful — and easy ; on occa- 
 sion, splendid ; always as beautiful as possible. 
 
 Right dress is therefore strong — simple — radiantly clean — 
 carefully put on — carefully kept. 
 
 Cheap dress, bought for cheapness sake, and costly dress 
 bought for costliness sake, are both abominations. Right 
 
 1 So also in writing an excuse for absence from a lecture upon 
 Woman's Work and Woman's Sphere, given on behalf of the French 
 female refugees by Miss Emily Faithfull in February, 1871, Mr. Ruskin 
 said: "I most heartily sympathize with you in your purpose of de- 
 fining woman's work and sphere. It is as refreshing as the dew's, and 
 as defined as the moon's, but it is not the rain's nor the sun's." (Daily 
 Telegraph, Feb. 21, 1871.) 
 
 2 The preceding numbers of the Monthly Packet had contained various 
 letters upon dress, and the present one was then sent to the Editor by 
 the person to whom it was originally addressed. 
 
 3 In June and September, 1863. See the first two chapters of Munera 
 Pulveris. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 337 
 
 dress is bought for its worth, and at its worth ; and bought 
 only when wanted. 
 
 Beautiful dress is chiefly beautiful in color — in harmony of 
 parts — and in mode of putting on and wearing. Rightness 
 of mind is in nothing more shown than in the mode of wear- 
 ing simple dress. 
 
 Ornamentation involving design, such as embroidery, etc., 
 produced solely by industry of hand, is highly desirable in the 
 state dresses of all classes, down to the lowest peasantry. 
 
 National costume, wisely adopted and consistently worn, is 
 not only desirable but necessary in right national organiza- 
 tion. Obeying fashion is a great folly, and a greater crime ; 
 but gradual changes in dress properly accompany a healthful 
 national development. 
 
 The Scriptural authority for dress is centralized by Proverbs 
 xxxi. 21, 22 ; and by 1 Samuel i. 24 ; the latter especially 
 indicating the duty of the king or governor of the state ; as 
 the former the duty of the housewife. It is necessary for the 
 complete understanding of those passages, that the reader 
 should know that " scarlet" means intense central radiance of 
 pure color ; it is the type of purest color — between pale and 
 dark — between sad and gay. It was therefore used with 
 hyssop as a type of purification. There are many stronger 
 passages, such as Psalm xlv. 13, 14 ; but as some people read 
 them under the impression of their being figurative, I need 
 not refer to them. The passages in the Prophecies and 
 Epistles against dress apply only to its abuses. Dress worn 
 for the sake of vanity, or coveted in jealousy, is as evil as any- 
 thing else similarly so abused. A woman should earnestly 
 desire to be beautiful, as she should desire to be intelligent ; 
 her dress should be as studied as her words ; but if the one 
 is worn or the other spoken in vanity or insolence, both are 
 equally criminal. 
 
 I have not time, and there is no need, to refer you to the 
 scattered notices of dress in my books : the most important is 
 rather near the beginning of my "Political Economy of Art ; " 1 
 
 1 See pp. 67-75 of the original, and 50-55 of the new edition (A Joy 
 for Ever). 
 
338 
 
 ARROWS OF THE OH ACE. 
 
 but I have not the book by me : if you make any use of this 
 letter (you may make any you please), I should like you to 
 add that passage to it, as it refers to the more immediate need 
 of economy in dress, when the modes of its manufacture are 
 irregular, and cause distress to the operative. 
 
 Believe me, my dear Sir, very faithfully yours, 
 
 J. KUSKIN. 
 
 [From " Macmillan's Magazine, 1 ' November, 1870, p. 80.] 
 
 SAB- COLORED COSTUMES. 
 
 Denmark Hill, S.E., Uth Oct., 1870. 
 To the Editor of "Macmillan's Magazine.'" 
 
 Sir : At p. 423 of your current number, Mr. Stopford A. 
 Brooke states that it is a proposal of mine for regenerating 
 the country, that the poor should be " dressed all in one sad- 
 colored costume." 1 
 
 It is, indeed, too probable that one sad-colored costume 
 may soon be "your only wear," instead of the present motley 
 — for both poor and rich. But the attainment of this monot- 
 ony was never a proposition of mine ; and as I am well aware 
 Mr. Brooke would not have been guilty of misrepresentation, 
 if he had had time to read the books he was speaking of, I am 
 sure he will concur in my request that you would print in 
 full the passages to which he imagined himself to be refer- 
 ring. 
 
 I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 John Kuskin. 
 
 1. " You ladies like to lead the fashion: by all means lead 
 it. Lead it thoroughly. Lead it far enough. Dress your- 
 selves nicely, and dress everybody else nicely. Lead the f ash- 
 
 1 Mr. Stopford Brooke's article was a review of Mr. Ruskin's Lectures 
 on Art, delivered at Oxford, and then recently published. In a note to 
 the present letter the Editor of the Magazine stated Mr. Brooke's regret 
 "at having been led by a slip of memory into making an inaccurate 
 statement." 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 339 
 
 ions for the poor first ; make them look well, and you your- 
 selves will look — in ways of which you have at present no 
 conception— all the better."—" Crown of Wild Olive " (18G6), 
 p. 18. 1 
 
 2. " In the simplest and clearest definition of it, economy, 
 whether public or private, means the wise management of 
 labor ; and it means this mainly in three senses : namely, first, 
 applying your labor rationally ; secondly, preserving its prod- 
 uce carefully ; lastly, distributing its produce seasonably. 
 
 " I say first, applying your labor rationally ; that is, so as 
 to obtain the most precious things you can, and the most 
 lasting things by it : not growing oats in land where you can 
 grow wheat, nor putting fine embroidery on a stuff that will 
 not wear. Secondly, preserving its produce carefully ; that is 
 to say, laying up your wheat wisely in storehouses for the 
 time of famine, and keeping your embroidery watchfully from 
 the moth ; and lastly, distributing its produce seasonably ; 
 that is to say, being able to carry your corn at once to the 
 place where the people are hungry, and your embroideries to 
 the places where they are gay ; so fulfilling in all ways the 
 wise man's description, whether of the queenly housewife or 
 queenly nation : - She riseth while it is yet night, and giveth 
 meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens. She 
 maketh herself coverings of tapestry, her clothing is silk and 
 purple. Strength and honor are in her clothing, and she shall 
 rejoice in time to come/ 
 
 "Now you will observe that in this description of the per- 
 fect economist, or mistress of a household, there is a studied 
 expression of the balanced division of her care between the 
 two great objects of utility and splendor : in her right hand, 
 food and flax, for life and clothing ; in her left hand, the 
 purple and the needlework, for honor and for beauty. . . . 
 And in private and household economy you may always judge 
 of its perfectness by its fair balance between the use and the 
 pleasure of its possessions : you will see the wise cottager's 
 garden trimly divided between its well-set vegetables and its 
 
 1 See the 1873 edition of the Crown of Wild Olive, p. 30, § 27, 
 
340 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CIIACE. 
 
 fragrant flowers : you will see the good housewife taking 
 pride in her pretty tablecloth and her glittering shelves, no 
 less than in her well-dressed dish and full store-room : the 
 care will alternate with gayety ; and though you will rever- 
 ence her in her seriousness, you will know her best by her 
 smile."— "Political Economy of Art" (1857), pp. 10-13. 1 
 
 [From " The Times, 1 ' October 24, 1862.] 
 
 OAK SILKWORMS. 
 
 To the Editor of " Tlie Times." 
 
 Sir : In your excellent article of October 17, on possible 
 substitutes for cotton, you say "it is very doubtful whether 
 we could introduce the silkworm with profit." The silkworm 
 of the mulberry tree, indeed, requires a warmer climate than 
 ours, but has attention yet been directed to the silkworm of 
 the oak ? A day or two ago a physician of European reputa- 
 tion, Dr. L. A. Gosse, was speaking to me of the experiments 
 recently made in France in its acclimatization. He stated to 
 me that the only real difficulty was temporary — namely, in 
 the importation of the eggs, which are prematurely hatched 
 as they are brought through warm latitudes. A few only have 
 reached Europe, and their multiplication is slow, but once let 
 them be obtained in quantity and the stripping of an oak 
 coppice is both robe and revenue. The silk is stronger than 
 that of the mulberry tree, and the stuff woven of it more 
 healthy than cotton stuffs for the wearer ; it also wears twice 
 as long. This is Dr. Gosse's report — likely to be a trust- 
 worthy one — at all events, it seems to me worth sending you. 
 I remain your obedient servant, 
 
 J. RlJSKIN. 
 
 Geneva, Oct. 20th, 
 
 1 See A Joy for Ever (1880), pp. 7-9. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 341 
 
 VI.— LITERARY CRITICISM. 
 
 [From " The World," June 9, 1875.] 
 
 THE PUBLICATION OF BOOKS. 1 
 
 Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 
 June 6, 1875. 
 
 To tlw Editor of " The World." 
 
 Sir : I am very grateful for the attention and candor with 
 which you have noticed my effort to introduce a new method 
 of publishing. 
 
 Will you allow me to explain one or two points in which I 
 
 1 This letter refers to an article on Mr. Raskins peculiar method of 
 publication which appeared in the World of May 26, 1875. It was en- 
 titled "Ruskin to the Rescue," and with the criticism to which Mr. 
 Ruskin alludes, strongly approved the idea of some reform being at- 
 tempted in the matter of the publication of books. Mr. Ruskin began 
 the still-continued method of publishing his works in 1871 ; and the 
 following advertisement, inserted in the earlier copies of the first book 
 thus published— Sesame and Lilies— will give the reader further in- 
 formation on the matter. 
 
 " It has long been in my mind to make some small beginning of re- 
 sistance to the existing system of irregular discount in the bookselling 
 trade — not in hostility to booksellers, but, as I think they will find event- 
 ually, with a just regard to their interest, as well as to that of authors. 
 Every volume of this series of my collected works will be sold to the 
 trade without any discount or allowance on quantity, at such a fixed price 
 as will allow both author and publisher a moderate profit on each vol- 
 ume. It will be sold to the trade only ; who can then fix such further 
 profit on it as they deem fitting, for retail. 
 
 ' 4 Every volume will be clearly printed, and thoroughly well bound : 
 on such conditions the price to the public, allowing full profit to the 
 retailer, may sometimes reach, but ought never to exceed, half a guinea, 
 nor do I wish it to be less. I will fully state my reasons for this pro- 
 cedure in the June number of Fors Clavigera. 
 
 "The price of this first volume to the trade is seven shillings." 
 
 In subsequent similar notices, some parts of this plan, especially as 
 regarded purchasers and price, were altered ; the trade not accepting 
 the offer of sale to them only, and the " trouble and difficulty of revis- 
 ing text and preparing plates" proving much greater than Mr. Ruskin 
 had expected. 
 
342 
 
 ARROWS OF THE GRACE. 
 
 am generally misunderstood ? I meant to have asked your 
 leave to do so at some length, but have been entirely busy, 
 and can only say, respecting two of your questions, what in 
 my own mind are the answers. 
 
 I. "How many authors are strong enough to do without 
 advertisements ? " 
 
 None : while advertisement is the practice. But let it be- 
 come the fashion to announce books once for all in a monthly 
 circular (publisher's, for instance), and the public will simply 
 refer to that for all they want to know. Such advertisement I 
 use now, and always would. 
 
 II. " Why has he determined to be his own publisher ? " 
 
 I wish entirely to resist the practice of writing for money 
 early in life. I think an author's business requires as much 
 training as a musician's, and that, as soon as he can write 
 really well, there would always, for a man of worth and sense, 
 be found capital enough to enable him to be able to print, say, 
 a hundred pages of his careful work ; which, if the public 
 were pleased with, they would soon enable him to print more. 
 I do not think young men should rush into print, nor old 
 ones modify their books to please publishers. 
 
 III. And it seems to me, considering that the existing ex- 
 cellent books in the world would — if they were heaped to- 
 gether in great towns — overtop their cathedrals, that at any 
 age a man should think long before he invites his neighbors 
 to listen to his sayings on any subject whatever. 
 
 What I do, therefore, is clone only in the conviction, fool- 
 ish, egotistic, whatever you like to call it, but firm, that I am 
 writing what is needful and useful for my fellow-creatures ; 
 that if it is so, they will in due time discover it, and that be- 
 fore due time I do not want it discovered. And it seems to 
 me that no sound scholar or true well-wisher to the people 
 about him would write in any other temper. I mean to be 
 paid for my work, if it is worth payment. Not otherwise. 
 And it seems to me my mode of publication is the proper 
 method of ascertaining that fact. I had much more to say, 
 but have no more time, and am, sir, very respectfully yours, 
 
 John Ruskin. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 343 
 
 [From M The Pall Mall Gazette," January 11, 1875.] 
 
 A MISTAKEN REVIEW. 1 
 
 To the Editor of " The Pall MaU Gazette" 
 
 Sir : The excellent letters and notes which have recently 
 appeared in your columns on the subject of reviewing lead 
 me to think that you will give me space for the statement of 
 one or two things which I believe it is right the public should 
 know respecting the review which appeared in the Examiner 
 of the 2d of this month (but which I did not see till yester- 
 day), by Mr. W. B. Scott, of Mr. St. J. Tyrrwhitt s " Letters 
 on Landscape Art." 
 
 1. Mr. Scott is one of the rather numerous class of artists 
 of whose works I have never taken any public notice, and who 
 attribute my silence to my inherent stupidity of disposition. 
 
 2. Mr. Scott is also one of the more limited and peculiarly 
 unfortunate class of artists who suppose themselves to have 
 great native genius, dislike being told to learn perspective, and 
 prefer the first volume of " Modern Painters," which praises 
 many third-rate painters, and teaches none, to the following 
 volumes, which praise none but good painters, and sometimes 
 admit the weakness of advising bad ones. 
 
 3. My first acquaintance with Mr. Scott was at the house 
 of a gentleman whose interior walls he was decorating with 
 historic frescos, and whose patronage I (rightly or wrongly) 
 imagined at that time to be of importance to him. I was then 
 more good-natured and less conscientious than I am now, and 
 my host and hostess attached vveight to my opinions. I said 
 
 1 Of this review nothing need be said beyond what is stated in thin 
 letter. The full title of the book which it so harshly treated is Our 
 Sketching Club. Letters and Studies on Landscape Art. By the Rev. 
 R. St. John Tyrrwhitt, M.A. With an authorized reproduction of the 
 lessons and woodcuts in Professor Ruskin's Elements of Drawing. 
 Macmillan, 1874. The " letters and notes'' refer especially to one 
 signed " K" in the Gazette of January 1, and another signed " A Young 
 Author" in that of January 4. The principal complaint of both these 
 letters was that reviewers seldom master, and sometimes do not even 
 read the books they criticise. 
 
344 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CEACK 
 
 all the good I truly could of the frescos, and no harm ; painted 
 a corn-cockle on the walls myself, in reverent subordination 
 to them ; got out of the house as soon afterwards as I could, 
 and never since sought Mr. Scott's acquaintance further 
 (though, to my regret, he was once photographed in the same 
 plate with Mr. Rossetti and me). Mr. Scott is an honest man, 
 and naturally thinks me a hypocrite and turncoat as well as a 
 fool. 
 
 4. The honestest man in writing a review is apt sometimes 
 to give obscure statements of facts which ought to have been 
 clearly stated to make the review entirely fair. Permit me to 
 state in very few words those which I think the review in 
 question does not clearly represent. My " Elements of Draw- 
 ing " were out of print, and sometimes asked for ; I wished to 
 rewrite them, but had not time, and knew that my friend and 
 pupil, Mr. Tyrrwhitt, was better acquainted than I myself 
 with some processes of water-color sketching, and was per- 
 fectly acquainted with and heartily acceptant" of the principles 
 which I have taught to be essential in all art. I knew he could 
 write, and I therefore asked him to write, a book of his own 
 to take the place of the " Elements," and authorized him to 
 make arrangements with my former publisher for my wood- 
 blocks, mostly drawn on the wood by myself. 
 
 The book is his own, not mine, else it would have been 
 published as mine, not his. I have not read it all, and do not 
 answer for it all. But when I wrote the " Elements" I be- 
 lieved conscientiously that book of mine to be the best then 
 attainable by the public on the subject of elementary drawing. 
 I think Mr. Tyrrwhitt's a better book, know it to be a more 
 interesting one, and believe it to be, in like manner, the best 
 now attainable by the British public on elementary practice 
 of art. I am, Sir, your faithful servant, 
 
 John Ruskin. 
 
 Brantwood, Jan. 10. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 345 
 
 [From "The Pall Mall Gazette," January 19, 1875.] 
 
 THE POSITION OF CRITICS. 
 
 To the Editor of " The Pall Mall Gazette." 
 
 Sir : I see you are writing of criticism ; 1 some of your 
 readers may, perhaps, be interested in hearing the notions of 
 a man who has dabbled in it a good many years. I believe, 
 in a word, that criticism is as impertinent in the world as it is 
 in a drawing-room. In a kindly and well-bred company, if 
 anybody tries to please them, they try to be pleased ; if any- 
 body tries to astonish them, they have the courtesy to be as- 
 tonished ; if people become tiresome, they ask somebody else 
 to j)lay, or sing, or what not, but they don't criticise. For the 
 rest, a bad critic is probably the most mischievous person in 
 the world (Swift's Goddess of Criticism in the " Tale of a Tub " 
 seems what need be represented, on that subject 2 ), and a good 
 one the most helpless and unhappy : the more he knows, the 
 less he is trusted, and it is too likely he may become morose 
 in his unacknowledged power. A good executant, in any art, 
 gives pleasure to multitudes, and breathes an atmosphere of 
 praise, but a strong critic is every man's adversary — men feel 
 that he knows their foibles, and cannot conceive that he knows 
 more. His praise, to be acceptable, must be always unquali- 
 fied ; his equity is an offence instead of a virtue ; and the art 
 of correction, which he has learned so laboriously, only fills his 
 hearers with disgust. 
 
 I am, Sir, your faithful servant, 
 
 John Buskin. 
 
 Brantwood, Jan. 18. 
 
 1 Since the correspondence already mentioned, the Gazette of January 
 14 and 18 had contained two long letters on the subject from " A Re- 
 viewer." 
 
 2 The Goddess of Criticism, with Ignorance and Pride for her parents, 
 Opinion for her sister, and for her children Noise and Impudence, Dul- 
 ness and Vanity, Positiveness, Pedantry, and Ill-manners, is described 
 in the Battle of the Books— the paper which follows, and is a compan- 
 ion to the Tale of a Tub. 
 
34G 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 [From 4 'The Critic," October 27, I860.] 
 
 COVENTRY PATMORE'S "FAITHFUL FOR EVER:" 
 
 To the Editor of " The Critic:' 
 
 Sir : I do not doubt, from what I have observed ot 
 general tone of the criticisms in your columns, that, in canAov 
 and courtesy, you will allow me to enter protest, bearing such 
 worth as private opinion may, against the estimate expressed 
 in your last number of the merits of Mr. C. Patmore's new 
 poem. 1 It seems to me that you have read it hastily ; and 
 that you have taken such view of it as on a first reading 
 almost every reader of good but impatient judgment would be 
 but too apt to concur with you in adopting — one, nevertheless, 
 which, if you examine the poem with care, you will, I think, 
 both for your readers' sake and Mr. Patmore's, regret having 
 expressed so decidedly. 
 
 The poem is, to the best of my perception and belief, a 
 singularly perfect piece of art ; containing, as all good art 
 does, many very curious shortcomings (to appearance), and 
 places of rest, or of dead color, or of intended harshness, 
 which, if they are seen or quoted without the parts of the 
 piece to which they relate, are of course absurd enough, pre- 
 cisely as the discords in a fine piece of music would be if you 
 played them without their resolutions. You have quoted 
 separately Mr. Patmore's discords ; you might by the same 
 system of examination have made Mozart or Mendelssohn 
 appear to be no musicians, as you have probably convinced 
 your quick readers that Mr. Patmore is no poet. 
 
 I will not beg of you so much space as would be necessay 
 to analyze the poem, but I hope you will let me — once for all 
 — protest against the method of criticism which assumes that 
 entire familiarity and simplicity in certain portions of a great 
 work destroy its dignity. Simple things ought to be simply 
 said, and truly poetical diction is nothing more nor less than 
 right diction ; the incident being itself poetical or not, accord- 
 
 * The tone of the criticism is sufficiently explained in this letter. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 347 
 
 ing to its relations and the feelings which it is intended to 
 manifest — not according to its own nature merely. To take 
 a single instance out of Homer bearing on that same simple 
 household work which you are so shocked at Mr. Patmore's 
 taking notice of, Homer describes the business of a family 
 washing, when it comes into his poem, in the most accurate 
 terms he can find. " They took the clothes in their hands ; 
 and poured on the clean water ; and trod them in trenches 
 thoroughly, trying who could do it best ; and when they had 
 washed them and got off all the dirt, they spread them out 
 on the sea-beach, where the sea had blanched the shingle 
 cleanest." 1 
 
 These are the terms in which the great poet explains the 
 matter. The less poet — or, rather, man of modern wit and 
 
 1 See Homer, Odyssey, vi. 90. 
 
 E'luara x^P^ eKovro Kal £cr<p6p€oy fxe\av uSeop, 
 "STuftov 5'eV fS6&poi<n &ows epiBa irpo(p€pov<rcu. 
 Avrkp iirel irKvvdv T€ Kufrypdv re pvita irdpra t 
 'Ej-eirjs iceracrav irapa ffiv' a\bs, f)X l ^d\tara 
 Aaiyyas ttot\ xipGov anwAvj/ecr/ce frdAacaa. 
 
 Ilie verse translation of this passage given in the letter is from Pope's 
 Odyssey. 
 
 The lines in Faithful for Ever, particularly alluded to as having been 
 condemned by the u Critic,'' were those here italicized in the following 
 passage : 
 
 44 For your sake I am glad to hear 
 You sail so soon. T send you, Dear, 
 A trifling present ; and will supply 
 Your Salisbury costs. You have to buy 
 Almost an outfit for this cruise ! 
 But many are good enough to xise 
 
 Again, among the things you send 
 To give away. My maid shall mend 
 And let you have them back. Adieu 1 
 Tell me of all you see and do. 
 I know, thank God, whate'er it be, 
 'Twill need no veil 'twixt you and me." 
 
 (laitnml for Ever, p. 17, II. " Mrs. Graham to Frederick/' her sailor 
 son.) 
 
348 
 
 A11R0W8 OF THE C II ACE. 
 
 breeding, without superior poetical power — thus puts the afr 
 fair into dignified language : 
 
 Then emulous the royal robes they lave, 
 And plunge the vestures in the cleansing wave. 
 (The vestures cleansed o'erspread the shelly sand, 
 Their snowy lustre whitens all the strand.) 
 
 Now, to my mind, Homer's language is by far the most poeti- 
 cal of the two — is, in fact, the only poetical language possible 
 in the matter. Whether it was desirable to give any account 
 of this, or anything else, depends wholly on the relation of 
 the passage to the rest of the poem, and you could only show 
 Mr. Patmore's glance into the servant's room to be ridiculous 
 by proving the mother's mind, which it illustrates, to be ridic- 
 ulous. Similarly, if you were to take one of Mr. George Bich- 
 mond's perfectest modern portraits, and give a little separate 
 engraving of a bit of the neck-tie or coat-lappet, you might 
 easily demonstrate a very prosaic character either in the rib- 
 and-end or the button-hole. But the only real question re- 
 specting them is their relation to the face, and the degree in 
 which they help to express the character of the wearer. 
 What the real relations of the parts are in the poem in ques- 
 tion only a thoughtful and sensitive reader will discover. 
 The poem is not meant for a song, or calculated for an hour's 
 amusement ; it is, as I said, to the best of my belief, a finished 
 and tender work of very noble art. Whatever on this head 
 may be the final judgment of the public, I am bound, for my 
 own part, to express my obligation to Mr. Patmore, as one of 
 my severest models and tutors in use of English, and my 
 respect for him as one of the truest and tenderest thinkers 
 who have ever illustrated the most important, because com- 
 monest, states of noble human life. 1 
 
 I remain, Sir, yours, etc., 
 Denmark Hill. J. Buskin. 
 
 1 See Sesame and Lilies (Ruskin's Works, vol. i.), p. 89, note. 
 " Coventry Patmore. You cannot read him too often or too carefully ; 
 as far as I know lie is the only living poet who always strengthens and 
 purines ; the others sometimes darken, and nearly always depress and 
 discourage, the imagination they deeply seize." 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS, 
 
 349 
 
 [From " The Asiatic,' 1 May 23, 1871.] 
 
 " THE QUEEN OF THE AIR." 
 
 To the Editor of <? TJie Asiatic:' 
 
 Sir : I am obliged and flattered by the tone of your article 
 on ray " Queen of the Air " in your last number, but not at all 
 by the substance of it ; and it so much misinterprets my 
 attempt in that book that I will ask your leave to correct it in 
 main points. 1 The " Queen of the Air " was written to show, 
 not what could be fancied, but what was felt and meant, in the 
 myth of Athena. Every British sailor knows that Neptune is 
 the god of the sea. He does not know that Athena is the 
 goddess of the air ; I doubt if many of our school-boys know 
 it — I doubt even if many of our school-masters know it ; and 
 I believe the evidence of it given in the " Queen of the Air " 
 to be the first clear and connected approximate proof of it 
 which has yet been rendered by scientific mythology, properly 
 so called. 
 
 You say, "I have not attempted to explain all mythology. " 
 I wonder what you would have said of me if I had f I only 
 know a little piece of it here and there, just as I know a crag 
 of alp or a bend of river ; and even what I know could not be 
 put into a small octavo volume. Nevertheless, I should have 
 had another such out by this time on the Apolline Myths, and, 
 perhaps, one on the Earth-Gods, but for my Oxford work ; 
 and shall at all events have a little more to say on the matter 
 than I have yet said — and much need there is — when all that 
 has yet been done by " scientific " mythology ends in the as- 
 sertion made by your reviewer, that " mythology is useful 
 mainly as a storehouse for poets, and for literary men in want 
 of some simile or metaphor to produce a striking effect." 
 
 I am, Sir, your faithful servant, 
 
 May 18, 1871- John Ruskin. 
 
 1 The article was entitled Aryan Mythology : Second Notice, the first 
 notice having been a review of Mr. Gladstone s Juventus Mundi, and of 
 some other mythological works. (See the Asiatic, April 25 and May 16, 
 1871.) The nature of the praise and criticism of the article may be gath- 
 ered from this letter. 
 
350 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHAOE. 
 
 [From "The Morning Chronicle," January 20, 1855. (Reprinted in " The Evening Jour* 
 nal," January 22.)] 
 
 THE ANIMALS OF SCRIPTURE: A REVIEW. 1 
 
 Among the various illustrated works which usually grace 
 the beginning of the year, has appeared one which, though of 
 graver and less attractive character than its companions, is 
 likely to occupy a more permanent place on the library 
 shelves. We allude to " Illustrations of Scripture, by an 
 Animal Painter, " a work which, whatever its faults or weak- 
 nesses, shows at least a singular power of giving reality and 
 interest to scenes which are apt to be but feebly, if at all, 
 brought before the mental vision, in consequence of our famil- 
 iarity with the words which describe them. The idea of the 
 work is itself sufficiently original. The animals are through- 
 out principal, and the pathos or moral of the passage to be 
 illustrated is developed from its apparently subordinate part 
 in it. Thus the luxury and idolatry of the reign of Solomon 
 are hinted behind a group of " apes and peacocks ; " the Del- 
 uge is subordinate to the dove ; and the healing of the lunatic 
 at Gennesareth to the destruction of the herd of swine. 
 
 In general, to approach an object from a new point of view 
 is to place it in a clearer light, and perhaps the very strange- 
 ness of the treatment in some cases renders the subject more 
 impressive than it could have been made by any more regular 
 method of conception. But, at all events, supposing the 
 studies of the artist to have been chiefly directed to animals, 
 and her power to lie principally in seizing their character, 
 she is to be thanked for filling her sketches of the inferior 
 creatures with so much depth of meaning, and rendering the 
 delineation even of an ape, or a swallow, suggestive of the 
 most solemn trains of thought. 
 
 1 The full title of the book here reviewed by Mr. Ruskin, and long 
 since out of print, was Twenty Photographs ; being illustrations of Scrip- 
 ture. By an Animal Painter ; with Notes by a Naturalist. Imperial 
 4to. Edinburgh : Constable, 1854. The work was, however, reprinted, 
 with engravings of the photographs, in Good Words for 1861. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 351 
 
 As so suggestive, without pretence or formalism, these 
 drawings deserve a place of peculiar honor in the libraries of 
 the young, while there are also some qualities in them which 
 fit them for companionship with more elaborate works of art. 
 The subject of " Lazarus " is treated with a courage and ten- 
 derness which say much for the painter's imagination, and 
 more for her heart ; and the waste of waters above which the 
 raven hovers is expressed, though rudely, yet in a way which 
 tells of many an hour spent in watching the play of the even- 
 ing light upon the movement of the wearied sea. It is true 
 that most of the compositions are weakened by a very visible 
 contempt, if not ignorance, of the laws which regulate the 
 harmonies of shade, as well as by a painful deficiency in the 
 drawing. Still there is a life and sincerity in them which are 
 among the rarest qualities in art ; and one characteristic, very 
 remarkable in the works of a person described in the text (we 
 doubt not, much against her will) as an " accomplished lady * 
 — we mean the peculiar tendency to conceptions of tearful- 
 ness, or horror, rather than of beauty. The camel, for in- 
 stance, might, we should have thought, as easily, and to many 
 persons much more pleasingly, have illustrated the meeting 
 of Eebekah with the servant of Abraham, as the desolation 
 of Kabbah ; and the dog might as gracefully have been 
 brought forward to remind us of the words of the Syro-Phoeni- 
 cian woman, as to increase the horror of the death of Jezebel. 
 There are curious evidences of a similar disposition in some 
 of the other plates ; and while it appears to us indicative of 
 the strength of a mind of no common order, we would cau- 
 tion the fair artist against permitting it to appear too fre- 
 quently. It renders the series of drawings in some degree 
 repulsive to many persons, and even by those who can sym- 
 pathize with it might sometimes be suspected of having its 
 root in a sublime kind of affectation. 
 
 We have spoken of these studies as drawings. They are, 
 in fact, as good, being photographic fac-similes of the original 
 sketches. The text is copious, and useful as an elucidation 
 of the natural history of Scripture. 
 
352 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 [From " The Builder," December 9, 1854.] 
 
 " LIMNER '' AND ILL JJMINA TION. 1 
 To the Editor of " The Builder:' 
 
 I clo not usually answer objections to my written state- 
 ments, otherwise I should waste my life in idle controversy ; 
 but as what I say to the workmen at the Architectural Museum 
 is necessarily brief, and in its words, though not in its sub- 
 stance, unconsidered, I will answer, if you will permit me, 
 any questions or cavils which you may think worthy of admis- 
 sion into your columns on the subject of these lectures. 
 
 I do not know if the Cambridge correspondent, whose letter 
 you inserted last week, is more zealous for the honor of Cary, 
 or anxious to detect me in a mistake. If the former, he will 
 find if he take the trouble to look at the note in the 264th 
 page of the second volume of the " Stones of Venice," that 
 Gary's reputation is not likely to suffer at my hands. 2 But 
 
 1 In his lecture on "the distinction "between illumination and paint- 
 ing," being the first of a series on Decorative Color delivered at the Archi- 
 tectural Museum, Cannon Street, Westminster, Mr. Ruskin is reported 
 (Builder, Nov. 25, 1854) to have said, " The line which is given by Cary, 
 4 which they of Paris call the limner's skill,' is not properly translated. 
 The word which in the original is ' alluminare^ does not mean the lim- 
 ner's art, but the art of the illuminator — the writer and illuminator of 
 books." In criticism of this remark, u M. A.," writing to the Builder 
 from Cambridge, defended Cary's translation by referring to Johnson's 
 dictionary to show that " limner " was after all corrupted from u enlum- 
 ineur," i.e., "a decorator of books with initial pictures/' His letter 
 concluded by remarking upon another of Mr. Buskin's statements in 
 the same lecture, namely, that u Black letter is not really illegible, it is 
 only that we are not accustomed to it. . . The fact is, no kind 
 of character is really illegible. If you wish to see real illegibility, go to 
 the Houses of Parliament and look at the inscriptions there ! " 
 
 The present letter was written in reply to " M. A.," from whom the 
 latter portion of it elicited a further letter, together with one from 
 " Vindex, M in defence or Sir Charles Barry and the Houses of Parlia- 
 ment (see the Builder, Dec. 16, 1854). 
 
 2 " It is generally better to read ten lines of any poet in the original 
 language, however painfully, than ten cantos of a translation. But an 
 exception may be made in favor of Cary"s ' Dante,' If no poet ever 
 was liable to lose more in translation, none was ever so carefully trans- 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 353 
 
 the translation in the instance quoted is inadmissible. It does 
 not matter in the least whence the word " limner 99 is derived. 
 I did not know when I found fault with it that it was a cor- 
 ruption of ' ' illuminator," but I knew perfectly that it did not 
 in the existing state of the English language mean " illuminat- 
 or. " No one talks of " limning a missal," or of a " limned missal." 
 The word is now universally understood as signifying a painter 
 or draughtsman in the ordinary sense, and cannot be accepted 
 as a translation of the phrase of which it is a corruption. 
 
 Touching the last clause of the letter, I should have thought 
 that a master of arts of Cambridge might have had wit enough 
 to comprehend that characters may be illegible by being far 
 off, as well as by being ill-shaped ; and that it is not less diffi- 
 cult to read what is too small to be seen than what is too 
 strange to be understood. The inscriptions on the Houses of 
 Parliament are illegible, not because they are in black letters, 
 but because, like all the rest of the work on that, I suppose 
 the most effeminate and effectless heap of stones ever raised by 
 man, they are utterly unfit for their position. 
 
 J. RuSKIN. 
 
 [From the " Transactions of the New Shakspere Society " for 187 -SO, pp. 409-12.] 
 
 NOTES ON A WORD IN SHAKESPEARE^ 
 % 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire. 
 My dear Furnivall : Of course, in any great writer's word, 
 the question is far less what the word came from, than where 
 
 lated ; and I hardly know whether most to admire the rigid fidelity, or 
 the sweet and solemn harmony, of Cary's verse," etc. See the note to 
 the Stones of Venice, at the above-named page. 
 
 1 This and the next letter were written in answer to Mr. Furnivall, 
 who, upon being questioned what appearance in the clouds was in- 
 tended by the word 1 1 fret" in the above passage, referred the point to 
 Mr. Ruskin, whose answers were subsequently read at the forty-fifth 
 meeting of the Society, Oct. 11, 1878. 
 
 " And yon gray lines 
 Thai fret the clouds are messengers of day." 
 
 Julius Cesar, II. i. 103-4. 
 
354 
 
 ARROWS OF THE OH ACE. 
 
 it lias come to. Fret means all manner of things in that 
 place ; primarily, the rippling of clouds — as sea by wind ; 
 secondarily, the breaking it asunder for light to come through. 
 It implies a certain degree of vexation — some dissolution — • 
 much order, and extreme beauty. I have myself used this 
 word substantively, to express the rippled edge of a wing- 
 feather. In architecture and jewellery it means simply rough- 
 ening in a decorative manner.* 
 
 Ever affectionately yours, 
 
 J. Buskin. 
 
 NOTES ON A WORD IN SHAKESPEARE. 
 
 n. 
 
 Edinburgh, 29th Sept, 1878. 
 
 Dear Furnivall : Your kind letter comes to me here, and 
 I must answer on this paper, for, if that bit of note is really 
 of any use to you, you must please add this word or two more, 
 in printing, as it wouldn't do to let it be such a mere fret on 
 the vault of its subject. You say not one man in 150 knows 
 what the line means : my dear Furnivall, not one man in 15,000, 
 in the 19th century, knows, or even can know, what any line — 
 or any ivord means, used by a great writer. For most words 
 stand for things that are seen, or things that are thought of ; 
 and in the 19th century there is certainly not one man in 
 15,000 who ever looks at anything, and not one in 15,000,000 
 capable of a thought. Take the intelligence of this word in 
 this line for example — the root of the whole matter is, first, 
 that the reader should have seen what he has often heard of, 
 but probably not seen twice in his life— " Daybreak." Next, 
 it is needful he should think what " break " means in that 
 word — what is broken, namely, and by what. That is to say, 
 the cloud of night is Broken up, as a city is broken up (Jeru- 
 
 * In modern English " chasing " has got confused with it, 
 but it should be separated again. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 355 
 
 salem, when Zedekiah fled), as a school breaks up, as a 
 constitution, or a ship, is broken up ; in every case with a not 
 inconsiderable change of idea and addition to the central 
 word. This breaking up is done by the Day, which breaks — 
 out, as a man breaks, or bursts out, from his restraint in a 
 passion ; breaks down in tears ; or breaks in, as from heaven 
 to earth — with a breach in the cloud-wall of it ; or breaks out, 
 with a sense of outward — as the sun — out and out, farther and 
 farther, after rain. Well ; next, the thing that the day breaks 
 up is partly a garment, rent, more than broken ; a mantle, the 
 day itself "in russet mantle clad" — the blanket of the dark, 
 torn to be peeped through — whereon instantly you get into a 
 whole host of new ideas ; fretting as a moth frets a garment ; 
 unravelling at the edge, afterwards ; — thence you get into 
 fringe, which is an entirely double word, meaning partly a 
 thing that guards, and partly a thing that is worn away on the 
 ground ; the French Frange has, I believe, a reminiscence of 
 ^pacrcraj in it — our "fringe" runs partly toward frico and 
 friction — both are essentially connected with frango, and the 
 fringe of "breakers" at the shores of all seas, and the break- 
 ing of the ripples and foam all over them — but this is wholly 
 different in a northern mind, which has only seen the sea 
 
 Break, break, break, on its cold gray stones, — 
 
 and a southern, which has seen a hot sea on hot sand break 
 into lightning of phosphor flame — half a mile of fire in an 
 instant — following in time, like the flash of minute-guns. 
 Then come the great new ideas of order and time, and 
 
 I did but tell her she mistook her frets, 
 And bowed her hand, etc. , 
 
 and so the timely succession of either ball, flower, or dentil, in 
 architecture : but this, again, going off to a totally different 
 and still lovely idea, the main one in the word aurifrigium — 
 which rooted once in aurifex, went on in Etruscan work, fol- 
 lowed in Florence into a much closer connection with frigid m 
 — their style being always in frosted gold (see th© dew on a 
 
35G 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 cabbage-leaf or, better, on a gray lichen, in early sunshine)—* 
 going back, nobody knows how far, but to the Temple of the 
 Dew of Athens, and gold of Mycense, anyhow ; and in Etruria 
 to the Deluge, I suppose. Well, then, the notion of the music 
 of morning comes in — with strings of lyre (or frets of Katha- 
 rine's instrument, whatever it was) and stops of various q uills ; 
 which gets us into another group beginning with plectrum, 
 going aside again into plico and plight, and Milton's 
 
 " Play in the plighted clouds " 
 
 (the quills on the fretful porcupine are all thought of, first, in 
 their piped complexity like rushes, before the standing up 
 in ill-temper), and so on into the plight of folded drapery, and 
 round again to our blanket. I think that's enough to sketch 
 out the compass of the word. Of course the real power of it 
 in any place depends on the writer's grasp of it, and use of 
 the facet he wants to cut with. 
 
 [From M The Theatre," March 1880, p. 169.] 
 
 "THE MERCHANT OF VENICE."* 
 
 6th Feb., 1880. 
 
 I have no doubt that whatever Mr. Irving has stated that I 
 said, I did say. But in personal address to an artist, to whom 
 
 1 The circumstances connected with the present letter, or rather ex- 
 tract from one, are as follows : After witnessing the performance of 
 The Merchant of Venice at the Lyceum Theatre, Mr. Ruskin had 
 some conversation with Mr. Irving on the subject. In the Theatre of 
 January 1880 — p. 63 — appeared a paragraph which stated that at the 
 interview named Mr. Ruskin had declared Mr. Irving's "Shylock" to 
 he " noble, tender, and true," and it is to that statement that the present 
 letter, which appeared in the March number of the Theatre, relates. 
 With reference to the letter privately addressed to Mr. Irving, the The- 
 atre of April (p. 249) had a note to the effect that Mr. Irving had, for 
 excellent and commendable reasons, preferred it not being made public. 
 For a full statement of Mr. Ruskin's view3 of The Merchant of Venice, 
 see Munera Pulveris, p. 102. 
 
MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS. 
 
 357 
 
 one is introduced for the first time, one does not usually say 
 all that may be in one's mind. And if expressions, limited, 
 if not even somewhat exaggerated, by courtesy, be afterwards 
 quoted as a total and carefully-expressed criticism, the gen- 
 eral reader will be — or may be easily — much misled. I did 
 and do much admire Mr. Irving's own acting of Shylock. 
 But I entirely dissent (and indignantly as well as entirely) 
 from his general reading and treatment of the play. And I 
 think that a modern audience will invariably be not only 
 wrong, but diametrically and with polar accuracy opposite to, 
 the real view of any great author in the moulding of his work. 
 
 So far as I could in kindness venture, I expressed my feel- 
 ings to that effect, in a letter which I wrote to Mr. Irving on 
 the day after I saw the play ; and I should be sincerely 
 obliged to him, under the existing circumstances, if he would 
 publish the whole of that letter. 
 
 RECITATIONS. 
 
 Sheffield, lQth February, 1880. 
 My dear Sir : 1 I am most happy to assure you, in reply to 
 your interesting letter of the 12th, that I heard your daugh- 
 ters' recitations in London last autumn, with quite unmixed 
 pleasure and the sincerest admiration — nor merely that, but 
 with grave change in my opinions of the general value of rec- 
 itations as a means of popular instruction. Usually, I like 
 better to hear beautiful poetry read quietly than recited with 
 action. But I felt, in hearing Shelley's " Cloud " recited (I 
 think it was by Miss Josephine) that I also was " one of the 
 people," and understood the poem better than ever before, 
 though I am by way of knowing something about clouds, too. 
 I also know the " Jackdaw of Rheims " pretty nearly by heart ; 
 
 1 This letter was addressed to Mr. R. T. Webling, by whom it was 
 afterwards printed as a testimonial of the interest and success of his 
 daughters' recitations. It was reprinted in the Daily News (Feb. 18, 
 1880). 
 
358 
 
 ARROWS OF THE CHACE. 
 
 but I would gladly come to London straightway, had I the 
 time, to hear Miss Peggy speak it again. And — in fine — I 
 have not seen any public entertainment — for many a long 
 year — at once so sweet, so innocent, and so helpful, as that 
 which your children can give to all the gentle and simple in 
 mind and heart. — Believe me, my dear Sir, faithfully, and 
 with all felicitation, yours, 
 
 J. Ruskin. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 [From the '« Testimonials" of W. C. Bennett, LL.D. 1871 ; p. 22.] 
 
 LETTER TO W. C. BENNETT, LL.D. 1 
 
 Herne Hill, Dulwich, December 28th, 1852. 
 Dear Mr. Bennett : I hope this line will arrive in time to 
 wish you and yours a happy New Year, and to assure you of 
 the great pleasure I had in receiving your poems from you, and 
 of the continual pleasure I shall have in possessing them. I 
 deferred writing to you in order that I might tell you how I 
 liked those which were new to me, but Christmas, and certain 
 little "pattering pairs of restless shoes " which have somehow 
 or another got into the house in his train, have hitherto pre- 
 vented me from settling myself for a quiet read. In fact, I 
 am terribly afraid of being quite turned upside down when I 
 do, so as to lose my own identity, for you have already nearly 
 made me like babies, and I see an ode further on to another 
 antipathy of mine — the only one I have in the kingdom of 
 flowers— the chrysanthemum. However, I am sure you will 
 be well pleased if you can cure me of all dislikes. I should 
 write to you now more cheerfully, but that I am anxious for 
 
 1 The present letter is from the Testimonials of W. C. Bennett, LL.D., 
 Candidate for the Clerkship of the London School Board. The pam- 
 phlet consists of " letters from distinguished men of the time," and in- 
 cludes some from Mr. Carlyle, Mr. Tennyson, Mr. Browning, Charles 
 Dickens, and others. Mr. Ruskin's letter was originally addressed to 
 Mr. Bennett in thanks for a copy of his Poems (Chapman and Hall, 
 1850). The poems specially alluded to are u Toddling May" (from 
 which Mr. Ruskin quotes), "Baby May," and another, "To the Chry- 
 santhemum." The book is dedicated to Miss M,itford. 
 
860 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 the person who, of all I know, has fewest dislikes and warm- 
 est likings— for Miss Mitford. I trust she is better, and that 
 she may be spared for many years to come. I don't know if 
 England has such another warm heart. 
 
 I hope I may have the pleasure of seeing you here in case 
 your occasions should at any time bring you to London, and 
 I remain, with much respect, most truly yours, 
 
 J. EUSKIN. 
 
 [From the " Memoir of Thomas Guthrie, D.D." Vol. ii. pp. 321-2 (1875).] 
 
 LETTER TO DR. GUTHRIE.' 
 
 Saturday, 26t7i, 1853. 
 
 I found a little difficulty in writing the words on the first 
 page, wondering whether you would think the " affectionate " 
 misused or insincere. But I made up my mind at last to write 
 what I felt ; believing that you must be accustomed to people's 
 getting very seriously and truly attached to you, almost at 
 first sight, and therefore would believe me. 
 
 You asked me, the other evening, some kind questions about 
 my father. He was an Edinburgh boy, and in answer to some 
 account by me of the pleasure I had had in hearing you, and 
 the privilege of knowing you, as also of your exertions in the 
 cause of the Edinburgh poor, he desires to send you the en- 
 closed, to be applied by you in such manner as you may think 
 fittest for the good of his native city. I have added slightly 
 to my father's trust. I wish I could have done so more largely, 
 but my profession of fault-finding with the world in general 
 is not a lucrative one. 
 
 Always respectfully and affectionately yours, 
 
 J. EUSKIN. 
 
 1 This letter accompanied the gift of a copy of The Stones of Venice, 
 sent to Dr. Guthrie by Mr. Ruskin, who, while residing in Edinburgh 
 during the winter of 1853, "was to be found each Sunday afternoon in 
 St. John's Free Church. " 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 361 
 
 [From "The Times," March 29, 1859.] 
 
 THE SALE OF MR. WIND US' PICTURES. 
 
 To the Editor of 11 The Times:' 
 
 Sir : Will you oblige me by correcting an error in your 
 account given this morning of the sale of Mr. Windus' pictures 
 on Saturday, in which the purchase of Mr. Millais's picture 
 " Pot Pourri " is attributed to me ? I neither purchased Mr. 
 Millais's picture, nor any other picture at that sale. 
 
 t have the honor to be, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 J. Euskin. 
 
 Denmark Hill, March 28. 
 
 [From " The Pall Mall Gazette," March 1, 1867.] 
 
 AT THE PLAY. 
 
 To tlie Editor of" The Pall Mall Gazette:' 
 
 Sir : I am writing a series of private letters on matters of 
 political economy to a working man in Newcastle, without 
 objecting to his printing them, but writing just as I should 
 if they were for his eye only. I necessarily take copies of 
 them for reference, and the one I sent him last Monday seems 
 to me not unlikely to interest some of your readers who care 
 about modern drama. So I send you the copy of it to use if 
 you like. 2 
 
 Truly yours, 
 
 J. Ruskin. 
 
 Denmark Hill, Feb. 28, 1867. 
 
 1 The collection of pictures belonging to Mr. B. G. Windus was sold 
 by Messrs. Christie and Man son on March 26, 1859. 
 
 2 The enclosed letter is Letter V. of Time and Tide. 
 
362 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 [Prom "The Daily Telegraph," January 22, 1868.] 
 
 AN OBJECT OF CHARITY. 1 
 
 To the Editor of " The Daily Telegraph:' 
 
 Sir : Except in " Gil Bias," I never read of anything As- 
 trsean on the earth so perfect as the story in your fourth arti- 
 cle to-day. 
 
 I send you a check for the Chancellor. If 40, in legal 
 terms, means 400, you must explain the further requirements 
 to your impulsive public. 
 
 I am, Sir, your faithful servant, 
 
 J. Ruskin. 
 
 Denmark Hill, S., Jan. 21, 1868. 
 
 j EXCUSES FROM CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 j 
 
 Denmark Hill, S. , 
 
 2d February, 1868. 
 
 I am about to enter on some work which cannot be well 
 done or even approximately well, unless without interruption, 
 and it would be desirable for me, were it in my power, to leave 
 home for some time, and carry out my undertaking in seclusion. 
 But as my materials are partly in London, I cannot do this ; 
 
 J Tlie Daily Telegraph of January 21, 1868, contained a leading arti- 
 cle upon the following facts. It appeared that a girl, named Matilda 
 Griggs, had been nearly murdered by her seducer, who, after stabbing 
 her in no less than thirteen different places, had then left her for dead. 
 She had, however, still strength enough to crawl into a field close by, and 
 there swooned. The assistance that she met with in this plight was or! 
 a rare kind. Two calves came up to her, and disposing themselves on 
 either side of her bleeding body, thus kept her warm and partly shel- 
 tered from cold and rain. Temporarily preserved, the girl eventually 
 recovered, and entered into recognizances, under the sum of forty 
 pounds, to prosecute her murderous lover. But " she loved much/ 7 
 and, failing to prosecute, forfeited her recognizances, and was impris- 
 oned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer for her debt. 4 ' Pity this poor 
 debtor," wrote the Daily Telegraph, and in the next day's issue appeared 
 the above letter, probably not intended for the publication accorded to it. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 3G3 
 
 so that my only alternative is to ask you to think of me as if 
 actually absent from England, and not to be displeased though 
 I must decline all correspondence. And I pray you to trust 
 my assurance that, whatever reasons I may have for so uncouth 
 behavior, none of them are inconsistent with the respect and 
 regard in which I remain, 
 
 Faithfully yours, 1 
 
 [From " The Liverpool Weekly Albion," November 9, 1872.] 
 
 LETTER TO THE A UTTIOR OF A REVIEW.* 
 
 Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 
 Wednesday, 30th Oct. 
 
 [My Dsar] Sir : I was on the point of writing to the Editor 
 of The Albion to ask the name of the author of that article. Of 
 course, one likes praise [and Tin so glad of it that I can take a 
 great many kinds], but I never got any [that] I liked so much 
 before, because, as far as I [can] remember nobody ever noticed 
 
 1 The above letter, printed as a circular, was at one time used by Mr. 
 Ruskin in reply to part of his large correspondence. Some few copies 
 had the date printed on them as above. The following is a similar but 
 more recent excuse, printed at the end of the last " list of works n issued 
 (March, 1880) by Mr. Ruskin 1 s publisher: 
 
 Mr. Ruskin has always hitherto found his correspondents under the 
 impression that, when he is able for average literary work, he can also 
 answer any quantity of letters. He most respectfully and sorrowfully 
 must pray them to observe, that it is precisely when he is in most active 
 general occupation that he can answer fewest private letters ; and this 
 
 year he proposes to answer none, except those on St. George's business. 
 
 There will be enough news of him, for any who care to get them, in the 
 occasional numbers of " Fors. " 
 
 ' 2 The review was the first of three articles entitled "The Discipline 
 of Art and the Votary of Science," published in the Liverpool Weekly 
 Albion of November 9, 16, and 23, 1873. The first of them had also 
 appeared previously in the Liverpool Daily Albion, and was reprinted 
 with the present letter in the weekly issue of Nov. 9. The aim of the 
 articles was partly to show how the question "What is Art ? " involved 
 a second and deeper inquiry, " What is Man ? " The words bracketed 
 here were omitted in the Albion, but occur in the original letter, for 
 access to which I have to thank the writer of the articles. 
 
364 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 or allowed for the range of work I've had to do, and which really 
 has been dreadfully costly and painful to me, compelling me to 
 leave things just at the point when one's work on them has 
 become secure and delightsome, to attack them on another 
 rough side. It is a most painful manner of life, and I never 
 got any credit for it before. But the more I see, the more I 
 feel the necessity of seeing all round, however hastily. 
 
 I am entirely grateful for the review and the understanding 
 of me ; and I needed some help just now — for I'm at once 
 single-handed and dead — or worse — hearted, and as nearly 
 beaten as I've been in my life. 
 
 Always therefore I shall be, for the encouragement at a 
 heavy time, 
 
 Very gratefully yours, 
 
 (Signed) J. Buskin. 
 
 [From "The Globe," October 29, 1874.] 
 
 AN OXFORD PROTEST.* 
 
 The Slade Professor has tried for five years to please every- 
 body in Oxford by lecturing at any time that might be con- 
 veniently subordinate to other dates of study in the University. 
 He finds he has pleased nobody, and must for the future at 
 least make his hour known and consistent. He cannot alter it 
 this term because people sometimes come from a distance and 
 have settled their plans by the hours announced in the Gazette, 
 but for many reasons he thinks it right to change the place, 
 and will hereafter lecture in the theatre of the museum. 2 On 
 Friday the 30th he will not begin till half -past twelve to allow 
 settling time. Afterwards, all his lectures will be at twelve in 
 this and future terms. He feels that if he cannot be granted 
 so much as twelve hours of serious audience in working time 
 
 1 Mr. Ruskin had recently changed the hour of his lectures from 
 two to twelve, and the latter hour clashing with other lectures, some 
 complaints had been made. This "protest" was then issued on the 
 morning of October 29 and reprinted in the Globe of the same day. 
 
 2 Instead of in the drawing schools at the Taylor Gallery. 
 
APPENDIX, 
 
 0G5 
 
 during the whole Oxford year, he need not in future prepare 
 public lectures at which his pupils need not much regret their 
 non-attendance. 
 
 [From " The Standard, " August 28, 1877. Reprinted in the "Notes and Correspondence " 
 to " Fors Clavigera, 1 ' Letter lxxxi., September, 1877, vol. iv., p. 104.] 
 
 MR. B USKIN AND MB. L 0 WE. 
 
 To the Editor of 11 The Standard:' 
 
 Sir : My attention has been directed to an article in your 
 columns of the 22d inst., referring to a supposed correspond- 
 ence between Mr. Lowe and me. 1 Permit me to state that the 
 letter in question is not Mr. Lowe's. The general value of 
 your article as a review of my work and methods of writing 
 will, I trust, rather be enhanced than diminished by the cor- 
 rection, due to Mr. Lowe, of this original error ; and the more, 
 that your critic in the course of his review expresses his not 
 unjustifiable conviction that no correspondence between Mr. 
 Lowe and me is possible on any intellectual subject whatever- 
 I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 John Buskin 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire, 
 August 24. 
 
 [From the List of f * Mr. Shepherd's Publications " printed at the end of his " The Bibli* 
 ography of Dickens,"' 1S80.] 
 
 THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF BUSKIN. 
 I. 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston, 
 Sept. 30, 1878. 
 
 Dear Sir : So far from being distasteful to me, your perfect 
 reckoning up of me not only flatters my vanity extremely, but 
 
 1 The article in question stated that a number of Fors Clavigera had 
 been sent to Mr. Lowe, and commented on by him in a letter to Mr. 
 Ruskin. The last words of the article, alluded to above, were as fol- 
 lows : ' ■ The world will be made no wiser by any controversy between 
 Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Lowe, for it would be impossible to reduce their 
 figures or facts to a common denominator. " 
 
3G6 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 will be in the highest degree useful to myself. But you know 
 so much more about me than I now remember about any- 
 thing, that I can't find a single thing to correct or add — glanc-r 
 ing through at least. 
 
 I will not say that you have wasted your time ; but I may 
 at least regret the quantity of trouble the book must have 
 given you, and am, therefore, somewhat ashamedly, but very 
 gratefully yours, 
 
 J. EUSKIN. 
 
 R. H. Shepherd, Esq. 
 
 ii. 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston, 
 Oct. 23, 1878. 
 
 Dear Mr. Shepherd : I am very deeply grateful to you, as 
 I am in all duty bound, for this very curious record of myself. 
 It will be of extreme value to me in filling up what gaps I can 
 in this patched coverlid of my life before it is draped over my 
 coffin — if it may be. 
 
 I am especially glad to have note of the letters to news- 
 papers, but most chiefly to have the good news of so earnest 
 and patient a friend. Ever gratefully yours, 
 
 J. RlTSKIN. 
 
 [From the "First Annual Report" of the " Ruskin Society 1 ' (of the Rose;, Manchester, 
 
 1880.] 
 
 THE SOCIETY OF THE BOSK 1 
 
 " No, indeed, I don't want to discourage the plan you have 
 so kindly and earnestly formed, but I could not easily or dec- 
 orously promote it myself, could I ? But I fully proposed to 
 write you a letter to be read at the first meeting, guarding 
 you especially against an £ ism,' or a possibility of giving occa- 
 sion for one ; and I am exceedingly glad to receive your 
 present letter. Mine was not written because it gave me 
 trouble to think of it, and I can't take trouble now. But 
 
 1 This letter was written early in 1879 to the Secretary ))vo tern, of the 
 Ruskin Society of Manchester, in reply to a request io\ Mr. Ruskiu« 
 views upon the formation of such a Society. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 without thinking*, I can at once assure you that the taking of 
 the name of St. George ivould give me endless trouble, and 
 cause all manner of mistakes, and perhaps even legal difficul- 
 ties. We must not have that, please. 
 
 " But I think you might with grace and truth take the name 
 of the Society of the Kose — meaning the English wild rose — ■ 
 and that the object of the society would be to promote such 
 English learning and life as can abide where it grows. You 
 see it is the heraldic sign on my books, so that you might 
 still keep pretty close to me. 
 
 " Supposing this were thought too far-fetched or sentimen- 
 tal by the promoters of the society, I think the c More ' Society 
 would be a good name, following out the teaching of the 
 Utopia as it is taken up in 'Fors.' I can't write more to-day, 
 but I dare say something else may come into my head, and 
 I'll write again, or you can send me more names for choice/ 
 
 [From " The Autographic Mirror," December 23 and 3(1, 1805,] 
 
 LETTER TO W. M HARRISON 1 
 
 Dear Mr. Harrison : The plate I send is unluckily merely 
 outlined in its principal griffin (it is just being finished), but 
 it may render your six nights' work a little more amusing. I 
 don't want it back. 
 
 1 A facsimile of this letter, from a collection of autographs in the pos- 
 session of Mr. T. F. Dillon Croker, appeared in the above-named issue of 
 the Autographic Mirror. The subject of the letter will be made clearer 
 by the following passages from Mr. Buskin's reminiscence of Mr. Will* 
 iam Henry Harrison, published in the University Magazine of April, 
 1878, under the title of " My First Editor."— ' ' 1st February, 1878. in 
 seven days more I shall be fifty-nine ; which (practically) is all the same 
 as sixty ; but being asked by the wife of my dear old friend, W. H. 
 Harrison, to say a few words of our old relations together, I find myself, 
 in spite of all these years, a boy again — partly in the mere thought of, 
 and renewed sympathy with, the cheerful heart of my old literary mas- 
 ter, and partly in instinctive terror lest, wherever he is in celestial cir- 
 cles, he should catch me writing bad grammar, or putting wrong stops, 
 and should set the table turning, or the like. , . . Not a book of 
 
368 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Never mind putting "see to quotations/' as I always do. 
 And, in the second revise, don't look to all my alterations to 
 tick them off, but merely read straight through the new proof 
 to see if any mistake strikes you. This will be more useful 
 to me than the other. 
 
 Most truly yours, with a thousand thanks, 
 
 J. RuSKIIi. 
 
 [From the ** Journal of Dramatic Reform," November, 1880.] 
 
 DRAMA TIG REFORM. 1 
 
 id 
 
 My dear Sir : Yes, I began writing something — a year ago, 
 is it? — on your subject, but have lost it, and am now utterly 
 too busy to touch so difficult and so important a subject. I 
 shall come on it, some day, necessarily. 
 
 Meantime, the one thing I have to say mainly is that the 
 idea of making money by a theatre, and making it educational 
 at the same time, is utterly to be got out of people's heads. 
 You don't make money out of a Ship of the Line, nor should 
 you out of a Church, nor should you out of a College, nor 
 should you out of a Theatre. 
 
 Pay your Ship's officers, your Church officers, your College 
 tutors, and your Stage tutors, what will honorably maintain 
 them. Let there be no starring on the Stage boards, more 
 than on the deck, but the Broadside well delivered. 
 
 mine, for good thirty years, but went, every word of it, under his care- 
 ful eyes twice over — often also the last revises left to his tender mercy 
 altogether on condition he wouldn't bother me any more." — The book 
 to which the letter refers may be the Stones of Venice, and the plate 
 sent the third (Noble and Ignoble Grotesque), in the last volume of that 
 work ; and if this be so, the letter was probably written from Heme 
 Hill about 1852-3. 
 
 1 This and the following letter were both addressed to Mr. John Stuart 
 Bogg, the Secretary of the Dramatic Reform Association of Manchester. 
 The first was a reply to a request that Mr. Ruskin would, in accordance 
 with an old promise, write something on the subject of the Drama foi 
 the Society's journal ; and the second was added by its author on hear* 
 lug that it was the wish of the Society to publish the first. 
 
APPENDIX, 
 
 369 
 
 And let the English Gentleman consider with himself what 
 he has got to teach the people : perhaps then, he may tell the 
 English Actor what he has to teach them. 
 
 Ever faithfully yours, 
 
 (Signed) J. Ruskik. 
 
 Brantwood, July 80^, 1880. 
 
 ii. 
 
 My dear Sir : I am heartily glad you think my letter may 
 be of some use. I wish it had contained the tenth part of 
 what I wanted to say. 
 
 May I ask you at least to add this note to it, to tell how in- 
 dignant I was, a few days ago, to see the drop-scene (!) of the 
 Folies at Paris composed of huge advertisements ! The ghastly 
 want of sense of beauty, and endurance of loathsomeness gain- 
 ing hourly on the people ! 
 
 They were playing the Mile du Tambour Major superbly, 
 for the most part ; they gave the introductory convent scene 
 without the least caricature, the Abbess being played by a very 
 beautiful and gracefully-mannered actress, and the whole thing 
 would have been delightful had the mere decorations of the 
 theatre been clean and pretty. To think that all the strength 
 of the world combining in Paris to amuse itself can't have 
 clean box-curtains ! or a pretty landscape sketch for a drop 
 scene ! — but sits in squalor and dismalness, with bills stuck all 
 over its rideau ! 
 
 I saw Le Chalet here last night, in many respects well played 
 and sung, and it is a quite charming little opera in its story, 
 only it requires an actress of extreme refinement for the main 
 part, and everybody last night sang too loud. There is no 
 music of any high quality in it, but the piece is one which, 
 played with such delicacy as almost any clever, wellbred girl 
 could put into the heroine's part (if the audiences would look 
 for acting more than voice), ought to be extremely delightful 
 to simple persons. 
 
 On the other hand, I heard William Tell entirely massacred 
 at the great opera-house at Paris. My belief is they scarcely 
 sang a piece of pure Rossini all night, but had fitted in -mod- 
 
370 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 ern skimble-skamble tunes, and quite unspeakably clumsy and 
 common ballet. I scarcely came away in better humor from 
 the mouthed tediousness of Gerin at the Franpais, but they 
 took pains with it, and I suppose it pleased a certain class of 
 audience. The William Tell could please nobody at heart. 
 
 The libretto of Jean de Neville is very beautiful, and ought 
 to have new music written for it. Anything so helplessly tune- 
 less as its present music I never heard, except mosquitoes and 
 cicadas. 
 
 Ever faithfully yours, 
 
 (Signed) J. Buskin. 
 
 Amiens, October 12th, 1880. 
 
 [From the " Glasgow Herald," October 7, 1880.] 
 
 THE LORD RECTORSHIP OF GLASGOW UNIVERSITY. 1 
 
 I. 
 
 Bkantwood, Coniston, Lancashire, 10th June, 1880. 
 
 My dear Sir : I am greatly nattered by your letter, but 
 there are two reasons why I can't stand — the first, that though 
 I believe myself the stanchest Conservative in the British 
 Islands, I hold some opinions, and must soon clearly utter 
 them, concerning both lands and rents, which I fear the Con- 
 servative Club would be very far from sanctioning, and think 
 Mr. Bright himself had been their safer choice. The second, 
 that I am not in the least disposed myself to stand in any 
 contest where it is possible that Mr. Bright might beat me. 
 
 Are there really no Scottish gentlemen of birth and learn- 
 ing from whom you could choose a Rector worthier than Mr. 
 Bright ? and better able than any Southron to rectify what 
 
 1 Of these letters it should be noted that the first was written to the 
 President of the Conservative Club upon his requesting Mr. Ruskin to 
 stand for the Lord Rectorship ; the second in answer to a hope that Mr. 
 Ruskin would reconsider the decision he had expressed in his reply \ 
 and the third upon the receipt of a letter explaining what the duties of 
 the office were. The fourth letter refers to one which dealt with some 
 reflections made by the Liberal Club upon the former conduct of their 
 opponents. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 371 
 
 might be oblique, or hold straight what wasn't yet so, in a 
 Scottish University ? 
 
 Might I ask the favor of the transmission of a copy of this 
 letter to the Independent Club ? It will save me the diffi- 
 culty of repetition in other terms. And believe me, my dear 
 sir, always the club's and your faithful servant, 
 
 (Signed) J. Buskin. 
 
 Matt. P. Fraser, Esq. 
 
 ii. 
 
 13^ June, 1880. 
 
 My dear Sir : I am too tired at this moment (I mean this 
 day or two back) to be able to think. My health may break 
 down any day, and I cannot bear a sense of having to do any- 
 thing. If you would take me on condition of my residence 
 for a little while with you, and giving a little address to the 
 students after I had seen something of them, I think I could 
 come, but I won't stand ceremonies nor make long speeches, 
 and you really should try to get somebody else. 
 
 Ever respectfully yours, 
 
 (Signed) J. Ruskin. 
 
 Matt. P. Fraser, Esq. 
 
 hi. 
 
 Mih June, 1880. 
 
 My dear Sir : I am grieved at my own vacillation, and fear 
 it is more vanity than sense of duty in which I leave this mat- 
 ter of nomination to your own pleasure. But I had rather 
 err in vanity than in heartlessness, and so will do my best for 
 you if you want me. 
 
 Ever respectfully yours, 
 
 (Signed) J. Ruskin. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Rouen, 2Sth September, 1880. 
 Sir : I am obliged by your letter, but can absolutely pay no 
 regard to anything said or done by Mr. Bright's Committee 
 beyond requesting my own committees to print for their in- 
 spection — or their use — in any way they like, every word of 
 every letter I haVe written to my supporters, or non-support* 
 
372 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 ers, or any other person in Glasgow, so far as such letters may 
 be recoverable. Faithfully yours, 
 
 (Signed) J. Buskin. 
 
 Matt. P. Fraser, Esq. 
 
 v. 1 
 
 [From "The Glasgow Herald," October 12, 1880.] 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire. 
 
 My dear Sir : What in the devil's name have you to do 
 with either Mr. Disraeli or Mr. Gladstone? You are stu- 
 dents at the University, and have no more business with poli- 
 tics than you have with rat-catching. 
 
 Had you ever read ten words of mine [with understanding] 
 you would have known that I care no more [either] for Mr. 
 Disraeli or Mr. Gladstone than for two old bagpipes with the 
 drones going by steam, but that I hate all Liberalism as I do 
 Beelzebub, and that, with Carlyle, I stand, we two alone now 
 in England, for God and the Queen. 
 
 Ever faithfully yours, 
 
 J. KUSKIN. 
 
 Alex. Mitchell, Esq. , Avoch, by Inverness. 
 
 P.S. — You had better, however, ask the Conservatives for a 
 copy of my entire letters to them. 
 
 1 Upon the terms of this letter, which was written in answer to a ques- 
 tion whether Mr. Ruskin sympathized with Lord Beaconsfield or with 
 Mr. Gladstone, the reader is referred to the Epilogue. The bracketed 
 words were omitted in the Glasgow Herald. 
 
EPILOGUE. 
 
 I find my immitigable Editor insists on epilogue as well 
 as prologue from his submissive Author ; which would have 
 fretted me a little, since the last letter of the series appears to 
 me a very pretty and comprehensive sum of the matters in 
 the book, had not the day on which, as Fors would have it, I 
 am to write its last line, brought to my mind something of 
 importance which I forgot to say in the preface ; nor will it 
 perhaps be right to leave wholly without explanation the short 
 closing letter to which I have just referred. 
 
 It should be observed thai it was written to the President 
 of the Liberal party of the Glasgow students, in answer to the 
 question which I felt to be wholly irrelevant to the business 
 in hand, and which could not have been answered in anything 
 like official terms with anything short of a forenoon's work. I 
 gave the answer, therefore, in my own terms, not in the least 
 petulant, but chosen to convey as much information as I could 
 in the smallest compass ; and carrying it accurately faceted 
 and polished on the angles. 
 
 For instance, I never, under any conditions of provocation 
 or haste, would have said that I hated Liberalism as I did 
 Mammon, or Belial, or Moloch. I chose the milder fiend of 
 Ekron, as the true exponent and patron of Liberty, the God 
 of Flies ; and if my Editor, in final kindness, can refer the 
 reader to the comparison of the House-fly and House-dog, in 
 (he, and not I, must say where) 1 the letter will have received 
 all the illustration which I am minded to give it. I was only 
 surprised that after its publication, of course never intended, 
 
 1 See The Queen of the Air, §§ 148-152 (1874 Ed.). 
 
374 
 
 EPILOGUE. 
 
 though never forbidden by me, it passed with so little chal* 
 lenge, and was, on the whole, understood as it was meant. 
 
 The more important matter I have to note in closing, is the 
 security given to the conclusions arrived at in many subjects 
 treated of in these letters, in consequence of the breadth of 
 the basis on which the reasoning is founded. The multipli- 
 city of subject, and opposite directions of investigation, which 
 have so often been alleged against me, as if sources of weak- 
 ness, are in reality, as the multiplied buttresses of the apse of 
 Amiens, as secure in allied result as they are opposed in di- 
 rection. Whatever (for instance) I have urged in economy 
 has ten times the force when it is remembered to have been 
 pleaded for by a man loving the splendor, and advising the 
 luxury of ages which overlaid their towers with gold, and 
 their walls with ivory. No man, oftener than I, has had cast 
 in his teeth the favorite adage of the insolent and the feeble — 
 " ne sutor." But it has always been forgotten by the speakers 
 that, although the proverb might on some occasions be wisely 
 spoken by an artist to a cobbler, it could never be wisely spoken 
 by a cobbler to an artist. 
 
 J. RuSKIN. 
 
 Amiens, St. Crispin's Bay, 1880. 
 
376 CHBONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE LETTERS 
 
 Note.— In the second and third columns the bracketed words and figures are more or 
 
 Title of Letter. 
 
 A Landslip near Giagnano 
 
 Modern Painters : a Reply , 
 
 Art Criticism 
 
 On Reflections in Water , 
 
 Danger to the National Gallery . . 
 The Pre-Raphaelite Brethren, I. 
 The Pre-Raphaelite Brethren, II. 
 Letter to W. C. Bennett, LL.D.. 
 
 The National Gallery 
 
 Letter to Dr. Guthrie 
 
 Letter to W. H. Harrison , 
 
 " The Light of the World " 
 
 " The Awakening Conscience " 
 
 " Limner " and Illumination 
 
 The Animals of Scripture : a Review 
 
 The Turner Bequest 
 
 On the Gentian 
 
 The Turner Bequest & National Gallery. . . . 
 
 The Castle Rock (Edinburgh) 
 
 The Arts as a Branch of Education 
 
 Edinburgh Castle 
 
 The Character of Turner 
 
 Pre-Raphaelitism in Liverpool 
 
 Generalization & Scotch Pre-Raphaelites . . . 
 Gothic Architecture & Oxford Museum, I. . . 
 
 The Turner Sketches and Drawings 
 
 Turner's Sketch Book (extract) 
 
 The Liber Studiorum (extract) 
 
 Gothic Architecture & Oxford Museum, II. 
 
 The Sale of Mr. Windus' Pictures 
 
 The Italian Question 
 
 The Turner Gallery at Kensington 
 
 Coventry Patmore's lk Faithful for Ever " 
 
 Mr. Thornbury's " Life of Turner rt (extract) 
 
 Art Teaching by Correspondence 
 
 On the Reflection of Rainbows 
 
 Proverbs on Right Dress , 
 
 Oak Silkworms 
 
 The Depreciation of Gold , 
 
 The Foreign Policy of England 
 
 The Position of Denmark 
 
 The Law of Supply and Demand 
 
 The Conformation of the Alps. 
 
 Concerning Glaciers 
 
 English versus Alpine Geology . 
 
 Concerning Hydrostatics 
 
 Strikes v. Arbitration 
 
 Work and Wages 
 
 Where Written. 
 
 Naples 
 
 [Denmark Hill 
 
 [Denmark Hill 
 
 [Denmark Hill 
 
 [Denmark Hill] 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Heme Hill, Dulwich. 
 Heme Hill, Dulwich. . 
 [Edinburgh] 
 
 [Heme Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 [Denmark Hill 
 
 [Denmark Hill 
 
 [Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 [Denmark Hill 
 
 Dunbar 
 
 Penrith 
 
 Penrith 
 
 [ 
 
 [ 
 
 [ 
 
 [ 
 
 c 
 
 [ 
 
 [ 
 
 [ J 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Berlin 
 
 Berlin 
 
 Schaffhausen 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Lucerne 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 C ] 
 
 Geneva 
 
 Geneva 
 
 Chamounix 
 
 Zurich 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Norwich 
 
 [Denmark Hill] 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 [Denmark Hill] 
 
CONTAINED IN BOTH VOLUMES. 377 
 
 less certainly conjecttired ; whilst those unbracketed give the actual dating of the letter. 
 
 When Written. 
 
 February 7, 1841 
 
 About Sept. 17, 1848] .... 
 
 December, 1843] 
 
 January, 1844] 
 
 January 6 [1847] 
 
 May 9 [1851] 
 
 May ;:6 [1851] 
 
 December 28th, 1852 
 
 December 27 [1852] 
 
 Saturday, 26th [Nov. ?] 
 
 1853 
 
 1853] 
 
 May 4 [1854] 
 
 May 24 [1854] 
 
 December 3, 1854] 
 
 January, 1855] 
 
 October 27 [1856] 
 
 February 10 [1857] 
 
 July 8, 1857] 
 
 14th September, 1857 .... 
 
 September 25, 1857 
 
 27th September [1857].... 
 
 1857] 
 
 January, 1 858] 
 
 March, 1858] 
 
 June, 1858] 
 
 November, 1858] 
 
 ] 1858 
 
 ] 1858 
 
 January 20, 1859 
 
 March 28 [1859] 
 
 June 6, 1859 
 
 June 15 [1859] 
 
 August 1, 1859 
 
 October 20 [3 859] 
 
 [October 21, 1860] 
 
 December 2, 1861 
 
 November, 1860 
 
 7th May, 1861 
 
 October 20th, 1862 
 
 October 20th [1862] 
 
 October 2 [1863] 
 
 October 25th, 1863 
 
 July 6 [1864] 
 
 October 26 [1864] 
 
 October 29 [1864] 
 
 November 2 [1864] 
 
 10th November, 1864 
 
 November 21 [1864] 
 
 29th November [1 864] 
 
 5th December [1864] 
 
 Easter Monday, 1865 
 
 Thursday, April 20 [1865] 
 Saturday, April 22, 1865. . 
 Saturday, 29th April, 1865 
 
 Vol and 
 Page. 
 
 Proceedings of the Ashmolean Society. . . 
 The Weekly Chronicle, Sept. 23, 1843. . . . 
 The Artist and Amateur's Magazine, 1844 
 The Artist and Amateur's Magazine, 1844 
 
 The Times, January 7, 1847 
 
 The Times, May 13, 1851 
 
 The Times, May 30, 1851 
 
 "Testimonials of W. C. Bennett," 1871.. 
 
 The Times, December 29, 1852 
 
 " Memoir of Thomas Guthrie, D.D.," 
 
 (1875) 
 
 The Autographic Mirror, December 23, 
 
 1865 
 
 The Times, May 15, 1854 
 
 The Times, May 25, 1854 
 
 The Builder, December 9, 1854 
 
 The Morning Chronicle, January 20, 1855 
 
 The Times, October 28, 1856 
 
 The Athenaeum, February 14, ] 857 
 
 The Times, July 9, 1857 
 
 The Witness (Edinburgh), Sept. 16, 1857 
 44 New Oxford Examinations, etc.," 1858 
 The Witness (Edinburgh), Sept. 30, 1857. 
 Thornbury's Life of Turner. Pref. 1861 . 
 The Liverpool Albion, January 11, 1858 . 
 The Witness (Edinburgh), March 27, 1858 
 
 41 The Oxford Museum," 1859 
 
 The Literary Gazette, Nov. 13, 1858 
 
 List of Turner's Drawings, Boston, 1874. 
 List of Turner's Drawings, Boston, 1S74. 
 
 44 The Oxford Museum," 1859 
 
 The Times, March 29, 1859 
 
 The Scotsman, July 20, 1859 
 
 July 23, 1859 
 
 44 Aug. 6, 1859 .. 
 
 The Times, October 21, 1859 
 
 The Critic, Oct. 27, 1860 
 
 Thornbury's Life of Turner. Ed. 2, Pref. 
 
 Nature and Art, December 1, 1866 
 
 The London Review, May 16, 1861 
 
 The Monthly Packet, Nov. 1863 
 
 The Times, Oct. 24, 1862 
 
 The Times, Oct. 8, 1863 
 
 The Liverpool Albion, Nov. 2, 1863 
 
 The Morning Post, July 7, 1864 
 
 The Daily Telegraph, Oct. 28, 1864 
 
 Oct. 31, 1864 
 
 4 4 4 4 Nov. 3, 1864 
 
 The Reader, November 12, 1864 
 
 The Reader, November 26, 1864 
 
 The Reader, December 3, 1864 
 
 The Reader, December 10, 1864 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette, April 18, 1865 ... . 
 
 April 21, 1865.... 
 
 4 4 44 April 25, 1865.... 
 
 44 44 May 2, 1865 
 
 i.197 
 i.17 
 i.24 
 
 i. 186 
 i.47 
 i.66 
 i.70 
 
 ii. 359 
 i.56 
 
 ii.360 
 
 i.84 
 i.198 
 
 i.87 
 i.143 
 
 i.39 
 i.144 
 i.110 
 
 i.79 
 
 i.81 
 i.122 
 
 i.91 
 
 i.88«L 
 LlOOw, 
 
 i. 128 
 
 ii. 361 
 ii.209 
 ii.214 
 ii.219 
 i.lOL 
 
 ii.346 
 
 i. lll 
 i.46 
 
 i. 196 
 
 ii. 336 
 
 ii. 340 
 ii.240 
 ii.22i 
 ii.223 
 ii.241 
 ii.243 
 ii.246 
 i.169 
 i.171 
 i.177 
 
 i. 181 
 
 ii. 249 
 ii.251 
 ii.253 
 ii.255 
 
378 CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE LETTERS 
 
 Title of Letter. 
 
 Work and Wages 
 
 Domestic Servants — Mastership 
 
 u " Experience 
 
 " " Sonship and Slavery 
 
 Modern Houses 
 
 Our Railway System 
 
 The Jamaica Insurrection 
 
 The British Museum 
 
 Copies of Turner's Drawings (extract) . . . 
 
 At the Play 
 
 The Standard of Wages 
 
 An Object of Charity 
 
 True Education , 
 
 Excuse from Correspondence , 
 
 Is England Big Enough ? 
 
 The Ownership of Railways , 
 
 Railway Economy 
 
 Employment for the Destitute Poor, etc. . 
 
 Notes on the Destitute Classes, etc 
 
 The Morality of Field Sports 
 
 Female Franchise 
 
 The Franco-Prussian War 
 
 U U ft 
 
 Sad-Colored Costumes 
 
 Railway Safety , 
 
 A King's First Duty , 
 
 Notre Dame de Paris 
 
 A Nation's Defences 
 
 " Turners " False and True ; 
 
 The Waters of Comfort , 
 
 The Streams of Italy 
 
 Woman's Sphere (extract) 
 
 The 41 Queen of the Air" 
 
 Drunkenness and Crime , 
 
 Castles and Kennels , 
 
 Verona v. Warwick , 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's Influence : a Defence 
 
 Mr. Ruskin's Influence : a Rejoinder 
 
 John Leech's Outlines 
 
 The Streets of London 
 
 Madness and Crime , 
 
 Letter to the Author of a Review , 
 
 41 Act, Act in the Living Present" 
 
 How the Rich spend their Money 
 
 u it u 
 
 Woman's Work 
 
 Mr. Ruskin and Professor Hodgson 
 
 " Laborare est Orare " 
 
 Ernest George's Etchings 
 
 James David Forbes : his Real Greatness 
 The Value of Lectures 
 
 Where Written. 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 [Denmark Hill] 
 
 Denmark Hill „ 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 [ 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill, S 
 
 Denmark Hill, S 
 
 Denmark Hill, S 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill, S.E 
 
 [Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 V^enice . 
 
 Denmark HilY, S. E. '. \ 
 [Denmark Hill, S.E.].. 
 
 Denmark Hill, S.E 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 [Denmark Hill] 
 
 [Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Oxford 
 
 Oxford 
 
 [Oxford 
 
 [Denmark Hill] 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill, S.E 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 Denmark Hill 
 
 [ 
 
 [Denmark Hill] 
 
 Oxford 
 
 Oxford 
 
 Oxford 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston. . . 
 [Brantwood, Coniston] . 
 Brantwood, Coniston . . . 
 
 c ] 
 
 Oxford 
 
 Oxford 
 
 Oxford 
 
 [Denmark Hill 
 
 c 
 
 Rome 
 
CONTAINED IN BOTH VOLUMES. 
 
 379 
 
 When Written. 
 
 May 4 [1865] 
 
 May 20, 1865 
 
 September 2 [1865] 
 
 September 6 [1865] 
 
 September 16, 1865] 
 
 October 16 [1865] 
 
 December 7 [1865] 
 
 December 19 [1865] 
 
 Jan. 26 [1866] 
 
 ] 1867 
 
 February 28, 1867 
 
 April 30, 1867 
 
 January 21, 1868 
 
 January 31, 1868 
 
 2d February, 1868 
 
 July 30 [1868] 
 
 August 5 [1868] 
 
 August 9 [1868] 
 
 December 24 [1868] 
 
 Autumn, 1868] 
 
 January 14 [1«70] 
 
 29th May, 1870 
 
 October 6 [1870] 
 
 October 7 [1870] 
 
 14th October, 1870 
 
 November 29, 1870 
 
 January 10 [1871] 
 
 January 18, 1871] 
 
 January 19, 1871 
 
 January 23 [1871] 
 
 February 3 [1871] 
 
 February3 [1871] 
 
 February 19, 1871] 
 
 May 18, 1871 
 
 December 9 [1871] 
 
 December 20 [1871] 
 
 24th (for 25th) Dec. [1871] 
 
 March 15 [1872] 
 
 March 21 [1872] 
 
 1872] 
 
 December 27, 1871 
 
 November 2 [1872] 
 
 Wednesday, October 30 
 
 [1872] 
 
 Christmas Eve, '72 
 
 January 23 [1873] 
 
 January 28 [1873] , 
 
 King Charles the Martyr, 
 
 1873 
 
 [May, 1873] 
 
 November 8, 1873 
 
 November 15, 1873 
 
 December, 1873 
 
 December, 1873] 
 
 1874] 
 
 26th May, 1874 
 
 Where and when first Published. 
 
 Vol and 
 Page. 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette, May 9, 1865 
 
 May 22, 1865 
 
 The Daily Telegraph, September 5, 1865. 
 " tk September 7, 1865. 
 
 " " September 18, 1865 
 
 " u October 17, 1865.. 
 
 " " December 8, 1865.. 
 
 u 11 December 20, 1865. 
 
 The Times, January 27, 1866 
 
 List of Turner's Drawings, Boston, 1874. 
 The Pall Mall Gazette, March 1, 1867. . . . 
 
 May 1,1867 
 
 The Daily Telegraph, January 22, 1868.. 
 The Pall Mall Gazette, January 31, 1868. . 
 
 Circular printed by Mr. Ruskin, 1868 
 
 The Daily Telegraph, July 31, 1868 
 
 August 6, 1868 
 
 " " August 10,1868.... 
 u " December 26, 1868. . 
 Pamphlet for private circulation, 1868. . . 
 The Daily Telegraph, January 15, 1870. . . 
 Date and place of publication unknown. . 
 
 The Daily Telegraph, Oct. 7, 1870., 
 
 " ki Oct. 8, 1870 
 
 Macmillan's Magazine, Nov. 1870 
 
 The Daily Telegraph, Nov. 30, 1870 
 
 " " January 12, 1871 .. 
 
 " u January 19, 1871 .. 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette, Jan. 19, 1871 
 
 The Times, January 24, 1871 
 
 The Daily Telegraph, Feb. 4, 1871 
 
 Feb. 7, 1871 
 
 u Feb. 21, 1871 
 
 The Asiatic, May 23, 1871 
 
 The Daily Telegraph, Dec. 11, 1871 
 
 u u December 22, 1871 
 
 u December 25, 1871 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette, March 16, 1872 . . 
 
 " March 21, 1872 .. 
 
 The Catalogue to the Exhibition, 1872 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette, Dec. 28, 1871 
 
 Nov. 4, 1872 
 
 Liverpool Weekly Albion, Nov. 9, 1872. . . 
 
 New Year's Address, etc., 1873 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette, Jan. 24, 1873 
 
 Jan. 29, 1873 
 
 " " Jan. 31, 1873... 
 
 L'Esperance, Geneve, May 8, 1873 
 
 The Scotsman, November 10, 1873. . . . 
 
 . 41 November 18, 1873 
 
 New Year's Address, etc., 1874 
 
 The Architect, December 27, 1873 . . . 
 
 Rendu's Glaciers of Savoy," 1874 . . . 
 The Glasgow Herald, June 5, 1874. , . . 
 
 ii.260 
 ii.263 
 ii.286 
 ii.287 
 ii.289 
 ii.296 
 ii.283 
 ii.226 
 i.62 
 
 i. 108?i 
 ii.361 
 ii.266 
 ii 362 
 
 ii. 309 
 ii.362 
 ii.275 
 ii.277 
 ii.279 
 ii.317 
 ii.318 
 ii.313 
 ii. 335 
 ii.228 
 ii.231 
 ii. 338 
 ii,285 
 ii.300 
 
 i. 150 
 
 ii. 105 
 
 i. 109 
 
 ii. 303 
 ii.304 
 ii.836??. 
 ii.349 
 ii.315 
 
 i.148 
 i.149 
 i.l5i 
 i.153 
 
 i. lll 
 it 307 
 
 ii. 316 
 
 ii.S6°» 
 ii.3^7 
 ii.267 
 ii.268 
 
 ii.269 
 ii.335 
 ii.246 
 ii.247 
 ii.328 
 i.113 
 
 i. 182 
 
 ii. 310 
 
880 CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE LETTERS 
 
 Title of Letteb. 
 
 Where Written. 
 
 An Oxford Protest , 
 
 A Mistaken Review 
 
 The Position of Critics 
 
 Commercial Morality , 
 
 The Publication of Books , 
 
 St. George* s Museum , 
 
 The Definition of Wealth , 
 
 The Frederick Walker Exhibition 
 
 The Cradle of Art I 
 
 Modern Warfare , 
 
 Copies of Turner's Drawings 
 
 Turner's Drawings, I 
 
 Turner's Drawings, II 
 
 The Foundations of Chivalry 
 
 Modern Restoration 
 
 Ribbesford Church 
 
 Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Lowe 
 
 The Principles of Property 
 
 A Pagan Message 
 
 Despair (extract) 
 
 The Foundations of Chivalry 
 
 Notes on a Word in Shakespeare 
 
 The Bibliography of Ruskin 
 
 IV " 
 
 The Society of the Rose 
 
 Blindness and Sight 
 
 "The Eagle's Nest " 
 
 On Cooperation. I 
 
 Politics in Youth 
 
 St. Mark's, Venice — Circular relating to 
 
 St. Mark's, Venice — Letters 
 
 On the Purchase of Pictures 
 
 The Merchant of Venice (extract) 
 
 Recitations , 
 
 Excuse from Correspondence 
 
 Copy of Turner's " Fluelen " 
 
 The Study of Natural History 
 
 On Cooperation. II 
 
 The Glasgow Lord Rectorship 
 
 u u u 
 
 if. it u 
 
 u u |4 
 
 Dramatic Reform. I 
 
 The Glasgow Lord Rectorship 
 
 Dramatic Reform. II 
 
 [Oxford 
 
 Brantwood 
 
 Brant wood 
 
 [Heme Hill 
 
 Oxford 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston 
 
 Oxford 
 
 [ 
 
 [Oxford] 
 
 [Brantwood] 
 
 Peterborough 
 
 Brantwood 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston, 
 
 Lancashire 
 
 Venice. 
 
 Venice 
 
 Venice 
 
 Venice 
 
 Venice 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston, 
 
 Lancashire 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston. . . . 
 
 [Brantwood] 
 
 Heme Hill, London, S. E . 
 
 [Oxford 
 
 Malham 
 
 Brantwood 
 
 Edinburgh 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston 
 
 [Brantwood 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston 
 
 Sheffield 
 
 [Brantwood 
 
 [Brantwood 
 
 TBrantwood 
 
 [Heme Hill, S.E.] 
 
 Sheffield 
 
 [Brantwood] 
 
 London 
 
 [ ] 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston 
 
 [Brantwood] 
 
 [Brantwood] 
 
 Brantwood, Coniston 
 
 Brantwood 
 
 Rouen 
 
 Amiens 
 
CONTAINED IN BOTH VOLUMES. 
 
 381 
 
 When Written. 
 
 October 29, 1874] ... 
 January 10 [1875] . . . 
 January 18 [1875] . . 
 
 February, 1875] 
 
 June 6, 1875 
 
 [September, 1875] . . . 
 9th November, 1875 . 
 
 January, 1876] 
 
 18th February, 1876. 
 
 June, 1876 
 
 April 23 [1876] 
 
 July 3 [1876] 
 
 July 16 [1876] 
 
 February 8th, 1877. 
 
 February 10th [1877]. 
 11th February [1877]. 
 12th February, '77]... 
 
 15th April, 1877 
 
 July 24, 1877 
 
 August 24 [1877]. . 
 10th October, 1877. 
 19th December, 187 
 February, 1878] . . . 
 July 3d, 1878 
 
 [September, 1878] 
 
 29th September, 1878. 
 September 30, 1878... 
 
 October 23, 1878 
 
 Early in 1879] 
 
 18th July, 1879 
 
 August 17th, 1879... 
 
 [August, 1879] 
 
 October 19th, 1879... 
 
 Winter 1879] 
 
 Winter 1879] 
 
 January, 1880] 
 
 6th February, 1880.. 
 16th February, 1880. 
 
 March, 1880] 
 
 20th March, 1880 
 
 Undated 
 
 April 12th, 1880 
 
 10th June, 1880 
 
 13th June, 1880 
 
 24th June, 1880 
 
 [July, 1880] 
 
 July 30th, 1880 
 
 Where and when first Published. 
 
 28th September, 1880. 
 October 12th, 1880. . . . 
 
 The Globe, Oct. 29, 1874 
 
 The Pall Mall Gazette, January 1 1, 1875. . 
 
 * 4 kk January 19, 1875.. 
 
 Date and place of publication unknown. . 
 
 The World, June 9, 1875 
 
 Sheffield Daily Telegraph, Sept. 6, 1875 . . 
 
 The Monetary Gazette, Nov. 13, 1875 
 
 The Times, January 20, 1876 
 
 Date and place of publication unknown.. 
 
 Fraser's Magazine, July, 1876 
 
 The Times, April 25, 1876 
 
 The Daily Telegraph, July 5, 1876 
 
 July 19, 1876 
 
 Vol anji 
 
 Page. 
 
 " The Science of Life " (second edition), 
 
 1878 
 
 44 u (first edition), 1877 
 
 1877 
 1877 
 
 The Liverpool Daily Post, June 9, 1877 . . 
 The Kidderminster Times, July 28, 1877 
 
 The Standard, August 28, 1877 
 
 The Socialist, November, 1877 
 
 New Year's Address, etc., 1878 
 
 The Times, February 12, 1878 
 
 "The Science of Life" (second edition), 
 
 1878 
 
 New Shakspere Soc. Trans. 1878-9 
 
 ii364 
 
 ii.343 
 ii.345 
 ii.271 
 ii.34i 
 ii.312 
 ii.271 
 i.116 
 ii.312 
 ii.234 
 i.108 
 i.102 
 i.107 
 
 ii.329 
 ii.336 
 ii.332 
 ii.333 
 i.154 
 
 i. 155 
 
 ii. 365 
 ii.272 
 ii.329 
 ii. 310k 
 
 4 1 Bibliography of Dickens " (advt. ), 1880. 
 Report of Ruskin Societv, Manchester, 
 
 1880 ; 
 
 The Y. M. A. Magazine, Sept., 1879 
 
 " 41 October, 1879... 
 
 The Christian Life, December 20, 1879. . . 
 
 The Y. M. A. Magazine, Nov. 1879 
 
 See the Circular 
 
 Birmingham Daily Mail, Nov. 27, 1879 . . 
 Leicester Chronicle, January 31, 1880 .... 
 
 The Theatre, March, 1880 
 
 Circular printed by Mr. R. T. Webling. . . 
 List of Mr. Ruskin's Writings, Mar., 1880 
 Lithograph copy issued by Mr. Ward, 1880 
 
 Letter to Adam White [unknown] 
 
 The Daily News, June 19, 1880 
 
 The Glasgow Herald, Oct. 7, 1880 
 
 Oct. 7, 1880 
 
 44 44 Oct. 7, 1880 
 
 Oct. 12, 1880 
 
 Journal of Dramatic Reform, November, 
 
 1880 
 
 The Glasgow Herald, Oct. 7, 1880 
 
 Journal of Dramatic Reform, November, 
 
 1880 
 
 ii.333 
 ii. 353 
 ii.354 
 ii.365 
 ii.366 
 
 ii.366 
 ii.325 
 ii.326 
 ii.273 
 ii.326 
 i.156 
 i.166 
 i.65 
 ii.356 
 ii.357 
 ii. 363ft 
 i. 108ft 
 
 i. 199 
 
 ii. 274 
 ii.370 
 ii.371 
 ii.371 
 ii.372 
 
 ii.368 
 ii.371 
 
 ii. 369 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abana and Pharpar, ii. 216. 
 
 Academy-studies, i. 119 ; usual tendencies of academies, i. 79 ; the Liver- 
 pool, ib. ; Royal Academy, pictures seen to disadvantage in the, i. 
 35 ; Exhibitions of the, i. 66, 74, 172 (note), 119 (note) j the Scotch 
 Academy, i. 81 (note), 172 (note). 
 
 Acland, Sir Thomas, i. 39. 
 
 (Dr ), Henry, i. 39 ; i. 123 (note) ; i. 128 ; i. 167. (See also 
 
 Oxford Museum.) 
 Advertisement of books, ii. 342. 
 iEschylus, his work, i. 37 (note). 
 Agassiz and Forbes, i. 172 ; i. 183. 
 
 Age, the present, one of u steam and iron, luxury and selfishness," i. 33 ; 
 
 one in which poetry is disregarded, i. 32 ; fever of change in, ii. 
 
 294 ; shallow learning, the curse of, ii. 310. 
 Agreements, compulsory, ii. 254. 
 Ailsa Rock, i. 143. 
 Alisma Plantago, i. 68. 
 Allen, Mr. George, i. 160 ; i. 166 (note). 
 Alms and Wages, ii. 257 ; ii. 262. 
 Almsgiving, ii. 294. (See Charity.) 
 
 Alps, conformation of the, i. 169 seqq. ; origin of form of, i. 170 ; charts 
 of sections of chain wanted, i. 171 ; extent of chain, i. 178 ; Mr. 
 Raskin's lecture on the Savoy Alps, i. 171, and note. 
 
 Alsace and Lorraine, ii. 234. 
 
 Alsen, ii. 225, and note. 
 
 Amazon, Kiss', ii. 220 (note), 218. 
 
 Ambition, tone of modern, ii. 337, 339. 
 
 America, England no need to learn from, ii. 275 ; has no castles, i. 147 
 (note) ; reference to Mr. Ruskin by Mr. Holyoake in, ii. 274 ; serf 
 economy in, ii. 227. 
 
 American war, loss of property in, ii. 241. (See also Lincoln, Pres.) 
 
 Amiens, Cathedral of, i. 151, ii. 272 ; the theatres at, ii. 269. 
 
 Andrew, St., ii. 214. 
 
 Angelico, i. 53, i. 118 ; and Giotto, their theology of death, i. 118 ; 
 holiness of, ii. 229 (note) ; Lis "highest inspiration" destroyed at 
 Florence, i. 48, and note ; his •* Last Judgment," i. 55, and note ; 
 formerly no picture by in National Gallery, i. 54, and note. 
 
 Angrogna, the valley of, ii. 217. 
 
 Animals, kindness and cruelty to, ii. 314 seqq. ; 315 (note); ii. 328 ? 
 
 portraiture of in architecture, i. 139 ; of Scripture, ii. 350. 
 Anjou, ii. 234. 
 
 Annual Register (1859), quoted, ii. 216 (note). 
 
384 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Antwerp, "Rubens" at, i. 39. 
 fc< A Pagan Message," ii. 329. 
 Apolline Myths, the, ii. 349. 
 Apollo Belvedere, the, i. 21. 
 Appendix, List of Letters in the, ii. 358. 
 
 Arabian Nights, the, quoted, " the seals of Solomon " (Story of the Fish 
 erman, Chapter ii.), i. 133 ; Story of the Ugly Bridegroom, ii. 294. 
 Arbia, the, ii. 221 (note). 
 Arbitration and Strikes (letter), ii. 249. 
 Archer knight, the, i. 155. 
 
 Architect, The (Dec. 27, 1873), Letter on E. George's Etchings, i. 113. 
 
 Architecture, List of Letters on, i. 123 ; its beauty dependent on its use, 
 i. 145 ; Byzantine builders, i. 164 ; cultivation of feeling for draw- 
 ing in, i. 114 ; English copying of old, i. 138 ; expressional charac- 
 ter of, i. 154 ; Frankenstein monsters, i. 153 ; Gothic and Classic, 
 i. 102 (note) ; Gothic, and the Oxford Museum (letters), i. 122 segq., 
 128 seqq. ; Greek work freehand, i. 164 ; jobbery in modern, i. 155 ; 
 pseudo-Venetian, i. 154; sculpture, use of, in. i. 137 seqq. ; St. 
 Mark's, Venice, place of, in, i. 158 ; Ruskin's influence on modern, 
 i. 151-154 ; unity in, i. 138. (See also Gothic Architecture.) 
 
 Areola, ii. 239. 
 
 Argument, the best kind of, i. 47. 
 Aristotle, his work, i. 37 ^note). 
 Arno, the, ii. 304-306. 
 
 Art, the Alphabet of (Dr Acland on), i. 127 ; color and design, i. 45 ; 
 connection of with other studies, i. 44, 45 ; conventionalism in, i. 
 139 ; dancing, ii. 334 ; dicta in, dangerous i. 39, 42 ; drawing — 
 practical value of, i. 42; an essential part of education, i. 40; its 
 uses, ib. ; a more universal faculty than music, ib. ;— education in 
 art, i. 44 ; enjoyment of different kinds of art by different people, 
 i. 28, i. 40; generalization in art, i. 81 ; Greek art, study of, ii. 334 ; 
 growth of art in England and Italy, i. 23 ; happiness and knowledge 
 of art, i. 40 ; highest art the most truthful, i. 138 ; history of, i. 41 ; 
 how far to be studied, i. 23 ; " ideas" in, ii. 213 ; inclusive of what, 
 i. 44 ; should be public, permanent, and expressive, i. 124, 64 ; 
 manufacture and, i. 43, ii. 324; music, ii. 334; ornamental art, i. 
 139; special gift for, how to detect, i. 43 ; studies, how to direct, i. 
 40 ; teaching by correspondence, i. 46 ; unity of purpose in, i. 138; 
 use of before printing, i. 122 (note). 
 
 Art Criticism, List of Letters on, i. 15 ; letter, 4 'Art Criticism," i. 24 seqq.', 
 art criticism, impossible to very young men, and why, i. 40 ; neces- 
 sarily partial, and why, i. 40 ; the common dicta of , their dangerous 
 use, i. 38, 40 ; how to develop the power of, ib. ; the foundations 
 of, i. 40 ; the kinds of, right and wrong, ib. 
 
 Art-critics, i. 27; two kinds of, i. 24 ; qualifications of, i. 25 (note). 
 
 Art Education, List of Letters on, i. 15 ; danger of too good models, i. 42. 
 (See Art.) 
 
 Art Examinations, range and object of, i. 39 ; examples of questions to 
 be set in, i. 40. 
 
 Artist (see Art), two courses open to the, i. 33 ; extent of his work, i. 
 
 40 ; ignorance of landscape in portrait painters, i. 29, and note ; 
 
 letters on artists and pictures, i. Ill seqq. 
 Artist and Amateurs Magazine. Letter on Art Criticism in (January 
 
 1844), i. 24 seqq.; allusion to article in, i. 32, and note ; Letter to 
 
INDEX. 
 
 385 
 
 Editor on " Reflections in Water " (February 1844), i. 186 seqq. ; re- 
 view of " Modern Painters," in, i. 196 (note). 
 
 Art Journal, " Cestus of Aglaia" referred to, ii. 292, and note ; Letters 
 on "A Museum or Picture Gallery meutioned, i. 12, and note. 
 
 Arts, Society of. (See Societies.) 
 
 Art Union, on < ' Modern Painters," i. 186 ; writers for the, i. 29. 
 Arve, foul water of the, i. 191. 
 Arveron, the, i. 175. 
 
 Ashmolean Society, Proceedings of (1841), Letter on "A Landslip near 
 
 Giagnano " in, i. 197. 
 Asiatic, The (May 23, 1871), Letter, "The Queen of the Air," ii. 349. 
 Astnean anecdote, an, ii. 357. 
 
 Athena, i. 159, 162 (note) ; the Queen of the Air, ii. 349. 
 
 Athenaeum, The (February 14, 1857), Letter on the Gentian, i. 198 ; the 
 
 Glasgow Athenaeum, ii. 310 (note). 
 Athens, ii. 356. 
 
 Atmospheric pressure, i. 181 seqq. 
 Atreus' treasury and St. Mark's, i. 159. 
 Audiences, modern, ii. 310 ; ii. 365. 
 Aui'ifrigium, ii. 355. 
 
 Authorship, early in life, deprecated, ii. 342 ; needs training, ib. 
 
 Austerlitz, battle of, ii. 236. 
 
 Austin's definition of Justice, ii. 258 (note). 
 
 Australia, gold in, ii. 258 (note). 
 
 Austria, characteristics of the nation, ii. 211 seqq.; "barbarism," and 
 magnanimity of, ii. 212 ; and France, loss in war between, ii. 238 ; 
 work of, in Italy, ii. 212 seqq. 
 
 Autographic Mirror, The (Dec. 23, 1865), letter to W. H. Harrison in, 
 ii. 368. 
 
 Anvergne, ii. 234. 
 
 Aytoun's " Ballads of Scotland " referred to, i. 83 (note). 
 
 Babies, ii. 359 ; " Baby May," ib. (note). 
 Backhuysen, i. 26. 
 
 Bacon, his mission and work, i. 37 (note). 
 Ballads, Scotch, i. 83 (note) ; " Burd Helen/' ib. 
 Bandinelli, i. 53. 
 Bank directors, ii. 317. 
 Bargaining and begging, ii. 257. 
 Barometer, use of the, i. 181. 
 
 Barry, Sir C., ii. 353 (note); James, R. A., anecdote of, i. 29, 30, and 
 note. 
 
 Bartholomew Fair, i. 65. 
 
 Bartolomeo, Fra, no picture by in the National Gallery, i. 55, and 
 
 note. 
 
 Bass, Mr. M. T., ii. 225 (note). 
 Bass rock, The, i. 142. 
 
 Beaconsfield, Lord, and Mr. Gladstone, ii. 372. 
 
 Beaumont, Sir G., i. 21 (note). 
 
 Bee. the Queen, ii. 296. 
 
 Beelzebub, ii. 372. 
 
 Begging and bargaining, ii. 257. 
 
 Bellini, i. 53, 57, 162 (note) ; his "Doge Leonardo Loredano," 55, 56, 
 and note ; character of as an artist, ib. 
 Vol. II.— 25 
 
386 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Bellinzona, the people of, ii. 306 ; Mr. Ruskin at, ib. 
 Bennett, W. C, Letter to, ii. 359 ; his Poems, ib., and note. 
 Bentham's definition of justice, ii. 258. 
 Ben Wyvis, i. 143. 
 
 Berlin, Mr. Buskin's letters from, ii. 211, 214 ; the sights of, ii. 217 
 
 and 217 (note) ; Sundays at, ii. 216. 
 Bible, animals of the, ii. 250 seqq. ; possible errors in the, ii. 291, and 
 
 note ; what to read in the, ii. 328 ; quoted or referred to, — 
 
 44 What are these wounds in thy hands " (Zechariah xiii. 6), i. 67 (note). 
 " I meditate on all thy works 11 (Psalm cxliii. 5), i. 68 (note). 
 "Behold, I stand at the door and knock" (Revelation iii. 20), i. 76. 
 The wild grass " whereof the mower filleth not his hand " (Psalm cxxix. 7), i. 76. 
 (See both Bible and Prayer-book versions.) 
 44 The feet of those who publish peace" (Isaiah lii. 7), i. 130. 
 44 We also are his offspring " (Acts xvii. 28), i. 159. 
 44 Abana and Pharpar" (2 Kings v. 12), ii. 216. 
 
 44 Woe unto thee, O land, when thy king is a child " (Ecclesiastes x. 16), ii. 227. 
 44 Raising the poor " (1 Sam. ii. 8 ; Psalm cxiii. 7), ii. 283. 
 
 The commandment is holy, just, and good " (Romans vii. 12), ii. 256. 
 4< Who sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not " (Psalm xv. 4), ii. 258. 
 44 Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth " (Exodus xxi. 24 and reff.), ii. 265. 
 44 He that delicately bringeth up his servant," etc. (Proverbs xxix. 21), ii. 286. 
 44 Not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved " (Philemon 16), 
 ii. 291. 
 
 44 The waters of comfort" (Psalm xxiii. 2, Prayer-book version), ii. 304. 
 44 Eyes have they and see not " (Jeremiah v. 21), ii. 326. 
 44 A rod for the fool's back" (Proverbs xxvi. 3), ii. 327. 
 
 44 A rod is for the back of him that is void of understanding 11 (Proverbs x. 13), ib. 
 "Thou shalt not commit adultery " (Exodus xx. 14), ii. 333. 
 44 Male and female created he them " (Genesis i. 27), ii. 334 s 
 " I will make a helpmeet for him " (Genesis ii. 18), ib. 
 
 44 All her household are clothed with scarlet " (Proverbs xxxi. 21, 22), ii. 337. 
 44 Who clothed you in scarlet %1 (2 Samuel i. 24), ib. 
 
 44 The king's daughter is all glorious within " (Psalm xiv. 13, 14), ii. 337. 
 
 44 She riseth while it is yet night. . . . Strength and honor are her clothing" 
 
 (Proverbs xxxi. 15, xxii. 5), ii. 339. 
 44 And the city was broken up " (2 Kings xxv. 4), ii. 354. 
 
 Bigg, Mr. W. M., sale of pictures, i. 105 (note). 
 'Bills, for fresh railways, ii. 283; the reform bill (1867), ii. 319. 
 Birds, preservation of wild, ii. 314 (note) ; treatment of, ii. 328. 
 Birmingham Daily Mail, Nov. 27, 1879 (Mr. Ruskin on St. Mark's, 
 
 Venice), i. 167. 
 Bishops, ii. 317. 
 
 Black, W., u The Daughter of Heth, ,, i. 120 (note). 
 
 Black-letter, not illegible, ii. (note), 352-353. 
 
 Blackfriars Bible Class. See "New Years Address." 
 
 Blackstone's summary of law, ii. 264, and note. 
 
 Blackwood's Magazine, the art critic of, i. 27. 
 
 " Blind Fiddler," the, i. 22. 
 
 Bluecoat School, i. 65. 
 
 Boat-race, training for, ii. 331. 
 
 Boileau quoted, i. 28. 
 
 " Bold" work in drawing and music, i. 98. 
 
 Bonheur, Mdlle. Rosa, escape of from Paris, ii. 229 (note). 
 
 Books, publication of, ii. 341 ; number of in the world, ii. 342. 
 
 Booth, J. Wilkes (assassin of President Lincoln), ii. 256 (note). 
 
 Botany, an examination paper in, i. 46. (See also Flowers.) 
 
INDEX. 
 
 387 
 
 Bouguer, Pierre, i. 192 (note). 
 Bourges Cathedral, i. 151. 
 
 Bragge, Mr. W. and the Sheffield Museum, ii. 313 (note). 
 4 1 Break," meaning of, ii. 354. 
 Breche, the, ii. 234. 
 Brenta, the, ii. 216, 305. 
 Brewster, Sir D., i. 192. 
 
 Bridge water House, il Turner " at, i. 26, and note. 
 Bright, Mr. John, M.P., ii. 370 seqq. 
 Brighton, railway competition at, ii. 279 (note). 
 
 British Museum, Letter on, i. 63 seqq. ; i. 105, 106 ; catalogues of the, 
 i. 63 ; Henry VI. 's psalter at, i. 64, and note ; preservation of 
 drawings at, i. 87 ; what it is and is not, i. 105, 106. 
 
 Brodie, Prof. , at Oxford, i. 132, and note. 
 
 Bromley, villas at, i. 153. 
 
 Brooke, Stopford A., ii. 338, and note. 
 
 Browne, Edward, Dr., ii. 309, and note ; Thomas, Sir, ib. 
 
 Browning, Robert, ii. 359 (note). 
 
 Bubastis, cats sacred to (Herodotus, ii. 263), ii. 225. 
 
 Buchan's Scotch Ballads referred to, i. 83 (note). 
 
 Buckland, Dr. William, i. 178 (note). 
 
 Builder, The (Dec. 9, 1854), Letter, " Limner" and Illumination, ii. 352. 
 Buildings, modern, ii. 333, i. 153 ; repair of, ii. 313. 
 Bunch, Sydney Smith's, ii. 229, and note. 
 Bunney, Mr., painting of St. Mark's, i. 166 (note). 
 Buonaroti, i. 53. 
 
 " Burd Helen," i. 83, and note ; meaning of " Burd," ib. 
 
 Burgundy, ii. 234. 
 
 Burial and immortality, i. 138. 
 
 Burlington House, i. 118. 
 
 Burne Jones, Mr. , and St. Mark's, Venice, i. 167. 
 Burns, quoted, i. 34, and note. 
 Butler, Bishop, ii. 257. 
 
 Byron quoted, i. 34, and note, i. 35 ; Turner's illustrations of, i. 105 
 (note). 
 
 Cabmen's fares, ii. 253. 
 Calcutta, ii. 237. 
 
 California, gold in, ii. 240 (note). 
 Callcott, Sir. A., i. 28, 36, 37. 
 
 Campanile, St. Mark's Venice, i. 164 ; at Verona, i. 166. 
 
 Campbell quoted, i. 35 (note), 36. 
 
 Canterbury Cathedral, i. 158. 
 
 Cape of Good Hope and Venetian History, ii. 331. 
 
 Capital, employment of, ii. 280 seqq. ; sunk in works of art, ii. 281. 
 
 Capital Punishment, ii. 320. 
 
 Cappel, ii. 210 (note), 211. 
 
 Capri, grotto of, i. 195 (note). 
 
 " Captain," loss of the, ii. 233, and note. 
 
 Caracci and Titian, i. 61. 
 
 Careers, modern, ii. 330, 331, 332. 
 
 Car lyle, Thomas, quoted, his 4 4 Frederick the Great," ii. 233; on the 
 Jamaica Insurrection and the Eyre Defence Fund, ii. 226 (note), 
 
388 
 
 INDEX, 
 
 228 (note) ; on servants, ii. 292 ; letter to W. C. Bennett, ji. 360 
 (note). 
 
 Carpenter, W. H., i. 87, and note, 95. 
 Carriage of heavy goods, ii. 322-824. 
 
 Gary's Dante quoted, ii. 221 (note) ; criticised, 351, and note. 
 
 Casentino, ii. 306. 
 
 Castel-a-mare, landslip near, i. 199. 
 
 Castles— building of, i. 145, 146 ; definition of, i. 145; not to be imi- 
 tated, i. 146 ; proper, no longer needed or possible, i. 145 ; none in 
 America, i. 148 (note); Warwick Castle, i. 148 seqq. 
 
 Casts of St. Marks, i. 160, 166. 
 
 Catechism, won't make good servants, ii. 286 ; or educate children, ii. 
 
 309. 
 
 Cathartics, use of by ancients, ii. 268. 
 Catholics, Roman, and Protestants, ii. 210 seqq. 
 Cellini, i. 53. 
 
 " Cestus of Aglaia." (See Buskin.) 
 
 Chamouni, i. 170 ; the rocks of, i. 175 ; land destroyed at, ii. 304. 
 
 Champagne, demand for, ii. 247. 
 
 Chantrey, Sir F., i. 36, 37. 
 
 Chapman, Mr. (of Glasgow Athenaeum), ii. 310. 
 
 Character formed by employment, ii. 318. 
 
 Charity, ii. 317 ; invalid charities, ii. 325; "an object of V (letter), ii e 
 
 362. 
 
 Charity-children singing at St. Paul's, ii. 335, 
 Charles the Bold, ii. 234. 
 
 Charlottenburg, tomb of Queen Louise at, i. 27, and note. 
 
 Chartres Cathedral, i. 151. 
 
 " Chasing." meaning of the word, ii. 354 (note). 
 
 Chiaroscuro, i. 18; of Leech, i. 112. 
 
 kt Child Waters," ballad of, i. 83 (note). 
 
 China, war in, ii. 233. 
 
 Chivalry, the foundation of, ii. 329 seqq. 
 
 44 Chorus," ii. 334. 
 
 Christ, offices of, to the soul, i. 76, 77. 
 
 Christ Church, Dean of, and St. Mark's, Venice, i. 167. 
 
 Christian Life, The (Dec. 20, 1879), Letter on Co-operation in, ii. 274. 
 
 Christie and Manson, sales by, i. 83 (note), ii. 74, ii. 359 (note). 
 
 Chrysanthema, ii. 359. 
 
 Cimabue, anecdote relating to, i. 24, and note ; his picture of the Vir- 
 gin, ih* ; teaches Giotto, i. 40 (note). 
 Cinderella, ii. 293. 
 
 Cirencester, Agricultural College at, ii. 304. 
 Citadel, definition of a, i. 145. 
 Civet, ii. 290. 
 
 Claude, i 38 ; challenged by Turner, i. 57, and note; his " Seaport," 
 and " Mill," ib. ; pictures of, restored, i. 57 (note). (See National 
 
 Gallery.) 
 
 Cleopatra dissolving the pearl, i. 60. 
 
 Coal, how to economize English, ii. 321. 
 
 Cocker, Edward, arithmetician (b. 1631, d. 1677), ii. 244. 
 
 Coincidence, a strange, ii. 297 (note), 297. 
 
 Colen, ii. 308. 
 
 Colenso, Bishop, ii. 291 (note) ; his book on the Pentateuch, ib. 
 
INDEX, 
 
 389 
 
 Collins, C. A., i. 66 seqq. ; ib. (note); his ''Convent Thoughts," ib. ; 
 
 portrait of Wm. Bennett, ib. ; his writings, ib. 
 Cologne, the " Rubens " at, i. 49. 
 Colonization, ii. 283, ii. 314. 
 
 Color, and design, i. 43 ; eye for, rare, i. 29 ; the laws of, how far de- 
 fined, i. 134 ; " scarlet " the purest, ii. 371 ; of water, i. 192. 
 Combe, Mr., purchase of the "Light of the World'' by, i. 74 (note). 
 Commandments, the Ten, ii. 328. 
 
 Commercial morality (letter), ii. 271 ; putrefaction, ii. 274. 
 Commons, House of, tone of debate on Denmark, ii. 224. 
 Conscience, the light of, i. 75. 
 Conscription, forms of true, ii. 323. 
 Consistency, the nature of true, i. 40 (note). 
 
 Contemporary Review, Mr. Goldwin Smith's article in (Dec, 1872), ii. 267 
 (note) ; Mr. Ruskin's " Home and its Economies" in (May, 1873), ii. 
 330 (note) ; "Letters on the Lords Prayer" in (Dec, 1879), ii. 328. 
 
 Conventionalism in Art, i. 132. 
 
 Conway Castle, i. 148. 
 
 Co-operation, letters to Mr. G. J. Holyoake on, ii. 274, 275. 
 Copenhagen, ii. 237. 
 
 Copies, of pictures in England and Italy, i. 108 ; of Turner, i. 108. 
 Cornhill Magazine, Mr. Ruskin's article on Sir Joshua and Holbein 
 
 (March, 1860), ii. 218 (note). 
 Cornwall, clear water on coast of, i. 192. 
 
 Correggio, i. 57, 81, 99 ; copies of, i. 109 ; in the Louvre, i. 60. 
 Correspondence, Mr. Ruskin's excuses from, ii. 362. 
 Cotopaxi, i. 179. 
 Cotton, substitutes for, ii. 340. 
 
 Coventry, riband makers of, ii 276, 322 ; Co-operative Record, letter in, 
 
 on co-operation, ii. 274 (note). 
 Cramlington, strike at, ii. 299, and note. 
 Crawford Place, ii. 298, and note. 
 Creation, man its greatest marvel, i. 99. 
 Cricklade, i. 63 (note). 
 
 Criticism (See Art-criticism), List of Letters on literary, ii. 342 ; literary, 
 ii. 343, 344 ; position of critics, ii. 344 ; the Goddess of Criticism, 
 ib. (note) ; rarity of good, i. 17. 
 
 Crime, how to prevent, ii. 320 ; and drunkenness, ii. 316 ; and madness, 
 ii. 316 (note). 
 
 Criminal classes, letter and pamphlet on the, ii. 317, 318 seqq. ; how W 
 
 treat criminals, ii. 316. 
 Cronstadt, ii. 238. 
 
 Crossing-sweepers in Utopia and London, ii. 307. 
 Crown, the, jewels, i. 63. 
 Cruelty to animals, ii. 314 (note). 
 "Cruise upon Wheels," A, i. 68 (note). 
 Curtius, ii. 211 (note). 
 Custozza, ii. 211 (note). 
 
 Cuyp, pictures of in National Gallery, i. 44, and note. 
 
 Daily News, the letter of Mr. Ruskin " on Co-operation" in (June 19, 
 1880), ii. 274; Speech of Mr. Ruskin at the Society for the Preven* 
 tion of Cruelty to Animals (July 11, 1877), ii. 314 (note). 
 
390 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Daily Telegraph, The, Letters and Articles in (in order of date) : — 
 
 (Oct. 28, 1864) " The Law of Supply and Demand, 1 ' ii. 241. 
 (Oct. 31, 1864) 44 44 ii. 242. 
 
 (Nov. 3, 1864) 44 " " ii. 242. 
 
 (Dec. 20, 1865) 44 The Jamaica Insurrection," ii. 226. 
 
 Carlylo's Letter to the Eyre Defence Fund, ii. 228 (note). 
 (Sept. 5, 18H5) 44 Domestic Servants " — Mastership, ii. 286. 
 (Sept. 7, 1865) 4i 44 Experience, ii. 287. 
 
 (Sept. 18, 1865) 44 44 Sonship and Slavery, ii. 289. 
 
 Articles, etc., on servants, ii. 287 (note), 292 (note), 295 (noteY 
 (Oct. 17, 1865) "Modern Houses," ii. 296. 
 
 Other correspondence on houses, ib. (note). 
 (Dec. 8, 1865) 44 Our Railway System, 11 ii. 283. 
 
 Article on railways, ib. (note). 
 (Jan. 22, 1868) 44 An object of charity,' 1 ii. 362. 
 
 Article on Matilda Griggs, ib. (note). 
 (July 16, 1868) Strikes, Mr. Ruskin's Proposition as to, ii. 265 (note). 
 (July 31, 1868) 44 Is England big enough ? 11 ii. 275. 
 
 Article, 44 Marriage or Celibacy, 11 ib. (note). 
 (Aug. 6, 1868) 44 The Ownership of Railways, 11 ii. 277. 
 
 Articles on railways, ib. (note) 279. 
 (Aug. 10, 1868) 44 Railway Economy, 11 ii. 279. 
 
 44 Fair Play's " letter on railways, 279, 280, 280 (note). 
 44 East End Emigrants," article, ii. 283 (note). 
 (Dec. 26, 1868) 44 Employment for the Destitute Poor and Criminal Classes, , ' ii. 
 317. 
 
 44 Employment." etc. (pamphlet), ii. 318 (note), 320 (note). 
 (Jan. 15, 1870) 44 The Morality of Field Sports," ii. 313. 
 
 Articles on sport, ib. (note). 
 (Oct. 7. 1870) 44 The Franco- Prussian War," ii. 228. 
 (Oct. 8. 1870) 44 44 44 ii. 231. 
 
 (Nov. 30, 1870) 44 Railway Safety, 1 ' ii. 285. 
 
 Article on railway accidents, ib. (note). 
 (Jan. 12, 1871) 44 A King's first duty," ii. 300. 
 
 Article on the Roman Inundations, ib. (note) ; ii. 243. 
 (Jan, 19, 1871) 44 Notre Dame de Paris," i. 148. 
 (Feb. 4, 1871) 44 The Waters of Comfort," ii. 303. 
 (Feb. 7, 1871) 44 The Streams of Italy," ii. 304. 
 
 (Feb. 21, 1871) 44 Woman's sphere," extract from a letter of Mr. Ruskin to Misi 
 
 Faithfull, ii. 335 (note). 
 (Dec. 8, 1871) Article on Taverns, i. 148 (note). 
 (Dec. 11, 1871) 44 Drunkenness and Crime," ii. 315. 
 (Dec. 22, 1871) 44 Castles and Kennels," i. 148. 
 (Dec. 25, 1871) 44 Verona v. Warwick," i. 149. 
 
 Articles on Warwick Castle, i. 148, 149 (note). 
 (July 5. 1876) 44 Turner's Drawings," i. 102 scqq. 
 (July 19, 1876) 44 44 i. 105. 
 
 Dancing, art of, ii. 334. 
 
 Danger and difficulty, how far factors in regulating wages, ii. 253. 
 
 Dante quoted, ii. 221, and note. (See also Cary.) 
 
 Darkness, effect of, on drawings, i. 92. 
 
 David, restoration of Raphaels by, i. 48. 
 
 Daybreak, ii. 354. 
 
 Deane, Sir Thomas, i. 122 (note). 
 
 Dearie, Mr. T., his "Evening on the Mai-clmo," i. 77, and note. 
 Decoration, delicate and rough, i. 135, 136. 
 
 Demand, law of supply and, letters on, i. 45-50; foolish, ii. 292 ; the 
 
 largest that of hell, ib. 
 Denmark, the position of, in 1863, ii. 223 seqq. 
 
 Denudation, i. 177, 178 ; its place in physical mythology, i. 179, 180. 
 
 Derby, the, 1859, ii. 216 (note). 
 
 " Derby Day," Frith's, i. 65. (See also i. 11, note.) 
 
INDEX. 
 
 391 
 
 De Saussure, i. 185, 186 (note). 
 Deucalion, the myth of, i. 179. 
 
 " Deucalion 'V referred to. (See Ruskin, books quoted.) 
 
 Diagrams, illustrating rainbow reflections, i. 196, 197. 
 
 Dickens, letter of, to Mr. Bennett, ii. 360 (note) ; bibliography of, let- 
 ters in the, ii. 366 ; death of, ii. 311 (note). " Pickwick " referred 
 to, ii. 290. 
 
 Dinner tables, modern, ii. 260. 
 
 M Disciple of Art and Votary of Science," article in Liverpool Albion, ii. 
 
 263 (note). 
 Discovery, the merits of, i. 183 seqq. 
 Distances, focal, i. 19. 
 
 Dividends, railway— a tax on the traveller, ii. 277. 
 
 Dogs, Protestant and Catholic, ii. 217 ; " dog or bee " letter, ii. 313. 
 
 Domestic servants. (See Servants.) Meaning of word u domestic," ii. 
 
 295 (note). 
 " Dones" and "undones," ii. 328. 
 Doric modes, ii. 334. 
 Drama, reform of the, ii. 368, 369. 
 Drawing. (See Art.) 
 Drawing-master, the first work of a, i. 42. 
 
 Drawings, chance beauty of good, i. Ill ; subtlety possible in, i. 96, 97 
 seqq. ; effect of light, etc. , on, i. 86, 87, 105, 106, 107 ; how to 
 mount, i. 86 ; how to frame, i. 86. 
 
 Dreams, Homeric myth as to, i. 81, and note. 
 
 Dress, right, ii. 336 seqq. ; national, ii. 337 ; dress-making, ii. 325 ; let- 
 ter on *' sad colored costumes," ii. 338. 
 
 Drunkenness, and Crime, ii. 315 ; a crime in itself, ib. ; instance of 
 death by, ii. 242 (note). 
 
 Dudley, Lord, u Angelico" in collection of pictures of, i. 55, and note. 
 
 Dulwich, railway at, ii. 290. 
 
 Duncan's, Mr., " Shiplake, on the Thames," i. 196 (note\ 
 
 D irer, Albert, i. 42, 68; sfrnd Holbein, their theology of death, i. 118. 
 
 Durham Cathedral, i. 158. 
 
 Duty, meaning of the word, ii. 264, 328. 
 
 "B. A. F. r letter signed, on the designs for the "Foreign Office," i. 
 102. 
 
 u Eagle's Nest " (see Ruskin, books quoted), ii. 332. 
 Earth-Gods, ii. 349. 
 
 Eastlake, Sir C, attack on, i. 48 (note), 49, 94 ; his knowledge of oil 
 
 pictures, i. 51, 57 (note) ; his paintings, and Byron's poems, i. 34. 
 
 Mr. C. L., his book on the Gothic Revival, i. 152 (note). 
 
 " Economist,'' letter in Daily Telegraph from, ii. 244, 247 (note). 
 Economy defined, its three senses, ii. 339 ; meaning of the word, ii. 
 
 298. (See Political Economy. ) 
 Edinburgh, ii. 331 ; improvements at, i. 142, 147 ; Sundays at, ii. 217 ; 
 
 Trinity Chapel, i. 144 ; University of, and Prof. Hodgson, ii. 247 
 
 seqq. 
 
 Castle, alterations at, i. 144, 146, 147 ; its grandeur, ib. ; no 
 
 longer a military position, i. 147. 
 
 Castle Rock, its place among Scotch " craigs," i. 143, 144 ; pro- 
 posal to blast, ib. 
 
 Education, list of letters on, ii. 309 ; an " average first-class man," i. 45 ; 
 
392 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 compulsory, ii. 310 ; division of studies, i. 44 ; employment the 
 primal half of, ii. 318 ; involution of studies, i. 45 ; education- 
 mongers, ii. 250 ; place of science in, i. 131 ; " true," letter on, ii. 
 309. 
 
 Edward the Confessor, i. 158. 
 Egg, yellow spot on, ii. 274. 
 Ehrenberg, 0. G., i. 130, 131 (note). 
 Electricity, use of, ii. 318. 
 Elgin marbles, the, i. 42. 
 Ellis, Mr. Wynn, i. 109 (note). 
 
 Embankment of Italian rivers, plan for, ii. 300 seqq. 
 Embroidery, use of, ii. 339. 
 Emigration, ii 283, 314. 
 
 Employment, ii. 320 ; to be educational, ii. 322 ; forms character, ii. 
 318 ; modes of for poor, ii. 324 ; always obtainable, ii. 248, 371 ; 
 principles of, ii. 320 seqq. 
 
 England, big enough ? (letter) ii. 275 ; buildings of destroyed, i. 148 ; 
 and Denmark, ii. 223, 224 ; France and, 1859, ii. 215 ; 1870, ii. 
 234 ; independent, ii. 292 ; and Italy, 1859, ii. 212 ; and Italian 
 inundations, ii. 302 (note), 306 ; and Italy, their treatment of art, 
 i. 19 ; literature of, i. 118; " machine-and-devil driven," ii. 310 
 (note) ; and Poland, ii. 225 ; protection of pictures in, i. 47 ; and 
 the Reform Bill, 1867, ii. 319 ; shopkeepers, a nation of ? ii. 293 ; 
 trade and policy of, ii. 234 ; and war, ii. 222, 223, 225. 
 
 Enid, ii. 293. 
 
 Enterprise, public and private, ii. 284. 
 "Epitaphs," the Essay on, ii. 292. 
 Epictetus, ib. 
 Eridanus, ii. 300. 
 
 Etching, George's, Ernest, i. 113 seqq. ; principles of, ib. ; (a) chiaro- 
 scuro, 116 ; (b) few lines, 116 ; (c) a single biting enough, 115 ; (d) 
 use pencil, 116 ; thirteenth century work and its imitators, ib. 
 
 Etruscan work, ii. 353* 
 
 Equity and Law, ii. 263, 
 
 Evening Journal, The (Jan. 22, 1855), review of "Animals of Scrip- 
 ture 1 ' in, ii. 349. 
 Examination. (See Art.) 
 
 Examiner, The, review of u Our Sketching Club " in, ii. 343, and 
 note. 
 
 Expenditure, objects of public, i. 105 ; national, on pictures, parks, 
 
 and peaches respectively, i. 94. 
 "Eye-witness, The," i. 68 (note). 
 Eylau, battle of, ii. 236. 
 
 Eyre, Governor, and the Jamaica Insurrection, ii. 226, and note. 
 Failure, the lesson of, i. 37, 122, 123. 
 
 "Fair Play," letter of in Daily Telegraph, ii. 279 (note), 280-282 (note). 
 
 Fairservice (see Scott, Sir Walter), ii. 290 (note). 
 
 Faithfull, Miss E., lecture by, ii. 336 (note); letter to, ib. 
 
 Fallacies, d priori, ii. 251. 
 
 Family, meaning of the word, ii. 295. 
 
 Farinata, ii. 221, and note. 
 
 Fashion, change of, ii. 337 ; how to lead, ii. 339. 
 Fate and trial, the laws of, i. 122 (note). 
 
INDEX. 
 
 393 
 
 Father's, a counsel to his son, ii. 333. 
 
 Fauna, Oxford prize for essay on the, i. 130 (note). 
 
 Fesch, Cardinal, kt Angelico " in the collection of, i. 55, and note. 
 
 Fielding, Copley, and Mr. Ruskin, i. 188. 
 
 Field sports, morality of, ii. 313. 
 
 FLsole, i. 23. 
 
 Finden, engraving in Rogers' Poems, i. 96. 
 Fine Art Society, i. 108 (note), 156, 163. 
 
 Fiulason, G. W., ''History of the Jamaica Case" referred to, ii. 228 
 (note). 
 
 Florence, "Angelico" destroyed at, i. 48 ; and floods, ii. 805; gallery 
 of, i. 60 ; Grhibelline proposal to destroy, ii. 221 (note) ; revenge in 
 old, ii. 265. 
 
 Flowers, use of in architecture, i. 139 seqq. ; u Alisma Plantago," i. 68; 
 
 Chrysanthema, ii. 359 ; Gentian, i. 198. 
 Fonfce Bran da, ii. 306. 
 
 Food, amount of, determines wages and price, ii. 265. 
 Forbes, George, Prof., i. 183 (note). 
 
 Forbes, James David, i. 172; letters on u his real greatness," i. 173 
 seqq. ; and Agassiz, i. 172, 186 ; his " Danger of Superficial Knowl- 
 edge " quoted, i. 185 (note) ; letter to Mr. Ruskin, i. 186 ; letter of 
 a pupil of to Mr. Ruskin, i. 186. 
 
 Force, use of human, ii. 320 seqq. 
 
 Foreground and background, painting of, i. 20. 
 
 * 4 Forester," lecture of in Daily Telegraph on Field Sports, ii. 814 
 (note). 
 
 Forster's Life of Dickens, ii. 311 (note). 
 
 Fortnif/Jdiy Bedew, Mr. Freeman aud Mr. Trollope on field sports, ii. 
 
 313 (note). 
 Fortress, definition of a, i. 145. 
 
 Fortunes, rapidly accumulated, ii. 281 ; inequality of desirable, ib. 
 Fountain of joy at Siena, ii. 306. 
 Fox-hunting, ii. 314. 
 
 Fra Bartolomeo, none in National Gallery, i. 55, and note. 
 Framing, methods of, for delicate drawings, i. 85. 
 
 France and Austria, loss of in war, ii. 239 ; cathedrals of, i. 151 ; empire, 
 war the key-note of the first, vice of the second, ii. 232; position 
 of in 1859, ii. 215. 
 
 Franco-Prussian war, letters on, ii. 228 seqq. ; cause of, ii. 232 ; character 
 of the contest, ii. 233 ; Germany to stop within limits, ii. 284 ; loss 
 of property in, ii. 237, 288; misery of, ii. 301, and note ; England s 
 position as regards, ii. 234; refugees during, ii. 336 (note); the 
 Sainte Chapelle in danger during, i. 151. 
 
 Franchise, female, ii. 336 (note). 
 Frange " ii. 355. 
 
 "Frango," ii. 355. 
 
 Fraser's Magazine (July, 1875), letter on " Modern Warfare," ii. 234. 
 Frederick the Great, his statue at Berlin, ii. 218 (note) ; his wars, vir- 
 tue of, ii. 233. 
 Freedom " not to be given," ii. 213, 214 (note). 
 Freeman, Mr. E., on field sports, ii. 313 (note). 
 Frere, M. Edouard, escape from Paris, ii. 229, and note. 
 Fresco-painting, laws of, determined by Perugino, i. 117. 
 "Fret," etymology of, ii. 855 seqq. 
 
394 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 "Frico," ii. 355. 
 
 Frith's, Mr., " Derby Day," i. 65. (See also i. 11, note.) 
 Furnivall, Mr., letters to, ii. 354. 
 Fuseli quoted, i. 66, 81. 
 
 Gainsborough, his landscapes, i. 27 ; his speed, i. 113. 
 
 Gardens, ii. 340. 
 
 Garisenda, tower of, i. 166. 
 
 Gas, effect of, on pictures, i. 101, 107. 
 
 Generalization in art, i. 82. 
 
 Geneva, lake of, i. 176 ; its color, i. 192 ; letter to journal at, 153 ; Sun- 
 days at, ii. 217. 
 Genius, the tone of true, i. 184, 185. 
 Gentian, letter on the, i. 198 ; species of the, ib. 
 Gentlemen, duties of, to their peasantry, ii. 314. 
 Geological letters i. 169 seqq. 
 
 Geology, English v. Alpine, i. 177 seqq, ; museum of, at Sheffield, ii. 
 312 ; Mr. Ruskin's study of, i. 172, 174 ; work needed in the sci- 
 ence, i. 171. (See also Glaciers.) 
 
 George, Mr. Ernest, his etchings, i. 114 (note), and seqq. 
 
 "Gerin," play of, mentioned, ii. 369. 
 
 Germany, characteristics of the nation, ii. 213 ; Emperor of, ii. 213 
 (note) ; Franco-Prussian war and, ii. 228-234 ; heroism of a Ger- 
 man girl, ii. 293 ; German soldiery, ii. 213 ; German women, type 
 of features, ii. 208. 
 
 Ghibelline faction at Florence, ii. 221 (note). 
 
 Ghirlandajo, i. 53 ; no picture by in National Gallery, i. 55 (note). 
 Giagnano, landslip near, i. 197. 
 Gideon's fleece, i 131. 
 "Gil Bias," ii. 362. 
 Giorgione, i. 81. 
 
 Giotto, his kt public," i. 29 ; pupil of Cimabue, i. 40, and note, i. 53; 
 his theology of death, i. 118. 
 
 Glaciers, action of compared with that of water, i. 171-174 ; excavation 
 of lake basins by, i. 169 seqq. ; the G. des Bois, i. 174-176 ; experi- 
 ments with honey illustrating, i. 174 ; hardness of, i. 173 ; motion 
 of, i. 172, 173. 
 
 Gladstone, Mr., ii. 328 (note); his " Juventus Mundi," ii. 349 (note) ; 
 at Naples, i. 33, and note ; and Lord Beaconsfield, ii. 372. 
 
 Glasgow, ii. 323 ; the G. Athenaeum, ii. 310 (note) ; the Lord Rector- 
 ship of G. University, ii. 370 seqq. 
 
 Glasgow Herald, The, letters in : — 
 
 (June 5, 1874) "The Value of Lectures," ii. 310. 
 
 (Oct. 7, 1880) The Lord Rectorship of Glasgow University (four letters), ii. 370 seqq. 
 (Oct. 12, 1880) The Lord Rectorship, etc., ii. 372. 
 
 Globe, The (Oct. 29, 1875), "An Oxford Protest" in, ii. 364. 
 
 ''G. M.," letter of, in the Reader, i. 181. 
 
 Gneiss, the rocks of Chamouni made of, i. 175. 
 
 Gold, depreciation of, ii. 240 ; discoveries of, ib. (note). 
 
 Gold win Smith, Mr., on Luxury, ii. 267 (note). 
 
 Good Words, 44 Animals of Scripture" reprinted in (1861), ii. 350 (note). 
 Gosse, Dr. L. A., ii, 340. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 395 
 
 Gothic architecture, adaptability of, i. 122 seqq., 128, 129 ; and classic, i. 
 102 (note) ; decoration of, i. 134, 136, 138 ; effect of strength in, i. 
 165 : employment of various degrees of skill in, i. 126 ; English, 
 Italian, and Venetian, i. 154 ; and the Oxford Museum, i. 125 seqq.\ 
 the G. Revival, i. 126, 127, 152 (note) ; types of French, i. 151. 
 
 Government, the kind of. needed, ii. 282. 
 
 Gravelotte, battle of, ii. 237. 
 
 Great Eastern Railway (article in Daily Telegraph on), the, ii. 279. 
 Greece, the king of, ii. 227 (note) ; oppressed by Greeks only, ii. 212; 
 
 and Venice, relation of architecture, i. 160. 
 Greek art, study of, ii. 334. 
 Grenville, Sir Richard, ii. 211 (note). 
 Greppond. glacier of, ii. 305. 
 
 Greswell, Rev. R., and the Oxford Museum, i. 137. 
 Grief, effect of trifles on minds distressed by, i. 78. 
 Griggs. Matilda, ii 362, and note, 
 
 "Growing old," article on, in Y. M. A, Magazine, ii. 326. 
 
 Grumio. (See Shakespeare.) 
 
 Guelfi, faction at Florence, ii. 321 (note). 
 
 Guido, pictures by, in the National Gallery, i. 53. 
 
 Guthrie, letter to Dr., ii. 360. 
 
 Guy's bowl at Warwick Castle, i. 150. 
 
 Hamilton, Sir W.'s Logic, ii. 257. 
 
 Hanging, who deserve, ii. 317. 
 
 Hanover, Sundays at, ii. 217. 
 
 Harbor-making, ii. 324. 
 
 Harding, i. 37. 
 
 Harold the Saxon, i. 158. 
 
 Harrison, letter to W. H., ii. 367. 
 
 Hartz minerals, purchase of by Mr. Ruskin, ii. 259. 
 
 Hartz mountains, ii. 218. 
 
 Hasselt's "Histoire de Rubens" referred to, i. 28 (note). 
 Hawley's, Sir J., " Musjid " (Derby winner), ii. 216 (note). 
 Health, chair of Physical, at Oxford, ii. 333. 
 Hem ling, i. 72. 
 
 Henry VI. 's Psalter, i. 65, and note. 
 Herodotus referred to, i. 180. (See also Bubastis.) 
 Heroism, true forms of, ii. 230 ; instance of, ii. 293 ; and vice, ii. 
 329. 
 
 Hervet, Gentian, his "Economist of Xenophon," ii. 335 (note). 
 Hervey, Lord Francis, i. 103 (note). 
 Highlanders, a characteristic of, ii. 212. 
 Highlands, the rocks of the, i. 143. 
 
 Historical monuments, loss of, in England, i. 155 ; and small interest 
 
 taken in, i. 43. 
 History, true, what it is, i. 42 ; how written hitherto, ib. 
 Hobbes, definition of Justice, ii. 258 (note), 262. 
 
 Hodgson, Professor, and Mr. Ruskin on supply and demand, ii. 251 seqq. 
 
 Hogarth, his "public," i. 28 ; his " Two 'prentices," ii. 340. 
 
 Holbein, the libel on, 240 (note), 247, and note ; portrait of George 
 
 Gyzen at Berlin, ii. 219, 218 (note); his quiet work, i. 112 ; Mr. 
 
 Ruskin's article on, ii. 218 (note) ; his theology of death, i. 118 ; 
 
 Wornum's life of, ii. 218 (note). 
 
396 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Holy Sepulchre, and St. Mark's, Venice, i. 159. 
 
 Hol'yoake, Mr. G. J., letters on Co-operation to, ii. 274; his " History oi 
 Co operation," ii. 274 (note) ; reference to Mr. Ruskin in America, 
 ii. 269, and note ; and the Sheffield Museum, lb. 
 
 Homer, Odyssey quoted or referred to (vi. 90), ii. 347, 348 (note) ; (xix. 
 562), i. 81 ; (xxii. end), ii. 205. 
 
 Iloniton lace-makers, ii. 322, 323. 
 
 " Honos," existence of auy absolute, ii. 262. 
 
 Horace, expurgated editions of, ii. 333 ; his theology of death, i 118; 
 
 quoted or referred to, ii. 258 (Odes, iii. 3, 1), 291, 300 (Odes, iii. 
 
 16, 29), and note, 339 ; study of, in England, ii. 329. 
 Horeb, i. 131. 
 House-7^, ii. 294. 
 Houses, letter on modern, ii. 297. 
 Huddersfield and the Jamaica Insurrection, ii. 226. 
 Hughes, Mr. T., M.P. for Lambeth, ii. 227 (notes). 
 Hullah, Mr., on music, i. 40 (note), 41. 
 
 Hume, Mr. Hamilton, and the Eyre Defence Fund, ii. 228 (note). 
 
 Hunt, Mr. Alfred, and the Liverpool Academy, i. 79 (note). 
 
 . Mr. Holman, i. 77; " Awakening Conscience, The," i. 77; his 
 
 early work criticised in the Times, i, 66 (note) ; exaggerates reflected 
 light, i. 71 ; " Light of the World," i. 74 seqq. ; technical details of, 
 
 i. 75 ; "Valentine rescuing Sylvia," i. 67 (note), 70, 71 seqq. 
 William, i. 121. (Mr. Ruskin's '* Notes on Prout and Hunt," re- 
 ferred to. See Ruskin.) 
 
 Hunting, ii. 314. 
 Husbands, duty of, ii. 335. 
 44 Hymn," meaning of, ii. 334. 
 Hyssop, ii. 337. 
 
 Ideal, definition of the, i. 22, and note. 
 
 Idle, treatment of the, ii. 321. 
 
 " Illustrations of Scripture," ii. 350. 
 
 Imagination, no food for, in modern life, ii. 340. 
 
 Increased Railway Fares (articles in Daily Telegraph), ii. 277 (note). 
 
 Indians, ideas of duty in, ii. 202 ; irrigation in India, ii. 304. 
 
 Infidelity, modern, i. 144 
 
 Ingoldsby Legends ("Jackdaw of Rheims") referred to, ii. 357. 
 
 Initials, no need of, in scientific discussion, i. 182. 
 
 Iniquity, an exploded word, ii. 299. 
 
 Interest one's own, ii. 203, ii. 250. 
 
 Interference, public, with the individual, ii. 319. 
 
 Intervention, principles of, ii. 213, 215, 216. 
 
 Inundations, ii. 300-307. 
 
 Iron manufacture, ii. 250 ; modern iron-work, ii. 313. 
 
 Irrigation for Italy, ii. 303, 304. 
 
 Irvings, Mr., "Shylock," i. 162. 
 
 Isle of Does, emigration from the, ii, 283. 
 
 Italian and English treatment of art, i. 23 ; masters, pencilling of, i. 112 ; 
 
 mannerisms of Italian masters, i. 18. 
 Italy, state of in 1859, letters on, ii. 209, 215, 219 ; extent of question, 
 
 ii. 220 5 position of, ii 215 ; passions of people noble, ii. 302 (note) ; 
 power of, ii 305 ; belt-government ii. 212 ; streams of, 108 seqq. 
 
 "Italy," a reputed Turner, i. 109, and note. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 897 
 
 <: Jackdaw of Rheims " (Ingoldsby Legends), ii. 357. 
 
 Jamaica Insurrection and Governor Eyre, ii. 225 seqq. 
 
 Jameson's 44 Early Italian Painters " referred to, i. 23 (note) ; tt History 
 
 of Our Lord," i. 49 (note), 55 (note). 
 Jameson's "Scotch Ballads," i. 83, 84 (note). 
 Janssens, Abraham, and Rubens, i. 28. 
 Japan, war in, ii. 223. 
 " Jean de Nivelle V mentioned, ii. 370. 
 Jena, battle of, ii. 236, 239. 
 Jerusalem, ii. 354. 
 Jezebel, ii. 351. 
 
 Johnson, Mr. Richard, on commerce, ii. 271, and note. 
 
 Journal de Geneoe, V Esperance, 1873, Letter on Women's Work, ii. 235. 
 
 Judgment-throne, condemnation from the, ii. 228. 
 
 Jukes, Mr. T. B , F.R.S., letters on geology, etc., i. 177 (note), 180. 
 
 Jussum, ii. 253, 254. 
 
 Just price, a, ii. 299 (note). 
 
 Justice, abstract, ii. 256 ; conceivable as a hideously bad thing, ii. 262 
 (note\ 264 ; definition and derivation of, ii. 253 ; defined as " con- 
 formity with any rule, good or bad," ii. 255, 263 (note), 262; need 
 of, ii. 216 ; principles of, ii. 250 ; different words for, ii. 253. 
 
 Justinian, summary of law by, ii. 265, and note. 
 
 Katharines instrument (see Shakespeare), ii. 356. 
 
 Kail leaf, the, used in Melrose Abbey, i. 139 (note). (See Scott, "The 
 Abbot," chap. xvi. ; " The Monastery," Introduction.) 
 
 Keble College, Oxford, "The Light of the World" at, i. 74 (note). 
 
 Kennedy, Mr. T. S., copy of Turner's " Fluelen " possessed by, i. 108 
 (note). 
 
 Kensington Museum, Art School at, i. 103 (note) ; Turner's at, i. 101 
 (note). Kidderminster Times, The (July 28, 1876), letter on " Ribbes- 
 ford Church," i. 155. 
 
 King Charles the Martyr, ii. 269, 270. 
 
 King, the first duty of a, ii. 300 ; must govern the rivers of his country, ib. 
 
 Kinglake, Mr. A. W. , on Savoy and Denmark, ii. 225. 
 
 Kingsley's, Charles, " Ode to the North-East Wind," ii. 255 (note). 
 
 Kingsley, Mr., of Sidney Sussex College, on optics, i. 97-9. 
 
 Kiss' Amazon, ii. 219, 218 (note). 
 
 Koniggratz, battle of, ii. 236. 
 
 Labor, as a discipline, ii. 322 ; the forces of, order of their employment, 
 ii. 233, 321; giving of the best charity, ii. 317; its influence on 
 character, ii. 319 ; price of, ii. 243, 265 ; promise to find, ii. 273. 
 
 " La Fille du Tambour Major," Oifenbach's, mentioned, ii. 369. 
 
 Lake basins, excavated by glaciers, i. 170 (see Glaciers). 
 
 Lambeth, Mr. T. Hughes, M.P. for, ii. 225, 226. 
 
 Lammermuirs, the, i. 143. 
 
 Lancet, The, founded by Mr. Wakley, i. 34 (note). 
 Landseer, i. 37, 70 (note) ; illustrated by Burns, i. 34. 
 Landslip near Giagnano, letters on, i. 197. 
 "Langharne Castle," Turner's, i. 105, and note. 
 <k Le Chalet" mentioned, ii. 386. 
 Launce (see Shakespeare), ii. 289. 
 Law Courts, the new, i. 153, and note. 
 
398 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Laws, criminal, ii. 329 ; equity and law, ii. 263 ; eternal, and practical 
 difficulties, ii. 288 ; of nature, ii. 273 ; summary of law, by Black- 
 stone and Justinian, ii. 265, and note ; lextalionis, lexgratiae, ii. 265. 
 
 Lazarus, ii. 351. 
 
 Leconfield, ' ' Turner " in possession of Lord, i. 109 (note). 
 Lectures, the value of, i. 114, and note. 
 Lee, Fred. Richard, R.A., i. 27, and note. 
 
 Leech, John, letter on his outlines, i. 113; characteristics of his work, 
 lb ; chiaroscuro, u felicity and prosperous haste," i. 112 ; death of, 
 i. Ill (note) ; especial value of first sketches, i. 112 ; fastidious 
 work, i. 113 ; proposal to distribute his drawings among national 
 schools, i. 113, i. 65 (note). 
 
 Leicester Chronicle and Mercury (Jan. 31, 1880), letter on " Purchase of 
 Pictures," i. 65. 
 
 Leicester, proposal for picture-gallery at, i. 65. 
 
 Leith, Mr. J., and the Blackfriars Bible class, Aberdeen, ii. 328 (note). 
 Lennox, Lord H., i. 62 (note) ; i. 103 (note). 
 Lenses and specula, grinding of, i. 98. 
 
 Leonardo da Vinci, i. 81 ; designed canals of Lombardy, ii. 306. 
 Leoni Levi, M., and statistics of drink, ii. 315. 
 Leonidas, ii. 211 (note). 
 
 L'Esperance, Geneva, letter u Woman's Work" in, ii. 335. 
 
 Letter, "to the author of a review, " ii. 363 ; black letter, ii. 353 (note), 
 352 ; letters, carriage of, ii. 278, 285. (See for the letters in the book 
 the Tables of Contents and the Index under the special headings, 
 Appendix ; Architecture ; Art Criticism and Art Education ; Edu- 
 cation ; Literary Criticism ; Pictures and Artists ; Political Economy ; 
 Politics ; Pre-Raphaelitism ; Public Institutions and the National 
 Gallery ; Railways ; Roman Inundations ; Science ; Servants and 
 Houses ; Turner ; War ; Women, their work and their dress.) 
 
 Lewis. John, i. 80 ; ''Encampment under Sinai," i. 117 (note) ; "The 
 Hhareem," i. 79, and note. 
 
 u Liber Studiorum," value of, i. 100 ; sale of original plates, ii. 271. 
 
 Liberalism, modern, ii, 372, 373. 
 
 Liberty and order, ii. 216 ; and slavery, ii. 291, 292. 
 
 Liebreich, Dr., lecture on Turner and Mulready, i. 152, and note. 
 
 " Life's Midday," song in •« Y. M. A. Magazine,'" ii. 327. 
 
 Light, effect of on drawings, i. 91, 92, 101, 104, 108 ; upon water, phe- 
 nomenon of, i. 86 ; 44 Light of the World," i. 74 seqq. 
 
 " Limner and Illumination." letter on, ii. 352. 
 
 Limousin, the, ii. 234. 
 
 Lincoln, President, death of, ii. 255, and note ; English opinion of, ib. 
 
 Liudisfarne, i. 158. 
 
 Literature, what it includes, i. 44. 
 
 Literary criticism, list of letters on, ii. 341. 
 
 Literary Gazette (Nov. 13, 1858); " Turner Sketches and Drawings" 
 (letter), i. 91, and note ; mention of Edinburgh Castle in, i. 137, and 
 note. 
 
 Liverpool Albion — 
 
 (January 11, 1858), Letters on Pre-Raphaelitism in Liverpool," i. 79. 
 (November 2, 1863), 44 The Foreign Policy of England," ii. 221. 
 (November 9, 1872), "To the author of a Review," ii. 363. 
 
 Articles on u Disciple of Art and Votary of Science " in, 
 ib. (note). 
 
INDEX. 
 
 399 
 
 Liverpool Academy, i. 79 (note) ; Institute, Mr. Ruskin's refusal to 
 
 lecture at, ii. 221 (note) ; Pre-Raphaelitism in, i. 79 (note). 
 Locke, ii. 257. 
 
 Logic, instance of English, ii. 291. 
 
 Lombard/, the canals of, ii. 306 ; insurrection, ii. 210, and note. 
 
 London, ii. 373 ; London and Northwestern Railway accidents, ii. 284 
 (note) ; the streets of (letter), ii. 307 seqq. ; London Review (May 1(3, 
 1861), letter on "The Reflection of Rainbows'," i. 201. 
 
 Lorraine and Alsace, ii. 234. 
 
 Louise, Queen of Prussia, her tomb, ii. 218, and note. 
 
 Louvre, the, arrangement of, i. 60 ; preservation of drawings at, i. 90 ; 
 richly furnished, i. 95 ; salon carre, i. 60 ; pictures in : " Immacu- 
 late Conception," i. 90 (note), 91 ; "Marriage in Cana," i. 90; 
 " Susannah and the Elders," i. 60 (note). 
 
 Love, the conqueror of lust, ii. 330, 333. 
 
 Lowe, Mr., and Mr. Ruskin, ii. 365. 
 
 Lucerna Valley, the, ii. 217, 218. 
 
 Lucina (the goddess " who brings things to light, " and especially, there- 
 fore, of birth), i. 175. 
 Lust (see Love). 
 
 Luxury, of the present age, i. 32 ; and political economy, ii. 267, 268, 
 276. 
 
 Lydian modes, ii. 334. 
 
 " M. A.," Letter on M limner " from, ii. 352. 
 
 "M. A. C," Letter on atmospheric pressure from, i. 181. 
 
 Macaulay, Lord, saying of. quoted and criticised, i. 185, and note ; tone 
 
 of his mind, i. 185. 
 Machiavelli quoted, ii. 221 (note). 
 Machinery, use of, ii. 321. 
 
 Macmillan's Magazine (Nov., 1870), " Sad-colored costumes," ii. 338. 
 
 Madonna, the, and Venus, i. 159. 
 
 Magdeburg, sack of, ii. 238. 
 
 Magenta, ii. 209 (note), 237. 
 
 Malamocco, ii. 305. 
 
 Malines, "Rubens" at, i. 49. 
 
 Manchester, Art Treasures Exhibition, 1858, i. 105 (note) ; Chamber of 
 Commerce, ii. 271 (note) ; Dramatic Reform Association of, ii. 369 
 (note) ; Ruskin Society of, ii. 349. 
 
 Manufacture and Art, i. 43 ; of dress, ii. 337. 
 
 Marengo, battle of, ii. 236. 
 
 Market the laws of honest, i. 162 (note). 
 
 Marks, Mr. H. S., R.A , Letter on F. Walker to, i. 116 seqq. 
 
 Marriage, ii. 333 ; "Marriage or Celibacy " (Daily Telegraph article on), 
 ii. 275 (note). 
 
 Mars, i. 159. 
 
 Martin, illustrated by Milton, i. 34. 
 Marylebone Council ii. 298 (note). 
 
 Maskelyne, Mr. Nevil S., M.P., i. 63, and note ; his work on minerals 
 
 at the British Museum, i. 64. 
 "Matilda Y.," letter of, i. 24, and note ; Matilda Griggs, letter on, ii. 
 
 262. 
 
 Mattie, carefn' (see Scott's "Rob Roy ") ii. 290. 
 Maw, J. H., Letter from, i. 187 (note), 195 (note). 
 
400 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Matthew, St., ii. 214. 
 
 Means of Life, the, ii. 269, 270. 
 
 Mechanical power, natural to be used before artificial, i. 131. 
 Medicine, to be learnt by children, ii. 333. 
 Meduna, M., and St Mark's, i. 165. 
 Meissonier, his pictures, i. 125. 
 
 Melrose, i. 138 ; the monks of (see Scott's "Abbot," chap, xvi.), i. 138 
 
 (note). 
 Mendelssohn, ii. 151. 
 Mercury, experiment with, i. 192. 
 Mestre, ii. 15. 
 
 Marlborough House. (See Turner Drawings.) 
 
 Michael Angelo, i. 143. 
 
 Milan, the French in, ii. 209 (note), 213. 
 
 Mill. J. S., ii. 332 (note) ; direction of his thought, ii. 227; and the 
 Jamaica Insurrection, ii. 226, 227 ; political economy of, ii. 272 
 
 (note). 
 
 Millais, Mr., i. 73 (note), 80; criticised in the Times (1851), i. 66 (note); 
 early work, i. 66 ; flesh-painting by, i. 72 ; painted glass of, i. 73 ; 
 pictures of mentioned: ** Autumn Leaves," i. 83 (note); "Blind 
 Girl." i. 79 (note), 83 (note); early sacred picture (1850), i. 67; 
 " Ferdinand lured by Ariel," i. 67 (note) ; " Mariana," i. 67 (note), 
 69, 70, 73 ; "Portrait of a Gentleman and his Grandchild, " i. 67 
 (note) ; " Pot Pourri," ii. 361 ; "Return of the Dove to the Ark," 
 i. 67 (note), 70, 72 : " Wives of the Sons of Noah," i. 70 ; " Wood- 
 man's Daughter," i. 67 (note). 
 
 Miller, John, collection of pictures of, i. 83 (note). 
 
 Milton quoted ('• Com us," i. 301), ii. 355; tk Paradise Lost," i. 33. 
 
 Mincio the, ii. 212, 216, 306. 
 
 Miniatures, painting of, i. 117; use of, 120, 124. 
 
 Miscellaneous Letters, list of subjects, ii. 275. 
 
 Missal paintings, condition of, good, and why, i. 93, 94. 
 
 Mistress, an ideal house-, ii. 295. 
 
 Mitford, Mary Russell, ii. 360 (note), 360. 
 
 Mitrailleuse and musket, relative effect of, ii. 236. 
 
 Mock-castles, etc., i. 148. 
 
 Modern houses, letter on, ii. 297 ; world, destruction of buildings by 
 
 the, i. 155 ; theology of, i. 118. (See also Age, the Present.) 
 " Modern Painters." (See under Ruskin, Mr.) 
 
 Monetary and Mining Gazette (Nov. 13, 1875), letter on 4 4 The Defini- 
 tion of Wealth," ii. 271. 
 
 Money, true, ii. 304 ; definition of, ii. 271, and note ; distribution of, ii. 
 250 ; ill g-ot, ill spent, ii. 330 ; loss of, ii. 323 ; how made and lost, 
 ii 275. 276 ; pedigree of, ii. 270 ; how the rich get and spend, ii. 
 262-266 ; value of, ii. 44 ; lowered value of, its effect, ii. 241. 
 
 Montanvert, the, i. 175. 
 
 Montaperto, battle of, ii. 221 (note). 
 
 Mont Rlanc, guides up. ii. 254, 257. 259 (note); Cenis (and James 
 Barry), i. 15, 16 (note) ; St. Angelo, ii. 304 j Viso, ii. 217. 
 
 Monthly Packet, The (Nov., 1863), "Proverbs on right dress " ii. 337. 
 
 Moore, Mr. Morris, and the National Gallery, i. 47 (note), 57. 
 
 Moore, Thomas, National Airs, " Oft in the stilly night,' ' referred to, 
 i. 77 ; his 14 Public," i. 28. 
 
 Morality of Field Sports, ii. 313 seqq. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 401 
 
 More, Sir T., " Utopia " of, ii. 367. 
 Morgarten, battle of, ii. 210, and note. 
 
 Morning Chronicle (Jan. 20, 1855), " The Animals of Scripture, a Re« 
 view," ii. 350. 
 
 Morning Post (July 7, 1864), letter, "The Position of Denmark," ii. 223. 
 
 Morris, Mr. William, and St. Mark's, Venice, i. 152. 
 
 Mosaic Law, the, ii. 272. 
 
 Mother, place of a, ii. 832. 
 
 Mountings of drawiugs. (See Drawings.) 
 
 Mozart, ii. 346. 
 
 Mulready, i. 72, 73 (note) ; Dr. Liebreich on, i. 151, and note. 
 Munro, Mr., and the Oxford Museum, i. 186. 
 
 Murchison, Sir Roderick, and the Excavation of G laciers, i. 169 (note) ; 
 
 and the Eyre Defence Fund, ii. 228 (note). 
 Murillo's k< Immaculate Conception," i. 90 (note), 91. 
 Muscle, use of, in labor, ii. 322. 
 
 Museum, a modern, ii. 312 ; a national, its objects and uses, i. 63; St. 
 George's, ii. 362. 
 
 Music, ii. 339 ; the art of, ii 334 ; a less common faculty than drawing, 
 
 i. 40, 98 ; ear for, commoner than eye for color, i. 29. 
 Musjid, Derby-winner, ii. 216 (note). 
 
 Mycenae, ii. 356. 
 
 Mythology, ii. 349 ; Christian and Greek, i. 160 ; and religion, i. 118. 
 
 Naples, Mr. Gladstone and the political prisoners at, ii. 28 (note) ; storm 
 at, ii. 304. 
 
 Napoleon Bonaparte, i. 55 (note), 59 ; ii. 232 ; the Third, ii. 212, 232, 
 
 233 ; purchase of the Louvre " Murillo " by, i. 90. 
 Nations, U A nation's defences," ii. 301 ; defences of, "do not pay!" 
 
 ii. 303 ; gain and loss of, 275, 276 ; their quality shown in that of 
 their servants, ii. 287 ; their strength in union, not in number, ii. 
 231. 
 
 National Gallery, the (see also Pictures) ; debate on vote for, i. 88 (note) ; 
 an European jest, i. 48 ; an ideal arrangement of, i. SSseqq., 60-62 ; 
 keepers of : Eastlake, Sir C, i. 48 (note) ; Uwins R.A. , i. 56 (note); 
 Wornum, i. 88 ; Letters to Times on, i. 47, 56, 88 ; a new gallery 
 proposed, i. 60, 62, and note ; no Ghirlandajo, Fra Bartolomeo, or 
 Verrochio in, i. 55 (note), 56 ; Parliamentary Blue Books referred 
 to, i. 47 (note), 53 (note), 57 (note), 59 (note) ; popular idea of its 
 object, i. 58; restoration of pictures in. i. 48 (note) and seqq., 56; 
 purchase of pictures for, i. 53, 55, 56 ; strictures on, i. 53 (note) ; 
 the Vernon gift, i. 61, and note. 
 
 National Gallery, Pictures referred to in the — 
 
 Albertinelli's "Virgin and Child, 1 ' i. 55 (note). 
 Angelico's " Adoration of the Magi," ib. 
 
 " " Christ amid the Blessed," ib. 
 Bellini, " Doge Leonardo Loredano," i. 56. 
 Claude's " Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca," i. 57 (note), 
 ;t " Mill," i. 57 (note). 
 " " Queen of Sheba," i. 57 (note). 
 " " Seaport." i. 57 (note). 
 Cuyp, " Large Dort." i. 50 (note). 
 
 " " Landscape, Evening," ib. 
 Guido, " Lot and his Daughters," i 53, 
 '* "Magdalen," ib. (note). 
 
 Vol. ii. —28 
 
402 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Guido, "St. Jerome," ib, 
 
 " " Susannah and the Elders, 1 ' ib. 
 Holbein, libel on, i. 48 (note), 56, and note. 
 Lorenzo di Credi, " Virgin and Child," i. 55 (note). 
 Perogino, "Virgin and Child, with St. Jerome and St. Francis," ib. 
 m "Virgin and Infant Christ, with St. John," ib. 
 
 •* " Virgin and Infant Christ, with Archangels Michael, Raphael, and 
 
 Tobias," ib.; 120. 
 Poussin, " Sacrifice of Isaac," i. 18, and note. 
 Rubens, " Judgment of Paris," i. 55, and note. 
 
 " " Peace and War,' 1 i. 49. 
 Titian, " Bacchus and Ariadne," i. 50-64. 
 Turner, "Dido building Carthage," i. 57, and note. 
 " "The sun rising in a mist," ib. 
 
 '* Drawings and Sketches, i. 61, and note ; 84 (note). 
 
 Van Eyck, " Jean Arnolfini and his wife," i. 57 (note). 
 Velasquez, "Philip IV. hunting the Wild Boar," i. 50. 
 Veronese, '* Consecration of St. Nicholas," i. 57, and note. 
 
 " " Rape of Europa," ib, 
 Wilkie, " The Blind Fiddler," i. 22. 
 
 Natural History, study of, i. 132 ; letter on, i. 199. 
 
 Nature and Art, letter on " Art Teaching by Correspondence " in, i. 46. 
 
 Nature, general ignorance of, i. 30 ; human, not corrupt, ii. 329 ; its 
 
 lessons true, i. 38 ; neglect of, i. 31 ; understanding of, ib. 
 Neptune, ii. 349. 
 
 Neutrality, the a difficulties of," letter, ii. 232; of England, ii. 221. 
 New Shakespeare Society, letters in Transactions of, ii. 353 seqq. 
 Newspaper, duty and power of an editor, ii. 287. 
 Newtonian law, i. 194 (note), 195. 
 Newton's " Principia," i. 28. 
 
 New Year's Address and Messages to Blackfriars Bible Class, Aberdeen : 
 
 " Act, act in the living present " (1873) ii. 327. 
 " Laborare est orare" (1874), ii. 328. 
 " A Pagan Message " (1878), ii. 329. 
 
 Nineteenth Century: Mr. Ruskin's 1 1 Fiction, Fair and Foul," quoted, 
 
 ii. 290 (note). 
 Nino Pisano, i. 53. 
 Nobert, line -ruling by, i. 97. 
 Non-iquity, ii. 303. 
 
 Norton, Prof. C. E. (U.S.A.), letters of Mr. Ruskin to, i. 88 (note), 100 
 
 (note), 108 (note) ; lecture on Turner, ib. 
 ' ' Notes on Employment of the Criminal Classes" {Daily Telegraph, 
 
 letter and pamphlet), ii. 322-326 seqq. 
 " Notes on Prout and Hunt" (see Ruskin, Mr.), i. 161 (note). 
 "Notre Dame de Paris," its place among French cathedrals, i. 149. 
 Norwich, Dr. Browne at, ii. 308, and note. 
 
 " Oak Silkworms,' ' letter in Times (Oct. 24, 1862) on, ii. 340. 
 Obedience, the real " Divine service, ii. 329. 
 Offenbach's " Fille du Tambour Major " referred to, ii. 369. 
 Oil painting, determined by Titian, i. 117. 
 Old Adam (see Shakespeare), ii. 290. 
 Old Masters, exhibition, i. 109. 
 Oliver, Rowland for an, ii. 249. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 403 
 
 Opie, i. 81. 
 
 Optical work, delicacy of, i. 97, 98. 
 
 Optics, writers on, i. 191 (note). 
 
 Organ, street nuisance of, ii. 224, 225 (note). 
 
 Ornament, natural forms in, i. 126 ; in dress, ii. 336. 
 
 O'Shea, and the Oxford Museum, i. 136, 140 (note). 
 
 « 4 Ought " and " are," ii. 274. 
 
 " Our Sketching Club/' ii. 343, and note. 
 
 Oxford, Ttalliol oriel-window, i. 132 ; bishop of, on education, ii. 229 
 (note), 178 ; Bodleian library, traceries of, i. 132 ; Christ Church, 
 fan-vaulting at, ib. ; drawing schools, i. 105,113; examinations, 
 letter on, i. 38; meeting in on St. Mark's, Venice, i. 167; print- 
 sellers, ii. 230; "An Oxford Protest," ii. 159; rich buildings, i. 
 132. 
 
 Oxford Museum, the, letters on, i. 122-142; Acland, Dr., his lecture 
 on, quoted, i. 122 (note), 128 (note), 130 (note) ; building of, i. 123 
 (note) ; capital in, i. 138, and note ; decoration of, i. 125, 133, 134, 
 135, 141 ; porch proposed, i. 128 ; sculpture of, i. 135 ; spandril in, 
 i. 142 ; success of its Gothic architecture, i. 128 ; its teaching, i. 135 ; 
 the west front, i. 136. 
 
 Padua, ii. 305. 
 
 Painters, how roused to exercise their strength, i, 136 ; vision of, how 
 
 it affects their pictures, i. 152. 
 Painting and poetry, closely allied, i. 34 ; portrait painting, ii. 348. 
 Pall Mall Gazette, The — 
 
 . (April 18, 1865) u Strikes v. Arbitration," ii. 248. 
 
 Articles on strikes, ib. 
 
 44 masters and men, ii. 251, and note. 
 (April 21, 1865) " Work and Wages," ii. 251. 
 ( " 25. 44 ) M 44 ii. 253. 
 
 (May 2, *• ) 14 44 ii. 255. 
 
 ( 44 9, 44 ) 44 ii. 260. 
 
 ( 44 22, « 4 ) 44 44 ii. 263. 
 
 Interpolation of, in Mr. Buskin's letters, ii. 258-260. 
 (March 1, 1867) " At the Play," ii. 361. 
 (May 1, 1867) Standard of Wages," ii. 266. 
 (January 31, 1868) "True Education." ii. 309. 
 ( 44 11), 1871) " A Nation's Defences," ii. 301. 
 (December 28, 1871) 44 The Streets of London," ii. 307. 
 (March 16, 1872) ''Mr. Ruskin's Influence— a defence," i. 151. 
 ( " 21, 14 ) 41 Mr. Ruskin's Influence — a rejoinder," i. 153. 
 (November 4, 1872) 44 Madness and Crime," ii. 3^6. 
 (January 24, 1873) "How the Rich spend their Money," ii. 267. 
 ( " 29, 44 ) * 44 44 ii. 268. 
 
 ( " 31, '«■) . ,*! 44 44 ii. 269. 
 
 ( " 11, 1875) 44 A Mistaken Review," ii. 343. 
 ( " 19, 44 ) 44 The Position of Critics," ii. 345. 
 
 Pan-droseion, i. 158. 
 
 Parents and children, relation of, ii. 331. 
 
 Paris, fortifications of, ii. 305 ; in Franco-Prussian war, ii. 231 ; theatres 
 of, ii. 369. 
 
 Parliament, ii. 326 ; of, 1868, ii. 319 j debate on Denmark, ii. 233 ; on 
 
 Turner bequest, i. 88; Houses of, ii. 353 (note), 354. 
 Partnership of masters and men, ii. 270, and note. 
 Patmore, Coventry, i. 67 (note), ii. 346, 349 (note). 
 
404 
 
 INDEX, 
 
 Paton, Waller, U.S.A., i. 80, and note. 
 Patriotism, ii. 210 (note), ii. 830. 
 Peebles v. Plainstanes. (See Scott ) 
 
 Penelope and her servants (see Homer, Od. xxii.), ii. 295. 
 
 Penrith, letter from, i. 144. 
 
 *' Percy's Reliques'' quoted, i. 83 (note). 
 
 Permanence, the blessing of a fixed life, ii. 294. 
 
 Perseus, i. 159. 
 
 Perugino, i. 55 (note), 117, 120, note, and 121. 
 
 Peter, St., ii. 214. 
 
 Petroleum, ii. 322. 
 
 Pharpar and Abana, ii. 216. 
 
 Phidias and Titian, i. 140, 159. 
 
 (ppac-aoo, ii 355. 
 
 " Pickwick " referred to, ii. 290. 
 
 Pictures— and artists, letters on, i. Ill ; arrangement of in a gallery, i. 
 52, 53, 00 ; cleaning of, i. 51 ; galleries, fatigue of visiting, i. 42, 
 61 ; glazing of, i'. 51, 57, 58 ; are great books, i. 58, 60 (note), 76, 
 106 ; London atmosphere, effect of on, i. 48 ; modern appreciation 
 of, i. 65; novelty of a purpose in, i. 77 ; popular idea of, i. 79; 
 preservation of, i. 49, 59 ; restoration of, i. 57 ; purchase of, i. 65 ; 
 common tendency of, i, 78 ; tone left by time on, i. 49 ; touches on, 
 value of last, i. 57 ; must be understood as well as seen, i. 77 ; value 
 of studies for, i. 62 ; vanity in possessing, i. 125 ; worth buying, 
 worth seeing, i. 52, 58, 95. (See also National Gallery.) 
 
 Pictures referred to, see National Gallery, Louvre, and under the names 
 of artists. 
 
 Piedmont, a view of, ii. 217. 
 
 4 'Pilgrim's Progress" referred to, i. 73. 
 
 Pisaji. 313. 
 
 Plato quoted, i. 31, 179 ; ii. 298 ; and justice, ii. 254. 
 " Plight," ii. 355. 
 
 Plummer, John, letter on " Supply and Demand," ii. 246, 247 (note). 
 Po, delta of, ii. 304 ; embankments for, ii. 301. 
 Pocock, Mr. T., ii. 326. 
 
 Poetry, disregarded in this age, i. 32; and painting allied, i. 33 ; princi- 
 ples of criticism of, ii. 347 ; better read than recited, ii. 357 ; requi- 
 sites for enjoyment of, i 32 ; of Turner's pictures, lb. 
 
 Poets, modern, ii. 349 (note). 
 
 Point sine u, under-pay ment of, ii. 284. 
 
 Poland and Russia, ii. 222. 
 
 Pole, Geffrey, his " Xenophon," ii. 295 (note). 
 
 Political Economy, list of letters on, ii. 240 ; and morality, how con- 
 nected, ii. 245, 246 ; primal fallacy of modern, ii. 265 ; Ruskin, Mr., 
 and his definition of, ii 279 (280-283) ; scope of his economy, ii. 
 292 ; shelter the first question in, ii. 298, 299 ; true and false, ii. 292- 
 
 Politics, list of letters on, ii. 209 ; bewilderment of Mr. Ruskin at, ii. 209 ; 
 the path in, ii. 213, 214 ; tone of modern, ii. 220 ; in youth, ii. 327. 
 
 Pompeii, ii. 304. 
 
 Pope's " Odyssey " quoted, ii. 347, and note- 
 Poplar, artisans of, emigration, ii. 282, 283 (note). 
 Porterage, ii. 322-324. 
 
 Portrait painters, their ignorance of landscape, i. 30. 
 
 Pottery, ii 328. - - ■ 
 
INDEX. 
 
 405 
 
 x'oussin, Gaspar, i. 17, 21 ; his "Sacrifice of Isaac," i. 17. 
 
 *' Nicholas, i. 18. 
 Powers, for labor, order of their employ, ii. 320 ; of a nation — depend- 
 ent on what, ii. 231. 
 Poynter, Mr. R. A., at Kensington, i. 102, and note. 
 Prayer, obedience the best, ii. 329. 
 
 Pre-Raphaelitism, etc., list of letters on, i. 55 ; choice of features by, i. 
 70, 71 ; conceits of, i. 83, and note ; drapery of, i. 70 ; flesh paint- 
 ing of, i. 71 ; growth of, i. 80 ; labor of Pre-Raphaelite pictures, i. 
 75 ; Liverpool and, i. 79 ; meaning of the word, i. 68, and note ; 
 perspective of the Pre-Raphaelite Brethren, i. 69 ; probable suc- 
 cess of, i. 73 ; religious tendencies of Pre Raphaelite Brethren, i. 
 67, 73; respective value of Pre-Raphaelite and other work, i. 80, 
 82 ; want of shade in Pre-Raphaelite work, i. 73 ; Pre-Raphaelite 
 work, true and false, i. 77. 
 
 Price, dependent on labor, ii. 257, 261 ; a just, ii. 299 (note) ; deter- 
 minable, ii. 262 ; allows for necessary labor, ii. 257 ; and value, ii. 
 242, 265. 
 
 Principle, the sense of, how blunted, i. 22. 
 
 Property, distribution of, ii. 268, 269 ; principles of, ii. 271 ; loss of in 
 
 war, ii. 238, 241. 
 Proteus, character of Shakespeare's, i. 71. 
 
 Prout, i. 70 (note). (See Ruskin, Mr., u Notes on Prout and Hunt.") 
 Provence, winds of, ii. 321. 
 "Protestant," ii. 326. 
 
 Protestantism, remarks on, ii. 209, 210 ; aspect of, at home and abroad, 
 ii. 217 ; hypocrisy of, ii. 210; of Italians, French, and Austrians, 
 ii. 211. 
 
 Protests, uselessness of, ii. 223. 
 
 Protractor, the use of the, i. 177 (note), 180. 
 
 Prussia, Frederick William IV., of, ii. 213 (note). (See also Franco- 
 Prussian war.) 
 
 Public, the, defined, i. 29 ; their judgment in art, i. 29 ; and in other 
 matters, i. 31 ; their ignorance of nature, i. 31 ; Frederick Walker, 
 how affected by, i. 122. 
 
 Public Institutions and the National Gallery, list of letters on, i. 47, 
 (See National Gallery, British Museum.) 
 
 Pullen, Mr. F. W., Letter to, on St. Mark's, Venice, i. 167 (note). 
 
 Punishment, ii. 320. 
 
 Qnarles Harris' port, ii. 267. 
 Quebec, emigration to, ii. 283. 
 
 Kabbah, ii. 351. 
 
 Radetzky, his character, ii. 211. 
 
 Railways, list of letters on, ii. 273 ; accidents, ii 284, 285 ; doubling of 
 lines, ii. 284, 285 ; at Dulwich, ii. 290 ; economy, ii. 279 ; invest- 
 ment in, ii. 277 ; management of, ii. 278; ownership of, ii. 277- 
 279 ; payment of pointsmen, ii. 279-284 ; stations, decoration of, ii. 
 88, 89. 
 
 Rainbows, reflection of in water, i. 171. 
 
 Raphael, i. 53, 81 ; distinction in art before and after, i. 69 ; pictures 
 
406 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 of in the Louvre, i. 59 ; in the National Gallery, i. 57 ; restored by 
 
 David and Vernet, ib. 
 Rationalism, modern, and the Liber Studiorum, i. 100 (note). 
 Rauch, Christian, ii. 223, 224 (note). 
 Reader, the, Letters in — 
 
 (November 12, 1864) " The Conformation of the Alps," i. 1G9. 
 (November 26, 1864) " Concerning Glaciers," i. 171. 
 (December 3, 1864) " English v. Alpine Geology," i. 171. 
 (December 10. 1864) 44 Concerning Hydrostatics," i. 181. 
 
 Letters and articles, etc., referred to : by " M. A. C." and 44 G. M.," i. 181 (note) ; 
 Jukes, Mr., i. 177 (note), 178 (note), 180 (note), 181 (note) ; Murchison, Sir 
 R., i. 169 (note) ; 44 Tain Caimbenl," i. 170 (note). 
 
 Real, the, and the ideal, not opposed, i. 21, and note. 
 
 Rebekah, ii. 351. 
 Recitations, Letter on, ii. 356. 
 Red Prince, the, ii. 301. 
 
 Reflections in water, letter on, i. 186 ; two kinds of, i. 191 (note) ; lines 
 
 of moonlight on the sea, i. 188 ; of rainbows, i. 196. 
 Reformation, ii. 319 ; instruments of, ib. 320. 
 Reform Bill, 1867, ii. 319. 
 
 Religion and mythology, i. 118 ; and science, i. 130. 
 Rembrandt, i. 27, 42, 115 (note). 
 
 Rendu's Glaciers of Savoy— letter on Forbes in, i. 182. 
 Repair of buildings, ii. 324. 
 
 Republicanism v. Monarchy in the Franco-Prussian war, ii. 242. 
 Restoration, modern, letter on, i. 154 ; impossible, i. 150 ; in Italy, i. 
 
 168. 
 
 ReTorence. a mark of high intellect, i. 185. 
 Review writing, ii. 344. 
 
 Reynolds, Sir Joshua, effect of gas on his pictures, i. 102 ; grace of, ii. 
 
 229 (note); speed of, i. 102; vehicles used by, i. 101 ; Mr Ruskin's 
 
 article on, ii. 224 (note). 
 Rheims Cathedral, i. 151. 
 
 Rhine, embankments for the, ii. 301 ; foul water of the, i. 155 
 
 (note). 
 Rhone, the, ii. 301. 
 Ribbesford Church, i. 155. 
 Ricardo s " Political Economy," ii. 27. 
 Rich and Poor, money how spent and made by, ii. 291-297. 
 Richmond, George, R.A., i. 167; Professor W. B. , ii. 348. 
 Rivers, Italian, ii. 300 seqq. (See Roman Inundation letters.) 
 Roadmaking, ii. 324. 
 Roads, who should own, ii. 307, 308. 
 Robert le Diable, opera of, ii. 223. 
 
 Rogers's u Italy," i. 86 ; Poems, i. 85, 96 ; his old servant, i. 107. 
 Roman inundations, list of letters on, ii. 339. 
 Roman race, the qualities of the, ii. 305. 
 Rome, and the floods, ii. 304. 
 
 Rose, Society of the, ii. 366 ; the heraldic sign on Mr. Ruikin's books, 
 
 ib. 
 
 Ross. Sir William, A.R.A., i. 69. 
 Rosse, microscopes of Lord, i. 97. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 407 
 
 Rossetti, i. 78, ii. 374. 
 Rossini, ii. 869. 
 
 Rotterdam, cleanness of, ii. 308. 
 Rouen Cathedral, i. 151. 
 
 Rowland, a, needed by France, ii. 247 ; for one's Oliver, ii. 271. 
 Royal Institution, Dr. Liebreich s lecture at, i. 151, and note. 
 
 " " Mr. Ruskin's lecture on ' ' The Alps " at, i. 170 (note). 
 
 " " Mr. Ruskin's lecture on "Verona" at, lb. 
 
 Rubens, advantageous condition in which to see his pictures, i. 49 ; 
 characteristics as an artist, i. 49 ; his landscapes, i. 27 ; his reply to 
 A. Janssens, i. 28 (note; ; pictures, at Antwerp, Malines, Cologne, i. 
 49 ; "Judgment of Paris," i. 54, and note; "Peace and War," 
 
 i. 49. 
 
 Rules good and bad, ii. 284, 285. 
 
 Buskin, Mr., antipathies of, ii. 369 ; an antiquary, i. 150 ; art teaching 
 by correspondence approved by, i. 47 ; art-work, how first begun, i. 
 176 ; Austrian friend of, at Venice, ii. 212 ; at Bellinzona, ii 306 ; 
 bewildered by modern politics, ii. 207 ; and the " Bibliography of 
 R.," ii. 366 ; his books, ii 342 (see below, books of, quoted) ; his books 
 read for the sound of the words, i. 158 ; botany, notes on, i. 76, 
 198, ii. 859 ; castles, his love of, i. 144, 146, 148 (note) ; changes 
 . residence, and why, i. 153 ; charity of, i. 149, ii. 325, 362 ; con- 
 science hereditary to, ii. 270 ; a conservative, i. 149, 150, ii. 227 ; 
 and Copley Fielding, i. 187 ; criticism,— principles of his, i. 186 ; 
 rarely replies to, i. 17, 91, ii. 347 ;— crossing-sweepers of, ii 309 ; 
 (note) ; diagram of Alpine aiguilles, i. 182 ; dispirited, ii. 364 ; 
 drawing of St. Mark's, Venice, i. 158 ; excuses from correspondence, 
 
 ii. 362 ; his father,— business of, ii. 283, and note, 295, 296 ; an 
 Edinburgh boy, ii. 360 ; — Forbes 1 gratitude to, i. 184 (note) ; fort- 
 une of, ii. 295, 296 ; gardener of, ii. 326 ; geology, knowledge and 
 early love of, i. 176, ii. 350 ; geological work amongst the Alps, i. 
 169; Griggs, Matilda, and, ii. 362; Guthrie, Dr., and, ii. 360; 
 Harrison, Mr. W. H., and, ii. 368 ; Hartz minerals purchased bv, 
 ii. 259 ; Holyoake, Mr., and, ii. 274, 275 ; illness in 1878, i. 157, and 
 note ; " inconsistency " of, i. 40 (note), ii. 274 ; influence of on archi- 
 tecture, i. 151 seqq., 154 ; insanity, a tender point with, ii 317; in- 
 vestment in house property, ii. 299 ; investment in railways — 
 " never held a rag of railroad scrip," ii. 278 ; Irving. Mr., and, ii. 
 365 (note) ; Italy, knowledge of, ii. 220, and the Italian question, 
 ii. 209 seqq. ; lectures, refusal to give, ii. 221, and note, 310 ; lectures 
 at Westminster Architectural Museum ii. 252 (note) ; Lowe, Mr., 
 and (letter , ii. 365 ; at Naples, ii. 304 ; natural history, love of, i. 
 196 ; newspapers little read by, ii. 216 ; at Oxford, ii. 364, 184 ; 
 resigns professorship, i. 160 ; political economy of, i. 176, ii. 280, 
 292, 293 (see s.v.) ; publication of books, ii. 341 seqq. ; as a railwav 
 traveller, ii. 278 ; range of work, ii. 364 ; religious tone of his 
 writings, i. 65, and note ; restoration, horror of modern, i. 150, 154, 
 156, 156 ; rich, moderately, ii. 268 ; science, love of, i. 130, 176 ; 
 servants of, ii. 289 ; strikes, proposal as to, ii. 266 (note) ; a Tory, i. 
 149, 150 ; Turner. R.'s insight for his work, i. 109 ; called mad for 
 praising Turner, i. 109 ; arranges the Turner bequest, i. 84, 86, 87, 
 and note, 88, 90, 101, 103 ; executor of Turner's will, i. 84 ; love of 
 Turner's pictures, i. 25; Thornbury's "Life of Turner" criticised 
 by, i. 110; St. Mark's, Venice, and i. 159, 166 ; Ruskin Society, 
 
408 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 i. 167 (note), ii. 367 ; Utopian home, ii. 315 ; residence in Venice, 
 i. 89 ; wish to buy "Verona" {see Verona), i. 149. 
 Ruskin, Mr., books of, quoted or referred to : — 
 
 " Academy Notes," i. 74 (note), 83 (note), 117; ii. 229 (note). 
 
 "A Joy for Ever, 1 ' i. 40 (note), 105 (note), 186 (note) ; ii. 338 (note), 340. 
 
 " Aratra Pentelici," ii. 311 (note). 
 
 " Ariadne Fiorentina, " i. 108 (note), 115 (note). 
 
 "Bibliotheca Pastorum," vol. ii. 214 (note), 301 (note), 337 (note). 
 
 " Cestus of Aglaia," ii. 292 (note). 
 
 «.« Crown of Wild Olive,' 1 ii. 229, 262 (note), 339. 
 
 44 Deucalion," i. 176 (note). 
 
 u Eagle's Nest," ii. 311 (note), 326. 
 
 V Education in Art," i. 40 (note). 
 
 *' Elements of Drawing," i. 98 ; ii. 343 (note). 
 11 Essays on Political Economy/' see below, " Munera Pulveris." 
 Evidence before National Gallery Commission, 1857, i. 58 (note), 87 (note). 
 " Examples of Venetian Architecture," i. 154 (note). 
 44 Fiction Fair and Foul,' 1 ii. 290 (note). 
 Fors Clavigera," i. 148, and note, 157 (note), 165, 166, 167^ ii. 262 (note), 271 
 (note), 273, 299 (note), 312 (note), 316, 342 (note), 363, 365. 
 
 V Giotto and his Works in Padua," i. 40 (note). 
 Holbein, article on, ii 219 (note). 
 
 44 Home and its Economies, 1 ' ii. 330 (note). 
 
 Lectures on Architecture and Painting, i. 37 (note), 110 (note). 
 
 Lectures on Art, ii. 311, 338 (note). 
 
 Lecture, on Forms of Stratified Alps, i. 171 (note). 
 
 on Verona and its ruins, ii, 302 (note). 
 
 Letters on the Lord's Prayer, ii. 328. 
 
 14 Modern Painters," i. 17, 18 (note), 19 (notes 1, 2), 21, 22 (note), 51, 67 (note), 
 69 (note), 74 (note), 104 (note), 110 (note), 111 (note), 152, 170, 182, 187 (note), 
 172 (note) ; ii. 313, 343. 
 
 44 Munera Pulveris," ii. 347 (note), 372, 373, 380, and note, 385, 322, 358 (note). 
 
 44 My First Editor," ii. 368 (note). 
 
 Notes on Criminal Classes, ii. 317 seqq. 
 
 Notes on Prout and Hunt, ii. (note). 
 
 Oxford Lectures, ii. 311. 
 
 44 Political Economy of Art ; 11 see above, 44 A Joy for Ever. 1 " 
 Pre-Raphaelitism, i. 26, 71 (note). 
 44 Queen of the Air," ii. 349, 373. 
 
 4 ' Sesame and Lilies,' 1 i. 67 (note); ii. 341 (note), 349 (note). 
 44 Seven Lamps of Architecture," i. 67 (note). 
 
 44 Stones of Venice," i. 154 (note), 158 ; ii. 363 (note), 360 (note), 368 (note), 
 44 Time and Tide," ii. 265, 361. 
 
 Turner pamphlets, Catalogues of Sketches and Drawings, i. 87, and note, 91 
 (note). 104 (note). 
 
 «* 44 Notes, 1857, i. 88 (note), 94, and note, 105 (note), 196. 
 
 «* 44 Report, i. 63 (note), 65, and note, 91 (note). 
 
 44 Two Paths." i. 91, 98. 
 44 Unto this Last." ii. 273 (note). 
 44 Val d'Arno," i. 115 (note); ii. 311. 
 
 Russia, England, and India, ii. 237. 
 
 "S," letter on capital from, ii. 279, and note, 280. 
 Saint Bernard, dogs of, ii. 217. 
 St. Elmo, ii. 303. 
 
 St. George, i. 159 ; Company or guild of. i. 166 (note), 186 ; fund, ii. 
 207 ; letters on, 183 (note) ; museum of, i. 160, ii. 274, 312; schools 
 of, ii. 332 ; Society of the Rose not to take nam* of, ii. 367. 
 
 St. James of the Rialto, i. 162, and note. 
 
 St. Jean d'Acre pillars, i 163. 
 
 4k St. Lawrence," emigration in the, ii. 283. 
 
 St. Michael, i. 159. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 409 
 
 St. Mark's, Venice, circular relating to, i. 156 ; letters on, i. 166 (note), 
 167 ; antiquity of, i. 157, 159, architecture of, i. 159 ; bill-posters 
 on, i. 163 ; bit off it, at Brantwood, i. 164 ; photographs of, i. 161 ; 
 restoration of south fagade, i. J 65, and note; stability of, i. 163, 
 169 ; subscriptions for. i. 160, 166 (note). 
 
 St. Paul and Justice, ii. 254. 
 
 St. Paul's, Charity children singing at, ii. 335. 
 
 Sainte Chapelle, the, i. 134, 150, 151. 
 
 Salamanca, battle of, ii. 235. 
 
 Salvation, the Light of the hope of, i. 76. 
 
 Salvator Rosa, i. 29 ; his "Mercury and the Woodman, " i. 18. 
 Sancho, ii. 290. 
 
 Sardinia, position of in 1859, ii. 209, 212. 
 Savoy, cession of, ii. 225, and note. 
 Scarlet, the purest color, ii. 337. 
 Schaffhausen, letter from, ii. 219. 
 Scholarship, result of English, ii. 291. 
 Schools (see Education, St. George). 
 
 Science, list of letters on, i. 169 ; connection of the different sciences, 
 i. 130 (note) ; what it includes, i. 44 ; growth of, i. 46, 130, 132 ; 
 and religion, i. 131 ; use of, i. 131. 
 
 " Science of Life, The," letters in, ii. 229, 235. 
 
 Scotch, ballads, i. 83 (note) ; u craigs," i. 143; people, religious tone 
 
 of, ii. 209, 210, 213. 
 Scotsman, The, letters in — 
 
 (July 20, 1859) »* The Italian Question," ii. 209. 
 
 ( «* 23, " ) 44 " ii. 214. 
 
 (Aug. 6, " ) " " " ii. 219. 
 
 (Nov. 10, 1873) " Mr. Ruskin and Prof. Hodgson," ii. 246. 
 
 ( 44 18, 44 ) " 44 44 ii. 243. 
 
 Scotsman, The, referred to, i. 81 (note). 
 
 Scott, Sir Gilbert, design for Foreign Office, ?. 102. 
 
 , Sir Walter, books of, referred to — 
 
 44 The Abbot," chap. xvi. ( <! The monks of Melroso mado cood kr.:! 3 " also quoted 
 
 in the introduction to 4< The Monastery i 138. 
 44 The Antiquary " ( Fairservice), ii. 290. 
 44 Lady of the Lake," canto v. st. x. quoted, i. 177. 
 "Lay of the Last Minstrel," canto ii. st. viii. quoted, i. 1S8. 
 44 Red gauntlet," Letter xiii. (Peebles v. Plainstancs), i. 180. 
 44 Rob Roy" (carefu 1 Mattie), ii. 290. 
 44 Waverley " referred to, ii. 309 (note). 
 
 , Mr. W. B., ii. 147; reviews Mr. Tyrrwhitt's " Sketching Club," ib. 
 
 Sculpture, in architecture, i. 123, 134 seqq. ; of hair, i. 1*41, ii. 208; 
 
 portrait statues, i. 138. 
 Sea, the, ii. 351 ; color of, i. 192 ; light and shadow on, i. 189 seqq. ; 
 
 southern and northern seas, ii. 356. 
 Sedan, battle of, ii. 237, 239. 
 Seine-series, Turner's, i. 85, 100. 
 Self-interest, ii. 213, 250, 257. 
 
 Sempach, ii. 210, and note ; battle of, i. 178, and note. 
 Serf-economy in America, ii. 227. 
 
410 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Servants and Houses, list of letters on, ii. 285 ; education of, ii. 293 ; 
 
 facilities for leaving places, ii. 294 ; good, how to secure, ii. 286 ; 
 
 kindness to, means care, ii. 287 ; rarity of good, ii. 289, and note ; 
 
 and masters, ii. 290 ; must be permanent to be good, ii. 291, 297 ; 
 
 Mr. Buskin's experience of, ii. 288. 
 Service, value of self-service, ii. 289. 
 Sexes, relation of the, ii. 333. 
 
 Shadow in distant effect, i. 190 seqq. ; on water, i. 193 ; impossible u on 
 
 clear water, near the eye," i. 187 seqq, 
 Shakespeare, his mission and work, i. 37 (note) ; notes on a word in, ii. 
 
 353, 354 ; Society, lb. ; quoted or referred to — 
 
 "As You Like It," Act 2, sc. 3 (Old Adam), ii. 290. 
 
 " M Act 2, sc. 7 (" motley's the only wear ''), ii. 338. 
 
 ■* Coriolanus," Act 3, sc. 1 (** mutable, rank scented many"), i. 49. 
 44 Hamlet," Act 5, sc. 1 (" The cat will mew," etc.), ii. 290. 
 " Julius Ccesar," Act 2, sc. 1 (•' And yon grey lines," etc.), ii. 353. 
 •* Measure for Measure," (Lord Angelo), ii. 330. 
 "Merchant of Venice," ii. 253, i. 162, ii. 356. 
 "Merry Wives of Windsor," i. 118. 
 
 "Midsummer Night's Dream," ii. 5, Act 1, sc, 1, i. 67, 68 (note). 
 "Romeo and Juliet," Act 2, sc. 4 (" Mv fan, Peter"), ii. 241. 
 "Taming of the Shrew" (Grumio), ii. 290, 356. 
 
 " " " Act 2. sc. 1 ("Katharine's frets "). 
 " Two Gentlemen of Verona," Act 2, sc. 4 (" As rich in having," etc.), i. 71. 
 (Launce), ii. 290. 
 
 Shallow, Justice, his theology of death, i. 118. 
 
 Sheepshanks collection at Kensington, i. 101 (note). 
 
 Sheffield, art impossible in, ii. 322 ; ironwork at, ii. 313 ; Museum, ii. 
 
 269 (note), i. 160 ; Western Park at, opened, ii. 312 (note) ; strikes 
 
 at, ii. 298. 
 
 Sheffield Daily Telegraph (Sept. 7, 1875), St. George's Museum, ii. 312. 
 Sheffield Independent (March 8, 1880), Mr. Holyoake on St. George's Mu. 
 seam, ii. 273. 
 
 Shelley, quoted to illustrate Turner, i. 30; his " Cloud," ii. 212. 
 Shenstone quoted, i. 79, and note. 
 
 Shepherd, Mr. R. H., two letters on the Bibliography of Ruskin, to, ii. 
 366. 
 
 Shoeburyness, ii. 303. 
 
 Siena, Fount of Joy at, ii. 306. 
 
 Sienese, qualities of the race, ii. 306. 
 
 Simmons, W. H., engraver of u Light of the World," i. 74 (note) 0 
 
 Sinai, the desert of, ii 211. 
 Singing for children, ii. 335. 
 Sire, meaning of, i. 142. 
 
 " Sixty years ago" (letter in Fall Mall Gazette, Jan. 30, 1868), ii. 309. 
 Slave markets in Mayfair, ii. 227. 
 
 Slavery and emancipation, ii. 227, 228; and liberty, ii. 294, 295 ; and 
 
 sonship, ii. 286, 287, 289. 
 Smith, Mr. Collingwood, on water colors, i. 107 (note). 
 Smith, Sydney, memoirs quoted (" Bunch "), ii. 289 (note). 
 Smoke, no art in midst of, ii. 116. 
 
 Socialist^ The (Nov., 1877), letter on the 44 Principles of Property'' in, 
 ii. 271. 
 
 Society of Arts, i. 62 ; of Artists, Sheffield, ii. 359 ; Ashmolean, i. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 411 
 
 New Shakespeare, ii. 354, 355 ; for the Prevention of Cruelty to 
 Animals, Mr. Ruskin at, ii. 314 (note); Buskin Society (of the 
 Hose), ii. 191 ; Science Association, Mr. Ruskin at, ii. 265 (note). 
 Solferino. ii. 209 (note), 236, 239. 
 
 Solomon, ii. 827,350; " seals of Solomon" (Suleyman), see Arabian 
 Nights. 
 
 Solomon, Mr. A., his 44 Waiting for the Verdict," i. 80 (note). 
 Son. relation of. to father, ii. 831. 
 Sonship and slavery, ii. 289, 291. 
 Sorrento, i. 197. 
 
 Sonlr, Marshal, collection of, i. 90 (note). 
 Southey s Colloquies quoted, i. 36 (note). 
 Spain, oppressed by Spaniards, ii. 212. 
 Sparkes/i. 103 (note). 
 
 Spencer, Mr. Herbert, quoted, i. 190 (note), ii. 330 (note). 
 Sport, field, ii. 313. 
 
 Sprat, venture a, to catch a herring, ii. 243. 
 
 Standard, The, letter •« Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Lowe " (Aug. 28, 1877), ii. 
 
 365 ; article on St. Mark's, Venice, i. 165. 
 Stanfield, i. 37, 188 ; illustrated by Campbell, i. 34 ; water-painting by, 
 
 i. 193. 
 
 Statues, commemorative, modern use of, i. 138. 
 
 Steam, to be employed after muscular power, ii. 283, 321. 
 
 Stones, pressure of, in water, i. 173, 182. 
 
 Stothard, engraving of design by, in u Rogers's Poems," i. 96. 
 
 Strasburg, ruin of, in Franco-Prussian war, ii. 231. 
 
 Street, Mr., influenced by Mr. Ruskin, i. 153 ; his New Law Courts, i. 
 
 153 ; and St. Mark's, i. 167. 
 Streets, state of London, ii. 307. 
 
 Strikes, ii. 245, 246 ; letter u Strikes v. Arbitration," ii. 249 ; at Cram- 
 lington, ii. 299, and note ; Mr. Ruskin's proposal as to, ii. 265 (note); 
 at Sheffield, ii. 299 ; in Staffordshire, ii. 242. 
 
 Stucco, ii. 98. 
 
 Sunrise, rarely seen, ii. 355. 
 
 Supply and Demand, letters on, ii. 241 seqq., 246 seqq., beneficial sup- 
 ply, ii. 246 ; law of, ii. 277, 280, 286, 290, 298 ; Mr. Ruskin and, 
 
 ii. 292, 293. 
 Swift, quoted, ii. 245. 
 
 Swiss, the people of Bellinzona, ii. 206 ; the liberties of Europe and, i. 
 
 178 ; Protestantism, ii. 209-211. 
 Sydenham, and railway complaints, ii. 280, and note. 
 Syro-Phoenicia, the woman of, ii. 351. 
 
 "Tain Caimbeul," letter in Header, i. 171 (note). 
 
 Taylor, the trial, ii. 316, and note. 
 
 Telford, " Ruskin, T., and Donecq," ii. 261 (note). 
 
 Tell, William, ii. 209, and note ; opera of , ii. 369. 
 
 Tempera-painting, determined by Angelico, i. 118. 
 
 Temple, Rev. F. (Bishop of Exeter), i. 40 (note), 45. 
 
 Tennyson, quoted : 44 Mariana," i. 67 (note); <4 In Memoriam," i. 175 ; 
 
 44 Enid," ii. 293; 4S Break, break," etc., ii. 355 ; mentioned, ii. 359 
 
 (note). 
 
 Territory, extent of, ii. 230. 
 
412 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Thackeray, Miss, "The Chaplain's Daughter" referred to, i. 120. 121 
 
 (note) ; " Jack the Giant Killer," ib. 
 Thames, the, i. 179 ; its commerce, i. 162 (note) ; its mud, ii. 274. 
 Theatre, the, letter, " At the Play," ii. 261. (See Drama.) 
 Theatre, The, letter in, <; The Merchant of Venice," ii. 265. 
 Thorburn, i. 69. 
 
 Thornbury, Walter, " Life of Turner," i. 111. 
 Tiber, inundations, ii. 300, 304, 307. 
 Ticino, inundations, ii. 301, 305. 
 Times, The letters in : — 
 
 (January 7, 1847) Danger to the National Gallery, i. 47. 
 
 (May 13, 1851) The Pre-Raphaelite Brethren, i. 66. 
 
 (May 30, 1851) The Pre-Raphaelite Brethren, i. 70. 
 
 (December 20, 1852) The National Gallery, i. 56. 
 
 (May 5, 1854) " The Light of the World," i. 74. 
 
 (May 25, 1854) "The Awakening Conscience," i. 77. 
 
 (October 28th, 1856) The Turner Bequest, i. 84. 
 
 (July 9, 1857) The Turner bequest and the National Gallery, i. 88. 
 
 (March 20, 1850) The sale of Mr. Windus' pictures, ii. 361. 
 
 (Ootobar 21, 1850) The Turner Gallery at Kensington, i. 101. 
 
 (October 24, 1862) Oak Silkworms, ii. 340. 
 
 (October 8, 1863) The Depreciation of Gold, ii. 240. 
 
 (January 27, 1866) The British Museum, i. 63. 
 
 (January 24, 1871) Turners False and True, i. 109. 
 
 (June 6, 1874) The Value of Lectures, ii. 310. 
 
 (January 20. 1876) The Frederick Walter Exhibition, i. 116. 
 
 (April 25, 1878) Copies of Turner's Drawings, i. 108. 
 
 (February 12, 1876) Despair (extract), ii. 310 (note). 
 
 ( February 2, 1880) The Purchase of Pictures, i. 65. 
 
 Articles, etc., referred to: — 
 
 Critique on early Pre-Raphaelite works, i. 66 (note). 
 
 kk Difficulties of Neutrality," Letter, ii. 232 (note). And see notes to above* 
 
 named letters. 
 
 Tintoret, i. 59, 81, 99, 112; " Susannah and the Elders," i. 61, and 
 note. 
 
 Titian, i. 88, 42, 52, 53, 59, 61, 81, 99, 109, 112, 117,140; i. 114; his 
 
 " Bacchus and Ariadne," i. 50, 65, and note. 
 Toccia, inundation of the, ii. 302. 
 Tombs, pompous, i. 137. 
 Tour, La, ii. 217, 218. 
 
 Townshend, Lord, letter by, on the Circassian exodus, ii. 223, and note. 
 
 Traceries, not to be copied, i. 156. 
 
 Trade, the true dignity of, ii. 271, and note. 
 
 Training, moral and athletic, ii. 331. 
 
 Translation, the, of words, ii. 353. 
 
 Trevelyan, Sir W. C, i. 131, and note. 
 
 Trial and fate, the laws of, i. 122-3. 
 
 Troliope, Anthony, on field sports, ii. 314 (note). 
 
 Tunbridge Wells, education meeting at, ii. 309. 
 
 Turin, ii. 217, 218. 
 
 Turner, J. W. M., list of letters on, i. 84 seqq.\ his pictures ill seen in 
 the Academy, i. 35, 36 ; bequest to the nation, i. 60, and note, 84, 
 102 ; his best work in grey, i. 99 ; his best work his modern work 
 (1843), i. 38 (note); change in price and value of his pictures, i. 
 41 ; character of, i. 110 ; Claude challenged by, i. 56, and note ; the 
 
INDEX. 
 
 413 
 
 Turner collection, i. 64, and note ; copies of, 105, and note ; diffi- 
 culty of copying, i. 98 ; lesson in art of copying, i. 38 ; his delicacy 
 of hand, i. 98 ; engravings of, their value, i. 93 ; exhibitions at 
 Marlboro' House, i. 84, and note, 91-2, 95, 101, 104 ; eyesight of 
 (Dr. Liebreich on the), i. 151 and 152 (note) ; 44 Turners " False and 
 True, i. 109 ; a Turner gallery, proposals for, i. 94 ; Life of, i. 110-11; 
 light and gas, etc., effect of, on his pictures, i. 86, 93, 101, and 
 note, 103, 106, 108 ; the Turner mania, i. 30 ; mass of drawings 
 left by, i. 103: Norton's, Prof., lecture on, i. 88 (note), 100 (note), 
 108 (note) ; pencil outlines of, i. 96 ; poetry and philosophy of his 
 pictures, i. 25, 29, 32, 35 ; pre-Raphaelitism of, i. 72 (note), 80 ; his 
 44 Public," i. 29 ; scorned in life, i. 22, 25 ; sea subjects, i. 195, 25, 
 26 (note); the 4 * Shakespeare " of painting, i. 37, and note ; Shel- 
 ley compared with, i. 35 ; sketch-book of, i 88 (note) ; subtlety of, 
 
 i. 99 ; requisites for enjoyment of his work, i. 35 ; unusual vehicles 
 of, i. 85 ; Waagen's estimate of, i. 25, 26, and note ; water-painting 
 by, i. 195 ; will quoted, i. 56 (note). 
 
 Turner, J. W. M. , Drawings and Sketches, condition of at death, i. 93, 
 104 (note) ; copies of, 108-9, and note ; distribution of among pro- 
 vincial schools proposed, 1 64, and note, 104 ; exhibitions of, at 
 Marlboro' House, see above, at Kensington, i. 101, and note, 104 ; a 
 perfect example of a Turner sketch, 98, 99, and note ; Ruskin's, 
 Mr., arrangement of, i. 86, 91, 92 ; report on, i. 63 (note), 65, and 
 note, 91 ; 44 Turner Notes," etc. (see Ruskin, Mr.). 
 
 ■ Pictures and drawings of, referred to : Alnwick Castle, i. 195 \ 
 
 " Dido building Carthage," i. 59; Edinburgh, i. 104; Egglestone 
 Abbey, i. 105, and note ; 44 Fishermen endeavoring to put their fish 
 on board " (Bridgewater House), i. 26, and note ; Fluelen, i. 107 
 (note) ; Fort Bard, i. 104 ; Harbors of England, i. 85, 104 ; Hornby 
 Castle, i. 117 ; Ivy Bridge, i. 85, 104; 44 Landscape with Cattle," i. 
 109, and note ; Langharne Castle, i. 105, and note : Liber Studi- 
 orum, i. 85, 88 ; sale of, ii. 77 ; Plains of Troy, i. 105, and note ; 
 Richmond series, i. 105, and note ; Rivers of England, i. 104 ; 
 Rivers of France, i. 85 ; River Scenery, ib. ; Rogers' Italy and 
 Poems, i. 85, 104; Seine series, i. 104 ; study of a Cutter, i. 99, and 
 note ; 44 San rising in a mist,'' i. 56; Val d'Aosta, i. 85 ; Pictures 
 of Venice, i. 195 ; Yorkshire series, i. 93. 
 
 Tuscan army (1859), ii. 212. 
 
 4 ' Twenty Photographs," review of, ii. 350, and note. 
 Tvre, the citadel of, and St. Mark's, i. 159. 
 Tyrrwhitt's 4k Sketching Club," ii. 343. 
 
 44 Uncle Tom's Cabin " referred to, ii. 227. 
 
 University Magazine, The (April, 1878), Mr. Ruskin's articles in, ii. 368 
 (note). 
 
 Utopia, the people of, and their streets, ii. 307 ; Ruskin '8 home in, ib.\ 
 
 Sir T. More's, ii. 367. 
 Utopianism, Mr. Ruskin's, ii. 274, 299. 
 
 Uwins, Thomas, R A , knowledge of oil pictures, i. 56, and note ; keeper 
 of the National Gallery, ib. 
 
 Vallombrosa, i. 179. 
 
 Value, intrinsic, aquestion outside political economy, ii. 242 ; and price, 
 
 ii. 240, 265. 
 
414 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 " Vandalism at the National Gallery " fa pamphlet), i. 37, 38 (note). 
 Van de Velde, i. 26 ; water painting, i. 195. 
 Van Eyck, i. 53, 55, 56, and note, 72. 
 Vasari quoted, i. 24 (note). 
 
 Vaudois, the character and the religion of the, ii. 209, 217, 218. 
 
 Velasquez's 44 Philip IV. hunting the wild boar, ,, i. 51. 
 
 Venice, the Cross of the merchants of, i. 162 ; market of, ib. (note) ; 
 
 ruin of, ii. 135; Ruskin, Mr., in, i. 90, 154, ii. 139 ; St. James of 
 
 the Rialto, i. 160 ; see St. Mark's. 
 Venus of Melos, ii. 35. 
 
 4i Verax," letters on National Gallery, i. 47 (note). 
 Vernet, Raphael restored by, i. 48. 
 
 Vernon ; Mr. Robert, gift of, to the National Gallery, i. 60, and note. 
 Verona, Campanile of, i. 166 ; Mr. Ruskin's wish to buy (see "Political 
 
 Economy of Art," Lect. ii. pp. 77-80, reprinted in 44 A Joy for 
 
 Ever," pp. 83, 85), i. 149, and note. 
 Veronese, i. 81, 99 ; in National Gallery, i. 56, and note ; <4 Marriage in 
 
 Cana," i. 90 ; 44 Family of Darius,'' ib., and note ; * 4 Rape of Europa," 
 
 i. 56 (note) ; St. Nicholas, ib. ; at Venice, pictures destroyed, 
 
 i. 48. 
 
 Verrochio, no picture by, in National Gallery, i. 54 (note). 
 
 Vice and heroism, ii. 320. 321. 
 
 Villas, modern, ii. 297, 298, and notes ; i. 153. 
 
 44 Vindex," letter on Barry from. ii. 353 (note). 
 
 Virgil quoted, i. 158 (note) ; ii. 224, and note. 
 
 Votes for Parliament, ii. 327, 335. 
 
 Waagen, Dr., i. 26, and note, 27. 
 
 Wages and labor, ii 257, 261 ; how determined, ii. 265, and note ; and 
 hardship of work, ii. 260 ; a just rate of, ii 250, 251, 252 ; "Stan- 
 dard of" (letter), ii. 265, 266, and see ii. 244. 
 
 Wakley, Thomas, M.P., i. 34, and note. 
 
 Wales, Princess of, 44 our future Queen," ii. 225. 
 
 Walker, Frederick, letter on i. 116 ; effect of public on, ib. ; elaborate- 
 ness of, i. Ill ; moral of his life, i. 118, 119 ; morbid tendency of, 
 i. 117; method of painting, i. 117; study of art, i. 118; special 
 pictures by, i. 120 seqq., and note. 
 
 Walpole's 4 'Anecdotes of Painting" referred to, i. 28 (note). 
 
 War. American, loss of property, ii. 239 ; English feeling as to, ii. 221- 
 223. 225 ; 44 modern warfare," letter on. ii. 235, and see ii. 229. 
 
 Ward, Mr. William, copies of Turner, i. 108, and note; photographs 
 obtainable of, i. 160. 
 
 Warwick Castle, burning of, letters on, i. 148 seqq., 149 seqq. ; the king- 
 maker, i. 150. 
 
 Waste land, bringing in of, ii, 324. 
 
 Water, use of in labor, ii. 321, 322 ; pressure of stones in, i. 173, 182 ; 
 reflections in. i. 187 (note), and seqq. ; of rainbows in, i. 196 ; sur- 
 face polished, i. 191, 193 seqq. 
 
 Water colors, effect of light, etc., on, i. 93, 94, 106, and note, 107 ; series 
 of British at Kensington, i. 101 (note) ; Society of Painters in, i. 118, 
 163, 196 (note). 
 
 Waterloo, battle of, ii. 236. 
 
 44 W. B.," letter in Daily Telegraphy ii- 292 (note). 
 
 " W. C. P.," letter in Times on 44 Neutrality," ii. 232 (note). 
 
INDEX. 
 
 415 
 
 Wealth, definition of, letter on the, ii. 271 ; Mill challenged to define, ib. 
 Weapons, ancient and modern, ii. 238. 
 " Weary Faulds," ii. 309, and note. 
 Weblings, recitation of the, ii. 357. 
 
 Weekly Chronicle, letter 4 4 Modern Painters*' in the (September 23, 
 
 1843), i. 17. 
 Weller, Sam, ii. 290 ; see Dickens. 
 West, Benjamin, i. 81. 
 Western Park, Sheffield, ii. 312 (note). 
 
 Westminster, the first Norman Abbey, i. 158; Mill, J. S., M.P. for, ii. 
 
 226 (note). 
 4 < Whinnyhills," ii. 309 (note). 
 
 Whitaker's ' 4 History of Riehmondshire," i. 117 (note). 
 
 White, Adam, letter on "the Study of Natural History" to, i. 199. 
 
 Whitmore, Dr., report of Crawford Place, ii. 298. 
 
 4 4 W. H. W.," letter to Daily Telegraph on houses, ii. 297, and note, 298. 
 Wicklow Hills, i. 177. 
 Wife, place of a, ii. 335. 
 
 Wilkie, Sir David, 44 The Blind Fiddler," i. 22 (note) ; Burns and, 
 
 compared, i. 35. 
 Wilkinson, Sir Gardner, ii. 372, and note. 
 
 Williams, Mr. (of Southampton), Lecture on u Art teaching by Corre- 
 spondence, } to, i. 47. 
 Wind-power, use of, ii. 321. 
 
 Windus, Mr. B. J., sale of his pictures, ii. 361 ; W. L., 44 Burd Helen," 
 
 i. 82, 83, and notes. 
 Winkelried, Arnold von, ii. 210, and note. 
 Winsor, Charlotte, ii. 293 (note). 
 Witness, The, letters in : — 
 
 (September 16, 1857) il The Castle Rock," i. 142. 
 (September 30, 1857) "Edinburgh Castle," i. 144. 
 
 (March 27, 1858) Generalization and the Scotch Pre-Raphaelities, i. 80. 
 (August, 1859) Refusal by, of Letters on the Italian Question, ii. 219 (note). 
 
 Women, list of letters on their work and dress, ii. 335 ; duty and em- 
 ployment of, ii. 336 ; modern ideas as to, ii. 336 ; place of, ii. 
 331 ; work of, ii. 337 (note), 336 (note). 
 
 Woodward, Mr., and the Oxford Museum, i. 122 (note). 
 
 Woolner, Mr. , and the Oxford Museum, i. 136. 
 
 Words, definition of, ii. 257. 
 
 Wordsworth, depth of, i. 39 (note) ; his " public," i. 28 ; quoted, i, 31, 
 
 32, 38, and note, 145. 146 ; ii. 212, 214 (note). 
 Work, the best unpaid, ii. 261, and note ; honest alwavs obtainable, ii. 
 
 248, 321. 
 
 Work and Wages, letters on, in the Pall Mall Gazette, ii. 249-265. 
 Workrae i, turned off, ii. 233 ; training of for Gothic architecture, i. 133. 
 Works of art, manufacture of by poor, ii. 325. 
 
 World, The (June 9, 1875), letter on the 14 Publication of Books," ii. 
 
 341 ; article, <; Ruskinto the Rescue," ib. (note). 
 Wornum's, R. N., "Life of Holbein, " ii. 218 (note); at the National 
 
 Gallery, i. 95, 88 (note) ; Turner drawings arranged, ib. 90. 
 Worth, battle of, ii. 237. 
 
 41 W. R. G.," letters of, to Pail Mall Gazette, ii. 267-270, and notes. 
 
416 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Xenophon's Economist, quoted, ii. 295, and note. 
 4< Y. L. Y.,'' letter in, on the gentian, i. 198 (note). 
 T. M. A. Magazine, letters in : — 
 
 (September, 1879) *« Blindness and Sight," ii. 225. 
 (October, 1879) " The Eagle's Nest," ii. 226. 
 (November, 1879) " Politics in York," ii. 227. 
 
 Young Men and Politics, ii. 227. 
 
 Zedekiah, ii. 254. 
 Zeus, i. 159. 
 
 Zorzi, Count, and St. Mark's, Venice, i. 157 (note). 
 Zositna, epitaph on, ii. 292. 
 Zuingli, 19, and note.