Class,? Rg 2.4 O 
 Book tAl 
 
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 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 
 
JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 From a photograph 
 
SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
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 With Introduction and Notes 
 by 
 
 MRS. LOIS G. HUFFORD 
 
 Teacher of English Literature in the High School of 
 Indianapolis, Indiana 
 
 GINN & COMPANY 
 
 BOSTON • NEW YORK • CHICAGO • LONDON 
 

 
 Copies 
 
 rttx nvvu 
 
 OCT, 
 
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 Coiwngii'. uhsx 
 
 COPY 8. 
 
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 Copyright, 1894, 1905 
 By LOIS G. HUFFORD 
 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 55-8 
 
 JEbe atdenaiim ffregg 
 
 GINN & COMPANY • PRO- 
 PRIETORS • BOSTON • U.S.A. 
 

 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Introduction vii 
 
 List of Collected Works ...... xxvii 
 
 Bibliographical References xxix 
 
 Sesame and Lilies: — 
 
 Introductory ... 3 
 
 Of Kings' Treasuries . . . . . 8 
 
 Annotations ... 60 
 
 Of Queens' Gardens 65 
 
 Annotations . , .104 
 
Ruskin's Life Purpose as Stated by Himself. 
 
 " All my work is to help those who have eyes and see not." 
 
 " I had no thought but of learning more, and teaching what truth 
 I knew — for the student's sake, not my own fame's." 
 
 " My purpose is to insist on the necessity as well as the dignity 
 of an earnest, faithful, loving study of nature as she is." 
 
 " The end of my whole professorship " (at Oxford) " would be 
 accomplished, — if only the English nation could be made to under- 
 stand that the beauty which is to be a joy forever, must be a joy 
 for all." 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 A half-century has elapsed since the first volume of 
 Modem Painters challenged the thoughtful attention of the 
 public by its bold questioning of accepted standards in taste 
 and art. 
 
 The appeal to the artist (Turner) with which the volume 
 closes reveals the spirit in which Ruskin's own work has 
 always been done : " We desire that he should follow out 
 his own thoughts and intents of heart, without reference to 
 any human authority. But we suggest that those thoughts 
 may be seriously and loftily given. We pray him to utter 
 nothing lightly — to do nothing regardlessly. He stands 
 upon an eminence, from which he looks back over the 
 universe of God, and forward over the generations of men. 
 Let every work of his hand be a history of the one, and a 
 lesson to the other. Let each exertion of his mighty mind 
 be both hymn and prophecy, — adoration to the deity, — 
 revelation to mankind." 
 
 In all his criticisms of art and life, Mr. Ruskin's attitude 
 has been that of reverent love for truth as revealed in nature 
 and in the human heart ; his purpose has been to open 
 men's eyes to that truth, and so to lead them to bring their 
 own lives into harmony through obedience to the eternal 
 laws of righteousness. 
 
 At five years of age, the child John Ruskin is said to 
 have preached to an imaginary congregation a sermon, the 
 
Vlll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 burden of which was, " People, be dood ! Dod will love 
 you if you are dood. People, be dood ! " 
 
 In his later years, it is reported that a Yorkshire country- 
 man once talked with him and tried to tell him how much 
 he had enjoyed his works. Mr. Ruskin's reply was: "I 
 don't care whether you enjoyed them ; did they do you any 
 good?" 
 
 It is this unwavering perception of the beauty of goodness 
 that has made Ruskin one of the great ethical teachers of 
 this age. The prayer of Plato, " May the gods make me 
 beautiful within," has been his; but not for himself alone. 
 With all the fervor of the Hebrew prophet, he has cried to 
 all men, — " Cleanse that which is within ! " 
 
 Religion, with him, is not a creed, nor a system of observ- 
 ances, but an animating, controlling spirit. "Be ye perfect, 
 even as your Father in Heaven is perfect," he verily 
 believes should not be banished from thought as unattain- 
 able, but should become the lodestar of conduct as well 
 as of aspiration. 
 
 The entire life of John Ruskin has been one of consecra- 
 tion. He was devoted to the service of God by his mother, 
 but her hope of seeing him a clergyman was never realized ; 
 yet no man in this century has more faithfully performed the 
 office of bishop and pastor according to the ideal as pre- 
 sented by him in " Kings' Treasuries." His ministry has 
 been to those who have ears for the truth, and he has, 
 indeed, been eyes to the blind. A chronological review of 
 his works, accompanied by a study of his life, discovers a 
 single-hearted devotion to the cause of truth and beauty, 
 and unwearied activity in its- service. 
 
 Reformers and philanthropists on the one hand, artists 
 and art-critics on the other, have usually been regarded 
 as two distinct types of men, with entirely different aims. 
 It is for this reason that the publication of a series of 
 
INTRODUCTION. IX 
 
 papers on Political Economy, under the title Unto This 
 Last, in the same year (i860) in which the concluding 
 volume of Modern Painters was published, was looked upon 
 as an unaccountable phenomenon in authorship. And to 
 this day, many, even of Mr. Ruskin's admirers, still consider 
 the work of his later years as contradictory to that of the 
 earlier period. 
 
 In that fifth volume of Modern Painters, however, Ruskin, 
 in reviewing the seventeen years of study during which his 
 works on art and architecture had been written, says : "All 
 true opinions are living and show their life by being capable 
 of nourishment ; therefore of change. But their change is 
 that of a tree, not of a cloud." Ruskin's criticisms of art 
 had always been grounded on moral principles. He had 
 tested all the work of man by its concurrence with the 
 perfectness and beauty of the work of God, — so that "as 
 the work changed like a tree, it was also rooted like 
 a tree." 
 
 In nature, Ruskin saw beauty ; in human society, he 
 found deformity. Therefore it was natural that he should 
 turn from a criticism of art to a criticism of life. It is 
 because "he sees life steadily and sees it whole," that his 
 efforts have been directed to secure moral wholeness, or 
 health. His burning desire has been to bring man's life, — 
 personal, social, political, — into harmony with the laws of 
 God as impressed upon his being ; for he believes that the 
 chief end of man is to glorify God by expressing in his own 
 life the true image of the divine nature. 
 
 John Ruskin sees nothing in isolation. He does not 
 think of the artist, the mechanic, the merchant, the states- 
 man, as concerned with unrelated interests. In all these 
 accidental occupations of mankind, he beholds man striving 
 by their means to realize himself, to fulfill his God-appointed 
 destiny. 
 
X INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Virtue, not vice; justice, not indifference or cruelty; 
 helpful service, not crushing competition, seem to him the 
 stepping-stones to truth expressed in life. He does not 
 believe that any form of government or any legal enactment 
 can make men better: they must reform their own lives — 
 then alone will they attain true freedom. Hence he builds 
 no Utopias. Duties, not rights, are his watchword. So, 
 although he is a conservative, he demands the most radical 
 reform. 
 
 In a letter to Emerson, Carlyle wrote : " No man in 
 England has in him the divine rage against iniquity, falsity, 
 and baseness that Ruskin has, and that every man ought to 
 have." 
 
 It is because Ruskin's grasp of principles has been so 
 firm and constant, his feelings so keen, and his speech so 
 impetuous, that he has seemed to the world a harsh censor, 
 when he has wished to be a helpful mentor. 
 
 He does not reproach this age as being worse than others, 
 but he judges all periods by the standards of clear honor, 
 just dealing, sincerity of purpose. Artists of daily life he 
 has sought above all things to develop. 
 
 "He aimed," says Collingwood, "at the general introduc- 
 tion of higher aims into ordinary life ; at giving true refine- 
 ment to the lower classes ; true simplicity to the upper." 
 
 This aim is thus forcibly expressed by himself in the 
 concluding volume of Modern Painters: "All effort in 
 social improvement is paralyzed, because no one has been 
 bold or clear-sighted enough to put and press home this 
 radical question: 'What is, indeed, the noblest tone and 
 reach of life for men ; and -how can the possibility of it be 
 extended to the greatest numbers ? ' It is answered, broadly 
 and rashly, that wealth is good ; that knowledge is good ; 
 that art is good ; that luxury is good. Whereas, none of 
 them are good in the abstract, but good only if rightly 
 
INTRODUCTION. XI 
 
 received. . . . This we know, shown clearly by the history 
 of all time, that the arts and sciences, ministering to the 
 pride of nations, have invariably hastened their ruin ; and 
 this also, I firmly believe, that the same arts and sciences 
 will tend as distinctly to exalt the strength and quicken the 
 soul of every nation which employs them to increase the 
 comfort of lowly life, and grace with happy intelligence the 
 unambitious courses of honorable toil." 
 
 However opinions may differ as to John Ruskin's theories 
 in art and economics, it cannot be denied that he has been 
 one of the great motive forces of this age. 
 
 II. 
 
 In the volume entitled " Praeterita, or Scenes from My 
 Past Life," John Ruskin has taken the reader into his con- 
 fidence, and has revealed not merely the main incidents in 
 his seventy-five years of life, but the inner controlling forces 
 that have shaped his character. To the thoughtful student 
 of humanity these formative influences are of absorbing 
 interest, and especially in the case of those whom the world 
 recognizes as leaders. 
 
 The quiet life of the London home into which John 
 Ruskin was born, February 8, 1819, was calculated to 
 develop the love of order and the sense of peace which he 
 counts as a rich part of his inheritance from those early years. 
 
 Not only did the affection of his parents center in this, 
 their only child, but to the day of their deaths (which 
 occurred after Ruskin was past middle life) both his father 
 and his mother seem to have lived only to promote his 
 welfare. 
 
 The almost Puritanic strictness of his mother early devel- 
 oped in the boy habits of obedience and self-control. 
 "Being always summarily whipped," he says, "if I cried, 
 
Xll INTRODUCTION. 
 
 did not do as I was bid, or tumbled on the stairs, I soon 
 attained serene and secure methods of life and motion." 
 
 Love of truth, which is the watchword throughout his 
 writings, seems to have been inborn, and to have been 
 fostered by the home atmosphere. An incident related of 
 his mother's own childhood reveals much. She had, on 0112 
 occasion, told her father a lie ; whereupon he s:mt his 
 servant for a bundle of broom twigs with which to whip her. 
 The impression left upon her character is evident from her 
 words : "They did not hurt as much as one would have 
 done, but I thought a great deal of it." 
 
 The perfect truthfulness to which John Ruskin was 
 accustomed, begot in him perfect faith, for as he says : 
 " Nothing was ever promised me that was not given ; noth * 
 ing ever threatened me that was not inflicted ; and nothing 
 ever told me that was not true." It is his opinion that, 
 " Speaking truth is like writing fair, and comes only by 
 practice ; it is less a matter of will than of habit," and he. 
 doubts if any occasion can be trivial, which permits th'4 
 practice and formation of such a habit. 
 
 In his babyhood, little was clone to amuse him ; and bein|?; 
 left to his own resources chiefly, this naturally serious 
 minded child early accustomed himself to studiously observ- 
 ing whatever came under his eye, within doors and without. 
 The pattern of the carpet and the wall-paper divided his 
 attention with the counting of bricks in the neighboring 
 houses ; and the most exciting event in his day was watch- 
 ing the process of filling the water-cart from an iron post on 
 the pavement edge. To the habit of fixed attention with 
 both eyes and mind thus formed, Mr. Ruskin attributes a 
 large part of his power of looking into the very heart of 
 things in later life. 
 
 In his fifth year, his daily horizon was expanded by 
 removal to Heme Hill, four miles distant from the heart of 
 
INTRODUCTION. Xlll 
 
 London. The new home had a garden and an orchard, 
 which so far satisfied the nature-loving boy that to him it 
 seemed an Eden, especially since the climate then allowed 
 him to pass a great part of his time in it. Yet he observed 
 a difference between this Paradise and that of our first 
 parents, viz., that whereas, in Eden, but one tree was for- 
 bidden, at Heme Hill all the fruit was denied him. He 
 also lamented that he had " no companionable beasts " to 
 cheer his solitude. 
 
 In his boyhood, his mother was his only teacher. He 
 read aloud with her every week-day morning from Pope's 
 translation of Homer and the novels of Sir Walter Scott ; 
 and, on Sundays, "Robinson Crusoe" and "Pilgrim's Prog- 
 ress." He was also required to read regularly from the 
 Bible, and to commit certain portions to memory. Of this 
 habit he says : " My mother forced me by steady, patient, 
 daily toil, to learn long chapters of the Eible by heart, as 
 well as to read every syllable through aloud, hard names 
 and all, from Genesis to the Apocalypse, about once every 
 year. She read alternate verses with me, watching, at first, 
 every intonation of my voice, and correcting the false ones, 
 till she made me understand the verse, if within my reach. 
 It might be beyond me altogether, — that she did not care 
 about ; but she made sure that as soon as I got hold of it 
 all, I should get hold of it by the right end. If a name was 
 hard, the better the exercise in pronunciation ; if a chapter 
 was tiresome, the better the lesson in patience ; if a chap- 
 ter was loathsome, the better lesson in faith that there was 
 'some use in its being so outspoken." 
 
 The effect of this training was to " make every word of 
 the scriptures familiar to my ear in habitual music, — yet in 
 that familiarity, reverenced as transcending all thought and 
 ordaining all conduct." And of all the knowledge which he 
 afterwards acquired, Ruskin counts this intimate acquaint- 
 
XIV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ance with the Bible as, on the whole, the essential part of his 
 education. 
 
 Strict though she was, John Ruskin's mother seems never 
 to have required him to commit more than he could easily 
 learn by twelve o'clock, if he studied diligently. For the 
 afternoon, he was free to employ himself as he chose. 
 
 The father of John Ruskin must have been an ideal mer- 
 chant, not only in the intelligence and exactitude of his busi- 
 ness habits, which made him prosperous, and in the integrity 
 which led his son to have written on the granite slab over 
 his grave, — " He was an entirely honest merchant " ; — but 
 because he was never enslaved by his business. He was a 
 man of cultivated tastes, both in art and literature. 
 
 It was his habit to go home to dinner at half-past four ; 
 and he spent the evening in reading aloud, while the mother 
 knitted, and the boy sat in a recess in the drawing-room, a 
 cup of milk and a slice of bread and butter before him on a 
 small table, listening or not, as he chose. He seems to 
 have found these readings interesting, for the authors whose 
 acquaintance he made in that way, Scott, Shakespeare, 
 Byron, and Cervantes, always continued to be favorites. 
 
 Salutary as were these influences, Ruskin does not fail to 
 recognize the narrowing tendency of his isolated childhood. 
 He says : " My verdict on the general tenor of my educa- 
 tion at this time must be that it was at once too formal and 
 too luxurious; leaving my character cramped indeed, but 
 not disciplined ; and only by protection innocent, instead of 
 by practice virtuous." 
 
 While his intellectual taste was thus being cultivated, and 
 the principles established which were to become the guiding 
 motives of all his later work, his aesthetic and moral nature 
 was yearly becoming enriched by leisurely travel through 
 the picturesque scenes of England, or of Scotland, the 
 native home of his parents. 
 
INTRODUCTION. XV 
 
 These summer tours, which his father took for orders, 
 were made a delightful two-months holiday to mother and 
 son as well. In a post-chaise, with a seat specially arranged 
 for the boy John, they traveled forty or fifty miles a day. 
 Whenever they passed near a castle or a country gentle- 
 man's house, they would visit it to inspect its collection of 
 pictures, or to glean some interesting facts concerning its 
 history. These glimpses of the life of the great seem 
 never to have excited in them any envy or revolt. Instead, 
 they were grateful for life in a country so rich in inherited 
 treasures and traditions. Thus Ruskin early saw, as he tells 
 us, nearly all the noblemen's houses in England " in reverent 
 and healthy delight of uncovetous admiration, — perceiving, 
 as soon as I could perceive any political truth at all, that 
 it was probably much happier to live in a small house 
 and have Warwick Castle to be astonished at, than to 
 live in Warwick Castle and have nothing to be astonished 
 at ; but that, at all events, it would not make Brunswick 
 Square 1 more pleasantly habitable to pull Warwick Castle 
 down." 
 
 Ruskin's susceptibility to the influences of nature was 
 derived from his father. It is a pleasant picture, — that of 
 the father and son, hand in hand, strolling along some by- 
 path or hedgerow, " looking into the beauty of a flower, or 
 gazing in rapture at some lovely nook where Nature had 
 lavished her richest gifts of fern and foliage," for the elder 
 Ruskin never failed to call the boy's attention to the 
 beauties of any attractive scene. The result is, that, as he 
 says, "I possess the gift of taking pleasure in landscape in 
 a greater degree than most men." 
 
 The discriminating taste in art, for which Ruskin has been 
 remarkable, finds its roots likewise in his father's intelligent 
 love of true art. In his infallible judgment the son trusts 
 
 1 His early childhood's home was in Brunswick Square, London. 
 
XVI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 implicitly. By never allowing the boy to look at a bad 
 picture after he was old enough to judge, and by critical 
 examination of the pictures -in the great houses they visited, 
 his father formed in him a pure artistic taste. 
 
 Very early also he became interested in stones and 
 minerals. In later life, his collection of minerals was very 
 extensive, and he made many and wide observations of 
 geological strata in different countries, so that he thinks 
 he might easily have distinguished himself as a geologist. 
 Many of his writings have for their themes the sermons 
 which he found in stones and running brooks, in leaves and 
 flowers. 
 
 We must not overlook the early practice in composition 
 which made the written expression of thought natural to him. 
 Close observation of details and accuracy in reporting what 
 he saw, were developed by the habit of spending the even- 
 ings on their travels in recording in a journal the observa- 
 tions and experiences of the day. When at home, he 
 accustomed himself to writing abstracts of books read, and 
 to retelling stories with changed names and situations. 
 Family birthdays were always festival occasions ; and, after 
 he was old enough, he generally prepared as a delightful 
 surprise for his father's birthday some original piece of 
 composition which he often illustrated with his own drawings. 
 
 In his case, it is easy to trace the influences which tended 
 to make the child the father of the man. By all his early 
 training and experiences he was being fitted for his calling 
 as a teacher of ethics in art and life. These tendencies may 
 almost be said to have been crystallized by a gift made 
 to him on his fourteenth birthday by one of his father's 
 partners. This gift was a copy of Rogers's " Italy," a work 
 illustrated by the artist Turner. 
 
 So enraptured was he by these pictures of Italian scenery 
 that his mother proposed that their summer's tour should b- 
 
INTRODUCTION. XVU 
 
 made in those scenes, instead of following their usual route. 
 It was a decision trembling with destiny. The mother could 
 not have foreseen that the "Continental Journey" so joyful 
 to them all was to make of her son a writer of books, instead 
 of a preacher of pulpit sermons. 
 
 Love of mountains has always been a passion with 
 Ruskin. To the artist who painted his portrait at the age 
 of three, he had said, when asked what he would like for 
 a background, — "Blue hills." In " Praeterita," he has 
 described his first sight of the Alps, which was to him a 
 consecration : " It was drawing towards sunset when we got 
 up to some sort of garden promenade — high above the 
 Rhine, so as to command the open country. At which open 
 country of low undulations far into blue, — suddenly — 
 .behold — beyond." "There was no thought in any of us 
 of their being clouds. They were clear as crystal, sharp on 
 the horizon sky ; and already tinged with rose by the sink- 
 ing sun. Infinitely beyond all that we had ever thought or 
 dreamed — the seen walls of lost Eden could not have been 
 more beautiful to us ; not more awful, round heaven, the 
 walls of sacred death." 
 
 " It is not possible to imagine, in any time of the world, a 
 more blessed entrance into life for a child of such a tempera- 
 ment as mine. I went down that evening with my destiny 
 fixed in all of it that was to be sacred and useful. To that 
 terrace, and the shore of the Lake of Geneva, my heart and 
 faith return to this day, in every impulse that is yet nobly alive 
 in them, and every thought that has in it help or peace." 
 
 In 1836, at the age of seventeen, Ruskin entered Christ 
 Church College at the University of Oxford. The associa- 
 tions of the place impressed his sensitive nature, and the 
 years spent there were fruitful in friendships, if not especially 
 influential in developing his abilities. His desire to gratify 
 his parents' ambitious hopes impelled him to compete 
 
XV111 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 successfully for the Newdigate Prize Poem. But for college 
 honors, which must be won by memory-cramming and com- 
 petitive examinations, he had no ambition ; and when, in his 
 third year at Oxford, a hemorrhage of the lungs led his 
 physicians to recommend a winter in Italy, he hailed the 
 permission to leave off his scholastic studies as a happy 
 reprieve, saying that the delight of resuming his sketching 
 gave a healthy stimulus to all the faculties which had been 
 latently progressive in him. 
 
 Oxford afterwards honored herself by conferring upon him 
 degrees in acknowledgment of his invaluable services to 
 literature and art ; and, when the Slade Art Professorship 
 was established (1869), Mr. Ruskin willingly accepted its 
 duties that he might arouse in the youth of the higher 
 classes an intelligent interest in art. The lectures that he. 
 delivered while holding this professorship are among the 
 most instructive and inspiring of his writings. 
 
 On his twenty-first birthday, his father made him a present 
 of a drawing by Turner, and also settled upon him about 
 $1000 a year for spending-money, $350 of which the young 
 man immediately spent for one of Turner's water-colors. 
 
 The real work of Ruskin's life may be said to have begun 
 when, at the age of twenty-four, he published a defense of 
 Turner's methods in painting, which had been bitterly 
 attacked by the critics. Whatever might be thought. of 
 Turner, the English reading public detected in this volume, 
 entitled "Modern Painters," and signed "By an Oxford 
 Graduate," the voice of a new master of English prose. 
 
 All the works that issued from his pen until he was forty 
 years old combined to give him the reputation of being an 
 Apostle of the Beautiful ; but Ruskin never had believed in 
 the doctrine of " Art for Art's sake " : he had always held 
 that its reason for being was to give expression to the 
 diviner perceptions and feelings in man, and thereby to 
 
INTRODUCTION. XIX 
 
 purify and elevate all life. "The main business of art," he 
 says, "is its service in the actual uses of daily life." "The 
 giving brightness to pictures, is much, but the giving bright- 
 ness to life, more." 
 
 Since i860, the work of Mr. Ruskin, which has been 
 mainly exerted to bring brightness and beauty into the lives 
 of men and women of all classes, may be considered under 
 two aspects : first, as a writer and lecturer ; second, as a 
 practical philanthropist. 
 
 Feeling that the mechanical grind of machine-labor had 
 taken from the common workman all the joy in work ; that 
 the cruel oppression of Competition had led many men to 
 find their happiness at the expense of others' loss, Mr. 
 Ruskin lifted up his voice in protest against what he con- 
 siders the false notions of social economics which are at the 
 root of much of the misery in the modern world. He says 
 that he could not go on painting or doing anything else that 
 he liked because he was made wretched by the knowledge of 
 the undeserved suffering all about him. "Therefore," he 
 says, "I will endure it no longer quietly; but, henceforward, 
 with any few or many who will help me, I will do my poor 
 best to abate this misery." 
 
 To that end, he has lectured to Oxford students and to 
 the citizens of many towns in England ; he has written 
 numerous letters to workingmen, and published articles on 
 questions of political economy ; he has tried to teach young 
 and old of all ranks through papers on art and science and 
 nature ; the burden of his message being always : Let 
 the love of the true, the beautiful, and the good mould your 
 individual and your national life, so that purity and whole- 
 some living may be possible to all. 
 
 By teaching its classes and in other ways, the Working- 
 men's College and the University Extension Courses have 
 received Mr. Ruskin's active personal support. 
 
XX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 As of Chaucer's parson, so it may be justly said of Mr. 
 Ruskin that — 
 
 " Cristes lore and his apostles twelve 
 He taught, but first he followed it himselve." 
 
 Of the large fortune of nearly $800,000 left him by his 
 father, he has kept less than one-twelfth for himself, having 
 used the rest in establishing museums, art-schools and 
 libraries ; in erecting comfortable dwelling-houses for the 
 poor ; in aiding needy young men and women to get an 
 education, etc. He has not simply been the almoner, 
 entrusting the distribution of his gifts to others, but has 
 himself, in most cases, attended personally to the carrying 
 out of his benevolent schemes. He gave altogether $70,000 
 to establish St. George's Guild near Sheffield, where the 
 effort was made to put into practical operation a community 
 of industries conducted on the principle of cooperation 
 instead of competition. Those who joined this Guild were 
 asked to subscribe to the following statement of faith and 
 practice : 
 
 1. I trust in the living God, Father Almighty, Maker of 
 Heaven and Earth, and of all things and creatures, visible 
 and invisible. I trust in the kindness of His law and the 
 goodness of His work. And I will strive to love Him and 
 to keep His law, and to see His work while I live. 
 
 2. I trust in the nobleness of human nature — in the 
 majesty of its faculties, the fullness of its mercy, and the joy 
 of its love. And I will strive to love my neighbor as myself, 
 and even when I cannot, I will act as if I did. 
 
 3. I will labor with such strength and opportunity as 
 God gives me, for my own daily bread ; and all that my 
 hand finds to do, I will do it with my might. 
 
 4. I will not deceive, or cause to be deceived, any human 
 being for my gain or pleasure ; nor hurt, nor cause to be 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXI 
 
 hurt, any human being for my gain or pleasure ; nor rob, 
 nor cause to be robbed, any human being for my gain or 
 pleasure. 
 
 5. I will not kill or hurt any living creature needlessly, 
 nor destroy any beautiful thing ; but will strive to save and 
 to comfort all gentle life, and guard and perfect all natural 
 beauty upon the earth. 
 
 6. I will strive to raise my own body and soul daily into 
 higher powers of duty and happiness ; not in rivalship or 
 contention with others, but for the help, delight, and honor 
 of others, and for the joy and peace of my own life. 
 
 7. I will obey all the laws of my country faithfully ; and 
 the order of its monarch, so far as such laws and commands 
 are consistent with what I suppose to be the law of God ; 
 and when they are not so, or seem in any wise to need 
 change, I will oppose them loyally and deliberately — not 
 with malicious, concealed, or disorderly violence. 
 
 8. And with the same faithfulness, and under the limits of 
 the same obedience, which I render to the laws of my 
 country, and the commands of its rulers, I will obey the 
 laws of the society called of St. George ... so long as I 
 remain a companion called of St. George. 
 
 The land which the Guild worked was to be brought 
 under perfect cultivation ; the laborers were to be paid 
 unchanging, sufficient wages ; and their children were to be 
 educated in industrial schools that would develop their 
 special powers ; the girls were to be taught domestic arts. 
 Gentleness, courtesy, truth, and obedience were to be strictly 
 inculcated. By hearing of brave and beautiful deeds, rever- 
 ence was to be cultivated, and all were to be taught music 
 as an expression of true feeling. 
 
 Experimentally, the plan has not been a success, because 
 it was undertaken by people who did not understand or 
 sympathize fully with Mr. Ruskin's ideas. His efforts to 
 
XX11 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 induce manufacturers to produce honest goods, and trades- 
 men to offer for sale unadulterated articles were not without, 
 effect, however, and the leaven of the principles of the 
 Guild of St. George is still working. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin is no cold speculative spinner of theories 
 which are foreign to his own practice. The motto which he 
 adopted for his crest — "To-day ! " — is the keynote of his 
 entire life. Whenever he has felt that a word must be 
 spoken to awaken the ignorant or the indifferent, he has 
 said it. Wherever he has seen an opportunity for bettering 
 conditions, he has, at once, done all in his power for their 
 improvement. On one occasion, finding a crop of thistles 
 growing as the result of a farmer's carelessness, he eradi- 
 cated them with his own hands. While he was lecturing at 
 Oxford, he said to the students : " Will none of you of your 
 own strength and leisure do anything for the poor — drain a 
 single cottage, repair a single village by-way ? Then, you 
 yourselves will be more strong, and your hearts more light, 
 than had your leisure been spent in costly games or more 
 hurtful amusements." There was an active response to this 
 noble appeal, resulting in the mending of a neglected piece 
 of road. His own sincerity and earnestness were demon- 
 strated by his taking lessons in stone-breaking himself. 
 Indeed, he has consistently upheld the dignity of all honest 
 labor. He tells us that the happiest bit of manual labor 
 that he ever did was for his mother once when they were 
 traveling in Switzerland. She had complained that the 
 stone staircase in the little inn where they were stopping 
 was unbearably dirty. Nobody belonging to the house 
 seeming to think it possible to wash it, Ruskin says he 
 brought the necessary buckets of water from the yard, 
 "poured them into a beautiful image of Versailles water- 
 works " down the fifteen or twenty steps, and, with the 
 strongest broom he could find, cleaned every step into its 
 
INTRODUCTION. XX111 
 
 corner. " It was quite lovely work to dash the water and 
 drive the mud from each with accumulating splash down to 
 the next one." 
 
 No wonder that he held that " A true lady should be a 
 princess, a washerwoman, — yes, a washerwoman ! To see 
 that all is fair and clean, to wash with water, to cleanse and 
 purify wherever she goes, to set disordered things in orderly 
 array." 
 
 Ruskin has said that the creation of the world for him 
 dates from a day in his fifth year when his nurse took him 
 to Friar's Crag on Derwentwater. "The intense joy mingled 
 with awe that I had in looking through the mossy roots over 
 the crag into the dark lake has associated itself more or less 
 with all twining roots of trees ever since." 
 
 In his sixtieth year, suffering from illness and exhaustion 
 induced by excessive labors and anxiety, he " wearied for 
 the heights that look down upon the dale," and felt that if 
 he could only lie down there, he should get well again. He 
 was glad, therefore, to avail himself of an opportunity that 
 offered to purchase a house and land overlooking Lake 
 Coniston, near the spot so dear in his memory. 
 
 Brantwood, as he calls the place, has ever since been to 
 him a refuge of peace and joy. For although he still retains 
 the old home at Heme Hill, yet he loves to work and rest 
 with congenial friends in this beautiful retreat among the 
 hills and lakes. 
 
 Those who have been associated with him the longest 
 and most intimately, love him ardently. The feeling which 
 throbs in every page he has written expresses itself in 
 thoughtful kindliness to all who come within the charmed 
 circle of his friendship. He is a perfect host, a considerate 
 neighbor, a lover of children and of animals, — a teacher 
 whose own life has been a consistent expression of the ideal 
 knighthood of which he has been the fearless advocate. 
 
XXIV INTRODUCTION. 
 
 III. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin has always recognized and accepted his own 
 limitations. While he has used the pencil and the brush 
 with great delicacy and skill, in the illustration of his works, 
 he early discovered that nature had not gifted him with the 
 creative faculty necessary to the successful artist. In his 
 youth, he wrote poems which the affectionate admiration of 
 his friends afterwards induced him to publish, but he him- 
 self knew that he was lacking in the constructive imagina- 
 tion essential to the production of great poems, so he never 
 wrote poetry after he was thirty years of age. But those 
 who have been thrilled by the melody and the picturing 
 power of his rhythmical imaginative prose find in this noth- 
 ing to regret. For, under his touch, English prose has 
 revealed a capability of sensuous, lyrical expression before 
 unknown. 
 
 A recent writer has said : " Poetry is the expression, in 
 beautiful form and melodious language, of the best thoughts* 
 and noblest emotions, which the spectacle of life awakens 
 in the finest souls ; hence, it is clear that this may be 
 effected by prose as truly as by verse, if only the language 
 be rhythmical and beautiful." 
 
 Words are to Ruskin not merely mechanical devices for 
 convenience in the communication of ideas. The sense of 
 Tightness, which dominates all his thinking, leads him to be 
 perfectly accurate and precise in the use of words ; the 
 reverence with which he views all of life gives to his 
 language an impassioned, persuasive character ; the pene- 
 trating vision, which reveals to him everywhere in nature 
 the presence of the beautiful, imparts to his prose a rich 
 ornamentation and a chaste imagery. 
 
 Ruskin's style had really been formed by his childhood's 
 habit of daily repetition of the poetic language of the 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXV 
 
 The fervor of feeling, the sublime simplicity of diction, the 
 glow of imaginative vision characteristic of the Hebrew 
 poets and prophets had become his own mode of thinking, 
 and, consequently, of expression. So much was said of the 
 beauty of his style in his earlier works that he was seriously 
 disturbed, and complained that, "People do not think at all 
 about what I am saying, but only about how I say it." 
 
 It is acknowledged by a critic not altogether friendly that, 
 if we compare anything which is familiar to us with Ruskin's 
 description of it, we shall find that, not only are his words 
 pleasing in their appeal to the ear and the eye, but also that 
 he has given an exhaustive enumeration of attributes, and 
 the most discriminating selection of the features that give 
 distinctive essence to the thing described. 
 
 Ruskin himself says that he left no passage until he had 
 put into it as much as it could be made to carry, and that he 
 had chosen the words with the utmost precision and tune he 
 could give them. Much as he loves words for their Tight- 
 ness and their beauty, in his dealing with every question, he 
 avoids, as far as possible, technical terms. Scholastic 
 verbal quiddities are hateful to him because he goes to the 
 heart of life in the endeavor to penetrate its secret. 
 
 Ruskin's writings everywhere give evidence that "The 
 style is the man.'' The same unity and harmony are in his 
 language as in his view of art and life ; the same principles 
 control his style as his thought. " All the virtues of 
 language," he says, "are in their roots, moral ; it becomes 
 accurate if the speaker desires to be true ; clear, if he 
 speaks with sympathy and a desire to be intelligible ; power- 
 ful, if he has earnestness ; pleasant, if he has sense of 
 rhythm and order." 
 
 Writing to young students, Mr. Ruskin admonished them 
 to fix in their minds as the guiding principle of all right 
 i bor and the source of all healthful energy the idea that 
 
XXVI INTRODUCTION. 
 
 their art should be in praise of something that they loved. 
 It might be the praise of a shell or a stone ; it might be the 
 praise of a hero ; it might be the praise of God ; but it 
 must be the expression of true delight in some real thing. 
 This is the secret of the moving quality, the impressiveness 
 of Ruskin's writings. He loved nature as the expression of 
 the loving thought of God. He studied plants and clouds 
 and mountains, not as an artist, to paint pictures ; not as a 
 scientist, to class and analyze them ; but to discover their 
 aspects, to read in them the revelation of God to man. 
 Like Wordsworth, he had felt, — 
 
 " A sense sublime 
 Of something far more deeply interfused, 
 Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 
 And the round ocean and the living air, 
 And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; 
 A motion and a spirit that impels 
 All thinking things ; all objects of all thought, 
 And rolls through all things." 
 
 It is because of this consciousness of the Indwelling God 
 that Ruskin has been the interpreter of the mystical mean- 
 ings in the various voices of nature. That he speaks to the 
 common heart of man is shown by the fact that "his works 
 have found their way among all classes." 
 
 Ruskin is unsurpassed as a painter with words ; but he is 
 more than a word-painter : his power to touch imagination 
 with emotion, to stir the deeper feelings, and to rouse the 
 whole moral nature will continue to make his a life-giving 
 influence over generations to-come. 
 
A List of the Collected Works of Mr. Ruskin. 
 
 The Poetry of Architecture. Papers Contributed to the 
 
 Architectural Magazine. 183 7-1 839. 
 The King of the Golden River. A Mythical Story for the 
 
 Young. 1 841. 
 Modern Painters. 5 vols. 1 843-1 860. 
 Seven Lamps of Architecture. 1849. 
 Pre-Raphaelitism. 1 85 1. 
 Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds. (On the 
 
 Duty of Pastors.) 1S51. 
 Stones of Venice. 3 vols. 185 1-1853. 
 Lectures on Architecture. 1853. 
 Elements of Drawing. (Letters to Beginners.) 1857. 
 The Political Economy of Art. 1857. 
 Two Paths on Art. Its Application to Decoration and Manu- 
 facture. 1859. 
 Poems. Collected in 1859. 
 
 Unto This Last. Lectures on Political Economy, i860. 
 Munera Pulveris. On the Elements of Political Economy. 
 
 1863. 
 Sesame and Lilies. 1865. 
 Ethics of the Dust. Lectures to Little Housewives on the 
 
 Elements of Crystallization. 1865. 
 Crown of Wild Olive. Three Lectures on Work, Traffic, and 
 
 War. 1866. 
 Time and Tide. Letters to a Workingman on the Laws of 
 
 Work. 1867. 
 The Queen of the Air. A Study of the Greek Myths of 
 
 Cloud and Storm. 1869. 
 
XXV111 LIST OF COLLECTED WORKS. 
 
 Lectures on Art. Delivered before the University of Oxford. 
 1870. 
 
 Aratra Pentelici. Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture 
 Delivered at Oxford. 1870. 
 
 Fors Clavigera. Letters to Workingm en. 1871-1878. 
 
 Ariadne Florentina. Lectures on Wood and Metal Engrav- 
 ing. 1872. 
 
 Love's Meinie. A Study of Birds. 1873. 
 
 The Art of England. (Oxford Lectures.) 1874. 
 
 Proserpina. Studies of Wayside Flowers. 1874. 
 
 Deucalion. Studies on the Lapse of Waves and the Life of 
 Stones. 1876. 
 
 St. Mark's Rest. The History of Venice. 1877. 
 
 Val d' Arno. Oxford Lectures on Tuscan Art. 1877. 
 
 The Laws of Fesole. A Familiar Treatise on the Elementary 
 Principles of Drawing and Painting, Arranged for the Use of 
 Schools. 1877. 
 
 Mornings in Florence. Simple Studies on Christian Art. 
 
 1877. 
 Arrows of the Chace. (Collected Letters.) 1880. 
 Pleasures of England. (Oxford Lectures.) 1885. 
 Our Fathers Have Told Us. Sketches of the History of 
 
 Christendom for Boys and Girls who have been held at its 
 
 Fonts. 1885. 
 Miscellanea. A Collection of Letters and Papers not included 
 
 in his other published works. 1894. 
 Hortus Inclusus. 
 
 Praeterita. An Autobiography. 1887. 
 Stones of Verona, and Other Lectures. 1894. 
 A Joy Forever, and its Price in the Market. 1894. 
 
Bibliographical References. 
 
 Aside from Mr. RuskhVs self-revelations in Praeterita, Fors 
 Clavigera, etc., the best and most reliable account of him as a 
 Man and a writer is — 
 
 Life of John Ruskin, by W. G. Collingwood. 
 
 Other valuable studies of his life and writings are found in the 
 following named works : — 
 
 Records of Tennyson, Ruskin and Browning, by Mrs. 
 
 Anne Thackeray Ritchie. 
 Poets and Problems, by G. W. Cooke. 
 Lessons from my Masters, by Peter Bayne. 
 John Ruskin, His Life and Teaching, by J. R. Mather. 
 Modern Leaders, by Justin McCarthy. 
 Pen Pictures of Modern Authors, by Shepard. 
 Out of the Past, by Godwin. 
 The Work of John Ruskin, by Chas. Waldstein. 
 The Victorian Age of English Literature, by Mrs. 
 
 Oliphant. 
 Famous Authors of the Nineteenth Century, by S. K. 
 
 Bolton. 
 
QUOTATIONS FROM OTHER AUTHORS. 
 
 Milton, Lycidas, 24; Paradise Lost, 
 
 70. 
 Shakespeare, 73, 306, 312. 
 Scott, 101. 
 
 Wordsworth, 84, 85, 90. 
 De Quincey, 92, 93. 
 Pope, 164, 312; translation from 
 
 Homer, 315. 
 Tennyson, 102, 103. 
 Carlyle, 222. 
 
 Freeman, the historian, 211. 
 Richard Owen, 342. 
 
 Froissart, 230-234. 
 
 Homer, 298, 313, 322. 
 
 Pindar, 296, 328. 
 
 Euripides, 308. 
 
 Virgil, 286. 
 
 Horace, 295, 328. 
 
 Ormerod, 314. 
 
 Dante, 32, 54, 317. 
 
 Coventry Patmore, 80. 
 
 Dante Rossetti, 76, yy. 
 
 John Stuart Mill, 187, 193, 194. 
 
 Proverbs from the Italian, S3. 
 
 INDEX TO SCRIPTURAL ALLUSIONS. 
 
 Genesis, xi. 3, p. 395. 
 
 Exodus, ii. 5, 10, p. (106); xv. 23, 
 
 p. (16S); xix. 16, p. (432). 
 Job, xxxviii. 31, p. 305. 
 Judges, xiv. 5-14, p. (270). 
 Proverbs, i. 26, 27, p. 376 ; x. 2, p. 
 
 148; xxii. 2, 16, 22, 23, p. 149; 
 
 xxix. 13, p. 149. 
 Song oj Solomon, ii. 11-13, p. 237, 
 
 (271); ii. 15, p. 103, (107). 
 Isaiah, xi. 1, p. 318; xxxv. 1, p. 
 
 69. 
 Daniel, iii. 1, p. (168). 
 Matthew, ii. I— II, p. (271); iv. 18- 
 
 22, p. 24, (61); xvi. iS, 19, p. ,(61); 
 
 xx. 1-14, p. 1 10 ; xxii. 3, 8, 9, p. 
 
 (6t); xxvi. 14-16, p. (270). 
 
 Luke, v. 27, p. (270); xvi. 20, p 
 
 (63); xxii. 39-44. P- (429); xxiii 
 
 18, 19, p. 151. 
 John, iv. p. (271); viii. 10, 1 1, p 
 
 23; xi. 49, 50, p. (62); xx. 20 
 
 p. (107). 
 Acts, ii. 2, p. (430); viii. p. (167) 
 
 xi. 26, p. 319, (429); xvii. 23, p 
 
 43 2 - 
 Romans, vi. 8, p. 53, (64). 
 Hebrews, xi. 7, p. 22. 
 
 1 Corinthians, xv. 56, p. 148. 
 / Thessalonians, v. 19, p. 326. 
 
 2 Peter, iii. 5-7, p. 22. 
 Revelations, xiv. 15, p. 310. 
 
The intellect becomes noble and ignoble according to the food w« 
 give it, and the kind of subjects with which it is conversant. — Stones of 
 Vejiice. 
 
 In the cloud of the human soul there is a fire stronger than the 
 lightning, and a grace more precious than the rain ; and though of the 
 good and evil it shall one day be said alike, that the place that knew 
 them knows them no more, there is an infinite separation between those 
 whose brief presence had been there a blessing, like the mist of Eden 
 that went up from the earth to water the garden, and those whose place 
 knew them only as a drifting and changeful shade, of whom the 
 heavenly sentence is, that they are " wells without water; clouds that 
 are carried with a tempest, to whom the mist of darkness is reserved 
 for ever." — Mystery of Life. 
 
SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 Ruskin certainly has a right to demand that those who 
 read his writings shall obey the rule which he says should 
 govern all reading : "Be sure that you go to an author to 
 find out his meaning, not to find yours. Judge it after- 
 wards, if you think yourself qualified to do so ; but ascertain 
 it first." 
 
 He has himself said, in a preface to these lectures, that 
 their entire gist is to be found in the concluding paragraphs 
 of the third lecture, "The Mystery of Life and its Arts." 
 Therein we find an emphatic statement of his view of what 
 constitutes right living. 
 
 Instead of thinking what we are to get, he would have us 
 think what we ought to do to make this world a good place 
 for all God's children to live their lives in. 
 
 " Those of us who mean to fulfill our duty ought, first," 
 he says, "to live on as little as we can ; and, secondly, to 
 do all the wholesome work we can, and to spend all we can 
 spare in doing all the sure good we can." 
 
 As is his custom, Ruskin would make the scriptural teach- 
 ing a rule of practice, as well as of faith. To every man, 
 whatever his station in life, who is doing nothing for the 
 good of the world, he would say : " If any man will not 
 work, neither should he eat." 
 
 Helpful action in cooperation with others should be 
 made the rule of life. For this, immediate opportunity 
 
4 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 may always be found in mending evil material conditions. 
 Every one should learn to do some useful thing thoroughly. 
 When we educate our youths to "make it the effort of 
 their lives to be chaste, knightly, faithful, holy in thought, 
 lovely in word and deed," we shall have put into their hands 
 the keys of the kingdom of heaven which is within us. 
 
 " Sesame and Lilies " deals primarily with motives ; in 
 these we shall find the sesame, the talisman, by which we 
 may open all doors of feeling and understanding ; these 
 hold the keys of Life, or — it may be — of Death. Mr. 
 Ruskin's poetic nature appears in his love of symbolic 
 names. The "Kings' Treasuries" of which he writes, are 
 those which contain the precious thoughts of kingly minds 
 in all ages — the great, true books of the world. 
 
 What to read, and how to read might be the title of this 
 lecture. Because of "our daily enlarging means of educa- 
 tion " the choice of books is becoming of vital importance, 
 not only to the individual, but to the national health. 
 In Mr. Ruskin's opinion, there is a fundamental error in 
 the common idea of the purpose of education. Most people 
 are seeking an education for their children in order that it 
 may secure to them some worldly advantage ; whereas, they 
 do not seem to realize that there may be an education which 
 is in itself an advancement in that higher life which 
 does not consist in the abundance of things which a man 
 possesses. 
 
 With keen penetration, Mr. Ruskin analyzes the popular 
 idea of " advancement in life," and finds that it practically 
 means becoming conspicuous ; i.e., being recognized as 
 having attained to something respectable or honorable. In 
 making money, not the having wealth, but what Bacon calls 
 "the fame of riches" ; in acquiring a position of authority, 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 5 
 
 not the consciousness of superior ability to discharge its 
 duties, but to hear himself addressed as " Captain," or " My 
 Lord," — this it is which stimulates ambitious effort. Love 
 of praise he believes to be the powerful incentive to human 
 action, especially in our day. We want to get into what the 
 world calls "good society," that we may be seen in it. 
 
 Although Mr. Ruskin may seem to set a low estimate 
 upon the motives of men in general, yet he does not deny 
 that the desire of being useful, of duty to fellow-men, does 
 have a share in the motives of most. 
 
 In associating with the true and the wise, we are most 
 likely to be happy and useful. How are we to secure such 
 association ? Few of us can be admitted to the higher 
 circles of human intelligence among the living men and 
 women of our own day ; but, while we vainly covet an 
 audience with queens and princes, with men of science and 
 great poets, we sometimes overlook the fact that the best 
 thought of the princely minds of all ages is offered to us, 
 and is waiting patiently for our listening ear. Hidden 
 behind the covers of books we may find the best expression 
 of the deepest thought of the wise. But there are books 
 and books : it is essential to distinguish. 
 
 The inherently bad books, it is needless to say, should 
 never be opened ; but, if we would so use books as to 
 advance ourselves in the true sense, we must follow Mr. 
 Ruskin's suggestion: give some time to the "good books 
 for the hour," which acquaint us with the life of our own 
 age ; but give our chief attention to the masterpieces in 
 literature, — the "good books for all time." These Books 
 of the Kings are the treasuries whose gems may be won by 
 all who learn the sesame, or magic pass-word. 
 
 The remainder of the lecture is devoted chiefly to showing 
 how such knowledge may be acquired ; for this noble society 
 will open its doors only to those who make themselves 
 
6 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 worthy. Worthiness is to be attained through love alone, and 
 this love must be shown in two ways: First) by patient atten- 
 tion and laborious study whereby we may enter understand- 
 ing^ into their thoughts; second, by sharing their mighty pas- 
 sion, through which we may rise to a knowledge of their hearts. 
 
 A reader of many books, according to Mr. Ruskin, is not 
 necessarily an educated person. The superficial study of 
 several languages may even be attended by a kind of 
 illiteracy, i.e., a lack of real understanding of the words 
 of any language. On the other hand, the accurate knowl- 
 edge which manifests itself in correct pronunciation, pre- 
 cision in the use of words, and a clear understanding of the 
 pedigree and history of his own language, marks a truly 
 educated man. To acquire this knowledge entails severe 
 study, but " the general gain to character in power and pre- 
 cision will be quite incalculable." 
 
 To illustrate his idea of the kind of study necessary for 
 acquiring this exact knowledge, Mr. Ruskin examines closely 
 a passage from Milton's " Lycidas." His analysis, or 
 "word-by-word examination," not only makes the sense of 
 this passage intelligible, but also shows just how he would 
 have us get the author's meaning in reading any piece of 
 literature ; by banishing from our thoughts, for the time, 
 all preconceived notions of our own, and entering into the 
 mind of the writer so as to see what he saw. 
 
 To make our minds good ground for the growth of the 
 seeds which these Kings of Thought have to sow, we must 
 clear them of all weeds of prejudice, and root up and 
 utterly destroy whatever evil may have begun to grow 
 therein. By this means, since " moral judgments are based 
 on intellectual," we shall be able to take the second step 
 towards worthiness to be admitted to friendly companion- 
 ship with the great. By habits of precise thinking, we enter 
 into their minds ; but it is only by feeling truly that we can 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 7 
 
 enter into their hearts. Sensitive sympathy with whatsoever 
 is pure, just, and noble gives the talismanic sesame which 
 opens the doors to the treasuries of living truth. 
 
 As with the individual, so with the nation. " For as in 
 nothing is a gentleman better to be discerned from a vulgar 
 person, so in nothing is a gentle nation better to be dis- 
 cerned from a mob, than in this, — that their feelings are 
 constant and just, results of due contemplation, and of 
 equal thought." 
 
 By citing actual examples drawn from (then) recent 
 occurrences, Ruskin shows how England falls short of real 
 greatness, — that greatness which secures to every man, 
 woman, and child healthful conditions for the development 
 of sound bodies, intelligent minds, pure morals. 
 
 His own justness in judging is made evident by his 
 acknowledging that the public heart still beats true in 
 response to an appeal to its higher feelings. " Instinctive, 
 reckless virtue," however, cannot save a nation ; its pas- 
 sions must be disciplined by reason, and controlled by love 
 of justice and righteousness. 
 
 That the " insanity of avarice " is so seriously affecting 
 the mind of England as to cause a loss of hearty apprecia- 
 tion of nature's beauties, of art, literature, and science, and 
 a blunting of human sympathy, is proved by the evidence of 
 striking facts. 
 
 It is negative virtue revealed by callous indifference to 
 remediable evils that leads Mr. Ruskin to accuse the public 
 of "childish illiterateness." It is this want of right educa- 
 tion which prevents our reading aright the lessons hidden 
 in the Kings' Treasuries of Wisdom. The seeing eye and 
 the understanding heart lead to the true advancement in 
 life. " He only is advancing in life, whose heart is getting 
 softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, whose 
 spirit is entering into Living Peace." 
 
8 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 In the men who have this life resides the true kinghood. 
 They are the men of power. The ideal state will be realized 
 when these men, putting themselves under the guidance of 
 the "Angels of Conduct, Toil, and Thought," and so 
 becoming " magnanimous — mighty of heart, mighty of 
 mind," — shall sit in the seats of kings and bring forth 
 treasures of wisdom for their people. 
 
 In public education, directed to make men thoughtful, 
 merciful, and just, is the only talisman of public health and 
 public safety. 
 
 LECTURE I. — SESAME. 
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES.i 
 
 " You shall each have a cake of sesame, — and ten pound." 
 
 Lucian : The Fisherman. 
 
 i. My first duty this evening is to ask your pardon for 
 the ambiguity of title under which the subject of this lecture 
 has been announced : for indeed I am not going to talk of 
 kings, known as regnant, nor of treasuries, understood to 
 contain wealth ; but of quite another order of royalty, and 
 another material of riches, than those usually acknowledged. 
 I had even intended to ask your attention for a little while 
 on trust, and (as sometimes one contrives, in taking a friend 
 to see a favorite piece of scenery) to hide what I wanted 
 most to show, with such imperfect cunning as I might, until 
 we unexpectedly reached the best point of view by winding 
 paths. But — and as also I have heard it said, by men 
 practiced in public address, that hearers are never so much 
 fatigued as by the endeavor to follow a speaker who gives 
 
 1 This lecture was given December 6, 1864, at Rusholme Town Hall, 
 Manchester, in aid of a library fund for the Rusholme Institute. 
 
OF KINGS TREASURIES. 9 
 
 them no clue to his purposes, — I will take the slight mask 
 off at once, and tell you plainly that I want to speak to you 
 about the treasures hidden in books ; and about the way we 
 find them, and the way we lose them. A grave subject, 
 you will say ; and a wide one ! Yes ; so wide that I shall 
 make no effort to touch the compass of it. I will try only 
 to bring before you a few simple thoughts about reading, 
 which press themselves upon me every day more deeply, as 
 I watch the course of the public mind with respect to our 
 daily enlarging means of education ; and the answeringly 
 wider spreading on the levels, of the irrigation of literature. 
 2. It happens that I have practically some connection 
 with schools for different classes of youth ; and I receive 
 many letters from parents respecting the education of their 
 children. In the mass of these letters I am always struck 
 by the precedence which the idea of a "position in life" 
 takes above all other thoughts in the parents' — more 
 especially in the mothers' — minds. " The education befit- 
 ting such and such a station in life'''' — this is the phrase, 
 this the object, always. They never seek, as far as I can 
 make out, an education good in itself ; even the conception 
 of abstract Tightness in training rarely seems reached by the 
 writers. But, an education " which shall keep a good coat 
 on my son's back; — which shall enable him to ring with 
 confidence the visitors' bell at doubled-belled doors ; which 
 shall result ultimately in establishment of a doubled-belled 
 door to his own house ; — in a word, which shall lead to 
 'advancement in life' ; — this we pray for on bent knees — 
 and this is all we pray for." It never seems to occur to 
 the parents that there may be an education which, in itself, 
 is advancement in Life ; — that any other than that may 
 perhaps be advancement in Death ; and that this essential 
 education might be more easily got, or given, than they 
 fancy, if they set about it in the right way ; while it is for 
 
10 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 no price, and by no favor, to be got, if they set about it in 
 the wrong. 
 
 3. Indeed, among the ideas most prevalent and effective 
 in the mind of this busiest of countries, I suppose the first 
 — at least that which is confessed with the greatest frank- 
 ness, and put forward as the fittest stimulus to youthful 
 exertion — is this of "Advancement in life." May I ask 
 you to consider with me what this idea practically includes, 
 and what it should include. 
 
 Practically, then, at present, " advancement in life " 
 means, becoming conspicuous in life ; — obtaining a position 
 which shall be acknowledged by others to be respectable or 
 honorable. We do not understand by this advancement, in 
 general, the mere making of money, but the being known to 
 have made it ; not the accomplishment of any great aim, 
 but the being seen to have accomplished it. In a word, we 
 mean the gratification of our thirst for applause. That 
 thirst, if the last infirmity of noble minds, is also the first 
 infirmity of weak ones ; and, on the whole, the strongest 
 impulsive influence of average humanity : the greatest 
 efforts of the race have always been traceable to the love of 
 praise, as its greatest catastrophes to the love of pleasure. 
 
 4. I am not about to attack or defend this impulse. I 
 want you only to feel how it lies at the root of effort ; 
 especially of all modern effort. It is the gratification of 
 vanity which is, with us, the stimulus of toil, and balm of 
 repose ; so closely does it touch the very springs of life 
 that the wounding of our vanity is always spoken of (and 
 truly) as in its measure mortal; we call it " mortification," 
 using the same expression jwhich we should apply to a 
 gangrenous and incurable bodily hurt. And although few 
 of us may be physicians enough to recognize the various 
 effect of this passion upon health and energy, I believe most 
 honest men know, and would at once acknowledge, its lead- 
 
OF KINGS TREASURIES. I I 
 
 ing power with them as a motive. The seaman does not 
 commonly desire to be made captain only because he knows 
 he can manage the ship better than any other sailor on 
 board. He wants to be made captain that he may be called 
 captain. The clergyman does not usually want to be made 
 a bishop only because he believes no Other hand can, as 
 firmly as his, direct the diocese through its difficulties. He 
 wants to be made bishop primarily that he may be called 
 11 My Lord." And a prince does not usually desire to 
 enlarge, or a subject to gain, a kingdom, because he believes 
 that no one else can as well serve the State, upon its 
 throne ; but, briefly, because he wishes to be addressed as 
 "Your Majesty," by as many lips as maybe brought to such 
 utterance. 
 
 5. This, then, being the main idea of "advancement in 
 life," the force of it applies, for all of us, according to our 
 station, particularly to that secondary result of such ad- 
 vancement which we call "getting into good society." We 
 want to get into good society, not that we may have it, but 
 that we may be seen in it ; and our notion of its goodness 
 depends primarily on its conspicuousness. 
 
 Will you pardon me if I pause for a moment to put what 
 I fear you may think an impertinent question ? I never can 
 go on with an address unless I feel, or know, that my 
 audience are either with me or against me : I do not much 
 care which, in beginning ; but I must know where they are ; 
 and I would fain find out, at this instant, whether you think 
 I am putting the motives of popular action too low. I am 
 resolved, to-night, to state them low enough to be admitted 
 as probable ; for whenever, in my writings on Political 
 Economy, I assume that a little honesty, or generosity — or 
 what used to be called "virtue" — maybe calculated upon 
 as a human motive of action, people always answer me, say- 
 ing, " You must not calculate on that : that is not in human 
 
12 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 nature : you must not assume anything to be common to 
 men but acquisitiveness and jealousy ; no other feeling ever 
 has influence on them, except accidentally, and in matters 
 out of the way of business." I begin, accordingly, to-night 
 low in the scale of motives ; but I must know if you think 
 me right in doing so. Therefore, let me ask those who 
 admit the love of praise to be usually the strongest motive 
 in men's minds in seeking advancement, and the honest 
 desire of doing any kind of duty to be an entirely secondary 
 one, to hold up their hands. {About a dozen of hands held 
 u p — the audience, partly, not being sure the lecturer is serious, 
 and, partly, shy of expressing opinion.) I am quite serious 
 — I really do want to know what you think ; however, I 
 can judge by putting the reverse question. Will those who 
 think that duty is generally the first, and love of praise the 
 second, motive, hold up their hands? {One hand reported 
 to have been held up, behind the lecturer.). Very good ; I see 
 you are with me, and that you think I have not begun too 
 near the ground. Now, without teasing you by putting 
 farther question, I venture to assume that you will admit 
 duty as at least a secondary or tertiary motive. You think 
 that the desire of doing something useful, or obtaining some 
 real good, is indeed an existent collateral idea, though a 
 secondary one, in most men's desire of advancement. You 
 will grant that moderately honest men desire place and 
 office, at least in some measure, for the sake of beneficent 
 power ; and would wish to associate rather with sensible 
 and well-informed persons than with fools and ignorant 
 persons, whether they are seen in the company of the 
 sensible ones or not. And finally, without being troubled 
 by repetition of any common truisms about the precious- 
 ness of friends, and the influence of companions, you will 
 admit, doubtless, that according to the sincerity of our 
 desire that our friends may be true, and our companions 
 
OF KINGS TREASURIES. 1 3 
 
 wise, — and in proportion to the earnestness and discretion 
 with which we choose both, will be the general chances of 
 our happiness and usefulness. 
 
 6. But, granting that we had both the will and the sense 
 to choose our friends well, how few of us have the power ! 
 or, at least, how limited, for most, is the sphere of choice ! 
 Nearly all our associations are determined by chance, or 
 necessity ; and restricted within a narrow circle. We can- 
 not know whom we would ; and those whom we know, we 
 cannot have at our side when we most need them. All the 
 higher circles of human intelligence are, to those beneath, 
 only momentarily and partially open. We may, by good 
 fortune, obtain a glimpse of a great poet, and hear the 
 sound of his voice ; or put a question to a man of science, 
 and be answered good-humoredly. We may intrude ten 
 minutes' talk on a cabinet minister, answered probably with 
 words worse than silence, being deceptive ; or snatch, once 
 or twice in our lives, the privilege of throwing a bouquet in 
 the path of a Princess, or arresting the kind glance of a 
 Queen. And yet these momentary chances we covet ; and 
 spend our years, and passions, and powers in pursuit of 
 little more than these ; while, meantime, there is a society 
 continually open to us, of people who will talk to us as long 
 as we like, whatever our rank or occupation ; — talk to us 
 in the best words they can choose, and of the things nearest 
 their hearts. And this society, because it is so numerous 
 and so gentle, and can be kept waiting round us all day 
 long, — kings and statesmen lingering patiently, not to 
 grant audience, but to gain it ! — in those plainly furnished 
 and narrow anterooms, our bookcase shelves, — we make 
 no account of that company, — perhaps never listen to a 
 word they would say, all day long ! 
 
 7. You may tell me, perhaps, or think within yourselves, 
 that the apathy with which we regard this company of the 
 
14 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 noble, who are praying us to listen to them ; and the 
 passion with which we pursue the company, probably of the 
 ignoble, who despise us, or who have nothing to teach us, 
 are grounded in this, — that we can see the faces of the 
 living men, and it is themselves, and not their sayings, with 
 which we desire to become familiar. But it is not so. Sup- 
 pose you never were to see their faces; — suppose you 
 could be put behind a screen in the statesman's cabinet, or 
 the prince's chamber, would you not be glad to listen to 
 their words, though you were forbidden to advance beyond 
 the screen? And when the screen is only a little less, 
 folded in two instead of four, and you can be hidden behind 
 the cover of the two boards that bind a book, and listen all 
 day long, not to the casual talk, but to the studied, deter- 
 mined, chosen addresses of the wisest of men ; — this station 
 of audience, and honorable privy council, you despise ! 
 
 8. But perhaps you will say that it is because the living 
 people talk of things that are passing, and are of immediate 
 interest to you, that you desire to hear them. Nay ; that 
 cannot be so, for the living people will themselves tell you 
 about passing matters, much better in their writings than in 
 their careless talk. But I admit that this motive does 
 influence you, so far as you prefer those rapid and epheme- 
 ral writings to slow and enduring writings, — books, properly 
 so called. For all books are divisible into two classes, the 
 books of the hour, and the books of all time. Mark this 
 distinction — it is not one of quality only. It is not merely 
 the bad book that does not last, and the good one that does. 
 It is a distinction of species. There are good books for 
 the hour, and good ones for all time ; bad books for the 
 hour, and bad ones for all time. I must define the two 
 kinds before I go farther. 
 
 9. The good book of the hour, then, — I do not speak 
 of the bad ones, — is simply the useful or pleasant talk of 
 
OF KINGS TREASURIES. I 5 
 
 some person whom you cannot otherwise converse with, 
 printed for you. Very useful often, telling you what you 
 need to know ; very pleasant often, as a sensible friend's 
 present talk would be. These bright accounts of travels ; 
 good-humored and witty discussions of question ; lively or 
 pathetic story-telling in the form of novel ; firm fact-telling, 
 by the real agents concerned in the events of passing 
 history ; — all these books of the hour, multiplying among 
 us as education becomes more general, are a peculiar 
 possession of the present age ; we ought to be entirely 
 thankful for them, and entirely ashamed of ourselves if we 
 make no good use of them. But we make the worst possi- 
 ble use if we allow them to usurp the place of true books : 
 for, strictly speaking, they are not books at all, but merely 
 letters or newspapers in good print. Our friend's letter 
 may be delightful, or necessary, to-day : whether worth 
 keeping or not, is to be considered. The newspaper may 
 be entirely proper at breakfast time, but assuredly it is not 
 reading for all day. So, though bound up in a volume, the 
 long letter which gives you so pleasant an account of the 
 inns, and roads, and weather last year at such a place, or 
 which tells you that amusing story, or gives you the real 
 circumstances of such and" such events, however valuable 
 for occasional reference, may not be, in the real sense of 
 the word, a "book" at all, nor, in the real sense, to be 
 "read." A book is essentially not a talked thing, but a 
 written thing ; and written, not with the view of mere com- 
 munication, but of permanence. The book of talk is printed 
 only because its author cannot speak to thousands of people 
 at once; if he could, he would — the volume is mere multi- 
 plication of his voice. You cannot talk to your friend in 
 India ; if you could, you would ; you write instead : that is 
 mere conveyance of voice. But a book is written, not to 
 multiply the voice merely, not to carry it merely, but to 
 
l6 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 perpetuate it. The author has something to say which he 
 perceives to be true and useful, or helpfully beautiful. So 
 far as he knows, no one has yet said it ; so far as he knows, 
 no one else can say it. He is bound to say it, clearly and 
 melodiously if he may ; clearly, at all events. In the sum 
 of his life he finds this to be the thing, or group of things, 
 manifest to him ; — this, the piece of true knowledge, or 
 sight, which his share of sunshine and earth has permitted 
 him to seize. He would fain set it down forever ; engrave 
 it on rock, if he could ; saying, " This is the best of me ; 
 for the rest, I ate, and drank, and slept, loved, and hated, 
 like another ; my life was as the vapor, and is not ; but this 
 I saw and knew : this, if anything of mine, is worth your 
 memory." That is his "writing"; it is, in his small 
 human way, and with whatever degree of true inspiration is 
 in him, his inscription, or scripture. That is a " Book." 
 
 10. Perhaps you think no books were ever so written. 
 
 But, again, I ask you, do you at all believe in honesty, 
 or at all in kindness ? or do you think there is never any 
 honesty or benevolence in wise people ? None of us, I 
 hope, are so unhappy as to think that. Well, whatever bit 
 of a wise man's work is honestly and benevolently done, 
 that bit is his book, or his piece of art. 1 It is mixed always 
 with evil fragments — ill-done, redundant, affected work. 
 But if you read rightly, you will easily discover the true 
 bits, and those are the book. 
 
 ii. Now books of this kind have been written in all ages 
 by their greatest men : — by great readers, great statesmen, 
 and great thinkers. These are all at your choice ; and Life 
 is short. You have heard as much before ; — yet have you 
 measured and mapped out this short life and its possibil- 
 ities ? Do you know, if you read this, that you cannot 
 
 1 Note this sentence carefully, and compare the Queen of the Air, 
 § 1 06. 
 
OF KINGS TREASURIES. 1 7 
 
 read that — that what you lose to-day you cannot gain 
 to-morrow ? Will you go and gossip with your housemaid, 
 or your stable-boy, when you may talk with queens and 
 kings ; or flatter yourselves that it is with any worthy con- 
 sciousness of your own claims to respect that you jostle 
 with the hungry and common crowd for entree here, and 
 audience there, when all the while this eternal court is open 
 to you, with its society, wide as the world, multitudinous as 
 its days, the chosen, and the mighty, of every place and 
 time ? Into that you may enter always ; in that you may 
 take fellowship and rank according to your wish; from that, 
 once entered into it, yon can never be outcast but by your 
 own fault ; by your aristocracy of companionship there, 
 your own inherent aristocracy will be assuredly tested, and 
 the motives with which you strive to take high place in the 
 society of the living, measured, as to all the truth and 
 sincerity that are in them, by the place you desire to take 
 in this company of the Dead. 
 
 12. "The place yon desire," and the place you fit your- 
 self 'for, I must also say ; because, observe, this court of the 
 past differs from all living aristocracy in this : — it is open 
 to labor and to merit, but to nothing else. No wealth will 
 bribe, no name overawe, no artifice deceive, the guardian of 
 those Elysian gates. In the deep sense, no vile or vulgar 
 person ever enters there. At the portieres of that silent 
 Faubourg St. Germain, there is but brief question, Do you 
 deserve to enter ? Pass. Do you ask to be the companion 
 of nobles ? Make yourself noble, and you shall be. Do 
 you long for the conversation of the wise ? Learn to under- 
 stand it, and you shall hear it. But on other terms ? — no. 
 If you will not rise to us, we cannot stoop to you. The 
 living lord may assume courtesy, the living philosopher 
 explain his thought to you with considerate pain ; but here 
 we neither feign nor interpret ; you must rise to the level of 
 
15 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 our thoughts if you would be gladdened by them, and share 
 our feelings, if you would recognize our presence." 
 
 13. This, then, is what you have to do, and I admit that 
 it is much. You must, in a word, love these people, if you 
 are to be among them. No ambition is of any use. They 
 scorn your ambition. You must love them, and show your 
 love in these two following ways : 
 
 I. — First, by a true desire to be taught by them, and to 
 enter into their thoughts. To enter into theirs, observe ; 
 not to find your own expressed by them. If the person 
 who wrote the book is not wiser than you, you need not 
 read it ; if he be, he will think differently from you in many 
 respects. 
 
 Very ready we are to say of a book, " How good this is 
 — that's exactly what I think ! " But the right feeling is, 
 " How strange that is ! I never thought of that before, and 
 yet I see it is true ; or if I do not now, I hope I shall, some 
 day." But whether thus submissively or not, at least be 
 sure that you go to the author to get at his meaning, not to 
 find yours. Judge it afterwards, if you think yourself quali- 
 fied to do so ; but ascertain it first. And be sure also, if 
 the author is worth anything, that you will not get at his 
 meaning all at once ; — nay, that at his whole meaning you 
 will not for a long time arrive in any wise. Not that he 
 does not say what he means, and in strong words too ; but 
 he cannot say it all ; and what is more strange, will not, 
 but in a hidden way and in parables, in order that he may 
 be sure you want it. I cannot quite see the reason of this, 
 nor analyze that cruel reticence in the breasts of wise men 
 which makes them always hide their deeper thought. They 
 do not give it to you by way of help, but of reward ; and 
 will make themselves sure that you deserve it before they 
 allow you to reach it. But it is the same with the physical 
 type of wisdom, gold. There seems, to you and me, no 
 
OF KINGS TREASURIES, 1 9 
 
 reason why the electric forces of the earth should not carry- 
 whatever there is of gold within it at once to the mountain 
 tops, so that kings and people might know that all the gold 
 they could get was there ; and without any trouble of dig- 
 ging, or anxiety, or chance, or waste of time, cut it away, 
 and coin as much as they needed. But Nature does not 
 manage it so. She puts it in little fissures in the earth, 
 nobody knows where : you may dig long and find none ; 
 you must dig painfully to find any. 
 
 14. And it is just the same with men's best wisdom. 
 When you come to a good book, you must ask yourself, 
 " Am I inclined to work as an Australian miner would ? 
 Are my pickaxes and shovels in good order, and am I in 
 good trim myself, my sleeves well up to the elbow, and my 
 breath good, and my temper?" And, keeping the figure 
 a little longer, even at cost of tiresomeness, for it is a thor- 
 oughly useful one, the metal you are in search of being the 
 author's mind or meaning, his words are as the rock which 
 you have to crush and smelt in order to get at it. And 
 your pickaxes are your own care, wit, and learning ; your 
 smelting-furnace is your own thoughtful soul. Do not hope 
 to get at any good author's meaning without those tools 
 and that fire ; often you will need sharpest, finest chiseling, 
 and pitientest fusing, before you can gather one grain of 
 the metal. 
 
 15. And therefore, first of all, I tell you, earnestly and 
 authoritatively (I know I am right in this), you must get 
 into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring 
 yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable — nay letter 
 by letter. For though it is only by reason of the opposition 
 of letters in the function of signs, to sounds in the function 
 of signs, that the study of books is called "literature," and 
 that a man versed in it is called, by the consent of nations, 
 a man of letters instead of a man of books, or of words, you 
 
20 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 may yet connect with that accidental nomenclature this real 
 fact ; — that you might read all the books in the British 
 Museum (if you could live long enough) and remain an 
 utterly " illiterate," uneducated person ; but that if you read 
 ten pages of a good book, letter by letter, — that is to say, 
 with real accuracy, — you are forevermore in some measure 
 an educated person. The entire difference between educa- 
 tion and non-education (as regards the merely intellectual 
 part of it) consists in this accuracy. A well-educated 
 gentleman may not know many languages, — may not be 
 able to speak any but his own, — may have read very few 
 books. But whatever language he knows, he knows pre- 
 cisely; whatever word he pronounces, he pronounces rightly; 
 above all, he is learned in the peerage of words ; knows the 
 words of true descent and ancient blood at a glance, from 
 words of modern canaille ; remembers all their ancestry, 
 their intermarriages, distant relationships, and the extent to 
 which they were admitted, and offices they held, among the 
 national noblesse of words at any time, and in any country. 
 But an uneducated person may know, by memory, many 
 languages, and talk them all, and yet truly know not a word 
 of any, — not a word even of his own. An ordinarily clever 
 and sensible seaman will be able to make his way ashore at 
 most ports ; yet he has only to speak a sentence of any 
 language to be known for an illiterate person : so also the 
 accent, or turn of expression of a single sentence, will at 
 once mark a scholar. And this is so strongly felt, so con- 
 clusively admitted by educated persons, that a false accent 
 or a mistaken syllable is enough, in the parliament of any 
 civilized nation, to assign to a man a certain degree of 
 inferior standing forever. 
 
 1 6. And this is right; but it is a pity that the accuracy 
 insisted on is not greater, and required to a serious purpose. 
 It is right that a false Latin quantity should excite a smile 
 
OF KINGS TREASURIES. 21 
 
 in the House of Commons ; but it is wrong that a false 
 English meaning should not excite a frown there. Let the 
 accent of words be watched ; and closely : let their mean- 
 ing be watched more closely still, and fewer will do the 
 work. A few words well chosen and distinguished, will do 
 work that a thousand cannot, when every one is acting, 
 equivocally, in the function of another. Yes ; and words, 
 if they are not watched, will do deadly work sometimes. 
 There are masked words droning and skulking about us in 
 Europe just now, — (there never were so many, owing to 
 the spread of a shallow, blotching, blundering, infectious 
 "information," or rather deformation, everywhere, and to 
 the teaching of catechisms and phrases at schools instead 
 of human meanings) — there are masked words abroad, I 
 say, which nobody understands, but which everybody uses, 
 and most people will also fight for, live for, or even die for, 
 fancying they mean this or that, or the other, of things 
 dear to them : for such words wear chameleon cloaks — 
 "groundlion" cloaks, of the color of the ground of any 
 man's fancy : on that ground they lie in wait, and rend him 
 with a spring from it. There never were creatures of prey 
 so mischievous, never diplomatists so cunning, never poi- 
 soners so deadly, as these masked words ; they are the 
 unjust stewards of all men's ideas : whatever fancy or 
 favorite instinct a man most cherishes, he gives to his 
 favorite masked word to take care of for him ; the word at 
 last comes to have an infinite power over him, — you cannot 
 get at him but by its ministry. 
 
 17. And in languages so mongrel in breed as the English, 
 there is a fatal power of equivocation put into men's hands, 
 almost whether they will or no, in being able to use Greek 
 or Latin words for an idea when they want it to be awful , 
 and Saxon or otherwise common words when they want it 
 to be vulgar. What a singular and salutary effect, for 
 
22 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 instance, would be produced on the minds of people who 
 are in the habit of taking the Form of the "Word" they 
 live by, for the Power of which that Word tells them, if we 
 always either retained, or refused, the Greek form " biblos," 
 or "biblion," as the right expression for "book" — instead 
 of employing it only in the one instance in which we wish 
 to give dignity to the idea, and translating it into English 
 everywhere else. How wholesome it would be for many 
 simple persons, if, in such places (for instance) as Acts xix. 
 19, we retained the Greek expression, instead of translating 
 it, and they had to read — " Many of them also which used 
 curious arts, brought their bibles together, and burnt them 
 before all men ; and they counted the price of them, and 
 found it fifty thousand pieces of silver ! " Or if, on the 
 other hand, we translated where we retain it, and always 
 spoke of " The Holy Book," instead of " Holy Bible," it 
 might come into more heads than it does at present, that 
 the Word of God, by which the heavens were, of old, and 
 by which they are now kept in store, 1 cannot be made a 
 present of to anybody in morocco binding ; nor sown on 
 any wayside by help either of steam plough or steam press ; 
 but is nevertheless being offered to us daily, and by us with 
 contumely refused ; and sown in us daily, and by us, as 
 instantly as may be, choked. 
 
 18. So, again, consider what effect has been produced 
 on the English vulgar mind by the use of the sonorous 
 Latin form "damno," in translating the Greek KaraKpivw, 
 when people charitably wish to make it forcible ; and the 
 substitution of the temperate "condemn" for it, when they 
 choose to keep it gentle^ and what notable sermons have 
 been preached by illiterate clergymen on — " He that 
 believeth not shall be damned " ; though they would shrink 
 with horror from translating Heb. xi. 7, "The saving of his 
 
 1 2 Peter, iii. 5-7. 
 
OF KINGS TREASURIES. 23 
 
 house, by which he damned the world " ; or John viii. 10, n, 
 " Woman, hath no man damned thee ? She saith, No man, 
 Lord. Jesus answered her, Neither do I damn thee ; go 
 and sin no more." And divisions in the mind of Europe, 
 which have cost seas of blood and in the defense of which 
 the noblest souls of men have been cast away in frantic 
 desolation, countless as forest leaves — though, in the heart 
 of them, founded on deeper causes — have nevertheless been 
 rendered practicably possible, namely, by the European 
 adoption of the Greek word for a public meeting, "ecclesia," 
 to give peculiar respectability to such meetings, when held 
 for religious purposes ; and other collateral equivocations, 
 such as the vulgar English one of using the word "priest" 
 as a contraction for " presbyter." 
 
 19. Now, in order to deal with words rightly, this is the 
 habit you must form. Nearly every word in your language 
 has been first a word of some other language — of Saxon, 
 German, French, Latin, or Greek (not to speak of eastern 
 and primitive dialects). And many words have been all 
 these ; — that is to say, have been Greek first, Latin next, 
 French or German next, and English last : undergoing a 
 certain change of sense and use on the lips of each nation ; 
 but retaining a deep vital meaning, which all good scholars 
 feel in employing them, even at this day. If you do not 
 know the Greek alphabet, learn it; young or old — girl or 
 boy — whoever you may be, if you think of reading seriously 
 (which, of course, implies that you have some leisure at 
 command), learn your Greek alphabet ; then get good 
 dictionaries of all these languages, and whenever you are 
 in doubt about a word, hunt it down patiently. Read Max 
 Miiller's lectures thoroughly, to begin with ; and, after that, 
 never let a word escape you that looks suspicious. It is 
 severe work ; but you will find it, even at first, interesting, 
 and at last, endlessly amusing. And the general gain 
 
24 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 to your character, in power, and precision, will be quite 
 incalculable. 
 
 Mind, this does not imply knowing, or trying to know, 
 Greek or Latin, or French. It takes a whole life to learn 
 any language perfectly. But you can easily ascertain the 
 meanings through which the English word has passed ; and 
 those which in a good writer's work it must still bear. 
 
 20. And now, merely for example's sake, I will, with 
 your permission, read a few lines of a true book with you, 
 carefully ; and see what will come out of them. I will take 
 a book perfectly known to you all. No English words are 
 more familiar to us, yet few perhaps have been read with less 
 sincerity. I will take these few following lines of Lycidas : 
 
 " Last came, and last did go, 
 The pilot of the Galilean lake ; 
 Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, 
 (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain), 
 He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake, 
 ' How well could I have spar'd for thee, young swain, 
 Enow of such as for their bellies' sake 
 Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold ! 
 Of other care they little reckoning make, 
 Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, 
 And shove away the worthy bidden guest ; 
 Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know how to hold 
 A sheep-hook, or have learn'd aught else, the least 
 That to the faithful herdsman's art belongs ! 
 What recks it them ? What need they ? They are sped ; 
 And when they list, their lean and flashy songs 
 Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw ; 
 The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, 
 But, swoln with wind, and the rank mist they draw, 
 Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread ; 
 Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw 
 Daily devours apace, and nothing said.' " 
 
OF KINGS TREASURIES. 25 
 
 Let us think over this passage, and examine its 
 words. 
 
 First, is it not singular to find Milton assigning to St. 
 Peter, not only his full episcopal function, but the very 
 types of it which Protestants usually refuse most pas- 
 sionately ? His " mitred " locks ! Milton was no Bishop- 
 lover ; how comes St. Peter to be "mitred?" "Two 
 massy keys he bore." Is this, then, the power of the keys 
 claimed by the Bishops of Rome, and is it acknowledged 
 here by Milton only in a poetical license, for the sake of its 
 picturesqueness, that he may get the gleam of the golden 
 keys to help his effect ? Do not think it. Great men do 
 not play stage tricks with doctrines of life and death : only 
 little men do that. Milton means what he says ; and means 
 it with his might too — is going to put the whole strength 
 of his spirit presently into the saying of it. For though not 
 a lover of false bishops, he 7c>as a lover of true ones ; and 
 the Lake-pilot is here, in his thoughts, the type and head of 
 true episcopal power. For Milton reads that text, " I will 
 give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of Heaven " quite 
 honestly. Puritan though he be, he would not blot it out 
 of the book because there have been bad bishops ; nay, in 
 order to understand Aim, we must understand that verse 
 first ; it will not do to eye it askance, or whisper it under 
 our breath, as if it were a weapon of an adverse sect. It is 
 a solemn, universal assertion, deeply to be kept in mind by 
 all sects. But perhaps we shall be better able to reason on 
 it if we go on a little farther, and come back to it. For 
 clearly this marked insistence on the power of the true 
 episcopate is to make us feel more weightily what is to be 
 charged against the false claimants of episcopate ; or 
 generally, against false claimants of power and rank in the 
 body of the clergy ; they who, " for their bellies' sake, 
 creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold." 
 
26 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 21. Never think Milton uses those three words to fill up 
 his verse, as a loose writer would. He needs all the three ; 
 specially those three, and no more than those — "creep," 
 and "intrude," and "climb"; no other words would or 
 could serve the turn, and no more could be added. For 
 they exhaustively comprehend the three classes, corre- 
 spondent to the three characters, of men who dishonestly 
 seek ecclesiastical power. First, those who "creep" into 
 the fold ; who do not care for office, nor name, but for 
 secret influence, and do all things occultly and cunningly, 
 consenting to any servility of office or conduct, so only that 
 they may intimately discern, and unawares direct, the minds 
 of men. Then those who "intrude" (thrust, that is) them- 
 selves into the fold, who by natural insolence of heart, and 
 stout eloquence of tongue, and fearlessly perseverant self- 
 assertion, obtain hearing and authority with the common 
 crowd. Lastly, those who " climb," who by labor and 
 learning, both stout and sound, but selfishly exerted in 
 the cause of their own ambition, gain high dignities and 
 authorities, and become "lords over the heritage," though 
 not " ensamples to the flock." 
 
 22. Now go on : — 
 
 " Of other care they little reckoning make, 
 Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast. 
 Blind mouths — " 
 
 I pause again, for this is a strange expression ; a broken 
 metaphor, one might think, careless and un scholarly. 
 
 Not so : its very audacity and pithiness are intended to 
 make us look close at the phrase and remember it. Those 
 two monosyllables express the precisely accurate contraries 
 of right character, in the two great offices of the Church — . 
 those of bishop and pastor. 
 
 A " Bishop " means a " person who sees." 
 
OF KINGS TREASURIES. 2*] 
 
 A " Pastor " means a " person who feeds." 
 
 The most unbishoply character a man can have is there- 
 fore to be Blind. 
 
 The most unpastoral is, instead of feeding, to want to be 
 fed, ■ — to be a Mouth. 
 
 Take the two reverses together, and you have " blind 
 mouths." We may advisably follow out this idea a little. 
 Nearly all the evils in the Church have arisen from bishops 
 desiring power more than light. They want authority, not 
 outlook. Whereas their real office it not to rule ; though it 
 may be vigorously to exhort and rebuke ; it is the king's 
 office to rule ; the bishop's office is to oversee the flock ; to 
 number it, sheep by sheep ; to be ready always to give full 
 account of it. Now it is clear he cannot give account of 
 the souls, if he has not so much as numbered the bodies of 
 his flock. The first thing, therefore, that a bishop has to 
 do is at least to put himself in a position in which, at any 
 moment, he can obtain the history, from childhood, of every 
 living soul in his diocese, and of its present state. Down 
 in that back street, Bill and Nancy, knocking each other's 
 teeth out ! — Does the bishop know all about it ? Has he 
 his eye upon them ? Has he had his eye upon them ? Can 
 he circumstantially explain to us how Bill got into the habit 
 of beating Nancy about the head ? If he cannot, he is no 
 bishop, though he had a mitre as high as Salisbury steeple ; 
 he is no bishop, — he has sought to be at the helm instead 
 of the masthead ; he has no sight of things. " Nay," you 
 say, " it is not his duty to look after Bill in the back street." 
 What ! the fat sheep that have full fleeces — you think it is 
 only those he should look after, while (go back to your 
 Milton) "the hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, 
 besides what the grim wolf, with privy paw" (bishops know- 
 ing nothing about it) "daily devours apace, and nothing 
 said " ? 
 
28 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 "But that's not our idea of a bishop." 1 Perhaps not; 
 but it was St. Paul's ; and it was Milton's. They may be 
 right, or we may be ; but we must not think we are reading 
 either one or the other by putting our meaning into their 
 words. 
 
 23. I go on. 
 
 " But ; swollen with wind, and the rank mist they draw." 
 
 This is to meet the vulgar answer that "if the poor are 
 not looked after in their bodies, they are in their souls ; 
 they have spiritual food." 
 
 And Milton says, " They have no such thing as spiritual 
 food ; they are only swollen with wind." At first you may 
 think that is a coarse type, and an obscure one. But again, 
 it is a quite literally accurate one. Take up your Latin 
 and Greek dictionaries, and find out the meaning of 
 " Spirit." It is only a contraction of the Latin word 
 "breath," and an indistinct translation of the Greek word 
 for "wind." The same word is used in writing, "The wind 
 bloweth where it listeth "; and in writing, " So is every one 
 that is born of the Spirit "; born of the breath, that is ; for 
 it means the breath of God, in soul and body. We have 
 the true sense of it in our words "inspiration" and "expire." 
 Now, there are two kinds of breath with which the flock 
 may be filled ; God's breath, and man's. The breath of 
 God is health, and life, and peace to them, as the air of 
 heaven is to the flocks on the hills ; but man's breath — 
 the word which he calls spiritual, — is disease and contagion 
 to them, as the fog of the fen. They rot inwardly with it ; 
 they are puffed up by it, as a dead body by the vapors of 
 its own decomposition. This is literally true of all false, 
 religious teaching ; the first and last, and fatalest sign of it 
 
 1 Compare the 13th Letter in Time and Tide. 
 
OF KINGS TREASURIES. 20, 
 
 is that " puffing up." Your converted children, who teach 
 their parents ; your converted convicts, who teach honest 
 men ; your converted dunces, who, having lived in cretinous 
 stupefaction half their lives, suddenly awakening to the fact 
 of there being a God, fancy themselves therefore His 
 peculiar people and messengers ; your sectarians of every 
 species, small and great, Catholic or Protestant, of high 
 church or low, in so far as they think themselves exclusively 
 in the right and others wrong ; and preeminently, in every 
 sect, those who hold that men can be saved by thinking 
 rightly instead of doing rightly, by word instead of act, and 
 wish instead of work : — these are the true fog children — 
 clouds, these, without water ; bodies, these, of putrescent 
 vapor and skin, without blood or flesh : blown bag-pipes 
 for the fiends to pipe with — corrupt, and corrupting, — 
 " Swollen with wind, and the rank mist they draw." 
 
 24. Lastly, let us return to the lines respecting the power 
 of the keys, for now we can understand them. Note the 
 difference between Milton and Dante in their interpretation 
 of this power : for once, the latter is weaker in thought ; he 
 supposes both the keys to be of the gate of heaven ; one is 
 of gold, the other of silver : they are given by St. Peter to 
 the sentinel angel ; and it is not easy to determine the 
 meaning either of the substances of the three steps of the 
 gate, or of the two keys. But Milton makes one, of gold, 
 the key of heaven ; the other, of iron, the key of the 
 prison in which the wicked teachers are to be bound who 
 " have taken away the key of knowledge, yet entered not in 
 themselves." 
 
 We have seen that the duties of bishop and pastor are to 
 see and feed ; and, of all who do so it is said, " He that 
 watereth, shall be watered also himself." But the reverse 
 is truth also. He that watereth not, shall be withered him- 
 self, and he that seeth not, shall himself be shut out of 
 
30 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 sight, — shut into the perpetual prison-house. And that 
 prison opens here, as well as hereafter : he who is to be 
 bound in heaven must first be bound on earth. That com- 
 mand to the strong angels, of which the rock-apostle is the 
 image, "Take him, and bind him hand and foot, and cast 
 him out," issues, in its measure, against the teacher, for 
 every help withheld, and for every truth refused, and for 
 every falsehood enforced ; so that he is more strictly 
 fettered the more he fetters, and farther outcast, as he more 
 and more misleads, till at last the bars of the iron cage 
 close upon him, and as "the golden opes, the iron shuts 
 amain." 
 
 25. We have got something out of the lines, I think, and 
 much more is yet to be found in them ; but we have done 
 enough by way of example of the kind of word-by-word 
 examination of your author which is rightly called " read- 
 ing " ; watching every accent and expression, and putting 
 ourselves always in the author's place, annihilating our 
 own personality, and seeking to enter into his, so as to be 
 able assuredly to say, "Thus Milton thought," not "Thus / 
 thought, in mis-reading Milton." And by this process you 
 will gradually come to attach less weight to your own " Thus 
 I thought " at other times. You will begin to perceive that 
 what you thought was a matter of no serious importance ; — 
 that your thoughts on any subject are not perhaps the 
 clearest and wisest that could be arrived at thereupon : — in 
 fact, that unless you are a very singular person, you cannot 
 be said to have any "thoughts" at all ; that you have no 
 materials for them, in any serious matters ; l — no right to 
 "think," but only to try to learn more of the facts. Nay, 
 most probably all your life (unless, as I said, you are a 
 
 1 Modern " Education " for the most part signifies giving people the 
 faculty of thinking wrong on every conceivable subject of importance to 
 them. 
 
OF KINGS TREASURIES. 3 1 
 
 singular person) you will have no legitimate right to an 
 " opinion " on any business, except that instantly under 
 your hand. What must of necessity be done, you can 
 always find out, beyond question, how to do. Have you a 
 house to keep in order, a commodity to sell, a field to 
 plough, a ditch to cleanse ? There need be no two opinions 
 about these proceedings ; it is at your peril if you have not 
 much more than an "opinion" on the way to manage such 
 matters. And also, outside of your own business, there are 
 one or two subjects on which you are bound to have but one 
 opinion. That roguery and lying are objectionable, and 
 are instantly to be flogged out of the way whenever dis- 
 covered ; — that covetousness and love of quarreling are 
 dangerous dispositions even in children, and deadly dis- 
 positions in men and nations ; — that in the end, the God 
 of heaven and earth loves active, modest, and kind people, 
 and hates idle, proud, greedy, and cruel ones ; — on these 
 general facts you are bound to have but one and that a 
 very strong, opinion. For the rest, respecting religions, 
 governments, sciences, arts, you will find that, on the whole, 
 you can know nothing, — judge nothing ; that the best you 
 can do, even though you may be a well-educated person, is 
 to be silent, and strive to be wiser every day, and to under- 
 stand a little more of the thoughts of others, which so soon 
 as you try to do honestly, you will discover that the thoughts 
 even of the wisest are very little more than pertinent 
 questions. To put the difficulty into a clear shape, and 
 exhibit to you the grounds for ///decision, that is all they 
 can generally do for you ! — and well for them and for us, 
 if indeed they are able " to mix the music with our thoughts, 
 and sadden us with heavenly doubts." This writer, from 
 whom I have been reading to you, is not among the first or 
 wisest : he sees shrewdly as far as he sees, and therefore it 
 is easy to find out his full meaning ; but with the greater 
 
32 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 men, you cannot fathom their meaning ; they do not even 
 wholly measure it themselves, — it is so wide. Suppose I 
 had asked you, for instance, to seek for Shakespeare's 
 opinion, instead of Milton's, on this matter of Church 
 authority? — or for Dante's? Have any of you, at this 
 instant, the least idea what either thought about it ? Have 
 you ever balanced the scene with the bishops in Richard 
 III. against the character of Cranmer? the description of 
 St. Francis and St. Dominic against that of him who made 
 Virgil wonder to gaze upon him, — " disteso, tanto vilmente, 
 nell' eterno esilio"; or of him whom Dante stood beside, 
 "come '1 frate che confessa lo perfido assassin?" 1 Shake- 
 speare and Alighieri knew men better than most of us, I 
 presume ! They were both in the midst of the main 
 struggle between the temporal and spiritual powers. They 
 had an opinion, we may guess. But where is it ? Bring it 
 into court ! Put Shakespeare's or Dante's creed into arti- 
 cles, and send it up for trial by the Ecclesiastical Courts ! 
 
 26. You will not be able, I tell you again, for many and 
 many a clay, to come at the real purposes and teaching of 
 these great men ; but a very little honest study of them will 
 enable you to perceive that what you took for your own 
 "judgment" was mere chance prejudice, and drifted, help- 
 less, entangled weed of castaway thought : nay, you will see 
 that most men's minds are indeed little better than rough 
 heath wilderness, neglected and stubborn, partly barren, 
 partly overgrown with pestilent brakes, and venomous, wind- 
 sown herbage of evil surmise ; that the first thing you have 
 to do for them, and yourself, is eagerly and scornfully to 
 set fire to this; burn all the jungle into wholesome ash 
 heaps, and then plough and sow. All the true literary work 
 before you, for life, must begin with obedience to that order, 
 " Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns." 
 
 1 Inf. xxiii. 125, 126; xix. 49, 50. 
 
OF KINGS TREASURIES. 33 
 
 27. II. 1 — Having then faithfully listened to the great 
 teachers, that you may enter into their Thoughts, you have 
 yet this higher advance to make ; — you have to enter into 
 their Hearts. As you go to them first for clear sight, so 
 you must stay with them, that you may share at last their 
 just and mighty Passion. Passion, or " sensation." I am 
 not afraid of the word ; still less of the thing. You have 
 heard many outcries against sensation lately ; but, I can tell 
 you, it is not less sensation we want, but more. The 
 ennobling difference between one man and another, — 
 between one animal and another, — is precisely in this, that 
 one feels more than another. If we were sponges, perhaps 
 sensation might not be easily got for us ; if we were earth- 
 worms, liable at every instant to be cut in two by the spade, 
 perhaps too much sensation might not be good for us. But, 
 being human creatures, it is good for us ; nay, we are only 
 human in so far as we are sensitive, and our honor is 
 precisely in proportion to our passion. 
 
 28. You know I said of that great and pure society of 
 the dead, that it would allow " no vain or vulgar person to 
 enter there." ^yhat do you think I meant by a "vulgar" 
 person ? What do you yourselves mean by " vulgarity " ? 
 You will find it a fruitful subject of thought ; but, briefly, 
 the essence of all vulgarity lies in want of sensation. 
 Simple and innocent vulgarity is merely an untrained and 
 undeveloped bluntness of body and mind ; but in true 
 inbred vulgarity, there is a deathful callousness, which, in 
 extremity, becomes capable of every sort of bestial habit 
 and crime, without fear, without pleasure, without horror, 
 and without pity. It is in the blunt hand and the dead 
 heart, in the diseased habit, in the hardened conscience, 
 that men become vulgar ; they are forever vulgar, precisely 
 in proportion as they are incapable of sympathy, — of quick 
 
 1 Compare H 13 above. 
 
34 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 understanding, — of all that, in deep insistence on the com- 
 mon, but most accurate term, may be called the "tact" or 
 " touch-faculty " of body and soul ; that tact which the 
 Mimosa has in trees, which the pure woman has above 
 all creatures; — fineness and fullness of sensation beyond 
 reason ; — the guide and sanctifier of reason itself. Reason 
 can but determine what is true : — it is the God-given pas- 
 sion of humanity which alone can recognize what God has 
 made good. 
 
 29. We come then to the great concourse of the Dead, 
 not merely to know from them what is True, but chiefly to 
 feel with them what is just. Now, to feel with them, we 
 must be like them ; and none of us can become that without 
 pains. As the true knowledge is disciplined and tested 
 knowledge, — not the first thought that comes, — so the 
 true passion is disciplined and tested passion, — not the 
 first passion that comes. The first that come are the vain, 
 the false, the treacherous ; if you yield to them they will 
 lead you wildly and far in vain pursuit, in hollow enthusiasm, 
 till you have no true purpose and no true passion left. Not 
 that any feeling possible to humanity is in itself wrong, but 
 only wrong when undisciplined. Its nobility is in its force 
 and justice ; it is wrong when it is weak, and felt for paltry 
 cause. There is a mean wonder, as of a child who sees a 
 juggler tossing golden balls, and this is base, if you will. 
 But do you think that the wonder is ignoble, or the sensa- 
 tion less, wifch which every human soul is called to watch 
 the golden balls of heaven tossed through the night by the 
 Hand that made them ? There is a mean curiosity, as of a 
 child opening a forbidden door, or a servant prying into her 
 master's business ; — and a noble curiosity, questioning, in 
 the front of danger, the source of the great river beyond the 
 sand, — the place of the great continents beyond the sea ; 
 ■ — a nobler curiosity still, which questions of the source of 
 
OF KINGS TREASURIES. 35 
 
 the River of Life, and of the space of the Continent of 
 Heaven, — things which "the angels desire to look into." 
 So the anxiety is ignoble, with which you linger over the 
 course and catastrophe of an idle tale ; but do you think 
 the anxiety is less, or greater, with which you watch, or 
 ought to watch, the dealings of fate and destiny with the life 
 of an agonized nation ? Alas ! it is the narrowness, selfish- 
 ness, minuteness, of your sensation that you have to deplore 
 in England at this day ; — sensation which spends itself in 
 bouquets and speeches ; in revelings and junketings ; in 
 sham fights and gay puppet shows, while you can look on 
 and see noble nations murdered, man by man, without an 
 effort or a tear. 
 
 30. I said "minuteness" and "selfishness" of sensa- 
 tion, but in a word, I ought to have said "injustice" or 
 "unrighteousness" of sensation. For as in nothing is a 
 gentleman better to be discerned from a vulgar person, 
 so in nothing is a gentle nation (such nations have been) 
 better to be discerned from a mob, than in this, — that 
 their feelings are constant and just, results of due contem- 
 plation, and of equal thought. You can talk a mob into 
 anything; its feelings may be — usually are — on the whole, 
 generous and right ; but it has no foundation for them, no 
 hold of them ; you may tease or tickle it into any, at your 
 pleasure ; it thinks by infection, for the most part, catching 
 an opinion like a cold, and there is nothing so little that it 
 will not roar itself wild about, when the fit is on ; — nothing 
 so great but it will forget in an hour, when the fit is past. 
 But a gentleman's or a gentle nation's, passions are just, 
 measured and continuous. A great nation, for instance, 
 does not spend its entire national wits for a couple of 
 months in weighing evidence of a single ruffian's having 
 done a single murder; and for a couple of years see its 
 own children murder each other by their thousands or tens 
 
36 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 of thousands a day, considering only what the effect is 
 likely to be on the price of cotton, and caring nowise to 
 determine which side of battle is in the wrong. Neither 
 does a great nation send its poor little boys to jail for 
 stealing six walnuts ; and allow its bankrupts to steal their 
 hundreds or thousands with a bow, and its bankers, rich 
 with poor men's savings, to close their doors " under cir- 
 cumstances over which they have no control," with a "by 
 your leave"; and large landed estates to be bought by 
 men who have made their money by going with armed 
 steamers up and down the China Seas, selling opium at 
 the cannon's mouth, and altering, for the benefit of the 
 foreign nation, the common highwayman's demand of 
 "your money or your life," into that of "your money and 
 your life." Neither does a great nation allow the lives 
 of its innocent poor to be parched out of them by fog 
 fever, and rotted out of them by dunghill plague, for the 
 sake of sixpence a life extra per week to its landlords ; 1 
 and then debate, with driveling tears, and diabolical sym- 
 pathies, whether it ought not piously to save, and musingly 
 cherish, the lives of its murderers. Also, a great nation 
 having made up its mind that hanging is quite the whole- 
 somest process for its homicides in general, can yet with 
 mercy distinguish between the degrees of guilt in homi- 
 cides ; and does not yelp like a pack of frost-pinched 
 wolf-cubs on the blood-track of an unhappy crazed boy, 
 or gray-haired clodpate Othello, "perplexed i' the extreme," 
 at the very moment that it is sending a Minister of the 
 Crown to make polite speeches to a man who is bayoneting 
 young girls in their father's sight, and killing noble youths 
 in cool blood, faster than a country butcher kills lambs in 
 
 1 See note at end of lecture. I have put it in large type, because the 
 course of matters since it was written has made it perhaps better worth 
 attention. 
 
OF KINGS TREASURIES. 37 
 
 spring. And, lastly, a great nation does not mock Heaven 
 and its Powers, by pretending belief in a revelation which 
 asserts the love of money to be the root of all evil, and 
 declaring, at the same time, that it is actuated, and intends 
 to be actuated, in all chief national deeds and measures, by 
 no other love. 
 
 31. My friends, I do not know why any of us should 
 talk about reading. We want some sharper discipline 
 than that of reading ; but, at all events, be assured, we 
 cannot read. No reading is possible for a people with 
 its mind in this state. No sentence of any great writer is 
 intelligible to them. It is simply and sternly impossible 
 for the English public, at this moment, to understand any 
 thoughtful writing, — so incapable of thought has it become 
 in its insanity of avarice. Happily, our disease is, as 
 yet, little worse than this incapacity of thought ; it is not 
 corruption of the inner nature ; we ring true still, when 
 anything strikes home to us ; and though the idea that 
 everything should " pay " has infected our every purpose so 
 deeply, that even when we would play the good Samaritan, 
 we never take out our twopence and give them to the host, 
 without saying, " When I come again, thou shalt give me 
 fourpence," there is a capacity of noble passion left in our 
 hearts' core. We show it in our work, — in our war, — even 
 in those unjust domestic affections which make us furious 
 at a small private wrong, while we are polite to a boundless 
 public one : we are still industrious to the last hour of the 
 day, though we add the gambler's fury to the laborer's 
 patience ; we are still brave to the death, though incapable 
 of discerning true cause for battle ; and are still true in 
 affection to our own flesh, to the death, as the sea- 
 monsters are, and the rock-eagles. And there is hope for 
 a nation while this can be still said of it. As long as it 
 holds its life in its hand, ready to give it for its honor 
 
38 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 (though a foolish honor), for its love (though a selfish love), 
 and for its business (though a base business), there is hope 
 for it. But hope only ; for this instinctive, reckless virtue 
 cannot last. No nation can last, which has made a mob 
 of itself, however generous at heart. It must discipline its 
 passions, and direct them, or they will discipline it, one 
 day, with scorpion whips. Above all, a nation cannot last 
 as a money-making mob : it cannot with impunity, — it can- 
 not with existence,- — go on despising literature, despising 
 science, despising art, despising nature, despising compassion, 
 and concentrating its soul on Pence. Do you think these 
 are harsh or wild words? Have patience with me but a little 
 longer. I will prove their truth to you, clause by clause. 
 
 32. I. — I say first we have despised literature. What do 
 we, as a nation, care about books ? How much do you 
 think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, 
 as compared with what we spend on our horses ? If a man 
 spends lavishly on his library, you call him mad — a biblio- 
 maniac. But you never call any one a horse-maniac, though 
 men ruin themselves every day by their horses, and you do 
 not hear of people ruining themselves by their books. Or, 
 to go lower still, how much do you think the contents of 
 the book-shelves of the United Kingdom, public and pri- 
 vate, would fetch, as compared with the contents of its 
 wine-cellars ? What position would its expenditure on 
 literature take, as compared with its expenditure on lux- 
 urious eating? We talk of food for the mind, as of food for 
 the body; now a good book contains such food inex- 
 haustibly ; it is a provision for life, and for the best part of 
 us ; yet how long most peojple would look at the best book 
 before they would give the price of a large turbot for it ! 
 though there have been men who have pinched their 
 stomachs and bared their backs, to buy a book, whose 
 libraries were cheaper to them, I think, in the end, than 
 
OF KINGS TREASURIES. 39 
 
 most men's dinners are. We are few of us put to such 
 trial, and more the pity ; for, indeed, a precious thing is 
 all the more precious to us if it has been won by work or 
 economy ; and if public libraries were half as costly as 
 public dinners, or books cost the tenth part of what brace- 
 lets do, even foolish men and women might sometimes sus- 
 pect there was good in reading, as well as in munching and 
 sparkling ; whereas the very cheapness of literature is 
 making even wise people forget that if a book is worth 
 reading, it is worth buying. No book is worth anything 
 which is not worth much ; nor is it serviceable, until it has 
 been read, and reread, and loved, and loved again ; and 
 marked, so that you can refer to the passages you want in 
 it, as a soldier can seize the weapon he needs in an armory, 
 or a housewife bring the spice she needs from her store. 
 Bread of flour is good : but there is bread, sweet as honey, 
 if we would eat it, in a good book ; and the family must be 
 poor indeed which, once in their lives, cannot, for such 
 multipliable barley-loaves, pay their baker's bill. We call 
 ourselves a rich nation, and we are filthy and foolish enough 
 to thumb each other's books out of circulating libraries ! 
 
 33. II. — I say we have despised science. "What ! " you 
 exclaim, "are we not foremost in all discovery, 1 and is not 
 the whole world giddy by reason, or unreason, of our inven- 
 tions ? " Yes ; but do you suppose that is national work ? 
 That work is all done in spite of the nation ; by private 
 people's zeal and money. We are glad enough, indeed, to 
 make our profit of science ; we snap up anything in the 
 way of a scientific bone that has meat on it, eagerly 
 enough ; but if the scientific man comes for a bone or a 
 crust to us, that is another story. What have we publicly 
 
 1 Since this was written, the answer has become definitely — No ; 
 we have surrendered the field of Arctic discovery to the Continental 
 nations, as being ourselves too poor to pay for ships. 
 
4<3 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 done for science ? We are obliged to know what o'clock it 
 is, for the safety of our ships, and therefore we pay for an 
 observatory ; and we allow ourselves, in the person of our 
 Parliament, to be annually tormented into doing something, 
 in a slovenly way, for the British Museum ; sullenly appre- 
 hending that to be a place for keeping stuffed birds in, to 
 amuse our children. If anybody will pay for his own 
 telescope, and resolve another nebula, we cackle over the 
 discernment as if it were our own ; if one in ten thousand 
 of our hunting squires suddenly perceives that the earth was 
 indeed made to be something else than a portion for foxes, 
 and burrows in it himself, and tells us where the gold is, 
 and where the coals, we understand that there is some use 
 in that ; and very properly knight him : but is the accident 
 of his having found out how to employ himself usefully any 
 credit to us ? (The negation of such discovery among his 
 brother squires may perhaps be some rtfocredit to us, if we 
 would consider of it.) But if you doubt these generalities, 
 here is one fact for us all to meditate upon, illustrative of 
 our love of science. Two years ago there was a collection 
 of the fossils of Solenhofen to be sold in Bavaria ; the best 
 in existence, containing many specimens unique for perfect- 
 ness, and one, unique as an example of a species (a whole 
 kingdom of unknown living creatures being announced by 
 that fossil). This collection, of which the mere market 
 worth, among private buyers, would probably have been 
 some thousand or twelve hundred pounds, was offered to 
 the English nation for seven hundred : but we would not 
 give seven hundred, and the whole series would have been 
 in the Munich Museum at Jthis moment, if Professor Owen 1 
 
 1 I state this fact without Professor Owen's permission : which of 
 course he could not with propriety have granted, had I asked it ; but 
 I consider it so important that the public should be aware of the fact 
 that I do what seems to be right though rude. 
 
OF KINGS TREASURIES. 41 
 
 had not, with loss of his own time, and patient tormenting 
 of the British public in person of its representatives, got 
 leave to give four hundred pounds at once, and himself 
 become answerable for the other three ! which the said 
 public will doubtless pay him eventually, but sulkily, and 
 caring nothing about the matter all the while ; only always 
 ready to cackle if any credit comes of it. Consider, I beg 
 of you, arithmetically, what this fact means. Your annual 
 expenditure for public purposes (a third of it for military 
 apparatus), is at least fifty millions. Now 700/. is to 
 50,000,000/. roughly, as seven pence to two thousand 
 pounds. Suppose then, a gentleman of unknown income, 
 but whose" wealth was to be conjectured from the fact that 
 he spent two thousand a year on his park-walls and footmen 
 only, professes himself fond of science ; and that one of his 
 servants comes eagerly to tell him that an unique collection 
 of fossils, giving clue to a new era of creation, is to be had 
 for the sum of seven pence sterling ; and that the gentle- 
 man, who is fond of science, and spends two thousand a 
 year on his park, answers, after keeping his servant waiting 
 several months, "Well ! I'll give you four pence for them, if 
 you will be answerable for the extra three pence yourself, 
 till next year ! " 
 
 34. III. — I say you have despised Art ! "What! " you 
 again answer, "have we not Art exhibitions, miles long? 
 and do we not pay thousands of pounds for single pictures ? 
 and have we not Art schools and institutions, more than 
 ever nation had before? " Yes, truly, but all that is for the 
 sake of the shop. You would fain sell canvas as well as 
 coals, and crockery as well as iron ; you would take every 
 other nation's bread out of its mouth if you could ; ! not 
 
 1 That was our real idea of " Free Trade " — " All the trade to my- 
 self." You find now that by "competition" other people can manage 
 to sell something as well as you — and now we call for Protection again. 
 Wretches ! 
 
42 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 being able to do that, your ideal of life is to stand in 
 the thoroughfares of the world, like Ludgate apprentices, 
 screaming to every passer-by, "What d'ye lack?" You 
 know nothing of your own faculties or circumstances ; you 
 fancy that, among your damp, flat fields of clay, you can 
 have as quick art-fancy as the Frenchman among his 
 bronzed vines, or the Italian under his volcanic cliffs ; — 
 that art may be learned as book-keeping is, and when 
 learned, will give you more books to keep. You care for 
 pictures, absolutely, no more than you do for the bills 
 pasted on your dead walls. There is always room on the 
 walls for the bills to be read, — never for the pictures to 
 be seen. You do not know what pictures you have (by 
 repute) in the country, nor whether they are false or true, 
 nor whether they are taken care of or not ; in foreign coun- 
 tries, you calmly see the noblest existing pictures in the 
 world rotting in abandoned wreck — (in Venice you saw the 
 Austrian guns deliberately pointed at the palaces containing 
 them), and if you heard that all the fine pictures in Europe 
 were made into sand-bags to-morrow on the Austrian forts, 
 it would not trouble you so much as the chance of a brace 
 or two of game less in you own bags, in a day's shooting. 
 That is your national love of Art. 
 
 35. IV. — You have despised Nature; that is to say, all 
 the deep and sacred sensations of natural scenery. The 
 French revolutionists made stables of the cathedrals of 
 France ; you have made race-courses of the cathedrals of 
 the earth. Your one conception of pleasure is to drive in 
 railroad carriages round their aisles, and eat off their altars. 1 
 You have put a railroad bridge over the fall of Schaffhausen. 
 
 1 1 meant that the beautiful places of the world — Switzerland, Italy, 
 South Germany, and so on — are, indeed, the truest cathedrals — places 
 to be reverent in, and to worship in ; and that we only care to drive 
 through them ; and to eat and drink at their most sacred places. 
 
OF KINGS TREASURIES. 43 
 
 You have tunneled the cliffs of Lucerne by Tell's chapel ; 
 you have destroyed the Clarens shore of the Lake of 
 Geneva ; there is not a quiet valley in England that you 
 haVe not filled with bellowing fire ; there is no particle left 
 of English land which you have not trampled coal ashes 
 into 1 — nor any foreign city in which the spread of your 
 presence is not marked among its fair old streets and happy 
 gardens by a consuming white leprosy of new hotels and 
 perfumers' shops : the Alps themselves, which your own 
 poets used to love so reverently, you look upon as soaped 
 poles in a bear-garden, which you set yourselves to climb, 
 and slide down again, with " shrieks of delight." When 
 you are past shrieking, having no human articulate voice 
 to say you are glad with, you fill the quietude of their 
 valleys with gunpowder blasts, and rush home, red with 
 cutaneous eruption of conceit, and voluble with convulsive 
 hiccough of self-satisfaction. I think nearly the two sorrow- 
 fullest spectacles I have ever seen in humanity, taking the 
 deep inner significance of them, are the English mobs in 
 the valley of Chamouni, amusing themselves with firing 
 rusty howitzers ; and the Swiss vintagers of Zurich ex- 
 pressing their Christian thanks for the gift of the vine, 
 by assembling in knots in the "towers of the vineyards," 
 and slowly loading and firing horse-pistols from morning till 
 evening. It is pitiful to have dim conceptions of beauty ; 
 more pitiful, it seems to me, to have conceptions like these, 
 of mirth. 
 
 36. Lastly. You despise compassion. There is no need 
 of words of mine for proof of this. I will merely print one 
 of the newspaper paragraphs which I am in the habit of 
 cutting out and throwing into my store-drawer ; here is one 
 
 1 I was singularly strnck, some years ago, by finding all the river 
 shore at Richmond, in Yorkshire, black in its earth, from the mere 
 drift of soot-laden air from places many miles away. 
 
44 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 from a Daily Telegraph of an early date this year (1867) 
 (date which, though by me carelessly left unmarked, is easily 
 discoverable ; for on the back of the slip, there is the 
 announcement that " yesterday the seventh of the special 
 services of this year was performed by the Bishop of Ripon 
 in St. Paul's ") ; it relates only one of such facts as happen 
 now daily ; this, by chance, having taken a form in which it 
 came before the coroner. I will print the paragraph in red. 
 Be sure, the facts themselves are written in that color in 
 a book which we shall all of us, literate or illiterate, have to 
 read our page of, some day. 
 
 " An inquiry was held on Friday by Mr. Richards, deputy 
 coroner, at the White Horse Tavern, Christ Church, Spital- 
 fields, respecting the death of Michael Collins, aged 58 
 years. Mary Collins, a miserable-looking woman, said that 
 she lived with the deceased and his son in a room at 2, 
 Cobb's court, Christ Church. Deceased was a ' translator ' 
 of boots. Witness went out and bought old boots ; deceased 
 and his son made them into good ones, and then witness 
 sold them for what she could get at the shops, which was 
 very little indeed. Deceased and his son used to work 
 night and day to try and get a little bread and tea, and pay 
 for the room (2s. a week), so as to keep the home together. 
 On Friday night week, deceased got up from his bench and 
 began to shiver. He threw down the boots, saying, ' Some- 
 body else must finish them when I am gone, for I can do no 
 more.' There was no fire, and he said, ' I would be better 
 if I was warm.' Witness therefore took two pairs of trans- 
 lated boots 1 to sell at the shop, but she could only get 14a 7 . 
 for the two pairs, for the pec-ple at the shop said, ' We must 
 have our profit.' Witness got i4lbs. of coal and a little 
 
 1 One of the things which we must very resolutely enforce, for the 
 good of all classes, in our future arrangements, must be that they wear 
 no " translated " articles of dress. 
 
OF KINGS TREASURIES. 45 
 
 tea and bread. Her son sat up the whole night to make 
 the ' translations,' to get money, but deceased died on 
 Saturday morning. The family never had enough to eat. — 
 Coroner : ' It seems to me deplorable that you did not go 
 into the workhouse.' Witness: 'We wanted the comforts 
 of our little home.' A juror asked what the comforts were, 
 for he only saw a little straw in the corner of the room, the 
 windows of which were broken. The witness began to cry, 
 and said that they had a quilt and other little things. The 
 deceased said he never would go into the workhouse. In 
 summer, when the season was good, they sometimes made 
 as much as ios. profit in the week. They then always 
 saved towards the next week, which was generally a bad 
 one. In winter they made not half so much. For three 
 years they had been getting from bad to worse. - — Cornelius 
 Collins said that he had assisted his father since 1847. 
 They used to work so far into the night that both nearly 
 lost their eyesight. Witness now had a film over his eyes. 
 Five years ago deceased applied to the parish for aid. The 
 relieving officer gave him a 4-lb. loaf, and told him if he 
 came again he should 'get the stones.' 1 That disgusted 
 
 1 This abbreviation of the penalty of useless labor is curiously coin- - 
 cident in verbal form with a certain passage which some of us may 
 remember. It may, perhaps, be well to preserve beside this paragraph 
 another cutting out of my store-drawer, from the Morning Post, of 
 about a parallel date, Friday, March 10th, 1865: — "The salons of 
 
 Mme. C , who did the honors with clever imitative grace and 
 
 elegance, were crowded with princes, dukes, marquises, and counts — in 
 fact, with the same male company as one meets at the parties of the 
 Princess Metternich and Madame Drouyn de Lhuys. Some English 
 peers and members of Parliament were present, and appeared to enjoy 
 the animated and dazzlingly improper scene. On the second floor the 
 supper-tables were loaded with every delicacy of the season. That your 
 readers may form some idea of the dainty fare of the Parisian demi- 
 monde, I copy the menu of the supper, which was served to all the guests 
 (about 200) seated at four o'clock. Choice Yquem, Johannisberg, Laf- 
 
4.6 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 deceased, and he would have nothing to do with them since. 
 They got worse and worse until last Friday week, when 
 they had not even a halfpenny to buy a candle. Deceased 
 then lay down on the straw, and said he could not live till 
 morning. — A juror: 'You are dying of starvation yourself, 
 and you ought to go into the house until the summer.' 
 Witness : ' If we went in we should die. When we come 
 out in the summer we should be like people dropped from 
 the sky. No one would know us, and we would not have 
 even a room. I could work now if I had food, for my sight 
 would get better.' Dr. G. P. Walker said deceased died 
 from syncope, from exhaustion, from want of food. The 
 deceased had had no bed-clothes. For four months he had 
 had nothing but bread to eat. There was not a particle of 
 fat in the body. There was no disease, but if there had 
 been medical attendance, he might have survived the syn- 
 cope or fainting. The coroner having remarked upon the 
 painful nature of the case, the jury returned the following 
 verdict: 'That deceased died from exhaustion, from want of 
 food and the common necessaries of life ; also through 
 want of medical aid.' " 
 
 37. "Why would witness not go into the workhouse ? " 
 you ask. Well, the poor seem to have a prejudice against 
 the workhouse which the rich have not; for, of course, every 
 
 fitte, Tokay, and Champagne of the finest vintages were served most 
 lavishly throughout the morning. After supper dancing was resumed 
 with increased animation, and the ball terminated with a chaine dia- 
 bolique and a cancan d'enfer at seven in the morning. (Morning- 
 service — ' Ere the fresh lawns appeared, under the opening eyelids of 
 the Morn. — ') Here is the menu: — 'Consomme de volaille a la Bagra- 
 tion ; 16 hors-d'oeuvres varies. Bouchees a la Talleyrand. Saumons 
 froids, sauce Ravigote. Filets de boeuf en Bellevue, timbales milanaises 
 chaudfroid de gibier. Dindes truffees. Pates de foies gras, buissons 
 d'ecrevisses, salades venetiennes, gelees blanches aux fruits, gateaux 
 mancini, parisiens et parisiennes. Fromages glaces, Ananas. Dessert." 
 
OF KINGS TREASURIES. 47 
 
 one who takes a pension from Government goes into the 
 workhouse on a grand scale ; * only the workhouses for the 
 rich do not involve the idea of work, and should be called 
 play-houses. But the poor like to die independently, it 
 appears ; perhaps if we made the play-houses for them 
 pretty and pleasant enough, or gave them their pensions at 
 home, and allowed them a little introductory peculation with 
 the public money, their minds might be reconciled to the 
 conditions. Meantime, here are the facts : we make our 
 relief either so insulting to them, or so painful, that they 
 rather die than take it at our hands ; or, for third alterna- 
 tive, we leave them so untaught and foolish that they starve 
 like brute creatures, wild and dumb, not knowing what to 
 do, or what to ask. I say, you despise compassion ; if you 
 did not, such a newspaper paragraph would be as impossible 
 in a Christian country as a deliberate assassination per- 
 mitted in its public streets. 2 " Christian " did I say ? Alas, 
 
 1 Please observe this statement, and think of it, and consider how 
 it happens that a poor old woman will be ashamed to take a shilling 
 a week from the country — but no one is ashamed to take a pension of 
 a thousand a year. 
 
 2 I am heartily glad to see such a paper as the Pall Mall Gazette 
 established ; for the power of the press in the hands of highly-educated 
 men, in independent position, and of honest purpose, may, indeed, 
 become all that it has been hitherto vainly vaunted to be. Its editor 
 will, therefore, I doubt not, pardon me, in that, by very reason of my 
 respect for the journal, I do not let pass unnoticed an article in its third 
 number, page 5, which was wrong in every word of it, with the intense 
 wrongness which only an honest man can achieve who has taken a false 
 turn of thought in the outset, and is following it, regardless of conse- 
 quences. It contained at the end this notable passage: — 
 
 " The bread of affliction, and the water of affliction — aye, and the bed- 
 steads and blankets of affliction, are the very utmost that the law ought 
 to give to outcasts merely as outcasts." I merely put beside this expres- 
 sion of the gentlemanly mind of England in 1865, a part of the message 
 which Isaiah was ordered to "lift up his voice like a trumpet" in 
 
48 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 if we were but wholesomely ^/-Christian, it would be 
 impossible ; it is our imaginary Christianity that helps us to 
 commit these crimes, for we revel and luxuriate in our faith, 
 for the lewd sensation of it ; dressing it up, like everything 
 else, in fiction. The dramatic Christianity of the organ and 
 aisle, of dawn-service and twilight-revival — the Christianity 
 which we do not fear to mix the mockery of, pictorially, 
 with our play about the devil, in our Satanellas, — Roberts, 
 ■ — Fausts ; chanting hymns through traceried windows for 
 back-ground effect, and artistically modulating the " Dio " 
 through variation on variation of mimicked prayer (while 
 we distribute tracts, next day, for the benefit of uncultivated 
 swearers, upon what we suppose to be the signification of 
 the Third Commandment); — this gas-lighted, and gas- 
 inspired, Christianity, we are triumphant in, and draw back 
 the hem of our robes from the touch of the heretics who 
 dispute it. But to do a piece of common Christian righteous- 
 ness in a plain English word or deed ; to make Christian 
 
 declaring to the gentlemen of his day : " Ye fast for strife, and to 
 smite with the fist of wickedness. Is not this the fast that I have 
 chosen, to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor 
 that are cast out (margin ' afflicted ') to thy house." The falsehood on 
 which the writer had mentally founded himself, as previously stated by 
 him, was this : " To confound the functions of the dispensers of the 
 poor-rates with those of the dispensers of a charitable institution is a 
 great and pernicious error." This sentence is so accurately and 
 exquisitely wrong, that its substance must be thus reversed in our minds 
 before we can deal with any existing problem of national distress. " To 
 understand that the dispensers of the poor-rates are the almoners of the 
 nation, and should distribute its alms with a gentleness and freedom of 
 hand as much greater and franker than that possible to individual 
 charity, as the collective national wisdom and power may be supposed 
 greater than those of any single person, is the foundation of all law 
 respecting pauperism." (Since this was written the Pall Mall Gazette 
 has become a mere party paper — like the rest ; but it writes well, and 
 does more good than mischief on the whole.) 
 
OF KINGS TREASURIES. 49 
 
 law any rule of life, and found one National act or hope 
 thereon, — we know too well what our faith comes to for 
 that ! You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke 
 than true action or passion out of your modern English 
 religion. You had better get rid of the smoke, and the 
 organ-pipes, both ; leave them, and the Gothic windows, and 
 the painted glass, to the property-man ; give up your car- 
 buretted hydrogen ghost in one healthy expiration, and look 
 after Lazarus at the door-step. For there is a true Church 
 wherever one hand meets another helpfully, and that is 
 the only holy or Mother Church which ever was, or ever 
 shall be. 
 
 3&. All these pleasures, then, and all these virtues, I 
 repeat, you nationally despise. You have, indeed, men 
 among you who do not ; by whose work, by whose strength, 
 by whose life, by whose death, you live, and never thank 
 them. Your wealth, your amusement, your pride, would all 
 be alike impossible, but for those whom you scorn or forget. 
 The policeman, who is walking up and down the black lane 
 all night to watch the guilt you have created there, and 
 may have his brains beaten out, and be maimed for life, at 
 any moment, and never be thanked ; the sailor wrestling 
 with the sea's rage ; the quiet student poring over his book 
 or his vial ; the common worker, without praise, and nearly 
 without bread, fulfilling his task as your horses drag your 
 carts, hopeless, and spurned of all ;' these are the men by 
 whom England lives ; but they are not the nation ; they are 
 only the body and nervous force of it, acting still from old 
 habit in a convulsive perseverance, while the mind is gone. 
 Our National wish and purpose are to be amused ; our 
 National religion is the performance of church ceremonies, 
 and preaching of soporific truths (or untruths) to keep the 
 mob quietly at work, while we amuse ourselves ; and the 
 necessity for this amusement is fastening on us as a feverous 
 
50 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 disease of parched throat and wandering eyes — senseless, 
 dissolute, merciless. 1 
 
 39. When men are rightly occupied, their amusement 
 grows out of their work, as the color-petals out of a fruitful 
 flower; — when they are faithfully helpful and compassion- 
 ate, all their emotions become steady, deep, perpetual, and 
 vivifying to the soul as the natural pulse of the body. But 
 now, having no true business, we pour our whole masculine 
 energy into the false business of money-making ; and hav- 
 ing no true emotion, we must have false emotions dressed 
 up for us to play with, not innocently, as children with dolls, 
 but guiltily and darkly, as the idolatrous Jews with their 
 pictures on cavern walls, which men had to dig to detect. 
 The justice we do not execute, we mimic in the novel and 
 on the stage ; for the beauty we destroy in nature, we sub- 
 stitute the metamorphosis of the pantomime, and (the human 
 nature of us imperatively requiring awe and sorrow of some 
 kind) for the noble grief we should have borne with our 
 fellows, and the pure tears we should have wept with them, 
 we gloat over the pathos of the police court, and gather the 
 night-clew of the grave. 
 
 40. It is difficult to estimate the true significance of these 
 things ; the facts are frightful enough ; — the measure of 
 national fault involved in them is, perhaps, not as great as 
 it would at first seem. We permit, or cause, thousands of 
 deaths daily, but we mean no harm ; we set fire to houses, 
 and ravage peasants' fields ; yet we should be sorry to find 
 we had injured anybody. We are still kind at heart ; still 
 capable of virtue, but only as children are. Chalmers, at 
 the end of his long life, having had much power with the 
 public, being plagued in some serious matter by a reference 
 
 1 How literally that word Dis-~Ea.se ; the Negation and impossibility 
 of Ease, expresses the entire moral state of our English Industry and its. 
 Amusements. 
 
OF KINGS TREASURIES. 5 1 
 
 to "public opinion," uttered the impatient exclamation, 
 " The public is just a great baby ! " And the reason that I 
 have allowed all these graver subjects of thought to mix 
 themselves up with an inquiry into methods of reading, 
 is that, the more I see of our national faults and miseries, 
 the more they resolve themselves into conditions of childish 
 illiterateness, and want of education in the most ordinary 
 habits of thought. It is, I repeat, not vice, not selfishness, 
 not dullness of brain, which we have to lament ; but an 
 unreachable schoolboy's recklessness, only differing from 
 ihe true schoolboy's in its incapacity of being helped, 
 because it acknowledges no master. 
 
 41. There is a curious type of us given in one of the 
 lovely, neglected works of the last of our great painters. It 
 is a drawing of Kirkby Lonsdale churchyard, and of its 
 brook, and valley, and hills, and folded morning sky bevond. 
 And unmindful alike of these, and of the dead who have 
 left these for other valleys and for other skies, a group of 
 schoolboys have piled their little books upon a grave, to 
 strike them off with stones. So, also, we play with the 
 words of the dead that would teach us, and strike them far 
 from us with our bitter, reckless will ; little thinking that 
 those leaves which the wind scatters had been piled, not 
 only upon a gravestone, but upon the seal of an enchanted 
 vault — nay, the gate of a great city of sleeping kings, who 
 would awake for us, and walk with us, if we knew but how 
 to call them by their names. How often, even if we lift the 
 marble entrance gate, do we but wander among those old 
 kings in their repose, and finger the robes they lie in, and 
 stir the crowns on their foreheads ; and still they are silent 
 to us, and seem but a dusty imagery ; because we know not 
 the incantation of the heart that would wake them; — which, 
 if they once heard, they would start up to meet us in their 
 power of long ago, narrowly to look upon us, and consider 
 
52 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 us; and, as the fallen kings of Hades meet the newly fallen, 
 saying, " Art thou also become weak as we — art thou also 
 become one of us ? " so would these kings, with their 
 undimmed, unshaken diadems, meet us, saying, "Art thou 
 also become pure and mighty of heart as we ? art thou also 
 become one of us ? " 
 
 42. Mighty of heart, mighty of mind — " magnanimous " 
 — to be this, is, indeed, to be great in life ; to become this 
 increasingly, is, indeed, to "advance in life," — in life 
 itself — not in the trappings of it. My friends, do you 
 remember that old Scythian custom, when the head of a 
 house died ? How he was dressed in his finest dress, and 
 set in his chariot, and carried about to his friends' houses ; 
 and each of them placed him at his table's head, and all 
 feasted in his presence ? Suppose it were offered to you, in 
 plain words, as it is offered to you in dire facts, that you 
 should gain this Scythian honor, gradually, while you yet 
 thought yourself alive. Suppose the offer were this : You 
 shall die slowly ; your blood shall daily grow cold, your 
 flesh petrify, your heart beat at last only as a rusted group 
 of iron valves. Your life shall fade from you, and sink 
 through the earth into the ice of Caina ; but, day by day, 
 your body shall be dressed more gaily, and set in higher 
 chariots, and have more orders on its breast — crowns on 
 its head, if you will. Men shall bow before it, stare and 
 shout round it, crowd after it up and down the streets ; 
 build palaces for it, feast with it at their tables' heads all 
 the night long ; your soul shall stay enough within it to 
 know what they do, and feel the weight of the golden dress 
 on its shoulders, and the furrow of the crown-edge on the 
 skull,- — no more. Would you take the offer, verbally 
 made by the death-angel ? Would the meanest among us 
 take it, think you ? Yet practically and verily we grasp at 
 it, every one of us, in a measure ; many of us grasp at it in 
 
OF KINGS TREASURIES. 53 
 
 its fullness of horror. Every man accepts it, who desires to 
 advance in life without knowing what life is ; who means 
 only that he is to get more horses, and more footmen, and 
 more fortune, and more public honor, and — not more per- 
 sonal soul. " He only is advancing in life, whose heart is 
 getting softer, whose blood warmer, whose brain quicker, 
 whose spirit is entering into Living peace. And the men 
 who have this life in them are the true lords or kings of the 
 earth — they, and they only. All other kingships, so far as 
 they are true, are only the practical issue and expression of 
 theirs; if less than this, they are either dramatic royalties, — 
 costly shows, set off, indeed, with real jewels instead of 
 tinsel, — but still only the toys of nations ; or else, they are 
 no royalties at all, but tyrannies, or the mere active and 
 practical issue of national folly ; for which reason I have 
 said of them elsewhere, " Visible governments are the toys 
 of some nations, the diseases of others, the harness of some, 
 the burdens of more." 
 
 43. But I have no words for the wonder with which I 
 hear Kinghood still spoken of, even among thoughtful men, 
 as if governed nations were a personal property, and might 
 be bought and sold, or otherwise acquired, as sheep, of 
 whose flesh their king was to feed, and whose fleece he was 
 to gather ; as if Achilles' indignant epithet of base kings, 
 "people-eating," were the constant and proper title of all 
 monarchs; and enlargement of a king's dominion meant the 
 same thing as the increase of a private man's estate ! 
 Kings who think so, however powerful, can no more be the 
 true kings of the nation than gad-flies are the kings of a 
 horse ; they suck it, and may drive it wild, but do not guide 
 it. They, and their courts, and their armies are, if one 
 could see clearly, only a large species of marsh mosquito, 
 with bayonet proboscis and melodious, band-mastered, trum- 
 peting in the summer air ; the twilight being, perhaps, some- 
 
54 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 times fairer, but hardly more wholesome, for its glittering 
 mists of midge companies. The true kings, meanwhile, rule 
 quietly, if at all, and hate ruling ; too many of them make 
 "il gran reniito" 1 ; and if they do not, the mob, as soon as 
 they are likely to become useful to it, is pretty sure to make 
 its "gran rifiiito " of them. 
 
 44. Yet the visible king may also be a true one, some 
 day, if ever day comes when he will estimate his dominion 
 by the force of it, — not the geographical boundaries. It 
 matters very little whether Trent cuts you a cantel out here, 
 or Rhine rounds you a castle less there. But it does matter 
 to you, king of men, whether you can verily say to this man, 
 "Go," and he goeth ; and to another, "Come," and he 
 cometh. "Whether you can turn your people, as you can 
 Trent — and where it is that you bid them come, and where 
 go. It matters to you, king of men, whether your people 
 hate you, and die by you, or love you, and live by you. 
 You may measure your dominion by multitudes better than 
 by miles ; and count degrees of love latitude, not from, but 
 to, a wonderfully warm and infinite equator. 
 
 45. Measure ! nay, you cannot measure. Who shall 
 measure the difference between the power of those who " do 
 and teach," and who are greatest in the kingdoms of earth, 
 as of heaven — and the power of those who undo, and con- 
 sume — whose power, at the fullest, is only the power of the 
 moth and the rust ? Strange ! to think how the Moth-kings 
 lay up treasures for the moth ; and the Rust-kings, who are 
 to their peoples' strength as rust to armor, lay up treasures 
 for the rust; and the Robber-kings, treasures for the robber; 
 but how few kings have ever laid up treasures that needed 
 no guarding — treasures of which, the more thieves there 
 were, the better ! Broidered robe, only to be rent ; helm 
 and sword, only to be dimmed ; jewel and gold, only to be 
 
 1 The great renunciation. 
 
OF KINGS TREASURIES. 55 
 
 scattered ; — there have been three kinds of kings who have 
 gathered these. Suppose there ever should arise a Fourth 
 order of kings, who had read, in some obscure writing of 
 long ago, that there was a Fourth kind of treasure, which 
 the jewel and gold could not equal, neither should it be 
 valued with pure gold. A web made fair in the weaving, by 
 Athena's shuttle ; an armor, forged in divine fire by Vul- 
 canian force — a gold to be mined in the sun's red heart, 
 where he sets over the Delphian cliffs ; — deep-pictured 
 tissue, impenetrable armor, potable gold ! — the three great 
 Angels of Conduct, Toil, and Thought, still calling to us, 
 -and waiting at the posts of our doors, to lead us, with their 
 winged power, and guide us, with their unerring eyes, by the 
 path which no fowl knoweth, and which the vulture's eye 
 has not seen ! Suppose kings should ever arise, who heard 
 and believed this word, and at last gathered and brought 
 forth treasures of — Wisdom — for their people ? 
 
 46. Think what an amazing business -that would be ! 
 How inconceivable, in the state of our present national 
 wisdom ! That we should bring up our peasants to a book 
 exercise instead of a bayonet exercise! — organize, drill, 
 maintain with pay, and good generalship, armies of thinkers, 
 instead of armies of stabbers! — find national amusement in 
 reading-rooms as well as rifle-grounds ; give prizes for a 
 fair shot at a fact, as well as for a leaden splash on a target. 
 What an absurd idea it seems, put fairly in words, that the 
 wealth of the capitalists of civilized nations should ever 
 come to support literature instead of war! 
 
 47. Have yet patience with me, while I read you a single 
 sentence out of the only book, properly to be called a book, 
 that I have yet written myself, the one that will stand (if 
 anything stand) surest and longest of all work of mine. 
 
 " It is one very awful form of the operation of wealth in 
 Europe that it is entirely capitalists' wealth which supports 
 
56 SESAME AND LILIES. , 
 
 unjust wars. Just wars do not need so much money to sup- 
 port them ; for most of the men who wage such, wage them 
 gratis ; but for an unjust war, men's bodies and souls have 
 both to be bought ; and the best tools of war for them 
 besides, which makes such war costly to the maximum ; not 
 to speak of the cost of base fear, and angry suspicion, 
 between nations which have not grace nor honesty enough 
 in all their multitudes to buy an hour's peace of mind with ; 
 as, at present, France and England, purchasing of each 
 other ten millions' sterling worth of consternation, annually 
 (a remarkably light crop, half thorns and half aspen leaves, 
 sown, reaped, and granaried by the ' science ' of the modern 
 political economist, teaching covetousness instead of truth). 
 And, all unjust war being supportable, if not by pillage of 
 the enemy, only by loans from capitalists, these loans are 
 repaid by subsequent taxation of the people, who appear to 
 have no will in the matter, the capitalists' will being the 
 primary root of the war ; but its real root is the covetousness 
 of the whole nation, rendering it incapable of faith, frank- 
 ness, or justice, and bringing about, therefore, in due time, 
 his own separate loss and punishment to each person." 
 
 48. P'rance and England literally, observe, buy panic of 
 each other ; they pay, each of them, for ten thousand 
 thousand pounds' worth of terror, a year. Now suppose, 
 instead of buying these ten millions' worth of panic annually, 
 they made up their minds to be at peace with each other, 
 and buy ten millions' worth of knowledge annually ; and 
 that each nation spent its ten thousand thousand pounds a 
 year in founding royal libraries, royal art galleries, royal 
 museums, royal gardens, and places of rest. Might it not 
 be better somewhat for both French and English ? 
 
 49. It will be long, yet, before that comes to pass. 
 Nevertheless, I hope it will not be long before royal or 
 national libraries will be founded in every considerable city, 
 
OF KINGS TREASURIES. 57 
 
 with a royal series of books in them ; the same series in 
 every one of them, chosen books, the best in every kind, 
 prepared for that national series in the most perfect way 
 possible ; their text printed all on leaves of equal size, 
 broad of margin, and divided into pleasant volumes, light in 
 the hand, beautiful, and strong, and thorough as examples 
 of binders' work ; and that these great libraries will be 
 accessible to all clean and orderly persons at all times of 
 the day and evening ; strict law being enforced for this 
 cleanliness and quietness. 
 
 I could shape for you other plans, for art galleries, and for 
 natural history galleries, and for many precious — many, it 
 seems to me, needful — things; but this book plan is the 
 easiest and needfullest, and would prove a considerable 
 tonic to what we call our British constitution, which has 
 fallen dropsical of late, and has an evil thirst, and evil 
 hunger, and wants healthier feeding. You have got its corn 
 laws repealed for it ; try if you cannot get corn laws estab- 
 lished for it, dealing in a better bread; — bread made of 
 that old enchanted Arabian grain, the Sesame, which opens 
 doors ; — doors, not of robbers', but of Kings' Treasuries. 
 
 50. Note to If 30. — Respecting the increase of rent by 
 the deaths of the poor, for evidence of which, see the preface 
 to the Medical officer's report to the Privy Council, just 
 published, there are suggestions in its preface which will 
 make some stir among us, I fancy, respecting which let me 
 note these points following : — 
 
 There are two theories on the subject of land now abroad, 
 and in contention ; both false. 
 
 The first is that, by Heavenly law, there have always 
 existed, and must continue to exist, a certain number of 
 hereditarily sacred persons to whom the earth, air, and 
 water of the world belong, as personal property ; of which 
 
58 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 earth, air, and water, these persons may, at their pleasure, 
 permit, or forbid, the rest of the human race to eat, breathe, 
 or to drink. This theory is not for many years longer 
 tenable. The adverse theory is that a division of the land 
 of the world among the mob of the world would immediately 
 elevate the said mob into sacred personages ; that houses 
 would then build themselves, and corn grow of itself ; and 
 that everybody would be able to live, without doing any 
 work for his living. This theory would also be found highly 
 untenable in practice. 
 
 It will, however, require some rough experiments, and 
 rougher catastrophes, before the generality of persons will 
 be convinced that no law concerning anything, least of all 
 concerning land, for either holding or dividing it, or renting 
 it high, or renting it low — would be of the smallest ultimate 
 use to the people — so long as the general contest for life, 
 and for the means of life, remains one of mere brutal com- 
 petition. That contest, in an unprincipled nation, will take 
 one deadly form or another, whatever laws you make against 
 it. For instance, it would be an entirely wholesome law foi 
 England, if it could be carried, that maximum limits should 
 be assigned to incomes according to classes ; and that every 
 nobleman's income should be paid to him as a fixed salary or 
 pension by the nation; and not squeezed by him in variable 
 sums, at discretion, out of the tenants of his land. But if 
 you could get such a law passed to-morrow, and if, which 
 would be farther necessary, you could fix the value of the 
 assigned incomes by making a given weight of pure bread 
 for a given sum, a twelve-month would not pass before 
 another currency would have been tacitly established, and 
 the power of accumulative wealth would have reasserted 
 itself in some other article, or some other imaginary sign. 
 There is only one cure for public distress — and that is 
 public education, directed to make men thoughtful, merciful, 
 
OF KINGS TREASURIES. 59 
 
 and just. There are, indeed, many laws conceivable which 
 would gradually better and strengthen the national temper ; 
 but, for the most part, they are such as the national temper 
 must be much bettered before it would bear. A nation 
 in its youth may be helped by laws, as a weak child by 
 backboards, but when it is old, it cannot that way straighten 
 its crooked spine. 
 
 And besides ; the problem of land, at its worst, is a by 
 one ; distribute the earth as you will, the principal question 
 remains inexorable, — Who is to dig it? Which of us, in 
 brief words, is to do the hard and dirty work for the rest — 
 and for what pay ? Who is to do the pleasant and clean 
 work, and for what pay? Who is to do no work, and. for 
 what pry? And there are curious moral and religious ques- 
 tions connected with these. How far is it lawful to suck a 
 portion of the soul out of a great many persons, in order to 
 put the abstracted psychical quantities together and make 
 one very beautiful or ideal soul ? If we had to deal with 
 mere blood, instead of spirit (and the thing might literally 
 be done — as it has been done with infants before now) — 
 so that it were possible by taking a certain quantity of blood 
 from the arms of a given number of the mob, and putting it 
 all into one person, to make a more azure-blooded gentle- 
 man of him, the thing would of course be managed ; but 
 secretly, I should conceive. But now, because it is brain 
 and soul that we abstract, not visible blood, it can be done 
 quite openly, and we live, we gentlemen, on delicatest prey, 
 after the manner of weasels ; that is to say, we keep a 
 certain number of clowns digging and ditching, and gener- 
 ally stupefied, in order that we, being fed gratis, may have 
 all the thinking and feeling to ourselves. Yet there is a 
 great deal to be said for this. A highly-bred and trained 
 English, French, Austrian, or Italian gentleman (much more 
 a lady) is a great production, — a better production than 
 
60 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 most statues ; being beautifully colored as well as shaped, 
 and plus all the brains ; a glorious thing to look at, a 
 wonderful thing to talk to ; and you cannot have it, any 
 more than a pyramid or a church, but by sacrifice of much 
 contributed life. And it is, perhaps, better to build a 
 beautiful human creature than a beautiful dome or steeple 
 — and more delightful to look up reverently to a creature 
 far above us, than to a wall ; only the beautiful human 
 creature will have some duties to do in return — duties of 
 living belfry and rampart — of which presently. 
 
 ANNOTATIONS. 
 
 i. Sesame: originally, a plant yielding an oily grain used by 
 Eastern nations for food. The reference here is to its use as a 
 talismanic word : the cave of the forty thieves in a tale of the 
 "Arabian Nights" is opened and closed by the magic words, 
 "Open, Sesame!" — "Shut Sesame!" Mr. Ruskin uses it to 
 denote the key by which the treasuries of book-lore may be 
 unlocked. 
 
 2. Double-belled doors : many houses of the rich in London 
 have two bells ; one for visitors, the other for those who call on 
 business. 
 
 3. The last infirmity of noble minds : these words are borrowed 
 from Milton's "Lycidas": — 
 
 " Fame, the spur which the clear spirit doth raise 
 (That last infirmity of noble minds) 
 To scorn delights and live laborious clays." 
 
 4. My Lord: three archbishops of the Established Church of 
 England, together with twenty-seven bishops, constitute the 
 " Lords Spiritual " of the Upper House in Parliament ; and are, 
 consequently, addressed as " My Lord." 
 
 1 1 . Entree (Ang-tra') : entrance, admission. 
 
ANNOTATIONS. 6 1 
 
 12. Elys'ian gates: the gates of Elysium, the name used by 
 the Greeks to describe the home of the blessed dead ; those 
 whose good deeds while in life had exceeded the sum of their evil 
 deeds. 
 
 Portieres (Por-ti-air') : door-screens ; here, doors or gates to the 
 houses of the great. 
 
 Faubourg St. Germain (Fo-boor San Zhar-mang'): a portion of 
 Paris in which the nobility formerly resided. 
 
 15. Canaille (Can-a'yuh) : the rabble. 
 
 Noblesse: Fr. nobility. By " the national noblesse of words" 
 Ruskin means those words which, in any country, are pure in their 
 origin ; i.e., are neither derived from nor compounded with words 
 belonging to another language. 
 
 16. Chameleon-cloaks, — groundlion cloaks : the chameleon, or 
 ground-lion, is a kind of lizard whose color is said to change so as 
 to harmonize with the color of its surroundings. 
 
 18. Eccles'ia : from this Greek word, which originally meant 
 any public meeting, has been derived the English word ecclesi- 
 astical, which is limited to affairs of the Church. 
 
 Presbyter: originally, simply an elder. 
 
 19. Max Miiller (Mil'ler) : a distinguished German scholar, 
 formerly professor of modern languages at Oxford. The lectures, 
 referred to are those on " The Science of Language." 
 
 20. The pilot of the Galilean lake: St. Peter. — See Matt. iv. 
 18-22. 
 
 Two massy keys he bore of metals twain: See Matt. xvi. 18, 
 19. The idea that the keys are of iron and gold is Milton's own. 
 The iron symbolizes harsh punishment ; the gold symbolizes love, 
 the key to heavenly joy. 
 
 Mitred locks : a figurative expression which, expanded, means 
 his head upon which is worn a 7>iitre or tall bishop \f cap, symbol 
 of authority in the Church. 
 
 Enow (Old Eng.) : enough. 
 
 Worthy bidden guest: See Matt. xxii. 3, 8, 9. 
 
 Recks (Old Eng.) : cares. This is an old idiom, meaning, 
 What care is it to them ? 
 
 Sped : provided for. 
 
62 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 List (Old Eng.) : please, choose. 
 
 Scrannel pipes of wretched straw : the word scrannel is 
 thought to have been invented by Milton, and may mean either 
 thin or screeching. The entire phrase forcibly characterizes the 
 worthlessness of these false bishops' teaching. 
 
 Rank mist: unwholesome and corrupting doctrines. 
 
 Episcopal function : the duty belonging to the office of bishop. 
 
 22. The word office as it occurs in this section is used in its 
 original Latin sense ; viz., duty. 
 
 Salisbury steeple : the highest spire in England ; 404 feet high. 
 
 23. Cretinous: idiotic ; — so-called from cretin, a Swiss name 
 for a deformed and helpless idiot. 
 
 24. The rock-apostle : Peter, — literally, a rock. See Matt.xvi.18. 
 
 25. Cranmer: an English statesman, divine, and reformer, 
 made archbishop of Canterbury and prime minister by Henry 
 VIII. Under Queen Mary, lie was burned at the stake (1556) 
 on a charge of heresy. 
 
 St. Francis: founder of the Franciscan order of mendicant 
 friars, about 1210 A.D. 
 
 St. Dominic : founder of the order of Dominicans, or Preach- 
 ing Friars, 121 5 A.D. 
 
 Him who made Virgil wonder to gaze upon him: Caiaphas — 
 (see John xi. 49, 50). Dante (Inferno xxiii. 3) represents him 
 as punished by being crucified and transfixed to the ground by 
 three stakes driven through his body. 
 
 " Disleso, tan to vibnente^ nelV eterno csi/io " : " distended so 
 ignominiously in the eternal exile." — Inferno xxiii. 126. 
 
 Him whom Dante stood beside : Nicholas III, whom Dante 
 represents as punished for fraud by being buried head downward 
 with his feet protruding from the earth. 
 
 " Come V frate che confessa lo perjido assassin 1 ': "like the 
 friar who is hearing the confession of a treacherous assassin." — 
 Inferno xix. 49. 
 
 Alighieri (Al-e-ge-a'-ree) : Dante's family-name. 
 
 28. Mimosa : a species of leguminous plants. The one here 
 referred to is the sensitive plant, so called because the leaves 
 shrink and fold when touched. 
 
ANNOTATIONS. 63 
 
 29. Junketings : private feastings. 
 
 Puppet-shows : mock dramas performed by little images moved 
 by wires. 
 
 30. Othello: the Moor of Venice in Shakespeare's play of the 
 same name. 
 
 32. Biblio-maniac : one who is insane on the subject of books. 
 
 34. Ludgate apprentices: the apprentices of the Ludgate Hill 
 District in London cried "What d'ye lack?" when advertising 
 their masters' wares on the street. 
 
 35. Schaffhausen : capital of a Swiss canton of the same name. 
 Three miles below the town are the beautiful falls of the Rhine, 
 of which Ruskin has given an eloquent description in " Modern 
 Painters." 
 
 Lucerne: a Swiss lake on whose shores the patriotic deeds of 
 Tell are said to have taken place. 
 
 Tell's Chapel : a chapel dedicated to the virtues of William 
 Tell, a legendary hero of Switzerland. 
 
 Chamouni (Sha-mou-nee') : a picturesque Alpine valley of 
 France, 2000 feet above Lake Geneva. Its sublime beauty has 
 inspired some noble poems, one of the finest being that by 
 Coleridge. 
 
 Zurich (Zoo'rik) : a lake and canton of Switzerland. 
 
 36. Spit'alfields : a section of London, seat of an important 
 silk manufacture. 
 
 Translator: literally, one who carries across; i.e., one who 
 changes something into another form. In this case, one who 
 makes new boots of old ones. 
 
 37. Satanellas, — Roberts, — Fausts : titles of dramas in 
 which the Devil is introduced as one of the characters. 
 
 Dio (De'-o) : Italian word for God. 
 Lazarus : see Luke xvi. 20. 
 
 40. Chalmers: the most eminent Scottish divine of the present 
 century. 
 
 41. Kirkby Lonsdale : a market town of England, County of 
 Westmoreland. Its location is picturesque. 
 
 Ha'des : the name given by the Greeks to the kingdom of Pluto, 
 or the realm of the dead. 
 
64 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 42. Scyth'ian : pertaining to Scythia, a name given in ancient 
 times to the country north and east of the Black Sea, the Caspian, 
 and the Sea of Aral. 
 
 Living peace : see Romans vi. 8. 
 Harness : here, armor or defense. 
 
 43. Achilles (A-kiHes): the hero of Homer's " Iliad." 
 
 44. Can'tel : a piece shaped like a half-moon. 
 
 45. Athen'a: the Greek goddess of wisdom and of arts. Her 
 Roman name is Minerva. 
 
 Vulcanian : pertaining to Vulcan, the Greek god of fire and 
 the forge, who presided over the working of metals : the word is 
 also used to signify volcanic force. 
 
 Delphian : pertaining to Delphi in Greece, the seat of a 
 renowned oracle of Apollo, the sun-god. 
 
 Deep pictured tissue : a fabric so interwoven with gold and 
 colors as to form pictures. 
 
 Potable : drinkable. 
 
 47. Taxation : about seventy-five cents out of every dollar of 
 taxes levied in England is spent either in paying the interest on 
 old war debts, or in making preparation for future wars. 
 
 48. Panic : extreme fright affecting a number of persons at 
 once : so named because, according to Herodotus, the Greek god 
 Pan struck such a sudden terror into the Persians at the battle of 
 Marathon. 
 
 49. Corn-laws: laws that imposed a heavy duty on all grain 
 (corn) imported into England, thus making bread dear, and caus- 
 ing great distress among the laboring classes. These laws were 
 repealed in 1849. 
 
OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 In this lecture, which is a further exposition of the 
 thought of " Kings' Treasuries," Mr. Ruskin gives with 
 great force his views concerning the education and duties 
 of woman. 
 
 The purpose of education is the same for both men and 
 women, viz., the acquiring of power which shall be used in 
 blessing and redeeming society ; in converting the desert 
 places of human life into gardens of fragrant beauty. For 
 the only true kingship and queenship is that "which consists 
 in a stronger moral state and a truer thoughtful state, than 
 that of others." 
 
 Since education, then, fits for duty, it is important to 
 consider what are the duties of woman. It is Mr. Ruskin's 
 opinion that to speak of the mission and the rights of 
 woman is to assume that the nature and the interests of 
 men and women are antagonistic. Not less erroneous is 
 the idea that woman is inferior to man, and therefore to 
 yield him servile obedience. 
 
 The intention in all life is harmony. To produce this 
 harmony in human life, the right understanding and accept- 
 ance of the relations of the womanly and the manly mind, 
 and their duty each to each are essential. 
 
 Since to use books rightly is "to be led by them into 
 wider sight" when our own knowledge is insufficient, 
 Ruskin seeks to discover the opinion of "the wisest, the 
 
66 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 purest-hearted of all ages " concerning the " true dignity of 
 womin and her mode of help to man." Shakespeare, that 
 master-interpreter of man to himself, represents women as 
 " infallibly faithful and wise counselors," — distinguished by 
 heroic action and fortitude — "strong to sanctify even when 
 they cannot save." Walter Scott, who "has given the 
 broadest view of modern society," pictures woman as com- 
 bining intellectual strength with feminine grace and tender- 
 ness, as moved by a high sense of justice; as actuated by 
 fearless, self-sacrificing devotion to duty ; as animated by 
 such wisdom and self-controlled affection as exalts not only 
 her own character, but that of her lover. This exalted 
 portraiture of womanly dignity and virtue and power finds 
 its counterpart in the great poems of all ages. But this 
 view of the character and power of woman is contrary to 
 the commonly accepted idea of the marriage relation which 
 assumes that the woman is inferior, and, therefore, properly 
 subject to her husband. 
 
 The appeal is next made to the human heart. In chivalry, 
 the embodiment of the Christian ideal, the knight voluntarily 
 submits to be directed by the lady of his choice, whose com- 
 mands, dictated by love and wise foresight, he feels himself 
 honored in obeying. Mr. Ruskin deprecates the fact that, 
 among us, marriage so often puts an end to this knightly, 
 reverent devotion. The noble picture which he paints of 
 harmonious family life, — the home that is the "place of 
 Peace" — had been daily realized for him from his earliest 
 recollection. The "guiding, determining function," which 
 he assigns to woman, was that of his mother, whose serene, 
 self-centred dignity made her home a sacred shrine of order 
 and holy peace. 
 
 Happy all who can give such testimony to a harmonious 
 home-life as this of Ruskin's : — "I had never heard my 
 father's or mother's voice once raised in any question with 
 
INTRODUCTORY. 6j 
 
 each other ; nor seen an angry, or even slightly hurt or 
 offended glance, in the eye of either. I had never heard a 
 servant scolded ; nor even suddenly, passionately, or in any 
 severe manner blamed. I had never seen a moment's 
 trouble or disorder in any household matter ; nor anything 
 whatever either done in a hurry, or undone (not done) in 
 due time." 
 
 Woman's true place and honor, then, is to be the guide, the 
 counselor, the director of man. But to be capable of this 
 guidance, she must be good, wise, and always ready to serve. 
 
 The lecture considers, in the second place, what kind of 
 education will fit the girl for this high dignity of gracious 
 womanhood. 
 
 First, that perfection of womanly beauty may be attained, 
 she must have such physical training as will secure harmoni- 
 ous bodily development. Second, she should be trained in 
 habits of accurate thinking ; she should become acquainted 
 with the beauty and the laws of nature ; humility should be 
 bred as the result of such a view of the vast expanse of 
 desirable knowledge as to cause her to feel how limited is 
 hers by comparison ; her imagination should be so cultivated 
 as to develop such an active sympathy with human suffering, 
 as will express itself in helpful deeds. 
 
 Theology, as mere intellectual speculation, Mr. Ruskin 
 would have women avoid ; but the higher science of prac- 
 tical religion they should realize in every-day life. 
 
 All superficial study is weakening ; but while the course 
 pursued should, in Mr. Ruskin's opinion, be the same for 
 girls as for boys, he would have the former apply their 
 knowledge in the daily home life and in social service. 
 
 " Let a girl's education be as serious as a boy's." Fri- 
 volity in women is the logical result of false, superficial 
 education. The virtues which we call manly should also 
 be developed to be the strength of woman. 
 
68 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 A well-chosen course of reading in history, poetry, and 
 fiction, together with the influence of the best models in art, 
 will give true standards of elevated thought and life. Above 
 all, see that her teachers have a personality fitted to inspire 
 reverence and that such respect shall be aroused by parental 
 example. Lastly, the quiet, loving companionship of nature, 
 with her mystical influences, upon the sensitive soul of the 
 child, is a powerful agency in the development of the finer 
 qualities. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin concludes this portion of his lecture with a 
 protest against the mercenary spirit of the age, which has 
 led to the defacing of the natural beauty of England by 
 digging in mines, building manufactories, and constructing 
 lines of railroads. The Greek imagination peopled Par- 
 nassus with the Muses, but the equally beautiful Mount 
 Snowdon awakens in the minds of Englishmen no thrill 
 of reverent awe ; the national mind is insensible to the 
 holy beauty of nature. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin believes that the true expansion of woman's 
 duty, equally with that of man, leads to service to the state. 
 Among the inextinguishable instincts deeply implanted in 
 the soul of man is the love of power, "which, rightly 
 directed, maintains all the majesty and law of life." 
 
 What shall be the purpose and scope of this power? To 
 redeem, not to destroy, — the sweetening and purifying of 
 human lives. 
 
 The noble title of Lady is not to be assumed for the sake 
 of selfish distinction, but to represent the true "loaf-giver" 
 who ministers to all the wants of the Master's little ones, — 
 his representatives on earth. Then shall women become 
 truly queens whose reign is one of duty, whose ambition is 
 to bless with kindly helpfulness. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin charges upon woman's indifference the re- 
 sponsibility of much of the warfare, the injustice, and the 
 
of queens' gardens. 69 
 
 misery in the world. With eloquent force, he appeals to 
 the educated women of England to renounce self-indulgent 
 ease and pleasure, and to devote themselves to nourishing 
 into healthy, happy life the feeble child-flowers who are 
 struggling with the sharp blasts of poverty and injustice. 
 Then they shall, indeed, walk as queens in the gardens 
 made beautiful with the lilies of joyous lives tended by 
 their care. 
 
 LECTURE II. — LILIES. 1 
 
 OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 
 
 " Be thou glad, oh thirsting Desert ; let the desert be made cheerful, 
 and bloom as the lily ; and the barren places of Jordan shall run wild 
 with wood." — Isaiah xxxv, i. (Septuagint.) 
 
 51. It will, perhaps, be well, as this Lecture is the sequel 
 of one previously given, that I should shortly state to you 
 my general intention in both. The questions specially pro- 
 posed to you in the first, namely, How and What to Read, 
 rose out of a far deeper one, which it was my endeavor to 
 make you propose earnestly to yourselves, namely, Why to 
 Read. I want you to feel, with me, that whatever advan- 
 tages we possess in the present day in the diffusion of 
 education and of literature, can only be rightly used by 
 any of us when we have apprehended clearly what educa- 
 tion is to lead to, and literature to teach. I wish you to 
 see that both well-directed moral training and well-chosen 
 reading lead to the possession of a power over the ill-guided 
 and illiterate, which is, according to the measure of it, in 
 the truest sense, kingly ; conferring indeed the purest king- 
 
 1 This lecture was given December 14, 1864, at the Town Hall, Man- 
 chester, in aid of the St. Andrews' Schools. 
 
yO SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 ship that can exist among men: too many other kingships 
 (however distinguished by visible insignia or material power) 
 being either spectral, or tyrannous; — Spectral — that is to 
 say, aspects and shows only of royalty, hollow as death, and 
 which only the " Likeness of a kingly crown have on " ; or 
 else tyrannous — that is to say, substituting their own will 
 for the law of justice and love by which all true kings rule. 
 
 52. There is, then, I repeat — and as I want to leave this 
 idea with you, I begin with it, and shall end with it — only 
 one pure kind of kingship ; an inevitable and external kind, 
 crowned or not : the kingship, namely, which consists in a 
 stronger moral state, and a truer thoughtful state, than that 
 of others ; enabling you, therefore, to guide, or to raise 
 them. Observe that word " State " ; we have got into a 
 loose way of using it. It means literally the standing and 
 stability of a thing ; and you have the full force of it in the 
 derived word " statue " — " the immovable thing." A king's 
 majesty or "state," then, and the right of his kingdom to be 
 called a state, depends on the movelessness of both : — 
 without tremor, without quiver of balance ; established and 
 enthroned upon a foundation of eternal law which nothing 
 can alter, nor overthrow. 
 
 53. Believing that all literature and all education are only 
 useful so far as they tend to confirm this calm, beneficent, 
 and therefore kingly, power — first, over ourselves, and, 
 through ourselves, over all around us, I am now going to 
 ask you to consider with me farther, what special portion or 
 kind of this royal authority, arising out of noble education, 
 may rightly be possessed by women ; and how far they also 
 are called to a true queenly power. Not in their house- 
 holds merely, but over all within their sphere. And in what 
 sense, if they rightly understood and exercised this royal 
 or gracious influence, the order and beauty induced by 
 such benignant power would justify us in speaking of the 
 
OF QUEENS GARDENS. 7 1 
 
 territories over which each of them reigned, as "Queens' 
 Gardens." 
 
 54. And here, in the very outset, we are met by a far 
 deeper question, which — strange though this may seem — 
 remains among many of us yet quite undecided, in spite of 
 its infinite importance. 
 
 We cannot determine what the queenly power of women 
 should be, until we are agreed what their ordinary power 
 should be. We cannot consider how education may fit 
 them for any widely extending duty, until we are agreed 
 what is their true constant duty. And there never was a 
 time when wilder words were spoken, or more vain imagina- 
 tion permitted, respecting this question — quite vital to all 
 social happiness. The relations of the womanly to the 
 manly nature, their different capacities of intellect or of 
 virtue, seem never to have been yet estimated with entire 
 consent. We hear of the " mission " and of the "rights " of 
 Woman, as if these could ever be separate from the mission 
 and the rights of Man; — as if she and her lord were 
 creatures of independent kind, and of irreconcilable claim. 
 This, at least, is wrong. And not less wrong — perhaps 
 even more foolishly wrong (for I will anticipate thus far 
 what I hope to prove) — is the idea that woman is only 
 the shadow and attendant image of her lord, owing him a 
 thoughtless and servile obedience, and supported altogether 
 in her weakness, by the preeminence of his fortitude. 
 
 This, I say, is the most foolish of all errors respecting her 
 who was made to be the helpmate of man. As if he could 
 be helped effectively by a shadow, or worthily by a slave ! 
 
 2^. I. — Let us try, then, whether we cannot get at some 
 clear and harmonious idea (it must be harmonious if it is true) 
 of what womanly mind and virtue are in power and office, with 
 respect to man's ; and how their relations rightly accepted, 
 aid, and increase, the vigor, and honor, and authority of both. 
 
72 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 And now I must repeat one thing I said in the last 
 lecture : namely, that the first use of education was to 
 enable us to consult with the wisest and the greatest men 
 on all points of earnest difficulty. That to use books 
 rightly, was to go to them for help : to appeal to them, 
 when our own knowledge and power of thought failed: to 
 be led by them into wider sight — purer conception — than 
 our own, and receive from them the united sentence of the 
 judges and councils of all time, against our solitary and 
 unstable opinion. 
 
 Let us do this now. Let us see whether the greatest, the 
 wisest, the purest-hearted of all ages are agreed in any wise 
 on this point: let us hear the testimony they have left 
 respecting what they held to be the true dignity of woman, 
 and her mode of help to man. 
 
 56. And first let us take Shakespeare. 
 
 Note broadly in the outset, Shakespeare has no heroes ; 
 — he has only heroines. There is not one entirely heroic 
 figure in all his plays, except the slight sketch of Henry the 
 Fifth, exaggerated for the purposes of the stage : and the 
 still slighter Valentine in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. 
 In his labored and perfect plays you have no hero. Othello 
 would have been one, if his simplicity had not been so 
 great as to leave him the prey of every base practice round 
 him ; but he is the only example even approximating to the 
 heroic type. Coriolanus — Caesar — Antony, stand in flawed 
 strength, and fall by their vanities; — Hamlet is indolent, 
 and drowsily speculative ; Romeo an impatient boy ; the 
 Merchant of Venice languidly submissive to adverse fort- 
 une ; Kent, in King Lear, is entirely noble at heart, but 
 too rough and unpolished to be of true use at the critical 
 time, and he sinks into the office of a servant only. Or- 
 lando, no less noble, is yet the despairing toy of chance, 
 followed, comforted, saved, by Rosalind. Whereas there is 
 
OF QUEENS GARDENS. 73 
 
 hardly a play that has not a perfect woman in it, steadfast 
 in grave hope and errorless purpose: Cordelia, Desdemona, 
 Isabella, Hermione, Imogen, Queen Katherine, Perdita, 
 Silvia, Viola, Rosalind, Helena, and last, and perhaps love- 
 liest, Virgilia, are all faultless : conceived in the highest 
 heroic type of humanity. 
 
 57. Then observe, secondly, 
 
 The catastrophe of every play is caused always by the 
 folly or fault of a man ; the redemption, if there be any, is 
 by the wisdom and virtue of a woman, and failing that, 
 there is none. The catastrophe of King Lear is owing to 
 his own want of judgment, his impatient vanity, his mis- 
 understanding of his children ; the virtue of his one true 
 daughter would have saved him from all the injuries of the 
 others, unless he had cast her away from him ; as it is, she 
 all but saves him. 
 
 Of Othello I need not trace the tale ; — nor the one 
 weakness of his so mighty love ; nor the inferiority of his 
 perceptive intellect to that even of the second woman char- 
 acter in the play, the Emilia who dies in wild testimony 
 against his error : — " Oh, murderous coxcomb ! What 
 should such a fool Do with so good a wife ? " 
 
 In Romeo and Juliet, the wise and brave stratagem of the 
 wife is brought to ruinous issue by the reckless impatience 
 of her husband. In Winter's Tale and in Cymbeline, the 
 happiness and existence of two princely households, lost 
 through long years, and imperiled to the death by the folly 
 and obstinacy of the husbands, are redeemed at last by the 
 queenly patience and wisdom of the wives. In Measure 
 for Measure, the foul injustice of the judge, and the foul 
 cowardice of the brother, are opposed to the victorious 
 truth and adamantine purity of a woman. In Coriolanus, 
 the mother's counsel, acted upon in time, would have saved 
 her son from all evil ; his momentary forgetfulness of it 
 
74 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 is his ruin; her prayer at last granted, saves him — not, 
 indeed, from death, but from the curse of living as the 
 destroyer of his country. 
 
 And what shall I say of Julia, constant against the fickle- 
 ness of a lover who is a mere wicked child ? — of Helena, 
 against the petulance and insult of a careless youth? — of 
 the patience of Hero, the passion of Beatrice, and the calmly 
 devoted wisdom of the " unlessoned girl," who appears 
 among the helplessness, the blindness, and the vindictive 
 passions of men, as a gentle angel, bringing courage and 
 safety by her presence, and defeating the worst malignities 
 of crime by what women are fancied most to fail in, — 
 precision and accuracy of thought. 
 
 58. Observe, further, among all the principal figures in 
 Shakespeare's plays, there is only one weak woman ■ — - 
 Ophelia ; and it is because she fails Hamlet at the critical 
 moment, and is not, and cannot in her nature be, a guide to 
 him when he needs her most, that all the bitter catastrophe 
 follows. Finally, though there are three wicked women 
 among the principal figures, Lady Macbeth, Regan, and 
 Goneril, they are felt at once to be frightful exceptions to 
 the ordinary laws of life ; fatal in their influence also in pro- 
 portion to the power for good which they have abandoned. 
 
 Such, in broad light, is Shakespeare's testimony to the 
 position and character of women in human life. He repre- 
 sents them as infallibly faithful and wise counselors, — 
 incorruptibly just and pure examples — strong always to 
 sanctify, even when they cannot save. 
 
 59. Not as in any wise comparable in knowledge of the 
 nature of man, — still less in his understanding of the 
 causes and courses of fate, — but only as the writer who has 
 given us the broadest view of the conditions and modes of 
 ordinary thought in modern society, I ask you next to 
 receive the witness of Walter Scott. 
 
OF QUEENS GARDENS. 75 
 
 I put aside his merely romantic prose writings as of no 
 value ; and though the early romantic poetry is very beauti- 
 ful, its testimony is of no weight, other than that of a boy's 
 ideal. But his true works, studied from Scottish life, bear 
 a true witness ; and, in the whole range of these, there are 
 but three men who reach the heroic type 1 — Dandie Din- 
 mont, Rob Roy, and Claverhouse ; of these, one is a border 
 farmer ; another a freebooter ; the third a soldier in a bad 
 cause. And these touch the ideal of heroism only in their 
 courage and faith, together with a strong, but uncultivated, 
 or mistakenly applied, intellectual power ; while his younger 
 men are the gentlemanly playthings of fantastic fortune, and 
 only by aid (or accident) of that fortune, survive, not 
 vanquish, the trials they involuntarily sustain. Of any 
 disciplined, or consistent character, earnest in a purpose 
 wisely conceived, or dealing with forms of hostile evil, 
 definitely challenged, and resolutely subdued, there is no 
 trace in his conceptions of young men. Whereas in his 
 imaginations of women, — in the characters of Ellen Douglas, 
 of Flora Maclvor, Rose Bradwardine, Catherine Seyton, 
 Diana Vernon, Lilias Redgauntlet, Alice Bridgenorth, Alice 
 Lee, and Jeanie Deans, — with endless varieties of grace, 
 tenderness, and intellectual power we find in all a quite 
 infallible and inevitable sense of dignity and justice ; a 
 fearless, instant, and untiring self-sacrifice to even the 
 appearance of duty, much more to its real claims ; and, 
 
 1 I ought, in order to make this assertion fully understood, to have 
 noted the various weaknesses which lower the ideal of other great 
 characters of men in the Waverley novels — the selfishness and narrow- 
 ness of thought in Redgauntlet, the weak religious enthusiasm in 
 Edward Glendinning, and the like ; and I ought to have noticed that 
 there are ^everal quite perfect characters sketched sometimes in the 
 backgrounds; three — let us accept joyously this courtesy to England 
 and her soldiers — are English officers: Colonel Gardiner, Colonel 
 Talbot, and Colonel Mannering. 
 
y6 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 finally, a patient wisdom of deeply restrained affection, 
 which does infinitely more than protect its objects from a 
 momentary error ; it gradually forms, animates, and exalts 
 the characters of the unworthy lovers, until, at the close of 
 the tale, we are just able, and no more, to take patience in 
 hearing of their unmerited success. 
 
 So that, in all cases, with Scott as with Shakespeare, it 
 is the woman who watches over, teaches, and guides the 
 youth ; it is never, by any chance, the youth who watches 
 over, or educates his mistress. 
 
 60. Next, take, though more briefly, graver testimony — 
 that of the great Italians and Greeks. You know well the 
 plan of Dante's great poem — that it is a love poem to his 
 dead lady ; a song of praise for her watch over his soul. 
 Stooping only to pity, never to love, she yet saves him from 
 destruction — saves him from hell. He is going eternally 
 astray in despair ; she comes down from heaven to his help, 
 and throughout the ascents of Paradise is his teacher, inter- 
 preting for him the most difficult truths, divine and human, 
 and leading him, with rebuke upon rebuke, from star to star. 
 
 I do not insist upon Dante's conception ; if I began I 
 could not cease ; besides, you might think this a wild 
 imagination of one poet's heart. So I will rather read to 
 you a few verses of the deliberate writing of a knight of 
 Pisa to his living lady, wholly characteristic of the feeling 
 of all the noblest men of the thirteenth, or early fourteenth 
 century, preserved among many other such records of 
 knightly honor and love, which Dante Rossetti has gathered 
 for us from among the early Italian poets. 
 
 " For lo ! thy law is passed 
 That this my love should manifestly be 
 
 To serve and honor thee ; 
 And so I do ; and my delight is full, 
 Accepted for the servant of thy rule. 
 
OF QUEENS* GARDENS. 77 
 
 " Without almost, I am all rapturous, 
 Since thus my will was set 
 To serve, thou flower of joy, thine excellence ; 
 Nor ever seems it anything could rouse 
 A pain or regret, 
 But on thee dwells mine every thought and sense ; 
 Considering that from thee all virtues spread 
 
 As from a fountain head, — ■ 
 That in thy gift is wisdom's best avail, 
 
 And honor without fail j 
 With whom each sovereign good dwells separate, 
 Fulfilling the perfection of thy state. 
 
 " Lady, since I conceived 
 That pleasurable aspect in my heart, 
 
 My life has been apart 
 In shining brightness and the place of truth; 
 
 Which till that time, good sooth, 
 Groped among shadows in a darken'd place, 
 
 Where many hours and days 
 It hardly ever had remember'd good. 
 
 But now my servitude 
 Is thine, and I am full of joy and rest. 
 
 A man from a wild beast 
 Thou madest me, since for thy love I lived." 
 
 6 1. You may think, perhaps, a Greek knight would have 
 had a lower estimate of women than this Christian lover. 
 His spiritual subjection to them was, indeed, not so abso- 
 lute ; but as regards their own personal character, it was 
 only because you could not have followed me so easily, that 
 I did not take the Greek women instead of Shakespeare's ; 
 and instance, for chief ideal types of human beauty and 
 faith, the simple mother's and wife's heart of Andromache ; 
 the divine, yet rejected wisdom of Cassandra ; the playful 
 kindness and simple princess-life of happy Nausicaa ; the 
 housewifely calm of that of Penelope, with its watch upon 
 
?8 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 the sea ; the ever patient, fearless, hopelessly devoted piety 
 of the sister and daughter, in Antigone ; the bowing down 
 of Iphigenia, lamb-like and silent ; and, finally, the expecta- 
 tion of the resurrection, made clear to the soul of the 
 Greeks in the return from her grave of that Alcestis, who, 
 to save her husband, had passed calmly through the bitter- 
 ness of death. 
 
 62. Now, I could multiply witness upon witness of this 
 kind upon you if I had time. I would take Chaucer, and 
 show you why he wrote a Legend of Good Women ; but no 
 Legend of Good Men. I would take Spenser, and show 
 you how all his fairy knights are sometimes deceived and 
 sometimes vanquished ; but the soul of Una is never dark- 
 ened, and the spear of Britomart is never broken. Nay, I 
 could go back into the mythical teaching of the most ancient 
 times, and show you how the great people, — by one of 
 whose princesses it was appointed that the Lawgiver of all 
 the earth should be educated, rather than by his own 
 kindred ; — how that great Egyptian people, wisest then ol 
 nations, gave to their Spirit of Wisdom the form of a 
 woman ; and into her hand, for a symbol, the weaver's 
 shuttle ; and how the name and the form of that spirit, 
 adopted, believed, and obeyed by the Greeks, became that 
 Athena of the olive-helm, and cloudy shield, to faith in 
 whom you owe, down to this date, whatever you hold most 
 precious in art, in literature, or in types of national virtue. 
 
 63. But I will not wander into this distant and mythical 
 element ; I will only ask you to give its legitimate value to 
 the testimony of these great poets and men of the world, — 
 consistent, as you see it is, on this head. I will ask you 
 whether it can be supposed that these men, in the main 
 work of their lives, are amusing themselves with a fictitious 
 and idle view of the relations between man and woman ; — 
 nay, worse than fictitious or idle ; for a thing may be 
 
OF QUEENS GARDENS. 79 
 
 imaginary, yet desirable, if it were possible ; but this, their 
 ideal of woman, is, according to our common idea of the 
 marriage relation, wholly undesirable. The woman, we say, 
 is not to guide, nor even to think for herself. The man is 
 always to be the wiser ; he is to be the thinker, the ruler, 
 the superior in knowledge and discretion, as in power. 
 
 64. Is it not somewhat important to make up our minds 
 on this matter ? Are all these great men mistaken, or are 
 we? Are Shakespeare and Aeschylus, Dante and Homer, 
 merely dressing dolls for us ; or, worse than dolls, unnat- 
 ural visions, the realization of which, were it possible, 
 would bring anarchy into all households and ruin into all 
 affections ? Nay, if you could suppose this, take lastly the 
 evidence of facts, given by the human heart itself. In all 
 Christian ages which have been remarkable for their purity 
 or progress, there has been absolute yielding of obedient 
 devotion, by the lover, to his mistress. I say obedient; — 
 not merely enthusiastic and worshiping in imagination, 
 but entirely subject, receiving from the beloved woman, 
 however young, not only the encouragement, the praise, 
 and the reward of all toil, but so far as any choice is open, 
 or any question difficult of decision, the direction of all toil. 
 That chivalry, to the abuse and dishonor of which are 
 attributable primarily whatever is cruel in war, unjust in 
 peace, or corrupt and ignoble in domestic relations ; and to 
 the original purity and power of which we owe the defense 
 alike of faith, of law, and of love ; — that chivalry, I say, in 
 its very first conception of honorable life, assumes the sub- 
 jection of the young knight to the command — should it 
 even be the command in caprice — of his lady. It assumes 
 this, because its masters knew that the first and necessary 
 impulse of every truly taught and knightly heart is this of 
 blind service to its lady ; that where that true faith and 
 captivity are not, all wayward and wicked passions must be,- 
 
80 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 and that in this rapturous obedience to the single love of 
 his youth, is the sanctincation of all man's strength, and 
 the continuance of all his purposes. And this, not because 
 such obedience would be safe, or honorable, were it ever 
 rendered to the unworthy ; but because it ought to be 
 impossible for every noble youth — it is impossible for 
 every one rightly trained — to love any one whose gentle 
 counsel he cannot trust, or whose prayerful command he 
 can hesitate to obey. 
 
 65. I do not insist by any farther argument on this, for I 
 think it should commend itself at once to your knowledge of 
 what has been and to your feelings of what should be. You 
 cannot think that the buckling on of the knight's armor by 
 his lady's hand was a mere caprice of romantic fashion. It 
 is the type of an eternal truth — that the soul's armor is 
 never well set to the heart unless a woman's hand has 
 braced it ; and it is only when she braces it loosely that 
 the honor of manhood fails. Know you not those lovely 
 lines — I would they were learned by all youthful ladies of 
 England : — 
 
 " Ah, wasteful woman ! — she who may 
 On her sweet self set her own price, 
 Knowing he cannot choose but pay — 
 How has she cheapen'd Paradise ! 
 How given for nought her priceless gift, 
 How spoiled the bread and spill'd the wine, 
 Which, spent with due, respective thrift, 
 Had made brutes men, and men divine ! " 1 
 
 66. Thus much, then, respecting the relations of lovers I 
 believe you will accept. J>ut what we too often doubt is the 
 
 1 Coventry Patmore. You cannot read him too often or too care- 
 fully; as far as I know he is the only living poet who always strengthens 
 and purifies ; the others sometimes darken, and nearly always depress 
 and discourage, the imagination they deeply seize. 
 
OF QUEENS GARDENS. 8 I 
 
 fitness of the continuance of such a relation throughout the 
 whole of human life. We think it right in the lover and 
 mistress, not in the husband and wife. That is to say, we 
 think that a reverent and tender duty is due to one whose 
 affection we still doubt, and whose character we as yet do 
 but partially and distantly discern ; and that this reverence 
 and duty are to be withdrawn, when the affection has 
 become wholly and limitlessly our own, and the character 
 has been so sifted and tried that we fear not to entrust 
 it with the happiness of our lives. Do you not see how 
 ignoble this is, as well as how unreasonable ? Do you not 
 feel that marriage, — when it is marriage at all, — is only 
 the seal which marks the vowed transition of temporary into 
 untiring service, and of fitful into eternal love ? 
 
 67. But how, you will ask, is the idea of this guiding 
 function of the woman reconcilable with a true wifely sub- 
 jection ? Simply in that it is a guiding, not a determining, 
 function. Let me try to show you briefly how these powers 
 seem to be rightly distinguishable. 
 
 We are foolish, and without excuse foolish, in speaking 
 of the "superiority" of one sex to the other, as if they could 
 be compared in similar things. Each has what the other 
 has not : each completes the other, and is completed by the 
 other: they are in nothing alike, and the happiness and 
 perfection of both depends on each asking and receiving 
 from the other what the other only can give. 
 
 68. Now their separate characters are briefly these. The 
 man's power is active, progressive, defensive. He is emi- 
 nently the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the defender. 
 His intellect is for speculation and invention ; his energy 
 for adventure, for war, and for conquest, wherever war is 
 just, wherever conquest necessary. But the woman's power 
 is for rule, not for battle, — and her intellect is not for 
 invention or creation, but for sweet ordering, arrangement, 
 
82 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 and decision. She sees the qualities of things, their claims, 
 and their places. Her great function is Praise : she enters 
 into no contest, but infallibly judges the crown of contest. 
 By her office, and place, she is protected from all dangei 
 and temptation. The man, in his rough work in open 
 world, must encounter all peril and trial : to him, there- 
 fore, must be the failure, the offense, the inevitable error : 
 often he must be wounded, or subdued ; often misled ; and 
 always hardened. But he guards the woman from all this ; 
 within his house, as ruled by her, unless she herself has 
 sought it, need enter no danger, no temptation, no cause 
 of error or offense. This is the true nature of home — it is 
 the place of Peace ; the shelter, not only from all injury, 
 but from all terror, doubt, and division. In so far as it is 
 not this, it is not home : so far as the anxieties of the outer 
 life penetrate into it, and the inconsistently-minded, un- 
 known, unloved, or hostile society of the outer world is 
 allowed by either husband or wife to cross the threshold, 
 it ceases to be home ; it is then only a part of that outer 
 world which you have roofed over, and lighted fire in. But 
 so far as it is a sacred place, a vestal temple, a temple of 
 the hearth watched over by Household Gods, before whose 
 faces none may come but those whom they can receive with 
 love, — so far as it is this, and roof and fire are types only 
 of a nobler shade and light, — shade as of the rock in a 
 weary land, and light as of the Pharos in the stormy sea, — 
 so far it vindicates the name, and fulfills the praise, of home. 
 And wherever a true wife comes, this home is always 
 round her. The stars only may be over her head ; the 
 glow-worm in the night-cold grass may be the only fire at 
 her foot : but home is yet wherever she is ; and for a noble 
 woman it stretches far round her, better than ceiled with 
 cedar, or painted with vermilion, shedding its quiet light far, 
 for those who else were homeless. 
 
of queens' gardens. 83 
 
 69. This, then, I believe to be, — will you not admit it to 
 be, — the woman's true place and power? But do not you 
 see that to fulfill this, she must — as far as one can use such 
 terms of a human creature — be incapable of error? So far 
 as she rules, all must be right, or nothing is. She must be 
 enduringly, incorruptibly good ; instinctively, infallibly wise 
 — wise, not for self-development, but for self-renunciation : 
 wise, not that she may set herself above her husband, but 
 that she may never fail from his side : wise, not with the 
 narrowness of insolent and loveless pride, but with the 
 passionate gentleness of an infinitely variable, because in- 
 finitely applicable, modesty of service — the true changeful- 
 ness of woman. In that great sense — "La donna e mobile," 
 not "Qual piiim' al vento " ; no, nor yet "Variable as the 
 shade, by the light quivering aspen made " ; but variable as 
 the light, manifold in fair and serene division, that it may 
 take the color of all that it falls upon, and exalt it. 
 
 70. II. — I have been trying, thus far, to show you what 
 should be the place, and what the power of woman. Now, 
 secondly, we ask, What kind of education is to fit her for 
 these ? 
 
 And if you indeed think this is a true conception of her 
 office and dignity, it will not be difficult to trace the course 
 of education which would fit her for the one, and raise her 
 to the other. 
 
 The first of our duties to her — no thoughtful persons 
 now doubt this — is to secure for her such physical training 
 and exercise as may confirm her health, and perfect her 
 beauty, the highest refinement of that beauty being un- 
 attainable without splendor of activity and of delicate 
 strength. To perfect her beauty, I say, and increase its 
 power ; it cannot be too powerful, nor shed its sacred light 
 too far: only remember that all physical freedom is vain to 
 produce beauty without a corresponding freedom of heart. 
 
84 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 There are two passages of that poet who is distinguished, 
 it seems to me, from all others — not by power, but by 
 exquisite rig/itness — which point you to the source, and 
 describe to you, in a few syllables, the completion of 
 womanly beauty. I will read the introductory stanzas, 
 but the last is the one I wish you specially to notice : — 
 
 " Three years she grew in sun and shower, 
 Then Nature said, 'A lovelier flower 
 
 On earth was never sown. 
 This child I to myself will take ; 
 She shall be mine, and I will make 
 
 A lady of my own. 
 
 « . 
 
 Myself will to my darling be 
 
 Both law and impulse ; and with me 
 
 The girl, in rock and plain, 
 In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, 
 Shall feel an overseeing power 
 
 To kindle, or restrain. 
 
 " ■ The floating clouds their state shall lend 
 To her ; for her the willow bend ; 
 
 Nor shall she fail to see 
 Even in the motions of the storm 
 Grace that shall mould the maiden's form 
 
 By silent sympathy. 
 
 " ' And vital feelings of delight 
 
 Shall rear her form to stately height, 
 
 Her virgin bosom swell. 
 Such thoughts to Lucy I will give, 
 While she and I together live, 
 Here in this happy dell."' 1 
 
 1 Observe, it is " Nature " who is speaking throughout, and who says, 
 " While she and I together live." 
 
of queen's gardens. 85 
 
 " Vital feelings of delight," observe. There are deadly 
 feelings of delight ; but the natural ones are vital, necessary 
 to very life. 
 
 And they must be feelings of delight, if they are to be 
 vital. Do not think you can make a girl lovely, if you do 
 not make her happy. There is not one restraint you put on 
 a good girl's nature — there is not one check you give to 
 her instincts of affection or of effort — which will not be 
 indelibly written on her features, with a hardness which is 
 all the more painful because it takes away the brightness 
 from the eyes of innocence, and the charm from the brow 
 of virtue. 
 
 71. This for the means: now note the end. Take from 
 the same poet, in two lines, a perfect description of womanly 
 beauty — 
 
 " A countenance in which did meet 
 Sweet records, promises as sweet." 
 
 The perfect loveliness of a woman's countenance can 
 only consist in that majestic peace, which is founded in 
 the memory of happy and useful years, — full of sweet 
 records ; and from the joining of this with that yet more 
 majestic childishness, which is still full of change and 
 promise; — opening always — modest at once, and bright, 
 with hope of better things to be won, and to be bestowed. 
 There is no old age where there is still that promise. 
 
 72. Thus, then, you have first to mould her physical 
 frame, and then, as the strength she gains will permit you, 
 to fill and temper her mind with all knowledge and thoughts 
 which tend to confirm its natural instincts of justice, and 
 refine its natural tact of love. 
 
 All such knowledge should be given her as may enable 
 her to understand, and even to aid, the work of men : and 
 yet it should be given, not as knowledge, — not as if it 
 
86 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 were, or could be, for her an object to know ; but only to 
 feel, and to judge. It is of no moment, as a matter of 
 pride or perfectness in herself, whether she knows many 
 languages or one ; but it is of the utmost, that she should be 
 able to show kindness to a stranger, and to understand the 
 sweetness of a stranger's tongue. It is of no moment to 
 her own worth or dignity that she should be acquainted 
 with this science or that ; but it is of the highest that she 
 should be trained in habits of accurate thought ; that she 
 should understand the meaning, the inevitableness, and the 
 loveliness of natural laws ; and follow at least some one 
 path of scientific attainment, as far as to the threshold of 
 that bitter Valley of Humiliation, into which only the wisest 
 and bravest of men can descend, owning themselves forever 
 children, gathering pebbles on a boundless shore. It is of 
 little consequence how many positions of cities she knows, 
 or how many dates of events, or names of celebrated 
 persons - — it is not the object of education to turn a woman 
 into a dictionary ; but it is deeply necessary that she should 
 be taught to enter with her whole personality into the 
 history she reads ; to picture the passages of it vitally in 
 her own bright imagination ; to apprehend, with her fine 
 instincts, the pathetic circumstances and dramatic relations, 
 which the historian too often only eclipses by his reasoning, 
 and disconnects by his arrangement : it is for her to trace 
 the hidden equities of divine reward, and catch sight, through 
 the darkness, of the fatal threads of woven fire that connect 
 error with its retribution. But, chiefly of all, she is to be 
 taught to extend the limits of her sympathy with respect 
 to that history which is being for her determined as the 
 moments pass in which she draws her peaceful breath : and 
 to the contemporary calamity, which, were it but rightly 
 mourned by her, would recur no more hereafter. She is to 
 exercise herself in imagining what would be the effects upon 
 
of queen's gardens. 87 
 
 her mind and conduct, if she were daily brought into the 
 presence of the suffering which is not the less real because 
 shut from her sight. She is to be taught somewhat to 
 understand the nothingness of the proportion which that 
 little world in which she lives and loves, bears to the world 
 in which God lives and loves ; — and solemnly she is to be 
 taught to strive that her thoughts of piety may not be feeble 
 in proportion to the number they embrace, nor her prayer 
 more languid than it is for the momentary relief from pain 
 of her husband or her child, when it is uttered for the 
 multitudes of those who have none to love them, — and is, 
 " for all who are desolate and oppressed." 
 
 73. Thus far, I think, I have had your concurrence ; 
 perhaps you will not be with me in what I believe is most 
 needful for me to say. There is one dangerous science for 
 women — one which they must indeed beware how they 
 profanely touch — that of theology. Strange, and miserably 
 strange, that while they are modest enough to doubt their 
 powers, and pause at the threshold of sciences where every 
 step is demonstrable and sure, they will plunge headlong, 
 and without one thought of incompetency, into that science 
 in which the greatest men have trembled, and the wisest 
 erred. Strange, that they will complacently and pridefully 
 bind up whatever vice or folly there is in them, whatever 
 arrogance, petulance, or blind incomprehensiveness, into 
 one bitter bundle of consecrated myrrh. Strange, in 
 creatures born to be Love visible, that where they can know 
 least, they will condemn first, and think to recommend 
 themselves to their Master, by scrambling up the steps of 
 His judgment throne, to divide it with Him. Strangest of 
 all, that they should think they were led by the Spirit of the 
 Comforter into habits of mind which have become in them 
 the unmixed elements of home discomfort ; and that they 
 dare to turn the Household Gods of Christianity into ugly 
 
88 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 idols of their own; — spiritual dolls, for them to dress 
 according to their caprice ; and from which their husbands 
 must turn away in grieved contempt, lest they should be 
 shrieked at for breaking them. 
 
 74. I believe then, with this exception, that a girl's 
 education should be nearly, in its course and material of 
 study, the same as a boy's ; but quite differently directed. 
 A woman, in any rank of life, ought to know whatever her 
 husband is likely to know, but to know it in a different way. 
 His command of it should be foundational and progressive ; 
 hers, general and accomplished for daily and helpful use. 
 Not but that it would often be wiser in men to learn things 
 in a womanly sort of way, for present use, and to seek for 
 the discipline and training of their mental powers in such 
 branches of study as will be afterwards fittest for social 
 service ; but, speaking broadly, a man ought to know any 
 language or science he learns, thoroughly — while a woman 
 ought to know the same language, or science, only so far as 
 may enable her to sympathize in her husband's pleasures, 
 and in those of his best friends. 
 
 75. Yet, observe, with exquisite accuracy as far as she 
 reaches. There is a wide difference between elementary 
 knowledge and superficial knowledge — between a firm 
 beginning, and an infirm attempt at compassing. A woman 
 may always help her husband by what she knows, however 
 little ; by what she half-knows, or mis-knows, she will only 
 tease him. 
 
 And indeed, if there were to be any difference between 
 a girl's education and a boy's, I should say that of the two 
 the girl should be earlier led, as her intellect ripens faster, 
 into deep and serious subjects : and that her range of 
 literature should be, not more, but less frivolous ; calculated 
 to add the qualities of patience and seriousness to her 
 natural poignancy of thought and quickness of wit ; and 
 
OF QUEENS GARDENS. 09 
 
 also to keep her in a lofty and pure element of thought. 
 I enter not now into any question of choice of books ; only 
 let us be sure that her books are not heaped up in her lap 
 as they fall out of the package of the circulating library, 
 wet with the last and lightest spray of the fountain of 
 folly. 
 
 76. Or even of the fountain of wit ; for with respect to 
 that sore temptation of novel-reading, it is not the badness 
 of a novel that we should dread, so much as its over- 
 wrought interest. The weakest romance is not so stupefying 
 as the lower forms of religious exciting literature, and the 
 worst romance is not so corrupting as false history, false 
 philosophy, or false political essays. But the best romance 
 becomes dangerous, if, by its excitement, it renders the 
 ordinary course of life uninteresting, and increases the 
 morbid thirst for useless acquaintance with scenes in which 
 we shall never be called upon to act. 
 
 77. I speak therefore of good novels only; and our 
 modern literature is particularly rich in types of such. 
 Well read, indeed, these books have serious use, being 
 nothing less than treatises on moral anatomy and chemistry ; 
 studies of human nature in the elements of it. But I 
 attach little weight to this function : they are hardly ever 
 read with earnestness enough to permit them to fulfill it. 
 The utmost they usually do is to enlarge somewhat the 
 charity of a kind reader, or the bitterness of a malicious 
 one ; for each will gather, from the novel, food for her own 
 disposition. Those who are naturally proud and envious 
 will learn from Thackeray to despise humanity ; those who 
 are naturally gentle, to pity it ; those who are naturally 
 shallow, to laugh at it. So, also, there might be a service- 
 able power in novels to bring before us, in vividness, a 
 human truth which we had before dimly conceived ; but 
 the temptation to picturesqueness of statement is so great, 
 
90 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 that often the best writers of fiction cannot resist it ; and 
 our views are rendered so violent and one-sided, that their 
 vitality is rather a harm than good. 
 
 78. Without, however, venturing here on any attempt at 
 decision of how much novel-reading should be allowed, let 
 me at least clearly assert this, that whether novels, or poetry, 
 or history be read, they should be chosen, not for their free- 
 dom from evil, but for their possession of good. The 
 chance and scattered evil that may here and there haunt, or 
 hide itself in, a powerful book, never does any harm to a 
 noble girl ; but the emptiness of an author oppresses her, 
 and his amiable folly degrades her. And if she can have 
 access to a good library of old and classical books, there 
 need be no choosing at all. Keep the modern magazine 
 and novel out of your girl's way ; turn her loose into the 
 old library every wet day, and let her alone. She will find 
 what is good for her ; you cannot ; for there is just this 
 difference between the making of a girl's character and a 
 boy's — you may chisel a boy into shape, as you would a 
 rock, or hammer him into it, if he be of a better kind, as 
 you would a piece of bronze. But you cannot hammer a 
 girl into anything. She grows as a flower does, — she will 
 wither without sun ; she will decay in her sheath, as the 
 narcissus will, if you do not give her air enough ; she may 
 fall, and defile her head in dust, if you leave her without 
 help at some moments of her life ; but you cannot fetter 
 her ; she must take her own fair form and way, if she take 
 any, and in mind as in body, must have always — 
 
 " Her household motions light and free 
 And steps of virgin liberty." 
 
 Let her loose in the library, I say, as you do a fawn in a 
 field. It knows the bad weeds twenty times better than 
 you ; and the good ones, too, and will eat some bitter and 
 
OF QUEENS GARDENS. 9 1 
 
 prickly ones, good for it, which you had not the slightest 
 thought would have been so. 
 
 79. Then, in art, keep the finest models before her, and 
 let her practice in all accomplishments to be accurate and 
 thorough, so as to enable her to understand more than 
 she accomplishes. I say the finest models — that is to say, 
 the truest, simplest, usefullest. Note those epithets ; they 
 will range through all the arts. Try them in music, where 
 you might think them the least applicable. I say the 
 truest, that in which the notes most closely and faithfully 
 express the meaning of the words, or the character of 
 intended emotion ; again, the simplest, that in which the 
 meaning and melody are attained with the fewest and most 
 significant notes possible ; and, finally, the usefullest, that 
 music which makes the best words most beautiful, which 
 enchants them in our memories each with its own glory of 
 sound, and which applies them closest to the heart at the 
 moment we need them. 
 
 80. An,d not only in the material and in the course, but 
 yet more earnestly in the spirit of it, let a girl's education 
 be as serious as a boy's. You bring up your girls as if they 
 were meant for sideboard ornament, and then complain of 
 their frivolity. Give them the same advantages that you 
 give their brothers — appeal to the same grand instincts of 
 virtue in them ; teach them, also, that courage and truth are 
 the pillars of their being ; — do you think that they would 
 not answer that appeal, brave and true as they are even 
 now, when you know that there is hardly a girl's school in 
 this Christian kingdom where the children's courage or 
 sincerity would be thought of half so much importance as 
 their way of coming in at a door ; and when the whole 
 system of society, as respects the mode of establishing them 
 in life, is one rotten plague of cowardice and imposture — ■ 
 cowardice, in not daring to let them live, or love, except as 
 
92 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 their neighbors choose ; and imposture, in bringing, for the 
 purpose of our own pride, the full glow of the world's worst 
 vanity upon a girl's eyes, at the very period when the whole 
 happiness of her future existence depends upon her remain- 
 ing undazzled ? 
 
 8 1. And give them, lastly, not only noble teachings, but 
 noble teachers. You consider somewhat, before you send 
 your boy to school, what kind of a man the master is ; — 
 whatsoever kind of a man he is, you at least give him full 
 authority over your son, and show some respect for him 
 yourself ; — if he comes to dine with you, you do not put 
 him at a side table ; you know, also, that at his college, 
 your child's immediate tutor will be under the direction of 
 some still higher tutor, for whom you have absolute rever- 
 ence. You do not treat the Dean of Christ Church or the 
 Master of Trinity as your inferiors. 
 
 But what teachers do you give your girls, and what 
 reverence do you show to the teachers you have chosen ? 
 Is a girl likely to think her own conduct, or her own 
 intellect, of much importance, when you trust the entire 
 formation of her character, moral and intellectual, to a 
 person whom you let your servants treat with less respect 
 than they do your housekeeper (as if the soul of your 
 child were a less charge than jams and groceries), and 
 whom you yourself think you confer an honor upon 
 by letting her sometimes sit in the drawing-room in 
 the evening? 
 
 82. Thus, then, of literature as her help, and thus of art. 
 There is one more help which we cannot do without — one 
 which, alone, has sometimes done more than all other 
 influences besides, — the help of wild and fair nature. 
 Hear this of the education of Joan of Arc : — 
 
 " The education of this poor girl was mean according to 
 the present standard ; was ineffably grand, according to a 
 
OF QUEENS GARDENS. 93 
 
 purer philosophic standard ; and only not good for our age, 
 because for us it would be unattainable. . . . 
 
 " Next after her spiritual advantages, she owed most to 
 the advantages of her situation. The fountain of Domremy 
 was on the brink of a boundless forest ; and it was haunted 
 to that degree by fairies, that the parish priest (cure) was 
 obliged to read mass there once a year, in order to keep 
 them in any decent bounds. . . . 
 
 " But the forests of Domremy — those were the glories of 
 the land ; for in them abode mysterious powers and ancient 
 secrets that towered into tragic strength. ' Abbeys there 
 were, and abbey windows,' — 'like Moorish temples of the 
 Hindoos,' that exercised even princely power both in 
 Touraine and in the German Diets. These had their sweet 
 bells that pierced the forests for many a league at matins or 
 vespers, and each its own dreamy legend. Few enough, 
 and scattered enough, were these abbeys, so as in no 
 degree to disturb the deep solitude of the region; yet 
 many enough to spread a network or awning of Chris- 
 tian sanctity over what else might have seemed a heathen 
 wilderness." l 
 
 Now, you cannot, indeed, have here in England, woods 
 eighteen miles deep to the centre ; but you can, perhaps, 
 keep a fairy or two for your children yet, if you wish to 
 keep them. But do you wish it ? Suppose you had each, 
 at the back of your houses, a garden large enough for your 
 children to play in, with just as much lawn as would give 
 them room to run, — no more — and that you could not 
 change your abode ; but that, if you chose, you could double 
 your income, or quadruple it, by digging a coal-shaft in the 
 middle of the lawn, and turning the flower-beds into heaps 
 of coke. Would you do it ? I hope not. I can tell you, 
 
 1 " Joan of Arc : in reference to M. Michelet's History of France.' 1 
 De Quincey's Works, Vol. Ill, page 217. 
 
94 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 you would be wrong if you did, though it gave you income 
 sixty-fold instead of four-fold. 
 
 83. Yet this is what you are doing with all England. 
 The whole country is but a little garden, not more than 
 enough for your children to run on the lawns of, if you 
 would let them all run there. And this little garden you 
 will turn into furnace-ground, and fill with heaps of cinders, 
 if you can ; and those children of yours, not you, will suffer 
 for it. For the fairies will not be all banished ; there are 
 fairies of the furnace as of the wood, and their first gifts 
 seem to be " sharp arrows of the mighty " ; but their last 
 gifts are " coals of juniper." 
 
 84. And yet I cannot — though there is no part of my 
 subject that I feel more — press this upon you; for we 
 made so little use of the power of nature while we had it, 
 that we shall hardly feel what we have lost. Just on the 
 other side of the Mersey you have your Snowdon, and 
 your Menai Straits, and that mighty granite rock beyond 
 the moors of Anglesea, splendid in its heatherly crest, and 
 foot planted in the deep sea, once thought of as sacred — 
 a divine promontory, looking westward ; the Holy Head or 
 Headland, still not without awe when its red light glares 
 first through storm. These are the hills, and these the 
 bays and blue inlets, which, among the Greeks, would 
 have been always loved, always fateful in influence on the 
 national mind. That Snowdon is your Parnassus ; but 
 where are its Muses ? That Holyhead mountain is your 
 Island of zEgina, but where is its Temple to Minerva ? 
 
 85. Shall I read you what the Christian Minerva had 
 achieved under the shadow of our Parnassus, up to the 
 year 1848 ? — Here is a little account of a Welsh school, 
 from page 261 of the report on Wales, published by the 
 Committee of Council on Education. This is a school 
 close to a town containing 5,000 persons : — 
 
OF QUEENS GARDENS. 95 
 
 " I then called up a larger class, most of whom had 
 recently come to the school. Three girls repeatedly 
 declared that they had never heard of Christ, and two 
 that they had never heard of God. Two out of six 
 thought Christ was on earth now (' they might have had 
 a worse thought, perhaps ')' ; three knew nothing about 
 the crucifixion. Four out of seven did not know the 
 names of the months, nor the number of days in a year. 
 They had no notion of addition beyond two and two, or 
 three and three ; their minds were perfect blanks." 
 
 Oh, ye women of England ! from the Princess of that 
 Wales to the simplest of you, do not think your own children 
 can be brought into their true fold of rest while these are 
 scattered on the hills, as sheep having no shepherd. And 
 do not think your daughters can be trained to the truth of 
 their own human beauty, while the pleasant places, which 
 God made at once for their school-room and their play- 
 ground, lie desolate and defiled. You cannot baptize 
 them rightly in those inch-deep fonts of yours, unless you 
 baptize them also in the sweet waters which the great 
 Lawgiver strikes forth forever from the rocks of your 
 native land — waters which a Pagan would have worshiped 
 in their purity, and you only worship with pollution. You 
 cannot lead your children faithfully to those narrow axe- 
 hewn church altars of yours, while the dark azure altars 
 in heaven — the mountains that sustain your island throne, 
 
 — mountains on which a Pagan would have seen the powers 
 of heaven rest in every wreathed cloud — remain for you 
 without inscription ; altars built, not to, but by, an Unknown 
 God. 
 
 86. III. — Thus far, then, of the nature, thus far of the 
 teaching, of woman, and thus of her household orifice, and 
 queenliness. We come now to our last, our widest question, 
 
 — What is her queenly office with respect to the state ? 
 
g6 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 Generally we are under an impression that a man's 
 duties are public, and a woman's private. But this is not 
 altogether so. A man has a personal work or duty, relating 
 to his own home, and a public work or duty, which is the 
 expansion of the other, relating to the state. So a woman 
 has a personal work and duty, relating to her own home, 
 and a public work and duty, which is also the expansion 
 of that. 
 
 Now the man's work for his own home is, as has been 
 said, to secure its maintenance, progress, and defense ; 
 the woman's to secure its order, comfort, and loveliness. 
 
 Expand both these functions. The man's duty, as a 
 member of a commonwealth, is to assist in the maintenance, 
 in the advance, in the defense of the state. The woman's 
 duty, as a member of the commonwealth, is to assist in the 
 ordering, in the comforting, and in the beautiful adornment 
 of the state. 
 
 When the man is at his own gate, defending it, if need 
 be, against insult and spoil, that also, not in a less, but in 
 a more devoted measure, he is to be at the gate of his 
 country, leaving his home, if need be, even to the spoiler, 
 to do his more incumbent work there. 
 
 And, in like manner, what the woman is to be within her 
 gates, as the center of order, the balm of distress, and the 
 mirror of beauty ; that she is also to be without her gates, 
 where order is more difficult, distress more imminent, loveli- 
 ness more rare. 
 
 And as within the human heart there is always set an 
 instinct for all its real duties, — an instinct which you 
 cannot quench, but only warp and corrupt if you with- 
 draw it from its true purpose ; — as there is the intense 
 instinct of love, which, rightly disciplined, maintains all 
 the sanctities of life, and, misdirected, undermines them ; 
 and must do either the one or the other ; — so there is in 
 
OF QUEENS GARDENS. 97 
 
 the human heart an inextinguishable instinct, the love of 
 power, which, rightly directed, maintains all the majesty 
 of law and life, and misdirected, wrecks them. 
 
 87. Deep rooted in the innermost life of the heart of 
 man, and of the heart of woman, God set it there, and 
 God keeps it there. Vainly, as falsely, you blame or 
 rebuke the desire of power ! — For Heaven's sake, and 
 for Man's sake, desire it all you can. But what power? 
 That is all the question. Power to destroy? the lion's 
 limb, and the dragon's breath ? Not so. Power to heal, 
 to redeem, to guide, and to guard. Power of the scepter 
 and shield ; the power of the royal hand that heals in 
 touching, — that binds the fiend and looses the captive ; 
 the throne that is founded on the rock of Justice, and 
 descended from only by steps of mercy. Will you not 
 covet such power as this, and seek such throne as this, 
 and be no more housewives, but queens ? 
 
 88. It is now long since the women of England arro- 
 gated, universally, a title which once belonged to nobility 
 only, and, having once been in the habit of accepting the 
 simple title of gentlewoman, as correspondent to that of 
 gentleman, insisted on the privilege of assuming the title 
 of "Lady," 1 which properly corresponds only to the title 
 of "Lord." 
 
 I do not blame them for this ; but only for their narrow 
 motive in this. I would have them desire and claim the 
 title of Lady, provided they claim, not merely the title, but 
 
 1 I wish there were a true order of chivalry instituted for our English 
 youth of certain ranks, in which both boy and girl should receive, at a 
 given age, their knighthood and ladyhood by true title; attainable only 
 by certain probation and trial both of character and accomplishment ; 
 and to be forfeited, on conviction, by their peers, of any dishonorable 
 act. Such an institution would be entirely, and with all noble results, 
 possible, in a nation which loved honor. That it would not be possible 
 among us is not to the discredit of the scheme. 
 
98 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 the office and duty signified by it. Lady means "bread- 
 giver" or "loaf-giver," and Lord means " maintainer of 
 laws," and both titles have reference, not to the law which 
 is maintained in the house, nor to the bread which is given 
 to the household, but to law maintained for the multitude, 
 and to bread broken among the multitude. So that a Lord 
 has legal claim only to his title in so far as he is the main- 
 tainer of the justice of the Lord of Lords ; and a Lady has 
 legal claim to her title only so far as she communicates that 
 help to the poor representatives of her Master, which women 
 once, ministering to Him of their substance, were permitted 
 to extend to that Master Himself ; and when she is known, 
 as He Himself once was, in breaking of bread. 
 
 89. And this beneficent and legal dominion, this power 
 of the Dominus, or House Lord, and of the Domina, or 
 House-Lady, is great and venerable, not in the number of 
 those through whom it has lineally descended, but in the 
 number of those whom it grasps within its sway ; it is 
 always regarded with reverent worship wherever its dynasty 
 is founded on its duty, and its ambition co-relative with its 
 beneficence. Your fancy is pleased with the thought of 
 being noble ladies, with a train of vassals. Be it so : you 
 cannot be too noble, and your train cannot be too great ; 
 but see to it that your train is of vassals whom you serve 
 and feed, not merely of slaves who serve and feed you ; and 
 that the multitude which obeys you is of those whom you 
 have comforted, not oppressed, — whom you have redeemed, 
 not led into captivity. 
 
 90. And this, which is true of the lower or household 
 dominion, is equally true of the queenly dominion ; — that 
 highest dignity is opened to you, if you will also accept that 
 highest duty. Rex et Regina — Roi et Reine — "Right- 
 doers " ; they differ but from the Lady and Lord, in that 
 their power is supreme over the mind as over the person — 
 
OF QUEENS GARDENS. 99 
 
 that they not only feed and clothe, but direct and teach. 
 And whether consciously or not, you must be, in many a 
 heart, enthroned : there is no putting by that crown ; queens 
 you must always be ; queens to your lovers ; queens to 
 your husbands and your sons ; queens of higher mystery to 
 the world beyond, which bows itself, and will forever bow, 
 before the myrtle crown, and the stainless scepter, of 
 womanhood. But, alas ! you are too often idle and care- 
 less queens, grasping at majesty in the least things, while 
 you abdicate it in the greatest ; and leaving misrule and 
 violence to work their will among men, in defiance of the 
 power, which, holding straight in gift from the Prince of 
 all Peace, the wicked among you betray, and the good 
 forget. 
 
 91. " Prince of Peace." Note that name. When kings 
 rule in that name, and nobles, and the judges of the earth, 
 they also, in their narrow place, and mortal measure, 
 receive the power of it. There are no other rulers than 
 they : other rule than theirs is but ////mile ; they who govern 
 verily " Dei gratia " are all princes, yes, or princesses, of 
 peace. There is not a war in the world, no, nor an injus- 
 tice, but you women are answerable for it ; not in that you 
 have provoked, but in that you have not hindered. Men, 
 by their nature, are prone to fight ; they will fight for any 
 cause, or for none. It is for you to choose their cause for 
 them, and to forbid them when there is no cause. There is 
 no suffering, no injustice, no misery in the earth, but the 
 guilt of it lies with you. Men can bear the sight of it, but 
 you should not be able to bear it. Men may tread it down 
 without sympathy in their own struggle ; but men are feeble 
 in sympathy, and contracted in hope ; it is you only who 
 can feel the depths of pain ; and conceive the way of its 
 healing. Instead of trying to do this, you turn away from 
 it ; you shut yourselves within your park walls and garden 
 
IOO SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 gates ; and you are content to know that there is beyond 
 them a whole world in wilderness — a world of secrets 
 which you dare not penetrate ; and of suffering which you 
 dare not conceive. 
 
 92. I tell you that this is to me quite the most amazing 
 among the phenomena of humanity. I am surprised at no 
 depths to which, when once warped from its honor, that 
 humanity can be degraded. I do not wonder at the miser's 
 death, with his hands, as they relax, dropping gold. I do 
 not wonder at the sensualist's life, with the shroud wrapped 
 about his feet. I do not wonder at the single-handed 
 murder of a single victim, done by the assassin in the 
 darkness of the railway, or reed-shadow of the marsh. I 
 do not even wonder at the myriad-handed murder of multi- 
 tudes, done boastfully in the daylight, by the frenzy of 
 nations, and the immeasurable, unimaginable guilt, heaped 
 up from hell to heaven, of their priests, and kings. But 
 this is wonderful to me — oh, how wonderful ! — to see the 
 tender and delicate woman among you, with her child at 
 her breast, and a power, if she would wield it, over it, and 
 over its father, purer than the air of heaven, and stronger 
 than the seas of earth — nay, a magnitude of blessing which 
 her husband would not part with for all that earth itself, 
 though it were made of one entire and perfect chrysolite : — 
 to see her abdicate this majesty to play at precedence with 
 her next-door neighbor ! This is wonderful — oh, wonder- 
 ful ! — to see her, with every innocent feeling fresh within 
 her, go out in the morning into her garden to play with the 
 fringes of its guarded flowers, and lift their heads when 
 they are drooping, with her happy smile upon her face, and 
 no cloud upon her brow, because there is a little wall around 
 her place of peace : and yet she knows, in her heart, if she 
 would only look for its knowledge, that, outside of that 
 little rose-covered wall, the wild grass, to the horizon, is 
 
OF QUEENS GARDENS. IOI 
 
 torn up by the agony of men, and beat level by the drift of 
 their life blood. 
 
 93. Have you ever considered what a deep under mean- 
 ing there lies, or at least may be read, if we choose, in our 
 custom of strewing flowers before those whom we think 
 most happy ? Do you suppose it is merely to deceive them 
 into the hope that happiness is always to fall thus in 
 showers at their feet ? — that wherever they pass they will 
 tread on herbs of sweet scent, and that the rough ground 
 will be made smooth for them by depth of roses ? So 
 surely as they believe that, they will have, instead, to walk 
 on bitter herbs and thorns ; and the only softness to their 
 feet will be of snow. But it is not thus intended they 
 should believe ; there is a better meaning in that old 
 custom. The path of a good woman is indeed strewn with 
 flowers : but they rise behind her steps, not before them. 
 " Her feet have touched the meadows, and left the daisies 
 rosy." 
 
 94. You think that only a lover's fancy;- — false and 
 vain ! How if it could be true ? You think this also, 
 perhaps, only a poet's fancy — ■ 
 
 " Even the light harebell raised its head 
 Elastic from her airy tread." 
 
 But it is little to say of a woman, that she only does not 
 destroy where she passes. She should revive ; the hare- 
 bells should bloom, not stoop, as she passes. You think 
 I am rushing into wild hyperbole ? Pardon me, not a whit 
 — I mean what I say in calm English, spoken in resolute 
 truth. You have heard it said — (and I believe there is 
 more than fancy even in that saying, but let it pass for a 
 fanciful one) — that flowers only flourish rightly in the 
 garden of some one who loves them. I know you would 
 
102 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 like that to be true ; you would think it a pleasant magic if 
 you could flush your flowers into brighter bloom by a kind 
 look upon them : nay, more, if your look had the power, 
 not only to cheer, but to guard them ; — if you could bid 
 the black blight turn away, and the knotted caterpillar spare 
 — if you could bid the dew fall upon them in the drought, 
 and say to the south wind, in frost — "Come, thou south, 
 and breathe upon my garden, that the spices of it may flow 
 out." This you would think a great thing ? And do you 
 think it not a greater thing, that all this (and how much 
 more than this !) you can do, for fairer flowers than these — 
 flowers that could bless you for having blessed them, and 
 will love you for having loved them ; — flowers that have 
 thoughts like yours, and lives like yours ; which, once saved, 
 you save forever ? Is this only a little power ? Far among 
 the moorlands and the rocks, — far in the darkness of the 
 terrible streets, — these feeble florets are lying, with all their 
 fresh leaves torn, and their stems broken — will you never 
 go down to them, nor set them in order in their little 
 fragrant beds, nor fence them in their trembling from the 
 fierce wind ? Shall morning follow morning, for you, but 
 not for them ; and the dawn rise to watch, far away, those 
 frantic Dances of Death ; * but no dawn rise to breathe 
 upon these living banks of wild violet, and woodbine, and 
 rose; nor call to you, through your casement, — call (not 
 giving you the name of the English poet's lady, but the 
 name of Dante's great Matilda, who on the edge of happy 
 Lethe, stood x wreathing flowers with flowers), saying : — 
 
 " Come into the garden, Maud, 
 For the black bat, night, has flown, 
 And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad 
 And the musk of the roses blown." 
 
 1 See note, p. 43. 
 
OF QUEENS' GARDENS. IO3 
 
 Will you not go down among them ? — among those sweet 
 living things, whose new courage, sprung from the earth 
 with the deep color of heaven upon it, is starting up in 
 strength of goodly spire ; and whose purity, washed from 
 the dust, is opening, bud by bud, into the flower of prom- 
 ise ; — and still they turn to you, and for you, "The Lark- 
 spur listens — I hear, I hear! And the Lily whispers — I 
 wait." 
 
 95. Did you notice that I missed two lines when I read 
 you that first stanza ; and think that I had forgotten them ? 
 Hear them now : — 
 
 " Come into the garden, Maud, 
 For the black bat, night, has flown. 
 Come into the garden, Maud, 
 I am here at the gate, alone." 
 
 Who is it, think you, who stands at the gate of this 
 sweeter garden, alone, waiting for you ? Did you ever hear, 
 not of a Maude, but a Madeleine, who went down to her 
 garden in the dawn, and found one waiting at the gate, 
 whom she supposed to be the gardener ? Have you not 
 sought Him often ; — sought Him in vain, all through the 
 night ; — sought Him in vain at the gate of that old garden 
 where the fiery sword is set ? He is never there ; but at 
 the gate of this garden He is waiting always — waiting to 
 take your hand — ready to go down to see the fruits of the 
 valley, to see whether the vine has flourished, and the 
 pomegranate budded. There you shall see with Him the 
 little tendrils of the vines that His hand is guiding — there 
 you shall see the pomegranate springing where His hand 
 cast the sanguine seed ; — more : you shall see the troops 
 of the angel keepers, that, with their wings, wave away the 
 hungry birds from the path sides where He has sown, and 
 call to each other between the vineyard rows, " Take us the 
 
104 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines, for our vines 
 have tender grapes." Oh — you queens — you queens; 
 among the hills and happy greenwood of this land of yours, 
 shall the foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have 
 nests ; and in your cities, shall the stones cry out against 
 you, that they are the only pillows where the Son of Man 
 can lay His head ? 
 
 ANNOTATIONS. 
 
 51. Spectral: merely having the appearance of ; unreal. 
 
 The likeness of a kingly crown have on : these words are 
 borrowed from Milton's description of death. — " Paradise Lost," 
 Book II. 
 
 56. Orlando and Ros'alind: characters in Shakespeare's play 
 "As You Like It." 
 
 CordeTia: banished daughter of King Lear. 
 
 DesdemOn'a : heroine of the drama " Othello." 
 
 Isabella: a character in " Measure for Measure." 
 
 Hermione: the wife, and Perdita, the daughter of Leontes, 
 King of Sicily, in " A Winter's Tale." 
 
 Im'ogen : heroine of the drama " Cymbeline." 
 
 Queen Katherine: first wife of Henry VIII, and heroine of the 
 drama " Henry VIII." 
 
 Silvia : the lady beloved by Valentine in " Two Gentlemen of 
 Verona." 
 
 Viola : heroine of the drama " Twelfth Night." 
 
 HeTena : heroine of " All's Well that Ends Well." 
 
 Virgilia: wife of Coriolanus, in Shakespeare's play of that 
 name. 
 
 Julia : a character in " Two Gentlemen of Verona." 
 
 Hero and Beatrice : characters in the drama " Much Ado 
 About Nothing." 
 
 The unlessoned girl : Portia, in " Merchant of Venice." She 
 uses these words concerning herself. 
 
ANNOTATIONS. 105 
 
 57. Emilia : wife of Iago, in Shakespeare's play " Othello." 
 
 58. Ophelia : heroine of Shakespeare's "Hamlet." 
 
 Lady Macbeth : wife of Macbeth, in Shakespeare's drama. 
 Regan and Goneril : sisters of Cordelia and daughters of King Lear. 
 
 59. Dandle Din'mont : an eccentric character in Scott's novel 
 "Guy Mannering." 
 
 Rob Roy : hero of Scott's story of the same name. 
 
 Clav'erhouse : a character in "The Bride of Lammermoor." 
 
 Ellen Douglas: heroine of Scott's " Lady of the Lake." 
 
 Flora Maclvor : heroine of " Waverley." 
 
 Rose Bradwardine: a character in "Waverley." 
 
 Catherine Seyton : a character in " The Abbot." 
 
 Dian'a Vernon : heroine of " Rob Roy." 
 
 Lilias Redgauntlet : a character in Scott's story " Redgauntlet." 
 
 Alice Bridgenorth : heroine of " Peveril of the Peak." 
 
 Alice Lee : a character in " Woodstock." 
 
 Jeanie Deans: a character in " Heart of Midlothian." 
 
 60. A love poe?n to his dead lady : Be'atrice, to whom the poet 
 Dante had been deeply attached, died in her 24th year. Dante's 
 love for her became to him a source of poetic inspiration, and he 
 represents her as his guide in the " Paradiso." 
 
 Dan'te Rossett'i: a distinguished artist and poet, and a per- 
 sonal friend of Ruskin. 
 
 61. Andromache (An-drom'-a-ke) : wife of Hector, a Trojan 
 hero in the " Iliad." 
 
 Cassan'dra : daughter of Priam, King of Troy. She was gifted 
 with the power of prophecy,* but Apollo, whom she had offended, 
 cursed her so that no one would believe her predictions. 
 
 Nausic'aa : daughter of the King of the Phoea'cians, whose 
 court was visited by Ulysses in his wanderings (" Odyssey "). She 
 is a type of maidenly purity. 
 
 PeneTo-pe : wife of Ulysses, — type of wifely constancy. 
 
 Antig'one: heroine of Sophocles' drama of that name, — type 
 of filial devotion. 
 
 Iphigenia (If-i-gen-ra) : daughter of Agamemnon, leader of the 
 Greeks in the Trojan war, who offered her as a sacrifice to. pro- 
 pitiate the offended goddess Diana. 
 
106 SESAME AND LILIES. 
 
 Alces'tis : wife of Adme'tus, to save whose life she offered to die. 
 Hercules brought her to life and restored her to her husband. 
 
 62. Una : an allegorical character in Spenser's " Faery Queene." 
 She represents Truth. 
 
 Brit'omart: a character in the same poem. She typifies 
 Chastity. 
 
 Lawgiver of all the earth : Moses, who was adopted by an 
 Egyptian princess, daughter of Pharoah. — See Exodus ii. 5-10. 
 
 Athe'na: see Annotations to Kings' Treasuries, 45. 
 
 The Egyptian ' Spirit of Wisdom ' is the goddess A T eith. 
 
 Aeschylus (Es'-ke-lus): a celebrated tragic dramatist of Greece. 
 
 68. A Vestal temple : a temple sacred to Vesta, goddess of the 
 hearth, and therefore dedicated to purity and peace. 
 
 Pharos : a lighthouse built on an island at the entrance of the 
 port of Alexandria in Egypt, one of the wonders of the ancient 
 world. 
 
 69. "La donna e mobile''''', woman is changeable. 
 
 " Qual pi'um' al vcnto ": like a feather in the wind. 
 "Variable as the shade," etc.: see Scott's " Marmion," Canto 
 vi. Stanza 30. 
 
 70. That poet who is distinguished, etc. : Wordsworth. 
 
 71. The lines quoted are from Wordsworth's poem entitled 
 " She was a Phantom of Delight." 
 
 8 1 . Christ Church : one of the colleges forming the University 
 of Oxford. 
 
 Trinity : one of the colleges belonging to the University of 
 Cambridge. 
 
 82. Joan of Arc : the French peasant girl of Domre'my whose 
 courage and enthusiasm enabled her to lead the French troops to 
 victory over the English invaders (1402 a.d.). 
 
 Touraine: a province of France. 
 
 German Diets : legislative bodies in Germany are called Diets. 
 
 84. Snowdon : the highest mountain in Wales (3571 feet). 
 
 Holy Head : a seaport town on an island west of the island of 
 Anglesea, with which it is e-onnected by a causeway. 
 
 Parnas'sus : a mountain in Greece, believed to be a favorite 
 haunt of Apollo and the Muses. 
 
ANNOTATIONS. 107 
 
 Island of Aegi'na: an island of Greece, sixteen miles from 
 Athens, anciently celebrated for its magnificent temples. 
 
 Minerva : Roman name for Athena, goddess of wisdom. 
 
 87. Power of the royal hand that heals in touching: an 
 allusion to the belief formerly current in England that the sov- 
 ereign had the gift of healing by a touch. 
 
 90. Rex et Regi'na (Latin) and Roi et Reine (French) for king 
 and queen. Derived from the Latin verb regere, to direct or 
 guide straight ; hence right. 
 
 91. Deigra'tia: by the grace of God. 
 
 93. " Her feet have touched the meadows" etc. • -from Tenny- 
 son's " Maud." 
 
 94. The lines quoted are from Scott's " Lady of the Lake," 
 Canto i. Stanza 18. 
 
 Dances of Death : pleasures of a life of dissipation. 
 
 Matil'da: an Italian countess, benefactress of the Church. 
 Matilda (Dante) and Maud (Tennyson) are really the same 
 name. 
 
 Lethe : in Greek mythology, a river of the underworld, a drink 
 of whose waters caused forgetfulness of the past. Dante, how- 
 ever, attributed to its waters a double power : — 
 
 " Power to take away 
 Remembrance of offence " — and — " to bring 
 Remembrance back of every good deed done." 
 
 Purgatorio xxix. 134. 
 
 " Come into the garden, Maud" etc. : quoted from Tennyson's 
 poem " Maud." 
 
 95. Madeleine: same as Magdalene. See John xx. 20. 
 
 That old garden where the fiery sword is set: see Genesis 
 iii. 24. 
 
 Sanguine seed : the seeds of the pomegranate seem to be blood- 
 red in color. Sanguine is derived from the Latin sanguis, blood. 
 
 " Take us the foxes" etc. See Song of Solomon ii. 15. 
 
OCT ♦ 1905