LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. Chap..!:-.!.- Copyright No. ..•?M i^O o UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. AET A^^D LIFE ARUSKIN ANTHOLOGY COMPILED BY WM. SLOANE KENNEDY "Ih((ve always fhoiir/hf that more true force of persuasion mirjht he obtained by rightly choosing and arranging what others have said, than by painfully saying it again in one's own ivay." — RusKiN, Furs Clavigera, Vol. I., p. 381. NEW YORK: JOHN B. ALDEN, PUBLISHER. 1 TVVo Copies iiti«^£ivEE), L/trary yf Conjfret% Office f th« MAV •» 6 1900 Kojfleter of Copyright* SECOND COPY. -. Copyrighted, 1886 and 1900 *'^. BY John B. Alden. Of old sang Chaucer of the Floicer and Leaf : The viirthful singer of a golden time ; I ' And stveet birds' song throughout his daisied rliume Rang fearless ; for our cities held no grief 3 Dumb in their blackened hearts beneath the grime ) Of factory and furnace, and the sheaf v^ Was borne in gladvA'ss ar the harvest-time. J So now the Seer u'ould Quicken our belief : ^ " Life the green leaf,'''' saith he, "and Art the flower, k:^ Blow winds of heaven about the hearts of men, Come love, and hope, and helpfulness, as ivhen On fainting vineyard falls the freshening shoicer : Fear not that life may blossom yet again, A nobler beauty from a purer power ! '^ H. Bellyse Baildon, in John Buskin, Economist. CONTENTS. PAOE Introduction, 11 PART I.- ART. Section I. CardiDal Tenets, 21 Art and Man in the Middle AKes, 46 Imitation and Finisli, 50 Great Art and Great Men 60 The Imagination in Art, 67 Section II.— The Graphic Arts. Chapter I.— Painting, TO Religious Painting, 86 Venice and tlie Venetian Painters, 90 The Dntch Masters 105 The Classical School, 106 Landscape, ^ . . 109 Turner Ill Turner and the Spliigen Drawing 117 Color 123 Pre-Raphaelitism, 130 Chapter II.— Engraving 133 Illumination, 135 Wood Cuts, 136 Section III.— Architecture, 143 Home Architecture, J45 City and Suburban Arcliitecture, 147 Gothic Architecture, 154 Section IV.— Sculpture, 166 Sculpture in Relation to the Workingman, .... 169 Tlie Tombs of the Doges in Venice, 171 6 CONTENTS. PART II.-SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY. PAGE Chapter I. Economic Caiious , , .181 Wealth 189 Livbor, li»l Riches, . 194 Poverty, 214 On Co-operation, 225 Trade, 220 Land 238 Machinerj-, 243 War, 244 Modern Warfare, 248 A Dream-Parable of War and Wf altli, 256 Government, 25S Liberty 202 Fiesh Air and Light, .264 Chapter IL Education, 269 The Education of Children 287 Teacliinpf Science to Children, 29'> Education in Art, 298 Chapter III. Museums, 309 Chapter IV. St, George's Guild, • . .314 In llusldn's Utopia, 319 PART in.— THE CONDUCT OF LIFE. Chapter I. Morals ^ ... 329 Domestic Servants, 349 Liquor Question, 352 Gentlemauliness and Vulgarit}% 354 Chapter II. Religion 357 The Bible, 307 Chapter III. Women 380 Women and Religion, 380 Girls 390 CH.'kPTEK IV. '•TlieMob." 403 Address by a Mangled Convict to a Benevolent Gentleman, 419 CONTENTS. 7 PART IV.— SCIENCE. PAGE Chapter I. Serpenl^, 425 Birds, ' 427 Chaptkr II. Botany 4132 Chapter III. Mineials 440 Chapter IV. Clouds, . . , 446 Chapter V, Bits of Thought 453 PART V. -NATURE AND LITERATURE. Chapter I. Nature, 407 The Sea 4SJ TheMonntaiiis, 484 Chapter II. Literature 502 Books 503 Myths 514 Fiction 518 Scott and his Novels 521 Poems by Ruskin, 530 Chapter III. Autobiographical, 531 Reminiscences of my Cliildhood 542 Leaves from Ruskins Piivate Accounts, 553 Chapter IV. Odds and Ends, 561 APPENDIX. Ruskins Writings in Classified Groups, PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. When John Ruskin died the other day on the shores of Coniston water the last of the group of idealistic giants of the Victorian era passed away. One must pity the man or woman who has lived as the contemporary of this man and not had his or her life enriched by his gospel of beauty and justice. He has shown us the world's delicate tent of blue shutting- down around a splendor of living beauty that makes a mere child's toy of even such a marvellous shrine as that of St. Mark's. Single-handed Ruskin slew the vile and heartless Ricardo and Adam Smith school of political economy, proving it unscientific because treat- ing man as a machine, and ignoring the chief element in the case, — the emotional and moral nature. Even his enemies admit that he has done this. It was a great service. Ruskin has rescued the study of art in England from dilettanteism. His judgments on special works of the old and the modern painters (you can see for yourself when you examine the originals) are often absurdly awry, exaggerated, swayed by his own eccentric personal bias ; but, as has been said of Carlyle, his very foibles are interesting. His harsh words about America were, like Carlyle's, largely the result of dense ignorance of the best men and things here. Charles Eliot Norton he loved, but he seemed to think Norton the only man America had produced 1 I suppose if I had not availed myself of Professor Norton's kind offices, when writing to get permission from Ruskin to make this volume of selec- tions from his works, I should have fared ill. For, although I wrote ofEering him the copyright proceeds of the work (wliich he kindly refused in my favor), 9 10 PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. the MS. had ah'eady been phiced in the printer's hands.* Last summer, a year ago, I spent a few hours at Coniston Lake, and took a walk to Brantwood, which is the last house out from Coniston, all beyond it, southward, being an unbroken solitude until the end of the lake is reached, four miles away. A great spongy fell slopes up and away from the estate, which borders the lake. (I got lost up among the mists of one of these gloomy and rainy uplands, or mountain fells, not far from Coniston, yet was smitten witli its grandeur and semi-conscious slumbering life, as of Browning's hills lying with chin on hand.) The road of approach to Brantwood is a public one and runs along the lakeside, the few residences lying between it and the lake. Running streams of pure water descend from the fell, and out of the hillwood, across the road. The terminus of the only railroad that has tried to penetrate the Lake Region is on the opposite side of the water from Brantwood ; yet the infrequent shrieks of the locomotive can be plainly heard there. The master had, willi-nilli, to endure the hated things. On my return, I stopped and chatted with a halo and canny old " wesher-woman," as she called herself, wlio lived on this same Ruskinward road, not very far from Brant- wood, and whose lowly cottage door was glorified by a canopy of reddest roses (England seemed to me even more the land of roses than Italy ; every other cot- tage has a gloire, or some red or white rose clamber- ing to its thatched dormers and about its roof). She said a gentleman and his wife from foreign parts had visited Brantwood that summer. " From America ? " " Yes. I think from America, or some such road," — half apologetically, as if anybody who did not live in Coniston were necessarily a little under suspicion for foolish wandering from the established and ordained center of the world. W. S. K. Belmont, Mass., April 4, 1900. * Professor Norton wrote me (April 23, '86): "Mrs. Severn writes (7 April) of Mr. Ruskin and your ' Selec- tions ' : 'As regards the extracts, be says he's pleased Mr. Kennedy has enjoyed his work, and that he's at liberty to publisb tbem,'" INTRODUCTION. John Rtjskin was born in London, February 8th, 1819, at his father's house, number 54 Hunter Street, Brunswick Square — a locality not far from the British Museum. For the greater part of his boyhood, youth, and manhood, up to 1871, his home was in Camber- well, a rural suburb of London, lying four miles south of the Centre and between Sydenham and Chelsea. His education was of the sternest Puritan kind, it being the purpose of his parents to make a clergyman of him. The decrees respecting toys were of Spartan severity. At first he had none ; when he got older he had a cart, a ball, two boxes of wooden bricks, and a two-arched bridge in blocks ; — that was all. At seven he began Latin with his mother. His first writings were certain compositions and poems printed in imitation of black print in a little red-bound book, four by six inches in dimensions ; the title-page was as follows, (see " Prae terita'') : "Harry and Lucy Concluded. Being the Last Part of Early Lessons : in four vol- uitfES. Vol. I. with copper plates. Printed AND Composed by a little boy and also drawn." His first piece of scientific composition was a mini>.'- alogical dictionary, begun when he was twelve, and writ- ten in crystallographic signs that later were unintel- ligible even to himself. He began to learn drawing prop- er by carefully copying the maps out of a small, old- fashioned quarto atlas. His first picture was a Dovei Castle, done when he was twelve. Later, his art studies were earned on under the direction of Copley Field- ing and J. D. Harding, Of an evening, at Heme Hill, he was usually placed in a little niche by the fireplace, with a table before him to hold his cup and l)]atteror his book, while his father read aloud from Walter Scott, Shakespeare, Don Quixote, or some other classic. 12 R USKLX A NTHOL G Y. When his mother's tuition was ended he was sent to the school kept by the Rev. Thomas Dale, and thence to Oxford (about 1836). He entered his name as a gentleman commoner on the rolls of Christ Church, and, under Dr. Buckland, laid the foundation of his geological knowledge. In 18.57 he accepted the Mastership of the Elemen- tary and Landscape School of Drawing, at the Working Men's College, in Great Ormond Street, London, ful- filling the duties of the office without salary. It was for the pupils in this evening school that he wrote his J^Iements of Urau-'tiKj. In 1867, the Senate of Cambridge University con- ferred upon him the degree of LL.D., and at the same time he was appointed Rede Lecturer at Cam- bridge. In 1869, Mr. Felix Slade bequeathed a large sum for the founding of Art Professorships in Oxford, Cambridge, and London. Ruskin was thereupon elect- ed Slade Professor of the Fine Arts at Oxford ; (re- elected in 1876, resigned in 1878 on account of illness.* resumed his duties in 1883). In 1871, Professor Ruskin bought, without seeing it, the old estate of Brantwood (" steep wood "), on Con- iston Water, in the Lake District, where he had played when a boy of seven years. The fourteen acres of •Brantwood are steep, craggy, and picturesque, containing streams, heather, nut-trees, and wild flowers, and abut- ting directly on Lake Coniston. Ruskin spent about !i)>oO,000 on the place before he had it to his mind, '1510,000 of this sum going to build a lodge for his pet cousin and her children. He is a famous fellow among boys and girls, and is voted by everybody to be a cap- ital neighbor. Professor Ruskin is emotional and nervous in man- ner, his large eye at times soft and genial, and again quizzing and mischievous in its glance, the mouth thin and severe, chin retreating, and forehead prominent. He has an iron-grey beard, wears old-fashioned coats, sky-blue neck cloths, and gold spectacles ; is rather petit, about five feet five in height ; his pronunciation as broad as Dundee Scotch, and at times "as indistinct as * Thrice has he been at death's door ; i.e. . in the years 1871 . 1878, and 1S85. INTRODUCTION. 13 Belgravia Cockney." He is one of the most popular lecturers in England, and his influence over the stu- dents at Oxford is said to have been such that, at one time, he purposely avoided (in a measure) their society that it might not be thought that he was doing an in- justice to his fellow-professors. Mr. Stopford Brooke rightly speaks of Ruskin as the most original man in England. And the Frenchman, Milsand, means the same thing when he says of his genius that it is fwitasqae et hizarretnent "aeceiitae. " He writes like a consecrated priest of the abstract and ideal," said Charlotte Bronte. And Carlyle wrote to JEmerson, in the last letter he ever sent him, the sub- joined words :— "There is nothing going on among us as notable to me as those fierce lightning-bolts Ruskin is copiously and desperately pouring into the black world of Anarchy all around him. No other man in England that I meet has in him the divine rage against iniquity, falsity, and base- ness that Ruskin has, and that every man ought to have."* Says Ruskin's old enemy, TJie iSpectator (x\utumn of 1384):— "No other critic ever occupied such a position. He expresses his thoughts on art in words which, in their exquisite collocation, their perfection at once of form and lucidity, have been rivalled, in oi;r generation, only l)y Cardinal Newman. He is one of the best known and most appreciated figures in our generation. His old- er books are among the treasures of the bibliophile, his later works are purchased like scarce jilates, his opinions are quoted like texts from a Holy Book." The first thing I note in his make and stamp is that he is Scotch on his father's side, and possibly also on that of his mother. He has Scotch traits — eccentricity, waywardness, paradox, quaint frets and freakish knots in the grain, a sort of stub-twist in the fibre, a Dant- esque imagination, and solemn Covenanter zeal in re- ligioc. It is as a teach «r of the people that he is preemi- nent. He imparts more than a contagious enthusiasm ; * Carl^if's roeopnition of Ruskin as a man of genius and prophet- power dales fnini isco, the j-ear of the publication of Unto This Last. (See Froude's Carlyle in London, II. Chap. XXV.) 14 RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. he not onl} inspires and uplifts the soul, but clarifies the intellect by his lucid and elegant expositions of ab- struse subjects. What severe thought on every page of his books, presented in how graceful and piquant a form ! How many new truths won by hardest toil ! How searchingly he probes, unfibres, unjoints, dis- solves, enumerates, classifies ! If his life sufficed, you would hardly be surprised to find him counting twice and thrice and again all the stars of heaven and the grains of sand by the sea. The soft cloudlets of the upper sky, the toppling cumulus, the shambling dance of the no-formed waves (to the slow music of the thun- der and the wind), the sprangle and green-shine of their hollow-curving crests, the lustre and coloring of the breast of a dove, the tintings and shadows of moun- tain rock, the intricate curves of leaf and bough — with all these he is at home, and for their hidden laws he reverently seeks. " Of the facts and aspects of nature," says W. M. Rossetti, " Mr. Ruskin is and must re- main a teacher of teachers, an expounder to expounders, and a poetiaer among those who feel and write poeti- cally." In the power of placing a subject in a new and start- ]ing light by means of a clear, well-chosen illustration or parallelism Ruskin is unsurpassed. He is a verbal antiquary, never satisfied until he has penetrated to the root-meaning of the important words he uses. What new strength and vividness he gives to Bible texts ! No noble or sententious thought so worn by the attrition of ages but he will pluck it fondly forth from its dull obscurity, cleanse it of rust, and set it a-gleara ?£rain in a foil of skilful explanation or glowing eulogy. He reads continually between the lines, and has ahaLH of challenging accepted statements to see if the^'' ring tvie. He is in part a conservative and in part i radiorc^ . Yet his radicalism is but a backward-working forse he would destroy and change, but only for the pur pose of reviving good old ways and tried customs.; "What our fathers have told us" no one more rever- ently receives. His style is impetuou;s and orn?te, his words loaded with meaning. Perhaps the word "intensity" INTRODUCTION. 15 best describes liis style.* Repressed passion lurks be- neath every page. For terrible and cutting irony he is equalled by no other English writer, except it ba Swift. His syllogisms are weapons with long range : he withholds his conclusion ; approaches it cautiously, with subtle concealment and through devious ways; apparently starts off in the opposite direction (note what Scott calls the national — Scotch — indirection), then, with lightning-swift stride and gleam of sword, rushes tlirough a side way directly to his goal. In studying the art-writings of Kuskin, there are three important dates to be borne in mind ; namely, 1858, 1800, and 1874. Previous to the year 1858 he believed the religious spirit to be necessary to su- preme art-power. But during the next sixteen years (1858-1874) his studies of the great Venetians led him to believe that Tintoret and Titian were greater painters than Cimabue, Giotto, or Angelico. In 1874, however, while copying some of Giotto's work at Aijsisi, he discovered, he says {Fors Clavlgera Lxxvi.), that that painter was inferior to the Vene- tians only in the material sciences of the craft, and that, in the real make-up of hifii, he was after all supe- rior to them, just on account of his religious faith. The third fulcrum date — isCiO — marks the entrance of Ruskin into the field of Social Science, and the conse- quent partial diversion of his mind from the study of nature_and_art^_ - The art-teachings of Ruskin may be summed up in a few words: '-AH great art is praise," the expression of man's delight in God's work. The greatest art is born of a noble national morality, and is conditioned upon the moral fibre of the workman. The greatest art is that which copies nature with the most loving fidelity and the most minute finish consistent with noble ima- ginative invention, or design. The greatest art can- not coexist with smoke, filtli, noise, and mechanism. The naive and Biblical [)iety of Ruskin gives to his writings a considerable part of their charm. Educated in a narrow sectarianism he has gradually adopted *Tn one instance {8emmi- and Liliea, 'English edition 1871 ). wishing to lay the utmost possilile stress upon a pathetic account of deatU by stai-vatiou, he prints the wliole narrative iu blooJ-red ink. 16 EUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. Broad Church views, without giving up the essentials of Christianity, As late as 1H80 he said: "I write as a Christian to Christians, that is to say, to persons who rejoice in the hope of a literal, perpetual life, with a literal, personal, and eternal God." He urges his readers to " confess Christ before men." He believes literally and unmetaphorically in a Devil, a deceiving and evil spirit in nature, the Lord of Lies and the Lord of Pain. " I am always quite serious," he writes, "when I speak of the Devil." For forty-five years he scarcely missed once being at church on Sun- day, and never misses the opportunity of talking with I'cligious persons. His well-known lavish benevolence is a legitimate corollary of his creed : it is the Sermon on the Mount put into practice. That he was on the London committee for the victualling of Paris in 18T1, sliows that his reputation for compassionate benevo- lence had become as well known as in the case of a Geoi'ge Peabody or a Lady Burdett-Coutts. And in truth the purse of no man in England has been more ready to open for the relief of suffering merit or genius. His benefactions for a single year have amounted to over f 70,000 . The gist, or marrow, of Mr^ Ruskin's political econo- my, or social philosophy, is that in all economic laws and measures the moral relations and social affections have got to be considered. Political economy, as at present taught, is merely a mercantile system of cut and dried I'ules for getting rich at the expense of somebody else. But political economy, in the large and proper sense, does not mean the art of getting rich, but it teaches how wisely to order the affairs of a state, and produce and distribute the good things of life, especially good men and women. It is not a science at all, but a system of moral conduct; for industry, frugality, and discretion — the tliree foundation-stones of economy — are moral qualities. Surely in its general features his economic teaching is sound and good. It is only on account of the visionary and impracticable nature of certain of its details that the whole system has been received with ridicule. It was because Ruskin saw very clearly the impossibility of getting his favorite IXTRODUUTION. 17 theories ad(ipted by society in general that he formed the bold scheme ot' establishing in England (and after- ward in various other countries) ideal associations — named by him "Guilds of St. George " — around which should gradually cluster all the better elements of soci- ety. Scattered through his books called Fors Clavi- gera you will find the details of this scheme little by little set down ; and, if you make a thorough study of it, it is probable that you will see as much in it to admire as to blame. You will not like his doctrines of coer- cion and blind obedience, and you may smile af his sumptuary laws and his theory of universal state aid for the poor; but the establishment of museums and libraries, the advocacy of free trade, organization of guarantee trade-guilds for the production and warrant- ing of honest work, the insistence on industry, the emphasis laid on agricultural work, and the attempt to reconcile labor with culture, the reclaiming of waste lands and formation of mountain reservoirs for rain-water, the noble care of the infirm and disabled, lowering of rents in proportion to improve- ments, avoidance of usury, and formation of a national store of wealth — all this we must emphatically in- dorse. It is good and only good, and adapted to tlu' mending of broken down civilization. Along such lines as these must England move if she would retain her power. It may well be that the framework of Ruskin's Guild will fall to pieces at his death. The great .secu- lar energies of society are perpetually beating against any forced or artificial organism formed within its limits, till it is finally swept away and incorporated in the great catholic movements and life of humanity. But no matter; what is good in the scheme of St. George will survive, Ruskin has blazed a path through the wood, made a little garden in the wilderness, dug wells of purest water of life. The lesson will not fail of its effect, the leaven will work. Is there anything in the life of the English people more significant than the existence of this very Guild? Like a dewy hill- croft or pastoral upland, lifted above the pall of Eng- land's smoke ; like sunlight glinting on a troubled sea, 18 RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. a swirl of rich colors in an arctic night, an oasis in a boundless desert, a living fountain in a dry and thirsty hind — such, in the midst of the grossness of Anglo- American materialism, seeins to some of us the social idealism of John Ruskin. PREFATORY NOTE. With a few exceptions, tiie page references through- out this volume are made to the edition of Prof. Rus- kin's whole works published by Mr. John B. Alden, (1885-6.) The references are, however, approximately correct for any edition, and may serve as an index to the various topics treated by Ruskin — an index useful both to his old admirers and to new readers \ 'ho wish to know all that he has written on a given subject.' For permission to use the sonnet prefixed to the vol- ume I am indebted to the courtesy of its author, Mr. H. Bellyse Baildon of Scotland. The parchment- covered, "Round-Table" series in which it originally appeared, contains, besides the study of Ruskin, ap- preciative essays on the protagonists of our own liter ature — Whitman and Emerson. W. S. K. Part I. -A R 1\ A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. PART I. — ART. Section I. — Cardinal Tenets. Great art [is] the Art of Dreaming. — Modern Painters, IV., p. 384. All great art is delicate. — Elements of Drawing, p. 8. The art, or general productive and formative en- ergy, of any country, is an exact exponent of its ethi- cal life. You can have noble art only from ngble per- sons. — Jjevtiires on Art, p. 22. I have had but one steady aim in all that I have ever tried to teach, namely — to declare that whatever was great in human art was the expression of man's de- light in God's work. — The Two Paths, p. 34. Thoroughly perfect art is that which proceeds from tlie heart, which involves all the noble emotions ; — as- sociates with these the head, yet as inferior to the lieart ; and the hand, yet as inferior to the heart and head; and thus brings out the whole >man. — IVie Ta'o Paths, p. 38. Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts — the book of their deeds, the book of their words, and the book of their art. Not one of these books can be understood unless we read the two others ; but of the three, the only quite trustworthy one is the last. The acts of a nation may be triumph- ant by its good fortune ; and its words mighty by the 23 -4 RUSKIX ANTHOLOGY. genius of a few of its children : but its art, only by the general gifts and common sympathies oi the race. — ■ ;St. Mark's Itest, p. 3. An artist is a person who has submitted to a law which it was painful to obey, that he may bestow a de- light which it isgracious to bestow. — J-'Vrs, III., p. 5H. Art axd Mechanism. — Almost the whole system and hope of modern life are founded on the notion that you may substitute mechanism for skill, photograph for picture, cast-iron for sculpture. That is your main nineteenth century faith, or infidelity. You think you can get everything by grinding — music, literature, and painting. You will find it grievously not so ; you can get nothing but dust by mere grinding. — Lectures on Art, p. G6. The Material Conditioxs of Art. — All art which is worth its room in this world, all art which is not a piece of blundering refuse, occupying the foot or two of earth which, if unencumbered by it, would have grown corn or violets, or some better thing, is art ii'hicJi 2)roreeds from an individual mind, vorkin^j through instruments 'which assist, but do not sujxr- sede,the muscular action of the hu/nan hand, upon them<(teri(ds which most tenderly receive, and most securely retain, the impressions of such honan labor. — Stones i of Venice, III., p. 41. CoNDiTioN3 OF A ScHooL OF Art. — Nothing may ever be made of iron that can as effectually lie made of wood or stone; and nothing moved by steam that can be as effectually moved by natural "forces. And ob- serve, that for all mechanical effort required in social life, and in cities, water power is infinitely more than enough ; for anchored mills on the large rivers, and jiills m.oved by sluices from reservoirs filled by the tide, will give you command of any quantity of con- stant motive power you need. Agriculture by the hand, then, and absolute refusal or banishment of unnecessary igneous force, are the first conditions of a school of art in any country. And un- 24 A R USKIN A NTHOLOG Y. til you do this, be it soon or late, things will continue in that triumphant state to which, for want of finer art, your mechanism has brought them ; — that, though England is deafened with spinning wheels, her people have not clothes — though she is black with digging of Cuel, they die of cold — and though she has sold her soul for gain, they die of hunger. Stay in that triumph, if you choose ; but be assured of this, it is not one which the fine arts v/ill ever share with you. — Lec- tures OH, Art, p. 80. European Youth. — It is certain that the general body of modern European youth have their minds oc- cupied more seriously by the sculpture and painting of the bowls of their tobacco-pipes, than by all the divinest work;nrianship and passionate imagination of Greece, Rome, and Mediaeval Christendom. — Aratr(t Pente- Ucl, p. 48. Fine Ak:" and Sweet Nature. — Whatever you can afford to spend for education in art, give to good masters, and lea'^e them to do the best they can for you : and what you A inrSKIN ANTHOLOGY. Nature First, Art Second. — The beginning of all my own right art work in life (and it may not be un- profitable that I should tell you this), depended not on my love of art, but of mountains and sea. . . . And through the whole of following life, whatever power of judgment I have obtained, in art, which I am now confident and happy in using, or communi- cating, has depended on my steady habit of always looking for the subject principally, and for the art only as the means of expressing it. — J^arjle^s JVest, p. 33. The Best Art not always Wanted. — The best art is not always wanted. Facts are often wanted without art, as in a geological diagram ; and art often without facts, as in a Turkey carpet. And most men have been made capable of giving either one or the oth- er, but not both ; only one or two, the very highest, can give both. — ^Sto/ies of Venice, II., p. 183. Copyists. — The common painter-copyists- who en- cumber our European galleries with their easels and pots, are, almost without exception, persons too stupid to be painters, and too lazy to be engravers. — Ari- adne, p. 79. Advice to Tourists in Italy. — My general direc- tions to all young people going to Florence or Rome would be very short: "Know your first volume of Vasari, and your two first books of Livy ; look about you, and don't talk, nor listen to talking." — Mornings in Fiorotce, p. 07. Stone Dolls after All. — The greater part of the technic energy of men, as yet, has indicated a kind of childhood ; and the race becomes, if not more wise, at least more manly, with every gained century. I can fancy that all this sculpturing and painting of ours may be looked back upon, in some distant time, as a kind of doll-making, and that the words of Sii Isaac New- ton may be smiled at no more : only it will not be for stars that we desert our stone dolls, but for men. — Ar- atra Pent did, p. 127. Dilettante Lovers of Art. — The modern " Ideal " (jf high art is a curious mingling of the gracefulness CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 27 and reserve of the drawing-room with a certain meas- ure of classical sensuality. — 3Todern Painters, III., p. 84. The fashionable lady who will write five or six pages in her diary respecting the effect upon her mind of such and such an " ideal " in marble, will have her drawing-room table covered with Books of Beauty, in which the engravings represent the human form in every possible aspect of distortion and affectation ; and the connoisseur who, in the morning, pretends to the most exquisite taste in the antique, will be seen, in the evening, in his opera-stall, applauding the least grace- ful gestures of the least modest figurante. — Modern Painters, III., p. 86. Let it be considered, for instance, exactly how far the value of a picture of a girl's head by Greuze would be lowered in the market, if the dress, which now leaves the bosom bare, were raised to the neck ; and how far, in the commonest lithograph of some ut- terly popular subject, — for instance, the teaching of Uncle Tom by Eva — the sentiment which is supposed to be excited by the exhibition of Christianity in youth is complicated with that which depends upon Eva's having a dainty foot and a well-made satin slipper. — Modern Painters, III., p. 84. The beauty of the Apollo Belvidere, or Venus de Medicis, is perfectly palpable to any shallow fine lady or fine gentleman, though they would have perceived none in the face of an old weather-beaten St. Peter, or' a grey-haired " Grandmother Lois." The knowl- edge that long study is necessary to produce these reg- ular types of the human form renders the facile admir- ation matter of eager self-complacency ; the shallow spectator, delighted that he can really, and without hypocrisy, admire what required much tliought to pro- duce, supposes himself endowed with the highest crit- ical faculties, and easily lets himself be carried into rhapsodies about the " ideal," which, when all is said, if they be accurately examined, will be found literally to mean nothing more than that the figure has got handsome calves to its legs, and a straight nose. — Mod- ern Painters, III., p. 85. ;.>S A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. . Your modern mob of English and American tourist*?, following a lamplighter through the V^atican to have pink light thrown for them on the Apollo Belvidere, are farther from capacity of understanding Greek art. than the parish charity boy, making a ghost out of a turnip, with a candle inside.— T^^^ D'Arno, p. 11. The Nude. — I can assert to you as a positive and perpetual law, that so much of the nude body as in the daily life of the nation may be shown with modesty, and seen with reverence and delight — so much, and no more, ought to be shov/n by the national arts, either of painting or sculpture. What, more than this, either art exhibits, will, assuredly, pervert taste, and, in all j)robabi!ity, morals. — Eagle s Nest, p. 102. We see in a Painting only what we bring to IT. — The sensualist will find sensuality in Titian ; the thinker will find thought ; the saint, sanctity ; the col- orist, color ; the anatomist, form ; and yet the picture will never be a popular one in the full sense, for none of these narrower people will find their special taste so alone consulted, as that the qualities which would en- sure their gratification shall be sifted or separated from others ; they are checked by the presence of the other qualities which ensure the gratification of other men. — 2yie T>ro Paths, p. 40. The Greek Ideal not Beauty but Design. — It is an error to suppose that the Greek worship, or seeking, was chiefly of Beauty. It was essentially of Right- ness and Strength, founded on Forethought: the prin- cipal character of Greek art is not Beauty, but Design : and the Dorian Apollo-worship and Athenian Virgin- worship are both expressions of adoration of divine Wisdom and Purity. Next to these great deities rank, in power over the national mind, Dionysus and Ceres, the givers of human strength and life : then, for heroic example, Hercules. There is no Venus-worship among the Greek in the great times : and the Muses are es- sentially teachers of Truth, and of its harmonies. — Crown of Wild Olliie, Lect. II., p. 55. Beauty and Truth distinguished. — Nothing is more common than to hear people who desire to be CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 25 thought philosophical, declare that " beauty is truth," and "truth is beauty." I would most earnestly beg every sensible person who hears such an assertion made, to nip the germinating philosopher ui his am- biguous bud ; and beg him, if he really believes his own assertion, never thenceforward to use two words for the same thing. The fact is, truth and beauty are entirely distinct, though often related, things. One is a prop- erty of statements, the other of objects. The state- ment that "two and two make four " is true, but it is neither beautiful nor ugly, for it is invisible ; a rose is lovely, but it is neither true nor false, for it is silent. — 3Iodcrn Pa inters, III., p. 49. Discipline in Art Work. — Because Leonardo made models of machines, dug canals, built fortifica- tions, and dissipated half his art-powei in capricious ingenuities, we have many anecdotes of him ; — but no picture of importance on canvas, and only a few with- ered stains of one upon a wall. But because his pupil, or reputed pupil, Luini, labored in constant and suc- cessful simplicity, we have no anecdotes of him ; — only hundreds of noble works. — Athena, p. 118. People affect the Customs of their Ancestors. — All other nations have regarded their ancestors with reverence as saints or heroes ; but have nevertheless thought their own deeds and ways of life the fitting subjects for their arts of painting or of verse. We, on the contrary, regard our ancestors as foolish and wicked, but yet find our chief artistic pleasures in de- scriptions of their ways of life. The Greeks and media3vals honored, but did not im- itate their forefathers ; we imitate, but do not honor. — Modern Painters, III., p. 280. Great Artists born, not made. — Many critics, especially the architects, have found fault with me for not "teaching people how to arrange masses;" for not " attributing sufficient importance to composition." Alas ! I attribute far more importance to it than they do ; — so much importance, that I should just as soon think of sitting down to teach a man how to write a Divina Commcdia, or King Lear, as how to " com- 30 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. pose," in the true sense, a single building or picture. — Pre-RaphaelUism, p. 45. Neither you nor I, nor any one, can, in the great ul- timate sense, teach anybody how to make a good de- sign. ... I could as soon tell you how to make or manufacture an ear of wheat, as to make a good artist of any kind. First you must find your artist in the grain ; then you must plant him ; fence and weed the field about him ; and with patience, ground and weath- er permitting, you may get an artist out of him — not otherwise. — The Tioo Paths, p. 68. A certain quantity of art-intellect is born annually in every nation, greater or less according to the nature and cultivation of the nation, or race of men ; but a perfectly fi.xed quantity annually, not increasable by one grain. You may lose it, or you may gather it ; you may let it lie loose in the ravine, and buried in the sands, or you may make kings' thrones of it, and overlay temple gates with it, as you choose ; but the best you can do with it is always merely sifting, melt- ing, hammering, purifying — never creating. . . . And the artistical gift in average men is not joined with others ; your born painter, if you don't make a jjainter of him, won't be a first-rate merchant, or lawyer ; at all events, whatever he turns out, his own special gift is unemployed by you ; and in no wise helps him in that other business. So here you have a certain quantity of a particular sort of intelligence, produced for you an- nually by providential laws, which you can only make use of by setting it to its own proper work, and which any attempt to use otherwise involves the dead loss of too much human energy. . . . Before a good painter can get employment, his mind has always been embit- tered, and his genius distorted. A common mind usu- ally stoops, in plastic chill, to whatever is asked of it, and scrapes or daubs its way complacently into public favor. But your great men quarrel with you, and you revenge yourselves by starving them for the first half of their lives. — ^1 Joy For l£ver, pp. 20, 21. A Workman exposes Himself in his Work. — If stone work is well put together, it means that a thoughtful man planned it, and a careful man cut it, CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 31 and an honest man cemented it. If it has too much ornament, it means that its carver was too greedy of pleasure ; if too httle, that he was rude, or insensitive, or stupid, and the like. So that when once you have learned how to spell these most precious of all legends — pictures and buildings — you may read the charac- ters of men, and of nations, in their art, as in a mir- ror; — nay, as in a microscope, and magnified a hun- dredfold ; for the character becomes passionate in the art, and intensifies itself in all its noblest or meanest delights. Nay, not only as in a microscope, but as un- der a scalpel, and in dissection ; for a man may hide himself from you, or misrepresent himself to you, ev- ery other way ; but he cannot in his work : there, be sure, you have him to the inmost. All that he likes, all that he sees — all that he can do — his imagination, his affections, his perseverance, his impatience, his clumsiness, cleverness, everything is there. If the work is a cobweb, you know it was made by a spider ; if a honeycomb, by a bee ; a worm-cast is thrown up by a worm, and a nest wreathed by a bird ; and a house built by a man, worthily, if he is worthy, and ignobly, if he is ignoble. — AtJieiia, p. 80. TiiE English Pound Piece. — As a piece of mere die-cuttmg, that St. George is one of the best bits of work we have on our money. But as a design — how brightly comic it is ! The horse looking abstractedly into the air, instead of where precisely it troiild have looked, at the beast between its legs : St. George, with nothing but his helmet on, (being the last piece of ar- mor he is likely to want,*) putting his naked feet, at least his feet showing their toes through the buskins, well forward, that the dragon may with the greatest convenience get a bite at them ; and about to deliver a mortal blow at him with a sword which cannot reach him by a couple of yards — or, I think, in George III.'s piece — with a field-marshal's truncheon. — Fors, I.,pp 363, 364. The Earliest Art Linear. — The earliest art in most countries is linear, consisting of interwoven, or * For the real difficulty in dragon- fights is not so much to kill your dragon, as to see him ; at least to see him in time, it being too prob able that he will seevou first. 32 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. richly spiral and otherwise involved arrangements of sculptured or painted lines, on stone, wood, metal, or clay. It is generally characteristic of savage life, and of feverish energy of imagination. — Lectures on Art, p. 89. A Grotesque. — A fine grotesque is the expression, in a moment, by a series of symbols thrown together in bold and fearless connection, of truths which it would have taken a long time to express in any verbal way, and of which the connection is left for the beholder to work out for himself; the gaps, left or overleaped by the haste of the imagination, forming the grotesque character. — Modern Pahitcrs, III., p. 114. The Equestrian Statue of the Duke of Well- ington. — You have a portrait of the Duke of Welling- ton at the end of the North Bridge — one of the thou- sand equestrian statues of Modernism — studied from the showriders of the amphitheatre, with their horses on their hindlegs in the sawdust. Do you suppose that was the way the Duke sat when your destinies de- pended on him? when the foam hung from the lips of his tired horse, and its wet limbs wei-e dashed with the bloody slime of the battlefield, and he himself sat anxious in his quietness, grieved in his fearlessness, as he watched, scythe-stroke by scythe-stroke, the gather- ing in of the harvest of death? You would have done something had you thus left his image in the enduring iron, but nothing \\o\n .—Lectures on Archltectare, p. 120. The Crystal Palace. — The quantity of bodily industry which that Crystal Palace expresses is very great. So far it is good. The quantity of thought it expresses is, I suppose, a single and very admirable thought of Mr. Paxtoii's, probably not a bit brighter than thousands of thoughts which pass thi'ough his active and intelligent brain every hour — that it might be possible to Jbuild a green- house larger than ever greenhouse was built before. This thought, and some very ordinary algebra, are as much as all that glass can represent of human intellect. " But one poor half-pennyworth of bread to all this in- tolerable deal of sack." — /Stones of Venice^ I., p. 407. CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 33 TriE Creative Power in Art. — Suppose Adam and Eve had been riuide in the softest clay, ever so neatly, and set at the foot of the tree of knowledge, fastened up to it, quite unable to fall, or do anything else, would they have been well created, or in any true sense created at all ? . . . A poet, or creator, is therefore a person who puts things together, not as a watchmaker steel, or a shoe- maker leather, but who puts life into them. — Modern Painters, V., p. 182. Quality, not Quantity of Art Study desir- able. — To have well studied one picture by Tintoret, one by Luini, one by Angelico, and a couple of Turner's drawings, will teach a man more than to have cata- logued all the galleries of Europe; while to have drawn with attention a porch of Amiens, an arch at Verona, and a vault at Venice, will teach him more of architect- ure than to have made plans and sections of every big heap of brick or stone between St. Paul's and the Pyramids. — JS^otes on his ovn DraiDmgs, p. 29. Three Rules. — 1. Never encourage the manufact- ure of any article not absolutely necessary, in the pro- duction of which Invention has no share. 2. Never demand an exact finish for its own sake, but only for some practical or noble end. o. Never encourage imitation or copying of any kind, except for the sake of preserving record of great works. — jS(07ies of 'fenire, II., p. 166. Art IS THE same for all Time. — Whatever changes may be made in the customs of society, whatever new machines we may invent, whatever new manufactures we may supply. Fine Art must remain what it was two thousand years ago, in the days of Phidias; two thousand years hence, it will be, in all its principles, and in all its great effects upon the mind of man, just the same. — T/ie Two Patlis, p. o9. Etruscan Art. — Etruscan art remains in its own Italian valleys, of the Arno and upper Tiber, in one unbroken series of work, from the seventh century be- fore Christ, to this hour, when the country whitewasher <*tUl scratches his plaster in Etruscan patterns. All 34 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. Florentine work of the finest kind — Luca deila Robbia's, Ghiberti's, Donatello's, Filippo Lippi's, Botticelli's, Fra Angelico's — is absolutely pure Etruscan, merely chang- ing its subjects, and representing the Virgin instead of Athena, and Christ instead of Jupiter. Every line of the Florentine chisel in the fifteenth century is based on national principles of art which existed in the seventh century before Christ. — Mornings in Flor- ence, p. 43. Destruction of Works or Art. — Fancy what Europe would be now, if the delicate statues and tem- ples of the Greeks — if the broad roads and massy walls of the Romans — if the noble and pathetic architecture of the middle ages, had not been ground to dust by mere human rage. You talk of the scythe of Time, and the tooth of Time : I tell you Time is scytheless and toothless; it is we who gnaw like the worm — we who smite like the scythe. Do you think that in this nineteenth century it is still necessary for the European nations to turn all the places where their principal art-treasures are into bat- tlefields? .... Imagine what would be the thriving circumstances of a manufacturer of some delicate pro- duce — suppose glass, or china — in whose workshop and exhibition rooms all the workmen and clerks began fighting at least once a day, first blowing off the steam, and breaking all the machinery they could reacli ; _.nd then making fortresses of all the cupboards, and attaclc- ing and defending the show-tables, the victorious party finally throwing everything they could get hold of out of the window, by way of showing their triumph, and the poor manufacturer picking up and putting away at last a cup here and a handle there. A fine prosperous business that would be, would it not ? and yet that is precisely the way the great manufacturing firm of the world carries on its business. — A Joy J'^or J^cer, p. 49. Symbols. — A symbol is scarcely ever invented just when it is needed. Some already recognized and ac- cepted form or thing becomes symbolic at a particular time. . . . Vibrate but the point of a tool against an unbaked vase, as it revolves, set on the wheel — CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 35 you have a wavy or zigzag line. The vase revolves once; the ends of the wavy line do not exactly tally when they meet ; you get over the blunder by turning one into a head, the other into a tail — and have a sym- bol of eternity — if, first, which is wholly needful, you have an iden of eternity ! Again, the free sweep of a pen at the finish of a large letter has a tendency to throw itself into a spiral. There is no particular intelligence, or spiritual emotion, in the production of this line. A worm draws it with his coil, a fern with its bud, and a periwinkle with his shell. Yet, completed in the Ionic capital, and arrested in the bending point of the acanthus leaf in the Corin- thian one, it has become the primal element of beauti- ful architecture and ornament in all the ages; and is eloquent 'with endless symbolism, representing the power of the winds and waves in Athenian work, and of the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, in Gothic work. — lujrs, I., p. 313. Importance of Dress to Historical Painting, — • I believe true nobleness of dress to be an important means of education, as it certainly is a necessity to any nation which wishes to possess living art, concerned with portraiture of human nature. No good historical painting ever yet existed, or ever can exist, where the dresses of the people of the time are not beautiful : and had it not been for the lovely and fantastic dressing of the loth to the 10th centuries, neither French, nor Floi'entine, nor Venetian art could have risen to any- thing like the rank it reached. Still, even then, the best dressing was never tlie costliest ; and its effect depended much more on its beautiful and, in early times modest, arrangement, and on the simple and lovely masses of its color, than on gorgeousnessof clasp or embroidery — A Joy For Ever, p, 39. Criticism of Art nv Young Men. — Sound criti- cism of art is impossible to young men, for it consists principally, and in a far more exclusive sense than has yet been felt, in the recognition of the facts represented by the art. A great artist represents many and abstruse fticts ; it is necessary, in order to judge of his works, that all those facts sliould be experimentally (not by 36 A RUSKiy ANTHOLOaV. hearsay) known to the observer ; whose recognition of tiieni constitutes his approving judgment. A young man ca)rnot know them. Criticism of art by young men must, therefore, con- sist either in the more or less apt retaihng and applica- tion of received opinions, or in a more or less immedi- ate and dextrous use of the knowledge they already possess, so as to be able to assert of given works o{ art that they are true up to a certain point ; the prob- ability being then that they are true farther than the young man sees. The first kind of criticism is, in general, useless, if not liarmful ; the second is that which the youths will employ who are capable of becoming ci-itics in after years. All criticism of art, at whatever period of life, must be partial ; warped more or less by the feelings of the person endeavoring to judge. — Arroirs of' the Chace, I., p. 41. Human Work as Ornament. — Ships cannot be made subjects of sculpture. No one pauses in par- ticular delight beneath the pediments of the Admiralty ; nor does scenery of shipping ever become prominent in bas-relief without destroying it : witness the base of the Nelson pillar. \t may be, and must be sometimes, introduced in severe subordination to the figure subject, but just enough to indicate the scene; sketched in the lightest lines on the background ; never with any at- tempt at reahzation, never with any equality to the force of the figures, unless the whole purpose of the subject be picturesque. . . . That is to say, when the mind is intended to derive part of its enjoyment from the parasitical qualities and accidents of the thing, not from the heart of the thing itself. And thus, while we must regret the flapping sails in the death of Nelson in Trafalgar Square, we may yet most heartily enjoy the sculpture of a storm in one of the bas-reliefs of the tomb of St. Pietro Martire in the church of St. Eustorgio at Milan, where the grouping of the figures is most fancifully conjplicated by the under-cut cordage of the vessel. In all these instances, however, observe that the per- mission to represent the human work as an ornament, CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 37 is conditional on its being necessary to the representa- tion of a scene, or explanation of an action. On no terms whatever could any such subject be independently admissible, I conclude, then, with the reader's leave, that all or- nament is base which takes for its subject human work, that it is utterly base — painful to every rightly-tonec\ mind, without perhaps immediate sense of the reason, but for a reason palpable enough when we do think of it. For to carve our own work, and set it up for ad miration, is a miserable self-complacency, a contentment in our own wretched doings, when we might have been looking at God's doings. And all noble ornament is the exact reverse of this. It is the expression of man's de- light in God's work. — iSto/tct; of Vtiitce, I., p. "ilS- 218. No great art ever was, or can be, employed in the careful imitation of the work of man as its principal subject. That is to say, art will not bear to be redupli- cated. A ship is a noble thing, and a cathedral a noble thing, but a painted ship or a painted cathedral is not a noble thing. ... A wrecked ship, or shattered boat, is a noble subject, while a ship in full sail, or a perfect boat, is an ignoble one; not merely because the one is by reason of its ruin more picturesque than the other, but because it is a nobler act in man to meditate upon Fate as it conquers his work, than upon that work itself. More complicated in their anatomy than the human frame itself, so far as that frame is outwardly discernil)le ; liable to all kinds of strange accidental variety in position and movement, yet in each position subject to imperative laws which can only be fol- lowed by unerring knowledge ; and involving in the roundings and foldings of sail and hull, delicacies of drawing greater than exist in any other inorganic object, except perhaps a snow-wreath — they [ships] present, ir- respective of sea or sky, or anything else around them, difficulties which can only be vanquished by draught- manship quite accomplished enough to render even the subtlest lines of the human face and form. But the artist who has once attained such skill as this will not devote it to the drawing of ships. He who can paint the face of St. PauT will not elaborate the parting tim- 38 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. bers of the. vessel in which he is wrecked. — ILirhors of England. Photography. — Photography cannot exhibit the character of large and finished sculpture ; but its au- dacity of shadow is in perfect harmony with the more roughly picturesque treatment necessary in coins, — Aratra Pentellci, p. G. Photographs are not true, though they seem so. They are merely spoiled nature. It is not human design you are looking for, there is more beauty in the next wayside bank than in all the sun-blackened paper you could collect in a lifetime. — Lectures on Art, p. 118. My chemical friends, if you wish ever to know any- thing rightly concerning the arts, I very urgently ad- vise you to throv/ all your vials and washes down the gutter-trap ; and if you will ascribe, as you think it so clever to do, in your modern creeds, all virtue to the sun, use that virtue through your own heads and fin- gers, and apply your solar energies to draw a skilful line or two, for once or twice in your life. You may learn more by trying to engrave, like Goodall, the tip of an ear, or the curl of a lock of hair, than by photo- graphing the entire population of the United States of America — black, white, and neutral-tint, — Ariadne, p. 70. Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Tintoret. — The works of Raphael, Michael Aiigelo, and Tintoret . . . are the most splendid efforts yet made by human crea- tures to maintain the dignity of states with beautiful colors, and defend the doctrines of theology with ana- tomical designs. — Relation between 3Iichael Angelo and Tintoret, p. 8. Nearly every existing work by Michael Angelo is an attempt to execute something beyond his power, coupled with a fevered desire that his power may be ac- knowledged. He is always matching himself either against the Greeks whom he cannot rival, or against rivals whom he cannot forget. He is proud, yet not proud enough to be at peace; melancholy, yet not dee})ly enough to be raised above petty pain ; and strong beyond all his companion workmen, yet never CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. S9 strong enough to coniniand liis temper, or limit his aims, Tintoret, on the contrary, works in the consciousness of supreme strengtii, whicli cannot be wounded by neg- lect, and is only to be thwarted by time and space. He knows precisely all that art can accomplish under given conditions ; determines absolutely how much of what can be done, he will hmiself for the moment choose to do ; and fulfills his purpose with as much ease as if, through his human body, were working the great forces of nature. . . . Both Raphael and Michael Angelo are thus, in the most vital of all points, separate from the great Vene- tian. They are always in dramatic attitudes, and al \vays appealing to the public for praise. They are the leading athletes in the gymnasium of the arts: and the crowd of the circus cannot take its eyes away from them, while the Venetian walks or rests with the sim- plicity of a wild animal ; is scarcely noticed ia his oc- casionally swifter motion ; when he springs, it is to please himself ; and so calmly that no one thinks of estimating the distance covered. — Relation heUoeen Michael Aiujelo and Tintoret, '^V-'^^y l-l- You are accustomed to think the figures of Michael Angelo sublime — because they are dark, and colossal, and involved, and mysterious — because in a word, they look sometimes like shadows, and sometimes like mountains, and sometimes like spectres, but never like human beings. Believe me, yet once more, in what i told you long since — man can invent nothing nobler than humanity. . . . All that shadowing, storming, and coiling of his, when you look into it, is mere stage decoration, and that of a vulgar kind. . . . Now, though in nearly all his greater pictures, Tin- toret is entirely carried away by his sympathy with Michael Angelo, and conquers him in his own field y — outflies him in motion, outnumbers him in multitude, outwits him \:\ fancy, and outflames him in rage — he can be just as gentle as he is strong: and that Para- dise, though it is the largest picture in the world, without any question, is also the thoughtfullest, and most precious. ... 40 .4 RUSKIX ANTHOLOGY. I have no hesitation in asserting this picture to be Ly far the most precious work of ait of any kind whatso- ever, now existing in the world. — llclailn}! hetweeii Michael A»fjdo and T'lntoret.^^^. 20-30. The Study of Anatomy destructive to Art. — Don't think you can paint a peach, because you know there's a stoiie inside ; nor a face, because you know a skull is. — Laxrs of Fesole, p. 19. The study of anatomy is destructive to art. . . . Mantegna and Diirer were so polluted and paralyzed by the study of anatomy that the former's best works (the magnificent mythology of th: \"icosin the Louvre, for instance) are entirely revolting to all women and children ; while Diirer never could draw one beautiful female form crfaee; and, of his important plates, only four, the JMelencholia, St. Jerome in his Study, St. Hubert, and Kniglit and Death, are of any use for popular instruction, because in these only, the figures being fully draped or armed, he was enabled to think and feel rightly, being d.'livered from the ghastly toil of bone-delineation — EcgMs JVest, J'nfare. I am now certain that the greater the intellect, the more fataljare the forms of degradation to which it be- comes liable in the course of anatomical study ; and that to Michael Angelo, of all men, the mischief was greatest, in destroying liis religious passion and imag- ination, and leading him to make every spiritual con- ception subordinate to the display of his knowledge of the body. — Eagles ITe.'it, p. 00. All the main work of the eagle's eye is in looking down. To Keep the sunshine above from teasing it, che cyo is put under a triangular penthouse, which is precisely the most characteristic thing in the bird's whole aspect. Its hooked beak does not materially distinguish it from a cockatoo, but its hooded eye does. But that projection is not accounted for in the skull; and, so little does the anatomist care about it, that you may hunt through the best modern v/orks on orni- thology, and you will find eagles drawn with all man- ner of dissections of skulls, claws, clavicles, sternums, and gizzards ; but you won't find so much as one poor CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 41 falcon drawn with a falcon's eye. — Eagles JVest, p. 08. Holbein draws skeleton after skeleton, m every possible gesture ; but never so much as counts their ribs ! He neither knows nor cares how many ribs a skeleton has. There are always enough to rattle. . . Monstrous, you think, in impudence — Holbein for his carelessness, and I for defending him ! Nay, 1 triumph in him; nothing has ever more pleased me than this grand negligence. Nobody wants to know how many ribs a skeleton has, any more than how many bars a gridiron has, so long as the one can breathe, and the other broil; and still less, when the breath and the fire are both out. — Ariadne, p. 98. Art in the History of Nations. — The great lesson of history is, that all the fine arts hitherto— having been supported by the selfish power of the noblesse, and never having extended their range to the comfort or the relief of the mass of the people— the arts, I say, thus practised, and thus matured, have only accelerated the ruin of the States they adorned.— 77ie 2\co Paths, p. 73. You find that the nations which possessed a refined art were always subdued by those who possessed none : you find the Lydian subdued by the Mede; tho Athe- nian by the Spartan ; the Greek by the Roman ; the Roman by the Goth ; the Burgundian by the Switzer : but you find, beyond this— that even where no attack by anv external pow?r has accelerated the catastrophe of the" state, the period in which mf given people reach their highest power in art isprecisely that in which they appear to sign the warrant of their own ruin ; and that, from the moment in which a perfect statue appears in Florence, a perfect picture in Venice, or a perfect fresco in Rome, from that hour forward, probity, industry, and courage seem to be exiled from their walls, and they perish in a sculpturesque paralysis, or a many- colored corruption. . . . And finally, while art has thus shown itself always active in the service of luxury and idolatry, it has also been strongly directed to the exaltation of cruelty. A nation which lives a pastoral and innocent life never decorates the shepherd's staff or the plough-handle, but 43 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. races who live by depredation and slaughter nearly al- ways bestow exquisite ornaments on the quiver, the helmet, and the spear. — TJte Tiro Paths, pp. 12, 13. Wherever art is practised for its own sake, and the delight of the workman is in what he does and 2)''odaces, instead of what he interprets or e.r/iibits — -there art has an influence of the most fatal kind on brain and heart, and its issues, if long so'pursued, in the destriir- tioii both of iiiteUertxal poircr and morol prlneipJi: ; whereas art, devoted humbly and self-foi-getf ally to the clear statement and record of the facts of the universe, is always helpful and beneficent to mankind, full of comfort, strength, and salvation. — The Two Paths, p. 17. The art which is especially dedicated to natural fact always indicates a peculiar gentleness and tenderness of mind, and all great and successful work of that kind will assuredly be the production of thoughtful, sensi- tive, earnest, kind men, large in their views of life, and full of various intellectual power. — Tlie Ttco Paths, p. 46. All great nations first manifest themselves as a pure and beautiful animal race, with intense energy and im- agination. They live lives of hardship by choice, and by grand instinct of manly discipline : the}^ become fierce and irresistible soldiers ; the nation is always its own army, and their king or chief head of government, is always their first soldier. . . . Then, after their great military period, comes the domestic period ; in which, without betraying the disci- pline of war, they add to their great soldiership the delights and possessions of a delicate and tender home- life : and then, for all nations, is the time of their per- fect art, which is the fruit, the evidence, the reward of their national idea of character, developed by the fin- ished care of the occupations of peace. That is the history of all true art that ever was, or can be : pal- pably the history of it — unmistakably — written on the forehead of it in letters of light — in tongues of fire, by which the seal of virtue is branded as deep as ever iron burnt into a convict's flesh the seal of crime. But al- ways hitherto, after the great period, has followed the CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 43 day of luxury, and pursuit of tlie arts for pleasure only. And all has so ended. — AtJicna, p. 82. "Fear Grace; Fear Dehcatksse." — Examine the history of nations, and you will find this great fact clear and unmistakable on the front of it — that good Art has only been produced by nations who rejoiced in it ; fed themselves with it, as if it were bread ; basked in it, as if it were sunshine ; shouted at the sight of it ; danced with the delight of it ; quarrelled for it ; fought for it ; starved for it ; did, in fact, precisely the opposite with it of what we want to do with it — the}^ made it to keep, and we to sell. . . . While most distinctly you may perceive in past his- tory that Art has never been produced, except by na- tions who took pleasure in it, just as assuredly, and even more plainly, you may perceive that Art has always destioyed the power and life of those who pur- sued it for pleasure only. . . . While men possess little and desire less, they remain brave and noble : while they are scornful of all the arts of luxury, and are in the sight of other nations as bar- barians, their swords are irresistible and their sway illimitable : but let them become sensitive to the re- finements of taste, and quick in the capacities of pleas- ure, and that instant the fingers that had grasped the iron rod, fail from the golden sceptre. . . . The only great painters in our schools of painting in England have either been of portrait — Reynolds and Gainsborough ; of the philosophy of social life — Ho- garth ; or of the facts of nature in landscape — Wilson and Turner. In all these cases, if I had time, I could show you that the success of the painter depended on his desire to convey a truth, rather than to produce a merely beautiful picture ; that is to say, to get a like- ness of a man, or of a place ; to get some moral prin- ciple rightly stated, or some historical character rightly described, rather than merely to give pleasure to the eyes. . . . You may fancy, perhaps, that Titian, Veronese, and Tintoret were painters for the sake of pleasure only : but in reality they were the only painters who ever sought entirely to master, and who did entirely master, the truths of light and shade as associated with color, 44 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. in the noblest of all physical created things, the human form. They were the only men who ever painted the human body; all other painters of the great schools are mere anatomical draughtsmen compared to them ; rather makers of maps of the body, than painters of it. — Ciunhi'hhje Tnavyural Address, pp. 9, 13, 19. Greek Art. — Greek art . . . is all parable, but Gothic, as distinct from it, literal. . . . From classic art unless you understand it, you may get nothing ; from romantic art, even if you don't understand it, you get at least delight. — Val Tf Arno, p. 98. The Greeks have not, in any supreme way, given to their statues character, beauty, or divine strength, [or divine sadness.] [Yet] from all vain and mean decoration — ail weak and monstrous error, the Greeks rescue the forms of man and beast, and sculpture them in the nakedness of their true flesh, and with the fire of their living soul. . . . The Greeks have been the origin not only of all broad, mighty, and calm conception, but of all that is divided, delicate and tremulous; "variable as the shade, by the light quivering aspen made." To them, as first leaders of ornamental design, belongs, of right, the praise of glistenings in gold, piercings in ivory, stainings in purple, burnishings in dark blue steel; of the fantasy of the Arabian roof — quartering of the Christian shield — rubric and arabesque of Christian scripture. — Aratra Pentidici, pp. 127, 129, 131. Greek art as a first, not a final, teacher. . . . Greek faces are not particularly beautiful. Of the much nonsense against which you are to keep your ears shut, that which is talked to you of the Greek ideal of beauty, is among the absolutest. There is nor. a sin- gle instance of a very beautiful head left by the high- est school of Greek art. On coins, there is even no approximately beautiful one. The Juno of Argos is a virago; the Athena of Athens, grotesque; the Athena of Corinth is insipid ; and of Thurium sensual. The Siren Ligeia, and fountain of Arethusa, on the coins of Terina and Syracuse, are prettier, but totally without expression, and chiefly set off by their well-curled liair. You might have expected something subtle in Mer- CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 45 curies ; but the Mercury of ^nus is a very stupid^ looliing fellow, in a cap like a bowl, with a knob on the top of it. Tiie Bacchus of Thasos is a drayman with his hair poniatum'd. The Jupiter of Syracuse is, how- ever, calm and refined ; and the Apollo of Clazomente would have been impressive, if he had not come down to us much flattened by friction. But on the whole, the merit of Greek coins does not primarily depend on beauty of features, nor even, in the period of highest art, that of the statues. You may take the Venus of Melos as a standard of beauty of the central Greek type. She has tranquil, reglilar, and lofty features; but could not hold her own for a moment against the beauty of a simple English girl, of pure race and kind heart. . . . That sketch of four cherub heads from an English girl, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, at Kensington, is an incomparably finer thing than ever the Greeks did. Ineffably tender in the touch, yet Herculean in power; innocent, yet exalted in feeling; pure in color as a pearl; reserved and decisive in design, as this Lion crest — if it alone existed of such — if it were a picture by Zeuxis, the only one left in the world, and you built a shrine for it, and were allowed to see it only seven days in a year, it alone would teach you all of art that you ever needed to know. . . . Then, what are the merits of this Greek art, which make it so exemplary for you ? Well, not that it is beautiful, but that it is Right. All that it desires to do, it does, and all that it does, does well. You will find, as you advance in the knowledge of art, that its laws of self-restraint are very marvelous ; that its peace of heart, and contentment in doing a simple thing, with only one or two qualities, restrictedly de- sired, and sufficiently attained, are a most wholesome element of education for you, as opposed to the wild writhing, and wrestling, and longing for the moon, and tilting at wind-mills, and agony of eyes, and torturing of fingers, and general spinning out of one's soul into fiddle-strings, which constitute the ideal life of a mod- ern artist. . . . Half the powcn- and imagiiifition of every other school depend on a ccn-tain feverish terror mingling with 46 A nUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. their sense of beauty; — the feeling that a child has in a dark room, or a sick person in seeing ugly dreams. But the Greeks never have ugly dreams. They can- not draw anything ugly when they try. Sometimes they put themselves to their wits'-end to draw an ugly thing — the Medusa's head, for instance — but tliey can't do it — not they — because nothing frightens them. They widen the mouth, and grind the teeth, and puff the cheeks, and set the eyes a-goggling; and the thing is only ridiculous after all, not the least dreadful, for there is no dread in their hearts. Pen- siveness; amazement; often deepest grief and deso- lateness. All these: but terror never. Everlasting calm in the presence of all fate ; and joy such as they could win, not indeed in a perfect beauty, but beauty at perfect rest. — Athena, pp. 154-128. The Greek, or Classic, and the Romantic Styles, — Without entering into any of the fine distinctions be- tween these two sects, this broad one is to be observed as constant: that the writers nnd painters of the Class- ic school set down nothing but what is known to be true, and set it down in the perf^ctest manner possible in their way, and are thenceforward authorities from whom there is no appeal. Romantic writers and paint- ers, on tlie contrary, express themselves under the im- pulse of passions which may indeed lead them to the discovery of new truths, or to the more delightful ar- rangement or presentment of things already known : but their work, however brilliant or lovely, remains imperfect, and without authority. — Val U'Arno, p. DfK ART AND MAN IN THE MIDDLE AGES. A degree of personal beauty, both male and female, was attained in the Middle Ages, with which classical periods could show nothing for a moment comparable : and this beauty was set forth by the most perfect splendor, united with grace, in dress, which the human race have hitherto invented. The strength of tlieir art-genius was directed in great part to this object ; and their best workmen and most brilliant fanciers were employed in wreathing the mail or embroidei'ing CAnnixA!. ThJ.xprrs of art. 47 the robe, Tlie exquisite arts of enamelling and clias- ing metal enabled them to make the armor as radiant and delicate as the plumage of a tropical bird; and the most various and vivid imaginations were displayed in the alternations of coloi', and fiery freaks of form, on shield and crest; so that of all the beautiful things which the eye:^ of men could fall upon, in the world about them, the most beautiful must have been a young knight riding out in moi-ning sunshine, and in faithful hojx". " His broad, clear brow in sunlight glowed ; On burnished liooves his war-horse trode ; From underneath his lielniet flowed His coal-black curls, as on lie rode. All in the blue, unclouded weather, Tliick jewelled shone the saddle leather ; The I'.eliuet and tlie helmet featlier Burned like one burning flame together ; And the gemmy bridle glittered free, Like to some brancli of stars we see Hung in the golden galaxy." Now, the effect of this superb presence of human beauty on men in general was, exactly as it had been in (xreek times, first, to turn their thoughts and glances in great part away from all other beauty but that, and to make the grass of the field take to them always more or less the aspect of a carpet to dance upon, a lawn to tilt upon, or a serviceable crop of hay; and, secondly, in what attention they paid to this lower na- ture, to make them dwell exclusively on what was graceful, symmetrical, and bright in color. All that was rugged, rough, dark, wild, unterminated, they re- jected at once, as the domain of "salvage men" and monstrous giants : all that they admired was tender, bright, balanced, enclosed, svmmetrical, — My'o/Wy/t'. In mediaeval art, thought is the first thing, execution the second ; in modern art execution is the first thing, and thought the second. And again, in mediseval art, truth is first, beauty second ; in modern art, beauty is first, truth second. The mediaeval principles led uj^ to Raphael, and the modern principles lead doicn from him. — Lectures on Arcldtecture, p. 110. The art of the thirteenth century is the foundation of all art — not merely the foundation, but the root of it ; that is to say, succeeding art is not merely built upon it, but was all comprehended in it, and is devel- oped out of it. — Lectures on Architect ure, p. 84. Joy and Brightness of Medi.eval Times. — The Middle Ages had their wars and agonies, but also in- tense delights. Their gold was dashed v/ith blood ; but ours is sprinkled with dust. Their life was inter- woven with white and purple ; ours is one seamless stuff of brown. Not that we are without apparent fes- tivity, but festivity more or less forced, mistaken, em- CARDINAL TESErS OF ART. 49 bittered, incouiplote — nut of the heart. — Jfodo'n Painters, III., p. 270. Longfellow a good Interpreter of the Middle Ages. — Longfellow, in the Golden Legend, has entered more closely into the temper of the Monk, for good and for evil, than ever yet theological writer or historian, though they may have given their life's labor to the analysis : and, again, Robert Browning is unerring in every sentence he writes of the Middle Ages ; always vital, right, and profound ; so that in the matter of art, with which we have been specially concerned, there is hardly a principle connected with the mediseval tem- per, that he has not struck upon in those seemingly careless and too rugged rhymes of his. — Jlodtrn Painters, IV., p. 392. Pisa in the Middle Ages. — Fancy what was the scene which presented itself, in his afternoon walk, to a designer of the Gothic school of Pisa — Nino Pisano, or any of his men. On each side of a bright river he saw rise a line of brighter palaces, arched and pillared, and inlaid with deep red porphyry, and with serpentine ; along the quays before their gates were riding troops of knights, noble in face and form, dazzling in crest and shield ; horse and man one labyrinth of quaint color and gleaming light — the purple, and silver, and scarlet fringes flow ing over the strong limbs and clashing mail, like sea- waves over rocks at sunset. Opening on each side from the river were gardens, courts, and cloisters ; long successions of white pillars among wreaths of vine ; leaping of fountains through buds of pomegranate and orange : and still along the garden-paths, and under and through the crimson of the pomegranate shadows, moving slowly, groups of the fairest women tha' Italy ever saw — fairest, because purest and thoughtfullest , trained in all high knowledge, as in all courteous art— in dance, in song, in sweet wit, in lofty learning, in loftier courage, in loftiest love — able alike to cheer, to enchant, or save, the souls of men. Above all this scenery of jierfect human life, rose dome and bell-tower, burning with white alabaster and gold ; lieyond dome and bell- tower the slopes of mighty hills, hoary with olive ; far so A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. in the north, above a purple sea of peaks of solemn Apennine, the clear, sharp-cloven Carrara mountains sent up their steadfast flames of tnarble summit into amber sky ; the great sea itself, scorching with expanse of light, stretching from their feet to the Gorgonian isles; and over all these, ever present, near or far — seen through the leaves of vine, or imaged with all its march of clouds in the Arno's stream, or set with its depth of blue close against the golden hair and burning cheek of lady and knight — that untroubled and sacred sky, which was to all men, in those days of innocent faith, indeed the unquestioned abode of spirits, as the earth was of men ; and which opened straight through its gates of cloud and veils of dew into the awfulness of the eternal world ; — a heaven in which every cloud that passed was literally the chariot of an angel, and every ray of its Evening and Morning streamed from the throne of God. . . . [Yet] all that gorgeousness of the Middle Ages, beautiful as it sounds in description, noble as in many re- spects it was in reality, had, nevertheless — for foimdation and for end, nothing but the pride of life — the pride of the so-called superior classes ; a pride which supported itself by violence and robbery, and led in the end to the destruction both of the arts themselves and the States in v.'hich they flourished. — The Two Paths, pp. 71-73. IMITATION AND FINISH. Finishing means in art simply telling more truth. — Modern Painters, III., p. 144. You must not draw all the hairs in an eyelash ; not because it is sublime to generalize them, but because it is impossible to see them. ^vlric^/MC, p. 100. Greek art, and all other art, is fine 'when it makes a tiuuCs face as like a niaiis face as it can. ... Get that well driven into your heads : and don't let it out again at your ])eril. Having got it well in, you may then farther under CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 51 stand, safely, that there is a great deal of secondary work in pots, and pans, and floors, and carpets, and shawls, and architectural ornament, which ought, es- sentially, to be unlike reality, and to depend for its charm on quite other qualities than imitative ones. But all such art is inferior and secondary— much of it more or less instinctive and animal, and a civilized human creature can only learn its principles rightly, by knowing those of great civilized art first — which is always'the representation, to the utmost of its power, of whatever it has got to show — made to look as like the thing as possible.*— J ?/ie«rt, pp. 122, 123. iVo tndt/ great man can be named in the arts— but it is that of one who finished to his utmost. Take Leonardo, Michael Angelo, and Raphael for a triad, to begin with. They all completed their detail with such subtlety of touch and gradation, that, in a careful drawing by any of the three, you cannot see where the pen'cil ceased to touch the paper ; the stroke of it is so tender, that, when you look close to the drawing you can see nothing ; you see the effect of it a liitle way back ! Thus tender in execution — and so complete in detail, that Leonardo must needs draw every several vein in the little agates and pebbles of the gravel under the feet of the St. Anne in the Louvre.— J7o(/- ern Painters, IIL, p. 143. Every quarter of an inch in Turner's drawings will bear magnifying ; much of the finer work in them can hardly be traced, except by the keenest sight, until it is magnified. In his painting of Ivy Bridge, the veins are drawn on tiie wings of a butterfly, not above three lines in diameter ; and in one of his smaller drawings of Scarborough, in my own possession, the muscle- .shells on the beach are rounded, and some shown as shut, some as open, though none are as large as one of the* letters of this tvpe ; and yet this is the man who was thought to belong to the " dashing " school, literally because most people had not patience or delicacy of " * " The Fine Arts, too,' like the coarse, and every art of Man's Gort- given Ficuhy. are to understand that they are *^^"t hither not to fth Sncl dance, but to speak and work : and on the whole, that God A miffhtv-s Farts such as given us, are the one pabu um which xmU yUw then, any nourishment in this world.-Ccn7^?., - Latter-Da>j. Pamphlets," VIII. 53 A RUSKIX AXTHOLOGY. sight enough to trace his endless detail. — Modern Painters, III., p. 142. Veronese often [draws] a finished profile, or any other portion of the contour of a face, with one line, not afterwards changed. — Lectures on Art, p. 35. Strokes by Tintoret or Paul Veronese, which were done in an instant, and look to an ignorant spectator merely like a violent dash of loaded color (and are, as such, imitated by blundering artists), are, in fact, modulated by the brush and finger to that degree of delicacy that no single grain of the color could be taker from the touch without injury; and little golden parti- cles of it, not the size of a gnat's head, have important share anu function in the balances of light in a picture perhaps fifty feet long. Nearly everi/ other rule appli- cable to art has some exception but this. This has ab- solutely none. All great art is delicate art, and all coarse art is bad art. — Modern Painters, III., p. 5G. When once we begin at all to unde^-^tand the hand- ling of any truly great executor, such as that of any of the three great Venetians, of Correggio, or Turner, the awe of it is something greater than can be felt from the most stupendous natural scenery. For the crea- tion of such a system as a high human intelligence, en- dowed with its ineffably perfect instruments of eye and hand, is a far more appalling manifestation of Infinite Power, than the making either of seas or mountains. — Tne Two Paths, p. 145. The object of the great Resemblant Arts is, and al- ways has been, to resemble; and to resemble as closely as possible. It is the function of a good portrait to set the man before you in habit as he lived, and I would we had a few more that did so. It is the function of a good landscape to set the scene before you in its real- ity ; to make you, if it may be, think the clouds are flying, and the streams foaming. It is the function of the best sculptor — the true Daedalus — to make stillness look like l)re;ithi:ig, and marble look like flesh. . . - You think all that very MTong. So did I. once; but it was I that was wrong. A long time ago, before ever J had seen Oxford, I painted a picture of the Lake of CARDIXAL TEXETS OF Airr. 5-5 Como, for my father. It was not at all like the Lake of Como; but I thought it rather the better for that. My father differed with me ; and objected particularly to a boat with a red and yellow awning, which I had put into the most conspicuous corner of my drawino-. I declared this boat to be "necessary to the composi- tion." My father not the less objected, that he had never seen such a boat, either at Como or elsewhere; and suggested that if I would make the lake look a lit- tle more like water, I should be under no necessity of explaining its nature by the presence of floating objects. I thought him at the time a very simple person for his pains; but have since learned, and it is the very gist of all practical matters, which, as professor of line art, I have now to toll you, that the great point in painting a lake is — to get it to look like water. — Anitiut I\nU- llci, pp. TO, SO. The utmost power of art can only be given in a ma- terial capable of receiving and retaining the influence of the subtlest touch of the human hand. That hand is the most perfect agent of material power existing in the universe ; and its full subtlety can only be shown when the material it works on, or with, is entirely yielding. The chords of a perfect instrument will re- ceive it, but not of an imperfect one; the softly bend- ing point of the hair pencil, and soft melting of color, will receive it, but not even the chalk or pen point, still less the steel point, chisel, or marble. — The Tii^o Ait/is p. 1 l:J. Our best finishing is but coarse and blundering work after all. We may smooth, and soften, and sharpen till we are sick at heart; but take a good magnifying glass to our miracle of skill, and the invisible edge is a jagged saw, and the silky thread a rugged cable, and the soft surface a granite desert. Let all the ingenuity and all the art of the human race ba brought to bear upon the attainment of the utmost possible finish, and they could not do what is done in the foot of a fly, or the film of a bubble. God alone can finish. — Modem Painters, IIL, p. i:}-?. Accurately speaking, no good work whatever can be perfect. ... I believe there has only been one man f4 A n USKIX A yJTHOL G Y. who would not acknowledge this necessity, and strove ill ways to reach perfection, Leonardo; the end of his ^'ain effort being merely that he would take ten years to a picture, and leave it unfinished. And therefore, if we are to have great men working at al), or less men doing their best, the work will be imperfect, however beautiful. Of human work none but what is bad can be perfect, in its own bad way.* — Stones of J^enice, IJ., p. 131. If it were possible for art to give all the truths of nature, it ought to do it. But this is not possible. Choice must always be made of some facts which can be represented, from among others which must be passed by in silence, or even, in some respects, mis- represented. The inferior artist chooses unimportant and scattered tri'ths; the great artist chooses the most necessary first, and afterwards the most consistent with these, so as to obtain the greatest possible and most harmonious st/m. F^r instance, Rembrandt always chooses to represent the exact force with which the light on the most illumined part of an object is opposed to its obscurer portions. In order to obtain this, i:) most cases, not very important truth, he sacrifices the light and color of five-sixths of *iis picture; and the ex- pression of every character of objects which depends on tenderness of shape or tint. Hut he obtains his single truth, and what picturesque and forcible expres- sion is dependent upon it, with magnu*ieent skill and subtlety. Veronese, on the contrary, chooses to repre- sent the great relations of visible things to each other, to the heaven above, and to the earth bene-ath them. He holds it more important to show how a figuro stands relieved from delicate air, or marble wall ; bcw as a red, or purple, or a white figure, it separates it' self, in clear discernibility, from things not red, nor purple, nor white; how infinite daylight shines round it; iiow innumerable veils of faint shadow invest it; how its blackness and darkness are, in the excess of their nature, just as limited and local as its intensity of ••The Elgin marbles are supposed by many persons to be " per- fect." In the most important portions they indeed appri lach perfec- tion, but only there. The draperies are unfinished, the hair and wool of the animals are unfinished, and the.entira bas-reliefs of thu frieze are roughly cut. CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 55 light : all this, I say, he feels to be more important than showing merely the exact measure of the spark of sunshine that gleams on a dagger- hilt, or glows on a jewel. All this, moreover, he feels to be harmonious, — capable of being joined in one great system of spa- cious truth. And with inevitable watchfulness, inesti- mable subtlety, he unites all this in tenderest balance, noting in each hair's-breadth of color, not merely what its Tightness or wrongness is in itself, but what its rela- tion is to every other on his canvas. — Modern Paint- ers, III., p. 52. The Whole Matter of Finish summed up. — I do not wonder at people sometimes thinking I contradict myself when they come suddenly on any of the scat- tered passages, in which I am forced to insist on the opposite practical applications of subtle principles of this kind. It may amuse the reader, and be finally serv- iceable to him in showing him how necessary it is to the right handling of any subject, that these contrary statements should be made, if I assemble here the prin- cipal ones I remember having brought forward, bearing on (his difficult point of precision in execution. Finish, for the sake of added truth, or utility, or beauty, is noble; but finish for the sake of workman- 'ship, neatness, or polish, ignoble. . . . No good work whatever can be perfect, and the de- mand for perfection is always a sign of the misunder- standing of the end of art. "' The first cause of the fall of the arts in Europe was a relentless requirement of perfection." . . . Perfect finish (finish, that is to say, up to the point possible) is always desirable from the greatest masters, and is always given by them. . . . Now all these passages are perfectly true ; and, as in much more serious matters, the essential thing for the reader is to receive their truth, however little he may be able to see their consistency. If truths of apparent contrary character are candidly and rightly received, they will fit themselves together in the mind without any troul)le. But no truth maliciously received will nourish you, or fit with others. The clue of connec- tion may in this case, however, be given in a word. Absolute finish is always right ; finish, inconsistent 5G .4. RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. with prudence and "j^assion, wrong. The imperative demand for finish is ruinous, because it refuses better things than finish. The stopping short of the finish, which is honorably possible to human energy, is de- structive on the other side and not in less degree. Err, of the two, on the side of completion. — Modern Paint- ers, v., pp. 294-297. Decoration and Conventionalism in Art. — There is no existing highest-order art but is decorative. The best sculpture yet produced has been the decoration of a temple front — the best painting, the decoration of a room. Raphael's best doing is merely the wall-coloring of a suite of apartments in the Vatican, and his car- toons were made for tapestries. Correggio's best doing is the decoration of two small church cupolas at Parma ; Michael Angelo's, of a ceiling in the Pope's private chapel ; Tintoret's, of a ceiling and side wall belonging to a charitable society at Venice ; while Titian and Veronese threw out their noblest thoughts, not even on the inside, but on the outside of the common brick and plaster walls of Venice. You will every day hear it absurdly said that room decoration should be by flat patterns — by dead colors — by conventional monotonies, and I know not what. Now, just bo assured of this — nobody ever yet used conventional art to decorate with, when he could do anything better, and knew that what he did would be safe. Nay, a great painter will always give you the natural art, safe or not. Correggio gets a commission to paint a room on the ground floor of a palace at Parma : any of our people — bred on our fine modern principles — would have covered it with a diaper, or with stripes or flourishes, or mosaic patterns. Not so Cor- reggio: he paints a thick trellis of vine-leaves, with oval openings, and lovely children leaping through them into the room ; and lovely children, depend upon it, are rather more desirable decorations than diaper, if you can do them — but they are not quite so easily done. . . . But if art is to be placed v/here it is liable to injury — to wear and tear; or to alteration of its form ; as, for instance, on domestic utensils, and armor, and weapons, and dress ; in which either the oi-nastnent will be worn CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 57 out by the usage of the thing, or will be c:i8i isiLo al- tered shape by the play of its folds; then it is wrong to put beautiful and j)erfeet art to such uses, and you v/ant forms of inferior art, such as will be by their simplicity less liable to injury ; or, by reason of their complexity and continuousness, may show to advantage, however distorted by the folds they are cast into. . . . The less of nature it contains, the more degraded is the ornament, and the fitter for a human place; but, how- ever far a great workman may go in r.-^f using the higher organisms of nature, he always takes care to retain the magnificence of natural lines; that is to say, of the in- finite curves, such as I have analyzed in the fourth volume of " Modern Painters." His copyists, fancying that they can follow him without nature, miss precisely the essence of all the work ; so that even the simplest piece of Greek conventional ornament loses the whole of its value in any modern imitation of it, the finer curves being always missed. . . . The animal and bird drawing of the Egyptians is, in their fine age, quite magnificent under its conditions ; magnificent in two ways — first, in keenest perception of the main forms and facts ia the creature ; and, sec- ondly, in the grandeur of line by which their forms are abstracted and insisted on, making every asp, ibis, and vulture a sublime spectre of asp or ibis or vulture power. The way for students to get some of this gift again [some only, for I believe the fullness of the gift itself to be connected with vital superstition, and with resulting intensity of reverence ; people were likely to know something about hawks and ibises, when to kill one was to be irrevocably judged to death) is never to pass a day without drawing some animal from the life, allow- ing themselves the fewest possible lines and colors to do it with, but resolving that whatever is characteristic of the animal shall in some way or other be shown. — T/ie Tiro Paths, pp. 55-59. If the designer of furniture, of cups and vases, of dress patterns, and the like, exercises himself contin- ually in the imitation of natural form in some leading division of his work ; then, holding by this stem of life, he ma}' pass down mto all kinds of merely geometi'ical 58 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. or formal design with perfect safety, and with noble results. — l^ie Two J^/t/u^, p. US. The first thing we have to ask of the decoration is that it should indicate strong liking, and that honestly. It matters not so much what the thing is, as that the builder should really love it and enjoy it, and say so plainly. The architect of Bourges Cathedral liked hawthorns ; so he has covered his porch with hawthorn — it is a perfect Niobe of May. Never was such haw- thorn ; you would try to gather it forthwith, but for fear of being pricked. The old Lombard architects liked hunting ; so they covered their work with horses and hounds, and men blowing trumpets two yards long. — /Stones of '\'^iii!r<\ I., p. 5(). You will often hear modern architects defending their monstrous ornamentation on the ground that it is "conventional," and that architectural ornament ought to be conventionalized. Remember when you hear this, that noble conventionalism is not an agreement between the artist and spectator that the one shall misrepre- sent nature sixty times over, and the other believe the misrepresentation sixty times over, but it is an agree- ment that certain means and liinitations being pre- scribed, only that K'ind of truth is to be expected which is consistent with those means. For instance, if Sir Joshua Reynolds had been talking to a friend about the character of a face, and there had been nothing in the room but a deal table and an ink bottle — and no pens — Sir Joshua would have dipped his finger in the ink, and painted a portrait on the table with his finger — and a noble portrait too, certainly not delicate in outline, nor representing any of the qualities of the face dependent on rich outline, but getting as much of the face as in that manner was attainable. That is noble conventionalism, and Egyptian work on granite, or il- luminator's work in glass, is all conventional in the same sense, but not conventionally false. — Leetureson Architertnrc, p. 80. Old Pieces of Gold or Silver Plate. — The way to have a truly noble service of plate, is to keep adding to it, not melting it. At every marriage, and at every birth, get a new piece of gold or silver if you will, but CARDINAL TEN^ETS OF ART. m with noble workman.ship on it, done for hH time, and put it among your treasures; that is one of the chief things which gold was made for and made incorruptible for. . . . Gold has been given us, among other things, that we might put beautiful work into its imperishable splendor, and that the artists who have the most wilful fancies may have a material which will drag out, and beat out, as their dreams require, and will hold itself together with fantastic tenacity, whatever rare and delicate service they set it upon. — A Joy For Ever, p. 34. Venetian Glass. — Our modern glass is exquisitely clear in its substance, true in its form, accurate in its cutting. We are proud of this. We ought to be ashamed of it. The old Venice glass was muddy, inac- curate in all its forms, and clumsily cut, if at all. And the old Venetian was justly proud of it. For there is this difference between the English and Venetian work- man, that the former thinks only of accurately match- ing his patterns, and getting his curves perfectly true and his edges perfectly sharp, and becomes a mere machine for rounding curves and sharpening edges, while the old Venetian cared not a whit whether his edges were sharp or not, but lie invented a new design for every glass that he made, and never moulded a handle or a lip without a new fancy in it. And there- fore, though some Venetian glass is ugly and clumsy enough, when made by clumsy and uninventive work- men, other Venetian glass is so lovely in its forms that no price is too great for it ; and we never see the same form in it twice. — Stones of Venice, II., p. 108. Cut, Spun, and Moulded Glass. — All cut glass is barbarous : for the cutting conceals its ductility, and confuses it with crystal. Also, all very neat, finished, and perfect form in glass is barbarous : for this fails in proclaiming another of its great virtues ; namely, the ease with which its light substance can be moulded or blown into any form, so long as perfect accuracy be not required. In metal, which, even when heated enough to be thoroughly malleable, retains yet such weight and consistency as render it susceptible of the finest handling and retention of the most delicate form. 00 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. gi'oiit precision of workmanship is admissible; but in glass, which when once softened must be blown or moulded, not hammered, and which is liable to lose, by contraction or subsidence, the fineness of the forms given to it, no delicate outlines are to be attempted, but only such fantastic and fickle grace as the mind of the workman can conceive and execute on the instant. The more wild, extravagant, and grotesque in their gracefulness the forms are, the better. No material is so adapted for giving full play to the imagination, but it must not be wrought with refinement or painfulness, still less with costliness. For as in gratitude we are to proclaim its virtues, so in all honesty we are to con- fess its imperfecdons; and while we triumphantly set forth its transparency, we are also frankly to admit its fragility, and therefore not to waste much time upon it, nor put any real art into it when intended for daily use. No workman ought ever to spend more than an hour in the making of any glass vessel. — /Stones of J^e/iice, II., p. o!)4. GREAT ART AND GREAT MEN. Great Art- Work. — In the greatest work there is no manner visible. It is at first uninteresting from its quietness ; the majesty of restrained power only dawns gradually upon us, as we walk towards its horizon. — Athena, p. I1'2. It is the crowning virtue of all great art that, how- ever little is left of it by the injuries of time, that lit- tle will be lovely. As long as you can see anything, you can see — almost all ; — so much the hand of the master will suggest of his soul. — Mornings in Flor- ctn^e, p. 16. The difference between great and mean art lies, not in definable methods of handling, or styles of represen- tation, or choices of subjects, but wlioUy in the noble- ness of the end to which the effort of the painter is ad- dressed. We cannot say that a painter is great be- cause lie paints boldly, or paints delicately ; because he generalizes or particularizes ; because he loves detail, CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. Gl or because he disdains it. He is great if, by any of these means, he has hiid open noble truths, or aroused noble emotions. — Jloder/i Painters, III., p. 39. Distinctness in Drawing. — The best drawing in- volves a wonderful perception and expression of indis- tinctness; and yet all noble drawing is separated from the ignoble by its distinctness, by its fine expression and firm assertion of /Somethin.(y ; whereas the bad drawing, without either firmness or fineness, expresses and asserts NiAluiuj. The first thing, therefore, to be looked for as a sign of noble art, is a clear con- sciousness of what is drawn and what is not; the bold statement, and frank confession — " This I know," '■'tJi((t I know not;" and, generally speaking, all haste, slurring, obscurity, indecision, are signs of low art, and all calmness, distinctness, luminousness, and positive- ness, of high art. — Modern Painters, III., p. 54. Gkeat Art Provincial. — All great art, in the great times of art, is procinria/, showing its energy in the capital, but educated, and chiefly productive, in its own country town. The best works of Correggio are at Parma, but he lived in his patronymic village; the best works of Cagliari at Venice, but he learned to paint at Verona ; the best works of Angelico are at Rome, but he lived at Fesole: the best works of Luini at Milan, but he lived at _jino. And, with still greater necessity of moral law, the cities which exercise form- ing power on style, are themselves provincial. There is no Attic style, but there is a Doric and Corinthian one. There is no Roman style, but there is an Umbri- an, Tuscan, Lombard, and Venetian one. There is no Parisian style, but there is a Norman and Burgundian one. There is no London or Edinburgh style, but there is a Kentish and Northumbrian one. The capitals of Europe are all of monstrous and de- graded architecture. An artist in former ages might be corrupted by the manners, but he was exalted by the splendor, of the capital ; and perished amidst magnifi- cence of palaces : but now— the Board of Works is capable of no higher skill than drainage, and the British artist floats placidly down the maximum current of the National Cloaca, to his Dunciad rest, content, virtually, 63 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. that his life should be spent at one end of a cigar, and his fame expire at the other. — Art of Enqland, pp. 109,110. The Great Masters. — I am certain that in the most perfect human artists, reason does not supersede instinct, but is added to an instinct as much more divine than that of the lower animals as the human body is more beautiful than theirs ; that a great singer sings not with less instinct than the nightingale, but with more — only more various, applical)le, and governable; that a great architect does not build with less instinct than the beaver or the bee, but with more — with an innate cunning of proportion that embraces all beauty, and a divine ingenuity of skill that improvises all construction. — The 3Ji/stery of I^ife,\>. 111*. The sight of a great painter is as authoritative as the lens of a camera lucida; he })erceives the form which a photograph will ratify ; he is sensitive to the violet or to the golden ray to the last precision and gradation of the chemist's defining light and intervaled line. — Art of Englwid, p. 103. No great inteUcvtual tlthuj was ccer done hy great effort ; a great thing can only be done by a great man, and he does it uutJiout effort. — Pre- JlapJtaeHtisin, p. 1>. The great men whose lives you would think, by the results of their work, had been passed in strong emo- tion, have in reality subdued themselves, though capable of the very strongest passions, into a calm as absolute as that of a deeply sheltered mountain lake, which re- flects every agitation of the clouds in the sky, and every change of the shadows on the hills, but is itself motion- less. — Lectures on Art., p. 53. The inferior mind intently watches its own processes, and dearly values its own produce; the master-mind is intent on other things than itself, and cares little for the fruits of a toil which it is apt to undertake rather as a law of life than a means of immortality. It will sing at a feast, or retouch an old play, or paint a dark wall, for its daily bread, anxious only to be honest in its fulfil- nient of its pledges or its duty, and careless that future CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 63 ages will rank it among the gods. — Giotto and his Works, p. 12. It is a characteristic — (as far as I know, quite a uni- versal one) — of the greatest masters, that they never expect you to look at them ; — seem always rather sur- prised if you want to; and not overpleased. Tell them you are going to hang their picture at the upper end of the table at the next great City dinner, and that Mr. So and So will make a speech about it ; you produce no impression upon them, whatever, or an unfavorable one. The chances are ten to one they send you the most rubbishy thing they can find in their lumber- room. But send for one of them in a hurry, and tell him the rats have gnawed a nasty hole behind the par- lor door, and you want it plastered and painted over ; — and he doa'5 you a masterpiece which the world will peep behind your door to look at forever. — Mornings in Florence, p. 42. All great men. not only know their business, but usually know that they know it; and are not only right in their main opinions, but they usually know that they are right in them; only, they do not think much of themselves on that account. Arnolfo knows he can build a good dome at Florence ; Albert Diirer writes calmly to one who had found fault with his work, " It cannot be better done ; " Sir Isaac Newton knows that he has worked out a problem or two that would have puzzled anybody else; — only they do not expect their fellow-men therefore to fall down and worship them; they have a curious luider-sense of powerless- ncss, feeling that the greatness was not in them, but throuf/Ji them ; that they could not do or be anything else than God made them. — 3Iodern Painters, III., p. 284. Scott writing his chapter or two before breakfast — not retouching, Turner finishing a whole drawing in a forenoon before he goes out to shoot (providing always the chapter and drawing be good), are instantly to be set above men who confessedly have spent the day over the work, and think the hours well spent if it has been a little mended between sunrise and simset. Indeed, it is no use for men to think to appear great by 64 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. working fast, dashing, and scrawling; the thing they do must be good and great, cost what time it may ; but if it be so, and they have honestly and unaffectedly done it with no effort, it is probably a greater and bet- ter thing than the result of the hardest efforts of others. — Modern Painters, III., p. 280. The largest soul of any country is altogether its own. Not the citizen of the world, but of his own city — nay, for the best men, you may say, of his own village. Patriot always, provincial always, of his own crag or field always. A Liddesdale man, or a Tyned;de; Angelico from the rock of Fesole, or Virgil from the Mantuan marsh. You dream of National unity ! — you might as well strive to melt the stars down into one nugget, and stamp them small into coin with one Caesar's face. — Art of JEiKjUuid, j). 30. The Foreseeing and Foreordaining Power of THE Great Artist. — In Turner, Tintoret, and Paul Veronese, the intenseness of perception, first, as to what is to be done, and then, of the means of doing it, is so colossal, that I always feel in the presence of their pictures just as other peo})le would in that of a supernatural being. Common talkers use the word "magic" of a great painter's power without knowing what they mean by it. They mean a great truth. That power is- magical; so magical, that, well under- stood, no enchanter's work could be more miraculous or more appalliiKj. — Modern Painters, IV., p. 78. The Universality and Realism of the Great Artists. — Among the various ready tests of true greatness there is not any more certain than this dar- ing reference to, or use of, mean and little things — mean and little, that is, to mean and little minds; but, when used by the great men, evidently part of the no- ble whole which is authoritatively present before them. — Modern Painters, III., p. 100. There is, indeed, perhaps, no greater sign of innate and real vulgarity of mind or defective education than the want of power to understand the universality of the ideal truth ; the absence of sympathy with the colossal grasp of those intellects, which have in them so much of divine, that nothing is small to them, and CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 65 nothing large; but vvitli equal and unoffended vision they take in the sum of tlie world — Straw Street and the seventh heavens — in the same instant. — Modern Pdinters, III., p. 102. It is a constant law that the greatest men, whether poets or historians, live entirely in their own age, and that the greatest fruits of their work are gathered out of their own age. Dante paints Italy in the thirteenth cen- tury ; Chaucer, England in the fourteenth ; Masaccio, Florence in the fifteenth ; Tintoret, Venice in the six- teenth ; — all of them utterly regardless of anachronism and minor error of every kind, but getting always vital truth out of the vital present. If it be said that Shakespeare wrote perfect historical plays on siibjects belonging to the preceding centuries, I answer, that they are perfect plays just because there is no care about centuries in them, but a life which all men recognize for the human life of all time. — Modern Painters, III., p. 110. All great art represents something that it sees or believes in ; nothing unseen or uncredited. . . . For instance, Dante's centaur, Chiron, dividing his beard with his arrow before he can speak, is a thing that no mortal would ever have thought of, if he had not actually seen the centaur do it. They might have coujposed handsome bodies of men and horses in all possible ways, through a whole life oi pseudo-idealism, and yet never dreamed of any such thing. But the real living centaur actually trotted across Dante's brain, and he saw him do it. — Modern Painters, III., p. 100. If the next painter who desires to illustrate the char- acter of Homer's Achilles, would represent him cutting pork chops for Ulysses, he would enable the public to understand the Homeric ideal better than they have done for several oonturies. — Modern Painters, III., p. 98. Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadow ceases to be enjoyed as light. A white can vns cannot produce an effect of sunshine ; the painter 66 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. must darken it in some places before lie can make it look luminous in others ; nor can an uninterrupted succession of beauty produce the true effect of beauty ; it must be foiled by inferiority before its own power can be developed. Nature has for the most part min- gled her inferior and nobler elements as she mingles sunshine with shade, giving due use and influence to both, and the painter who chooses to remove the shadow, perishes in the burning desert he has created. The truly high and beautiful art of Angelico is con- tinually refreshed and strengthened by his frank por- traiture of the most ordinary features of his brother monks, and of the recorded peculiarities of imgainly sanctity; but the modern German and Raphaelesque schools lose all honor and nobleness in barber-like ad- miration of handsome faces, and have, in fact, no real faith except in straight noses and curled hair. — Mod- ern Painters, III., p. 50. As far as I have watched the main powers of human mind, they have risen first from the resolution to see fearlessly, pitifully, and to its very worst, what these deep colors mean, wheresoever they fall ; not by any means to pass on the other side looking pleasantly up to the sky, but to stoop to the horror, and let the sky, for the present, take care of its own clouds. However this may be in mortal matters, with which I have nothing here to do, in my own field of inquiry the fact is so; and all great and beautiful work has come of first gazing without shrinking into the darkness. If, having done so, the human spirit can, by its courage and faith, conquer the evil, it rises into conceptions of victori- ous and consummated beauty. It is then the spirit of the highest Greek and Venetian Art. If unable to conquer the evil, but remaining in strong, though mel- ancholy war with it, not rising into sui)i'eme beauty, it is the spirit of the best northern art, typically represent- ed by that of Holbein andDiirer. If, itself conquered by the evil, infected by the dragon breath of it, and at last brought into captivity, so as to take delight in evil forever, it becomes the spirit of the dark, but still pow- erful sensualistic art, represented typically by that of Salvator. — Modern Pointers, V., pp. 225-229. CABDINAL TENETS OF ART. 67 THE IMAGINATION IN ART. DisTixcTiox Betweex Fancy and Imaoixation, — ■ I am myself now entirely indifferent which word I use; and should say of a work of art that it was well " fan- cied," or well "invented," or well "imagined," with only some shades of different meaning in the applica- tion of the terms, rather dependent on the matter treated, than the power of mind involved in the treat- ment. I might agree with Sir Piei'cie Shafton that his doublet was well-fancied, or that his figure of speech was well conceived, and might perhaps reserve the word " Imagined " for the design of an angel's dress by Giotto, or the choice ('f a simile by Dante. But such distinctions fire scarcely more than varieties of cour- tesy or dignitv in the use of words. — Modern Paint- ers, II., p. 155, Ed. 1888. Art is Fouxded ix Truth, axd Coxsists ix Im- agination. — Having learned to represent actual ap- peai'ances faithfully, if you have any human faculty of your own, visionary appearances will take ])lace to you which will be nobler and more true than any actual or material appearances; and the realization of these is the function of every fine art, which is founded abso- lutely, therefore, in truth, and consists absolutely in imagination. — Eagle's Nest, p. 91. Design. — If you paint a bottle only to amuse the spectator by showing him how like a painting may be to a bottle, you cannot be considered, in art-philosophy, as a designer. But if you paint the cork flying out of the bottle, and the contents arriving in an arch at the mouth of a recipient glass, you are so far forth a de- signer or signer ; probably meaning to express certain ultimate facts respecting, say, the hospitable disposi- tion of the landlord of the house; but at all events representing the bottle and glass in a designed, and not merely natural manner. Not merely natural — nay, m some sense non-natural or supernatural. And all great artists show both this fantastic condition of mind in their work, and show thfit it has arisen out of a com- municative or didactic purpose. They are the Sign- painters of God. — Ariadne, p. 82. 68 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. The Art-Seek AS ax Interpreter of Nature to rs. — Although, to the sintill, conceited, jmrI affected pninter disphiying his narrow knowledge and tiny dexterities, our only word may be, " Stand aside from between that nature juid me," yet to the great imaginative painter — greater a million times in every faculty of soul than we-^our word may wisely be, "Come between this nature and me — this nature which is too great and too wonderful for me ; temper it for me, interpret it to me ; let me see with yc-ur eyes, and hear with your ears, and have help and strength from your great spirit." — JModeru Painters, III., p. 1(51. The Working of the Minds of Great Men. — Imagine all that any of these men had seen or heard in the whole course of their lives, laid up accurately in their memories as in vast storehouses, extending, with the poets, even to the slightest intonations of syllables heard in the beginning of their lives, and, with the painters, down to the minute folds of drapery, and shapes of leaves or stones ; and over all this unindexed and immeasurable mass of treasure, the imagination brooding and wandering, but dream-gifted, so as to summon at any moment exactly such gi'oups of ideas as shall justly fit each other : this I conct ive to be the real natui'cof the imaginative mind, and this, I believe, it would be oftener explained to us as being, by the men themselves who possess it, but that they have no idea what ihe state of other persons' minds is in com- parison ; they suppose every one remembers all that he has seen in the same way, and do not understand how it happens that thoy alone can produce good drawings or great thoughts. — Modern Pdinters, IV., p. 40. Association of Ideas. — Examine the nature of your own emotion (if you feel it) at the sight of the Alp, and you find all the brightness of that emotion hanging, like dew on gossam.er, on a curious web of subtle fancy and imperfect knowledge. First, you have a vague idea of its size, coupled with wonder at the work of the great Builder of its walls and foundations, then an apprehension of its eternity, apathetic sense of its perpetualness, and your own transientness, as of the grass upon its sides ; then, and in this very sadness, a CARDINAL TENETS OF ART. 69 sense of strange companionship with past generations in seeing what they saw. Then, mingled with these more solemn imaginations, come the understandings of the gifts and glories of the Alps, the fancying forth of all the fountains that well from its rocky walls, and strong rivers that are born out of its ice, and of all the pleasant valleys that wind between its cliffs, and all the chalets that gleam among its clouds, and happy farmsteads couched upon its pastures ; while togetlier with the thoughts of these, rise strange sympathies with all the unknown of human life, and happiness, and death, signified by that narrow white fiame of the everlasting snow, seen so far in the morning sky. — Jlodent Painters, III., p. 152. " Excellent Good I'faith." — Tell any man, of the slightest imaginative power, that such and such a pic- ture is good, and moans this or rhat : tell him, for in- stance, that a Claude is good, and that it means trees, and grass, and water; and forthwith, whatever faith, virtue, humility, and imagination there are in the man, rise up to help Claude, and to declare that indeed it is all "excellent good, i'faith f and whatever in the course of his life he has felt of pleasure in trees and grass, he will begin to reflect upon and enjoy anew, supposing all the while it is the picture he is enjoying. — Modem Painters, III., pp. 153, 154. The Spirit of Buffoonery. — I suppose the chief bar to the action of imagination, and stop to all great- ness in this present age of ours, is its mean and shallow love of jest; so that if there be in any good and lofty work a flaw, failing, or undipped vulnerable part, where sarcasm may stick or stay, it is caught at, and pointed at, and buzzed about, and fixed upon, and stuiig into, as a recent wound is by flies ; and nothing is ever taken seriously or as it was meant, but always, if it may be, turned the wrong way, and misundei'stood ; and while this is so, there is not, nor cannot be, any hope of achievement of high things; men dare not open their hearts to us, if we are to broil them on a thorn-fire. — Modern Painters, II., p. 188, Ed. 1883. 70 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. SECTION II.— THE GRAPHIC ARTS. Chapter I. — Painting. No vain or selfish person can possibly paint, in the noble sense of the word. Vanity and selfishness are troublous, eager, anxious, petulant : — painting can only be done in calm of mind. — Modern Painters, V., p. 211. The sky is not blue color merely ; it is l)lue fire — and cannot be painted. — Modern Pa utters, IV., p. 47. Oil-Painting. — You have often heard quoted the saying of Michael Angelo, that oil-painting was only fit for women and children. He said so, simply because he had neither the skill to lay a single touch of good oil-painting, nor the patience to overcome even its elementary difficulties. Oil-painting is the Art of arts ; it is sculpture, draw- ing, and music, all in one, involving the technical dex- terities of those threvi several arts ; that is to say — the decision and strength of the stroke of the chisel ; — the balanced distribution of appliance of that force necessary for gradation in light and shade ; — -and the passionate felicity of rightly multiplied actions, all unerring, which on an instrument produce right sound, and on canvas, living color. There is no other human skill so great or so wonderful as the skill of fine oil-painting ; and there is no other art whose results are so absolutely permanent. Music is gone as soon as produced — marble discolors — fresco fades — glass darkens or de- composes — painting alone, well guarded, is practically everlasting. — Relation between Micltael Aiujelo and Tintoret, p. 18. A Beautiful Thing the Work of Ages. — The glory of a great picture is in its shame; and the charm THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 71 of it, in speaking the pleasure of a great heart, that there is something better than picture. Also it speaks with the voices of many: the efforts of thousands dead, and their passions, are in the pictures of their children to-day. Not with the skill of an hour, nor of a life, nor of a century, but with the help of numberless souls, a beautiful thing must be done. — Laws of Fesole, p. 13. The Best Pictures are Portraits. — The best pictures that exist of the great schools are all portraits, or groups of portraits, often of veiy simple and nowise noble persons. You may have much more brilliant and impressive qualities in imaginative pictures ; you may have figures scattered like clouds, or garlanded like flowers ; you may have light and shade, as of a tempest, and color, as of the rainbow ; but all that is child's play to the great men, though it is astonishment to us. Their real strength is tried to the utmost, and as far as I know it is never elsewhere brought out so thoroughly, as in painting one man or woman, and the soul thaf was in them. — Lectures on Art, p. 68. The highest thing that art can do is to set before you the true image of the presence of a noble human being. It has never done more than this, and it ought not to do less. — Lectures on Art, p. 27. Invention and Composition. — By a truly great in- ventor everything is invented ; no atom of the work is unmodified by his mind ; and no study from nature, however beautiful, could be introduced by him into his design without change ; it would not fit with the rest. Finished studies for introduction are therefore chiefly by Leonardo and Raphael, both technical designers rather than imaginative ones. — Modern Painters, V,, p. 202. A great composition always has a leading emotional purpose, technically called its motive, to which all its lines and forms have some relation. Undulating lines, for instance, are expressive of action ; and would be false in effect if the motive of the picture was one of re- pose. Horizontal and angular lines are expressive of rest and strength ; and would destroy a design whose 'i2 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. purpose was to express disquiet and feebleness. — Mod- em Pididers, v., p. 184. Take any noble musical air, and you find, on exam- ining it, that not one even of the faintest or shortest notes can be removed without destruction to the whole passage in which it occurs ; and that every note in the pas- sage is twenty times more beautiful so introduced, than it would have been if played singly on the instrument. Precisely this degree of arrangement and relation must exist between every touch and line in a great picture. You ffxay consider the whole as a prolonged musical composition : its parts, as separate airs connected in the story ; its little bits and fragments of color and line, as separate passages or bars in melodies; and down to the minutest note of the whole — down to the minutest tourJi — if there is one that can be spared — that one is doing mischief. — The Ttco Pal/ts, p. 32. Raphael and Holeein compared.— Scholastic learn- ing destroy^s Raphael, but it graces him and is a part of him. It all but destroys Mantegna ; but it graces him. And it does not hurt Holbein, just because it does not grace him — never is for an instant a part of him. It is with Raphael as with some charming young girl who has a new and beautifully made dress brought to her, which entirely becomes her — so much, that in a little while, thinking of nothing else, she becomes it ; and is only the decoration of her dress. But with Holbein it is as if you brought the same dress to a stout fanner's daughter who was going to dine at the Hall; and begged her to put it on that she might not discredit the company. She puts it on to please you ; looks entirely ridiculous in it, but is not spoiled by it — remains herself, in spite of it. — Ariadne, pp. 89, 90. The Cartoons of Raphael. — The cartoons of Raphael. . . were, in the strictest sense of the word, "compositions" — cold arrangements of propriety and agreeableness, according to academical formulas ; the painter never in any case making the slightest effort to conceive the thing as it must have happened, but only to gather together graceful lines and beautiful faces, in such compliance with commonplace ideas of the subject as might obtain for the whole an " epic unity," or THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 73 some such other form of scholastic perfectness. — Modern Painters, III., p. 70. The "Doggie" in the Sistine Chaprl. — The in- tensest form of northern realization can be matched in the south, when the southerns choose. There are two pieces of animal drawing in the Sistine Chapel un- rivalled for literal veracity. The sheep at the well in front of Zipporah ; and afterwards, when she is going away, leading lief children, her eldest boy, like every one else, has taken his chief treasui'e with him, and this treasure is his pet dog. It is a little sharp-nosed white fox-terrier, full of fire and life ; but not strong enough for a long walk. So little Gershom, whose name was "the stranger" because his father had been a stranger in a strange land — little Gershom carries his white ter- rier under his arm, lying on the top of a large bundle to make it comfortable. The doggie puts its sharp nose and bright eyes out, above his hand, with a little roguish gleam sideways in them, which means — if I can read rightly a dog's expression — that he has been barking at Moses all the morning, and has nearly put him out of temper : — and without any doubt, I can assert to you that there is not any other such piece of animal painting in the w^orld — so brief, intense, vivid, and absolutely balanced in truth; as tenderly drawn as if it had been a saint, yet as humorously as Landseer's Lord Chancellor poodle. — Ariadne, p. 161. Florentine Art and Greek Art compared. — Florentine art was essentially Christian, ascetic, ex- pectant of a better world, and antagonistic, therefore. to the Greek temper. So that the Greek element, once forced upon it, destroyed it. There was absolute in- compatibility between them. — Modern Painters, V., p. 235. The Christian painters differed from the Greek in two main points. They had been taught a faith which put an end to restless questioning and discouragement. All was at last to be well — and their best genius might be peacefully given to imagining the glories of heaven and the happiness of its redeemed. But on the other hand, though suffering was to cease in heaven, it was to be not only endured, but honored upon earth. And 74 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. from the Crucifixion, down to a beggars lameness, all the tortures and maladies of men were to be made, at least in part, the subjects of art. — Modern Puinters,Y ., p. 238. Poetry and Painting allied.— Infinite confusion has been introduced into this subject [the "Grand Style "] by the careless and illogical custom of opposing painting to poetr^^, instead of regarding poetry as con- sisting in a noble use, whether of colors or words. Painting is properly to be opposed to speaA'i/u/ or uiriti/tf/, but not io poefri/. Both painting and speak- ing are methods of expression. Poetry is the employ- ment of either for the noblest purposes. — Modern Painters, III., p. 29. Softness of Touch. — You will find in Veronese, in Titian, in Tintoret, in Correggio, and in all the great painters, properly so-called, a pecuhar melting and mys- tery about tlie penciling, sometimes called softness, sometimes freedom, sometimes breadth; but in reality a most subtle confusion of colors and forms, obtained either by the apparently careless stroke of the brush, or by careful retouching with tenderest labor; but always obtained in one way or another. — 3Iodern Painters, IV., p. 74. English Painters. — I do not speak of living men ; but among those who labor no more, in this England of ours, since it first had a school, we have had only five real painters: — -Reynolds, Gainsborough, Hogarth, Richard Wilson, and Turner. — The Tuoo Paths, p. 137. The [rural] designs of J. C. Hook are, perhaps, the only works of the kind in existence which deserve to be mentioned in connection with the pastorals of Words- worth and Tennyson. — Modern Painters, V., p. 282. The Hierarchy of Painters. — He who represents deep thoughts and sorrows, as, for instance, Hunt, in his Claudio and Isabella, and such other works, is of the highest rank in his sphere : and he who represents the slight malignities and passions of the drawing-room, as, for instance, Leslie, of the second rank ; he who repre- sents the sports of boys or simplicities of clowns, as Webster or Teniers, of the third rank ; and he who rep- THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 75 resents brutalities and vices (for delight in them, and not for rebuke of them), of no rank at all, or rather of a negative rank, holding a certain order in the abyss. — 3Iodern Painters, III., p. 44. Murillo, of all true painters uhe narrowest, feeblest, and most superficial, [and] for those reasons the most popular.— 77;e Tiro Paths, p. 40. In such writings and sayings [of the great painters] as we possess, we may trace a quite curious gentleness and serene courtesy. Rubens' letters are almost ludicrous in their unhurried politeness. Reynolds, swiftest of painters, was gentlest of companions ; so also Velasquez, Titian, and Veronese. — 3Iodern. Painters, V., p. 212. There is perhaps no more popular Protestant pic- ture than Salvator's " Witch of Endor," of which the subject was chosen by the painter simply because, under the names of Saul and the Sorceress he could paint a captain of banditti, and a Neapolitan hag. — Stones of Venice, II., p. 108. Giotto. — The Greeks had painted anything anyhow — gods black, horses red, lips and cheeks white; and when the Etruscan vase expanded into a Cimabue pic- ture, or a Tafi mosaic, still — except that the Madonna was to have a blue dress, and everything else as much gold on it as could be managed — there was very little advance in notions of color. Suddenly, Giotto threw aside all the glitter, and all the conventionalism ; and declared that he saw the sky blue, the tablecloth white, and angels, when he dreamed of them, rosy. And he simply founded the schools of color in Italy — Venetian and all. Giotto came from the field, and saw with his simple eyes a lowlier worth. And he painted — the Madonna, and St. Joseph, and the Christ — yes, by all means if you choose to call them so, but essentially — Mamma, Papa, and the Baby. And all Italy threw up its cap — "Ora ha Giotto ilgrido." — 3Iorniu(js in Florence, pp. 27-30. Giotto, like all the great painters of the period, was merely a travelling decorator of walls, at so much a day ; having at Florence a hottega, or workshop, for 76 A nUSKIX ANTHOLOGY. the production and sale of small tempera pictures. There were no such things as "studios " in those days. An artist's "studies" were over by the time he was eighteen; after that he was a lavoratore, "laborer," a man who knew his business, and produced certain works of known value for a known price ; being troubled with no philosophical abstractions, shutting him- self up in no wise for the reception of inspirations ; re- ceiving, indeed, a good many, as a matter of course — just as he received the sunbeams which came in at his window, the light which he worked by; — in either case, without mouthing about it, or much concerning himself as to the nature of it. Not troubled by critics either ; satisfied that his work was well done, and that people would find it out to be well done ; but not vain of it, nor m.ore profoundly vexed at its being found fault with, than a good saddler would be by some one's saying his last saddle was uneasy in the seat. Not, on the whole, much molested by critics, but generally understood by the men of sense, bis neighbors and friends, and permitted to have his own way with the walls he had to paint, as being, on the whole, an au- thority about walls ; receiving at the same time a good deal of daily encouragement and comfort in the simple admiration cf .the populace, and in the general sense of having done good, and painted what no man could look upon without being the better for it. — Giotto and his Works, p. 22. The "O" of Giotto. — I have not the slightest doubt that Giotto drew the circle as a painter naturally would draw it ; that is to say, that he set the vellum upright on the wall or panel before him, and then steadying his arm firmly against his side, drew the cir- cular line with one sweeping but firm revolution of his hand, holding the brush long. Such a feat as this is completely possible to a well-disciplined painter's hand, but uttei-ly impossible to any other; and the circle so drawn was the most convincing proof Giotto could give of his decision of eye and perfectness of practice. • — Giotto and his Works, p. 11. Historical Painting. — Now, historical or simpiv narrative art is very precious in its proper place and THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 77 way, but it is never great art until the poetical or im- aginative power touches it. — M, 870. LuiM. — Luini is, perhaps, the best central type of the highly-trained Italian painter. He is the only man who entirely united the religious temper which was the spirit-life of art, with the physical power which was its bodily life. He joins the purity and passion of Angelico to the strength of Veronese- the two elements, poised in perfect balance, and are so calmed and restrained, each by the other, that most of us lose tiie sense of both. The artist does not see the strength by reason of the .chastened spirit in which it is used ; and the re- ligious visionary does not recognize the passion, by reason of (he fi'jvr.k human truth with which it is ren- dered. He i; a man ten times greater than Leonardo ; — a mighty colorist, while Lec1. The Religious Art of Italy. — As I was correcting these pages [18()0], there was put into my hand a little work by a very dear friend — " Travels and Study in Italy," by Charles Eliot Norton ; — I have not yet been able to do more than glance at it ; but my impression is, that by carefidly reading it, together v.ith the essay by the same writer on the Vita Nuova of Dante, a more just estimate may be formed of the religious art of Italy than by the study of any other books yet existing. At least, I have seen none in which the tone of thouglit was at once so tender and so just. — Modern Pu'tntvrs, v., p. 307. Moses not vet paixted. — All the histories of the Bible are, in my judgment, yet waiting to be painted. Moses has never been painted; Elijah never; David never (except as a mere ruddy stripling) ; Deborah never; Gideon never; Isaiah never. — Modern Paint- ers, III., p. 70. Modern Religious Akt. — In polities, religion is now a name; in art, a hypocrisy or affectation. Over German religious pictures the inscription, " See how Pious I am," can be read at a glance by any clear- sighted person. Over French and English religious pictures, the inscription, "See how Impious I am," is equally legible. All sincere and modest art is, among us, profane. — Modern Painters, III., p. 277. t)0 A Ji'USKIN ANTHOLOGY. VENICE AND THE VENETIAN PAINTERS. Since the first dominion of men was asserted over the ocean, three thrones, of mark beyond all others, have been set upon its sands: the thrones of Tyre, Venice, and England. Of the First of these great powers only the memory remains ; of the Second, the ruin; the Third, whicli inherits their greatness, if it forget their example, may be led tlii'ough prouder emi- nence to less pitied destruction. The exaltation, the sin, and the punishment of Tyre have been recorded for us, in perhaps the most touch- ing words ever uttered by the Prophets of Israel against the cities of the strangei'. But we read them as a lov.'ly song; and close our ears to the sternness of their warning : for the very depth of the Fall of Tyre has blinded us to its reality, and we forget, as we watch the bleaching of the rocks between the sunshine and tlie .sea, that they were once " as in Eden, the Garden of God." Her successor, like her in perfection of beauty, tliougli less in endurance of dominion, is still left for our be- holding in the final period other decline: a ghost upon the sands of the sea, so weak — so quiet — so bereft of all but her loveliness, that we might well doubt, as we watched her faint refiection in the mirage of the lagoon, which was the City, and which the Shadow. I would endeavor to trace the lines of this image before it be forever lost, and to record, as far as I may, the warning which seems to me to be uttered by every one of the fast-gaining waves, that beat, like passing bells, against the Stones of Venice. — Stones of Venice, I., p. IT). TiiK AprROACfi TO Venice by Sea in the Olden Days. — Not but that the aspect of the city itself was generally the source of some slight disappointment, for, seen in this direction, its buildings are far less characteris- tic than those of the other great towns of Italy ; but this inferiority was partly disgui.sed by distance, and more than atoned for by the strange rising of its walls and towers out of the midst, as it seemed, of the deep sea, THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 91 for it was impossible that the mind or the eye could at once comprehend the shallowness of the vast sheet of water which stretched away in leagues of rippling lustre to the north and south, or trace the narrow line of islets bounding it to the east. The salt breeze, the white moaning sea-birds, the masses of black weed separating and disappearing gradually, in knots of heaving shoal, under the advance of the steady tide, all proclaimed it to be indeed the ocean on whose bosom the great city rested so calmly ; not such blue, soft, lake-like ocean as bathes the Neapolitan promontoi'ies, or sleeps beneath the marble rocks of Genoa, but a sea with the bleak power of our own northern waves, yet subdued into a strange spacious rest, and changed from its angry pallor into afield of burnished gold, as the sun declined behind the belfry tower of the lonely island church, fitly named '■ St. George of the Seaweed." As the boat drew nearer to the city, the coast which the traveller had just left sank behind him into one long, low, sad-colored line, tufted irregularly with briishw^ood and willows ; but, at what seemed its northern extrem- ity, the hills of Arqua rose in a dark cluster of purple pyramids, balanced on the bright mirage of the lagoon ; two or three smooth surges of inferior hill extended themselves about their roots, and beyond these, begin- ning with the craggy peaks above Vicenza, the chain of the Alps girded the whole horizon to the north — a wall of jagged blue, here and there slewing through its clefts a wilderness of misty precipices, fading far back into the recesses of Cadore, and itself rising and break- ing away eastward, where the sun struck opposite upon its snow, into mighty fragments of peaked light, stand- ing up behind the barred clouds of evening, one after another, countless, the crown of the Adrian Sea, until the eye turned back from pursuing them, to rest upon the nearer burning of the campaniles of Murano, and on the great city, where it magnified itself alons the waves, as the quick silent pacing of the gondola drew nearer and nearer. And at last, when its walls were reached, and the outmost of its untrodden streets was entered, not through towered gate or guarded rampart, but as a deep inlet between two rocks of coral in the Indian sea;wnen first upon the traveller's sight opened the long mnges 93 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. (j£ columned palaces — eaeli wilh its black boat moored at the portal — each with its image cast down, beneath its feet, upon that green pavement w'hich every breeze broke into new fantasies of rich tessellation ; when first, at the extremity of the bright vista, the shadowy Rialto threw its colossal curve slowly forth from behind the palace of the Camerlenglii ; that strange curve, so delicate, so adamantine, strong as a mountain cavern, graceful as a bow just bent; when first, before its moonlike circumference was all risen, the gondolier's cry, " Ah ! Stall," struck sharp upon the ear, and the prow turned aside under the mighty cornices that half met over the narrow canal, where the plash of the water followed close and loud, ringing along the marble by the boat's side ; and when at last that boat darted forth upon the breadth of silver sea, across which the front of the Ducal palace, flushed with its sanguine veins, looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady of Salvation, it was no marvel that the mind should be so deepl}' entranced by the visionary charm of a scene so beautiful and so strange, as to forget the darker truths of its history and its being. . . . At high water no land is visible for many miles to the north or south of Venice, except in the form of small islands crow^ned with towers or gleaming with villages : there is a channel, some three miles wide, between the city and the mamland, and some mile and a half v/ide between it and the sandy breakwater called the Lido, which divides the lagoon from the Adriatic, but which is so low as liardly to disturb the impression of the city's having been built in the midst of the ocean, al- though the secret of its true position is partly, not yet painfully, betrayed by the clusters of pileh set to mark the deep-water channels, which andulate far away in spotty chains like the studded backs of huge sea-snakes, and by the quick glittering of the crisped iind crowded waves that flicker and dance before the strong winds upon the unlifted level of the shallow sea. But the scene is widely different at low tide. A fall ot eighteen or twenty inches is enough to show ground over the greater part of the lagoon ; and at i\\^ complete ebb the city is seen standing in the midst of a dark plain of seaweed, of gloomy green, except only where the THE GRAPHIC ARTS.—FAIXTISG. 03 larger branches of the Brenta and its associated streams converge towards the port of the Lido. Through this salt and sombre plain the gondola and the fishing-boat advance by tortuous channels, seldom more than four or feet five deep, and often so choked with slime that the heavier keels furrow the bottom till their crossing tracks are seen through the clear sea water like the ruts upon a wintry road, and the oar leaves blue gaslies upon the ground at every stroke, or is entangled among the thick weed that fringes the banks with the weight of its sullen waves, leaning to and fro upon the luicei-tain sway of the exhausted tide. The scene is often pro- foundly oppressive, even at this day, when every jilot of higher ground bears some fragment of fair building; but, in order to knowVhat it was once, let the traveller follow in his boat at evening the windings of some un- frequented channel far into the midst of the melancholy plain ; let him remove, in his imagination, the bi'ight- ?iess of the great 'city that still extends itself in the distance, and the walls and towers from the islands that are near ; and so wait, until the bright investiture and ■^weet warmth of the sunset are withdrawn from the waters, and the black desert of their shore lies in its na- keduess beneath the night, pathless, comfortless, infirm, lost in dark languor and fearful.silence, except where the salt runlets plash into the tideless pools, or the seabirds flit from their margins with a questioning cry ; and he will be enabled to enter in some sort into the horror of heart with which this solitude was anciently chosen by man for his habitation. They little thought, who first drove the stakes into the sand, and strewed the ocean reeds for their rest, that their children were to be the princes of that ocean, and their palaces its pi'ide ; and yet, in the great natural laws that rule that soi'rowful wilderness, let it be remiembered what strange prepa- lation had been made for the things which no human imagination could have f ofetold, and how the whole ex- istence and fortune of the Venetian nation v/ere antici- pated or compelled, by the setting of those bars and doors to the rivers and the sea. Had deeper currents divided their islands, hostile navies would again and again have reduced the rising city into servitude ; had stronger surges beaten their shores, all the richness and 94 A RUSKIX AXTHOLGGY. refinement of the Venetian architectui-o must nave been exchanged for the walls and bulwarks of an ordinary sea-port. Had there been no tide, as in other parts of the Mediterranean, the narrow canals of the city would have become noisome, and the marsh in which it was built pestiferous. Had the tide been only a foot or eighteen inches higher in its rise, the water-access to the doors of the palaces would have been impossible : even as it is, there is sometimes a little difficulty, at the ebb, in landing without setting foot upon the lower and slippery steps : and the highest tides sometimes enter the courtyards, and overflow the entrance halls. — Atones of Venice, H., pp. 7-lo. Old Venice like Old Yarmouth. — For seven hundred years Venice had more likeness in her to old Yarmouth than to new Pall Mall; and you might come to shrewder guess of what she and her people were like, by living for a year or two lovingly among the herring-catchers of Yarmouth Roads, or the boat- men of Deal or Bo castle, than by reading any lengths of eloquent history. But you are to know also, and remember always, that this amphibious city — this Pho- cfea, or sea-dog of towns— looking with soft human eyes at you from the sand, Proteus himself latent in the salt-smelling skin of her — had fields, and plots of garden here and there; and, far and near, sweet woods of Calypso, graceful with quivering sprays, for woof of nests — gaunt with forked limbs for ribs or ships ; had good milk and butter from familiarly couchant cows ; thickets wherein familiar birds could sing ; and finally was observant of clouds and sky, as pleasant and useful phenomena. And she had at due distances among her simple dwellings, stately churches of marble. — St. Mark's Best, ^.^\. The Gothic Palaces of Venice. — Happily, in the pictures of Gentile Bellini, the fresco coloring of the Gothic palaces is recorded, as it still remained in his time ; not with rigid accuracy, but quite distinctly enough to enable us, by comparing it with the existing colored designs in the manuscripts and glass of the period, to ascertain })recisely what it must have been. The walls were generally covered with chequers of THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 95 very warm color, a russet inclining to scarlet, more or less relieved with white, black, and grey; as still seen in the only example which, having been executed in marble, has been jjerfectly preserved, the front of the Ducal Palace. ... On these russet or crimson backgrounds the entire space of the series of windows was relieved, for the most part, as a subdued white field of alabaster ; and on this delicate and veined white were set the circular disks of purple and green. The arms of the family were of course blazoned in their own proper colors, but I think generally on a pure azure ground ; the blue color is still left behind the shields in the CasaPriuli and one or two more of the palaces which are unrestored, and the blue ground was used also to relieve the sculptures of religious subject. Finally, all the mouldings, capitals, cornices, cusps, and traceries were either entirely gilded or profusely touched with gold. The whole front of a Gothic palace in Venice may, therefore, be simply described as a field of subdued russet, quartered with broad sculptured masses of while and gold ; these latter being relieved by smaller inlaid fragments of blue, purple, and deep green. — ^Stones of Venice, III., pp. 25, 2G. The Venetian habitually incrusted his work with nacre ; he built his houses, even the meanest, as if he had been a shell-fish — roughly inside, mother-of-pearl on the surface : he was content, perforce, to gather the clay of the Brenta banks, and bake it into brick for his substance of wall; but he overlaid it with the wealth of ocean, with the most precious foreign marbles. You might fancy early Venice one wilderness of brick, which a petrifying sea had beaLen upon till it coated it with marble : at first a dark city — washed white by the sea foam. — Stones of Venice, I., p. 268. Such, then, was that first and fairest Venice which rose out of the barrenness of the lagoon, and the sorrow of her people ; a city of graceful arcades and gleaming walls, veined with azure and warm with gold, and fretted with white sculpture like frost upon forest branches turned to marble. — Stones of Venice, II., p. lU. 96 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. A Golden City. — A city of marble, did I say? nay, rather a golden city, paved with emerald. For truly, every pinnacle and turret glanced or glowed, overlaid with gold, or bossed with jasper. Beneath, the unsullied sea drew in deep breathing, to and fro, in eddies of green wave. Deep-hearted, majestic, terrible as the sea — the men of Venice moved in sway of power and war ; pure as her pillars of alabaster, stood her mothers and maidens ; from foot to brow, all noble, walked her knights ; the low bronzed gleaming of searrusted armor shot angrily under their blood-red mantle-folds. Fear- less, faithful, patient, impenetrable, implacable — every word a fate — sate her senate. In hope and honor, lulled by flowing of v/ave around their isles of sacred .sand, each with his name written and the cross graved at his side, lay her dead. A wonderful piece of world. Rather, itself a world. It lay along the face of the waters, no larger, as its captains saw it from their masts at evening, than a bar of sunset that could not pass away ; but, for its power, it must have seemed to them as if they were sailing in the expanse of heaven, and this a great planet, whose orient edge widened through ether. — Modem Pabtters, V., p. 308. The Venice of Bvron. — The Venice of modern fiction and drama is a thing of yesterday, a mere efllor- escence of decay, a stage dream which the first rtty of daylight must dissipate into dust. No prisoner, whose name is worth remembering, or whose sorrow desert ed sympathy, ever crossed that " Bridge of Sighs," which is the centre of the Byronic ideal of Venice; no great merchant of Venice ever saw that Rialto under which the traveller now passes with breathless interest : the statue which Byron makes Faliero address as of one of his great ancestors was erected to a soldier of fortune a hundred and fifty years after Faliero's death ; and the most conspicuous parts of the city have been so entirely altered in the course of the last three centuries, that if Henry Dandolo or Francis Foscari could be summoned from their tombs, and stood each on the deck of his galley at the entrance of the Grand Canal, that renowned en- trance, the painter's favorite subject, the novelist's fa- vorite scene, where the water first nai"ov>'s liy tiie stciis THE GRAPHIC AnTS.—PAIXTING. 97 of the Chuvcli of La Salute — the mighty Doges would not know in what spot of the world they stood, would literally not recognize one stone of the great city, for whose sake, and by whose ingratitude, their gray hairs had been brouglit down with bitterness to the grave. The remains of t/iei?' Venice lie hidden behind the ciunbrous masses v/hich were the delight of the nation in its dotage ; hidden in ma^iy a grass-grown court, and silent pathway, and lightless canal, where the slow waves have sapped their foundations for five hundred years, and must soon prevail over them forever.— j!'^fones of Venice, II., p. {>. Venick, 23rd Jim e. [1871.] Modern Venice. — My letter will be a day or two late, I fear, after all ; for I can't wiite this morning, because of the accursed whistling of the dirty steam- engine of the omnibus for Lido, waiting at the quay of the Ducal Palace for the dirty population of Venice, which is now neither fish nor flesh, neither noble nor fish- erman — cannot afford to be rowed, nor has strength nor sense enough to row itself ; but su)okes and spits up and down the piazzetta all day, and gets itself dragged by a screaming kettle to Lido next morning, to sea-bathe it- self into capacity for more tobacco. — 7u:>rs, I., p. 250. The Sanity and Strength of the Venetian Character. — [The Venetians were] always quarrelling with the Pope. Their religious liberty came, like their bodily health, from that wave-training; for it is one notable effect of a life passed on shipboard to destrov weak beliefs in appointed forms of religion. A sailor may be grossly superstitious, but his supersti- tions will be connected with amulets and omens, not cast in systems. He must accustom himself, if he prays at all, to pray anywhere and anyhow. Candle- sticks and incense not being portable into tlie maintop, he perceives those decorations to be, on the whole, in- essential to a maintop mass. Sails must be set and cables bent, be it never so strict a saint's day, and it is found that no harm comes of it. Absolution on a lee- shoi'e must be had of the breakers, it appears, if at all, and they give it plenary and brief, without listening to confession. 98 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. It is enough for the Florentine to know how to use his sword and to ride. We Venetians, also, must be able to use our swords, and on ground which is none of the steadiest ; but, besides, we must be able to do near- ly everything that hands can turn to — rudders, and yards, and cables, all needing workmanly handling and workmanly knowledge, from captain as well as from men. To drive a nail, lash a spar, reef a sail — rude work this for noble hands; but to be done sometimes, and done well, on pain of death. All which not only takes mean pride out of us, and puts nobler pride of power in its stead; l)ut it tends partly to soothe, partly to chasten, partly to employ and direct, the hot Italian temper, and make us every way greater, calmer, and happier. — Modern Painters, V., pp. 235, 236. The Religion of Venice. — The Venetians were t\\Q last believing Ac\\oo\ oi\ti\\y . . . . The Venetian re- ligion was true. Not only true, but one of tlie main motives of their lives. . . . For one profane picture by great Venetians you will find ten of sacred subjects ; and those, also, including their grandest, most labored, and most beloved works. Tintoret's power culminates in two great religious pictures: the Crucifixion and the Paradise. Titian's in the Assumption, the Peter Martyr, and Presentation of the Virgin. Veronese's in the Marriage in Cana. — Modern Painters, V., pp. 240, 242. The decline of lier [Venice's] political prosperity was exactly coincident with that of domestic and individual religion. The most curious phenomenon in all Venetian history is the vitality of religion in private life, and its deadness in public policy. Amidst the enthu- siasm, chivalry, or fanaticism of the other states of Eu- rope, Venice stands, from first to last, like a masked stat- ue; her coldness impenetrable, her exertion only aroused by the touch of a secret spring. That spring was her commercial interest — this the one motive of all her im- portant political acts, or enduring national animosities.* * Years after tliis was written, Raskin admitted that he was wrong in the matter. " Venice," he says in his later note. " is superficially and apparently commercial: at heart jiassionately heroic and relig- ious; precisely the reverse of modeiii England, who is .superficially and apparently religious; and at lieart entirel.y infidel, cowardly, and dishonest. '"—aSYijucs of V(^nice. Iidrodmtory Chcvpiers. 1879. THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 99 She could forgive insults to her honor, but never rival- ship in her commerce; she calculated the glorv of her conquests by their value, and estimated their justice by their facility. Venice may well call upon us to note with reverence, that of all the towers which are still seen rising like a branchless forest from her islands, there is but one whose office was other than that of summoning to prayer, and that one was a watch-tower only : from first to last, while the palaces of the other cities of Italy were lifted into sullen fortitudes of rampart, and fringed with forked battlements for the javelin and the bow, the sands of Venice never sank under the weight of a war tower, and her roof terraces were wreathed with Arabian imagery, of golden globes suspended on the leaves of lilies. — /Sfo/zes of Yemce, pp. lS)-"24. Venetian Painting. — The great splendor of the Venetian school arises from their having seen and held from the beginning this great fact — that shadow is as much color -as hght, often much more. In Titian's fullest red the lights are pale rose-color, passing into white — the shadows warm deep crimson. In Veronese's most splendid orange, the lights are pale, the shadows crocus color; and so on. — Lectures on Art, p. 88. The Pride of Venetian Landscape. — The worst point we have to note respecting the spirit of Venetian landscape is its pride. . . . The Venetian possessed, and cared for, neither fields nor pastures. Being delivered, to his loss, from all the wholesome labors of tillage, he was also shut out from the sweet wonders and charities of the earth, and from the pleasant natural history of the year. . . . No simple joy was possible to him. Only stateliness and power; high intercourse with kingly and beautiful humanity, proud thoughts, or splendid pleasures ; throned sensualities, and ennobled appetites. — Modern Painters, V., pp. 239, 240. Religion in the Art of Titian. — The religion of Titian is like that of Shakespeare — occult behind his magnificent equity. . . . It had been the fashion before his time to make the Magdalen always y^ung and beautiful ; her, if no one 100 A nUSKIX ANTHOLOGY. else, even the rudest painters flattered ; her repentanee was not thought perfect unless she had lustrous hair and lovely lips. Titian first dared to doubt the ro- mantic fable, and reject the nai'iovmess of sentimental faith. He saw that it was possible for plain women to love no less than beautiful ones; and for stout persons to repent as well as those more delicately made. It seemed to him that the Magdalen would have received her pardon not the less quickly because her wit wa,s none of the readiest ; and would not have been re- garded with less compassion by her Master because her eyes were swollen, or her dress disordered. Titian could have put issues of life and death into the face of a man asking the way ; nay, into the back of him, if he had so chosen. He has put a whole scheme of dogmatic theology into a row of bishops' backs at the Louvre. — Modern Painters, V., p. 248. Breadth and Realism of Venetian Art. — The Venetian mind, we have said, and Titian's especially, as the central type of it, was wholly realist, universal, and manly. In this breadth and realism, the painter saw that sen- sual passion in man was, not only a fact, but a Divine fact ; the human creature, though the highest of the animals, was, nevertheless, a perfect animal, and his hap{)iness, health, and nobleness depended on the due power of every animal passion, as well as the cultiva- tion of every spiritual tendency. He thought that every feeling of the mind and heart, as well as every form of the body, deserved painting. Also to a painter's true and highly trained instinct, the human body is the loveliest of all objects. I do not stay to trace the reasons why, at Venice, the female body could be found in more perfect beauty than the male; but so it was, and it becomes the princi- pal subject therefore, both with Giorgione and Titian. They painted it fearlessly, with all right and natural qualities ; never, however, representing it as exercising any overpowering attractive influence on man ; but only on the Faun or Satyr. Yet they did this so majestically that I am perfectly certain no untouched Venetian picture ever yet excited one base thought (otherwise than in base persons any- THE GRAPHIC ARTS.-PAINTING. 101 thing may do so) ; while in the greatest studies of the female body by the Venetians, all other characters are overborne by majesty, and the form becomes as pure as that of a Greek statue. — Modern Painters, V., p. 249. The Pictures of Tintoret in^ the Scuola di San Rocco, Venice. — The number of valuable pictures is fifty-two ; arranged on the walls and ceilings of three rooms, so badly lighted, in consequence of the admirable arrangements of the Renaissance architect, that it is only in the early morning that some of the pictures can be seen at all, nor can they ever be secii but imper- fectly. They were all painted, however, for their places in the dark, and, as compared with Tintoret's other works, are therefore, for the most part, nothing more than vast sketches, made to produce, under a certain .degree of shadow, the effect of finished pictures. Their treatment is thus to be considered as a kind of scene- painting ; differing from ordinary scene-painting only in this, that the effect aimed at is not that of a natural scene but a 2mrfert picture. They differ in this respect from all other existing works ; for there is not, as far as I know, any other instance in which a great master has consented to work for a room plunged into almost total obscurity. It is probable that non^ but Tintoret would have undertaken the task, and most fortunate that he was forced to do it. For in this magnificent scene-painting we have, of course, more wonderful examples, both of his handling, and knowl- edge of eft'ect, than could ever have been exhibited in finished pictures ; while the necessity of doing much with few strokes keeps his mind so completely on the stretch throughout the work (while yet the velocity of production prevented his being wearied), that no other series of his works exhibits powers so exalted. On the other hand, owing to the velocity and coarseness of the painting, it is mo-.'e liable to injury thri)iigh drought or damp; and, as the walls have been for years con- tinually running down with rain, and what little sun gets into the place contrives to fall all day right on one or other of the pictures, they are nothing but wrecks of what they were ; and the ruins of paintings originally coarse are not likely ever to be attractive to the public mind. Twenty or thirty years ago they were taken 102 .4 BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. down to be retouched ; but the man to whom the task was committed providentially died, and only one of them was spoiled. 1 have found traces of his work upon another, but not to an extent very seriously de- structive. The rest of the sixty-two, or, at any rate, all that are in the upper room, appear entirely intact. — /Stones of Venice, III., pp. 340, 341. Young Ruskin's first Visit to tiik Scuola di San Rocco in Venice. — When we came away, Hard- ing said that he felt like a whipped schoolboy. 1, not having been at school so long as he, felt only that anew world was opened to me, that I had seen that day the Art of Man in its full majesty for the first time ; and that there was also a strange and precious gift in my- self enabling me to recognize it, and therein ennobling, not crushing mo. — Modern Painters, II., p. 256, Ixe- msed Ed., 1883. Tintoret's Massacre of the Innocents. — The scene is the outer vestibule of a palace, the slippery marble floor is fearfully barred across by sanguine shadows, so that our eyes seem to become bloodshot and strained with strange horror and deadly vision ; a lake of life before them, hke the burning seen of the doomed Moabite on the water that came by the way of Edom ; a huge flight of stairs, without parapet, de- scends on the left; down this rush a crowd of women mixed with the murderers; the child in the arms of one has been seized by the limbs, she hurls herself over the edge, and fidls head down-most, dragging the child out of the grasp by her weight ; — she will be dashed dead in a second : two others are farther in flight, they reach the edge of a deep river — the water is beat into a hollow by the force of their plunge ; — close to us is the great struggle, a heap of the mothers entangled in one mortal writhe with each other and the swords, one of the murderers dashed down and crushed beneath them, the sword of another caught by the blade and dragged at by a woman's naked hand ; the youngest and fairest of the women, her child jnsr torn away from a death grasp and clasped to her breast with the grip of a steel vice, falls backwards helplessly over the heap, right on the sword points; all knit together and hurled down in one hopeless, frenzied, furious aliandonment of body THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 103 and soul in the effort to save. Their slirieksiinsj in our ears till the marble seems rending around us, but far back, at the bottom of the stairs, there is sometiiing in the shadow like a heap of clothes. It is a woman, sitting quiet — quite quiet — still as any stone, she looks down steadfastly on her dead child, hud along on the floor before her, and her hand is pressed softly upon her brow. — Modern Painters, II., p. 375. "The Last Judgment," ev Tintoret. — By Tin- toret only has this unmanageable event been grappled with in its verity, not typically nor symbolically, but as they may see it who shall not sleep, but be changed. Only one ti'aditional circumstance he has received with Dante and Michael Angelo, the boat of the condemned; but the impetuosity of his mind bursts out even in the adoption of this image, he has not stopped at the scowl- ing ferryman of the one nor at the sweeping blow and demon dragging of the other, but, seized Hylas-like by the limbs, and tearing up the earth in his agony, the victim is 'dashed into his destruction; nor is it the slug- gish Lethe, nor the fiery lake that bears the cursed vessel, but the oceans of the earth and the waters of the firmament gathered into one white, ghastly cataract, the river of the wrath of God, roaring down into the gulf where the world has melted with its fervent heat, choked with the ruin of nations, and the limbs of its corpses tossed out of its whirling, like water-wheels. Bat-like, out of the holes and caverns and shadows of the ear^h, the bones gather, and the clay-heaps heave, rattling and adhering into half-kneaded anatomies, that crawl, and startle, and struggle up among the putrid weeds, with the clay clinging to their clotted hair, and their heavy eyes sealed by the earth darkness yet, like his of old who went his way unseeing to Siloam Pool ; shaking off one by one the dreams of the prison-house, hardly hearing the clangor.of the trumpets of the armies of G(k1, blinded yet more, as they awake, by the white light of the new Heaven, until the great vortex of the four winds bears up their bodies to the judgment seat • the firmament is all full of them, a very dust of human souls, that drifts, and floats, and falls in the intermina' ble, inevitable light ; the bright clouds are darkened with them as witli thick snow, currents of atom life ia 104 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOay. the arteries of heaven, now soaring up slowly, farther, and higher, and higher still, till the eye and the thought can follow no farther, borne up, wingless, by their in- ward faith and by the angel powers invisible, now hurled in countless drifts of horror before the breath of their condemnation. — Modern Pamters, II., p. 377. Veronese's Mastiffs. — Two mighty brindled mas- tiffs, and beyond them, darkness. You scarcely see them at first, against the gloomy green. No other sky for them, poor things. They are gray themselves, spotted witli black all over; their multitudinous dog- gish vices may not be washed out of them — are in grain of nature. Strong thewed and sinewed, how- ever — no blame on them as far as bodily strength may reach ; their heads coal-black, with drooping ears and fierce eyes, bloodshot a little. Wildest of beasts per- haps they would have been, by nature. But between them stands the spirit of their human Love, dove- winged and beautiful, the resistless Greek boy, golden- quivered ; his glowing breast and limbs the only light upon the sky — purple and pure. He has cast his chain about the dogs' necks, and holds it in his strong right hand, leaning proudly a little back from them. They will never break looje. — Modirii Pidnters,N ., p. 277. Venetian Art perished. — By reason of one great, one fatal fault; — recklessness in aim. Wholly noble in its sources, it was wholly unworthy in its purposes. . . The Assumption is a noble picture, because Titian believed in the Madonna. But he did not paint it to make anyone else believe in her. He painted it be- cause he enjoyed rich masses of red and blue, and faces flushed with sunlight. . . . Other men used their effete faiths and mean facul- ties with a high moral purpose. The Venetian gave the most earnest faith, and the lordliest faculty, to gild the shadows of an ante-chamber, or heighten the splen- dors of a holiday. I know not how far in humility, or how far in bitter and hopeless levity, the great V^enetians gave their art to be blasted by the sea-winds or Wcisted by the worm. I know not whether in sorrowful obedience, or in wanton compliance, they fostered the folly, and en- THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 105 riched the luxury of their age. This only I know, that in proportion to the greatness of their power was the shame of its desecration and the suddenness of its fall. The enchanter's spell, woven by centuries of toil, was broken in the weakness of a moment; and swiftly, and utterly, as a rainbow vanishes, the radiance and the strength faded from the wings of the Lion. — 3Ioder)i Painters, V., Part IX., chap. 3, i^'i-ssmi. THE DUTCH MASTERS. [From Modern Painters, V., Part IX., Chap. Xl.} No Religion in Dutch Art. — So far as I can hear or read, this is an entirely new and wonderful state of things achieved by the Hollanders. The human being never got wholly quit of the terror of spiritual being before. Persian, Egyptian, Assyrian, Hindoo, Chinese, all kept some dim, appalling record of what they called "gods." Farthest savages had — and still have — their Gieat Spirit, or, in extremity, their feather idols, large-eyed ; but here in Holland we have at la.-^t got utterly done with it all. Our only idol glitters dimly, in tangible shape of a pint pot, and all the incense offered thereto, comes out of a small censer or bowl at the end of a pipe, Paul Potter. — You will find that the best Dutch painters do not care about the people, but about the lustres on them. Paul Potter, their best herd and cattle painter, does not care even for sheep, but only for wool ; regards not cows, but cowhide. RrsKiN AND THE DiTCiiMEN. — No effort of faucy will enable me to lay hold of the temper of Teniers or Wouvermans, any more than I can enter into the feel- ings of one of the lower animals. I cannot see why they painted — what they are aim.ing at — what they liked or disliked. All their life and work is the same i-ort of mystery to me as the mind of my dog when he rolls on carrion. "Articles in Oil Paint.'" — A Dutch picture is, in fact, merely a Florentine table more finely touched : it 106 A R US KIN A NTHOL OGY. has its regular ground of slate, and its mother-of-pearl and tinsel put in with equal precision ; and perhaps the fairest view one can take of a Dutch painter is, that he is a respectable tradesman furnishing well-made articles in oil paint. CuYP. — Cuyp can, indeed, paint sunlight, the best that Holland's sun can show ; he is a man of large natural gift, and sees broadly, nay, even seriously. A brewer by trade, he feels the quiet of a summer afternoon, and his work will make you marvelously drowsy. It is good for nothing else that I know of: strong; but un- helpful and unthoughtful. Nothing happens in his pic- tures, except some indifferent person's asking the way of somebody else, who, by their cast of countenance, seems not likely to know it. For farther entertain- ment perhaps a red cow and a white one ; or puppies at play, not playfully; the man's heart not going even with the puppies. Essentially he sees nothing but the shine on the flaps of their ears. Rubens. — Rubens was an honorable aild entirely well-intentioned man, earnestly industrious, sinnple and temperate in habits of life, high-bred, learned, and dis- creet. His affection for his mother w'as great ; his generosity to contemporary artists unfailing. He is a healthy, worthy, kind-hearted, courtly-phrased — Animal — without any clearly perceptible traces of a soul, except when he paints his children. Teniers. — Take a picture by Teniers, of so',s quar- relling over their dice : it is an entirely clever picture ; so clever that nothing in its kind has ever been done equal to it ; but it is also an entirel}'- base and evil picture. It is an expression of delight in the prolonged contemplation of a vile thing, and delight in that is an "unmannered," or "immoral" quality. — Crovyn of Wild Olive, Lect. I., p. 40. THE CLASSICAL SCHOOL. The Classical Spirit. — The school is generally to be characterized as that of taste and restraint. As the school of taste, everything is, in its estimation, beneath THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 107 it, so as to be tasted or tested ; not above it, to be thankfully received. Nothing was to be fed upon as bread; but only palated as a dainty. The spirit has destroyed art since the close of the sixteenth century, and nearly destroyed French literature, our English literature being at the same time severely depressed, and our education, (except in bodily strength) rendered nearly nugatory by it, so far as it affects common-place minds. It is not possible that the classical spirit should ever take possession of a mind of the highest order. Claude. — Claude had a fine feeling for beauty of form and considerable tenderness of perception. . . , He first set the pictorial sun in the pictorial heaven. . . His aerial effects are unequalled. Their character ap- pears to me to arise rather from a delicacy of bodily constitution in Claude, than from any mental sensibil- ity ; such as they are, they give a kind of feminine charm to his work, which partly accounts for its wide influence. To whatever the character may be traced, it renders hiua incapable of enjoying or painting any- thing energetic or terrible. Hence the weakness of his conceptions of rough sea. . . . He had sincerity of purpose. That is to say, so far as he felt the truth, he tried to be true ; but he never felt it enough to sacrifice sujjposed propriety, or habit- ual method to it. . . . His seas are the most beautiful in old art. . . . He had hardly any knowledge of })hysical science. There is no other sentiment traceable in his work than this weak dislike to entertain the con- ception of toil or suffering. Ideas of relation, in the true sense, he has none ; nor ever makes an effort to conceive an event in its probable circumstances, but fills his foregrounds with decorative figures, using com- monest conventionalism to indicate the subject he in- tends. We may take two examples, merely to show the general character of such designs of his. St. George and the Dragon. The scene is a beauti- ful opening in woods by a river side, a pleasant foun- tain springs on the right, and the usual rich vegetation covers the foreground. The dragon is about the size of ten bramble leaves, and is being killed by the re- mains of a lance, barely the thickness t)f a walking- stick, in his throat, curling his tail in a highly offensive 108 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. and threatening manner. St. George, notwitlistandin^^, on a prancing horse, bi-andishes his sword, at about thirty yards' distance from the offensive animal. A semicircuh^r shelf of rocks encircles the foneground, by which the theatre of action is divided into pit and boxes. Some women and children having descended unadvisedly into the pit, are helping each other out of it again, with marked precipitation. A prudent per- son of rank has taken a front seat in the boxes — crosses his legs, leans his head on his hand, and contemplates the proceedings with the air of a connoisseur. Two attendants stand in graceful attitudes behind him, and two more walk away under the trees, conversing on general subjects. Large admiration of Claude is wholly impossible in any period of national vigor in art. He may by such tenderness as he possesses, and by the very fact of his banishing painfulness, exercise considerable influence over certain classes of minds ; but this influence is al- most exclusively hurtful to them. Nevertheless, on account of such small sterling quali- ties as they possess, and of their general pleasantness, as well as their importance in the history of art, genu- ine Claudes must always possess a considerable value, either as drawing-room ornaments or museum relics. They may be ranked with fine pieces of China manu- facture, and other agreeable curiosities, of which the price depends on the rarity rather than the merit, yet always on a merit of a certain low kind — Modern, Painters, V,, pp. 263-2G9. NicoLO PoussiN. — Poussin's landscapes, though more limited in material, are incomparably nobler than Claude's. It would take considerable time to enter into accurate analysis of his strong but degraded mind ; and bring us no reward, because whatever he has done has been done better by Titian. His peculiarities are, without exception, weaknesses, induced in a highly in- tellectual and inventive mind by Iteing fed on medals, books, and bassi-relievi instead of nature, and by the want of any deep sensibility. His best works are his Bacchanalian revels, always brightly wanton and wild, full of frisk and fire ; but they are coarser than Titian's, and infinitely less beautiful. ... THE 'ORAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 109 His want of sensibility permits liim to paint frightful subjects, without feeling any true horror. . . . His battle pieces are cold and feeble ; his religious subjects wholly nugatory, they do not excite him enough to develop even his ordinary powers of rnvQW- iionZ-Modern rainters, V., pp. 2()3-2Tl. LANDSCAPE. Education amidst country possessing architectural re- mains of some noble kind, I believe to be wholly essen- tial to tlie progress of a landscape artist. — Modern rainters, V., p. 322. Tlie first man who entirely broke through the con- ventionahty of his time, and painted pure landscape, was Masaccio, but he died too young to effect the revolu- tion of winch his genius was capable. It was left for other men to accomplish, namely, for Correggio and Titian. These two painters were the first who relieved che foregrounds of their landscape from the grotesque, j^uaint, and crowded formalism of the early painters ; and gave a close approximation to the forms of nature in £ i\\\-ng^.— Lectures on Architecture, p. 88. Human Interest in Landscape. — All true land- scape, whether simple or exalted, depends primarily for its interest on connection with humanity, or with spirit- ual powers. Banisli your heroes and nymphs from the classical landscape— its laurel shades will move you no more. Show that the dark clefts of the most romantic mountain are uninhabited and untraversed ; it will cease to be romantic. ... If from Veronese's Mar- i-iage in Cana we remove the architecture and the gay dre^sses, we shall not in the faces and hands remaining, find a satisfactory abstract of the picture. But try it the other way. Take out the faces ; leave the draperies, and how then \ Put the fine dresses and jewelled gir- dles into the best group you can ; paint them with all Veronese's skill: will they satisfy you ?— J/o(/t^;7i Pcmiters, V., p. 21G. A Modern French Emotional Landscape. — You may paint a modern French emotional landscape with 110 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. a pail of whitewash and a pot of gas-tar in ten minutes, at the outside. You put seven or eight streaks of the plaster for your sky, to begin with; then you put in a i-ow of bushes with the gas-tar, then you rub the ends of them into the same shapes upside down — you put three or four more streaks of white, to intimate tlie presence of a pool of water — and if you finish off with a log that looks something like a dead body, your picture will have the credit of being a di";est of a whole novel of Gaboriau, and lead the talk of the season. — Art of Englcmd, p. 90. In Miss Greena way's Child-Land. — There are no railroads in it, to carry the children away with, are there? no tunnel or pit mouths to swallow them up, no league-long viaducts — no blinkered iron bridges 1 There are only wiiiding brooks, wooden foot-bridges, and grassy hills without any holes cut into them ! Again — there are no parks, no gentlemen's seats with attached stables and offices ! — no rows of model lodging-houses! no charitable institutions! ! It seems as if none of these things which the English mind now rages after, possess any attraction whatever for this unimpressionable person. She is a graceful Gallio — Gallia gratia plena, and cares for none of those things. And more wonderful still — there are no gasworks ! no waterworks, no mowing machines, no sewing ma- chines, no telegraph poles, no vestige, in fact, of science, civilization, economical arrangements, or commei'cial enterprise! ! ! — Art of En f /land, pp. 68, 69. The Native Country of Salvator. — We are ac- customed to hear the south of Italy spoken of as a beautiful country. Its mountain forms are graceful above others, its sea-bays exquisite in outline and hue ; but it is only beautiful in superficial aspect. In closer detail it is wild and melancholy. Its forests are sombre- leafed, labyrinth-stemmed; the carubbe, the olive, lau- rel, and ilex, are alike in that strange feverish twist- ing of their branches, as if in spasms of half human pain : — Avernus forests ; one fears to break their boughs, lest they should cry to us from their rents ; the rocks they shade are of ashes, or thrice-molten lava; iron sponge, whose every pore has been filled THE GUAPlUa ARTS.— PAINTING. Ill with fire. Silent villages, earthquake-shaken, without commerce, without industry, without knowledge, with- out hope, gleam in white ruin from hillside to hillside ; far-winding wrecks of immemorial walls surround the dust of cities long forsaken: the mountain streams moan through the cold arches of their foundations, green with weed, and rage over the heaps of their fallen towers. Far above, in thunder-blue serration, stand the eternal edges of the angry Apennine, dark with rolling iiupendence of volcanic cloud. — Modern Painters, V., p. 257. Salvator had not the sacred sense — the sense of color; all the loveliest hues of the Calabrian air were invisible to him; the sorrowful desolation of the Cala- brian villages unfelt. He saw only what was gross and terrible — the jagged peak, the splintered tree, the flowerless bank of grass, and wandering weed, prickly and pale. His temper confirmed itself in evil, and became more and more fierce and morose ; though not, I believe, cruel, ungenerous, or lascivious. — Modern Painters, V., p. 258. TURNER. Turner painted the labor of men, their sorrow, and their death ; . . . [he] only momentarily dwells on anything els(i than ruin. — Modern Painters, V., pp. 356, 357. Turner appears never to have desired, from any one, .care in favor of his separate works. The only thing he would say sometimes was, " Keep them together." He seemed not to mind how much they were injured, if only the record of the thought were left in them, and they were kept in the series which would give the key to their meaning. — .Modern Painters, V., p. 359. Turner may be beaten on his own ground — so may Tintoret, so may Shakespeare, Dante, or Homer : but my heliefia that all these first-rate men are lonely men ,• that the pai-ticular work they did was by them done for ever in the best way ; and that this work done by Turner among the hills, joining the most intense appre- 112 A RUSK JN ANTHOLOGY. ciation of all tenderness with delight in all magnitude, and memory for all detail, is never to be rivalled, or looked upon in similitude again. — Modern Pidnfers, IV., p. 322. A single dusty roll of Turner's brush is more truly expressive of the infinitude of foliage than the niggling of Hobima could have rendered his canvas, if he had worked on it till doomsday. . . . He could not paint a cluster of leaves better than Titian ; but he could a bough, much more a distant mass of foliage. No man ever before painted a distant tree rightly, or a full-leaved branch rightly. All Titian's distant branches are ponderous flakes, as if covered with sea-weed, while Veronese's and Raphael's are con- ventional, being exquisitely ornamental arrangements of small perfect leaves. — Modern Painters, V., p. 52. Turner's Opinion of Skies. — He knew the colors of the clouds over the sea, from the Bay of Naples to the Hebrides; and- being once asked where, in Europe, were to be seen the loveliest skies, answered instantly, "in the Isle of Tlianet." Where, therefore, and in this very town of Margate, he lived, when he chose to be quit of London, and yet not to travel. — Fors, I., p. 128. Turner and ixis Opponents. — They had deliberately closed their eyes to all nature, and had gone on inquir- ing, " Where do you put your brown tree ? " A vast revelation was made to them at once [by Turner's color style], enough to have dazzled any one; but to them, light unendurable as incomprehensible. They "did to the moon complain," in one vociferous, unani-' mous, continuous " Tu whoo." Shrieking rose from all dark places at the same instant, just the same kind of shrieking that is now raised against thePre-Raphaelites. Those glorious old Arabian Nights, how true they are ! Mocking and whispering, and abuse loud and low by turns, from all the black stones beside the road, when one living soul is toiling up the hill to get the golden water. Mocking and whispering, that he may look back, and become a black stone like themselves. — Pre- llcqjhaelitism, p. 39. THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 113 The Port-holes of the Ship. — Turner, in his early life, was sometimes good-natured, and would show peo- ple what he was about. He was one day making a drawing of Plymouth harbor, v/ith some ships at the distance of a mile or two, seen against the light. Hav- ing shown this drawing to a naral officer, the naval officer observed with surprise, and objected with very justifiable indignation, that the ships of the line had nc port-holes. "No," said Turner, " certainly not. If yoi' will walk up to Mount Edgecumbe, and look at th** ships against the sunset, you will find you can't see th? port-holes." "Well, but," said the naval officer, stiP indignant, "you know the port-holes are there." " Yes,'' said Turner, " I know that well enough ; but my busi- ness is to draw what I see, and not what I know ii/ there :'— Eagles JVc^f, p. 81. Each Work must be studied Separately. — Two works of his, side by side, destroy each other to a dead certainty, for each is so vast, so complete, so demand- ant of every power, so sufficient for every desire of the mind, that it is utterly impos?ible for two to be compre- hended together. Each must have the undivided in- tellect, and each is destroyed by the attraction of the other; and it is the chief power and might of these pictures, that they are works for the closet and the heart — works to be dwelt upon separately and devotedly, and then chiefly when the mind is in it ^ highest tone, and desirous of a beauty which may be food for its immortality. It is the very stamp and essence of the purest poetry, that it can only be so met and under- stood ; and that the clash of common interests, and the roar of the selfish world, must be hushed about the heart, before it can hear the still, small voice, wherein rests the power communicated from the Holiest. — Arroics of the CJutce, I., p. 35. Various Judgments and Anecdotes of Turner. — Turner differed from most men in this — that he was always willing to take anything to do that came in lii^s way. He did not shut himself up in a garret to pro- duce unsaleable works of " high art," and starve, or lose his senses. He hired himself out every evening to wash in skies in Imlian ink, on other people's drawings, 114 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. as many as he could, at half-a-crown a-night, getting his supper into the bargain. " What could 1 have done better?" he said afterwards: "it was first-rate prac- tice." There does not exist such a thing as a slovenly draw- ing by Turner. . . . He never let a drawing leave his hands without having made a step in advance, and having done better in it than he had ever done before ; and there is no important drawing of the period which is not executed with a ^Jc/^/^dif^regard of time and price, and which was not, even then, worth four or five times what Turner received for it. . . . What Turner did in contest with Claude, he did with every other then-known master of landscape, each in his turn. He challenged and vanquished, each in his own peculiar field, Vandevelde on the sea, Salvator among rocks, and Cuyp on lowland rivers ; and, having done this, set himself to paint the natural scenery of skies, mountains, and lakes, which, until his time, had never been so much as attempted. He thus, in the extent of his sphere, far surpassed even Titian and Leonardo, the great men of the earlier schools. In their foreground work neither Titian nor Leonardo could be excelled ; but Titian and Leonardo were thoroughly conventional in all hut their fore- gi'ounds. Turner was equally great in all the elements of landscape, and it is on him, and on his daring addi- tions to the received schemes of landscape art, that all modern landscape has been founded. You will never meet any truly great living landscape painter who will not at once frankly confess his obligations to Turner, not, observe, as having copied him, but as having been led by Turner to look in nature for what he would otherwise either not have discerned, or discerning, not have dared to represent. Turner, therefore, was the first man who presented us with the t[/pe of perfect landscape art : and the richness of that art, with which you are at present sur- rounded, and which enables you to open your walls as it were into so many windows, through which you can see whatever has charmed you in the fairest scenery of your country, you will do well to remember as Tur- nercsqxe. . . . THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 115 This man, this Turner, of whom you have known so little while he was living among you, will one day take his place beside Shakespeare and Verulam, in the an- nals of the light of England. Yes : beside Shakespeare and Yerulam, a third star in that central constellation, round which, in the astron- omy of intellect, all other stars make their circuit. By Shakespeare, humanity was unsealed to you ; by Veru- lam the princijyles of nature ; and by Turner, her aspect. ... I knew him for ten years, and during that time had much familiar intercourse with him. I never once heard him say an unkind thing of a brother artist, / iievev. once heard liiin fnd a fault with another man's work. I could say this of no other artist whom I have ever known. . . . When Turner's picture of Cologne was exhibited in the vear 1826, it was hung between two portraits, by Sir Thomas Lawrence, of Lady Wallscoui t, and Lady Robert Manners. The sky of Turner's picture was exceedingly bright, and it had a most injurious effect on the color of the two portraits. Lawrence naturally felt mortified, and complained openly of the position of his pictures. You are aware that artists were at that time permitted to retouch their pictures on the walls of the Academy. On the morning of the opening of the exhibition, at the private view, a friend of Turner's who had seen the Cologne in all its splendor, led a group of expectant critics up to the picture. He started back from it in consternation. The golden sky had changed to a dun color. He ran up to Turner, who was in another part of the room. " Turner, what have you been doing to your picture?" "Oh," muttered Turner, in a low voice, "poor Lawrence was so unhappy. It's only lamp black. It'll all wash off after the exhibition ! " He had actually passed a wash of lamp black in water- color over the whole sky, and utterly spoiled his picture for the time, and so left it through the exhibition, lest it should hurt Lawrence's. Imagine what it was for a man to live seventy years in this hard world, with the kindest heart and the noblest intellect of his time, and never to meet with a 116 A R USKIN ANTHOLOG F. single word or ray of sympathy, until he felt himself sinking into the grave. From the time he knew his ti'ue greatness all the world was turned against him : he held his own ; but it could not be without roughness of bearing, and hardening of the temper, if not of the heart. No one understood him, no one trusted him, and every one cried out against him. Imagine, any of you, the effect upon your own minds, if every voice that you heard from the human beings around you were raised, year after year, through all your lives, only in condemnation of your efforts, and denial of your success. — Lectures on ArcJiitecture, III., pp. 95-103. Emerson and Turner. — No modern person has truer instinct for heroism than [Mr. Emerson]: nay, he is the only man I know of, among all who ever looked at books of mine, who had nobleness enough to under- stand and believe the story of Turner's darkening his own picture that it might not take the light out of Lawrence's. The level of vulgar English temper is now sunk so far below the power of doing such a thing, that I never told the story yet, in general society, with- out being met by instant and obstinate questioning of its truth, if not by quiet incredulity. But men with "the pride of the best blood of England" can believe it ; and Mr. Emerson believes it. — Fors, I., p. 365. Turner's Kindness. — One of the points in Turner which increased the general falseness of impression respecting him was a curious dishke he had to appear kind. Drawing, with one of his best friends, at the bridge of St. Martin's, the friend got into great difficul- ty over a colored sketch. Turner looked over him a little while, then said, in a grumbling way — "I haven't got any paper I like ; let me try yours." Receiving a block book, he disappeared for an hour and a half. Returning, he threw the book down, with a growl, say- ing — " I can't make anything of your paper." There were three sketches on it, in throe distinct states of progress, showing the process of coloring from begin- ning to end, and clearing up every difficulty which his friend had got into. — 3Iodern Painters, V., p. 369. THE ORAPIUV AUTS.— PAINTING. 117 This one fact I now record joyfully and solsmnly, that, having known Turner for ten years, and tliat dur- \\v^ the period of his life when the briglitest qualities of his mind were, in many respects, diminished, and when he was suffering most from the evil speaking of the world, I never heard him say one depreciating word of living man, or man's woi'k ; I never saw him look an unkind or blameful look; I never knew him let pass, without some sorrowful remonstrance, or endeaver a* mitigation, a blameful word spoken by another. — Modern Pahiters, V., p. (3(j(J. TURNER AND THE SPLUGEN DRAWING [Shortly after his recovery from the most serious illness of his life, in the Spring of 187S, Professor Riiskin was presented, by his friends with Turner's "Pass of the Spliigen," a drawing which he had cov- eted for years, and Vv^hich he says has mainly directed all his practical study of mountain forms, and all his geological researches. The drawing was purchased at the Novar sale, the idea of the presentation having been taken from Professor Ruskin's Notes on his Turner Drawings, wherein lie gave a graphic and sprightly report of the origin of the "Spliigen," and his own share in getting Turner the commission. In 1840-41 Turner had been in Switzerland making sketches, and in the winter of 1841-42, having re- turned to London, he went to picture dealer -Griffith, with fifteen of these, and left them with him, offering to realize ten if buyers could be found. He also took to Griffith four realized sketches in order to show his hand. Let Professor Ruskin continue the story] : So he went to Mr. Griffith of Norwood. I loved — yes, loved, Mr. Griffith; and the happy hours he got for me! (I was introduced to Turner on Mr. Griffith's garden-lawn.) He was the only person whom Turner minded at that time. But my father could not bear him. So there were times, and times. • One day, then, early in 1842, Turner brought the four [sign] drawings above-named, [The Pass of the Spliigen, Mont Righi (morning), Mont Righi (evening), 118 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. and Lake Lucerne] and the fifteen sketches in a roll in his pocket, to Mr. Griffith (in Waterloo Place, where the sale-room was). I have no reason to doubt the substantial accuracy of Mr. Griffith's report of the first conversation. Says Mr. Turner to Mr. Griffith, " What do you think you can get for sucii things as these ? " Says Mr. Griffith 'to Mr. Turner: " Well, perhaps, commission included, eighty guineas each." Says Mr. Turner to Mr. Griffith, "Ain't they worth more?" Says Mr. Griffith to Mr. Turner, (after looking curiously into the execution, whichj you will please note, is rather what some people would call hazy) : " They 're a little diii'erent from your usual style" — (Turner silent, Griffith does not push the point) — "but — but — yes, they are worth more, but I could not get more." (Question of intrinsic value, and political economy in Art, you see, early forced on my attention). So the bargain was made that if Mr. Griffith could sell ten drawings — the four signs [or specimens] to wit, and six others — for eighty guineas each. Turner would make the six others from such of the fifteen sketches as the purchasers chose, and Griffith should have ten per cent, (mt of the eight hundred total (Tur- ner had expected a thousand, I believe). So then Mr. Griffith thinks over the likely persons to get commissions from, out of all England, for ten drawings by Turner ! and these not quite in his usual style, too, and he sixty-five years old ; — reputation also pretty nearly overthrown finally, by lilackirooirs MiKjdzhto ; — a hard thing enough ; but the old man must be pleased, if possible! So Griffith did his best. He sent to Mr. Munro of Novar, Turner's old com- panion in travel ; he sent to Mr. Windus of Totten- ham; he sent to Mr. Bicknell of Heme Hill ; he sent to my fatlier and me. Mr. Windus of Tottenham came first, and at once said "the style was changed, he did not quite like it." (He was right, mind you, he knew his Turner, in style). " He would not have any of these drawings." I, as Fors would have it, came next; but my father was travelling for orders, and I had no authority to do any- THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 119 thing. The Spliigen Pass I saw in an instant to be the noblest Alpine drawing Turner had ever till then made ; and the red Righi, such a piece of color as had never come nil/ way before. I wrote to my father, saying I would fain have that Spliigen Pass, if he were home in time to see it, and give me leave. Of more than one drawing I had no hope, for my father knew the worth of ei'ditv jj; nine as. [After some talk and bargaining two of the sketches got ordered and three of the finished drawings were purchased]. " And not tliat^'' said Turner, shaking his fist at the Pass of the Spliigen ; — but said no more ! I came and saw the Pass of the Spliigen again, and heard how things were going on, and I knew well why Turner had said, " And not that." The next day Munro of Novar came again ; and he also knew why Turner had said " not that," and made up his mind; and bought the Pass of the Spliigen. At last my father came home. I had not the way of explaining my feelings to him somehow, any more than Cordelia to her father ; nevertheless, he knew them enough to say I might have one of the sketches realized. He went with me, and chose with me, to such end, the original of the Ehrenbreitstein. [By hard coaxing, John got his father to promise him one more drawing; on condition that it turned out well. Turner set to work on nine pictures and finished them. John's conditional " Lucerne" turned out well, and was purchased by the indulgent father]. Four or five years ago — [continues Mr. Ruskin] Mr. Vokins knows when, I haven't the date handy here — he came out to me, saying he wanted a first- rate Turner drawing, had I one to spare? " Well," I said, " I have none to spare, yet I have a reason for letting one first-rate one go, if you give me a price." " What will you take % " "A thousand pounds." Mr. Vokins wrote me the cheque in Denmark Hill drawing-room (my old servant, Lucy Tovey, bringing pen and ink), and took the Lucerne. Lucy, amazed and sorrowful, put the drawing into his carriage. I wished to get (had Turner, for one drawing, his 120 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. own original price for the whole ten, and thus did. — ' Notes on his Turner Drawings — Epilogue, pp. 71-75. Turner Unappreciated by the Public. — I spent the ten strongest years of my life (from twenty to thirty), in endeavoring to show the excellence of the work of the man whom I believed, and rightly believed, to be the greatest painter of the schools of England since Reynolds. I had then perfect faith in the power of every great truth or beauty to prevail vUtimately,and take its right place in usefulness and honor ; and 1 strove to bring the painter's work into this due place, while the painter was yet alive. But he knew, better than I, the uselessness of talking about what people could not see for themselves. He always discouraged me scornfully, even when he thanked me — and he died before even the superficial effect of my work was visi- ble. I went on, however, thinking I could at least be of use to the public, if not to him, in proving his power. My books got talked about a little. The prices of mod- ern pictures, generally, rose, and I was beginning to take some pleasure in a sense of gradual victory, when, for- tunately or unfortunately, an opportunity of perfect trial undeceived me at once, and for ever. The Trustees of the National Gallery commissioned me to arrange the Turner drawings there, and permitted me to prepare three hundred examples of his studies from nature, for exhibition at Kensington. At Kensington they were and are placed for exhibition ; but they are not ex hibited, f.^r the room in which they hang is always empty. — The Mystery of Life, p. 105. " The Rest is Silence," — The account of gain and loss, of gifts and gratitude, between Turner and his countrymen, was for ever closed. lie could only be left to his quiet death at Chelsea — the sun upon his face ; they to dispose a length of funeral through Lud- gate, and bury, with threefold honor, his body in St. Paul's, his pictures at Charing Cross, and his purposes in Chancery. — Modern Painters, III., p. 7. Turner's "Slave Ship." — I think the noblest sea that Turner has ever painted, and if so, the noblest certainly ever painted by man, is that of the Slave THE GRAPHIC ARIK-PAINTING. 1?1 Ship, the chief Academy picture of the ExhibitiDii of 18-iO. It is a sunset on the Atlantic, after prolonged storni ; but the storm is partially lulled, and the torn and streaming rain-clouds are moving in scarlet lines to lose themselv'es in the hollow of the night. The whole surface of sea included in the picture is divided into two ridges of enormous swell, not high nor local, but a low, broad heaving of the whole ocean, hke the lifting of its bosom by deep-drawn breath after the torture of the storm. Between tliese two ridges the fire of the .sunset fails along the trough of the sea, dyeing it with an awful but glorious light— the intense and lurid splendor which burns like gold and bathes like blood. Along this fiery path and valley, the tossing waves by which the swell of the sea is restlessly divided lift themselves in dark, indefinite, fantastic forms, each casting a faint and ghastly shadow behind it along the illumined foam. They do not rise everywhere, but three or four together in wild groups, fitfully and fu- riously, as the linder-strength of the swell compels or permits them, leaciiig between them treacherous spaces of level and whirling water, now lighted with green and lamp-like fire, now tiashing back the gold of the declin- inii sun, now fearfully dyed from above with theundis- tinguishable images of the burning clouds, which fall upon them in fiakes of crimson and scarlet, and give to tlie reckless waves the added motion of tlieir own fiery flying. Purple and blue, the lurid shadows of the hol- low breakers are cast upon the mist of the night, which leathers cold and low, advancing like the shadow of death upon the guilty* ship as it labors amidst the lightning of the sea, its thin masts written upon the sky in lines of blood, girded with condemnation in that fear- ful hue which signs the sky with horror and mixes its naming flood with the sunlight, and, cast far along the desolate heave of the sepulchral waves, incarnadines tlie multitudinous sea. I believe if I were reduced to rest Turner's immor- tality upon any single work, I should choose this. Its daring conception, ideal in the highest sense of the word, is based on the purest truth, and wrought out * She is a Slaver, throwing her slaves overboard. The near sea is encumbered with corpses. 122 A RVSKIN ANTHOLOGY. with the concentrated knowledge of a life ; its color is absolutely perfect, not one false or morbid hue in any part or line, and so modulated that every square inch of canvas is a perfect composition ; its drawing as accu- rate as fearless; the ship buoyant, bending, and full of motion ; its tones as true as they are wonderful ; and the whole picture dedicated to the most sublime of subjects and impressions (completing thus the perfect system of all truth, which we have shown to be formed by Turner's works) — the power, majesty, and death- fulness of the open, deep, illimitable sea. — Moden Painters, II., p. 140. [In the University Magazine for May, 1878, Mr W. H. Harrison, the friend and literary counsellor o/ Ruskin in his boyhood, gives a whimsical anecdote o Turner. He say.s: — " I used to meet Turner at the table of Mr. Ruskin ihe father of the art critic. The first occasion was s ("ew days after the appearance of a notice in the At/iencBum, of a picture of Turner's, which was there- m characterized as 'Eggs and Spinach.' This stuck in the great painter's throat, and as we were returning together, ia Mr. Ruskin's carriage. Turner ejaculated the obnoxious phrase every five minutes. I told him that if i had attained to his' eminence in art, I should not care a rush for what anyone siid of me. But the only reply 1 could get was 'Eggs and Spinach.'" The best Life of Turner is by Walter Thornbury. — On Epochs in his Art Life consult the Introduction (pp. 7-9) to "Notes by Mr. Ruskin on his Drawings, the Late J. M. W. Turner;" also "Modern Painters," I., pp. 190-201), and ■' Pre-Raphaelitism," pp. 28-48. Chapter VIII. of ihe " Laws of Fcsol?," describes Turner's method of laying his colors. Mr. Ruskin 'has had made by his draughtsman, Mr. Wm. Ward, fac- simile copies of Turner's paintings which he thinks nearly equiil to the originals. They are for sale by Mr, Ward at 2 Church Terrace, Richmond, Surrey]. THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 133 COLOR. Color is the type of love. — Modern Painters, V., p. 342. Color, generally, but chiefly the scarlet, used with the hyssop, in the Levitical law, is the great sanctifying element of visible beauty inseparably connected with purity and life. — Modern. Painters, V., p. 341. The Loveliest Colors. — The loveliest colors ever granted to human sight — those of morning and even- ing clouds before or after rain — are produced on mi- nute particles of finely-divided water, or perhaps some- times, ice. There are no colors, either in the nacre of shells, or the plumes of birds and insects, which are so pure as those of clouds, opal, or flowers. No diamond shows color so pure as a dewdrop. — Jjectiires on Art, p. 110. To color perfectly is the rarest and most precious (technical) power an artist can possess. There have been only seven supreme colorists among the true painters whose works exist (namely, Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, Tintoret, Correggio, Reynolds, and Turner) ; but the names of great designers, including sculptors, architects, and metal-workers are multitudinous. — Modern Painters, V., p. 342. Form before Color. — Abstract color is of far less importance than abstract form ; that is to say, if it could rest in our choice whether we would carve like Phidias (supposing Phidias had never used color), or arrange the colors of a shawl like Indians, there is no question as to which power we ought to choose. The difference of rank is vast ; there is no way of estimat- ing or measuring it. — Modern Painters, V., p. 341. Color and Form. — The man who can see all the grays, and reds, and purples in a peach, will paint the peach rightly round, and rightly altogether ; but the man who has only studied its roundness, may not see its purples and grays, and if he does not, will never get it to look like a peach ; so that great power over 124 A Ji'i^i^l'^LS AXTHOLOGY. color is alwtiys a sign of large general art-intellect. . . . To color well requires real talent and earnest study, and to color perfectly is the rarest and most precious power an artist can possess. — 3Iodern Painters, IV., p. 07. The Interdependence of Colors. — In giving an ac- count of anything for its own sake, the most important points are those of form. Nevertheless, the form of the object is its owa attribute; special, not shared with other things. An error in giving an account of it does not necessarily involve wider error. But its color is partly its own, partly shared with other things round it. The hue and power of all broad sunlight is involved in the color it has cast upon this single thing; to falsify that color, is to misrepresent and break the harmony of the day : also, by what color it bears, this single object is altering hues all round it ; reflecting its own into them, displaymg them by opposition, softening them by repetition ; one falsehood in color in one place, implies a thousand in the neighborhood. Hence, there are peculiar penalties attached to falsehood in color, and peculiar rewards granted to veracity in it. — Modern Pttiiitcn^, V., p. 345. The Saoredness of Color. — The fact is, we none of us enough appreciate the nobleness and sacredness of color. Nothing is more common than to hear it spoken of as a subordinate beauty — nay, even as the mere source of a sensual pleasure ; and we might almost be- lieve that we were daily among men who " Could strip, for aught the prospect yields To them, their verdure from the fields ; And take the radiance from the clouds With which the sun his setting shrouds." But it is not so. Such expressions are used for the most part in thoughtlessness ; and if the speakers would only take the pains to imagine what the world and their own existence would become, if the blue were taken from the sky, and the gold from the sunshine, and the verdure from the leaves, and the crimson from the blood which is the life of man, the flush from the cheek, the darkness from the eye, the radiance from the hair — if they could but see for an instant, white human crea- THE ORAFHIC ARTS.— FAINTING. 125 tures living in a white world — they would soon feel what they owe to color. The fact is, that, of all God"s gifts to the sight of man, color is the lioliest, the most divine, the most solemn. We speak rashly of gay color, and sad color, for color cannot at once be good and gay. All good color is in some degree pensive, the love- liest is melancholy, and the purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love color the most. — Stones vj Venice, II., p. 145. Chiaroscuro and Color Incompatible. — In our modern art we have indeed lost sight of one great principle which regulated that of the Middle Ages, namely, that chiaroscuro and color are incompatible in their highest degrees. Wherever chiaroscuro enters, color must lose some of its brilliancy. There is no shade m a rainbow, nor in an opal, nor in a piece of mother-of-pearl, nor in a well-designed painted window; only various hues of perfect color. — Giotto and Ills Works, p. 20. Colors Wet. — Every color, wet, is twice as brilliant as it is when dry ; and when distances are obscui'ed by mist, and bright colors vanish from the sky, and gleams of sunshine from the earth, the foreground assumes all its loveliest hues, the grass and foliage revive into their perfect green, and every sunburnt rock glows into an ixgai^.^Modern Pxihdcrs, IV., p. 263. A drop of water, while it subdues the hue of a green leaf or blue flower into a soft grey, and shows itself therefore on the grassor the dock-leaf as a lustrous dim- ness, enhances the force of all warm colors, so that you never can see what the color of a carnation or a wild rose really is till you get the, dew on it. — A^'t of Eng- land, p. iOO. Whv we like a Rose. — Perhaps few people have ever asked themselves why they admire a rose so much more than all other flowers. If they consider, they will find, first, that red is, in a delicately gradated state, the loveliest of all pure colors ; and secondly, that in the rose there is no shado'w, except what is com- posed of color. x\ll its shadows are fuller in color than its lights, owing to the translucency and reflective power of its leave.-.;, — Modern Painters, III., p. 57. 126 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. Mountain Colors the most Tender. — In some sense, a person who has never seen the rose-color of the rays of dawn crossing a blue mountain twelve or fifteen miles away, can hardly be said to know what tenderness in color means at all ; bright tendei'ness he may, indeed, see in the sky or in a flower, but this grave tenderness of the far-away-hill purples he cannot conceive. — .Modern Pointers, IV., p. 371. Love of BRKiirr Color will return to us. — Our reprobation of bright color is, I think, for the most part, mere affectation, and must soon be done av/ay with. Vulgarity, dulness, or impiety, will indeed always ex- press themselves through art in brown and grey, as in Rembrandt, Caravaggio, and Salvator ; but we are not wholly vulgar, dull, or impious ; nor, as moderns, are we necessarily obliged to continue so in any wise. Our greatest men, whotlier sad or gay, still delight, like the great men of all ages, in brilliant hues. The color- ing of Scott and Byron is full and pure ; that of Keats and Tennyson rich even to excess. — Modern Painters, III., p. 281. Absence of Color-Sense in the Greeks. — AGreek would have regarded the a[)ple-blossom simply with the eyes of a Devonshire farmer, as bearing on the probable price of cider, and would have called it red, cerulean^, purple, white, hyacinthine, or generally "aglaos," agree- able,, as happened to suit his verse. Again : we have seen how fond the Greek was of composing his paradises of rather damp grass ; but that in this fondness for grass there was always an undercurrent of consideration for his horses ; and the characters in it which pleased him most were its depth and freshness; not its color. — Modern. Painters, III., p. 24-1. Turner as a Colorist. — Claude and Cuyp had painted th? ^w^shine, Turner alone the sun color. . . . Note, with respect to this matter, that the peculiar innovation of Turner was the perfection of the color chord by means of scarlet. Other pointers had ren- dered the golden tones, and the blue tones, of sky; Titian esj eciallv the last, in perfectness. F>ut none had THE GRAPHIC ARTS.—l\-±rsriNG. 137 dared to paint, none seem to have seen, the scarlet and purple. Nor was it only in seeing this color in vividness when it occurred in full light, that Turner differed from preceding painters. His most distinctive innovation as a colorist was his discovery of the scarlet .•shadow. " True, there is a sunshine whose light is golden, and its shadow gray ; but there is another sunshine, and that the purest, whose light is white, and its shadow scarlet." This was the essentially offensive, inconceiv- able thing, which he could not be believed in. There was some ground for the increduhty, because no color is vivid enough to express the pitch of light of pure white sunshine, so that the color given without the true in- tensity of light looks false. Nevertheless, Turner could not but report of the color truly. " I must in- deed be lower in the key, but that is no reason why I should be false in the note. Here is sunshine which glows even when subdued ; it has not cool shade, but kery shade." — llodern. Painters, V., pp. 338-341. The Chinese and Hindoos as Colorists. — The great men never know how or why they do things. They have no rules ; cannot comprehend the nature of rules ; — do not, usually, even know, in v/hat they do, what is best or what is worst : to them it is all the same ; something they cannot help saying or doing — one piece of it as good as another, and none of it (it seems to them) worth much. . . . And this is the reason for the somewhat singular, but very palpable truth that the Chinese, and Indians, and other semi-civilized nations, can color better than we do, and that an Indian shav/1 or Chinese vase are still, in in- vention of color, inimitablt' by us. It is their glorious ignorance of all rules that does it ; the .pure and true in- stincts have play, and do their work — instincts so subtle, that the least warping or compression breaks or blunts them ; and the moment we begin teaching people any rules about color, and make them do this or that, we crush theinstinct generally forever. Hence, hitherto, it has been an actual necessity, in order to obtain power of coloring, that a nation should be half-savage : everybody could color in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries ; but we were ruled and legalized into grey in the fif- 128 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. teenth; — only a little salt simplicity of their sea na- tures at Venice still keeping their precious shell-fishy purpleness and power ; and now that is gone ; and no- body can color anywhere, except the Hindoos and Chi- nese ; but that need not be so, and will not be so long ; for, in a little while, people will find out their mistake, and give up talking about rules of color, and then everybody will color again, as easily as they now talk. — 3Ioder)i Painters, III., pp. 104-107. Salvatok and Fra Angelico. — It will be found that so surely as a painter is irreligious, thoughtless, or obscene in disposition, so surely is his coloring cold, gloomy, and valueless. The opposite poles of art in this respect are Fra Angelico and Salvator Rosa •, of whom the one was a man who smiled seldom, wept often, prayed constantly, and never harbored an im- pure thought. His pictures are simply so many pieces of jewelry, the colors of the draperies l)eing perfectly pure, as various as those of a painted window, chas- tened only by paleness, and relieved iipc^n a gold ground. Salvator was a dissipated jester and satirist, a man who spent his life in masquing and revelry. But his pictures are full of horror, and their color is for the most part gloomy grey. — Stones of Venice, 11., p. 14(5. Dead Color. — The law concerning color is very strange, very noble, in some sense almost awful. In every given touch laid on canvas, if one grain of the color is inoperative, and does not take its full part in producing the hue, the hue will be imperfect. The grain of color which does not work is dead. It infects all about it with its death. It must be got quit of, or the touch is spoiled. We acknowledge this instnictively in our use of the phrases " dead color," " killed color," " foul color." Those words are, in some sort, literally true. If more color is put on than is necessary, a heavy touch when a light one would have been enough, the quantity of color that was not wanted, and is overlaid by the rest, is as dead, and it pollutes the rest. There will be no good in the touch. The art of painting, properly so called, consists in laying on the least possible color that will produce the required result, and this measurement, in all tli<^ ul(i ' THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 129 mate, that is to say, the principal, operations of color- ing, is so delicate that not one human hand in a million lias the required lightness. The final touch of any painter properly so named, of Correggio — Titian — Turner — or Reynolds — would be always quite invisible to any one watching the progress of the work, the films of hue being laid thinner than the depths of the grooves in mother-of-pearl. The work may be swift, apparent- ly careless, nay, to the painter himself almost uncon- scious. Great painters are so organized that they do their best work without effort; but analyze the touches afterwards, and you will find the structure and depth of the color laid mathematically demonstrable to be of literally infinite fineness, the last touches passing away at their edges by untraceable gradation. The very es- sence of a master's work may thus be removed by a picture-cleaner in ten minutes. — The Two Paths, p. 143. Five Laws of Color. — 1. All good color is gra- dated. A blush rose (or, better still, a blush itself), is the type of rightness in arrangement of pure hue. — 2. All harmou ies of color dejjend for their vita lity on the action andhelpf id operation of every 2:)article of color they contain. — 3. The final particles of color necessary to the completeness of a color harmony are always infinitely small; either laid by immeas urably subtle touches of the pencil, or"^ produced by portions of the coloring substance, however dis- tributed, which are so absolutely small as to become at the intended distance infinitely so to the eye. — 4. JVo color harmony is of }u(/h order unless it in- volves indescribahle tints. It is the best possible sign of a color when nobody who sees it knows what to call it, or how to give an idea of it to any one else. Even among simple hues the most valuable are those which cannot be defined ; the most precious purples will look brown beside pure purple, and purple beside pure brown; and the most precious greens will be called blue if seen beside pure green, and green if seen beside pure blue. — 5. The finer the eye for color, the less it nu'll require to [/ratify it intensely. But that little must be supremely good and pure, as the finest notes of a great singer, which are so near to silence. And a 130 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. great colorist will make even the absence of color lovely, as the fading of the perfect voice makes silence sacred. — T/ie Two Paths, p. 150. PRE-RAPHAELITISM. True Pre-Raphaelite Work and its Imitations. — The true work represents all objects exactly as they would appear in nature, in the position and at the dis- tances which the arrangement of the picture supposes. The faise work represents them with all their details, as if seen through a microscope. — Modern Painter s,W ., p. 93. The Giottesque and the Pre-Rapiiaelite Move- ments Similar. — The Giottesque movement in the fourteenth, and Pre-Raj)haelite movement in the nine- teenth centuries, are precisely similar in bearing and meaning: both being the protests of vitality against mortality, of spirit against letter, and truth against tradition : and both, which is the more singular, literally links in one unbroken chain of feeling ; for exactly as Niecola Pisano and Giotto were helped by the classical sculptures discovered in their time, the Pre-Raphaelites have been helped by the works of Niecola and Giotto at Pisa and Florence : and thus the fiery cross of truth has been delivered from spirit to spirit, over the dust of intervening tjenerations. — Giotto and his Works, p. 17. The Union of Expression and Finish. — The per- fect unison of expression, as the painter's main purpose, with the full and natural exertion of his pictorial power in the details of the WQrk, is found only in the old Pre- Raphaelite periods, and in the modern Pre-Raphaelite school. In the works of Giotto, Angelico, Orcagna, John Bellini, and one or two more, these two conditions of high art are entirely fulfilled, so far as the knowl- edge of those days enable them to be fulfilled ; and in the modern Pre-Raphaelite school they are fulfilled nearly to the uttermost. Hunt's Light of the World is, I believe, the most perfect instance of expressional purpose with technical power, which the world has yet produced. — Modern Painters, III., p. 46. THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— PAINTING. 131 RossETTi's " Annunciation," Mii.lais's " Blind Girl," and Burxe-Jones's "Marriage Dance." — Consider how the pious persons who had always been accustomed to see their Madonnas dressed in scrupu- lously folded and exquisitely falling robes of blue, with edges embroidered in gold — to find them also, sitting under arcades of exquisitest architecture by Bernini — and reverently to observe them receive the angel's mes- sage with their hands folded on their breasts in the most graceful positions, and the missals they had been previously studying laid open on their knees. Consider, I repeat, the shock to the feelings of all these delicately minded persons, on being asked to conceive a Virgin waking from her sleep on a pallet bed, in a plain room, startled by sudden words and ghostly presence which she does not comprehend, and casting in her mind wliat manner of salutation this should be. Again, consider, with respect to the second picture, how the learned possessors of works of established reputation by the ancient masters, classically cata- logued as "landscapes with figures;" and who held it for eternal, artistic law, that such pictures should either consist of a rock, with a Spanish chestnut growing out of the side of it, a:nd three banditti in helmets and big feathers on the top, or else of a Corinthian temple, built beside an arm of the sea; with the queen of Sheba beneath, preparing for embarkation to visit Solomon — the whole properly toned down with amber varnish : — imagine the first consternation, and final wrath, of these cognoscenti, at being asked to con- template, deliberately, and to the last rent of her ragged gown, and for principal object in a finished picture, a vagrant who ought at once to have been sent to the workhouse ; and some really green grass and blue flow- ers, as they may actually any day be seen on an English common-side. And, filially, let us imagine, if imagination fail us not, the far more wide and weighty indignation of the public, accustomed always to see its paiiitings of marriages elab- orated in Christian propriety , nd splendor ; with a bishop officiating, assisted by a dean and an arch- deacon ; the modesty of the bride expressed by a veil of the most expensive Valenciennes, and the robes of 132 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. the bridesmaids designfd by the perfeetest of Parisian artists, and looped up with stuffed robins or other such tender rarities; — think with what sense of hitherto un- heard of impropriety, the British public must have re- ceived a picture of a marriage, in which the bride was only crowneil with flowers — at which the bridesmaids danced barefoot — and in which nothing was known, or even conjecturable, respecting the bridegroom, but his love! — The lliree (Uilors of Pre-RaphaeUtisrn., Nineteenth Century, 1878.* :j[ Prof. Ruskin's chief words on the Pre Raphaehtes will be found in the following books chronologieallv arranged- Arrowa of the Vhace, I., pp. GG-Sl ; Pvp-RdplKu-litiam (1851); Lectures on Architecture and Painthu/- HI ( I8:)3); Art of Eiigl(Ui(HlSS:i). See also the Edinburgh ]i'itiii'ss. Mnn-h'S. 18.58. The Nineteenth Century, for November and lieifiiilier, 18?8, contains articles by Eu.skin on •' The Three Colors ol I're-Raphaelitism." J THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— ENGRAVING, ETC. 133 SECTION II.— THE GRAPHIC ARTS. Chapter II. — Engraving — Illumination, Etc. Engraving. — Engraving is, in brief torms, the Ari, of Scratch. ... To engrave is, in final strictness, " to decorate a surface with furrows." Cameos, in accurat- est terms, are minute sculptures, not engravings. A })loughed field is the purest type of such art ; and is, on hilly land, an exquisite piece of decoration. — ^Iri- adne, pp. 21-2o. In metal engraving, you cut ditches, fill them with ink, and press your paper into them. In wood engrav- ing, you leave ridges, rub the tops of them with ink, and stamp them on your paper. The instrument with which the substance, whether of the wood or steel, is cut away, is the same. It is a solid ploughshare, which, instead of throwing the earth aside, throws it up and out, producing at first a simple ravine, or furrow, in the wood or metal, which you can widen by another cut, or extend by successive cuts. . . . Since, then, in wood printing, you print from the surface left solid ; and, in metal printing, from the hollows cut into it, it follows that if you put few touches on wood, you draw, as on a slate, with white lines, leaving a quantity of black; but if you put few touches on metal, you draw with black lines, leaving a quantity of white. Now the eye is not in the least offended l)y quantity of white, but is, or ought to be, greatly saddened and offended by quantity of black. Hence it follows that you must never put little work on wood. You must not sketch upon it. You may sketch on metal as much as you please. — Ariadne, p. 40. The Ancient and the Modern Styles of Engrav- ing.- — The essential difference between these men 134 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. [Diii-er and the artists of the Renaissance] and t"he moderns is that these central masters cut their line for the most part with a single furrow, giving it depth by force of hand or wrist, and retouching, not in the furroio itself, but vnth others beside it . . . [The Modern school deepens its] lines in successive cuts. The instant consequence of the introduction of this method is the restriction of curvature ; you cannot follow a complex curve again with precision through its furrow. If you are a dextrous ploughman, you can drive your plough any number of times along the sim- ple curve. But you cannot repeat again exactly the motions which cut a variable one. You may retouch it, enei-gize it, and deepen it in parts, but you cannot cut it all through again equally. And the retouch- ing and energizing in parts is a living and intel- lectual process ; but the cutting all through, equally, a mechanical one. The difference is exactly such as that between the dexterity of turning oat two simi- lar mouldings from a lathe, and carving them with the free hand, like a Pisan sculptor. And although splen- did intellect, and subtlest sensibility, have been spent on the production of some modern plates, the mechan- ical element introduced by their manner of execution always overpowers both ; nor can any plate of con- sunnnate value ever be produced in the modern method. — Ariadne, pp. 75, 76. Blake and Rembrandt. — In expressing conditions of glaring and flickering light, Blake is greater than Rembrandt.- — J^'ler/tents of Uravliaj, p. 190. Engravers Themselves have Destroyed their Craft. — Engravers complain that photography and cheap woodcutting have ended their finer craft. No complaint can be less grounded. They themselves de- stroyed their own craft, by vulgarizing it. Content in their beautiful mechanism, they ceased to learn and to feel, as artists; they put themselves under the order of publishers and printsellers ; they worked indiscrimi- nately from whatever was put into their hands — from Bartlett as willingly as from Turner, and from Mul- ready as carefully as from Raphael. — Ariadne, p. 71). THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— ENGRAVING, ETC. 135 Engraving the Grammar of Painting.— The ex- cellence of a beautiful engraving is primai'ily in the use of these resources [dots and net-work of lines] to exhibit the qualities of the original picture, with de- light to the eye in the method of translation; and. the language of engraving, when once yoa begin to under- stand it, is, in these respects, so fertile, so ingenious, so ineffably subtle and severe in its grammar, that you may quite easily make it the subject of your life's in- vestigation, as you would the scholarship of a lovely literature. But in doing this, you would withdraw, and neces- sarily withdraw, your attention from the higher quali- ties of art, precisely as a grammarian, who is that, and nothing more, loses command of the matter and sub- stance of thought. And the exquisitely mysterious mechanisms of the engi-aver's method have, in fact, thus entangled the intelligence of the careful draughts- man of Europe ; so that since the final perfection of this translator's power, all the men of finest patience and finest hand have stayed content with it — the sub- tlest draughtsmanship has perished from the canvas,* and sought more popular praise in this labyrinth of dis- ciplined language, and more or less dulled or degraded thought. And, in sum, I know no cause more direct or fatal, in the destruction of the great schools of European art, than the perfectness of modern line en- graving. — Ariad'Me, p. 08. Illuminated Manuscripts. — Perfect illumination is only writing made lovely ; the moment it passes into picture-making it has lost its dignity and function. For pictures, small or great, if beautiful, ought not to be painted on leaves of books, to be worn with service; and pictures, small or great, not beautiful, should be painted nowhere. — Lectures on Art, p. 96. A well-written book is as much pleasanter and more beautiful than a printed one as a picture is than an en- graving: and there are many forms of the art of illu- mination which were only in their infancy at the time * An effort has lately been made in France, by IMeissi mier, Gerijme, and their school, to recover it, with marvelous collateral skill of en- gravers. The etching of Gcrome's Louis XYI. and Moliere is one of the completest pieces of skilful mechanism ever put on metal. K:!6 A IWSKLY ANTHOLOaV. .when the wooden blocks of Germany abolished the art of scripture, and of which the revival will be a neces- sary result of a proper study of natural history. — Iwrs, III., p. 54. Painted Glass Windows. — In the case of windows, the points which we have to insist upon are, the trans- parency of the glass and its susceptibility of the most brilliant colors ; jaid therefore the attempt to turn painted Vv'indows into pretty pictures is one of the most gross and ridiculous barbarisms of this pre-eminently barbarous century. The true perfection of a painted window is to be serene, intense, brilliant, like flaming jewelry ; full of easily legible and quaint subjects, and exquisitely subtle, yet simple, in its harmonies. In a word, this perfection has been consummated in the de- signs, never to be surpassed, if ever again to be ap- proached by human art, of the French windows of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. — Stones of Venice, II., pp. 395, 396. The value of hue in all illuminations on painted glass of fine periods depends primarily on the expedients used to make the colors palpitate and fluctuate; in- equality of brilliancy being the condition of brilliancy, just as inequality of accent is the condition of power and loveliness in sound. The skill with which the thirteenth century illuminators in books, and the Indians in shawls and carpets, use the minutest atoms of color to gradate other colors, and confuse the eye, is the first secret in their gift of splendor: associated, however, with so many other artifices which are quite instinctive and unteachable, that it is of little use to dwell upon them. Delicacy of organization in the designer given, you will soon have all, and without it, nothing. — TJie Two Paths, p. 150. WooD-Crxs. — The execution of the plumage in Bewick's birds is the most masterly thing ever yet done in wood-cutting — Elements of Drawing, p. 190. Now calculate — or think enough to feel the impos- sibility of calculating — the number of wood-cuts used daily for our popular prints, and how many men are night and day cutting 1,050 square holes to the square inch, as the occupation of their manly life. And Mrs. THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— ENGRAVING, ETC. 13? Beecher Stowe and the North Americans fancy they have aboHshed slavery ! — Ariadne, p. 55. A wood-cut never can be so beaiitifiil or good a thing as a painting, or hne engraving. But in its own separate and useful way, an excellent thing, because, practised rightly, it exercises in the artist, and suni- mons in you, the habit of abstraction ; that is to say, of deciding what are the essential points in the things you see, and seizing these. — Ariadne, p. 58. If we were at this moment to come across a Titian wood-cut, or a Diirer wood-cut, we should not like it — those of us at least who are accustomed to the cheap work of the day. We don't hke, and can't like, that long; but when we are tired of one bad cheap thing, we throw it aside and buy another bad cheap thing; and so keep looking at bad things all our lives. Now, the very men who do all that quick bad work for us are capable of doing perfect work. Only, perfect work can't be hui-ried, and therefore it can't be cheap beyond a certain point. — ^1 Joy For Ever, p. 30. While no entirely beautiful thing can be represented in a wood-cut, every form of vulgarity or unpleasant- ness can be given to the life ; and the result is, that, especially in our popular scientific books, the mere effort to be amusing and attractive leads to the publi- cation of every species of the abominable. No micro- scope can teach the beauty of a statue, nor can any wood-cut represent that of a nobly bred human form; but only last term we saw the whole Ashmolean So- ciety held in a trance of rapture by the inexplicable decoration of the posteriors of a flea; and I have framed for you here, around a page of the scientific journal which styles itself, " Knowledge," a collection of wood-cuts out of a scientific survey of South Amer- ica, presenting collectively to you, in designs igno- rantly drawn and vilely engraved, yet with the pecu- liar advantage belonging to the cheap wood-cut, what- ever, through that fourth part of the round world, from Mexico to Patagonia, can be found of savage, sordid, vicious, or ridiculous in humanity, without so much as one exceptional indication of a graceful form, a true 138 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOG Y. instinct, or a cultivable capacity. — Art of England, p. 74. Etching. — Etching is an indolent and blundering method at the best. — Ariadne, p. 100. If you ever happen to meet with the two volumes of " Grimm's German Stories," which were illustrated [by Cruikshank] luigago, pounce upon them instantly; the etchings in them are the finest things, next to Rembrandt's, that, as far as I know, have been done since etching was invented. — Kknients of Drcnobuj, p. 189. Flaxmak's Outlines to Dante. — Flaxman's out- lines to Diinte contain, I think, examples of almost every kind of falsehood and feebleness which it is pos- sible for a trained artist, not base in thought, to commit or admit, both in design and execution. — Elemods of Draicing, p. IDl. Caricature. — No teaching, no hard study, will ever enable other people to equal, in their several ways, the works of Leech or Cruikshank ; whereas, the power of pure drawing is communicable, within certain limits, to every one who has good sight and industry. 1 do not, in- deed, know how far, by devoting the attention to points of character, caricaturist skill may be laboriously at- tained ; but certainly the power is, in the masters of the school, innate from their childhood. — Modem Paint- ere., IV., p. 413. "Punch." — The definite and every year more em- phatic assertion [of the laws of Beauty] in the pages ol " Punch" is the ruling charm and most legitimate pride of the immortal periodical. Day by day the search for grotesque, ludicrous, or loathsome subject which de- graded the caricatures in its original, the " Charivari," and renders the dismally comic journals of Italy the mere plagues and cancers of the State, became, in our English satirists, an earnest comparison of the things which were graceful and honorable, with those which were grace- less and dishonest, in modern life. Gradually the kind and vivid genius of John Leech, capable in its brightness of finding pretty jest in everything, but capable in its tenderness also of rejoicing in the beauty of every- THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— ENGRAVING, ETC. 139 thing, softened and illumined with its loving wit the en- tire scope of English social scene ; the graver power of Tenniel brought a steady tone and law of morality into the license of political contention; and finally the acute, highly trained, and accurately physiological observation of Du Maurier traced for us, to its true origin in vice or virtue, every order of expression in the mixed circle of metropolitan rank and wealth : and has done so with a closeness of delineation the like of which has not been seen since Holbein, and deserving the most re- spectful praise in that, whatever power of satire it may reach by the selection and assemblage of telling points of character, it never degenerates into carica- ture. — Art of England, p. 79. The Animal Drawings of John Lewis. — Rubens, Rembrandt, Snyders, Tintoret, and Titian, have all, in various ways, drav/n wild beasts magnificently ; but they have in some sort humanized or demonized them, making them either ravenous fiends or educated beasts, that would draw cars, and had respect for hermits. The sullen isolation of the brutal nature ; the dignity and quietness of the mighty limbs ; the shaggy moun- tainous power, mingled with grace, as of a flowing stream ; the stealthy restraint of strength and wrath in every soundless motion of the gigantic frame ; all this seems never to have b<)en seen, much less drawn, until Lewis drew and himself engraved a series of ani- mal subjects, now many years ago. — rre-Haphael- itisnt, p. 20. Raphael and Rembrandt as Chiakoscurists. — You probably have been beguiled, before now, into ad- miring Raphael's Transfiguration, in which everybody's faces and limbs are half black ; and into supposing Rembrandt a master of chiaroscuro, because he can paint a vigorous portrait with a black dab under the nose ! Both Raphael and Rembrandt are masters, indeed ; but neither of them masters of light and shade, in treat- ment of which the first is always false, and the second always vulgar. The only absolute masters of light and shade are those who never make you think of light and shade, more than Nature herself does. 140 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. It will be twenty years, however, at least, before you can so much as see the finer conditions of shadow in masters of that cahbre. — Laics of Fesole, p. 117. GusTAVE DoRE. — Thank you for sending me your friend's letter about Gustave Dore; he is wrong, how- ever, in thinking there is any good in those illustrations of Elaine. I had intended to speak of them afterwards, for it is to my mind quite as significant — almost as awful — a sign of what is going on in the midst of us, that our great English poet should have suffered his work to be thus contaminated, as that the lower Evan- gelicals, never notable for sense in the arts, should have got their Bibles dishonored. Those Elaine illustrations are just as impure as anything else that Dore has done; but they are also vapid, and without any one merit whatever in point of art. The illustrations to the Contes Drolatiques are full of power and invention ; but those to Elaine are merely and simply stupid ; theatrical betises, with the taint of the charnel-house on them besides. — Letter to Thos. Dixon, Time and Tide,^. 71. Stamped Paper for Water-Colors. — From all I can gather respecting the recklessness of modern paper manufacture, my belief is, that though you may still handle an Albert Diirer engraving, two hundred years old, fearlessly, not one-half of that time will have passed over your modern water-colors, before most of them will be reduced to mere white or brown rags ; and your descendants, twitching them contemptuously into fragments between finger and thumb, will mutter against you, half in scorn and half in anger, " Those wretched nineteenth century people ! they kept vapor- ing and fuming about the world, doing what they called business, and they couldn't make a sheet of paper that wasn't rotten." ... I am inclined to think, my- self, that water-color ought not to be used on paper at all, but only on vellum, and then, if properly taken care of, the drawing would be almost imperishable. Still, paper is a much more convenient material for rapid work ; and it is an infinite absurdity not to se- cure the goodness of its quality, when we could do so without the slightest trouble. Among the many favors THE GRAPHIC ARTS.— ENGRAVING, ETC. 141 which I am going to ask from our paternal government when we get it, will be that it will supply its little boys with good paper. You have nothing to do but to let the government establish a paper manufactory, un- der the superintendence of any of our leading chemists, who should be answerable for the safety and complete- ness of all the processes of the manufacture. The government stamp on the corner of your sheet of drawing-paper, made in the perfect way, should cost you a shilling, which would add something to the rev- enue ; and when you bought a water-color drawing for fifty or a hundred guineas, you would have merely to look in the corner for your stamp, and pay your extra shilling for the security that your hundred guineas were given really for a drawing, and not for a colored rag. — A Joy I'^or Ever, pp. 31, 32. 143 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOG F". SECTION III.— ARCHITECTURE. True architecture is a thing which puts its builders to cost — not which pays them dividends. . . . True erchiteeture is built by the man who wants a house for himself, and builds it to his own liking, at his own cost; not for his own gain, to the liking of other people. — Mrs, 1., p. 280. Every great national architecture has been the re- sult and exponent of a great national religion. You can't have bits of it here, bits there — you must have it everywhere, or nowhere. > It is not the monopoly of a clerical company — it is n*ot the exponent of a theolog- ical dogma — it is not the hieroglyphic writing of an initiated priesthood; it is the manly language of a people inspired by resolute and common purpose, and rendering resolute and common fidelity to the legible laws of an undoubted God. — (Jroum of' Wild Olive, Lecture, II., p. 53. Architecture is the work of nations ; but we cannot have nations of great sculptors. Every house in every street of every city ought to be good architecture, but we cannot have Flaxman or ThoJ'waldsen at work upon it. . . . Your business as an architect, is to calculate only on the co-operation of inferior men. to think for them, to indicate for them such expressions of your thoughts as the weakest capacity can comprehend and the feeblest hand can execute. This is the definition of the purest architectural absti'actions. They are the •deep and laborious thoughts of the greatest men, put i."to such easy letters that they can be written by the simplest. Theij are exjyressions of the mind of AJn.'IIJTECTUEE. 14:5 manhood bi/ i/ie /tandu of chihlltvod. — Stones of Venice, p. 241. You cannot have good architecture merely by ask- ing people's advice on occasion. All good architecture is the' expression of national life and character; and it is produced by a prevalent and eager national taste, or desire for beauty. — (Jroirn of Wild Olive, Led. II., p. 45. Every man has, at some time of his life, personal interest in architecture. He has influence on the de- sign of some public building; or he has to buy, or build, or alter his own house. It signifies less whether the knowledge of other arfp. be general or not; men may live without buying pictures or statues: but, in architecture, all must in some ^^'ay commit themselves; they mxist do mischief, and waste their money, if they do not know how to turn it to account. — Stones of Venice, I., p. 8. Sculpture not subordinate to Architecture. — Do you think the man who designed the procession on the portal of Amiens was the subordinate workman ? that there was an architect over him, restraining him within certain limits, and ordering of him his bishops at so much a mitre, and his cripples at so much a crutch ? Not so. Here, on this sculptured shield, rests the Master's hand; this is the centre of the Mas- ter's thought ; from this, and in subordination to this, waved the arch and sprang the pinnacle. Having done this, and being able to give human expression and action to tho stone, all the rest — the rib, the niche, the foil, tho shaft — were mere toys to his hand and accessories to his conception: and if once you also gain the gift of doing this, if once you can carve one fronton such as you have here, I tell you, you would be able — so far as it depended on your inven- tion — to scatter cathedrals over England as fast as clouds rise from its streams after summer rain. — The Two Paths, pp. 89, 90. A great architect must be a great scidptor or painter. This is a universal law. No person who is not a great sculptor or painter ca7i be an architect. If 144 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. he is not a sculptoi- or painter, lie can only be a huildet. The three greatest architects hitherto known in the world were Phidias, Giotto, and Michael Angelo; with all of whom, architecture was only their play, sculpture and painting their wovk.—Lectut-es on Arehitecture, p. G5. The So-called Five Ordeus of Ahciiitecture. — Five orders [of architecture] ! There is not a side chapel in any Gothic cathedral but it has fifty orders, the worst of them better than the best of the Greek ones, and all new ; and a single inventive human soul could create a thousand orders in an hour. — Stones of Venice, III., p. 100. Novelty in Architecture. — The very essence of a Style, properly so-called, is that it should be practised fo7' ages, and applied to all purposes; and that so long as any given style is in practice, all that is left for in- dividual imagination to accomplish must be within the scope of that style, not in the invention of a new one. — The Two Paths, \x^\. The Crystal Palace. — I have received, " with the respects of the author," a pamphlet on the Crystal Palace ; which tells me, in its first sentence, that the Crystal Palace is a subject which every cultivated Englishman has at heart ; in its second, that the Crys- tal Palace is a household word, and is the loftiest moral triumph of the world ; and in its third, that the Palace is declining, it is said- — verging towards decay, I have not heard anything for a long time which has more pleased me ; and beg to assure the author of the pamphlet in question that I never get up at Heme Hill after a windy night without looking anxiously towards Norwood in the hope that " the loftiest moral triumph of the world" may hare been blown away. — Fors, H., p. 415. The Castles of the Middle Ages. — Nothing can be more noble or interesting than the true thirteenth or fourteenth century castle, when built in a difficult posi- tion, its builder taking advantage of every inch of ground to gain more room, and of every irregularity of surface for purposes of outlook and defence; so that the castle sate its rock as a strong rider sits his horse — ARCHITECTURE. 145 fitting its limbs to every writhe of the flint beneath it; and fringing the nionntain ])romontory far into the sky with the wild crests of its fantastic battlements. Of such castles we can see no more. — Arrows of the Chacc, I., p. 146. The Ekglish Cottage. — If you think over the matter you will find that you actually do owe, and ought to owe, a great part of your pleasure in all cot- tage scenery, and in all the inexhaustible imagery of literature which is founded upon it, to the conspicuous- ness of the cottage roof — to the subordination of the cottage itself to its covering, which leaves, in nine cases out of ten, really more roof than anything else. It is, indeed, not so much the whitewashed walls — nor the flowery garden — nor the rude fragments of stones set for steps at the door — nor any other picturesqueness of the building which interests you, so much as the grey bank of its heavy eaves, deep-cushioned with green moss and golden stonecrop. — Lectures on Architect- ure, p. 25. Brick and Terra-Cotta in Architecture. — Just as many of the finest works of the Italian sculptors were executed in porcelain, many of the best thoughts of their architects are expressed in brick, or in the softer material of terra-cotta ; and if this were so in Italy, where there is not onecity from whose towers we may not descry the blue outline of Alp or Apennine, ever- lasting quarries of granite or marble, how much more ought it to be so among the fields of England ! I believe that the best academy for her architects, for some half century to come, would be the brick-field ; for of this they may rest assured, that till they know how to use clay, they will never know how to use vaaxhlQ.-^ Stones of Venice, II., p. 200. Medium-sized Blocks best for Buildings. — The invention of expedients for the raising of enormous stones has always been a characteristic of partly sav- age or corrupted races. A block of marble not larger than a cart with a couple of oxen could carry, and a cross-beam, with a couple of pulleys raise, is as large as should generally be used in any building. The employ- ment of large masseiJ is sure to lead to vulgar exhibi- 146 A R USKiyf A NTHOL G T. tions of g^eometrical arrangement, and to draw away the attention from the sculpture. In general, rocks naturally break into such pieces as the human beings that have to build with them can easily lift, and no larger should be sought for. — Aratra Pentelici, p. 97. Let not Art be too Common or Familiar. — Nor do I hold it usually an advantage to art, in teaching, that it should be common, or constantly seen. In be- coming intelligibly and kindly beautiful, while it remains solitary and unrivalled, it has a greater power. West- minster Abbey is more didactic to the English nation, than a million of popular illustrated treatises on archi- tecture.— ^4 ?Y'«(7>.'e, p. 2(5. Permanent Homes. — I believe that the wandering habits which have now become almost necessary to our existence, lie more at the root of our bad architecture than any other character of modern times. \ye always look upon our houses as mere temporary lodgings. — Lectures on Architecture, p. 55. The one point you may be assured of is, that your happiness does not at all depend on the size of your house — (or, if it does, rather on its smallness than large- ness) ; but depends entirely on your having peaceful and safe possession of it — on your habits of keeping it clean and in order — on the materials of it being trust- worthy, if they are no more than stone and turf — and on your contentment with it, so that gradually you may mend it to your mind, day by day, and leave it to your children a better house than it was. To your children, and to theirs, desiring for them that they may live as you have lived ; and not strive to forget you, and stammer when any one asks who vou were, because, forsooth, thev have become fine folks by your help.— i=ons-, 1., pp."'280, 281. A House suited to You. — " But I mean to make money, and have a better and better house every ten years." Yes, I know you do. If you intend to keep that notion, I have no word more to say to you. Fare you — not well, for you can- not ; but as you may. But if you have sense, and feeling, determine what ARCHITECTURE.. 147 sort of a house will be fit for you ; — determine to work for it — to get it — and to die in it, if tiie Lord will. " What sort of house will be tit for me? — but of course the biggest and finest I can get will be fittest ! " Again, so says the Devil to you ; and if you believe him, iie will find you fine Jodgings enough — for rent. But if you don't believe him, consider, I repeat, what sort of house will be fit for you ? " Fit ! — but what do you mean by fit ? " I mean, one that you can entirely enjoy and manage ; but which you will not be proud of, except as you make it charming in its modesty. If you are proud of it, it is un^A for you — better than a man in your station of life can by simple and sustained exertion obtain; and it should be rather under such quiet level than above, Ashesteil was entirely fit for Walter Scott, and Walter Scott was entirely happy there. Abbotsford was fit also for >S7r Walter Scott ; and had he been content with it, his had been a model life. But he would fain still add field to field — and died homeless. — Fors,\\., p. 298. Round every raiiroad station, out of the once quiet fields, there bursts up first a blotch of brick-fields, and then of ghastly houses, washed over with slime into miserable fineries of cornice and portico. A gentleman would hew for himself a log hut, and thresh for him- self a straw bed, before he would live in such. — Ai'- roifis of the Chace., II., p. 98. The AhcuiTectuke of Cities. — All lovely archi- tecture was designed for cities in cloudless air ; for cities in which piazzas and gardens opened in bright populousness and peace ; cities built that men might live happily in them, and take delight daily in each other's presence and powers. But our cities, built in black air, which, by its accumulated foulness, first ren- ders all ornam.ent invisible in distance, and then chokes its interstices with soot ; cities v/hich are mere crowded masses of store, and warehouse, and counter, and are therefore to the rest of the world what the larder and cellar are to a private house ; cities in which the object of men is not life, but labor; arid in which all chief magnitude of edifice is to enclose machinery; cities 148 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. in which the streets are not the avenues for the pass- ing and procession of a happy people, but the drains for the discharge of a tormented mob, in which the only object in reaching any spot is to be transferred to another ; in which existence becomes mere transition, and every creature is only one atom in a drift of human dust, and current of interchanging particles, circulating here by tunnels under ground, and there by tubes in the air ; for a city, or cities, such as this, no architecture is possible — nay, no desire of it is possible to their inhabitants. — Lectures on Architecture, p. 137. It does not matter how many beautiful public build- ings you possess, if they are not supported by, and in harmony with, the private houses of the town. Neither the mind nor the eye will accept a new college, or a new hospital, or a new institution, for a city. It is the Canonga-te, and the Princes Street, and the High Street that are Edinburgh. . . . Do not think that you can have good architecture merely by paying for it. It is not by subscribing liberally for a large building once in forty years that you can call up architects and in- spiration. It is only by active and sympathetic atten- tion to the domestic and every day work which is done for each of you, that you can educate either yourselves to the feeling, or your builders to the doing, of what is truly great. Well but, you will answer, you cannot feel interested in architecture: you do not care about it, and cannot care about it. I know you cannot. About such archi- tecture as is built now-a-days, no mortal ever did or could care. You do not feel interested in hearing the same thing over and over again ; — why do you suppose you can feel interested in seeing the same thing over and over again, were that thing even the best and most beautiful in the world ? — Lectures on Ar- chitecture, p. 11. Suburban Architecture. — An English clergyman, a master of this University, a man not given to senti- ment, but of middle age, and great practical sense, told me . . . that he never could enter London from his coun- try parsonage but with closed eyes, lest the sight of the AUCmrECTURE.. 149 blocks of houses which the raih'oad intersected in the suburbs should unfit him, by the horror of it, for his day's work. ... To have any right morality, happi- ness, or art in any country where the cities are thus built, or thus, let me rather say, clotted and coagidated ; spots of a dreadful mildew spreading by patches and blotches over the countiy they consume. You must have lovely cities, crystalized, not coagulated, into form ; limited in size, and not casting out the scum and scurf of them into an encircling eruption of shame, but girded each with its sacred pomosrium, and with gar- lands of gardens full of blossoming trees, and softly guided streams. — Lectures on Art, p. 79. Blackfriar's Bridge. — Asa Greek put human life into his pillars and produced the caryatid ; and an Egyptian lotos life into his pillars, and produced the lily capital : so here, either of them would have put some gigantic or some angelic life into those colossal sockets. He would perhaps have put vast winged statues of bronze, folding their wings, and grasping the iron rails with their hands; or monstrous eagles, or serpents holding with claw or coil, or strong four-footed animals couchant, holding with the paw, or in fierce action, holding with teeth. Thousands of grotesque or of lovely thoughts would have risen before him, and the bronze forms, animal or human, would have signified, either in symbol or in legend, whatever might be gracefully told respecting the pui'poses of the work and the districts to which it conducted. Whereas, now, the entire invention of the designer seems to have ex- hausted itself in exaggerating to an enormous size a weak form of iron nut, and in conveying the informa- tion upon it, in large letters, that it belongs to the Lon- don, Chatham, and Dover Railway Company. — Athena, p. 138. Cathedrals. — All the great thirteenth-century cathedrals in France have been destroyed, within my own memory, only that architects might charge com- mission for putting up false models of them in tlieii" place. — Fors, I., p. 71. Nothing is more unseemly than that a great multi- tude should find its way out and in, as ants and wasps 150 A R US KIN A NTH OLOGY. do, through holes; and nothing more undignified than the paltry doors of many of our English cathedrals, which look as if they were made, not for the open egress, but for the surreptitious drainage of a stagnant congregation . Besides, the expression of the church door should lead us, as far as possible, to desire at least the western entrance to be single, partly because no man of right feeling would willingly lose the idea of unity and fellowship in going up to worship, which is suggested by the vast single entrance; partly because it is at the entrance that the most serious words of the building are always addressed, by its sculptures or inscriptions, to the worshipper; and it is well, that these words should be spoken to all at once, as by one great voice, not broken up into weak repetitions over minor doors. — Stones of Venice, I., p. 179. An English Cathedral. — Let us go together up the more retired street, at the end of which we can see the pinnacles of one of the towers, and then through the low grey gateway, with its battlemented top and small latticed window in the centre, into the inner private-looking road or close, where nothing goes in but the carts of the tradesmen who supply the bishop and the chapter, and where there are little shaven grass- plots, fenced in by neat rails, before old-fashioned groups of somewhat diminutive and excessively trim houses, with little oriel and bay windows jutting out here and there, and deep wooden cornices and eaves painted cream color and white, and small porches to their doors in the shape of cockle-shells, or little, crooked, thick, indescribable wooden gables warped a little on one side; and so forward till we come to larger houses, also old-fashioned but of red brick, and with gardens behind them, and fruit walls, which show here and there, among the nectarines, the vestiges of an old cloister arch or shaft, and looking in front on the cathedral square itself, laid out in rigid divisions of smooth grass and gravel walk, yet not uncheerful, es- pecially on the sunny side where the canon's children are walking with their nurserymaids. And so, taking care not to tread on the grass, we will go along the Straight walk to the west front, and there stand for a ARCHITECTURE. 151 time, looking up at its deep-pointed porches and the dark pkices between their pillars where there were statues once, and where the fragments, here and there, of a stately figure are still left, which has in it the like- ness of a king, perhaps indeed a king on earth, perhaps a saintly king long ago in heaven ; and so higher and higher up to the great mouldering v.all of rugged sculpture and confused arcades, shattered, and grey, and grisly with heads of dragons and mocking fiends, worn by the rain and swirling winds into yet un- seemlier shape, and colored on their stony scales by the deep russet-orange lichen, melancholy gold ; and so, higher still, to the bleak towers, so far above that the eye loses itself among the bosses of their traceries, though they are rude and strong, and only sees like a drift of eddying black points, now closing, now scatter- ing, and now settling suddenly into invisible places among the bosses and flowers, the crowd of restless birds that fill the whole square with that strange clangor of theirs, so harsh and yet so soothmg, like the cries of birds on a solitary coast between the cliffs and sea. — Stones of Vcvice. II., pp. 67, 68. The Materials of the Sculptor-Akciiitect. — From visions of angels, down to the least important gesture of a child at play, whatever may be conceived of Divine, or beheld of Human, may be dared or adopted by you: throughout the kingdom of anisnal life, no creature is so vast, or so minute, that you can- not deal with it, or bring it into service ; the lion and the crocodile will couch about your shafts ; the moth and the bee v/ill sun themselves upon your flowers ; for you, the fawn will leap; for you, the snail be slow ; for you, the dove smooth her bosom ; and the hawk spread her wings toward the south. All the wide world of vegetation blooms and bends for you ; the leaves trem- ble that you may bid them be still under the marble snow ; the thorn and the thistle, which the earth casts forth as evil, are to you the kindliest servants ; no dy- ing petal, nor drooping tendril, is so feeble as to have no more help for you ; no robed pride of blossom so kingly, but it will lay aside its purple to receive at your hands the pale immortality. Is there anything in 153 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. common life too mean — in common things too trivial — to be ennobled by your touch I As there is nothing in life, so there is nothing in lifelessness which has not its lesson for you, or its gift ; and when you are tired of watching the strength of the plume, and the tenderness of the leaf, you may walk down to your rough river shore, or into the thickest markets of your thoroughfares, and there is not a piece of torn cable that will not twine into a perfect moulding ; there is not a fragment of cast-away matting, or shattered basket-work, that will not work into a chequer or capital. Yes: and if you gather up the very sand, and break the stone on which you tread, among its fragments of all but invisible shells you will find forms that will take their place, and that proudly, among the starred traceries of your vault- ing; and you, who can crown the mountain with its fortress, and the city with its towers, are thus able also to give beauty to ashes, and worthiness to dust. — The Tiro Paths, pp. 95, 96. European Architecture in general. — All Eu- ropean architecture, bad and good, old and new, is de- rived from Greece througli Rome, and colored and per- fected from the East. The history of Architecture is nothing but the tracing of the various modes and direc^ tions of this derivation. Understand this, once for all: if you hold fast this great connecting chie, you may string all the types of successive architectural inven- tion upon it like so many beads. The Doric and the Corinthian orders are the roots, the one of all Roman- esque, massy-capitaled buildings — Norman, Lombard, Byzantine, and what else you can name of the kind ; and the Corinthian of all Gothic, Early English, Frenclif German and Tuscan. Now observe : those old Greeks gave the shaft ; Rome gave the arch ; the Arabs pointed and foliated the arch. The shaft and arch, the frame-work and strength of architecture, are from the race of Japheth ; the spirituality and sanctity of it from Ismael, Abraham, and Shem. — Stones of Venice, I., p. 27. The Roman, the Lombard, and the Arabian Styles. — The work of the Lombard was to give hardi- hood and system to the enervated body and enfeebled AnCHITECTUnE. 153 mind of Christondoiii ; that of the Arab was to punish idolatry, and to proclaim the spirituality of worship. The Lombard covered every church which he built with the sculptured representations of bodily exercises — huntini>- and war. The Arab banished all imagina- tion of creature form from his temples, and proclaimed from their minarets, " There is no god but God." Opposite in their character and mission, aliKe in their magnificence of energy, they came from the North and from the South, the glacier torrent and the lava stream: they met and contended over the wreck of the Roman empire ; and the very centre of the struggle, the point of pause of both, the dead water of the oppo- site eddies, charged with embayed fragments of the Roman wreck, is Venice. The Ducal Palace of Venice contains the three ele- ments in exactly equal proportions — the Roman, Lom- bard, and Arab. It is the central building of the world. The lava stream of the Arab, even after it ceased to flow, warmed the whole of the northern air ; and the history of Gothic architecture is the history of the re- finement and spiritualization of Northern work under its influence. — Stones of Venice, L, pp. 27, 30, 33. The Lombard of early times seems to have been ex- actly what a tiger would be, if you could give him love of a joke, vigorous imagination, strong sense of justice, fear of hell, knowledge of northern mythology, a stone' den, and a mallet and chisel; fancy him pacing up and down m the said den to digest his dinner, and striking on the wall, with a new fancy in his head, at every turn, and you have the Lombardic sculptor. . . . The Lombard animals are all (dive, and fiercely alive too, all impatience and spring : the Byzantine birds peck idly at the fruit, and the animals hardly touch it with their noses. The einquecento birds in Venice hold it up daintily, like train-bearers ; the birds in the earlier Gothic peck at it hungrily and naturally; but the Lombard beasts gripe at it like tigers, and tear it off with writhing lips and glaring eyes. 154 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. GOTHIC ARCHITECTURE. A Gothic cathedral is properly to be defined as a piece of the most magnificent associative sculpture, ar- ranged on the noblest principles of building, for the service and delight of multitudes ; and the proper defi- nition of architecture, as distinguished from sculpture, is merely " the art of designing sculpture for a particu- lar place, and placing it there on the best principles of building." Hence it clearly follows, that in modern days we have r\o architects. The term " architecture " is not so much as understood by us. — Lectvres on Archi- tectm-e, pp. 65, 00. Modern arcliitects decorate the tops of their build- mgs. Mediaeval ones decorated the bottom. . . It is not putting ornament high that is wrong ; but it is cutting it too fine to be seen, wherever it is. . . . This is the great modern mistake. Now the Gothic builders placed their decoration on a precisely contrary principle, and on the only rational principle. All their best and most delicate work they put on the foundation of the building, close to the spec- tator, and on the upper parts of the walls they put ornaments large, bold, and capable of being plainly seen at the necessary distance. — Lectures on Archi- tecture, pp. 43, 45. Gothic Architecture not the Work of the Clergy. — Good architecture is the work of good and believing men ; therefore, you say, at least some people say, " Good architecture must essentially have been the work of the clergy, not of the laity." No — a thousand times no ; good architecture has always been the work of the commonalty, ';;(>^ of the clergy. What, you say, those glorious cathedrals — the pride of Europe — did their builders not form Gothic architect- ure ? No ; they corrupted Gothic architecture. Gothic was formed in the baron's castle, and the burgher's street. It was formed by the thoughts, and hands, and powers of free citizens and soldier kings. By the monk it was used as an instrument for the aid ARCHITECTURE. 155 of his superstition ; when that superstition became a beautiful madness, and the best hearts of Europe vain- ly dreamed and pined in the cloister, and vainly raged and perished in the crusade — through that fury of perverted faith and wasted war, the Gothic rose also to its loveliest, most fantastic, and, finally, most fool- ish dreams ; and, in those dreams, was lost. — Crown of Wild Olive, Lect. II., p. 53. The flamboyant traceries that adorn the fagade of Rouen Cathedral had once their fellows in every win- dow of every house in the market-place ; the sculptures that adorn the porches of St. Mark's had once their match [in kind] on the walls of every palace on the Grand Canal; and the only difference between the church and the dwelling-house was, that there existed a symbolical meaning in the distribution of the parts of all buildings meant for worship, and that the painting or sculpture was, in the one case, less frequently of profane subject than in the other. — iStones of Yodce, II., p. 103. The French Cathedrals. — As examples of Gothic, ranging from the twelfth to the fourteenth century, the cathedrals of Chartres, Rouen, Amiens, Rheims, and Bourges, form a kind of cinque-foil round Notre Dame of Paris, of which it is impossible to say which is the more precious petal ; but any of those leaves would be worth a complete rose of any other country's work ex- cept Italy's. Nothing else in art, on the surface of the round earth, could represent any one of them, if de- stroyed, or be named as of any equivalent value. — Arroics of the Chace, I., p. 151. The Gothic Style not derived from Vegetation. — I have before alluded to the strange and vain sup- position, that the original conception of Gothic archi- tecture had been derived from vegetation — from the symmetry of avenues, and the interlacing of branches. It is a supposition which never could have existed for a moment in the mind of any person acquainted with early Gothic; but, however idle as a theory, it is most valuable as a testimony to the character of the per- fected style. It is precisely because the reverse of this theory is the fact, because the Gothic did not arise 156 A nUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. out of, but develop itself into, a resemblance to vege- tation, that this resemblance is so instructive as an indication of the temper of the builders. It was no chance suggestion of the form of an arch from the bending of a bough, but a gradual and continual dis- covery of a beauty in natural forms which could be more and more perfectly transferred into those of stone, that influenced at once the heart of the people, and the form of the edifice. The Gothic architecture arose in massy and mountainous strength, axe-hewn, and iron- bound, block heaved upon block by the monk's enthu- siasm and the soldier's force ; and cramped and stanch- ioned into such weight of grisly wall, as might bury the anchoret in d;irkness, and beat back the utmost storm of battle, suffering by the same narrow crosslet the passing of the sunbeam, or of the arrow. Gradually, as that monkish enthusiasm became more thoughtful, and as the sound of war became more and more intermit- tent beyond the gates of the convent or the keep, the stony pillar grew slender and the vaulted roof grew light, till they had wreathed themselves into the sem- blance of the summer woods at their fairest ; and of the deaa field-flowers, long trodden down in blood, sweet monumental statues were set to bloom for ever, beneath the porch of tlie temple, or the canopy of the tomb. — Stones of Yen ire II., p. 201. The True Sources of Gothic ARcriiTECTURE. — The true gable, as it is the simplest and most natural, so I esteem it the grandest of roofs ; whether rising in ridgy darkness, like a gi*ey slope of slaty mountains, over the precipitous walls of the northern cathedrals, or stretched in burning breadth above the white and square- set groups of the southern architecture. B«t this dif- ference between its slope in the northern and southern structure is a matter of far greater importance than is commonly supposed, and it is this to which I would especially direct the reader's attention. One main cause of it, the necessity of throwing off snow in the north, has been a thousand times alluded to : another I do not remember having seen noticed, namely, that rooms in a roof are comfortably habitable in the north, which are painful sotto phytnhi in Italy; and that there is iu wet climates a natural tendency in ARCHITECTURE. 157 all men to live as high as possible, out of the damp and mist. These two causes, together with accessible quantities of good timber, have induced in the north a general steep pitch of gable, which, when rounded or squared above a tower, becomes a spire or turret ; and this feature, worked out with elaborate decoration, is the key-note of the whole system of aspiration, so called, which the German critics have so ingeniously and falsely ascribed to a devotional sentiment pervading tlie North- ern Gothic : I entirely and boldly deny the whole theory ; our cathedrals were for the most part built by wordly people, who loved the world, and would have gladly staid in it for ever ; whose best hope was the escaping hell, which they thought to do by building cathedrals, but who had very vague conceptions of Heaven in general, and very feeble desires respecting their entrance therein : and the form of the spired cathedral has no more intentional reference to Heaven, as distinguished from the flattened slope of the Greek pediment, than the steep gable of a Norman house has, as distinguished from the flat roof of a Syrian one. . . . There is, however, in the north an animal activity which materially aided the svstem of buildiny; bcijun in mere utility — an animal life, naturally expressed in erect work, as the languor of the south in reclining or level work. Imagine the difference between the action of a man urging himself to his work in a snow storm, and the inaction of one laid at his length on a sunny bank among cicadas and fallen olives, and you will have the key to a whole group of sympathies which were forcefully expressed in the architecture of both; remem- bering always that sleep would be to the one luxury, to the other death. And to the force of this vital instinct we have far- ther to add the influence of natural scenery; and chiefly of the groups and wildernesses of the tree which is to the German mind what the olive or palm is to the southern, the spruce fir. The eye which has once been habituated to the continual serration of the pine forest, and to the multiplication of its infinite pinnacles, is not easily offended by the repetition of similar forms, nor easily satisfied by the simplicity of flat or massive outlines, — iStones of Venice, I., pp. 154-156, 158 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. The Poetry of Gothic Terms. — These [Greek] pediments, and stylobates, and architraves never ex- cited a single pleasurable feeling in you — never will, to the end of time. They are evermore dead, lifeless, and useless, in art as in poetry, and though you built as many of them as there are slates on your house-roofs, you will never care for them. They will only remain to later ages as monuments of the patience and pliability with which the people of the nineteenth century saci'i- ficed their feelings to fashions, and their intellects to forms. But on the other hand, that strange and thrill- ing interest with which such words strike you as are in any wise connected with Gothic architecture — as for in- stance, Vault, Arch, Spire, Pinnacle, Battlement, Bar- bican, Porch, and myriads of such others, words ever- lastingly poetical and powerful wherever they occur — is a most true and certain index that the things themselves are delightful to you, and will ever continue to be so. — Lectures on Architecture, p. 35. The Gothic Porch. — You know how the east winds blow through those unlucky couples of pillars [of the Greek portico], which are all that your architects find consistent with due observance of the Doric order. Then, away with these absurdities; and the next house you build, insist upon having the pure old Gothic porch, v.'alled in on both sides, with its pointed arch enti-ance and gable roof above. Under that, you can put down your umbrella at your leisure, and, if you will, stop a moment to talk with your friend as you give him the parting shake of the hand. And if now and then a wayfarer found a moment's rest on a stone seat on each side of it, I believe you would find the insides of your houses not one whit the less comfortable. — Lectures on Architecture, p. 37. The Gothic Arch. — There is a farther reason for our adopting the pointed arch than its being the strong- est form; it is also the most beautiful form in which a window or door-head can be built. Not the most beau- tiful because it is the strongest ; but most beautiful, because its form is one of those which, as we know by its fi-equent occurrence in the work of nature around ARCHITECTURE. 159 US, has been appointed by the Deity to be an everlas^ ing source of pleasure to the human mind. (rather a branch from any of the trees or flowers to which the earth owes its principal beauty. You will find that every one of its leaves is terminated, more or less, in the form of the pointed arch ; and to that form owes its grace and character. — Lectures on Architect- ure, p. 18. How TO TELL Good Gothic. — First. Look if the roof rises in a steep gable, high above the walls. If it does not do this, there is something wrong; the building is not quite pure Gothic, or has been altered. . . . Secondly. Look if the principal windows and doors have pointed arches with gables over them. If not pointed arches, the building is not Gothic. . . . Thirdly. Look if the arches are cusped, or apertures fuhated. . . . Fourthly. If the building meets all the first three conditions, look if its arches in general, whether of win- dows and doors, or of minor ornamentation, are carried on true shafts lolth bases and capitals. If they are, then the building is assuredly of the finest Gothic style. Stones of Venice, II., pp. 227, 228. To TELL WHETHER A PlECE OF PuKE GoTlIIC BE ALSO Masterly Architecture. — [For a building] may be very pure Gothic, and yet, if a copy, or originally raised by an ungiftedbuildei', very bad architecture. . . , First. See if it looks as if it had been built by strong men ; if it has the sort of roughness, and large- ness, and nonchalance, mixed in places with the ex- quisite tenderness which seems always to be the sign- manual of the broad vision, and massy power of men who can see past the work they are doing, and betray here and there something like disdain for it. If the building has this character, it is much already in its favor; it will go hard but it proves a noble one. If it has not this, but is altogether accurate, minute, and scrupulous in its workmanship, it must belong to either the very best or the very worst of schools : the very best, in which exquisite design is wrought out with un- tiring and conscientious care, as in the Giottesque 160 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. Gothic; or the very worst, in which mechanism has taken the place of design. . . . Secondly. Observe if it be irregular, its different parts fitting themselves to different purposes, no one caring what becomes of them, so that they do their work. If one part always answers accurately to another part, it is sure to be a bad building ; and the greater and more conspicuous the irregularities, the greater the chances are that it is a good one. . . . Thirdly. Observe if all the traceries, capitals, and other ornaments are of perpetually varied design. If not, the work is assuredly bad. Lastly. Head the sculpture. Preparatory to read- ing it, you will have to discover whether it is legible (and, if legible, it is nearly certain to be worth reading). On a good building, the sculpture is ahoai/s so set, and on such a scale, that at the ordinary distance from which the edifice is seen, the sculpture shall be thorough- ly intelligible and interesting. In order to accomplish this, the uppermost statues will be ten or twelve feet high, and the upper ornamentation wiU be colossal, in- creasing in fineness as it descends, till on the founda- tion it will often be wrought as if for a precious cabi- net in a king's chamber ; but the spectator will not notice that the upper sculptures are colossal. He will merely feel that he can see them plainly, and make them all out at his ease. — Stones of Venice, II., pp. 229, 230. Egyptian and Greek buildings stand, for the most part, by their own weight and mass, one stone passively incumbent on another: but in the Gothic vaults and traceries there is a stiffness analogous to that of the bones of a limb, or fibres of a tree ; an elastic tension and communication of force from part to part, and also a studious expression of this throughout every visible line of the building. ■ And, in like manner, the Greek and Egyptian ornament is either mere surface engrav- ing, as if the face of the wall had been stamped with a seal, or its lines are flowing, lithe, and luxuriant ; in either case, there is no expression of energy in frame work of the ornament itself. But the Gothic ornatnent stands out in prickly independence, and fros;y fortitude, ARCHITECTURE. 131 jutting into crockets, anil freezing into pinnacles; here starting up into a monster, tiiere germinating into a blossom ; anon knitting itself into a branch, alternately thorny, bossy, and bristly, or writhed into every form of nervous entanglement ; but, even when most grace- ful, never for an instant languid, always quickset; err- ing, if at all, ever on the side of bruscmerie. — Stones of Venice, If., p. 203. Renaissance Architecture. — Raised at once into all the magnificence of which it was capabie by Michael Angelo, then taken up by men of real intellect and im- agination, such as Scamozzi, Sansovino, Inigo Jones, and Wren, it is impossible to estimate the extent of its influence en the European mind ; and that the more, be- cause few persons are concerned with painting, and, of those few, the larger number regard it with slight at- tention ; but all men are concerned with architecture, and have at some time of their lives serious business with it. It does not much matter that an individual loses two or three hundred pounds in buying a bad pic- ture, but it is r.o be regretted that a nation should lose two or three hundred thousand in raising a ridiculous building. Nor is it merely wasted wealth or distem- pered conception which we have to regret in this Renais- sance architecture: but we shall find in it partly the root, partly the expression, of certain dominant evils of modern times — over-sophistication and ignorant classic- alism ; the one destroying the healthfulness of general society, the other rendering our schools and universi- ties useless to a large number of the men who pass through them. Now Venice, as she was once the most religious, was in her fall the most corrupt, of European states ; and as she was in her strength the centre of the pure currents of Christian architecture, so she is in her decline the source of the Renaissance. It was the originality and splendor of the Palaces of Vicenza and Venice which gave this school its eminence in the eyes of Europe; and the dying city, magnificent in her dissipation, and graceful in her follies, obtained wider woiship in her decrepitude than in her youth, and sank from tlie midst of her ad- mirers into the grave. — /i>it'nes of Venice, I., p. 38. 162 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. Renaissance architecture is the school which has con- ducted men's inventive and constructive faculties from the Grand Canal to Gower Street ; from the marble shaft, and the lancet arch, and the wreathed leafage, and the glowing and melting harmony of gold and azurt, to the square cavity in the brick wall. — /Stones of Venice, III., p. (3. If vre think over this matter a little, we shall soon feel that in those meagre lines there is indeed an ex- pression of aristocracy in its v/orst characters ; coldness, perfectness of training, incapability of emotion, want of sympathy with the weakness of lower men, blank, hopeless, haughty self-sufficiency. All these characters are written in the Renaissance architecture as plainly as if they were graven on it in words. For, observe, all other architectures have something in them that common men can enjoy; some concession to the simpli- cities of humanity, some daily bread for the hungei- of the multitude. Quaint fancy, rich ornament, bright color, something that shows a sympathy with men of ordinary minds and hearts ; and this wrought out at least in the Gothic, with a rudeness showing that the workman did not mind exposing his own ignorance if he could please others. But the Renaissance is exactly the contrary of all this. It is rigid, cold, inhuman; in- capable of glowing, of stooping, of conceding for an in. stant. Whatever excellence it has is refined, high- trained, and deeply erudite ; a kind which the architect well knows no common mind can taste. He proclaims tons aloud. ''You cannot feel my work unless you study Vitruvius. I will give you no gay color, no pleasant sculpture, nothing to make you happy; for I am a learned man. All the pleasure you can have in anything I do is in its proud breeding, its rigid formal- ism, its peifect finish, its cold tranquillity. I do not work for the vulgar, only for the men of the academy and the court." . . . Here was an architecture that would not shrink, that had in it no submission, no mercy. The proud princes and lords rejoiced in it. It was full of insult to the poor in its every line. It would not be built of the materials at the poor man's hand ; it would not roof itself with thatch or shinjrle. ARCHITECTURE. \(Si and black oak beams; it would not wall itself with rough stone or brick; it would not pierce itself with small windows where they were needed ; it would not niche itself, wherever there was room for it, in the street corners. It would be of hewn stone ;it would have its windows and its doors, and its stairs and its pillars, in lordly order, and of stately size ; it would have its wings and its corridors, and its halls and its gardens, as if all the earth were its own. And the rugged cottages of the mountaineers, and the fantastic streets of the labor- ing burgher were to be thrust out of its way, as of a lower species. — Stones of Venice, III., pp. iYl, 63. I have not grasp enough of thought to embrace the evils which have resulted among all the orders of Eu- ropean society from the introduction of the renaissance schools of building, in turning away the eyes of the be- holder from natural beauty, and reducing the workman to the level of a machine. In the Gothic times, writing, painting, carving, casting — it mattered not what — were all works done by thoughtful and happy men ; and the illumination of the volume, and the carving and casting of wall and gate, employed, not thousands, but millions, of true and noble artists over all Christian lands. Men in the same position are now left utterly without intel- lectual power or pursuit, and, being unhappy in their work, they rebel against it; hence one of the worst forms of Unchristian Socialiism, — Lertares on Archl- tectto'e, p. 7(). [Ruskin's first work on Architecture — tlie "Seven Lamps," is so immature and flat in style (as he says him- self in the preface to edition of 1 S8()— • • being overlaid with gilding, and overshot too splashiiy and cascade-fashion with gushmg of words'"), and so entirely devoid of the brilliant and epigrammatic paragraphs that make the in- terest of his later works, tliat it seems best to give a brief summary of the noteworthy portions of its contents ratiier than quote from it at length. In regard to the title Prof. Ruskin states, in one of his prefaces, that he has always had a suspicion of the number seven : for when he wrote his " Seven Lamps '' he had great difliculty in preventing them from becoming eight or nine on his hands. By the word " lamp " he is understood to mean 164 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. tlie inner spirit, or principle, whieli both inspired and is embodied in various works of architecture. The Lain[) of 8acrih(!e, tlie Lamp of Truth, of Beauty, Power, Lite, Memory, Obedience — under these lieadings are grouped his thoughts. Ornament, he says, cannot be overcliarged, if it be good and m its place. All beautiful designs are taken from n ttuivil objects. Power in architecture is ob- taine'd bj^ increase of magnituile in a building ; sublimity is attained l)y mass, deep glooms and shadows, and vast areas of towering wall-surface on whicii the sunshine may sleep in noble strength. Don't place the decorations of a temple on a shop-front : in a place where rest is for- bidden, so is beauty. Do not forge golden ploughshares, bind ledgers with cnaniei, nor ihrash witli sculptured flails. It is proper that railroad stations si lould be built in a severe and simple style, because the people wliojiass through them have no time for the contemplation of elaborate and beautiful sculptures. It is a la\\ of architect- ural proportion that one large or principal object shall be harmonized with a number of smaller or inferior ones : the pinnacles of a cathedral are eini)loyed chiefly to fur- nisli the third term to the spire anti tower. No one may dare to toucli sculpture witli color unless he be a Tintoret or Giorgione. The lovely and mellow tones of the natural stones are preferable to color laid on by an inferior hand. Color in nature is arranged on an entirely separate system from form, or anatomy : the spots of tlie leopard, tlie stripes of the zebra, or tlie plumage of a bird are independent of the muscular lines of their bodies. So in architecture, color must be visibly independent of form : a column should never be painted with vertical lines, but crosswise The life of good architecture consists in its freedom from a distressing mechanical regularity or symmetry : the old master-architects purposely broke up llie regu- larity of their arches and columns by deft adjustments to the irregularities of the walls and otlicr architectural masses. In vital carving, a masculine toucli is often shown by rough handling : all carving is good v>hi<-h is (\oni} with enjoyment and zest ; all carving bad v.liich is done as an enforced task. To this summary of tlie " Seven Lamps " may be added a few words from the preface to the 1^73 edition of tlie '•Stones of Venice": — "No book of mine," says Prof. Ruskin, " lias had so niucli inlluence on art as the 'Stones of Venice;' but this influence lias been pos- sessed only by tiie third pnrt of it. the ivip.aining two- thirds having been resolutely ignored by tlie British public. And. as a physician would in most cases ratlier hear that his patieiit luul thrown all of his medicine out of the window, than that he had sent word to his apothe- ARCHITECTURE. 165 cary to leave out two of its three ingredients, so I would rather, for ray own part, that no architects had ever con- descended to adopt one of the views suggested iii this book, than that any slioukl have made the partial use of it which has mottled our manufactory chimneys with black and red brick, dignified oiu- banks and drapers' shops with Venetian tracery, and pinched our parish churches into dark and slipjx'ry arrangements for the advertisement of cheap colored glass and pantiles."] 166 A liUSKJN ANTHOLOGY. SECTION IV.— SCULPTURE. Curlyle's general symbol of the best attainments of northern religious sculpture — " three whale-cubs com- bined by boiling." — Pleasures of l^ngland, p. 9. No great sculptor, from the beginning of art to the end of it, has ever carved, or ever will, a deceptive drapery. He has neither time nor will to do it. His mason's lad may do that if he likes. A man who can carve a limb or a face never finishes inferior parts, but either with a hasty and scornful chisel, or with such grave and strict selection of their lines as you know at once to be imaginative, not imitative. — Mornitjgs in Flor- ence, p. 17. From the Elgin marbles down to the lightest tendril that curls round a capital in the thirteenth century, every piece of stone that has been touched by the hand of a master, becomes soft with under-life, not resem- bling nature merely in skin-texture, nor in fibres of leaf, or veins of flesh ; but in the broad, tender, un- speakably subtle undulation of its organic form. — Lect- ures on Art, p. 114. The sculpture on your friend's house unites in effect with that on your own. The two houses form one grand mass — far grander than either separately ; much more if a third be added — and a fourth ; much more if the whole street — if the whole city — join in the solem:i harmony of sculpture. Your separate possessions of pictures and prints are to you as if yon sang pieces of music with your single voices in your own houses. But your architecture would be as if you all sang together in one mjghty choir. — T^ectures on Architecture, p. 55. Portrait Sculpture Third-rate Work. — Portrait sculpture, which is nothing more, is always third-rate SCULPTURE. 16T work, even when produced by men of geniu:;; — nor does it in the least require men of genius to pro- duce it. To paint a portrait, indeed, implies the very highest gifts of painting ; but any man, of ordinary p;(tience and artistic feeling, can carve a satisfactory inist — Arati'a Pentelici, p. 41. The Choir of the Cathedral of Amiens. — Wood- carving was the Pieard's joy from his youth up, and, so far as I know, there is nothing else so beautiful cut out of the goodly trees of the world. Sweet and young-grained wood it is : oak, trained and chosen for such work, sound now as four hundred years since. Under the carver's hand it seems to cut like clay, to fold like silk, to grow like living branches, to leap like living flame. Canopy crowning canopy, pin- nacle piercing j^innacle — it shoots and wreaths itself into an enchanted glade, inextricable, imperishable, fuller of leafage than any forest, and fuller of story than any book. — Bible of Amiens, p. 93. The two great Schools of Sculpture. — The con- ditions necessary for the production of a perfect school of sculpture have only twice been met in the history of the world, and then for a short time ; nor for short time only, but also in narrow districts, namely, in the valleys and islands of Ionian Greece, and in the strip of land deposited by the Arno, between the Apennine crests and the sea. All other schools, except these two, led severally by Athens in the fifth century before Christ, and by Flor- ence in the fifteenth of our own era, are imperfect ; and the best of them are derivative : these two are consum- mate in themselves, and the origin of what is best in others. . . . And so narrow is the excellence even of these two exclusive schools, that it cannot be said of either of them that they represented the entire human form. The Greeks perfectly drew, and perfectly moulded the body and limbs ; but there is, so far as I am aware, no instance of their representing the face as well as any great Italian. On the other hand, the Italian painted and carved the face insuperably ; but I believe there is no instance of his having perfectly rep- resented the body, which, by command of his religion, it 108 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. became his pride to despise, and his safety to mortify. — Aratru PcitteUci, pp. 117, 118. NiccoLA PisANo's PuLPiT. — Behold ! between the capitals of the pillars and the sculptured tablets there are interposed live cusped arches, the hollow beneath the pulpit showing dark through their foils. You have seen such eusped arches before, you think ? Yes, gentlemen, you have ; but the Pisans had not And that intermediate layer of the pulpit means — the change, in a word, foi' all Europe, from the Parthenon to Amiens Cathedral. For Italy it means the rise of her Gothic dynasty ; it means the duomo of Milan in- stead of the temple of Paestum. — Yal I/Arno, p. 14. Sculpture and the Drama. — Of the two mimetic arts, [sculpture and the drama] the drama being more passionate, and involving conditions of greater excite- ment and luxury, is usually in its excellence the sign of culminating strength in the people ; while a fine sculpt- ure, requiring always submission to severe law, is an unfailing proof of their being in early and active pro- gress. There is no instance of fine sculpture being produced by a nation either torpid, weak, or in de- cadence. Their drama may gain in grace and wit ; but their sculpture, in days of decline, is cdirays base. — Aratra Podelici, p. 28. The Apollo BELvinEUE. — Thefallof Greece was in- stant when her gods again became fables. The Apollo Belvidere is the work of a sculptor to whom Apollon- ism is merely an elegant idea on which to exhibit his own skill. He does not himself feel for an instant that the handsome man in the unintelligible attitude, with drapery hung over his left arm, as it would be hung to dry over a clothes-line, is the Power of the Sun. — Ariadne, p. 92, Nothing but Life must de sculptured.— All de- light in mere incidental beauty, which painting often triumphs in, is wholly forbidden to sculpture; — for in- stance, in painting tlie branch of a tree, you may rightly represent and enjoy the lichens and moss on it, but a sculptor must not touch one of them : they are inessential to the tree's life — he must give the flow and SCULPTURE. 169 bending of the branch only, else he does not enough "see Pallas " in it. Or to take a higher instance, here is an exquisite little painted poem, by Edward Frere; a cottage in- terior, one of the thousands which within the last two months have been laid desolate in unhappy France. Every accessory in the painting is of value — the fire- side, the tiled floor, the vegetables lying upon it, and the basket hanging from the roof. But not one of these accessories would have been admissible in sculpt- ure. You must carve nothing but what has life. " Why 1 " you probably feel instantly inchned to ask me.— You see the principle we have got, instead of being blunt or useless, is such an edged tool that you are startled the moment I apply it. " Must we refuse every pleasant accessory and picturesque detail, and petrify nothing but living creatures 1 " — Even so : I would not assert it on my own authority. It is the Greeks who say it, but whatever they say o^f^sculpture, be assured, is true.— ^4r«^m Pentelici, p. 73. Sculpture in its Relation to the Life of the Workman.— Understand this clearly. You can teach a man to draw a straight line, and to cut one ; to strike a curved line, and to carve it ; and to copy and carve any number of given lines or forms, with admirable speed and perfect precision ; and you find his work per- fect of its kind : but if you ask him to think about any of those forms, to consider if he cannot find any better in his own head, he stops ; his execution becomes hesi- latin<^ • he thinks, and ten to one he thinks wrong ; ten to oife'he makes a mistake in the first touch he gives to his work as a thinking being. But you have made a man of him for all that. He was only a machine before, ^n animated tool. ... , , .i j i * + Go forth again to gaze upon the old cathedral tront, where you have smiled so often at the fantastic igno- rance of the old sculptors: examine once more those dcrly goblins, and formless monsters, and stern statues, /matomiless and rigid ; but do not mock at them, for they are signs of the life and liberty of every workman who struck the stone ; a freedom of thought, and rank in scale of being, such as no laws, no charters, no char- 1 70 AH USKIN A NTHOL OGY. ities can secure ; but which it must be the first aim of all Europe at this day to regain for her children. — Stones of Venice, II., pp. 162, 163, The Duomo of Pisa and the Crystal Palace. — In the vault of the apse of the Duomo of Pisa, was a colossal image of Christ, in colored mosaic, bearing to the temple, as nearly as possible, the relation which the statue of Athena bore to the Parthenon; and in the same manner, concentrating the imagination of the Pisan on the attributes of the God in whom he be- lieved. In precisely the same position with respect to the nave of the building, but of larger size, as proportioned to the three or four times greater scale of the whole, a colossal piece of sculpture was placed by English de- signers, at the extremity of the Crystal Palace, in pre- paration for their solemnities in honor of the birthday of Christ, in December, 1867 or 1868. That piece of sculpture was the face of the clown in a pantomime, some twelve feet high from brow to chin, which face, being moved by the mechanism which is our pride, every half minute opened its mouth from ear to ear, showed its teeth, and revolved its eyes, the force of these periodical seasons of expression being in- creased and explained by the illuminated inscription underneath " Here we are again." When it is assumed, and with too good reason, that the mind of the English populace is to be addressed, in the principal Sacred Festival of its year, by sculpture such as this, I need scarcely point out to you that the hope is absolutely futile of advancing their intelligence by col- lecting within this building, (itself devoid absolutely of every kind of art, and so vilely constructed that those who traverse it are continually in danger of falling over the cross-bars that bind it together) examples of sculpt- ure filched indiscriminately from the past work, bad and good, of Turks, Greeks, Romans, Moors, and Chris- tians, miscolored, misplaced, and misinterpreted ; here thrust into unseemly corners, and there mortised to- gether into mere confusion of heterogeneous obstacle ; pronouncing itself hourly more intolerable in weariness, mitil any kind of relief is sought from it in steam SCULPTURE. 171 wheelbarrows or cheap toysliops ; and most of all in beer and meat, the corks and the bones being dropped through the chinks in the damp deal flooring of the Eng- lish Fairy Palace. — Aratra Pentelici, p. 40. Terra Cotta Work. — You must put no work into it requiring niceness in dimension, nor any so elaborate that it would be a great loss if it were broken, but as clay yields at once to the hand, and the sculptor can do anything with it he likes, it is a material for him to sketch with and play with — to record his fancies in, before they escape him — and to express roughly, for people who can enjoy such sketches, what he has not time to complete in marble. The clay, being ductile, lends itself to all softness of line ; being easily frangi- ble, it would be ridiculous to give it sharp edges, so that a blunt and massive rendering of graceful gesture will be its natural function ; but as it can be pinched, or pulled, or thrust in a moment into projection which it would take hours of chiselling to get in stone, it will also properly be used for all fantastic and grotesque form, not involving sharp edges. Therefore, what is true of chalk and charcoal, for painters, is equally true of clay, for sculptors ; they are all most precious mate- rials for true masters, but tempt the false ones into fatal license ; and to judge I'ightly of terra cotta work is a far higher reach of skill in sculpture-criticism than to distinguish the merits of a finished statue. — Aratra Pentelici, p. 100. The Tombs of the Doges Tomaso Mocenigo and Andrea Vendramin in Venice. — Like all the lovely tombs of Venice and Verona, it is a sarcophagus with a recumbent figure above, and this figure is a faithful but tender portrait, wrought as far as it can be without painfulness, of the doge as he lay in death. He wears his ducal robe and bonnet — his head is laid slightly aside upon his pillow — his hands are simply crossed as they fall. The face is emaciated, the features large, but so pure and lordly in their natural chiselling, that they must have looked like marble even in their anima- tion. They are deeply worn away by thought and death; the veins on the temples branched and starting; the skin gathered in sharp folds ; the brow high-arched 172 A EUSKIN ANTHOLOGY, and shaggy : the eye-ball magnificently large ; the curve of the lips just veiled by the light moustache at the side ; the beard short, double, and sharp-pointed : all noble and quiet ; the vi^hite sepulchral dust marking like light the stern angles of the cheek and brow. . . . In the choir of the same church, St. Giov. and Paolo, is another tomb, that of the Doge Andrea Vendramin. This doge died in 1748, after a short reign of two years, the most disastrous in the annals of Venice. He died of a pestilence which followed the ravage of the Turks, carried to the shores of the lagoons. He died, leaving Venice disgraced by sea and land, with the smoke of hostile devastation rising in the blue distances of Friuli ; and there was raised to him the most costly tomb ever bestowed on her monarchs. The tomb is pronounced by Ciogndra "the very cul- minating point to which the Venetian arts attained by ministry of the chisel." To this culminating point, therefore, covered with dust and cobwebs, I attained, as I did to every tomb of importance in Venice, by the ministry of such ancient ladders as were to be found in the sacristan's keeping. I was struck at first by the excessive awkwardness and want of feeling in the fall of the hand towards the spec- tator, for it is thrown off the middle of the body in order to show its fine cutting. Now the Mocenigo hand, severe and even stiff in its articulations, has its veins finely drawn, its sculptor having justly felt that the delicacy of the veining expresses alike dignity and age and birth. The Vendramin hand is far more labori- ously cut, but its blunt and clumsy contour at once makes us feel that all the care has been thrown away, and well it may be, for it has been entirely bestowed in cut- ting gouty wrinkles about the joints. Such as the hand is, I looked for its fellow. At first I thought it had been broken off, but, on clearing away the dust, I saw the wretched effigy had only 07ie hand, and was a mere block on the inner side. The face, heavy and disagree- able in its features, is made monstrous by its semi- ficulpture. One side of the forehead is wrinkled elabo- rately, the other left smooth; one side only of the doge's cap is chased; one cheek only is finished, and the other blocked out and distorted besides ; finally, the SCULPTURE. 173 ormine robe, which is elaborately imitated to its utmost lock of hair and of ground hair on the one side, is blocked out only on the other ; it having been supposed throughout the work that the effigy was only to be seen from below, and from one side. It was indeed to be so seen by nearly every one ; and I do not blame — I should, on the contrary, have praised — the sculptor for regulating his treatment of it by its position; if that treatment had not involved, first, dis- honesty, in giving only half a face, a monstrous mask, when we demanded true portraiture of the dead ; and, secondly, such utter coldness of feeling, as could only consist with an extreme of intellectual and moral degra- dation. Who, with a heart in his breast, could have stayed his hand as he drew the dim lines of the old man's countenance — unmajestic once, indeed, but at least sanctified by the solemnities of death — could have stayed his hand, as he reached the bend of the grey forehead, and measured out the last veins of it at so much the zecchin ? But now, reader, comes the very gist and point of the whole matter. This lying monument to a dishon- ored doge, this culminating pride of the Renaissance art of Venice, is at least veracious, if in nothing else, in its testimony to the character of its sculptor. lie was banished from Venice for forgery in 1187. — Stones of Venice, I., pp. 39-43. St. Mark's. — A sea-borne vase of alabaster full of incense of prayers ; and a purple manuscript — floor, walls, and roof blazoned with the scrolls of the gospel. — Deucalion, p. 84. A multitude of pillars and white domes, clustered in to a long low pyramid of colored light ; a treasure-heap, it seems, partly of gold, and partly of ("pal and mother- of-pearl, hollowed beneath into five great vaulted porches, ceiled with fair mosaic, and beset with sculpt- ure of alabaster, clear as amber and delicate as ivory, — sculpture fantastic and involved, of palm-leaves and lilies, and grapes and pomegnxnates, and birds clinging and fluttering among the branches, all twined together in an endless network of buds and plumes; and, in the midst of it, the solemn forms of angels, sceptred, and 174 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. robed to the feet, and leaning to each other across the gates, their figures indistinct among the gleaming of the golden ground through the leaves beside them, inter- rupted and dim, like the morning light as it faded back among the branches of Eden, when first its gates were angel-guarded long ago. And round the walls of the porches tliei'e are set pillars of variegated stones, jas- per and porphyry, and deep-green serpentine spotted v/ith flakes of snow, and marbles, that iialf refuse and half yield to the sunshine, Cieopatra-like, " their bluest veins to kiss " — the shadow, as it steals back from them, revealing line after line of azure undulation, as a reced- ing tide leaves the waved sand ; their capitals rich with interwoven tracery, rooted knots of herbage, and drifting leaves of acanthus and vine, and mystical signs, all be- ginning and ending in the Cross ; and above them, in the broad archivolts, a continuous chain of language and of life — angels, and the signs of heaven, and the labors of men, each in its appointed season upon the earth ; and above these, another range of glittering pin- nacles, mixed with white arches edged with scarlet flowers — a confusion of delight, amidst which the breasts of the Greek horses are seen blazing in their breadth of golden strength, and the St. Mark's Lion, lifted on a blue-field covered with stars, until at last, as if in ecstasy, the crests of the arches break into a mar- ble foam, and toss themselves far into the blue sky in flashes and wreaths of sculptured spray, as if the break- ers on the Lido shore had been frost-bound before they fell, and the sea-nymphs had inlaid them with coral and amethyst. . . . The interior is lost in deep twilight, to which the eye must be accustomed for some moments before the form of the building can be traced ; and then there opens before us a vast cave, hewn out into the form of a Cross, and divided into shadowy aisles by many pillars. Round the domes of its roof the light enters only through narrow apertures like large stars; and here and there a ray or two from some far away casement wanders into the darkness, and casts a narrow phos- phoric stream upon the waves of marble that heave and fall in a thousand colors along the floor. What else there is of light is from torches, or silver lamps, burn- SCULPTURE. 175 ing eoasolossly in the recesses of the chapels ; the roof slieeted with gold, and the polished walls covered with alabaster, give back at every curve and angle some fee- ble gleaming to the flames ; and the glories round the heads of the sculptured saints flash out upon us as we pass them, and sink again into the gloom. Under foot and over head, a continual succession of crowded im- agery, one picture passing into another, as in a dream ; forms beautiful and terrible mixed together ; dragons and serpents, and ravening beasts of prey, and graceful birds that in the midst of them drink from running fountains and f<^ed fr'om vases of crystal ; the passions and pleasures of human life symbolized together, and the mystery of its redemption ; for the mazes of inter- woven lines and changeful pictures lead always at last to the Cross, lifted and carved in every place and upon every stone. . . . The very first requisite for true judgment of St. Mark's, is the perfection of that color-faculty which few people ever set themselves seriously to find out, whether they possess or not. For it is on its value as a piece of perfect and unchangeable coloring, that the claims of this edifice to our respect are finally rested ; and a deaf man might as well pretend to pro- nounce judgment on the merits of a full orchestra, as an architect trained in the composition of form only, to discern the beauty of St. Mark's. . . . While the burghers and barons of the North were building their dark streets and grisly castles of oak and sandstone, the merchants of Venice were covering their palaces with porphyry and gold ; and at last, when her mighty paint- ers had created for her a color more priceless than gold or porphyry, even this, the richest of her treasures, she lavished upon walls whose foundations were beaten by the sea ; and the strong fide, as it runs beneath the Rialto, is reddened to this day by the reflection of the frescoes of Giorgione. The whole edifice is to be regarded less as a temple wherein to pray, than as itself a Book of Common Prayer, a vast illuminated missal, bound with alabaster instead of parchment, studded with porphyry pillars in- stead of jewels, and written within and without in letters of enamel and gold. . . . 1T6 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. It would be easier to illustrate a crest of Scottish mountain, with its purple heather and pale harebells at their fullest and fairest, or a glade of Jura forest, with its floor of anemone and moss, than a single portico of St. Uark's.— Stones of Venice, II., pp. '70-98. It seems to me that the English visitor never realizes thoroughly what it is that he looks at in the St. Mark's porches: its glittering confusion in a style unexampled, its bright colors, its mingled marbles, produce on him no real impression of age, and its diminutive size sciircely any of grandeur. It looks to him almost like a stage-scene, got up solidly for some sudden festa. No mere guide-book's passing assertion of date — this cen- tury or the other — can in the least make him even con- ceive, and far less feel, that he is actually standing be- fore the very shafts and stones that were set on their foundations here while Harold the Saxon stood by the grave of the Confessor under the fresh-raised vaults of the first Norman Westminster Abbey, of which now a single arch only remains standing. He cannot, by any effort, imagine that those exquisite and lace-like sculpt- ures of twined acanthus — every leaf-edge as sharp and fine as if they were green weeds fresh springing in the dew, by the Pan-droseion — were, indeed, cut and finished to their perfect grace while the Norman axes were hewing out rough zigzags and dentils round the aisles of Durham and Lindisfarne. . . . Beyond all measure of value as a treasury of art, it is also, beyond all our other volumes, venerable as a codex of religion. Just as the white foliage and birds on their golden ground are descendants, in direct line, from the ivory and gold of Phidias, so the Greek pictures and inscrip- tions, whether in mosaic or in sculpture, throughout the building, record the unbroken unity of spiritual in- fluence from the Father of Light — or the races whose own poets had said " We also are his offspring" — down to the day when all their gods, not slain, but changed into new creatures, became the types to them of the mightier Christian spirits; and Perseus became St. George, and Mars St. Michael, and Athena the Madonna, and Zeus their revealed Father in Heaven. In all the history of human mind, there is nothing so SCULPTURE. 177 wonderful, nothing so eventful, as this spiritual change. So inextricably is it interwoven with the most divine, the most distant threads of human thought and effort, that v.'hile none of the thoughts of St. Paul or the vis- ions of St. John can be understood without our under- standing first the imagery familiar to the Pagan wor- ship of the Greeks ; on the other hand, no understand- ing of the real purport of Greek religion can be securely reached without watching the translation of its myths into the message of Christianity. — Arroics of the Chace, I., pp. 158, 159. Throughout the whole fagade of St. Mark's, the capi- tals have only here and there by casualty lost so much as a volute or an ancanthus leaf, and whatever remains is perfect as on the day it was set in its place, mel- lowed and subdued only in color by time, but white still, clearly white ; and gray, still softly gray ; its porphyry purple as an Orleans plum, and the serpentine as green as a greengage. Note alf-o, that in this through- out perfect decorated surface there is not a loose joint. — Arrows of the Chace, II., p. 163. PART II. SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY. " Some treasures are heavy with human tears, as an ill' stored harvest ivith untimely rain." RusKiN, "Unto This Last," p. 39. "Unless opinions favorable to democracy and to aristoc- racy, to property and to equality, to cooperation and to competition, to luxury and to abstenence, to sociality and to individuality, to liberty and discipline, and all the other standing antagonisms of practical life, are expressed with equal freedom, and enforced and defended toith equal talent and energy, there is no chalice of both elements ob- taining their due." John Stoart Mill. A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. PART II.— SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY. CHAPTER I. Ecois^oMic Canons. Political Economy is not itself a science, but a system of conduct founded on the sciences, and impossible, except under certain conditions of moral culture. Which is only to say, that industry, frugality, and discretion, the three foundations of economy, are moral qualities, and cannot be at- tained without moral discipline: a flat truism, the reader may think, thus stated, yet a truism which is denied both vociferously, and in all endeavor, by the entire populace of Europe ; who are at present hoi:>eful of obtaining wealth by tricks of trade, with- out industry. The study which lately in England has been called Political Economy is in reality nothing more than the investigation of some accidental phenomena of modern commercial operations, nor has it been true in its investigation even of these. — Mimera Fiilveris, p. 11, 19. Among the delusions which at different periods have possessed themselves of the minds of large masses of the human race, perhaps the most curious — certainly the least creditable — is the modern soi- disant science of political economy, based on the idea that an advantageous code of social action naay be determined irrespectively of the influence of social affection. Observe, I neither impugn nor doubt the conclu- (181) 182 A liUSKIJSr ANTHOLOGY. sions of the science, if its terms are accepted. I aiu simjily uninterested in them, as I should be in tliose of a science of gymnastics which assumed that men had no skeletons. It might be shown, on that supposition, that it would be advantageous to roll the students up into pellets, flatten them into cakes, or stretch them into cables ; and that when these results were effected, the re-insertion of the skeleton would be attended with various inconveniences to their constitution. The reasoning might be admir- able, the conclusions true, and the science deficient only in aiJijlicability. Modern political economy stands on a precisely similar basis. Assuming, not that the human being has no skeleton, but that it is all skeleton, it founds an ossifiant theory of j^ro- gress on this negation of a soul ; and having shown the utmost that may be made of bones, and con- structed a number of interesting geometrical figures with death's-heads and humeri, successfully proves the inconvenience of the reappearance of a soul among these corpuscular structures. I do not deny the truth of this the»ory : I simply deny its applica- bility to the present phase of the world. — U7ito This Last, p. 14. The real science of political economy, which has yet to be distinguished from the bastard science, as' medicine from witchcraft, and astronomy from as- trology, is that which teaches nations to desire and labor for the things that lead to life ; and which teaches them to scorn and destroy the things that lead to destruction. — Unto This Last, p. 66. Political economy (the economy of a State, or of citizens) consists simply in the production, preserva- tion, and distribution, at fittest time and place, of useful or pleasurable things. The farmer who cuts his hay at the right time ; the shipwright who drives his bolts well home in sound wood ; the builder who lays good bricks in well-tempered mor- tar ; the housewife who takes care of her furniture in the parlor, and guards against all waste in her kitchen ; and the singer who rightly disciplines, and SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY. 183 never overstrains her voice : are all political econo- mists in the true and final sense ; adding continu- ally to the riches and well-being of the nation to which they belong. But mercantile economy, the economy of "jnerces" or of "pay," signifies the accunn;lation, in the hands of individuals, of legal or moral claim upon, or power over, the labor of others ; every such claim implying precisely as much poverty or debt on one side, as it implies riches or right on the other. It does not, therefore, necessarily involve an addi- tion to the actual property, or well-being, of the State in which it exMs.— Unto Tliis Last, p. 33. The Production of Good Mex axd Women THE OB.JECT OB^ True ECONOMY.— This is the ob- ject of all true policy and true economy : " utmost multitude of good men on every given space of ground" — impei-atively always, good, sound, honest men, not a mob of white-faced thieves. — Athena, p.Ul. A little group of wise hearts is better than a wil- derness full of fools.— CrotWi of Wild Olive, Lect. III., p. 83. It is strange that men always praise enthusiasti- cally any person who, by a momentary exertion, saves a life ; but praise very hesitatingly a person who, by exertion and self-denial prolonged through years, creates one. We give the crown " ob civem servatum ; '' — Avhy not " ob civem natum ? " Born, I mean, to the full, in sovil as well as body. Eng- land has oak enough, I think, for both chaplets. — Unto This Last, p. 77. The Function of Labor in National Life.— It is physically impossible that true religious knowl- edge, or pure morality, should exist among any classes of a nation who do not Avork with their hands for their bread.— i^o?-.S', III., p. 349. A Money-Making Mob.— A nation cannot last as a money-making mob : it cann'>t with impunity,— it cannot with existence.— goon despising literature. 184 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. despising science, despising art, despising nature, despising compassion, and concentrating its soul on Pence. — Sesame and Lilies, p. 54. Vitality and Decay in Nations. — The customs and manners of a sensitive and highly-trained race are always Vital : that is to say, they are or- derly manifestations of intense life, like the habitual action of the fingers of a musician. The customs and manners of a vile and rude race, on the con- trary, are conditions of decay : they are not, prop- erly speaking, habits, but incrustations ; not re- straints, or forms of life ; but gangrenes, noisome, and the beginnings of death. — Munera Pulderis, p. 1)0. " An Honest Man is the Noblest Work of God." — I have sometimes heard Pope condemned for the lowness, instead of the height of his standard : — " Honesty is indeed a respectable virtue ; but how much higher may uien attain ! Shall nothing more be asked of us than that we be honest? " For the present, good friends, nothing. It seems that in our aspirations to be more than that, we have to some extent lost sight of the propriety of be- ing so much as that. — Unto This Last, p. 7. Whenever in my writings on Political Economy, I assume that a little honesty or generosity, — or what used to be called " virtue" — may be calculated up- on as a human motive of action, people always answer me, saying, "You must not calculate on that: that is not in human nature: you must not assume anything to be common to men but acquisi- tiveness and jealousy ; no other feeling ever has influence on them, except accidentally, and in mat- ters out of the way of business." — Sesame and Lilies, p. 30. Fight — Avill you ? — and pull other people's houses down ; while I am to be set to build your liarracks, that you may go smoking and spitting about all day, with a cock's conjb on your head, and spurs to your heels? — (1 observe, by the Avay, the Italian SOCIAL rniLOSOPHY. 185 soldiers have now got cocks' tai/s on their heads, instead of cocks' com1>s.) — Lay down the law to me in a wi|?,— will you? and tell nie the house I have built is — XOT niineV and take luy dinner from me, as a fee for that opinion ? Build, my man, — build, or dig, — one of the two ; and then eat your honestly earned meat, thankfully, and let other people alone, if you can't telp them.— i^'or.^, II., p. 300. DKFixiTloy'OP Currency. — The currency of any countrj^ consists of every document acknowledging debt, which is transferable in the countr}\ — Munera Palmris, p. 59. iNFLATlOJf OF C URREXCY.— The Government may at any time, with i^erfect justice, double Its issue of coinage, if it gives every man who had ten pounds in his pocket, another ten jjounds, and every man who had ten pence, another ten i)ence ; for it thus does not make any of them richer ; it merely di- vides their counters for them into twice the number. But if it gives the newly-issued coins to other people, or keeps them itself, it simply robs the former hold- ers to jjreeisely that extent. — AtJiena, p. 93. If ten men are cast away on a rock, with a thou- sand pounds in their pockets, and there is on the rock neither food nor shelter, their money is worth simply nothing ; for nothing is to be had for it : if they build ten huts, and recover a cask of biscuit from the wreck, then their thousand pounds, at its maximum value, is Avorth ten huts and a cask of biscuit. If they make their thousand pounds into two thousand by writing new notes, their two thou- sand pounds are still only Avortli ten huts and a cask of hiseuit.—Athe7ia, p. 91. The lowered value of money is often (and this is a very curious case of economical back current) indi- Ccited, not so much by a rise in the price of goods, as by a fall in that of labor. The household lives as comfortably as it did on a hundred a year, but the master has to work half as hard again to get it. This increase of toil is to an active nation often a iS(j A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. kind of phiy ; men go into it as into a violent game ; fatliers of families die quicker, and the gates of or- phan asylums are choked with applicants ; distress and crime spread and fester through a thousand silent channels ; but there is no commercial or ele- mentary convulsion ; no chasm opens into the abyss through the London clay ; no gilded victim is asked of the Guards : the Stock-Exchange falls into no hysterics ; and the old lady of Threadneedle street does not so much as ask for "My fan, Peter." — Arrows of the Chace, II., p. 45. Gold Coin.— Every bit of gold found in Australia, so long as it remains uncoined, is an article offered for sale like any other ; but as soon as it is coined into pounds, it diminishes the value of every pound we have now in our pockets. The Avaste of labor in obtaining the gold, though it cannot be estimated by help of any existing data, may be understood in its bearing on entire economy by supposing it limited to transactions between tAvo persons. If two farmers in Australia have been ex- changing corn and cattle with each other for yearr., keei:)ing their accounts of reciprocal debt in any simple way, the sum of the possessions of either would not be diminished, though the part of it which was lent or borroAved Avere only reckoned by marks on a stone, or notches on a tree ; and the one counted himself accordingly, so many scratches, or so many notches, better than the other. But it Avould soon be seriously diminished if, discoA'ering gold in their fields, each resoh^ed only to accept golden counters for a reckoning ; and accordingly, whenever he Avanted a sack of corn or a cow, Avas obliged to go and wash sand for a Aveek before he could get the means of giving a receijDt for them. — Munera Pulveris, pp. 60, 63. The Nature of Intrinsic Value. — Intrinsic A'alue is the absolute power of anything to support life. A sheaf of Avheat of giA''en quality and Aveight has in it a measurable power of sustaining the sub- stance of the body ; a cubic foot of pure air a fixed SOCIAL PEILOSOrffT. 187 power of sustaining its warmth ; and a cluster of llowers of p:iven beauty a fixed power of enlivening or animating the senses and heart. — Mimera Pul- otris, p. 24. The economist, in saying that his science takes no account of the qualities of pictures, merely signifies that he cannot conceive of any quality of essential badness or goodness existing in i^ictures ; and that he is incapable of investigating the laws of wealth in such articles. Which is the fact. But, being in- capable of defining intrinsic value in pictures, it follows that he must be equally helpless to define the nature of intrinsic value in painted glass, or in painted pottery, or in patterned stuffs, or in any other national produce requiring true huiuan in- genuity. Nay, though capable of conceiving the idea of intrinsic value with respect to beasts of bur- den, no economist has endeavored to state the gen- eral principles of National Economy, even with regard to the horse or the ass. And, in fine, the modern political economists have been, without ex- ception, incapable of apprehending the nature of intrinsic value at all- When, in the winter of 1851, I was collecting ma- terials for my work on Venetian architecture, three of the pictures of Tintoret on the roof of the School of St. Roch were hanging down in ragged fragments, mixed with lath and plaster, round the apertures made by the fall of three Austrian heavy shot. The city of Venice was not, it appeared, rich enough to repair the damage that winter ; and buckets were set on the floor of the upper room of the school to catch the rain, which not only fell directly through the shot holes, but found its way, owing to the gen- erally pervious state of the roof, through many of the canvases of Tintoret's in other parts of the ceiling. It was a lesson to me, as I have just said, no less direct than severe ; for I knew already at that time (though I have not ventured to assert, until recently at Oxford,) that tlie pictures of Tintoret in Venice were accurately the most precious articles of wealth 188 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. ill Euroije, being the best existing productions of human industry. Now at the time that three of them were thus fluttering in moist rags from the roof they had adorned, the shops of the Rue Rivoli at Paris were, in obedience to a steadily-increasing public Demand, beginning to show a steadily-in- creasing Supply of elaborately-finished and colored (ithograjDhs, representing the modern dances of de- light, among which the cancan has since taken a ilistinguished place. The labor employed on the stone of one of these lithograiihs is very much more than Tintoret was in the habit of giving to a liicture of average size. Considering labor as the origin of value, therefore, the stone so highly wrought would be of greater value than the picture ; and since also it is capable of producing a large number of immediately salea- ble or exchangeable impressions, for which the "demand" is constant, the city of Paris naturally supposed itself, and on all hitherto believed or stated principles of political economy, was, infi- nitely richer in the possession of a large number of these lithographic stones, (not to speak of countless oil pictures and marble carvings of similar char- acter), than Venice in the possession of those rags of mildewed canvas, flaunting in the south Avind and its salt rain. And, accordingly, Paris provided (without thought of the expense) lofty arcades of shops, and rich recesses of innumerable private apartments, for the protection of these better treas- ures of hers from the weather. Yet, all the while, Paris was not the richer for these jjossessions. Intrinsically, the delightful lith- ographs were not wealth, but polar contraries of wealth. She was, by the exact quantity of labor she had given to jiroduce these, sunk below, instead of above, absolute Poverty. They not only were false Riches— they were true Debt, Avhich had to be paid at last— and the present aspect of the Rue Rivoli shows in what manner. And the faded stains of the Venetian ceiling, all the while, were absolute and inestimable wealth. SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 189 Useless to their possessors as forgotten treasure in a buried city, they had in them, nevertheless, the intrinsic and eternal nature of wealth; and Venice, still possessing the ruins of them, was a rich city; only, the Venetians had not a notion sufficiently correct even for the very common purpose of in- ducing them to put slates on a roof, of what was "meant hy yveei\th."—Munei-a Puloeris, pp. 6-8. WEALTH. Wealth is the possession of the valuable by THE VALIANT.— C/wto This Last, p. 69. The study of Wealth is a pi'ovince of natural science : — it deals with the essential properties of things. The study of Money is a province of commercial science :— it deals v,^ith conditions of engagement and exchange. The study of Riches is a province of moral sci- ence : — it deals with the due relations of men to each other in regard of material possessions: and with the just laws of their association for purjposes of labor. — Munera Pulveris, p. 24. One mass of money is the outcome of action which has created, — another, of action which has annihi- lated, — ten times as much in the gathering of it; such and such strong hands have been paralyzed, as if they had been numbed by nightshade; so many strong men's courage broken, so many pro- ductive operations hindered; this and the other false direction given to labor, and lying image of prosperity set vip, on Dura plains dug into seven- tiuies-heated furnaces. That which seems to be wealth may in verity be only the gilded index of fai'-reaching ruin; a wrecker's handful of coin gleaned from the beach to which he has beguiled an argosy; a camp-follower's bundle of rags un- wrapped from the breasts of goodly soldiers dead; the [)urchase-pieces of potter's fields, wherein shall 190 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. be buried together the citizen and the stranger. — Unto This Last, p. 39. There is ko WsAiiTH but Life.— Life, inchiding all its po Avers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human be- ings; that man is richest who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others. — U7ito This Last, p. 83. The True Veins of Wealth.— Since the essence of wealth consists in power over men, will it not follow that the nobler and the more in number the persons are over whom it has power, the greater the wealth ? Perhaps it may even appear after some consideration, that the persons themselves are the wealth — that these pieces of gold with which we are in the habit of guiding them, ai'e, in fact, nothing more than a kind of Byzantine harness or trappings, very glittering and beautiful in barbaric sight, wherewith we bridle the creatures; but that if these same living creatures could be guided with- out the fretting and jingling of the Byzants in their mouths and ears, they might themselves be more valuable than their bridles. In fact, it may be dis- covered that the true veins of wealth are purple^ and not in Rock, but in Flesh— perhaps even that the final outcome and consummation of all wealth is in the producing as many as possible full- breathed, bright-eyed, and happy-hearted human creatures. — Unto This Last, p. 41. Wealth as Power.— Since the essence of wealth consists in its authority over men, if the apparent or nominal wealth fail in this power, it fails in es- sence; in fact, ceases to be wealth at all. It does not appear lately in England, that our authority over men is absolute. The servants show some dis- position to rush riotously upstairs, under an im- pression that their wages are not regularly paid. We should augur ill of any gentleman's projjerty SOCIAL rniLO SOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. IGl to whom this happened every other day in his drawing-room. So also, the power of our wealth seems limited as respects the comfort of the servants, no less than their quietude. The persons in the kitchen appear to be ill-dressed, squalid, half-starved. One cannot help imagining that the riches of the establishment must be of a very theoretical and documentary character. — Unto This Last, p. 41. LABOR. The beginning of all good law, and nearly the end of it, is in these two ordinances,— That every man shall do good work for his bread; and sec- ondly, That every man shall have good bread for his work. — Fors, I., p. 141. To succeed to my own satisfaction in a manual piece of work, is life, — to me, as to all men; and it is only the i^eace which comes necessarily from manual labor which in all time has kept the hon- est country people patient in their task of main- taining the i-ascals who live in towns. — Fors, II,, p. 306. Labor is the contest of the life of man Avith an opposite. Literally, it is the quantity of " Lapse," loss, or failure of human life, caused by any effort. It is usually confused with effort itself, or the appli- cation of power (opera); but there is much effort which is merely a mode of recreation, or of pleas- ure. The most beautiful actions of the human body, and the highest results of the human intelli- gence, are conditions, or achievements, of quite un- laborious, — nay, of recreative, — effort. But labor is the suffering in effort. It is the negative quan- tity, or quantity of de-feat, which has to be counted against every Feat, and of defect which has to be counted against every Fact, or Deed of men. In brief, it is " that quantity of our toil which we die in." — Mtmera Fuloeris, p. 49. 192 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. There is one fixed idea in the mind of every Euro- pean progressive poHtician, at this time; namely, that by a certain apphcation of Financial Art, and by the erection of a certain quantity of new build- ings on a colossal scale, it will be possible for soci- ety hereafter to pass its entire life in eating, smok- ing, harlotry, and talk; without doing anything whatever with its hands or feet of a laborious char- acter.— For^, II., p. 236. A happy nation may be defined as one in which the husband's hand is on the i^lough, and the house- wife's on the needle; so in due time reaping its golden harvest, and shining in golden vesture : and an unhappy nation is one which, acknowledg- ing no use of plough nor needle, will assuredly at last find its storehouse empty in the famine, and its breast naked to the cold.— The Two Paths, p. 121. Good Work ill-paid or not taid at all.— Generally, good, useful work, whether of the hand or head, is either ill-paid, or not paid at all. I don't say it should be so, but it always is so. Peo- ple, as a rule, only pay for being amused or being cheated, not for being served. Five thousand a year to your talker, and a shilling a day to your fighter, digger, and thinker, is the rule. None of the best head work in art, literature, or science, is ever paid for. How much do you think Homer got for his Iliad ? or Dante for his Paradise ? only bitter bread and salt, and going up and down other peo- ple's stairs. — Crown of Wild Olive, Lect. II., p. 35. Wages not always determined by Competi- tion. — I pay my servants exactly what wages I think necessary to make them comfortable. The sum is not determined at all by competition; but sometimes by my notions of their comfort and de- serving, and sometimes by theirs. If I were to be- come penniless to-morrow, several of them would certainly still serve me for nothing. In both the real and supposed cases the so-called "law " of vulgar ijolitical economy is absolutely set at defiance. But I cannot set the law of gravita- SOCIAL PniLOSOrHY— ECONOMIC CANON'S. 193 tiou at defiance, nor determiue that in my house I will not allow ice to melt, when the temperature is above thirty-two degrees. A true law outside of my house, will remain a true one inside of it. It is not, therefore, a law of Nature that wages are de- termined by competition. — Munera Pulveris-, p. 10. Employmkxts. — There being three great classes of mechanical powers at our disposal, namely («) vital or muscular power; (&) natural mechanical power of wind, water, and electricity; and (e) artificially produced mechanical power, it is the first princi- ple of economy to use all available vital power first, then the inexpensive natural forces, and only at last to have recourse to artificial jjower. And this, because it is always better for a man to work with his own hands to feed and clothe himself, than to stand idle while a machine works for him; and if he cannot, by all the labor healthily possible to him, feed and clothe himself, then it is better to use an inexpensive machine — as a windmill or Avater- mill — than a costly one like a steam-engine, so long as we have natural force enough at our disposal. . . . The principal point of all to be kept in view is, that in every idle arm and shoulder throughout the country there is a certain quantity of force, equivalent to the force of so much fuel; and that it is mere insane waste to dig for coal for our force, while the vital force is unused; and not only un- used, but, in being so, corrui^ting and polluting itself. We waste our coal, and sjjoil our humanity at one and the same instant. . . . Then, in employ- ing all the muscular power at our disposal we are to make the employments we choose as educational as possible. For a wholesome human employment is the first and best method of education, mental as well as bodily. The next great principle of employment is, that whenever there is pressure of poverty to be met, all enforced occupation should be directed to the pro- duction of useful articles only, that is to say, of food, of simple clothing, of lodging, or of the means 194 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. of conveying, distributing, and preserving these. . . . Men cannot live on ribands, or buttons, or velvets, or by going quickly from place to place; and every coin spent in useless ornament, or use- less motion, is so much withdrawn from the na- tional means of life. One of the most beautiful uses of railroads is to enable A to travel from the town of X to take away the business of B in the town of Y; while, in the meantime, B travels from the town of Y to take away A's business in the town of X. But the national wealth is not increased by these operations. . . . And lasth^: Since for every idle person, some one else must be working somewhere to provide him with clothes and food, and doing, therefore, double the quantity of work that would be enough for his own needs, it is only a matter of pure justice to compel the idle person to work for his maintenance himself. — Athena, pp. 9G-99. RICHES. The first of all English games is making money. That is an all-absorbing game; and we knock each other down oftener in playing at that than at foot- ball, or any other roughest sport; and it is abso- lutely without purpose; no one who engages heart- ily in that game ever knows why. — Croion of Wild Olive, Lect. I., p. 21. And I can tell you, the poor vagrants by the road- side suffer now quite as mvich from the bag-baron, as ever they did from the crag-baron. Bags and crags have just the same result on rags. — Croivn of Wild Olive, Lect. I., p. 39. The guilty Thieves of Europe, the real sources of all deadly war in it, are the Capitalists — that is to say, people who live by percentages on the labor of others; instead of by fair wages for their own. — Fors, I., p. 97. For, during the last eight hundred years, the up- per classes of Europe have been one large Picnic SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 195 Party. Most of tlieiu liave been religious also; and in sitting clown, by companies, upon the green grass, in parks, gardens, and the like, have con- sidered themselves commanded into that position by Divine authority, and fed with bread from Heaven : of which they duly considered it proper to bestow the fragments in support, and the tithes in tuition, of the poor. — Fors, I., p. 25. There will be always a number of men who Avould fain set themselves to the accumulation of wealth as the sole object of their lives. Necessarily, that class of men is an uneducated class, inferior in in- tellect, and more or less cowardly. It is physically impossible for a well-educated, intellectual, or brave man to make money the chief object of his thoughts; as physically impossible as it is for him to make his dinner the principal object of them. — Crown of Wild Olive, Lect. I., p. 26. There is a working class — strong and happy— among both rich and poor; there is an idle class — weak, Avicked, and miserable — among both rich and poor. And the worst of the misunderstandings arising between the two orders come of the unlucky fact that the wise of one class habitually contem- plate the foolish of the oilxer.— Crown of Wild Olivet Lect. I., p. 19. Lowly Pleasures.— What is chiefly 'aeeded in England at the present day is to show the quan- tity of jileasure that may be obtained by a con- sistent, Avell-administered competence, modest, con- fessed, and laborious. We need examples of people who, leaving Heaven to decide whether they are to rise in the world, decide for themselves that they will be happy in it, and have resolved to seek — not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher fortune, but deeper felicity; making the first of possessions, self-possession; and honoring them- selves in the harmless pride and calm pursuits of peace. — Unto This Last, p. 89. Money is a strange kind of seed; scattered, it is poison; but set, it is bread: so that a man M'hom 196 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. God has appointed to be a sower must bear as lightly as he may the burden of gold and of pos- sessions, till he find the proper places to sow them in.— Fors, III., p. 124. Inequalities of Wealth. — As diseased local de- termination of the blood involves depression ol' the general health of the system, all morbid local action of riches will be found ultimately to involve a weakening of the resources of the body politic. — Unto This Last, p. 35. Inequalities of wealth justly established, "benefit the nation in the course of their establishment; and, nobly used, aid it yet more by their existence. That is to say, among every active and well-gov- erned people, the various strength of individuals, tested by full exertion and specially applied to vari- ous need, issues in unequal, but harmonious results, receiving reward or authority according to its class and service; while in the inactive or ill-governed nation, the gradations of decay and the victories of treason work out also their own rugged systen of subjection and success: and substitute, for the melodious inequalities of concurrent power, the in- iquitous dominances and depressions of guilt and misfortune. — Unto TJiis Last, p. 38. AVhkre does the Rich Man get his Means of Living? — Well, for the point in question then, as to means of living : the most exemplary manner of answer is simply to state how I got my own, or rather how my father got them for me. lie and his partners entered into Avhat your cori-espondent mellifluously styles "a mutually benf'ficent part- nership," with certain laborers in Spain. These laborers produced from the earth annually a cer- tain number of bottles of wine. These productions were sold by my father and his partners, who kept nine-tenths, or thereabouts, of the price themselves, and gave one-tenth, or thereabouts, to the laborers. In whicli state of nnitual beneficeiice my father and his partners naturally became rich, and the laborers as naturally remained poor. Then my good father SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 197 gave all his money to me (who never did a stroke of work in my life worth my salt, not to mention my dinner).— Arrotos of the Chace, II., p. 73. Money A^^D its Uses. — You will find that wher- ever and Avhenever men are endeavoring to make money hastily, and to avoid the labor which Prov- idence has appointed to be the only source of hon- orable profit; — and also wherever and whenever they permit themselves to spend it luxuriously, without reflecting how far they are misguiding the lal)or of others; — there and then, in either case, they are literally and infallibly causing, for their own benefit or their own pleasure, a certain annual number of human deaths; that, therefore, the choice given to every man born into this world is, simply, Avhether he will be a laborer or an assassin; and that whosoever has not his hand on the Stilt of the plough, has it on the Ililt of the dagger. — The Two Paths, p. 130. The Upper Classes.— The upper classes, broad- ly speaking, are always originally composed of the best-bred (in the merely animal sense of the term), the most energetic, and most thoughtful, of the population, who either by strength of arm seize the land from the rest, and make slaves of them, or bring desert laud into cultivation, over Avhich they have therefore, within certain limits, true personal right; or by industry, accumulate other i^roperty, or by choice devote themselves to intellectual pursuits, and, though poor, obtain an acknowledged sui:)eriority of position, shown by benefits conferred in discovery, or in teaching, or in gifts of art. This"is all in the simple course of the law of nature. . . . The office of the upper classes, then, as a body, is to keep order among their inferiors, and raise them always to the nearest level with themselves of which those inferiors are capable. So far as they are thus occupied, they are invariably loved and reverenced intensely by all beneath them, and reach, them- selves, the highest types of human power and beauty. — Time and Tide, pp. 93, 94. 198 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. How far is it lawful to suck a portion of the soul out of a great many persons, in order to put the ab- stracted psychical quantities together, and make one very beautiful or ideal soul ? . . . We live, we gentlemen, on delicatest prey, after the manner of weasels ; that is to say, we keep a certain num- ber of clowns digging and ditching, and generally 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 Ital- ian gentleman (mvich more a lady) is a great pro- duction ; a better j^roduction than 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, per- haps, better to build a beautiful human creature than a beautiful dome or steeple, and more delight- ful to look xip reverently to a creature far above us, than to a wall ; only the beautiful human crea- ture will have some duties to do in return — duties Df living belfry and raujpart. — Sesame and Lilies, p. 53. The Opportunities and Power of the Rich.— You may stretch out your sceptre over the heads of the English laborers, and say to them, as they stoop to its waving, " Subdue this obstacle that has baffled our fathers; put away this plague that consumes our children ; water these dry places, plough these desert ones; carry this food to those who are in hunger ; carry this light to those who are in dark- ness ; carry this life to those who are in death ; " or on the other side you may say to her laborers : "Here am I; this power is in my hand; come, build a mound here for me to be throned upon, high and wide ; come, make crowns for my head, that men may see them shine from far away ; come, weave tapestries for my feet, that I may tread softly on the silk and purple; come, dance before me, that I may be gay; and sing sweetly to me, that I may SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 109 slumber; so shall I live in joy, and die in honor." And better than such an honorable death, it were that the day had perished wherein we were born, and the night in which it was said, There is a child conceived.— J. Joy For Ever, p. 83. It is nothing to give pension and cottage to the widow who has lost her son; it is nothing to give food and medicine to the workman who has broken his arm, or the decrepit woman wasting in sickness. But it is something to use your time and strength to war with the waywardness and thoughtlessness of mankind; to keej:) the erring workman in your service till you have niade him an unerring one; and to direct your fellow-merchant to the oppor- tunity which his dulness would have lost.— ^ Joi For Ever, pp. 81, 82. You would be indignant if you saw a strong man walk into a theatre or a lecture-room, and, calndy choosing tlie best place, take his feeble neighbor by the shoulder, and tvirn him out of it into the back seats, or the street. You would be equally indig- nant if you saw a stout fellow thrust himself up to a table where some hungry children Avere being fed, and reach his arm over their heads and take their bread from them. But you are not the least indig- nant if when a man has stoutness of thought and swiftness of capacity, and, instead of being long- armed only, has the much greater gift of being long-headed— you think it perfectly just that he should use his intellect to take the bread out of the mouths of all the other men in the town who are of the same trade with him; or use his breadth and sweep of sight to gather some branch of the com- merce of the country into one great cobweb, of which he is himself to be the central spider, making every thread vibrate with the points of his claws, and commanding every avenue with the facets of his eyes. You see no injustice in this. But there is injustice; and, let us trust, one of which honorable men will at no very distant period disdain to be guilty.— J. Joy For Ever, pp. 80, 81. 200 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY, Advicr to Rich Wordlixqs — Is the earth only an hospital ? Play, if you care to play, on the floor of the hospital dens. Knit its straw into what crowns i^lease you; gather the dust of it for treas- ure, and die rich in that, clutching at the black motes in the air Avith your dying hands; — and yet, it may be well with you. But if this life be no dream, and the world no hospital; if all the peace and power and joy you can ever win, must be won now; and all fruit of victory gathered here, or never;— will you still, throughout the puny totality of your life, weary yourselves in the fire for vanity? If there is no rest which remaineth for you, is there none you might presently take ? was this grass of the earth made green for your shroud only, not for your bed ? and can you never lie down upon it, but only under it? The heathen, to whose creed you have returned, thought not so. They knew that life brought its contest, but they expected from it also the crown of all contest : No proud one ! no jewelled circlet flaming through Heaven above the height of the unmerited throne; only some few leaves of wild olive, cool to the tired brow, through a few years of peace. It should have been of gold, they thought; but Jupiter was poor; this Avas the best the god could give them. Seeking a greater than this, they had known it a mockery. Not in war, not in Avealth, not in tyranny, was there any happiness to be found for them — only in kindly peace, fi-uitful and free. The wreath was to be of loild olive, mark you :— the tree that grows care- lessly, tufting the rocks with no vivid bloom, no verdure of branch; only with soft snow of blossom, and scarcely fulfilled fruit, mixed with grey leaf and thorn-set stem; no fastening of diadem for you but with such sharp embroidery ! But this, such as it is, you may win while yet you live; type of grey honor and sweet rest. — Crotonof Wild Olive, Preface, p. 15. The Eidolon or Phantasm op Wealth. — A man's power over his property is at the widest range of it, fivefold; it is power of Use, for himself, SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 201 Administration, to others, Ostentation, Destruc- tion, or Bequest : and possession is in use only, which for each man is sternly limited; so that such thingvS, and so much of them as he can use, are, in- deed, well for him, or Wealth; and more of them, or any other things, are ill for him, or lUth. Plunged to the lips in Orinoco, he shall drink to his thirst- measure; more, at his peril : with a thousand oxen on his lands, he shall eat to his hunger-measure; more, at his jjeril. He cannot live in two houses at once; a few bales of silk or wool will suffice for the fabric of all the clothes he can ever wear, and a few books will probably hold all the furniture good for his brain. Beyond these, in the best of us but nar- row, capacities, we have but the power of adminis- tering, or m«/-administering, wealth : (that is to say, distributing, lending, or increasing it); — of exhibit- ing it (as in magnificence of retinue or furniture), — of destroying, or, finally, of bequeathing it. And Avith multitudes of rich men, administration degen- erates into curatorship; they merely hold their property in charge, as Trustees, for the benefit of some person or persons to whom it is to be delivered upon their death; and the position, explained in clear terms, would hardly seem a covetable one. What would be the probable feelings of a youth, on his entrance into life, to whom the career hoped for him Avas proposed in terms such as these : "You must work unremittingly, and with your utmost intelligence, during all your available years, you will thus accumulate wealth to a large amount; but you must touch none of it, beyond what is needful for your support. Whatever sums you gain, beyond those required for your decent and moderate maintenance, and whatever beautiful things you may obtain possession of, shall be prop- erly taken care of by servants, for whose mainte- nance you Avill be charged, and whom you will have the trouble of superintending, and on your death-bed you shall have the f)Ower of determining to whom the accumulated pro^oerty shall belong, or to what purposes be applied." 202 A BUSKIN' ANTHOLOGY. The labor of life, under such conditions, would probably be neither zealous nor cheerful; yet the only difference between this position and that of the ordinary capitalist is the power which the latter suj^poses himself to possess, and which is attributed to him by others, of spending his money at any moment. This pleasure, taken in the imagination of power to x>aTt ivith that loith which toe have no in- tention of parting, is one of the most curious, though commonest forms of the Eidolon, or Phantasm of Wealth. But the political economist has nothing to do with this idealism, and looks only to the prac- tical issue of it — namely, that the holder of wealth, in such temper, may be regarded simply as a xnechanical means of collection; or as a money- chest with a slit in it, not only receptant but suc- tional, set in the j^ublic thoroughfare ; — chest of which only Death has the key, and evil Chance the liistribution of the contents. — Munera Pulveris, pp. 36, 37. Large Fortunes can not Honestly be made BY One Man. — No man can become largely rich by his personal toil.* The work of his oAvn hands, Avisely directed, will indeed always maintain him- self and his family, and make fitting provision for his age. Btit it is only by the discovery of some method of taxing the labor of others that he can be- come opulent. Every increase of his capital enables him to extend this taxation more widely ; that is, to invest larger funds in the maintenance of laborers, — to direct, accordingly, vaster and yet vaster masses of labor, and to appropriate its profits. Large fortunes cannot honestly be made by the work of one man's hands or head. If his work bene- fits multitudes, and involves position of high trust, it may be (I do not say that it is) expedient to re- ward him with great Avealth or estate ; but fortune of this kind is freely given in gratitude for benefit, * By his art he may ; but only when its produce, or the sight or hearing' of it, beeoiiies a sul).ieet of dispute, so as to enable tlie artist to tax the labor of umltitudes highly, in exchange for his own. SOCIAL rillLOSOrilY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 203 not as repayment for labor. Also, men of peculiar genius in any art, if the public can enjoy the pro- duct of their genius, may set it at almost any price they choose ; but this, I will show you when I come to speak of art, is unlawful on their part, and ruin- ous to their own powers. . . . Such fortunes as are now the prizes of commerce can be made only in one of three ways : — 1. By obtaining command over the labor of mul- titudes of other men, and taxing it for our own profit. 3. By treasure-ti'ove,— as of mines, xiseful vege- table products, and the like,— in circumstances put- ting them under our own exclusive control. 3. By speculation (commercial gambling). The two first of these means of obtaining riches are, in some forms and within certain limits, lawful, and advantageous to the State. The third is en- tirely detrimental to it ; for in all cases of profit derived from speculation, at best, what one man gains another loses; and the net result to the State is zero (pecuniarily), with the loss of the tijne and ingenuity spent in the transaction ; besides the dis- advantage involved in the discouragement of the losing party, and the corrupted moral natures of both. This is the result of speculation at its best. At its worst, not only B. loses what A. gains (having taken his fair risk of such loss for his fair chance of gain), but C. and D., who never had any chance at all, are drawn in by B.'s fall, and the final result is that A. sets up his carriage on the collected sum which was once the means of living to a dozen fami- lies. — Time and Tide, p. 61. Noblesse oblige.— This ought to be the first lesson of every rich man's political code. " Sir," his tutor should early say to him, "you are so placed in societj^^t may be for your misfortune, it must be for your trial — that you are likely to be maintained all your life by the labor of other men. You will have to make shoes for nobody, but some one will have to make a great many for you. You will have to dig ground for nobody, but some one 204 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY, will have to dig through every summer's hot day for you. You will build houses and make clothes for no one, but many a rough hand must knead clay, and many an elbow be crooked to the stitch, to keep that body of yours warm and fine. Now remember, whatever you and yoiar work may be worth, the less your keep costs, the better. It does not cost money only. It costs degradation. You do not merely employ these people. You also tread upon them. It cannot be helped; — you have your place, and they have theirs; but see that you ti'ead as lightly as f)ossible, and on as few as i50S- sible. What food, and clothes, and lodging you honestly need, for your health and ijeace, j^ou may righteously take. See that you take the plainest you can serve yourself with — that you waste or wear nothing vainly; — and that you emply no man in furnishing you with any useless luxury." — Time and Tide, p. 89. Riches a Form op Strength.— I do not coun- tenance one whit, the common socialist idea of di- vision of property; division of property is its de- struction; and with it the destruction of all hope, all industry, and all justice : it is simply chaos — a chaos towards Avhich the believers in modern j^olit- ical economy are fast tending, and from which I am striving to save them. The rich man does not keep back meat from the poor by retaining his riches; but by basely using them. Riches are a form of strength; and a strong man does not injure others by keeping his strength, but by using it in- juriously. The socialist, seeing a strong man op- press a weak one, cries out — " Break the strong man's arms; " but I say, " Teach him to use them to better purpose." The fortitude and intelligence which acquire riches are intended, by the Giver of both, not to scatter, nor to give away, but to em- ploy those riches in the service of mankind; in other words, in the redemption of the erring and aid of the weak — that is to say, there is first to be the Work to gain money; then the Sabbath of use SOCIAL PIIILOSOFHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 205 for it — the Sabbath, whose hiw is, not to lose life, but to save. — Unto This Last, p. 84. Yet, in some fai--away and yet undreamt-of hour, I can even imagine that England may cast all thoughts of possessive wealth back to the barbaric nations among whom they first arose; and that, while the sands of the Indus and adamant of Gol- conda may yet stiffen the housings of the charger, and flash from the turban of the slave, she, as a Christian mother, may at last attain to the virtues and the treasures of a Heathen one, and be able to lead forth her Sons, saying, — " These are my Jew- els."— I77zto This Last, p. 42. Capital. — The best and simplest general type of capital is a well-made ploughshare. Now, if that ploughshare did nothing but beget other plough- shares, in a polypous manner, — however the great cluster of polypous plough might glitter in the sun, it would have lost its function of capital. It be- comes true capital only by another kind of splen- dor, — when it is seen, " splendescere sulco," to grow bright in the furrow; rather with diminution of its substance, than addition, by the noble fric- tion. And the true home question, to every cap- italist and to every nation, is not, "how many jjloughs have you?" — but, "where are your fur- rows ? " not — " ho,w quickly will this caj^ital repro- duce itself?" — but, "what will it do during re- production?" What substance will it furnish, good for life ? what work construct, protective of life ? if none, its own reproduction is useless — if worse than none, — (for capital may destroy life as well as supi^ort it), its own reproduction is worse than useless. — Unto This Last, p. 78. If, having certain funds for supporting labor at my disposal, I pay men merely to keeji my ground in order, my money is, in that function, spent once for all; but if I pay them to dig iron out of my ground, and work it, and sell it, I can charge rent for the ground, and percentage both on the manu- facture and the sale, and make my capital profita- 206 A RUSEIN ANTHOLOGY, ble in these three bye-ways. The greater part ol the profitable investment of capital, in the present day, is in operations of this kind, in which the pub- lic is persuaded to buy something of no use to it, on production, or sale, of which, the capitalist may charge percentage; the said jiublic remaining all the while under the persuasion that the percentages thus obtained are real national gains, whereas, they are merely filchings out of partially light pockets, to swell heavy ones. — Crown of Wild Olwe, Preface, p. 8. If I were to put a turnpike on the road Avhere it passes my own gate, and endeavor to exact a shil- ling from every passenger, the jjublic would soon do away with my gate, without listening to any plea on my part that " it was as advantageous to them, in the end, that I should spend their shillings, as that they themselves should." But if, instead of out-facing them with a turnijike, 1 can only per- suade them to come in and buy stones, or old iron, or any other useless thing, out of my ground, I may rob them to the same extent, and be, moreover, thanked as a public benefactor, and promoter of commercial prosperity. — Grown of Wild Olive, Pref ace, p. 9. Origin of Riches aivd Poverty. — Suppose that three men formed a little isolated republic, and found themselves obliged to separate in order to farm different pieces of land at some distance from each other along the coast; each estate furnishing a distinct kind of produce, and each more or less in need of the material raised on the other. Suppose that the third man. in order to save the time of all three, undertakes simply to superintend the trans- ference of commodities from one farm to the other; on condition of receiving some sufficiently remun- erative share of every parcel of goods conveyed, or of some other parcel received in exchange for it. If this carrier or messenger always brings to each estate, from the other, what is chiefly wanted, at the right time, the operations of the two farmers SOCIAL r III LO SOPHY— EGONOMIG CANONS. 207 will ^o ou prosperously, and the largest i^ossible re- sult in i)roduce, or wealth, will be attained by the little coininunity. But suppose no intercourse be- tween the land-owners is possible, except through the travelling agent; and that, after a time, this agent, watching the course of each man's agricul- ture, keeps back the articles with which he has been entrusted, until there comes a period of extreme ne- cessity for them, on one side or other, and then ex- acts in exchange for them all that the distressed farmer can spare of other kinds of produce; it is easy to see that by ingeniously Avatching his oppor- tunities, he might possess himself regularly of the greater i:)art of the superfluous j^roduce of the two estates, and at last, in some year of severest trial or scarcity, purchase both for himself, and maintain the former jjroprietors thenceforward as his laborers or his servants. This would be a case of commercial wealth ac- quired on the exactest principles of modern political economy. But, ... it is manifest that the wealth of the State, or of the three men considered as a society, is collectively less than it would have been had the merchant been content with juster profit. The operations of the two agriculturists have been cramped to the utmost; and the continual limita- tions of the supply of things they wanted at critical times, together with the failure of courage conse- quent on the prolongation of a struggle for mere existence, without any sense of permanent gain, must have seriously diminished the effective results of their labor; and the stores finally accumulated in the merchant's hands will not in anywise be of equivalent value to those which, had his dealings been honest, Avould have filled at once the granaries of the farmers and his own. — Unto This Last, pp. 37, 38. Again, let us imagine a society of peasants, living on a river-shore, exposed to destructive inundation at somewhat extended intervals ; and that each peasant possesses of this good, but imperilled, ground, more than he needs to cultivate for imme- 208 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. diate subsistence. We will assume fartlier (and witli too great probability of justice), that the greater part of theui indolently keep in tillage just as much land as suj^plies them with daily food ; — that they leave their children idle, and take no pre- cautions against the rise of the stream. But one of them, (we will say but one, for the sake of greater clearness) cultivates carefully all the ground of his estate; makes his children work hard and healthily; uses his spare time and theirs in building a rampart against the river; and, at the end of some years, has in his storehouses lai'ge reserves of food and clothing, in his stables a well-tended breed of cat- tle, and around his fields a wedge of wall against flood. The torrent rises at last — sweeps away the har- vests, and half the cottages of the careless peasants, and leaves them destitute. They naturally come for help to the provident one, whose fields are un- wasted, and whose granaries are full. He has the right to refuse it to tliem : no one disputes this right. But he will probably not refuse it; it is not his interest to do so, even were he entirely selfish and cruel. The only question with him will be on what terms his aid is to be granted. Clearly, not on terms of mere charity. To main- tain his neighbors in idleness would be not only his ruin, but theirs. He will require work from them, in exchange for their maintenance; and, whether in kindness or cruelty, all the Avork they can give. Not now the three or four hours they were wont to spend on their own land, but the eight or ten hours they ought to have spent. But how will he apply this labor? The men are now his slaves; — nothing less, and nothing more. On pain of starva- tion, lie can force them to work in the manner, and to the end, he chooses. And it is by his wisdom in this choice that the worthiness of his mastership is proved, or its vunvorthiness. Evidently, he must first set them to bank out the water in some tem- porary way, and to get their ground cleansed and resown; else, in any case, their continued mainte- SOCIAL PIIILOSOrnr^ECONOMIG CANONS. 209 nance will be impossible. That done, and while he has still to feed them, suppose he makes them raise a secure rampart for their own ground against all future flood, and rebuild their houses in safer places, with the best material they can find; being allowed time out of their working hours to fetch such material from a distance. And for the food and clothing advanced, he takes security in land that as much shall be returned at a convenient period. We may conceive this security to be redeemed, and the debt paid at the end of a few years. The prudent peasant has sustained no loss; hut is no richer than he taas, and has had all his trouble for nothing. But he has enriched his neighbors materi- ally; bettered their houses, secured their land, and rendered them, in worldly matters, equal to him- self. In all rational and final sense, he has been throughout their true Lord and King. We will next trace his probable line of conduct, presuming his object to be exclusively the increase of his own fortune. After roughly recovering and cleansing the ground, he allows the ruined peas- antry only to build huts upon it, such as he thinks protective enough from the weather to keep them in working health. The rest of their time he occu- pies, first in pulling down, and rebuilding on a magnificient scale, his own house, and in ad-ding large dependencies to it. This done, in exchange for his continued supply of corn, he buys as much of his neighbors' land as he thinks he can super- intend the management of; and makes the former owners securely embank and protect the ceded por- tion. By this arrangement, he leaves to a certain number of the peasantry only as much ground as will just maintain them in their existing numbers; as the population increases, he takes the extra hands, who cannot be maintained on the narrowed estates, for his own servants; employs some to cul- tivate the ground he has bought, giving them of its produce merely enough for subsistence; with the surplus, which, under his energetic and careful 210 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. superintendence, will be large, he maintains a train of servants for state, and a body of workmen, wliom lie educates in ornamental arts. He now can sj^len- didly decorate his house, lay out its grounds mag- nificently, and richly supply his table, and that of his household and retinue. And thus, Avithout any abuse of right, we should find established all the phenomena of poverty and riches, which (it is supposed necessarily) accompany modern civiliza- tion. In one part of the district, we should have unhealthy land, miserable dwellings, and half- starved poor; in another, a well-ordered estate, well-fed servants, and refined conditions of highly educated and luxurious life.— Munera Pulmris, pp- 115-17. War and National Taxation.— Everybody in France who is got any money is eager to lend it to M. Thiers at five per cent. No doubt, but who is to Ijay the five per cent. ? . . . The i:>eople who have got no money to lend pay it; the daily worker and producer pays it — unfor- tunate " William." . . . And the people who are to get their five \)eY cent, out of hinia and roll him and suck him, — the sugar-cane of a William that he is, — how should they but think the arrangement a glorious one for the nation ? So there is great acclaina and triumphal proces- sion of financiers ! and the arrangement is made; namely, that all the poor laboring persons in France are to pay the rich idle ones five per cent, annually, on the sum of ei.i;hty millions of sterling pounds, until further notice. But this is not all, observe. Sweet William is not altogether so soft in his rind that you can crush him without some sufficient machinery : you must have your army in good order, " to justify public confidence;" and you must get the expense of that, besides your five per cent., out of ambrosial AVil- iiam. He must pay the cost of his own roller. Now, therefore, see briefly what it all comes to. First, you spend eighty millions of money in fire- SOCIAL rniLOSOniY—ECONOMIG CANONS. 211 works, doing no end of damage in letting them off. Then you borrow money to pay the firework- maker's bill, from any gain-loving persons who have got it. And then, dressing your baihff's men in new red coats and cocked hats, you send them drumming and trumpeting into the fields, to take the peasants by the throat, and make them pay the interest on what you have borrowed, and the expense of the cocked hats besides. That is " financiering," my friend-s, as the mob of the money-makers understand it. And they under- stand it well. For that is what it ahvays comes to finally; taking the peasant by the throat. He imist pay_'for \re only can. Food can only be got out of the ground, and all these devices of soldiership, and law, and arithmetic, are but ways of getting at last down to him, the furrow-driver, and snatching the voots from him as he digs.— i^'ors, I., pp- 10:5-1(>.5. Capitalists, when they do not know what to do with their money, persuade the peasants, in various countries, that the said peasjints want guns to shoot each other with. The peasants accordingly borrow guns, out of the manufacture of which the cap- italists get a percentage, and men of science much amusement and credit. Then the peasants shoot a certain number of each other, until they get tired; and burn each other's homes down in various places. Then they put the guns back into towers, arsenals, etc., in ornamental patterns; (and the victorious party put also some ragged fiags in churches). And then the capitalists tax both, an- nually, ever afterwards, to pay interest on the loan of the guns and gunpowder. And that is what capitalists call "knowing Avhat to do with their money;" and what commercial men in general call " practical " as opposed to " sentimental " Political Economy.— ^l/itweJ'^i Pulveris, p. 15. A CivTr,T/J':P Nation.— This, in Modern Europe, consists essenti.illy <'f (A), a mass of half-taught, - 85. Six thousand years of weaving, and have we learned to Aveave ? Might not every naked Avail have been purple Avith tapestry, and eA-ery feeble Ijreast fenced Avith sweet colors from the cold? AVhat have Ave done ? Our fingers are too feAv, it seems, to tAvist together some poor coA^eiing for our bodies. We set our streams to Avork for us, and choke the air Avith fire, to turn our spinning-Avheels —and,— are we yet clothed i Are not the streets of the capitals of Europe foul Avith the sale of cast clouts and rotten rags ? Is not the beauty of your sweet children left in wretchedness of disgrace, Avhile, Avith better honor, nature clothes the brood of the bird in its nest, and the suckling of the Avolf in her den ? And does not every Avinter'ssnoAV robe Avhat you have not robed, and shroud Avhat you have not shrouded ; and every winter's Avind bear up to heaA^en its AA-asted souls, to Avitness against you hereafter, by the voice of their Christ,—" I Avas naked, and ye clothed me not ? ''—Mystery of Life, pp. 124, 125. The ant and the mothhaA^e cells for each of their young, but our little ones lie in festering heaps, in iiomes that consume them like graves; and night by night from the corners of our streets, rises up 216 A BUS KIN ANTHOLOGY. the cry of the homeless — " I was a stranger, and y* took me not in." — Mystery of Life, p. 126. The little Girl with large Shoes. — One day in November, 1873, at Oxford, as I was going in at the private door of the University galleries, to give a lecture on the Fine Arts in Florence, I was hin- dered for a moment by a nice little girl, whipping a top on the pavement. She was a very nice little girl; and rejoiced wholly in her whip, and top; but could not iniiict the reviving chastisement with all the activity that was in her, because she had on a large and dilaijidated pair of woman's shoes, which projected the full length of her own little foot be- hind it and before; and being securely fastened to her ankles in the manner of mocassins, admitted, indeed, of dextei-ous glissades, and other modes of progress quite sufficient for ordinary purposes; but not conveniently of all the evolutions proper to the pursuit of a whipping-top. There were some worthy people at my lecture, and I think tlie lecture was one of my best. It gave some really trustworthy information al)out art in Florence six hundred years ago. But all the time I was speaking, I knew that nothing spoken about art, either by myself or other people, could be of the least use to anybody there. For their primary business, and mine, was with art in Ox- ford, now; not Avith art in Florence, then; and art in Oxford now was absolutely dependent on our power of solving the question^which I knew that my audience would not even allow to be proposed for solution — " Why have our little girls lai'ge shoes ? "—Fors, II., p. 130. The Savoyard Cottac4E.— On a green knoll above that plain of the Arve, between Cluse and Bonneville, there was, in the year 1860, a cottage, inhabited l)y a Avell-doing family — man and wife, three children, and the grandmother. I call it a cottage, but in truth, it was a large chimney on the ground, wide at the bottom, so that the family might live round the fire; lighted by one smalj SOCIAL PIllLO'^ornY—ECOl^OUIO CANONS. 2lT broken "wiiulow, and entered by an unclosing; door. The family, I say, was " well-doing;" at least it was ho[)e{'ul and cheerful; the wife health}', the children, for Savoyards, pretty and active, but the husband threatened with decline, from exposure under the cliffs of the Mont Vergi by day, and to draughts between every plank of his chimney in the frosty nights. " Why could he not jjlaster the chinks ? " asks the practical reader. For the same reason that your child cannot wash its face and hands till you have Avashed them many a day for it, and will not wash them when it can, till you force it. I passed this cottage often in my walks, had its windoAv and door mended; sometimes mended also a little the meal of sour bread and broth, and generally got kind greeting and smile from the face of young or old; which greeting, this year, narrowed itself into the half-recognizing stare of the elder child, and the old woman's tears; for the father and mother were both dead, — one of sickness, the other of sorrow. It happened that I passed not alone, but with a companion, a practised English joiner, who, while these people were dying of cold, had been employed from six in the morningto six in the evening, for two months, in fitting, without nails, the panels of a single door in a large house in Lon- don. Three days of his work taken, at the right tinse, from fastening the oak panels with useless ]irecision, and applied to fasten the larch timbers v/ith decent strength, would liave saved these Sa- voyards' lives. He would have been maintained equally; (I suppose him equally paid for his work by the owner of the greater house, only the work not consumed selfishly on his own walls;) and the two peasants, and eventually, probably their children, saved. — Muncra Pulveris. pp. 131-123. Labor axd Capital.— The landlord, usurer, or labor-master, does not, and cannot, himself con- sume all the means of life he collects. He gives them to other persons, whom he employs in his own 218 A EUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. behalf— {>Towers of champagne; jockeys; footmen; jewellers; builders; painters; musicians, and the like. The diversion of the labor of these persons from the production of food to the production of articles of luxury is very frequently, and, at the present day, very grievously, a cause of famine. But when the luxuries are produced, it becomes a quite separate question who is to have them, aiid whether the landlord and capitalist are entirely to monopolize the music, the painting, the architec- ture, the hand-service, the horse-service, and the sparkling champagne of the world. And it is gradually, in these days, becoming man- ifest to the tenants, borrowers, and laborers, that instead of paying these large sums into the hands of the landlords, lenders, and employers, that they may purchase music, painting, etc.; the tenants, borrowers, and workers, had better buy a little music and painting for themselves ! That, for in- stance, instead of the capitalist-emi)loyer's paying three hundred pounds for a full-length portrait of himself, in the attitude of investing his capital, the united workmen had better themselves pay the three hundred pounds into the hands of the ingen- ious artist, for a painting, in the antiquated man- ner of Lionaj'do or Raphael, of some subject more religiously or historically interesting to them; and lilaced where they can alwaj'S see it. And again, instead of paying three hundred pounds to the obliging landlord, that he may buy a box at the opera with it, whence to study the refinements of music and dancing, the tenants are beginning to think that they may as well keep their rents partly to themselves, and therewith pay some Wandering Willie to fiddle at their own doors; or bid some grey-haired minstrel " Tune, to please a peasant's ear, The harp a king had loved to hear." And similarly the dwellers in the hut of the field, and garret of the city, are beginning to think that, instead of paying half-a-crown for the loan of half SOCIAL PIIILOSOPIIY-EGONOMIG CANONS. -210 a fireplace, they had better keep their half-crown in their pockets till they can buy for themselves a whole one. These are the views which are gaining ground among the poor; and it is entirely vain to endeavor to repress them by equivocations. They are founded on eternal laws; and although their recognition will long be refused, and their promulgation, re- sisted as it will be, partly by force, partly by false- hood, can only take place through incalculable confusion and misery, recognized they must be eventually; and with these three ultimate results: —that the usurer's trade will be abolished utterly; —that the employer will be paid justly for his super- intendence of labor, but not for his capital; and the landlord paid for his superintendence of the cultivation of land, when he is able to direct it wisely :— that both he, and the employer of mechan- ical labor, will be recognized as beloved masters, if they deserve love, and as noble guides when they are capable of giving discreet guidance; but neither will be permitted to establish themselves any mort as senseless conduits, through which the strength and riches of their native land are to be poui-ed into the cup of the fornication of its Babylonian city of the VX&in.—Fors, III., pp. 90, 91. The Laborer's Pension. —A laborer serves his country with a spade, just as a man in the middle ranks of life serves it with a sw^ord, pen, or lancet; if the service is less, and therefore the wages during health less, then the reward, when health is broken, may be less, but not, therefore, less honorable; and it ought to be quite as natural and straightforward a matter for a laborer to take his pension from his parish, because he has deserved well of his parish, as for a man in higher rank to take his pension from his country, because he has deserved Avell of his country. If there be any disgrace in coming to the parish, because it may imply im- providence in early life, much more is there dis. grace in coming to the government; since improvi- 220 A RU8KIN AN T HO LOO Y. deuce is far less justifiable in a liiglily educated than in an imperfectly educated man; and far less justifiable in a high rank, where extravagance must have been luxury, than in a low rank, where it may only have been comfort. So that the real fact of the matter is, that j)eople will take alms delightedly, consisting of a carriage and footmen, because those do not look like alms to the peoi^le in the street; but they will not take alms consisting only of bread and water and coals, because every- body would understand what those meant. Mind, I do not want any one to refuse the carriage who ought to have it; but neither do I want them to refuse the coals. — A Joy For Ever, pp. 92, 93. American Slavery axd Exglish.— There are two rocks in mid-sea, on each of which, neglected equally by instructive and commercial powers, a handful of inhabitants live as they may. Two merchants bid for the two properties, but not in the same terms. One bids for the people, buys them, and sets them to work, under pain of scourge; the other bids for the rock, buys it, and throws the inhabitants into the sea. The former is the Ameri- can, the latter the English method, of slavery; much is to be said for, and something against, both. . . . Tlie fact is that slavery is not a politi- cal iiistitution at all, hut an inherent, natural, and eternal inheritance of a large portion of the human race — to whom, the more you give of their own free will, the more slaves they will make themselves. — Miinera Pulveris, pp. 108, 109. EXECUTIOJfS OF THE PoOR AT SHEFFIELD.— As I am securely informed, from ten to twelve public exections of entirely innocent persons take place in Sheffield, annually, by crushing the persons condemned under large pieces of sandstone thrown at them by steam-engines; in order that the moral improvement of the public may be secured, by furnishing them with carving-knives sixjjence a dozen cheaper than, without these executions would be possible.— i'^or.s, IV., p. 138. SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 221 WORKINGMEN. When we get to the bottom of the matter, Ave find the inhabitants of this earth broadly divided into two great masses; — the peasant paymasters — spade in hand, original and imperial producers of turnips; and, waiting on them all round, a crowd of polite persons, modestly expectant of turnips, for some — too often theoretical — service. — Fors, I., p. 144. Advice to Worki^gmk;;.— You are to do good work, whether you live or die. . . . Mind your own business with your absohite heart and soul; but see that it is a good business first. That it is corn and sweet pease you are producing, — not gun- powder and arsenic. . . . But what are we to do against powder and peti'oleum, then ? What men may do; not what poisonous beasts may. If a wretch sjjits in your face, will you answer by spitting in his ? if he throw vitrioj at you, will you go to the apothecary for a bigger bottle? — Fors, I., p. 99. Labor should be paid at a fixed Rate.— The natural and right system respecting all labor is, that it should be paid at a fixed rate, but the good workman employed, and the bad workman unem- I>loyed. The false, unnatural, and destri;ctive system is when the bad workman is allowed to offer his work at half-price, and either take the place of the good, or force him by his competition to work for an inadequate sum. — Unto This Last, p. 14. Work of Head and Hand compared.— There must be work done by the arms, or none of us could live. There must be work done by the brains, or the life we get would not be worth having. And the same men cannot do both. There is rough work to be done, and rough men must do it; there is gentle work to be done, and gentlemen must do it; and it is physically impossible that one class should do, or divide, the work of the other. And it is of 222 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. no use to try to conceal this sorrowful fact Toy Hue words, and to talk to the workman about tlie lion- orahleness of manual labor, and the dignity of humanity. That is a grand old proverb of Saneho Panza's, 'Fine words butter no parsnips;' and I can tell yovi that, all over England just now, you workmen are buying a great deal too much butter at that dairy. Rough work, honorable or not, takes the life out of us; and the man who has been heav- ing clay out of a ditch all day, or driving an ex- press train against the north wind all night, or holding a collier's helm in a gale on a lee-shore, or whirling white hot iron at a furnace mouth, that man is not the same at the end of his day, or night, as one who has been sitting in a quiet room, with everything comfortable about him, reading books, or classing butterflies, or painting pictures. If it is any comfort to you to be told that the rough work is the more honorable of the two, I should be sorry to take that much of consolation from you; and in some sense I need not. The rough work is at all events real, honest, and, generally, though not always, useful; while the fine work is, a great deal of it, foolish and false as well as fine, and therefore dishonorable; but when both kinds are equally well and worthily done, the head's is the noble Avork, and the hand's the ignoble. — Crown of Wild Olive, Lect. I., p. 30. The Commune of '71.— Ouvrier and petroleuse; they are gone their way — to their death. But for these, the Virgin of France shall yet unfold the oriflamme above their graves, and lay her blanched lilies on their smirched dust. Yes, and for these, great Charles shall rouse his Roland, and bid him put ghostly trump to lip, and breathe a point of war; and the helmed Pucelle shall answer with a wood-note of Domremy; — yes, and for these the Louis they mocked, like his Master, shall raise his holy hands, and prayGrod's peace. — Fors, I., p. 106. Masters. — The masters cannot bear to let any opportunity of gain escape them, and fi*a,ntically SOCIAL FIIILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 223 rush at every gap and breach in the walls of For- tune, raging to be rich, and affronting with im- patient covetousness, every risk of ruin; while the men prefer three days of violent labor, and three days of drunkenness, to six days of moderate work and Avise rest. There is no way in which a prin- cii)al, who really desires to help his workmen, may do it more effectually than by checking these dis- orderly habits both in himself and them; keeping his own business operations on a scale which will enable him to pursue them securely, not yielding to temptations of precarious gain. — Unto This Last, p. 14. The hospitality of the inn need not be less con- siderate or true because the inn's master lives in his occupation. Even in these days, I have had no more true or kind friend than the now dead Mrs. Eisenkraemer of the old Union Inn at Chamouni; and an innkeeper's daughter in the Oberland taught me that it was still possible for a Swiss girl to bo refined, imaginative, and pure-hearted, though she waited on her father's guests, and though these guests were often vulgar and insolent English trav- ellers. For she had been bred in the rural districts of happy olden days. — Fors, II., p. 241. Supply and Demand.— There maybeall manner of demands, all manner of supplies. The true po' litical economist regulates these; the false politioal economist leaves them to be regulated by (not Divine) Providence. For, indeed, the largest final demand anywhere reported of, is that of hell; and the supply of it (by the broad-gaugeline) would be very nearly equal to the demand at this day, unle?? there were here and there a swineherd or two who who could keep his loigs out of sight of the lake. — Arrows of the Chace, II., p. 96. I had the honor of being on the committee under the presidentship of the Lord Mayor of London, for the victualling of Paris after her surrender. It be- came, at one period of our sittings, a question of vital importance at what moment the law of demaad 224 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. and supply would come into operation, and what the operation of it would exactly be : the demand, on this occasion, being very urgent indeed; that of several millions of people within a few hours of utter starvation, for any kind of food whatsoever. Nevertheless, it was admitted, in the course of debate, to be probable that the divine principle of demand and supjjly might find itself at the eleventh hour, and some minutes over, in want of carts and horses; and we ventured so far to interfere with the divine principle as to provide carts and horses, with haste which i3roved, happily, in time for the need; but not a moment in advance of it. It was farther recognized by the committee that the divine principle of demand and supply Avould commence its operations by charging the poor of Paris twelve- pence for a penny's worth of whatever they wanted; and would end its operations by offering them twelve-pence worth for a jienny of whatever they didn't want. Whereupon it was concluded by the committee that the tiny knot, on this special occa- sion, was scarcely " dignus tr/ndiae," by the divine principle of demand and supply : and that we would venture, for once, in a profane manner, to provide for the poor of Paris what they wanted, when they wanted it. Which, to the value of the sums en- trusted to us, it will be remembered we succeeded in doing. But the fact is that the so-called "law," which was felt to be false in this case of extreme exigence, is alike false in cases of less exigence. It is false always, and everywhere. Nay, to such an extent is its existence imaginary, that the vulgar econom- ists are not even agreed in their account of it ; for some of them mean by it, only that prices are regu- lated by the relation between demand and supply, which is partly true ; and others mean that the relation itself is one with the process of which it is iinwise to interfere; a statement which is not only, as in the above instance, untrue; but accurately the reverse of the truth: for all wise economy, political or domestic, consists in the resolved maintenance SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 225 of a given relation between supply and deniand, other than the instinctive, or (directly) natural, ^ue.—Manera Pulveris, pp. 9, 10. ON CO-OPERATION.* While, on the one hand, there can be no ques- tion but that co-operation is better than unjust and tyrannous mastership, there Is very great room for doubt whether it be better than a just and be- nignant mastership. At present you — every one of you — speak, and act, as if there were only one alternative; namely, between a system in which profits shall be divided in due proportion among all; and the present one, in which the workman is paid the least wages he will take, under the pressui-e of competition in the labor-market. But an intermediate method is conceivable; a method which appears to be more prudent, and in its ultimate results more just, than the co-operative one. An arrangement may be supijosed, and I have good hope also may one day be effected, by which every subordinate shall be paid sufficient and regular wages, according to his rank; by Avliich due provision shall be made out of the profits of the business for sick and superannu- ated workers; and by which the master being held responsible, as a minor king or governor, for the conduct as loell as the comfort of all those under his rule, shall, on that condition, be permitted to re- tain to his own use the surplus profits of the busi- ness, which the fact of his being its master may be assumed to prove that he has organized by superior intellect and energy.— T/we and Tide, p. 12. Brantwood, Conlston, Lancashire, August, 1879. Dkar Mr. IIOLYOAKE : I am not able to write you a pretty letter to-day, being sadly tired, but am very heartily glad to be remembered by you. But * Compare Purt U., Chapter IV. 226 A E US KIN ANTHOLOGY. it utterly silences me that you should waste youi time and energy in wi'iting " Histories of Co-opera tion " anywhere as yet. My dear Sir, you might ai well write the history of the yellow spot in an egg- in two volumes. Co-operation is as yet — in an> true sense — as impossible as the crystallization ol Thames mud. . . . The one calamity which I per- ceive or dread for an Englishman is his becoming a rascal : — and co-operation among rascals — if it were possible — would bring a curse. Every year sees our workmen more eager to do bad work and rob their customers on the sly. All political movement among such animals I call essentially fermentation and putrefaction — not co-operation. Ever affec- tionately yours, J. IlvsKi::fi.— Arrows of the Chace, II., pp. 77, 78. The cure of a little village near Bellinzona, to whom I had expressed wonder that the peasants allowed the Ticino to flood their fields, told me that they would not join to build an eft'ectual embank- ment high up the valley, because everybody said "that would help his neighbors as much as him- self." So every proprietor built a bit of low em- bankment about his own field; and the Ticino, as soon as if had a mind, SAvept away and swallowed all ui) together. — Unto Tlris Last, p. 76. TRADE. The Function of the Merchant in a State.— I believe one of the worst symptoms of modern society to be, its notion of great inferiority, and ungentlemanliness, as necessarily belonging to the character of a tradesman. I believe tradesmen may be, ought to be— often are— more gentlemen than idle and useless people : and I believe that art may do noble work by recording in the hall of each trade, the services which men belonging to that trade have done for their country, both l^reserving the portraits, and recording the import- SOCIAL FHILO SOPHY— ECONOMIC OANOWS. 227 ant incidents in the lives, of those who made ^reat advances in commerce and civilization.— xi Juy For Ever, p. 78. The wonder has always been great to me, that heroism has never been supposed to be in anywise consistent with the practice of supplyin keepers to ruin each other, neither having the least idea that his ruined neighbor must eventually be supported at his own expense, Avith an increase of poor rates; and that the contest between them is not in reality which shall get everything for him- SOCIAL PniLOSOPHY-ECONOMIG CANONS. 2;Ja self, but which shall first take upon himself and his customers the gratuitous maintenance of the other's family. — A Joy For Ever, p. 90. Sin sticks so fast between the joinings of the stones of buying and selling, that " to trade " in things, or literally ''cross-give" them, has warped itself, by the instinct of nations, into their worst word for fraud; and "trader," " traditor," and "traitor" are but the same word. For which simplicity of language there is more reason than at first appears : for as in true commerce there is no "profit," so in true commerce there is no "sale." The idea of sale is that of an interchange between enemies respectively endeavoring to get the better one of another; but commerce is an exchange be- tM-een friends; and there is no desire but that it should be just, any more than there would be between membei-s of the same family. — Munera Pulveris, pp. 81, 82. Middlemen in Trade.— Here's my publisher, gets tenpence a dozen for his cabbages; the con- sumer pays threepence each. That is to say, you pay for three cabbages and a half, and the middle- man keejjs two and a half for himself, and gives you one. Suppose yovi saw^ this financial gentleman, in bodily presence, toll-taking at your door — that you bought three loaves, and saw him pocket two, and pick the best crust off the third as he handed it in; — that you paid for a pot of beer, and saw him di'ink two-thirds of it, and hand j^ou over the pot and sops — ^would you long ask, then, what w'as to become of him? — Fors, III., p. 309. Pay as you go. — In all wise commerce, payment, large or small, should be over the counter. If you can't pay for a thing, don't buy it. If you can't get paid for it, dont sell it. So, you will have calm days, drowsy nights, all the good business you have now, and none of the bad. — Fors, I., p. 362. Free Trade. — The distances of nations are njeas- ured, not by seas, but by ignorances; and their 234 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. divisions determined, not by dialects, but by enmi- ties. — Munera Piilveris, p. 79. It Avill be observed tliat I do not admit even the idea of reciprocity. Let other nations, if they like, keep their ports shut; every wise nation will throw its own open. It is not the opening them, but a sudden, inconsidei-ate, and blunderingly experi- mental manner of opening them, which does the harm. If you have been protecting a manufacture for long series of years, you must not take protec- tion off in a moment, so as throw every one of its operatives at once out of employ, any more than you must take all its wrappings off a feeble child at once in cold weather, though the cumber of them may have been radically injuring its health. Little by little, you must I'estore it to freedom and to air. . . . When trade is entirely free, no country can be competed with in the articles for the production of which it is naturally calculated; nor can it com- pete with any other in the production of articles for which it is not naturally calculated. Tuscany, for instance, cannot compete with England in steel, nor England with Tuscany in oil. They must ex- change their steel and oil. Which exchange should be as frank and free as honesty and the sea-winds can make it. Competition, indeed, arises at first, and sharply, in order to prove which is strongest in any given manufacture possible to both; this point once ascertained, competition is at an end. — Unto This Last, pp. 56, 57. Excha:n^ge. — There are in the main two great fallacies which the rascals of the world rejoice in making its fools proclaim : The first, that by con- tinually exchanging, and cheating each other on exchange, two exchanging persons, out of one pot, alternating with one kettle, can make their two fortunes. That is the principle of Trade. The second, that Judas's bag has become a juggler's, in which, if Mr. P. deposits his pot. and waits awhile, there Avill come out two pots, both full of broth; and if Mr. K. deposits his kettle, and Avaits awhile, SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 235 there will come out two kettles, both full of fish ! That is the principle of Interest. — Fors, II., p. 267. One man, by sowing and reaping, turns one measure of corn into two measures. That is Profit. Another by digging and forging, turns one spade into two spades. That is Profit. But the man who has two measures of coi*n wants sometimes to dig; and the man who has two spades wants sometimes to eat : — They exchange the gained grain for the gained tool; and both are the better for the ex- change; but though there is much advantage in the transaction, there is no Pro^^. Nothing is con- structed or produced. . . . Pro^^, or material gain, is attainable only by construction or by discovery; not by exchange. AVhenever material gain follows exchange, for every plus there is a precisely equal minus- Unhappily for the progress of the science of Politi- cal Economy, the ^?«6' quantities, or — if I may be al- lowed to coin an awkward plural — the 2)hises, make a very positive and venerable appearance in the world, so that every one is eager to learn the science which produces results so magnificent, whereas the minuses have, on the other hand, a tendency to re- tire into back streets, and other places of shade, — or even to get themselves wholly and finally put out of sight in graves : which renders the algebra of this science peculiar, and difficultly legible : a large number of its negative signs being written by the account-keeper in a kind of red ink, which starvation thins, and makes strangely pale, or even quite invisible ink, for the present.— C/;ito This Last, pp. 71, 72. Definition op Property. — A man's "Property," the possession "proper" to him, his own, rightly so called, and no one else's on any pretence of theirs — consists of : — (A) The good things, (B) Which he has honestly got, (C) And can skilfully use. — That is the A B C of Property.— i^ors. III., p. a09. The Spending, or Consumption op Wealth. — It is because of this (among many other such errors) 236 A liUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. that I have fearlessly declared, your so-called science of Political Economy to be no science; be- cause, namely, it has omitted the study of exactly the most important branch of the business — the study of spending. For spend you must, and as much as you make, ultimately. You gather corn : — will you bury England under a heap of grain; or will you, when you have gathered, finally eat? You gather gold : — will you make your house-roofs of it, or pave your streets with it ? — Crown of Wild Olive, Lect. II., p. 60. There is not one person in a million who knows what a " million " means; and that is one reason the nation is always ready to let its ministers spend a million or two in cannon, if they can show they have saved twopence-halfpenny in tape. — Bugle's Nest, p. 23. A certain quantity of the food produced by the country is paid annually by it into the squire's hand, in the form of rent, privately, and taxes, publicly. If he uses this food to support a food- producing population, he inci*eases daily the strength of the country and his own; but if he uses if to support an idle population, or one producing merely trinkets in iron, or gold, or other rubbish, he steadily weakens the country, and debases him- self.— i^ors, II., p. 343. Unnecessary Luxury is Waste. — If a school- boy goes out in the morning with five shillings in his pocket, and comes home at night penniless (having spent his all in tarts), principal and interest are gone, and fruiterer and baker are enriched. So far so good. But suppose the schoolboy, instead, has bought a book and a knife; principal and in- terest are gone, and bookseller and cutler are en- riched. But the schoolboy is enriched also, and may help his schoolfellows next day with knife and book, instead of lying in bed and incurring a debt to the doctor. — A Joy For Ever, p. 103. The beggared Millionaire.— The spending of the fortune in extravagance, has taken a certain SOCIAL FIIILOSOPIIY—ECONOMW CANONS. 237 number of years (suppose ten), and during that time 1,000,000 dollars worth of work has been done by the people, who have been paid that sum for it. Where is the product of that work ? By your own statement, wholly consumed; for the man for whom it has been done is now a beggar. You have given therefore, as a nation, 1,000,000 dollars worth of work, and ten years of time, and you have pro- duced, as ultimate result, one beggar ! Excellent economy, gentlemen; and sure to conduce, in due sequence, to the production of more than one beg- gar. —J. Joy For Ever, \y. 102. The Expenditures op the Rich.— When Mr. Greg so pleasantly showed in the Contemporary Remew how benevolent the rich were in drinking champagne, [on the (false) theory that expediture of money for luxuries is a help to the poor : in reality (says Ruskin), the nation is so much the poorer for every penny spent in indulgence of use- less luxury,] and how wicked the poor were in drink- ing beer, you will find that in Fors of vol. iii, p. 85, I requested him to supply the point of economical information which he had inadvertently overlooked — how the champagne-drinker had got his cham- pagne. The poor man, drunk in an ungraceful manner though he be, has yet w^orked for his beer — ■ and does but drink his Avages. I asked, of course, for complete parallel of the two cases — what work the rich man had done for his sparkling beer; and how it came to pass that he had got so much higher wages, that he could put them, unblamed, to that benevolent use. To which question, you observe, Mr. Grag has never ventured the slightest answer. ^Fors, IV., p. 49. WisK Consumption the difficult Thing.— Consumption absolute is the end, crown, and per- fection of production; and wise consumption is a far more difficult art than wise production. Twen- ty people can gain money for one who can use it; and the vital question, for individual and for nation, is, never "how much do they make? " but 238 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. "to what purpose do they spend ? "—Z7«^o This Last, p. 77. The final object of political economy is to get good njethod of consumption, and great quantity of consumption: in other words, to use everything, and to use it nobly Tt matters, so far as the laborer's immediate profit is concerned, not an iron filing whether I employ him in growing a peach, or forging a bombshell; but my probable mode of consumj)tion of those articles matters seri- ously. Admit that it is to be in both cases "un- selfish," and the difference, to him, is final, whether when his child is ill I Avalk into his cottage and give it the peach, or drop the shell down his chimney, and blow his roof off. — Unto This Last, pp. 80, 82. LAND. 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 cer- tain number of hereditarily sacred persons, to whom the earth, air, and water of the world belong, as personal property; of which earth, air and water these persons may, at their pleasure, permit, or for- bid 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 pei'sonages; that houses would then build them selves, 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. — Sesame and Lilies, p. 51. Possession of land implies the duty of living on it, and by it, if thei-e is enough to live on; then, having got one's own life from it by one's own SOCIAL r II LLo Si )i>iIY^ECONOMIG CANONS. 239 labor or Nvise superiutentlence of labor, if there i« more land than is enough for one's self, the duty of making it fruitful and beautiful for as many more as can live on it.— Fors, IV., p. 378. Rext.— Rent is an exaction, by force of hand, for the maintenance of squires. — Fors, II., p. 220. The rents of our lands [in Utopia], though they Will be required from the tenantry as strictly as those of any other estates, will differ from common rents primarily in being lowered, instead of raised, in proportion to every inqjrovement made by the tenant; secondly, in that they will be entirely used for the benefit of the tenantry themselves, or better culture of the estates, no money being ever taken by the landlords unless they earn it by their own personallabor. — Fors, III., p. 41. You lease your tenants an orchard of crab-trees for so much a year; they leave you, at the end of the lease, an orchard of golden pippins. Supposing they have paid you their rent regularly, you have no right to anything more than w'hat you lent them — crab-trees, to wit. You. must pay them for the better trees which by their good industry they give you back, or, which is the sanje thing, previ- ously reduce their rent in proportion to the im- provement in apples. "The exact contrary," you observe, "of your present modes of proceeding." Just so, gentlemen; and it is not imj^robable that the exact contrary in many other cases of your present modes of proceeding will be found by you, eventually, the proper one, and more than that, the necessary one. — Fo7's, II., p. 2G2. The most wretched houses of the poor in London often pay ten or fifteen per cent, to the landlord; and I have known an instance of sanitary legisla- tion being hindered, to the loss of many hundreds of lives, in order that the rents of a nobleman, derived from the necessities of the poor, might not be diminished. . . . I felt this evil so strongly that I bought, in the Avorst part of London, one freehold 240 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. and one leasehold i^ropej-ty, consisting of houses inhabited by the lowest j^oor; in order to try what change in their comfort and habits I could effect by taking only a just rent, but that flruily. The houses of the leasehold pay me five per cent.; the families that used to have one room in them have now two; and are more orderly and hopeful besides; and there is a surplus still on the rents they pay, after I have taken my five per cent., with which, if all goes well, they will eventually be able to buy twelve years of the lease from me. The freehold pays three per cent., Avith similar results in the comfort of the tenant. This is merely an example of what might be done by firm State action in such matters. — Ti/ne and Tide, p. 99. Railroads.— Going by railroad I do not consider as travelling at all; it is merely " being sent" to a place, and very little different from becoming a parcel; the next step to it would of coui'se be tele- graphic transport, of which, however, I suppose it has been truly said by Octave Feuillet, " il {/ aurait des gens assez betes pour trouver 9a amusant." A man who really loves travelling would as soon consent to i^ack a day of happiness into an hour of railroad, as one who loved eating Avould agree, if it were possible, to concentrate his dinner into a lii\\.~ Modern Painters, III., pp. 319, 320. A Railway Traveller. — A person carried in an iron box by a kettle on wheels.— i^'or^, II., p. 103. RusKi.v's PERSONAL UsE OF RAILROADS.— My Cor- respondent doubts the sincerity of my abuse of railroads because she suspects I use them. I do so constantly, my dear lady; few men more. I use everything that comes Avithin reach of me. If the devil were standing at my side at this moment, I should endeavor to make some use of him as a local black. The wisdom of life is in preventing all the evil we can; and using what is inevitable, to the best jjurpose. I use my sicknesses, for the work I despise in health; my enemies, for study of the philosophy of benediction and malediction; SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 241 and railroads, for whatever I find of help in them — looking always hopefully forward to the day when their embankments will be ploughed down again, like the camps of Rome, into our English fields. But I am perfectly ready even to construct a railroad, when I think one necessary; and in the opening chapter of Manera Pulveris my correspon- dent will find many proper uses for steam-machin- ery siDecifled. What is required of the members of St. George's Company is, not that they should never travel by railroads, nor that they should abjure machinery; but that they should never travel unnecessarily, or in wanton haste; and that they should never do Avith a machine what can be done with hands and arms, while hands and arms are \d\e.—Fors, II., p. 333. * From Co:?fiSTON to ULVERSTo:yE.— The town of Ulverstone is twelve miles from me, by four miles of mountain road beside Coniston lake, three through a pastoral valley, five by the seaside. A healthier or lovelier walk would be difficult to find. In old times, if a Coniston peasant had any busi- ness at Ulverstone, he walked to Ulverstone; spent nothing but shoe-leather on the road, drank at the streams, and if he spent a couple of batz when he got to Ulverstone, " it was the end of the world." But now, he would never think of doing such a thing ! He first walks three miles in a contraiy direction, to a railroad station, and then travels by railroad twenty-four miles to Ulverstone, paying two shillings fare. Dui'ing the twenty-four miles transit, he is idle, dusty, stupid; and either more hot or cold than is pleasant to him. In either case he drinks beer at two or three of the stations, passes his time, betvveen them, with anybody he can find, in talking without having anything to talk of; and such talk always becomes vicious. He arrives at Ulverstone, jaded, half drunk, and otherwise de- moralized, and three shillings, at least, iworer than in the morning. Of that sum, a shilling has gone for beer, threepence to a railway shareholder, 242 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. threepence in coals, and eighteenpence has been spent in employing strong men in the vile mechani- cal work of making and driving a machine, instead of his own legs, to carry the drunken lout. The results, absolute loss and demoralization to the poor, on all sides, and iniquitous gain to the rich. Fancy, if you saw the railway officials actually em- ployed in carrying the countryman bodily on their backs to Ulverstone, what you would think of the business ! And because they waste ever so much iron and fuel besides to do it, you think it a profita- ble one \—Fors, II.. p. 338. Let the Nation ow^^ its Railroads.— Neither road, nor railroad, nor canal should ever pay divi- dends to anybody. They should pay their working expenses and no more. All dividends are simply a tax on the traveller and the goods, levied by the person to whom the road or canal belongs, for the right of passing over his property. And this right should at once be purchased by the nation, and the original cost of the roadway — be it of gravel, iron, or adamant— at once defrayed by the nation, and then the whole work of the carriage of persons or goods done for ascertained prices, by salaried offi- cers, as the carriage of letters is done now. I believe, if the votes of the proprietors of all the railroads in the kingdom were taken eti masse, it would be found that the majority would gladly receive back their original capital, and cede their right of " revising " prices of railway tickets. And if railway i^roperty is a good and wise investment of capital, the public need not shrink from taking the whole off their hands. Let the public take it. (I, for one, who never held a rag of railroad scrip in my life, nor ever willingly travelled behind an engine where a horse could pull me, will most gladly subscribe my proper share for such purchase ac- cording to my income.) Then let them examine what lines pay their working expenses and what lines do not, and boldly leave the unpaying embank- ments to be white over Avith sheep, like Roman SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY -EfJOXOMIG CANONS. 24:^ camps, take np the working lines on sound prin- ciples, pay their drivers and pointsmen well, keep their cari'lages clean and in good repair, and make it as wonderful a thing for a train, as for an old mail-coach, to be behind its time; and the sagacious British public will very soon find its pocket heav- ier, its heart lighter, and its " passages " pleasanter than any of the three have been for many a daj'. — Arrofos of the Chace, II., p. S3. A railroad company is merely an association of turnpike-keepers, who make the tolls as high as they can, not to mend the roads with, bvit the pocket. The public will in time discover this, and do away with turnpikes on railroads, as on all other pu bile- ways —J/«Jif>c/ Pulveris, p- 106. MACHINERY. A spider may perhaps be rationally proud of his own cobweb, even though all the fields in the morning are covered Avith the like, for he made it himself — but suppose a machine spun it for him Y — A Joy For Ecer, p. 139. " Hark," says an old Athenian, according to Aris- tophanes, " how the nightingale has filled the thii'k- ets with honey " (meaning, Avith music as sweet). In Yorkshire, your steam-nightingales fill the woods with — Buzz; and for four miles round are audible, summoning yoiT — to your pleasure, I suppose, my free-l)orn?— FO/-.S-, I., p. ;3t)0. IModern Utopianism imagines that the world is to be stubbed by steam, and human arms and legs to be eternally idle; not perceiving that thus it Avould reduce man to the level of his cattle indeed, who can only graze and gore, but not dig ! It is indeed certain that advancing knowledge will guide us to less painful methods of human toil; but in the true Utopia, man will rather harness himself, Avith his oxen, to his plough, than leave the deA'il to driA'e it.— Fors, IV., p. :5(S1. 244 - A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. As all noble sight is with the eyes that Grod has given yon, so all noble motion is with the limbs God has balanced for you, and all noble strength with the arms He has knit. Though you should put electric coils into your high heels, and make spring-heeled Jacks and Gills of yourselves, you will never dance, so, as you could barefoot. Though you could have machines that would swing a ship of war into the sea, and drive a railway train through a rock, all divine strength is still the strength of Herakles, a man's wrestle, and a man's hlow.— Art of England, p. 68. If all the steam engines in England, and all the coal in it, with all their horse and ass poAver put together, could produce — so much as one grain of corn l—Fors, II., p. 338. The use of such machinery as mowing implements involves the destruction of all pleasures in rural labor; and I doubt not, in that destruction, the essential deterioration of the national mind. — Moder7i Painters, V., p. 162. The use of machinery in art destroys the national intellect; and, finally, i-enders all luxury impossi- ble. All machinery needful in ordinary life to supplement human or animal labor may be moved by wind or water; while steam, or any mode of heat power, may only be employed justifiably under extreme or special conditions of need; as for speed on main lines of communication, and for raising water from great depths, or other such work beyond human strength. — Fors, III., p. 250. WAR. Pro.— The vice and injustice of the world are constantly springing anew, and are only to be sub- dued by battle; the keepers of order and law must always be soldiers. — Athena, p. 88. SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 245 The {j;aine of war is only that in which tlie full personal power of the human creature is l)rong'ht out in inauagenjent of its weapons. . . . Tlie great justification of this game is that it truly, Avhen well played, determines who is the best man; — who is the highest bred, the most self-denying, the most fear- less, the coolest of nerve, the swiftest of eye and hand. You cannot test these qualities wholly, un- less there is a clear possibility of the struggle's end- ing in death. — Crown of Wild Olive, p. 75. The creative or foundational war is that in which the natural restlessness and love of contest among men are disciplined, by consent, into modes of beautiful — though it may be fateil — play : in which the natural ambition and love of power of men are disciplined into the aggressive conquest of sur- rounding evil : and in which the natural instincts of self-defence are sanctified by the nobleness of the institutions, and purity of the households, which they are appointed to defend. — Crown of Wild Olive, p. 70. Those Vv'ho can never more see sunrise, nor Avatch the climbing light gild the Eastern clouds, without thinking what graves it has gilded, first, far down behind the dark earth-line, — who never more shall see the crocus bloom in spring, without thinking Avhat dust it is that feeds the wild flowers of Bala- clava. Ask t7ieir witness, and see if they will not reply that it is well with them, and with theirs; that they would have it no otherwise; would not, if they might, receive back their gifts of love and life, nor take again the purple of their blood out of the cross on the breastplate of England. Ask them : and though they should answer only with a sob, listen if it does not gather upon their lips into the sound of the old Seyton war-cry — " Set on." — Mod- ern Painters, III., p. 355. All healthy men like fighting, and like the sense of danger; all brave women like to hear of their fighting, and of their facing danger. This is a fixed instinct in the fine race of them; and I cannot help 246 'A liUSKIN' ANTHOLOGY. fiineying that faiv fight is the best play for them ; and that a tournament was a better game than a steeple-chase. The time may perhaps come in France as well as here, for universal hurdle-races and cricketing: V)ut I do not think universal " crickets" will bring out the best qualities of the nobles of either country. I use, in such question, the test which I have adopted, of the connection of war with other arts; and I reflect how, as a sculp- tor, I should feel, if I were asked to design a monu- ment for a dead knight, in AVestminster abbey, M'itli a carving of a bat at one end, and a ball at the other. It may be the remains in me onlj^ of savage Gothic prejudice; but I had rather carve it with a shield at one end, and a sword at the other. — Crown of Wild Olive, p. 74. War is the foundation of all the arts, and it is the foundation of all the high virtues and faculties of men. It was very strange to me to discover this; and very dreadful — but I saw it to be quite an undenia- ble fact. The common notion that peace and the virtues of civil life flourished together, I found, to be wholly untenable. Peace and the vices of civil life only flourish together. We talk of peace and learning, and of peace and plenty, and of peace and civilization; but I found that those were not the words which the Mvise of History coupled together : that on her lips, the words were — peace and sensu- ality, peace and selfishness, peace and corruption, peace and death. — Crown of Wild Olive, p. 70. All the pure and noble arts of peace are founded on war; no great art ever yet rose on earth, but among a nation of soldiers. There is no art among a shepherd people, if it remains at peace. There is no art among an agricultural peojile, if it remains at peace. Conimerce is barely consistent with fine art; but cannot produce it. Manufacture not only is unable to produce it, but invariably destroys whatever seeds of it exist. There is no great art possible to a nation but that which is based on heittle.—Croivn of Wild Olive, Lect. III., p. 66. SOCIAL FHILOSOPHY^ECONOMIC CANONS. 247 Coiitra. — I, for one, would fain join in the cadence of hammer-strokes that should beat swords into l)lough-shares. — Groxon of Wild Olive, Lect. III., p. !)3. The real, final, reason for all the poverty, misery, and rage of battle, throughout Europe, is simply that you women, however good, hov/ever religious, however self-sacrificing for those whom you love, are too selfish and too thoughtless to take pains for any creature out of your own immediate circles. You fancy that you are sorry for the pain of others. Now I just tell you this, that if the usual course of war, instead of unroofing peasants' houses, and ravaging peasants' fields, merely broke the china upon your own drawing-room tables, no war in civilized countries Avould last a week. . • . Let every lady in the upper classes of civilized Europe simply vow tliat, while any cruel war proceeds, she will wear black; — a mute's black — with no jewel, no ornament, no excuse for, or evasion into, pretti- ness.— I tell you again, no war would last a week. —Crown of Wild Olive, Lect. IIL, p. 93. The first reason for all wars, and for the necessity of national defences, is that the majority of persons, high and low, in all European nations, are Thieves, and in their hearts, greedy of their neighbors' goods, land, and fame. But besides being Thieves, they are also fools, and have never yet been able to understand that if Cornish men want pippins cheap, they must not ravage Devonshire. — Fo):s, I., p. 96. ''To dress it and to keep it." — That, then, was to be our v/ork. Alas ! what work liave we set ourselves upon instead ! How have we ravaged the garden instead of kept it— feeding our war- horses with its flowers, and splintering its trees into spear-shafts \— Modern Painters, V., p. 15. There is a beautiful type of this neglect of the perfectness of the Earth's beauty, by reason of the ])assions of men, in that picture of Paul Uccello's of the battle of Sant' Egidio, in which the armies m8 a ruskin anthology, meet on a country road beside a hedge of wild roses; the tender red flowers tossing above the hel- mets, and glowing between the lowered lances. For in like manner the whole of Nature only shone hitherto for man between the tossing of helmet- crests; and sometimes I cannot but think of the trees of the earth as capable of a kind of sorrow, in that imperfect life of theirs, as they opened their innocent leaves in the warm spring-time, in vain for men; and all along the dells of England her beeches cast their dappled shade only where the outlaw drew his bow, and the king rode his careless chase; and by the sweet French rivers their long ranks of poplar waved in the twilight, only to show the flames of burning cities, on the horizon, through the tracery of their stems : amidst the fair deflles of the Apennines, the twisted olive-trunks hid the ambushes of treachery; and on their valley mead- ows, day by day, the lilies which were white at the dawn were washed with crimson at sunset. — Modern Painters, V., p. 19. No youth who was earnestly busy with any peaceful subject of study, or set on any serviceable course of action, ever voluntarily became a soldier. Occupy him early, and wisely, in agriculture or business, in science or in literature, and h^ will never think of war otherwise than as a calamity. But leave him idle; and the more brave and active and capable he is by nature, the more he will thirst for some appointed field for action; and find, in the passion and peril of battle, the only satisfying ful- filment of his unoccupied being. — Qroron. of Wild Olive, p. 71. MODERN WARFARE. If we could trace the innermost of all causes of modern war, I believe it would be found, not in the avarice nor ambition of nations, but in the mere idleness of the uiTi)er classes. They have nothing SOCIAL PnrLOSOPHY^ECONOMlC CAA^OXS. 240 to do but to toach the peasantry to kill each other. —Mimcra Piilccns, p. 121. The ingenuity of our inventors is far from being exhausted, and in a few years more we may be able to destroy a regiment round a corner, and bombard a fleet over the horizon.— J.rrow'A' of the Chace, III., p. 41. It is one very awful form of the operation of wealth in Europe that it is entirely capitalists' wealth which supports unjust wars. Just wars do not need so much money to support them; for most of the men who wage such, waL;e 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; Avhich makes such war costly to the maxi- mum. — Unto This Last, p. 82. The Americans, in their war of 18G0-G5, sent all their best and honestest youths. Harvard University men and the like, to that accursed war; got them nearly all shot; wrote pretty biograi)liies (to the ages of 17, 18, 19) and epitaphs for them; and so, having washed all the salt out of the nation in blood, left themselves to putrefaction, and the morality of New York. — Munera Fulveris, p. 102. If you have to take away masses of men from all industrial employment— to feed them by the lal)or of others— to move them and provide them with de- structive machines, varied daily in national rival- ship of inventive cost; if you have to ravage tlie country which you attack,— to destroy for a seore of future years, its roads, its woods, its cities, and its harbors;— and if, finally, having brought masses of men, counted by hundreds of thousands, face to face, you tear those masses to pieces with jagged shot, and leave the fragments of living creatures countlessly beyond all help of surgery, to starve and parch, through days of torture, down into clots of clay — what book of accounts shall record the cost of your work;— What book of judgment sen- tence the guilt of it ? That, I say, is modem war— scientific war — ehem- 250 -A nUSKIN' ANTHOLOGY. ical and mechanic war, worse even than the sav- age's poisoned nrrow.— Crown of Wild Olive, p. 76. If you, the gentlemen of this or any other king- dom, choose to make your pastime of contest, do so, and welcome; but set not up these unhappy peasant-pieces upon the green fielded board. If the wager is to be of death, lay it on your own heads, not theirs. A goodly struggle in the Olympic dust, though it be the dust of the grave, the gods will look upon, and be with you in; but they will not be with you, if you sit on the sides of the amphi- theatre, whose steps are the mountains of earth, whose arena its valleys, to urge your peasant mil- lions into gladiatorial yva,r.—Croion of Wild Olive, p. 72. The game of war is entrancingly pleasant to the imagination; the facts of it, not always so pleasant. We dress for it, however, more finely than for any other sport; and go out to it, not merely in scarlet, as to hunt, but in scarlet and gold, and all numner of fine colors : of course we could fight better in grey, and without feathers; but all nations have agreed that it is good to be well dressed at this play. Then the bats and balls are very costly; our English and French bats, with the balls and wickets, even those which we don't make any use of, costing, I suppose, now about fifteen millions of money annu- ally to each nation; all of which, you know, is paid for by hard laborer's work in the furrow and fur- nace. A costly game ! — not to speak of its conse- quences. — Crown of Wild Olives, Lect. I., p. 33. Suppose I had been sent for by some private gentleman, living in a suburban house, with his garden separated by a fruit- wall from his next door neighbor's; and he had called me to consult with him on the furnishing of his drawing room. I begin looking about me, and find the walls rather bare; I think such and such a paper might be desirable— perhaps a little fresco here and there on the ceiling — a damask curtain or so at the windows. " Ah," says my employer, " damask cur- SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CA^^ON'S. 251 tains, indeed I That's all very fine, but you know I can't alTord that kind of thing just now ! " " Yet the Avorld credits you with a splendid income ! '' " Ah. yes." says uiy friend, '' but do you know, at present, I am obliged to spend it nearly all in steel- traps ? " '• Steel-traps ! for whom ? " " Why, for that fellow on the other side of the wall, you knoAV : we're very good friends, cajjital friends; but we are obliged to keep our traps set on both sides of the wall; we could not possibly keep on friendly terms without them, and our spring guns. The worst of it is, we are both clever fellows enough; and there's never a day passes that we don't find out a new trap, or a new gun-barrel, or something; we spend about fifteen millions a year each in our traps, take it all together; and I don't see how we're to do it with less." A highly comic state of life for two private gentlemen ! but for two nations, it seems to me, not wholly comic ? Bedlam would be comic, perhaps, if there were only one mad man in it; and your Christmas pantomime is comic, when there is only one clown in it; but when the whole world turns clown, and paints itself red with its own heart's blood instead of vermilion, it is something else than comic, I thinli.— Crown, of Wild Olive, Lect. II., p. 48. Obsei've what the real fact is, respecting loans to foreign military governments, and how strange it is. If your little boy came to you to ask for money to spend in squibs and crackers, you would think twice before you gave it him; and you would have some idea that it was wasted, when you saw it fly off in fireworks, even though he did no nns- chief with it. But the Russian children, and Aus- trian children, come to you, borrowing money, not to spend in innocent squibs, but in cartridges and bayonets to attack you in India with, and to keep down all noble life in Italy with; and to murder Polish women and children with; and that you. will give at once, because they pay you interest for it. Now, in order to pay you that interest, they must 253 A HUSKW ANTHOLOaY. tax every working peasant in their dominions; and on that work you live. You therefore at once rob the Austrian peasant, assassinate or banish the Pohsh peasant, and you live on the produce of the theft, and the bribe for the assassination ! That is the broad fact— that is the practical meaning of your foreign loanti, and of most large interest of nionev; and then you quarrel with Bishop Colenso, forsooth, as if he denied the Bible, and you believed it! though, wretches as you are, every deliberate act of your lives is a new deiiance of its jjrimary orders; and as if, for most of the rich men of Eng- land at this moment, it were not indeed to be de- sired, as the best thing at least for them, that the Bible should not be true, since against them these words are written in it: "The rust of your gold and silver shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh, as it were lire." — Grown of Wild Olive, Lect. I., p. 29. Thk Attitude op E:ngland toward Italy and Poland in 1859 and 1863.— What these matters have to do with Art may not at first be clear, but I can perhaps make it so by a short similitude. Suppose I had been engaged by an English gentleman to give lectures on Art to his son. Matters at first go smoothly, and I am diligent in my definitions of line and color, until, on Sunday morning, at break- fast time, a ticket-of-leave man takes a fancy to murder a girl in the road leading round the lawn, before the house-windows. My patron, hearing the screams, puts down his paper, adjusts his spec- tacles, slowly apprehends what is going on, and rings the bell for his smallest footman. " John, take my cai-d and compliments to that gentleman outside the hedge, and tell him that his proceedings are abnorujal, and. I may add, to me personally offensive. Had that road passed through my prop- erty, I should have felt it my duty to interfere." John takes the card, and returns with it; the ticket- of-leave man finishes his work at his leisure; but, the screams ceasing as he fills the girl's mouth with clay, SOCIAL PHILOSOFIIY— ECONOMIC CANOXt>. 2.-)3 the English gentleman returns to his muffins, and oongrati;lates himself on having " kept out of that mess." Presently afterwards he sends for me to know if I shall be ready to lecture on Monday. I am somewhat nervous, and answer — I fear rudely — " Sir, your son is a good lad; I hope he will grow to be a man — but, for the present, I cannot teach him anything. I should like, indeed, to teach you some- thing, but have no words for the lesson." Which indeed I have not. If I say any words on such matters, people ask me, " Would I have the country go to war ? do I know how dreadful a thing war is?" Yes, truly, I know it. I like war as ill as most people — so ill, that I would not spend twenty millions a year in making machines for it, neither my holidays and pocket money in playing at it ; yet I would have the country go to war, with haste, in a good quarrel; and, which is perhaps eccentric in me, rather in another's quarrel than in lier own. We say of ourselves comi^lacently that we will not go to war for an idea; but the phrase interpreted means only, that we will go to war for a bale of goods, but not for justice nor for mercy. — Arrows of the Chace, II., p. 26. A Nation's real Strength.— Observe what the standing of nations on their defence really means. It means that, but for such armed attitude, each of them would go and rob the otlier; that is to say, that the majority of active j^ersons in every nation are at present— thieves. I am very sorry that this should still be so; but it will not be so long. Na- tional exhibitions, indeed, will not bring peace; but national education will, and that is soon com- ing. I can judge of tliis by my own mind, for I am myself naturally as covetous a person as lives in this world, and am as eagei'ly-minded to go and steal some things the French have got, as any housebreaker could be, having clue to attractive spoons. If I could by military incursion carry off Paul Veronese's "Marriage in Cana," and the " Venus Victrix " and the "Hours of St. Louis," it 251 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. would give me the profouudest satisfaction to ac- oomplisli the foray successfully; nevertheless, being a comparatively educated person, I should most assuredly not give myself that satisfaction, though there were not an ounce of gianpowder, nor a bayo- net, in all France. I have not the least mind to rob anybody, however much I may covet what they have got; and I knoAv that the French and British public may and will, with many other publics, be at last brought to be of this mind also; and to see farther that a nation's real strength and happiness do not depend on properties and territories, nor on machinery for their defence; but on their getting such territory as they have, well filled with none but respectable persons. Which is a way of iiijiuitelij enlarging one's territory, feasible to every poten- tate; and dependent nowise on getting Trent turned,, or Rhine-edge reached. Not but that, in the present state of things, it may often be soldiers' duty to seize territoiy, and hold it strongly; but only from banditti, or savage and idle persons. Thus, both Calabria and Greece ought to have been irresistibly occupied long ago. — Time and Tide, p. 108. The true Soldier.— The security of treasure to all the poor, and not the ravage of it down the val- leys of the Shenandoah, is indeed the true warrior's work. But, that they may be able to restrain vice rightly, soldiers must themselves be first in virtue; and that they may be able to compel labor sternly, they must themselves be first in toil, and their spears, like Jonathan's at Beth-aven, enlighteners of the eyes. — Time and Tide, p. 113. Advice to Soldiers. — Suppose, instead of this volunteer marching and countermarching, you were to do a little volunteer ploughing and counter- ploughing? It is more difficult to do it straight: the dust of the earth, so disturbed, is more grateful than for merely i-hythmic footsteps. . . . Or, con- ceive a little volunteer exercise with the spade, SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 255 other than such as is needed for moat and breast- work.— J/^twera Pul verts, p. 120. Drkss of Soldier and Peasant. — Quite one of the chiefest art-mistakes and stupidities of men has been their tendency to dress soldiers in red clothes, and monks, or pacific persons, in black, white, or grey ones. At least half of that mental bias of young people, which sustains the wickedness of war among us at this day, is owing to the prettiness of uniforms. Make all Hussars black, all Guards black, all trooi^s of the line black; dress officers and men, alike, as you would public executioners; and the number of candidates for commissions will be greatly diminished. Habitually, on the contrary, you dress these destructive rustics and tJieir officers in scarlet and gold, but give your productive rustics no costume of honor or beauty. ... A day is coming, be assured, when the kings of Europe will dress their peaceful troops beautifully; will clothe their peasant girls •' in scarlet, with other delights," and " put on ornaments of gold upon tJieir appar- el;" when the crocus and the lily will not be the only living things dressed daintily in our land, and the glory of the wisest monarchs be indeed, in that their people, like themselves, shall be, at least in some dim likeness, "arrayed like one of these." — Val D'Arno, pp. 55, 56. Two Kinds op Peace. — Both peace and war are noble or ignoble according to their kind and occa- sion. . . . But peace may be sought in two ways. . . . That is, you may either win your jjeace, or buy it :— win it, by resistance to evil; — buy it, by compromise with evil. You may buy your peace, with silenced consciences; — you may buy it, with broken vows, — buy it, with lying words, — buy it, with base connivances, — buy it, with the blood of the slain, and the cry of the captive, ajid the silence of lost souls — over hemispheres of the earth, Avhile you sit smiling at your serene hearths, lisping com- fortable prayers evening and morning, and count- ing your pretty Protestant beads (which are flat, 256 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. and of gold, instead of round, and of ebony, as the monks' ones wei-e), and so mutter continually to yourselves, " Peace, peace," when there is no peace; but only captivity and death, for you, as well as for those you leave unsaved; — and yours darker than theirs. . . . For many a year to come, the sword of every righteous nation must be whetted to save or sub- due; nor will it be by patience of others' suffering, but by the offering of your own, that you ever will draAV nearer to the time when the great change shall pass vipon the iron of the earth; — when men shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; neither shall they learn Avar any more. — The Two Paths, pp. 133, 134. A DREAM-PARABLE OP AVAR AND WEALTH. I drean)ed I was at a child's May-day party, in Avhich every means of entertainment had been pro- vided for them, by a wise and kind host. It was in a stately house, with beautiful gardens attached to it; and the children had been set free in the rooms and gardens, with no care whatever but how to pass their afternoon rejoicingly. They did not, indeed, know much about what was to happen next day; and some of them, I thought, were a little frightened, Itecause there was a chance of their being sent to a new school where there were examinations; but they kept the thoughts of that out of their heads as well as they could, and resolved to enjoy them- selves. The house, I said, was in a beautiful gar- den, and in the garden were all kinds of flowers; sweet grassy banks for rest; and smooth lawns for play; and pleasant streams and woods; and rocky places for climbing. And the children were happy for a little while, but presently they separated themselves into parties; and then each party de- clared, it would have a piece of the garden for its own, and that none of the oth3rs should have any- SOCIAL PIIILOSOPirr—ECOA'^OMIG CANON'S. 257 tiling to do with that piece. Next, they quarrelled violently, which pieces they would have; and at last the boys took ui^ the thing, as boys should do, " practicallj'," and fought in the flower-beds till there was hardly a flower left standing; then they trampled down each other's bits of the garden out of spite; and the girls cried till they could cry no more; and so they all lay down at last breathless in the ruin, and waited for the time when they were to be taken home in the evening.* Meanwhile, the children in the house had been making themselves liapi)y also in their manner. For them, there had been provided every kind of in-doors pleasure : there was music for them to dance to; and the library was open, with all man- ner of amusing books; and there was a museum, full of the most curious shells, and animals, and birds; and there was a workshop, with lathes and carpenter's tools, for the ingenious boys; and there were pretty fantastic dresses, for the girls to dress in; and there were microscoj^es, and kaleidoscopes; find whatever toys a child could fancy; and a table, in the dining-room, loaded with everything nice to eat. But, in the midst of all this, it struck two or three of the more "practical" children, that they would like some of the brass-headed nails that studded the chairs; and so they set to work to pull them out. Presently, the others, who were reading, or looking at shells, took a fancy to do the like; and, in a little while, all the children, nearly, were spraining tlieir fingers, in pulling out brass-headed nails. With all that they could pull out, they were not satisfied; and then, everj'body wanted some of somebody else's. And at last the really practical and sensible ones declared, that nothing was of any real consequence, that afternoon, except to get plenty of brass-headed nails; and that the books, and the * I have sometimes been asked what this means. I intended i»^ to set forth the wisdonx of men in war contending for Icing- (Joms, and what follows to set forth their wisdom in peace, r intending for wealtli. 258 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. cakes, and the microscopes were of no use at all in themselves, but only, if they could be exchanged for nail-heads. And, at last they began to fight for nail-heads, as the others fought for the bits of garden. Only here and there, a despised one shrank away into a corner, and tried to get a little quiet with a book, in the midst of the noise; but all the practical ones thought of nothing else but counting nail-heads all the afternoon — even though they knew they would not be allowed to carry so much as one brass knob away with them. But no — it was — " who has most nails ? I have a hundred, and you have fifty; or, I have a thousand and you have two. I must have as many as you before I leave the house, or I cannot possibly go home in peace." At last, they made so much noise that I awoke, and thought to myself, " What a false dream that is, of children.'" The child is the father of the man; and wiser. Children never do such foolish things. Only men do. — Mystery of Life, pp. IIG, 117. GOVERNMENT. Visible governments are the toys of some nations, the diseases of others, the harness of some, the burdens of more. — Sesame and Lilies, p. 67. The Form op a Government immaterial.— No form of government, provided it be a government at all, is, as such, to be either condemned or l^raised, or contested for in anyAvise, but by fools. But all forms of government are good just so far as they attain this one vital necessity of policy — that the wise and kind, few or many, shall govern the unwise and unkind; and they are evil so far as they miss of this, or reverse it. Nor does the form, in any case, signify one whit, but its firmness, and adaptation to the need; for if there be many foolish persons in a state, and few wise, then it is good that the few govern; and if there be many wise, and few foolish, then it is good that the many SOCIAL rillLOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. -IM govern; and if many be wise, yet one wiser, then it is good that one should govern; and so on. — Munera Pulmris, p. 103. I see that politicians and writers of history con- tinually run into hopeless error, because they con- fuse the Form of a government with its Nature. A government may be nominally vested in an individual; and yet if that individual be in such fear of those beneath him, that he does nothing lait what he supposes will be agreeable to them, the Government is Democratic; on the other hand, the Government may be vested in a deliberative assembly of a thousand men, all having equal au- thoritj^ and all chosen from the lowest ranks of the people; and yet if that assembly act independ- ently of the will of the people, and have no fear of them, and. enforce its determinations uijon them, the government is Monarchical; that is to sajs the Assembly, acting as One, has power over the Many, while in the case of the weak king, the Many have power over the One. A Monarchical Government, acting for its own interests, instead of the peoi:)le"s, is a tyranny. I said the Executive Government was the hand of the nation; — the Republican Government is in like manner its tongue. The Monarchical Govern- ment is its head. All true and right Government is Monarchical, and of the head. What is its best form, is a totally different question; but unless it act /or the people, and not as representative of the people, it is no government at all; and one of the grossest blockheadisms of the English in the present day, is their idea of sending men to Parliament to "represent their opinions." Whereas their only true business is to find out the wisest men among them, and send them to Parliament to represent their oivn opinions, and act upon them. — Constnie- tion of Sheepfohls, p. 31. The Mosquito Variety op Kixgs.— The self- styled " kings" who think nations can be bought and sold like personal property can no more be the 260 A liUSKLV ANTHOLOCiY. true kings of the nation than gad-fiies are the king's 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, trumpeting in the summer air. — Sesame and Lilies, p. G8. Young ME^r in Politics. — Young men have no business with politics at all; and when the time is come for them to have opinions, they will find all Ijolitical parties resolve themselves at last into two — that which holds with Solomon, that a rod is for the fool's back, and that which holds with the fool himself, that a crown is for his head, a vote for his mouth, and all the universe for his bellj'. — Arroios of the Chace, II., p. 131. National Parties. — Men only associate in par- ties by sacrificing their opinions, or by having none worth sacrificing; and the eflfect of party govern- ment is always to develop hostilities and hypo- crisies, and to extinguish idenLH.—Fors, I., p. 6. Thk Necessity of imperative Law to the Prosperity op States. — When the crew of a wrecked ship escape in an open boat, and the boat is crowded, the provisions scanty, and the prospect of making land distant, laws are instantly estab- lished and enforced which no one thinks of disobey- ing. An entire equality of claim to the provisions is acknowledged without dispute; and an equal liability to necessary labor. No man who can row is allowed to refuse his oar; no man, however much money he may have saved in his pocket, is allowed so much as half a biscuit beyond liis proper ration. Any riotous person who endangered the safety of the rest would be bound, and laid in the bottom of the boat, without the smallest compunction for such violation of the principles of individual lib- erty; and on the other hand, any child, or woman, or aged person, who was hel[)less, and exposed to greater danger and suffering by their weakness, would receive more than ordinary care and indul- SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— EGONOMIG CANONS. 261 gence, not unaccompanied Avith unanimous self- sacrifice, on the part of the laboring crew. . . . Now, the circumstances of every associated group of human society, contending bravely for national honors, and felicity of life, differ only from those thus supposed, in the greater, instead of less, neces- sity for the establishment of restraining law. . . . The impossibility of discerning the effects of indi- vidual error and crime, or of counteracting them by individual effort, in the affairs of a great nation, renders it tenfold more necessary than in a small society that direction by law should be sternly es- tablished. Assume that your boat's crew is disor- derly and licentious, and Avill, by agreement, submit to no order; — the most troublesome of then) will yet be easily discerned; and the chance is that the best man among them knocks him down. Common instinct of self-pi-eservation will make the rioters put a good sailor at the helm, and impulsive pity and occasional help will be, by heart and hand, here and there given to visible distress. Not so in the ship of the realm. The most troublesome per- sons in it are usually the least recognized for such, and the most active in its management; the best men mind their own business patiently, and are never thought of; the good helmsman never touches the tiller but in the last extremity; and the worst forms of misery are hidden, not only from every eye, but from every thought. On the deck, the aspect is of Cleopatra's galley— under hatches, there is a slave-hospital; while, finally (and this is the most fatal difference of all), even the feAv persons who care to interfere energetically, with purpose of doing good, can, in a large society, discern so little of the real state of evil to be dealt with, and judge so little of the best means of dealing with it, that half of their best efforts will be misdirected, and some may even do more harm than good. — Time and Tide, p. 50. [On the American Government and People, see hereafter.] •262 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. LIBERTY. I know not if a day is ever to come when the na- ture of right freedom will be understood, and when men will see that to obey another man, to labor for him, yield reverence to him or to his place, is not slavery. It is often the best kind of liberty, — liberty from care. The man who says to one, Go, and he goeth, and to another, Come, and he com- eth, has, in most cases, more sense of restraint and difficulty than the man who obeys him. — Stones of Venice, II., p. 164. You Avill find, on fairly thinking of it, that it is his Restraint which is honorable to man, not his Liberty; and what is more, it is restraint which is honorable even in the lower animals. A butterfly is much more free than a bee; but you honor the bee more, just because it is subject to certain laws which fit it for orderly function in bee society. And throughout the world, of the two abstract things, liberty and restraint, restraint is always the more honorable. ... It is true, indeed, that in these and all other matters you never can reason finally from the abstraction, for both liberty and restraint are good when they ai'e nobly chosen, and both are bad when they ai-e basely chosen; but of the tAvo, I repeat, it is restraint which charactei-izes the higher creature, and betters the lower creature : and, from the ministering of the archangel to the labor of the insect, — from the poising of the planets to the grav- itation of a grain of dust, — the power and glory of all creatures, and all matter, consist in their obedi- ence, not in their freedom. — The Two Paths, pp. 131, 133. Democracy and Communism.— Now, my dear friend, here is the element which is the veriest devil of all that have got into modern flesh; this infidelity of the nineteenth-century St. Thomas in there being anything better than himself, alive; coupled, as it always is, with the farther resolution — if unwillingly convinced of the fact— to seal the Better living thing SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECOXOMIC CAN-ONS. 263 down aj^ain out of his way, under the first stone hundy. — Time and Tide, p. 113. The Influence of Machinery upon Politics.— It is verily this degradation of the operative into a machine. Avhich, more than any other evil of the times, is leading the mass of the nations everywhere into vain, incoherent, destructive struggling for a freedom of which they cannot explain the nature to themselves. Their universal outcry against wealth, and against nobility, is not forced from them either by the pressure of famine, or the sting of mortified pride. These do much, and have done much in all ages; but the foundations of society were never yet shaken as they are at this day. It is not that men are ill fed, but that they have no pleasure in the work by which they make their bread, and therefore look to wealth as the only means of pleasure. It is not that men are pained by the scorn of the upper classes, but they cannot endure their own; for they feel that the kind of labor to which they are condemned is verily a degrading one, and makes them less than men.— Stones of Venice, II., p- 164. The "Free Hand" in Drawing.— Try to draw a circle yourself with the " free " hand, and with a single line. You cannot do it if your hand trem- bles, nor if it hesitates, nor if it is unmanageable, nor if it is in the common sense of the word " free." So far from being free, it must be under a control as absolute and accurate as it it were fastened to an inflexible bar of steel. And yet it must move, under this necessary control, with perfect, untor- mented serenity of ease. That is the condition of all good work Avhatsoever. All freedom is error— Athena, p. Ill- Modern Liberty.— You will send your child, will you, into a room where the table is loaded with sweet wine and fruit— some poisoned, some not?— you will say to him, " Choose freely, my little child ! It is so good for you to have freedom of choice : it forms your character— your individuality ! If you 264 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. take the wrong cup, or the wrong berry, you will die before the day is over, but you will have acquired the dignity of a Fi'ee child ! " You think that puts the case too sharply ? I tell you, lover of liberty, there is no choice offered to you, but it is similarly between life and death. There is no act, nor option of act, possible, but the wrong deed or option has poison in it which will stay in your veins thereafter forever. Never more to all eternity can you be as you might have been, had you not done that — chosen that. . . . The liberty of expression, with a great nation, would become like that in a well-educated com- pany, in which there is indeed freedom of speech, but not of clamor; or like that in an orderly senate, in which men who deserve to be heax'd, are heard in due time, and under determined restrictions. The degree of liberty you can rightly grant to a number of men is in the inverse ratio of their de- sire for it; and a general hush, or call to order, would be often very desirable in this England of ours. . . . The arguments for liberty may in general be sumnjed in a few very simi^le forms, as follows : — Misguiding is mischievous: therefore guiding is. If the blind lead the blind, both fall into the ditch : therefore, nobody should lead anybody. Lambs and fawns should be left free in the fields; much more bears and wolves. If a man's gun and shot are his own, he may fire in any direction he pleases. A fence across a road is inconvenient; much more one at the side of it. Babes should not be swaddled with their hands Jjound down to their sides: therefore they should be thrown out to roll in the kennels naked.— ' Athena, pp. 114-117. FRESH AIR AND LIGHT. Fields green and Faces ruddy.— I tell you, gentlemen of England, if ever you would have your SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 205 country breathe the pure breath of heaven again, and receive again a soul into her body, instead of rotting into a carcase, blown uj^ in the belly with carbonic acid (and great that Avay), you must think, and feel, for your England, as well as fight for her : you must teach her that all the true great- ness she ever had, or ever caia have, she won while her fields were green and her faces ruddy; — that great- ness is still possible for Englishmen, even though the ground be not hollow under their feet, nor the sky black over their heads. — Croion of Wild Olive, p. 88. Fresh Air. — There are now not many European gentlemen, even in the highest classes, who have a pure and right love of fresh air. They would put the filth of tobacco even into the first breeze of a May morning. — Time and Tide, jj. 23. Rural vs. City Life. — In the country every morning of the year brings Avith it a new aspect of springing or fading nature; a new duty to be ful- filled upon earth, and a new promise or warning in heaven. No day is without its innocent hope, its special prudence, its kindly gift, and its sublime danger; and in every process of wise husbandry, and every effort of contending or remedial courage, the Avholesome passions, pride and bodily poAver of the laborer, are excited and exerted in happiest unison. The companionship of domestic, the care of serAnceable animals, soften and enlarge his life Avith loAvly charities, and discipline him in familiar Avisdoms and unboastful fortitudes ; while the di- A'ine laws of seed-time Avhich cannot be recalled, harA'est which cannot be hastened, and Avinter in AA'hich no man can Avork, compel the impatiences and coA^eting of his heart into labor too submissive to be anxious, and rest too SAveet to be Avanton. What thought can enough comprehend the con- trast betAveen such life, and that in streets AA'hero summer and Avinter are only alternations of heat and cold; AA'here snoAv neA^er fell Avhite, nor sun- shine clear; Avhere the ground is only a paA^ement, 266 A RUSKIX ANTHOLOGY. and the sky no more than the glass roof of an ai'cade; where the utmost i^ower of a storm is to choke the gutters, and the finest magic of spring, to change mud into dust : wlaere — chief and most fatal difference in state, there is no interest of occu- pation for any of the inhabitants but the routine of counter or desk within doors, and the effort to pass each other without collision outside; so that from morning to evening the only possible varia- tion of the monotony of the hours, and lightening of the penalty of existence, must be some kind of mischief, limited, unless by more than ordinary godsend of fatality, to the fall of a horse, or the slitting of a pocket. — Fiction— Fai?' and Foul, pp.7, 8. Fair and Fouii. — In my young days, Croxsted Lane was a green by-road traversable for some distance by carts; but rarely so traversed, and, for the most part, little less than a narrow strip of unfilled field, separated by blackberry hedges from the better cared-for meadows on each side of it : growing more weeds, therefore, than they, and perhaps in spring a primrose or two — white arch- angel-daisies plenty, and purple thistles in au- tumn. A slender rivulet, boasting little of its brightness, for there are no springs at Dulwich, yet fed purely enough by the rain and morning dew, here trickled — there loitered — through the long grass beneath the hedges, and expanded it- self, where it might, . into moderately clear and deep pools, in which, under their veils of duck- weed, a fresh-water shell or two, sundry curious little skipping shi'imps, any quantity of tadpoles in their time, and even sometimes a tittlebat, offered themselves to my boyhood's pleased, and not inac- curate, observation. There, my mother and I used to gather the first buds of the hawthorn; and there, in after years, I used to walk in the summer shad- ows, as in a place wilder and sweeter than our gar- den, to think over any passage I wanted to make better than usual in Modern Painters. . . . The fields on each side of it are now mostly dug up for building, or cut through into gaunt corners and SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ECONOMIC CANONS. 267 nooks of blind ground by the wild crossings and concurrencies of three railroads. Half a dozen handfuls of new cottages, with Doric doors, are dropped about here and there among the gashed ground : the lane itself, now entirely grassless, is a deep-rutted, heavy-hillocked cart-road, diverging gatelessly into various brick-fields or jjieces of waste; and bordered on each side by heaps of — Hades only knows what ! — mixed dust of every unclean thing that can crumble in drought, and mildew of every unclean thing that can rot or rust in damp : ashes and rags, beer-bottles and old shoes, battered l^ans, smashed crockery, shreds of nameless clothes, door-sweepings, floor-sweepings, kitchen garbage, back-garden sewage, old iron, rotten timber jagged with out-torn nails, cigar-ends, jjipe-bowls, cinders, bones, and ordure, indescribable; and, variously kneaded into, sticking to, or fluttering foully here and there over all these, — remnants broadcast, of every manner of newspaper advertisement or big- lettered bill, festering and flaunting out their last publicity in the pits of stinking dust and mortal slime. — Fiction — Fair and Foul, pp. 3, 4. Letter to Thos. Dis.ois .—March 21, 1867. I see, by your last letter, for which I heartily thank you, that you would not sympathize with me in my sor- row for the desertion of his own work by Gfeorge Cruikshank, that he may fight in the front of the temperance ranks. But you do not know what work he has left undone, nor how much richer in- heritance you might have received from his hand. It was no more his business to etch diagrams of drunkenness than it is mine at this moment to be writing these letters against anarchy. It is the first mild day of March (high time, I think, that it should be !), and by rights I ought to be out among the budding banks and hedges, outlining sprays of hawthorn, and clusters of primrose. This is my right work; and it is not, in the inner gist and truth of it, right nor good for you, or for anybody else, that Cruikshank with his great gift, and I with my weak, but yet thoroughily clear and definite one, 268 A Kl/SKIN ANTHOLOGY, should both of us be tormented by agony of indig- nation and compassion, till we are forced to give up our peace, and pleasure, and power; and rush down into the streets and lanes of the city, to do the little that is in the strength of our single hands against their uneleanliness and iniquity. But, as in a sorely besieged town, evei'y man must to the ramparts, whatsoever business he leaves, so neither he nor I have had any choice but to leave our household stuff, and go on crusade, such as Ave are called to; not that I mean, if Fate may be anywise resisted, to give wp the strength of my life, as he has given his; fori think he was wrong in doing so; and that he should only have carried the fiery cross his appointed leagues, and then given it to another hand : and, for my own part, I mean these very letters to close my political work for many a day; and I write them, not in any hope of their beingat present listened to, but to disburden my heart of the Avitness I haA'e to bear, that I may be free to go back to my gai'den laAvns, and paint birds and flowers there. — Time mid Tide, pp. 53, 53. L'Envoi. — Bred in luxury, Avhich 1 perceiA^e to have been unjust to others, and destruc tiA'e to my- self; vacillating, foolish, and miserably failing in all my oAvn conduct in life — and blown about hope- lessly by storms of jiassion — I, a man clothed in soft raiment, — I, a reed shaken with the wind, have yet this Message to all men again entrusted to me : " Behold, the axe is laid to the root of the trees. Whatsoever tree therefore bringeth not forth good fruit, shall be hewn down and cast into the fire."—. Fors, III., p. 45. Whether I am spared to put into act anything here designed for my country's help, or am shielded by death from the sight of her remediless sorroAV, I have already done for her as much serAice as she has Avill to receiA^e, by laying before her facts A'ital to her existence, and unalterable by her poAver, in words of which not one has been Avarped by in- terest nor Aveakened by fear; and which are as pure from selfish passion as if they were spoken already out of another world. — Arrows of the Chace, I., p. 7. SOCIAL PIIILOSOPUY— EDUCATION. 269 CHAPTER II. Edocation.* I take Wordsworth's single line, " AVe live by admiration, liope, and love," for my literal guide, in all education. — Fors, II., p. 340.' All education must be moral first; intellectual secondarily. — Fors, III., p. 250. There is one test by which you can all determine the rate of your real progress. Examine, after every period of renewed industry, how far you have enlarged your faculty of admira- tion. Consider how much more you can see to rever- ence, in the work of masters; and how much more to love, in the work of nature. — A Joy For Ever, p. 127. By this you may recognize true education from false. False education is a delightful thing, and warms you, and makes you every day think more of yourself. And true education is a deadly cold thing, with a Grorgon's head on her shield, and makes you every day think worse of yourself. Worse in two ways, also, more's the pity. It is perpetually increasing the personal sense of ignor- ance and the personal sense of ivi\x\t.—Time and Tide, p. 115. Modern "Education" for the most signifies giving people the faculty of thinking wrong on every conceivable subject of importance to them. — Sesame and Lilies, p. 46. To make your children capable of honesty is the beginning of education. Make them men first, and * On tlie education of girls, see Part III., Chapter III., " Women." For autobiographical anecdotes of Ruskin on his early education, see Part V., Chapter III., "Personal." 270 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. religious men afterwards, and all will be sound; but a knave's religion is always the rottenest thing about him.— Ti?ne and Tide, p. 30. The first condition under which education can be given usefully is, that it should be clearly under- stood to be no means of getting on in the world; but a means of staying pleasantly in your place there. — Time and Tide, p. 67. Education, rightly comprehended, consists, half of it, in making children familiar with natural objects, and the other half in teaching the practice of piety toAvards them (piety meaning kindness to living things, and orderly use of the lifeless.)— i^ors, IV., p. 378. You do not educate a man by telling him what he knew not, but by making him what he was not; and making him what he will remain forever : for no wash of weeds will bring back the faded purple. And in that dyeing there are two processes — first, the cleansing and wringing-out, which is the baptism with water; and then the infusing of the blue and scarlet colors, gentleness and justice, which is the baptism with fire. — Munera Pulveris, p. 90. The Meat op Knowledge.— Think what a deli- cate and delightful meat that used to be in old days, when It was not quite so common as it is now, and when young people — the best sort of them — really hungered and thirsted for it. Then a youth went up to Cambridge, or Padua, or Bonn, as to a feast of fat things, of wines on the lees, well-refined. But now, he goes only to swallow, — and, more 's the pity, not even to swallow as a glutton does, with enjoyment; not even— forgive me the old Aristotel- ian Greek, ^s6;aevo5 t^ or brickdust near at hand; and, having got it into working order, and good, empty, and oiled serviceableness, start your im- mortal locomotive, at twenty-five years old or thh'ty, express from the Strait Gate, on the Narrow Road. The whole period of youth is one essentially of formation, edification, instruction (I use the words with their weight in them); in taking of stores, establishment in vital habits, hopes and faiths. There is not an hour of it but is trembling with destinies — not a moment of which, once past, the apjjointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blow struck on the cold iron. Take your vase of Venice glass out of the furnace, and strew chaff over it in its transparent heat, and recover that to its clearness and rubied glory when the north wind has blown upon it; but do not think to strew chaff over the child fresh from God's presence, and to bring the heavenly colors back to him — at least in this world.— J/ofZer?i Painters, IV., p. 431. Certain early Habits ineradicable.— It is wholly impossible— this I say from too sorrowful experience — to conquer by any effort or time, habits of the hand (much more of head and soul), with which the vase of fiesh has been formed and filled in youth, — the law of God being that parents shall compel the child, in the day of its obedience, into habits of hand, and eye, and soul, which, when it is old, shall not, by any strength, or any weakness, be departed from. [Illustration of the foregoing]. I can't resist the expression of a little piece of personal exultation, 274 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. hi noticing that a figure in one of Giotto's paintings liolds his pencil as I do myself : no writing master, and no effort (at one time very steady for many months), having ever cured me of that way of hold- ing both pen and pencil between my fore and sec- ond finger; the third and fourth resting the backs of them on my pa,i)eY.—3Ioriiings in Florence, pp. 80, 118. The Elective System op Education.— Whereas it was formerly thought that the discipline neces- sary to form the character of youth was best given in the study of abstract branches of literature and philosophy, it is now thought that the same, or a better, discipline may be given by informing men in early years of things it cannot but be of chief practical advantage to them afterwards to know; and by permitting to them the choice of any field of study which they may feel to be best adapted to their personal dispositions. I have always used what poor influence I possessed in advancing this change; nor can any one rejoice more than I in its practical results. — Lectures On Art. Your modern ideas of development imply that you must all turn out what you are to be, and find out what you are to know for yourselves, by the inevitable operation of your anterior affinities and inner consciences : — whereas the old idea of educa- tion was that the ba1)y material of you, however accidentally or inevitably born, was at least to be by external force and ancestral knowledge, bred; and treated by its Fathers and Tutors as a plastic vase, to be shaped or mannered as they chose, not as it chose, and filled, when its form was well finished and baked, with sweetness of sound doc- trine, as with Hybla honey, or Arabian spikenard. — Pleasures of England, p- 9. Virtue must become ixsti^ctive. — The essen- tial idea of real virtue is that of a vital human strength, which instinctively, constantly, and without motive, does what is right. You must train men to this by habit, as you would the branch SOCIAL rillLO SOPHY— EDUCATION. 275 of a tree; and give them instincts and manners (or morals) of purity, justice, kindness, and courage. Once rightly trained, they act as they should, irre- spectively of all motive, of fear, or of reward.— -E^i!^- ics of the Dust, p. 90. National Libraries.— I hope it will not be long before royal or national libraries will be founded in every considerable city, with a royal series of books in them; the same series in every one of tliein, chosen books, the best in every kind, pre- pared 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 pleas- ant volumes, light in hand, beautiful, and strong, and thorough as examples of binder's work; and that these great libraries Avill 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. — Sesame and Lilies, p. 71. " Le pauvre Exfaxt, II :\'e sait pas vivre.''— Getting no education is by no means the worst thing that can happen to us. One of the pleasantest friends I ever had in my life was a Savoyard guide, Avho could only read with difficulty, and write scarcely intelligibly and by great effort, lie knew no language but his own — no science, except as much practical agriculture as served him to till his fields. But he was, without exception, one of the hapi)iest persons, and, on the Avhole, one of the best. I have ever known; and, after lunch, when ho had had his half bottle of Savoy wine, he would generally, as we walked up some quiet valley in the afternoon light, give me a little lecture on phi- losophy; and after I had fatigued and provoked him with less cheerful views of the world than his own, he would fall back to my servant behind me, and console himself with a shrug of the shoulders, and a whispered " Le pauvre enfant, il nesaiti)as vivre ! " — (•' The poor child, he doesn't know how to live.") — Fors, L, p. 42. 276 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. Labor and Scholarship compatible.— Educa- tion of any noble kind has of late been so constantly- given only to the idle classes, or, at least, to those who conceive it a privilege to be idle,* that it is difficult for any person, trained in modern habits of thought, to iujagine a true and refined scholar- ship, of which the essential foundation is to be skill in some useful labor. — Fo7-s, I., p. 112. A Grammar op Music. — Musicians, like painters, ai-e almost virulently determined in their efforts to abolish the laws of sincerity and purity; and to in- vent, each for his own glory, new modes of dissolute 'o5o|iai' :— " Let uotMng be done through strife or vain glory." And I would have fixed for each age of children and students a certain standard of pass in examina- tion, so adapted to average capacity and power of exertion, that none need fail who had attended to their lessons and obeyed their masters; while its variety of trial should yet admit of the natural dis- tinctions attaching to progress in especial subjects and skill in peculiar arts. Beyond such indication or acknowledgment of merit, there should be nei- ther prizes nor honors; these are meant by Heaven to be the proper rewards of a man's consistent and kindly life, not of a youth's temporary and selfish exertion. Nor, on the other hand, should the natural tor- por of wholesome dulness be disturbed by provo- cations, or plagued by punishments. The wise proverb ought in every school-master's mind to be deeply set — "You cannot make a silk purse of a sow's ear;" expanded with the farther scholium that the flap of it will not be in the least disguised by giving it a diamond earring. If, in a woman, SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— EDUCATION. 279 Taeauty without discretion be as a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, much more, in man, woman, or child, knowledge without discretion— the knowl- edge which a fool receives only to puff up his stomach, and sparkle in his cockscomb. . . . It is in the Avholesome indisposition of the aver- age mind for intellectual labor that due provision is made for the quantity of dull work which must be done in stubbing the Thornaby wastes of the world.— Fors, IV., pp. 380, 381. Facts and System. —All sciences should, I think, be taught more for the sake of their facts, and less for that of their system, than heretofore. Comprehensive and connected views are impossi))le to most men; the systems they learn are nothing but skeletons to them; but nearly all men can un- derstand the relations of a few facts bearing on daily business, and to be exemplified in common substances. And science will soon be so vast that the most comprehensive men will still be narrow, ant"l we shall see the fitness of rather teaching our youth to concentrate their general intelligence highly on given points than scatter it towards an infinite horizon fronj Avhich they can fetch nothing, and to which they can carry nothing. — Arrows of the Chace, I., p. 49. Words. — You must get into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable — nay letter by letter .... you might read all the books in the British Museum (if you could live long enough), and re- main an utterly " illiterate," uneducated person; but if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter, — that is to say, with real accuracy, — you are for evermore in some measure an educated per- son. . . . 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 what- ever language he knows, he knows precisely; what- ever word he pronounces he pronounces rightly; 280 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. above all, he is learned in the peera^'e of words; knows the words of true descent and ancient blood, at a glance, from words of modern canaille An uneducated person may know by memory any number of languages, and talk them all, and yet truly know not a word of any — not a word even of his own. ... It is right that a false Latin quan- tity should excite a smile in the House of Commons; but it is wrong that a false English meaning should 7iot excite a frown there. Let the accent of words be watched, by all means, but let their meaning be Avatched more closely still, and fewer will do the work. A few words, Avell chosen and well distin- guished, will do work that a thousand cannot, when every one is acting, equivocally, in the func- tion of another. . . . There are masked words abroad which nobody understands, but which everybody uses, and most people will also light 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 cha- meleon 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 were never creatures of prey so mischiev- ous, never diplomatists so cunning, never poisoners so deadly, as these masked words. — Sesame and Lilies, pp. 37, 38. 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 diction- aries 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 Avork; but you will find it, even at first, interesting, and at last, endlessly amusing. And the general gain to your character, in power and precision, will be quite Tiicalcvilable.— (SeA'u'yMe and Lilies- p. 40. SOCIAL PHtLOSOPtlYSDUCATION: 281 Beautiful Spkakixg.— The fouiidatioiial im- portance of beautiful speaking has been disgraced by the confusion of it with diplomatic oratory, and evaded by the vicious notion that it can be taught by a master learned in it as a separate art. The management of the lips, tongue, and throat may, and perhaps should, be so taught; but this is prop- erly the first function of the singing-master. Elocu- tion is a moral faculty; and no one is lit to be the head of a childrens' school who is not both by nature and attention a beautiful speaker. By attention, I say, for fine elocution means first an exquisitely close attention to, and intelligence of, the meaning of words, and perfect sympathy with what feeling they describe; but indicated al- ways with reserve. In this reserve, fine reading and speaking, (virtually one art), differ from " recita- tion," which gives the statement or sentiment with the explanatory accent and gesture of an actor. In perfectly pure elocution, on the contrary, the accent ought, as a rule, to be much lighter and gentler than the natural or dramatic one, and the force of it wholly independent of gesture or ex- pression of feature. A fine reader should read, a great speaker speak, as a judge delivers his charge; and the test of his power should be to read or speak vuiseen. At least an hour of the school-day should be spent in listening to the master's or some trustwor- thy visitor's reading; but no children should attend unless they were really interested; the rest being allowed to go on with their other lessons or employ- ments. A large average of children, I suppose, are able to sew or draw while they yet attend to read- ing, and so there might be found a fairly large audience, of whom however those Avho were usually busy during the lecture should not be called upon for any account of what they had heard; but, on the contrary, blamed, if they had allowed their attention to be diverted by the reading from what they were about, to the detriment of their work. The real audience consisting of the few for whom. 282 A RUSKm ANTHOLOGY. the book had been specially chosen, should be re- quired to give perfect and unbroken attention to what they heard; to stop the reader always at any Avord or sentence they did not understand, and to be prepared for casual examination on the story next day. I say " on the story," for the reading, whether poetry or prose, should always be a story of some sort, whether trvie history, travels, romance or fairy-tale. In poetry, Chaucer, Spenser, and Scott, for the ui^per classes, lighter ballad or fable for the lower, contain always some thread of pretty adventui-e. No merely didactive or descriptive l)<)oks should be permitted in the reading room, l)ut so far as they are used at all, studied in the same way as granjmars; and Shakespeare, accessible always at playtime in the library in small and large editions to the young and old alike, should never be used as a school book, nor even formally or continuously read aloud. He is to be known by thinking not mouthing. I have used, not unintentionally, the separate words " reading room " and library. No school should be considered as organized at all, without these two rooms, rightly furnished; the reading room, with its convenient pulpit and student's desks, in good light, skylight if possible, for draw- ing, or taking notes — the library with its broad tables for laying out books on, and recesses for niched reading, and plenty of lateral light kept carefully short of glare : both of them well shut off from the school room or rooms, in which there must be always more or less of noise. — Fors, IV., p. 383, 385. Children should be taught to see.— The main thing which we ought to teach our youth is to see something — all that the eyes which God has given them are cajjable of seeing. The sum of what werfo teach them is to say something. As far as I have experience of instruction, no man ever dreams of teaching a boy to get to the root of a matter; to SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— EDUCATION. 283 think it out; to get quit of passion and desire in the process of thinking; or to fear no face of man in plainly asserting the ascertained result. But to say anything in a glib and graceful manner; — to give an epigrammatic turn to nothing,— to quench the dim perceptions of a feeble adversarj^ and parry cunningly the home-thrusts of a strong one, — to in- vent blanknesses in sjieech for breathing time, and slipperinesses in speech for hiding time, — to pol- ish malice to the deadliest edge, shape profession to the seemliest shadow, and mask self-interest under the fairest pretext,— all these skills we teach definitely, as the main arts of business and life. — Modern Painters, IV., p. 439. Sympathy as as Eleivient of Educatio:!^.— The chief vices of education have arisen from the one great fallacy of supposing that noble language is a communicable trick of grammar and accent, in- stead of simply the careful expression of right thought. All the virtues of language 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; powerful, if he has earnestness; pleasant, if he has sense of rhj'thm and order. . . . The secret of language is the secret of sympathy, and its full charm is possible only to the gentle. . . . No noble nor right style was ever yet founded but out of a sincere heart. — Lectures on Art, pp. 48, 49. No man can read the evidence of labor who is not himself laborious, for he does not know what the work costs: nor can he read the evidence of true passion if he is not passionate; nor of gentle- ness if he is not gentle : and the most subtle signs of fault and weakness of character he can only judge by having had the same faults to fight with. — Lectures on Art, p. 51. Agaixst Stupidity the Gods fight ia' a^aijv.— In education, true justice is curiously unequal — if you choose to give it a hard name, iniquitous. The 284 A BUS KIN ANTHOLOaY. riylit law of it is that you are to take most pains with the best material. Many conscientious masters will plead for the exactly contrary iniquity, and say you should take the most pains with the dullest boys. But that is not so (only you must be very careful that you know which are the dull boys; for the cleverest look often very like them). Never Avaste pains on bad ground; let it remain rough, though properly looked after and cared for; it will be of best service so; but spare no labor on the good, or on what has in it the cajDacity of good. The tendency of modern help and care is quite morbidly and madly in reverse of this great princi- ple. Benevolent persons are always, by preference, busy on the essentially bad; and exhaust them- selves in their efforts to get maximum intellect from cretins and maximum virtue from criminals. Meantime, they take no care to ascertain (and for the most part when ascertained, obstinately refuse to remove) the continuous sources of cretinism and crime, and suffer the most splendid material in child-nature to wander neglected about the streets, until it has become rotten to the degree in which they feel prompted to take an interest in it. — Fors, I., p. 114. The greatness or smallness of a man is, in the most conclusive sense, determined for him at his birth, as strictly as it is determined for a fruit whether it is to be a currant or an apricot. Educa- tion, favorable circumstances, resolution, and in- dustry can do much; in a certain sense they do tVier ything ; that is to say, they determine whether the poor apricot shall fall in the form of a green bead, blighted by an east wind, shall be ti'odden under foot, or whether it shall exisand into tender l)ride, and sweet brightness of golden velvet. But apricot out of currant, — great man out of small, — did never yet art or effort make. . . . Therefore it is, that every system of teaching is false which holds forth " great art " as in any wise to be taught to students, or even to be aimed at SOCIAL riTILOSOrilY— EDUCATION'. 285 by them. Great art is precisely that which never was, nor will be taught, it iff pre-eminently and finally the expression of the spirits of great men; so that the only wholesome teaching is that which simply endeavors to fix those characters of noble- ness in the pupil's mind, of which it seems easily susceptible; and without holding out to him, as a possible or even probable result, that he should ever paint like Titian, or carve like Michael An- gelo, enforces upon him the manifest possibility, and assured duty, of endeavoring to draw in a man- ner at least honest and intelligible; and cultivates in him those general charities of heart, sincerities of thought, and graces of habit which are likely to lead him, throughout life, to prefer openness to affectation, realities to shadows, and beauty to cor- ruption. — 3Iodern Painters, III., p. Gl. The vulgar and incomparal)ly false saying of Macaulay's, that the intellectual giants of one age become the intellectual pigmies of the next, has been the text of too many sermons lately preached to you. You think you are going to do better things — each of you — than Titian and Phidias- write better than Virgil — think more wisely than Solomon. My good young people, this is the fool- ishest, quite pre-eminently — perhaps almost the harmfullest — notion that could possibly be put into your empty little eggshells of heads. There is not one in a million of you who can ever be great in any thing. To be greater than the greatest that have been, is permitted i:)erhaps to one man in Euroi^e in the course of two or three centuries. But because you cannot be Handel and Mozart- is it any reason why you should not learn to sing " Ciod save the Queen " properly, when you have a mind to ? — A Joy For Ever, p. 138. IIOW TO BE AS WISE AS ONE'S FATHERS-— You have all been taught by Lord Macaulay and his school that because you have carpets instead of rushes for your feet; and feather-beds instead of fern for your backs; and kickshaws instead of 286 A RUSKIir ANTHOLOGY. beef for your eating; and Drains instead of Holy Wells for your drinking; — that, therefore, you are the Cream of Creation; and every one of you a seven-headed Solomon. Stay in those pleasant circumstances and convictions if you please; but don't accuse your roughly bred and fed fathers of telling lies about the aspect the earth and sky bore to them, — till you have trodden the earth as they, barefoot, and seen the heavens as they, face to face. If you care to see and to know for yourselves, you may do it with little pains; you need not do any great thing, you need not keep one eye open and the other shut for ten years over a microscoi^e, nor fight your way through icebergvS and darkness to knowledge of the celestial pole. Simply do as much as king after king of the Saxons did, — put rough shoes on your feet, and a rough cloak on your shoulders, and walk to Rome and back. Sleep by the roadside, when it is fine, in the first outhouse you can find, when it is wet, and live on bread and water, with an onion or two, all the way; and if the experiences M'hich you will have to relate on your return do not, as may well be, deserve the name of spiritvial, at all events you will not be disposed to let other people regard them either as Poetry or Fiction.— P/casM/TS of England, p. 24. . To Certain Students op Oxford University. —Your youthful days in this place are to you the dipping of your feet in the brim of the river, which is to be manfully stemmed by you all your days; not drifted with,— nor toyed upon. Fallen leaves enough itis strewn with, of the flowers of the forest; moraine enough it bears, of the ruin of the brave. Your task is to cross it; your doom may be to go down with it, to the depths out of which there is no crying. Traverse it, staff in hand, and with loins girded, and with whatsoever law of Heaven you know, for your light. On the other side is the Promised Land, the Land of the Leal.— ^r^ of Eng- land, p. 52. An Ideal University Park.— I will even ven- SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— EDUCATION. 287 ture to tell you my hope, though I shall be dead long before its possible fulfilment, that one day the English people will, indeed, so far recognize what education means as to surround this University of Oxford with the loveliest park in England, twenty miles square; that they will forbid, in that environ- ment, every unclean, mechanical, and vulgar trade and manufacture, as any man would forbid them in his own garden; — that they will abolish every base and ugly building, and nest of vice and misery, as they would east out a devil;— that the streams of the Isis and Cherwell will be kept pure and quiet among their fields and trees; and that, within this park, every English Avild flower that can bloom in lowland will be suffered to grow in luxuriance, and every living creature that haunts wood and stream know that it has happy refuge. — Eagle's Nest, p. 109. THE EDUCATION OP CHILDREN. The relatio:n by Children of what they HAVE SEEliT OR HEARD. — No discipline is of more use to a child's character, with threefold bear- ing on intellect, memory, and morals, than the being accustomed to relate accurately what it has lately done and seen. . . . Children ought to be frequently required to give account of themselves, though always alloAved reserve; if they ask : " I would rather not say, mamma," should be accepted at once with serene confidence on occasion; but of the daily walk and work the child should take pride in giving full account, if questioned; the parent or tutor closely lopijing exaggeration, investigating elision, guiding into order, and aiding in expres- sion. The finest historical style may be illustrated in the course of the narration of the events of the day.— Fors, IV., p. 385. Education for Different Spheres of Life. — For cliildren whose life is to be in cities, the sub- 288 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. jects of study should be, as far as their dispositidi will allow of it, mathematics and the arts; for cliii- dren who are to live in the country, natural history of birds, insects, and plants, together with agri- culture taught practically; and for children who are to be seamen, physical geography, astronomy, and the natural history of sea fish and sea birds.— Time and Tide, p. 70. Nature a fine Educator. — For prolonged en- tertainment, no picture can be compared with the wealth of interest which may be found in the herb- age of the poorest field, or blossoms of the narrow- est coi5se. As suggestive of supernatural power, the passing away of a fitful rain-cloud, or opening of dawn, are in their change and mystery more pregnant than any pictures. A child would, I suppose, receive a religious lesson from a flower more willingly than from a print of one, and might be taught to understand the nineteenth Psalm, on a starry night, better than by diagrams of the con- stellations. — 3Iodern Painters, V., p. 214. There used to be, thirty years ago, a little rivulet of the Wandel, about an inch deep, which ran over the carriage-road and under fi foot-bridge just under the last chalk hill near Croydon. Alas! men came and went; and it — did not go on forever. It has long since been bricked over by the parish authorities; but there was more education in that stream with its minnows than you could get out of a hundred pounds spent yearly in the parish schools, even though you were to spend every farthing of it in teaching the nature of oxygen and hydrogen, and the names, and rate per minute, of all the rivers in Asia and America. — Lectures on Art, p. 77. y Learning by Heart. — Learning by heart, and repitition with perfect accent and cultivated voice, should be made quite principal branches of school discipline up to the time of going to the university. And of writings to be learned by heart, among other i^assages of disputable jihilosophj' and perfect SOCIAL PHILOSOPnT— EDUCATION. 289 poetry, I include certain chapters of the — now for the most part forgotten — wisdom of Solomon; and of these, there is one selected portion which I should recommend not only schoolboys and girls, but per- sons of every age, if they don't know it, to learn forthwith, as the shortest summary of Solomon's wisdom; — namely, the seventeenth chapter of Prov- erbs, which being only twenty-eight verses long, ujay be fastened in the dullest memory at the rate of a verse a day in the shortest month of the year. Storvi Cloud, Lect. II., § 20. The two Chivalries— of the Horse and the Wave. — You little know how much is implied in the two conditions of boys' education, . . . that they shall all learn either to ride or sail : nor by what constancy of law the power of highest disci- pline and honor is vested by Nature in the two chivalries — of the Horse and the Wave. Both are significative of the right command of man over his oAvn passions; but they teach, farther, the strange mystery of relation that exists between his soul and the wild natural elements on the one hand, and the wild lower animals on the other. — Fors, I., p. 119. The Education op Boys in St. George's Guild. — In my own school of St. George I mean to make the study of Christianity a true piece of intellectual work; my boys shall at least know what their fathers believed, before they make up their own wise minds to disbelieve it. They shall be infidels, if they choose, at thirty; but only students, and very modest ones, at fifteen. But I shall at least ask of modern science so much help as shall enable me to begin to teach them at that age the physical laws relating to their own bodies, openly, thor- oughly, and with awe; and of modern civilization, I shall ask so much help as may enable me to teach them what is indeed right, and what wrong, for the citizen of a state of noble humanity to do, and per- mit to be done, by others, unaccused. — Arroivs of the CJiace, II., p. 136. 290 A BUSKII^r ANTHOLOGY. The Study of Grammar.— I am at total issue with most preceptors as to the use of grammar to any body. In a recent examination of our Coniston school I observed that the thing the children did exactly best, was their parsing, and the thing they did exactly worst, their repetition. Could stronger proof be given that the dissection of a sentence is as bad a way to the understanding of it as the dis- section of a beast to the biography of it ? — Fors, IV., p. 379. Lying. — It should be pointed out to young people with continual earnestness that the essence of lying is in deception, not in words; a lie may be told by silence, by equivocation, by the accent on a sylla- ble, by a glance of the eye attaching a peculiar significance to a sentence; and all these kinds of lies are worse and baser by many degrees than a lie plainly worded.— 3Ioder7i Painters, V., p. 290. Children taught Self-reliance. — Children should have their times of being off duty, like soldiers; and when once the obedience, if required, is certain, the little creature should be very early put for periods of practice in complete command of itself; set on the barebacked horse of its own will, and left to break it by its own strength. — Praeterita, II. The Study of History.— Every fairly educated European boy or girl ought to learn the history of five cities — Athens, Rome, Venice, Florence, and London; that of London including, or at least com- pelling in parallel study, some knowledge also of the history of Paris. — Pleasures of England, p. 8. I don't know any Roman history except the two first books of Livy, and little bits here and there ol the following six or seven. I only just know enough about it to be able to make out the bearings and meaning of any fact that I now learn. The greater number of modern historians know, (if honest enough even for that,) the facts, or something that may possibly be like the facts, but haven't the least notion of the meaning of them. So that, SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— EDUCATION. 291 though I have to find out everything that I want in Smith's Dictionary, like any schoolboy, I can usually tell you the significance of what I so find, better than jierhaps even Mr. Smith himself could. — Proserpina, p. 100. The Wordsworth Schoolhouse.— I went only this last month to see the school in which Words- worth was educated. It i-emains, as it was then, a school for peasant lads only; and the doors of its little library, therefore, hang loose on their decayed hinges; and one side of the schoolroom is utterly dark — the window on that side having been long ago walled up, either " because of the window-tax, or perhaps it had got broken," suggested the guar- dian of the place.— i^'ors, III., p. 53. English Parents' idea op Education.— I re- ceive many letters from parents respecting the edu- cation of their children. . . . They never seek, as far as I can make out, an education good in Itself; the conception of abstract rightness in training rarely seems reached by the writers. But an edu- cation " which shall keep a good coat on my son's back; — an education which shall enable him to ring with confidence the visitors' bell at double- belled doors; — education which shall result ulti- mately in establishment of a double-belled door to his own house; in a word, which shall lead to " advancement in life." — Sesame and Lilies, p. 28. Birds do not praise God in their Songs. — This London is the principal nest of men in the world; and I was standing in the centre of it. In the shops of Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill, on each side of me, I do not doubt I could have bought any quan- tity of books for children, which by way of giving them religious, as opposed to secular, instruction, informed them that birds praised God in their songs. Now, though on the one hand, you may be very certain that bii'ds are not machines, on the other hand it is just as certain that they have not the smallest intention of praising God In their songs; and that we cannot prevent the religious 292 A liUSKIN ANTHOLOaY. education of our cliildern more utterly than by be- ginning it in lies.— Eagle's Nest, p. 43. Boys and Squirrels. — As of all quadrupeds there is none so ugly or so miserable as the sloth, so, take him for all in all, there is none so beautiful, so happy, so wonderful as the squirrel. Innocent in all his ways, harndess in his food, i^layful as a kitten, but without cruelty, and surpassing the fantastic dexterity of the monkey, with the grace and the brightness of a bird, the little dark-eyed miracle of the forest glances from brancli to branch more like a sunbeam than a living creature : it leaps, and darts, and twines, where it will; — a chamois is slow to it; and a panther, clumsy: grotesque as a gnome, gentle as a fairy, delicate as the silken plumes of the rush, beautiful and strong like the spiral of a fern, — it haunts you, listens for you, hides from you, looks for you, loves you, as if the angel that walks with your children had made it himself for their heavenly plaything. And this is what you do, to thwart alike your child's angel, and liis God, — you take him out of the woods into the town, — you send him from modest labor to competitive schooling,— you force him out of the fresh air into the dusty bone-house, — you show him the skeleton of the dead monster, and make him pour over its rotten cells and wire- stitched joints, and vile extinct capacities of de- struction, — and when he is choked and sickened with useless horror and putrid air, you let him — re- gretting the waste of time — go out for once to play again by the woodside; — and the first squirrel he sees, he throws a stone at ! — Deucalion, pp. 145, 146. The best dog I ever had was a buU-teri-ier, whose whole object in life was to please me, and nothing else; though, if he found he could please me by hold- ing on with his teeth to an inch-thick stick, and be- ing swung round in the air as fast as I could turn, that was his own idea of entirely felicitous existence. 1 don't like, therefore, hearing of a bulldog's being ill-treated; but I can tell you a little thing that SOCIAL PmLOSOPHY— EDUCATION. 293 chanced to me at Coniston the other day, more horrible, in the deep elements of it, than all the dog, bulldog, or bull fights, or baitings, of England, Spain, and California. A fine boy, the son of an amiable English clergyman, had come on the coach- box round the Water-head to see me, and was telling me of the delightful drive he had had. " Oh," he said, in the triumph of his enthusiasm, "and just at the corner of the wood, there was such a big squirrel ! and the coachman threw a stone at it, and nearly hit it ! " "Thoughtlessness — only thoughtlessness " — say you — proud father ? Well, perhaps not much worse than that. But how could it be much worse ? Thoughtlessness is precisely the chief public calam- ity of our day; and when it comes to the pitch, in a clergyman's child, of not thinking that a stone hurts what it hits of living things, and not caring for the daintiest, dextrousest, innocentest living thingin the noi'thern forests of God's earth, except as a brown excrescence to be knocked off their branches, — nay, good pastor of Christ's lambs, believe me, your boy had better have been employed in thoughtfully and resolutely stoning St. Stephen — if any St. Stephen is to be found in these days, when men not only can't see heaven opened, but don't so much as care to see it, shut.— i^'or^, II., p. 312. Ideal of ax Elementary School.— Every parish school to have gai-den, playground, and cultivable land round it, or belonging to it, si^acious enough to employ the scholars in fine weather mostly out of dooi's. Attached to the building, a children's library, in which the scholars Avho cai'e to read may learn that art as deftly as they like, by themselves, help- ing each other without troubling the master^ — a suflBcient laboratory always, in which shall be specimens of all common elements of natural sub- stances, and where simple chemical, optical, and pneumatic experiments may be shown; and accord- ing to the size and importance of the school, at- 294 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. taclied workshops, many or few, — but always a carpenter's, and first of those added in the better schools, a potter's. In the school Itself, the things taught will be music, geometry, astronomy, botany, zoology, to all; drawing, and history, for childi-en who have gift for either. And finally, to all children of whatever gift, grade, or age, the laws of Honor, the habit of Truth, the Virtue of Humility, and the Happiness of Love.— i^ors, IV., p. 369. The Decorations of School Rooms.— Many a study aj^pears dull or painful to a boy, when it is pursued on a blotted deal desk, under a wall with nothing on it but scratches and pegs, which would have been pursued pleasantly enough in a curtained corner of his father's library, or at the lattice win- dow of his cottage. Nay, my own belief is, that the best study of all is the most beautiful; and that a quiet glade of forest, or the nook of a lake shore, are worth all the schooh'ooms in Christendom, when once you are past the multiplication table; but be that as it may, there is no question at all but that a time ought to come in the life of a well trained youth, when he can sit at a Avriting table without wanting to throw the inkstand at his neighbor; and when also he will feel more capable of certain efforts of mind with beautiful and refined forms about him than with ugly ones. When that time comes he ought to be advanced into the decorated schools; and this advance ought to be one of the important and honorable epochs of his life. . . . Now, the use of your decorative painting would be, in myriads of ways, to animate [the scholars'] history for them, and to put the living aspect of 13ast things before their eyes as faithfully as in- telligent invention can; so that the master shall have nothing to do but once to point to the school- room walls, and forever afterwards the meaning of any word would be fixed in a boy's mind in the best possible way. Is it a question of classical dress —what a tunic was like, or a chlamys, or a peplus ? . SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— EDUCATION. 295 At this day, you have to point to some vile wood- cut, in the middle of a dictionary page, rejjresent- ing the thing hung upon a stick; but then, you would point to a hundred figures, wearing the actual dress, in its fiery colors, in all the actions of various stateliness or strength; you Avould under- stand at once how it fell round the people's limbs as they stood, how it drifted from their shoulders as they went, how it veiled their faces as they wept, how it covered their heads in the day of battle.— A Joi/ For Ever, pp. 71, 73. TEACHING SCIENCE TO CHILDREN. The Education of a little Girl. — I don't in the least want a book to tell her how many species of bees there are; nor what grounds there may be for suspecting that one species is another species; nor why Mr. B. is convinced that what Mr. A. considered tAvo species are indeed one species; nor how conlusively Mr. C has proved that what Mr. B. described as a new species is an old species. Neither do I want a book to tell her what a bee's inside is like, nor whether it has its brains in the small of its back, or nowliere in particular, like a modern political economist; nor whether the mor- phological nature of the sternal portion of the thorax should induce us strictly, to call it the pro- sternum, or may ultimately be found to present no serious inducement of that nature. But I want a book to tell her, for instance, how a bee buzzes; and how, and by what instrumental touch, its angry buzz differs from its pleased or simply busy buzz.* —Fors, II., p. 359. [* So Lockhai-t says of Sir Walter Scott, that lie detested the whole generation of modern school books with their attempt to teach scientific niinntire; but delighted cordially in those of the preceding age, which by addressing the imagination, ob- tained thereby, as lie thonglit, the best chance of imparting solid knowledge and stirring up the mind to an interest in graver studies.— For fuller statements of lluskin on teaching science to children, consult Proserpina, passim, and Fors Clavi- gera, 1»75, Letter 51.J 296 A RVSKIN ANTHOLOGY. Natural History.— I have often been unable, through sickness or anxiety, to follow uiy own art work, but I have never found natural history fail me, either as a delight or a medicine. But for children it must be curtly and wisely taught. We must show them things, not tell them names. A deal-chest of drawers is worth many books to them, and a well-guided country walk worth a hundred lectures. — Arrows of the Chace, L, p. 199. Botany.— The most pressing need is for a simple handbook of the wild flowers of every country — French flowers for French children, Teuton for Teuton, Saxon for Saxon, Highland for Scot — se- verely accurate in outline, and exquisitely colored 6y hand (again the best possible practice in our drawing schools); with a text regardless utterly of Any but the most popular names, and of all micro- iscopic observation; but teaching children the beau- ty of plants as they grow, and their culinary uses when gathered; and that, except for such uses, they should be left growing. — Fors, IV., pp. 391. Botanists have discovered some wonderful con- nection between nettles and figs, which a cowboy, who will never see a ripe fig in his life, need not be at all troubled about; but it will be interesting to him to know what effect nettles have on hay, and what taste they will give to i^orridge; and it will give him nearly a new life if he can be got but once, in a spring-time, to look well at the beautiful circ- let of the white nettle blossom, and work out with his sohoolmaster the curves of its petals, and the waj^ it is set on its central mast. So, the principle of chemical equivalents, beautiful as it is, matters far less to a peasant boy, and even to most sons of gentlemen, than their knowledge how to find whether the water is wholesome in the back-kitchen cistern, or whether the seven-acre field wants sand or chalk. — A Joy For Fver, p. 91. It may not be the least necessary that a peasant should know algebra, or Greek, or drawing. But it may, perhaps, be both possible and expedient SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— EBUCATIOX. 297 that he should be able to arrange his thoughts clearly, to speak his own language intelligibly, to discern between right and wrong, to govern his passions, and to receive such pleasures of ear or sight a,s his life may render accessible to him. I Avould not have him taught the science of music; but most assuredly I would have him taught to sing. I would not teach him the science of drawing; but certainly I would teach him to see; without learning a single term of botany, he should know accurately the habits and uses of every leaf and flower in his fields; and unencumbered by any theories of moral and political philosophy, he should help his neighbor, and disdain a bribe. — Modern Painters, V., p. 354. ExAMi:vATioN Paper for a Botanical Glass.— 1. State the habit of such and such a plant. 2. Sketch its leaf, and a portion of its ramifica- tions (memory). 3. Explain the mathematical laws of its growth and structure. 4. Give the composition of its juices in different seasons. 5. Its uses? Its relations to other families of plants, and conceivable uses beyond those known ? 6. Its commercial value in London ? Mode of cultivation ? 7. Its mythological meaning? The commonest or most beautiful fables respecting it? 8. Quote any important references to it by great poets. 9. Time of its introduction. 10. Describe its consequent influence on civiliza- tion. Of all these ten questions, there is not one which does not test the student in other studies than botany. — Arrotcs of the Chace, I., p. 45. Astronomy.— The beginning of all is to teach the child the places and names of the stars, when it can see them, and to accustom it to watch for the nightly change of those visible. The register of the 298 A BUSKIN- ANTHOLOGY. visible stars of first magnitude and planets should be printed largely and intelligibly for every day of the year, and set by the schoolmaster every day; and the arc described by the sun, Avith its following and preceding stars, from point to jioint of the horizon visible at the place, should be drawn, at least weekly, as the first of the drawing exercises. — Fors, IV., p. 389. Geography. — Of the cheap barbarisms and abor- tions of modern cram, the frightful method of representing mountain chains by black bars is about the most ludicrous and abominable. All mountain chains are in groups, not bars, and their watersheds are often entirely removed from their points of greatest elevation. — Fors, TV-, p. 388. [On Botany, see also Part IV.] EDUCATION IN ART.* If you desire to draw, that you may represent something that you care for, you will advance SAviftly and safely. If you desire to draw, that you may make a beautiful drawing, you will never make one. — Lawsof Fesole, p. 13. Teaching to be adjusted to Capacity. — A young person's critical power should be developed by the presence around him of the best models into the excellence of loMch Ms knoioledge 2^ermits him to enter. He should be encouraged, above all things, to form and express judgment of his own; not as if his judgment were of any importance as related to the excellence of the thing, but that both his master and he may know precisely in what state his mind is. He should be told of an Albert Diirer engraving, " That ?'s good, whether you like it or not; but be sure to determine whether you do [* On the arts as a brancli of Education, see Arrows of the Chace, I., pp. 39-46; and the Supplement to A Joy For Ever; coni' pare also Sesame and Lilies.] SOCIAL PIIILOSOPHY^EDUCATIoy. 299 or do not, and why." All formal expressions of reasons for opinion, such as a boy could catch up and repeat, should be Avithheld like poison; and all models which are too good for him should be kept out of his way. Contemplation of works of art, without understanding them, jades the faculties and enslaves the intelligence. A Rembrandt etch- ing is a better example to a boy than a finished Titian, and a cast from a leaf than one of the Elgin marbles. — Arrows of the Chace, I., p. 42. Illuminated Writing.— Every scliool should be furnislied witli progressive examples, in fac-simile, of beautiful illuminated writing : for nothing could be more conducive to the progress of general scholarship and taste than that the first natural instincts of clever children for the imitation or, often, the invention of picture writing, should be guided and stimulated by perfect models in their own kind.— Fors, IV., p. 389. Proportion. — Make your studies always of the real size of things. A man is to be drawn the size of a man, and a cherry the size of a cherry. " But I cannot draw an elephant his real size ? " There is no occasion for you to draw an elephant. "But nobody can draw Mont Blanc his real size ? " No. Therefore nobody can draw Mont Blanc at all; but only a distant view of Mont Blanc. You may also draw a distant view of a man, and of an elephant, if you like; you must take care that it is seen to be so, and not mistaken for a drawing of a pigmy, or a mouse, near. "But there is a great deal of good miniature- painting?" Yes, and a great deal of fine cameo-cutting. But I am going to teach you to be a painter, not a locket-decorator, or medallist. — Laws of Fesole, p. 18. Color.— You ought to love color, and to think nothing quite beautiful or jierfect without it; and if you really do love it, for its own sake, and are m A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. not merely desirous to color because you think painting a finer thing than drawing, there is some chance you may color well. Nevertheless, you need not hope ever to produce anything more than pleasant helps to memory, or useful and suggestive sketches in color, unless you mean to be wholly an artist. You may, in the time which other vocations leave at your disposal, produce finished, beautiful, and masterly drawings in light and shade. But to color well, requires your life. It cannot be done cheaper. The difficulty of doing right is increased — not twofold nor threefold, but a thousandfold, and more — by the addition of color to your work. If you sing at all, you must sing sweetly; and if you color at all, you must color rightly. Give up all the form, rather than the slightest part of the color : just as, if you felt yourself in danger of a false note, you would give up the word and sing a meaningless sound, if you felt that so you could save the note. . . . An ill-colored picture could be no more admitted into the gallery of any rightly constituted Academy, or Society of Painters, than a howling dog into a concert. — Laws of F6sole, pp. 79, 83. The Vale of Tempe.— I wish I could ask you to draw, instead of the Alps, the crests of Parnassus and Olympus, and the ravines of ^elphi and of Tempe. I have not loved the arts of Greece as others have; yet I love them, and her, so much, that it is to me simply a standing marvel how scholars can endure for all these centuries, during which their chief education has been in the lan- guage and policy of Greece, to have only the names of her hills and rivers upon their lips, and never one line of conception of them in their mind's sight. Which of us knows what the valley of Sparta is like, or the great mountain vase of Arcadia ? which of us, except in mere airy syllabling of names, knows aught of "sandy Ladon's lilied banks, or old Lycseus, or Cyllene hoar ? "—Lectures on Art, p. 73. SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— EDUCATION. 301 To FOSTER Art-gknius IN A YouTH.— Kiiow once for all, that a poet on canvas is exactly the same species of creature as a poet in song, and nearly every error in our methods of teaching will be done away with. For who among us now thinks of bringing men up to be poets ?— of producing poets by any kind of general recipe or method of culti- vation ? Suppose even that we see in youth that which we hope may, in its development, become a power of this kind, should we instantly, suppos- ing that we wanted to make a poet of him, and nothing else, forbid him all quiet, steady, rational labor ? Should we force him to perpetual spinning of new crudities out of his boyish brain, and set before him, as the only objects of his study, the laws of versification which criticism has supposed itself to discover in the works of previous writers ? . . . But if we had sense, should we not rather restrain and bridle the first flame of invention in early youth, heaping material on it as one would on the first sparks and tongues of a fire which we desired to feed into greatness ? Should we not educate the whole intellect into general strength, and all the affections into warmth and honesty, and look to heaven for the rest "i—Pre-Raphael- itism, p. 17. The greatest Art cannot be taught.— The very words "School of Design" involve the pro- foundest of Art fallacies. Drawing may be taught by tutors : but Design only by Heaven; and to every scholar who thinks to sell his insi^iration Heaven refuses its help \—Laws of Fesole, p. 8. Some ten or twelve years ago, when I was first actively engaged in Art teaching, a young Scottish student came up to London to piat himself under me, having taken many prizes (justly, with respect to the qualities looked for by the judges) in various schools of Art. He worked under me very earnestly and patiently for some time; and I was able to praise his doings, in what I thought very high terms', nevertheless, there remained always a look 302 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. of mortification on his face, after he had been praised, however unquahfiedly. At last, he could hold no longer, but one day, when I had been more than usually complimentary, turned to me with an anxious, yet not unconfident expression, and asked; " Do you think, Sir, that 1 shall ever draw as well as Turner?" I paused for a second or two, being much taken aback; and then answered,* " It is far more likely you should be made Emperor of All the Russias. There is a new Emperor every fifteen or twenty years on the average; and by strange hap, and fortunate cabal, anybody might be made Emperor. But there is only one Turner in five hundred years, and God decides, without any admission of auxiliary cabal, what piece of clay his soul is to be put in." It was the first time that I had been brought into direct collision with the modern system of prize- giving aii?l competition ; and the mischief of it was, in the sequel, clearly shown to me, and tragically. This youth had the finest powers of mechanical exe- cution I have ever met with, but was quite incapa- ble of invention, or strong intellectual effort of any kind. Had he been taught early and thoroughly to know his place, and be content with his faculty, he would have been one of the happiest and most serviceable of men. But, at the art schools, he got prize after prize for his neat handling; and having, in his restricted imagination, no power of discerning the qualities of great work, all the vanity of his nature was brought out unchecked; so that, being intensely industrious and conscientious, as well as vain (it is a Scottish combination of character not unfi'equentf), he naturally expected to become one of the greatest of men. My answer not only morti- * I do not mean that I answered in these words, but to the effect of them, at greater length. t We English are usually bad altogether in a harmonious way, and only quite insolent when we are quite good-for- nothing; the least good in us shows itself in a measure of mod- esty ; but many Scotch natures, of fine capacity otherwise, are rendered entirely abortive by conceit. SOCIAL PHILOSorHY—EDVGATION. 303 fied. but angei-ed hiiu, and made him suspicious of me; he thought I wanted to keep his talents from being fairly displayed, and soon afterwards asked leave (he was then in my employment as well as under my teaching) to put himself under another master. I gave him leave at once, telling him, "if he found the other master no better to his mind, he might come back to me whenever he chose." The other master giving him no more hope of ad- vancement than I did, he came back to me; I sent him into Switzerland, to draw Swiss architecture; but instead of doing what I bid him, quietly, and nothing else, he set himself, with furious industry, to draw snowy mountains and clouds, that he might show me he could draw like Albert Durer, or Turner; — spent his strength in agony of vain effort; — caught cold, fell into decline, and died. How many actual deaths are now annually caused by the strain and anxiety of competitive examination, it would startle us all if we could know: but the mis- chief done to the best faculties of the brain in all cases, and the miserable confusion and absurdity involved in the system itself, which offers every place, not to the man who is indeed fitted for it, but to the one who, on a given day, chances to have bodily strength enough to stand the cruellest strain, are evils infinite in their consequences, and more lamentable than many deaths. — Fo7's, I., p. 117. Rapid Drawing.— I have seen a great master's hand flying over the jDaper as fast as gnats over a pool; and the ink left by the light grazing of it, so pale, that it gathered into shade like gray lead; and yet the contours, and fine notes of character, seized with the accuracy of Holbein. But gift of this kind is a sign of the rarest artistic faculty and tact : you need not attempt to gain it, for if it is in you, and you work continually, the power will come of itself; and if it is not in you, will never come; nor, even if you could win it, is the attain- ment wholly desirable. Drawings thus executed 304 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. are always imperfect, however beautiful : they are out of harmony with the general manner and scheme of serviceable art; and always, so far as I have observed, the sign of some deficiency of ear- nestness in the worker.— ia?«5 of Fesole, p. 30. Measurement in Drawing. — The question of measurement is, as you are probably aware, one much vexed in art schools; but it is determined indisputably by the very first words written by Lionardo : "II giovane deve prima imparare pro- spettiva, per le misure d' ogni cosa." Without absolute precision of measurement, it is certainly impossible for you to learn perspective rightly; and as far as I can judge, impossible to learn anything else rightly. And in my past experience of teaching, I have found that such precision is of all things the most difficult to enforce on the pupils. It is easy to persuade to diligence, or provoke to enthusiasm; but I have found it hitherto impossible to humiliate one student into perfect accuracy. — Lectures on Art, p. 95. Errors op the existing popular School op Drawing. — The first error in that system is the forbidding accuracy of measurement, and enforcing the practice of guessing at the size of objects. Now it is indeed often well to outline at first by the eye, and afterwards to correct the drawing by measure- ment; but under the present method, the student finishes his inaccurate drawing to the end, and his mind is thus, during the whole progress of his work, accustomed to falseness in every contour. Such a practice is not to be characterized as merely harmful, — it is ruinous. No student who has sus- tained the injury of being thus accustomed to false contours, can ever recover precision of sight. Nor is this all : he cannot so much as attain to the first conditions of art judgment. For a fine work of art differs from a vulgar one by subtleties of line which the most perfect measurement is not, alone, delicate enough to detect; but to whicli precision of at- tempted measurement directs the attention; while SOCIAL PHILO SOPHY-EDUCATION. 305 the security of boundaries, within which maximum error must be restrained, enables the hand gradu- ally to approach the perfectness which instruments cannot. Gradually, the mind then becomes con- scious of the beauty which, even after this honest effort, remains inimitable; and the faculty of dis- crimination increases alike through failure and success. But Avhen the true contours are voluntar- ily and habitually departed from, the essential qualities of every beautiful form are necessarily lost, and the student remains forever unaware of their existence. The second error in the existing system is the en- forcement of the execution of finished drawings in light and shade, before the student has acquired delicacy of sight enough to observe the gi-adations. It requires the most careful and patient teaching to develop this faculty; and it can only be developed at all by raind and various practice from natural objects, during which the attention of the student must be directed only to the facts of the shadows themselves, and not at all arrested on methods of producing them. He may even be allowed to pro- duce them as he likes, or as he can; the thing re- quired of him being only that the shade b'e of the right darkness, of the right shape, and in the right relation to other shades round it; and not at all that it shall be prettily cross hatched, or decep- tively transparent. But at present, the only virtues required in shadow are that it shall be pretty in texture and picturesquely effective; and it is not thought of the smallest consequence that it should be in the right place, or of the right depth. And the consequence is that the student remains, when he becomes a painter, a mere manufacturer of conven- tional shadows of agreeable texture, and to the end of his life incapable of perceiving the conditions of the simplest natural passage of chiaroscuro. The third error in the existing code, and in ulti- mately destructive power, the worst, is the con- struction of entirely symmetrical or balanced forms for exercises in ornamental design; whereas every 306 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. beautiful form in this world, is varied in the minu- tiae of the balanced sides. Place the most beautiful of human forms in exact symmetry of position, and curl the hair into equal curls on both sides, and it will become ridiculous, or monstrous. Nor can any law of beauty be nobly observed without occasional wilfulness of violation. — Laws of Fisole, pp. 7, 6. Perspective. — I never met but with two men in my life who knew enough of perspective to draw a Grothic arch in a retiring plane, so that its lateral dimensions and curvatures ujight be calculated to scale from the drawing. — Pre-Raphaelitism, p. 20. No great painters ever trouble themselves about perspective, and very few of them know its laws; they draw everything by the eye, and, naturally enough, disdain in the easy parts of their work rules which cannot help them in difficult ones. It would take about a month's labor to draw im- perfectly, by laws of i^erspective, what any great Venetian will draw perfectly in five minutes, when he is throwing a wreath of leaves round a head, or bending the curves of a pattern in and out among the folds of drapery. . . . Turner, though he was professor of perspective to the Royal Academy, did not know what he professed, and never, as far as 1 remember, drew a single building in true perspec- tive in his life; he drew them only with as much persjDective as suited him. Prout also knew nothing of perspective, and twisted his buildings, as Turner did, into whatever shapes he liked. I do not justify this; and would recommend the student at least to treat perspective with common civility, but to pay no court to it. — Elements of Dratoing, p. 12. All the professors of perspective in Europe, could not, by perspective, draw the live of curve of a sea beach; nay, could not outline one pool of the quiet water left among the sand. The eye and hand can do it, nothing else. All the rules of aerial perspective that ever were written, will not tell me how sharply the pines on the hill-top are drawn at this moment on the sky. I shall know if I see them, SOCIAL PHILOSOrilY—EBUCAriON. 30? and love them; not till then. — Stones of Venice, III., p. 481. When perspective was first invented the world thought it a mighty discovery, and the greatest men it had in it were as proud of knowing that retiring lines converge, as if all the wisdom of Solomon had been compressed into a vanishing point. And, accordingly, it became nearly impos- sible for any one to paint a Nativity, but he must turn the stable and manger into a Corinthian arcade, in order to show his knowledge of perspec- tive; and half the best architecture of the time, instead of being adorned with historical sculpture, as of old, was set forth Avith bas-relief of minor corridors and galleries, thrown into perspective. — Stones of Venice, p. 60. Aerial Perspective. — Aerial perspective, as giv- en by the modern artist, is, in nine cases out of ten, a gross and ridiculous exaggeration. . . . The other day I showed a fine impression of Albert Durer's " St. Hubert " to a modern engraver, who had never seen it nor any other of Albert Durer's Avorks. He looked at it for a minute contemptuously, then turned away : " Ah, I see that man did not knoAv much about aerial perspective ! " All the glorious work and thought of the mighty master, all the re- dundant landscape, the living vegetation, the mag- nificent truth of line, were dead letters to him. because he happened to have been taught one particular piece of knowledge which Durer despised. — Stones of Venice, III., p. 49. You:ng Folks ix Picture Galleries. —It only wastes the time and dulls the feelings of young persons, to drag them through picti;re galleries; at least, unless they themselves wish to look at l^articular pictures, (jenerally, young people only care to enter a picture gallery when there is a chance of getting leave to run a race to the other end of it; and they had better do that in the gar- den below. If, however, they have any real enjoy- ment of pictures, and want to look at this one or SOS A BUSKIN ANTBOLOaY. that, the principal point is never to disturb them in looking at what interests them, and never to make them look at what does not. Nothing is of the least use to young people (nor, by the way, of much use to old ones), but what interests them- and therefore, though it is of great importance to put nothing but good art into their possession, yet when they are passing through great houses or galleries, they should be allowed to look precisely at what pleases them : if it is not useful to them as art, it will be in some other way : and the healthiest way in which art can interest them is when they look at it, not as art, but because it represents something they like in nature. If a boy has had his heart filled by the life of some great man, and goes up thirstily to a Vandyck portrait of him, to see what he was like, that is the wholesomest way in which he can begin the study of portraiture; if he love mountains, and dwell on a Turner drawing because he sees in it a likeness to a Yorkshire scar, or an Alpine pass, that is the wholesomest way in which he can begin the study of landscape; and if a girl's mind is filled with dreams of angels and saints, and she pauses before an Angelico because she thinks it must surely be indeed like heaven, that is the wholesomest way for her to begin the study of re- ligious Sivt.— Elements of Drawing , pp. 185, 186. SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— MUSEUMS. 309 CHAPTER III. Museums. A iiiiiseum is, be it first observed, primarily, not '.c al! a place of entertainment, but a place of Sducation. And a museum is, be it secondly, ob- served, not a place for elementary education, but for that of already far-advanced scholars. And it is by no means the same thing as a parish school, or a Sunday school, or a day school, or even — the Brighton Aquarium. — Fors, III., p. CG. In all museums intended for popular teaching, there are two great evils to be avoided. The first is, suiDerabundance; the second, disorder. The first is having too much of everything. You will find in your own work that the less you have to look at, the better you attend. You can no more see twenty things worth seeing in an hour, than you can read twenty books worth reading in a day. Give little, but that little good and beautiful, and explain it tlioroughly. — Deucalion, p. 94. Nothing has so much retarded the advance of art as our misei'able habit of mixing the works of every master and of every century. More would be learned by an ordinarily intelligent observer in simply passing from a room in which there were only Titians, to another in which there were oidy Caraccis, than by reading a volume of lectures on color. Few minds are strong enough first to ab- stract and then to generalize the characters of paintings hung at random. Pew minds are so dull as not at once to perceive the points of difi'er- ence, were the works of each painter set by them- selves. The fatigue of which most persons com- plain in passing through a picture gallery, as at present arranged, is indeed partly caused by the 310 A liUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. straining elloit to see what is out of sight, but not less by the continual change of temper and of tone of thought demanded in passing from the work of one master to that of another. — Arrows of the Chace, L, p. 61. A museum, primarily, is to be for simple persons. Children, that is to say, and peasants. For your student, your antiquary, or your scientific gentle- man, there must be separate accommodation, or they must be sent elsewhere. . . . Secondly: The museum is to manifest to these simi^le persons the beauty and life of all things and creatures in their perfect- ness. Not their modes of corrujition, disease, or death. Not even, always, their genesis, in the more or less blundering beginnings of it; not even their modes of nourishment, if destructive; you must not stuff a blackbird pulling up a worm, nor exhibit in a glass case a crocodile crunching a baby. Neither must you ever show bones or guts, or any other charnel-house stuff. Teach your children to know the lark's note from the nightingale's; the length of their larynxes is their own business and God's. It is difficult to get one clear idea into anybody, of any single thing. But next to impossible to get two clear ideas into them, of the same thing. We have had lion's heads for door-knockers these hun- dred and fifty years, without ever learning so much as what a lion's head is like. But with good mod- ern stuffing and sketching, I can manage now to make a child really understand something about the beast's look, and his mane, and his sullen eyes and brindled lips. But if I'm bothered at the same time with a big bony box, that has neither mane, lips, nor eyes, and have to explain to the poor wretch of a parish schoolboy how somehow this fits on to that, I will be bound that, at a year's end, draw one as big as the other, and he won't know a lion's head from a tiger's — nor a lion's skull from a rabbit's. Nor is it the parish boy only who suffers. The scientific people themselves SOCIAL FHILOSOPHY-MUSEUMS. 311 miss half tlieir points from the haldt of hacking at things, instead of looking at them. When I gave my lecture on the Swallow at Oxford, I challenged every anatomist there to tell me the use of his tail (I believe half of them didn't know he had one). Not a soul of them could tell me, which I knew beforehand; but I did not know, till I had looked well through their books, hoAV they were quarrel- ling about his wings ! Actually, at this moment (Easter Tuesday, 1880), I don't believe you can find in any scientific book in Europe, a true account of the Avay a bird flies— or how a snake serpentines. My Swallow lecture was the first bit of clear state- ment on the one point, and when I get my Snake lecture published, you will have the first extant bit of clear statement on the other; and that is simply because the anatomists can't, for their life, look at a thing till they have skinned it. In the British Museum, at the top of the stairs, we encounter in a terrific alliance a giraffe, a hip- popotamus, and a basking-shark. The public- young and old— pass with a start and a stare, and re- main as wise as they were before about all the three creatures. The day before yesterday I was standing by the big fish,— a father came up to it with his little boy. "That's a shark," says he; " it turns on its side when it wants to eat you," and so went on— literally as wise as he was before; for he had read in a book that sharks turn on their side to bite, and he never looked at the ticket, which told him this particular shark only ate small fish. Now he never looked at the ticket because he didn't expect to find anything on it except that this was the Sharkogobalus Smith-Jonesianius. But if, round tlie walls of the room, there had been all the well-known kinds of shcU-k, going down in gradu- ated sizes, from that basking one to our waggling dog-fish, and if every one of these had had a plain English ticket, with ten words of common sense on it, saying where and how the beast lived, and a num- ber (unchangeable) referring to a properly arranged manual of the shark tribe (sold by the Museum 312, A EUSKIN ANTHOLOGY: publisher, who ought to have his httle shop close by the porter's lodge), both father and son must have been much below the level of the average Eng- lishman and boy in mother wit if they did not go out of the room by the door in front of them very dis- tinctly, and— to themselves — amazingly wiser than they had come in by the door behind them. If I venture to give instances of fault from the British Museum, it is because, on the whole, it is the best ordered and pleasantest institution in all England, and the grandest concentration of the means of human knowledge in the world. Every considerable town ought to have its ex- emplary collections of woodM^ork, ironwork, and iewellery attached to the schools of their several trades, leaving to be illustrated in its pu olic mu- seum, as in an hexagonal bee's ceil, the six queenly and muse-taught arts of needlework, writing, pot- tery, sculpture, architecture, and painting. For each of these, there should be a separate Tribune or Chamber of absolute tribunal, which need not be large — that, so called, of Florence, not the size of a railway waiting-room, has actually for the last century determined the taste of the Euro- pean public in two arts ! — in which the absolute best in each art, so far as attainable by the communal pocket, shall be authoritatively exhibited, Avith sim- ple statement that it 4s good, and reason why it is good, and notification in Avhat particulars it is un- surpassable, together with some not too complex illustrations of the steps by which it has attained to that perfection, where these can be traced far ba,ck in history. These six Tribunes, or Temples of Fame, being first set, with their fixed criteria, there should fol- low a series of historical galleries, showing the rise and fall (if fallen') of the arts in their beautiful associations as practiced in the great cities and by the great nations of the world. The history of Egypt, of Persia, of Greece, of Italy, of France, and of England, should be given in their arts: dynasty by dynasty, age by age; and for tbft seventh, a SOCIAL PIIILOSOPtlY— MUSEUMS. 313 Sunday Room, for the histovy of Christiaiiity in its Art, including; the farthest range and feeblest efforts of it; reserving' for tliis room also, what power could be reached in delineation of the great mon- asteries and cathedrals which were once the glory of all Christian lands. — London Art Journal, June and Aug., 1880. [At his examination before the National Gallery Commission, in 1857, Mr. Ruskin said * that the Tribune at Florence was poorly arranged, the paintings and sculptures huddled together merely to show how many great and rich works could be got together in one place. But paintings and sculptures should be exhibited separately. He gave it as his opinion that all kinds of pictures ought to be shown under glass, if possible; it gives them a greater delicacy, and keeps them from being ruined by coal smoke and dust. Again, paintings should be hung on a line with the eye, and not so as to cover the wtills of a room four or five deep. He would not accumulate in the gallery avast number of pictures, but a few of the characteristic ones of the greatest artists. Indeed, there should be two public galleries, one removed at a distance from London, and another, easily accessible to the people, designed for their education, and containing not the best and most precious works, but works true and right so far as they went. On some one enquiring his opinion of the value of second-rate art, he is re- ported to have said that fiftli-rate, sixth-rate to a hundredth-rate art is good. Art that gives jjleasure to any one has a right to exist. A child's picture book pleases the baby; a flower beautifully drawn will delight a girl who is learning botany, and may be useful to some man of science. The true outline of a leaf shown to a child may turn the whole course of its life.fl * See The Lomlon Literary Gazette, Aug. 22, 1857. t For further Ideiis of Ruskin on public Galleries of Art, see Arn/ws of the Chace, I., pp. 47 (55 iind 101-107. 314 A liUSKlN ANTHOLOar. CHAPTER IV. St. George's Guild.* To THE Workmen and Laborers op Great Britain. — Are there any landlords — any masters — who would like better to be served by men than by iron devils ? Any tenants, any workmen, who can be true to their leaders and to each other ? who can vow to work and to live faithfully, for the sake of the joy of their homes ? — Will any such give the tenth of what they have, and of what they earn — not to emigrate with, but to stay in England with; and do what is in their hands and hearts to make her a happy England ? I am not rich; (as people now estimate riches), and great part of what I have is already engaged in maintaining art-workmen, or for other objects more or less of public utility. The tenth of whatever is left to me, estimated as accurately as I can, (you shall see the accounts,) I will make over to you in perpetuity, with the best security that English law can give, on Christmas Day of this year, with engagement to add the tithe of whatever I earn afterwards. Who else will help, with little or much? the object of such fund being, to begin, and gradually — no matter how slowly — to increase, the buying and securing of [* St. George's Guild wasfonnully organized in 1871, and duly registered as a limited liabilities company. Ruskin at that time made over to it tlie tenth of his Income, he being worth about $5.50,000. Up to July, 1876, the membership numbered only about thirty persons, many of tliem young ladies. It curiously marks the unpopular nature of the enterprise, that the mastei', in drawing up for publication his list of names of members dared to give, at first, only the initials, and afterwards the first and last names of sncli as he thought would not blame him for so doing. Up to July, 1877, the Guild had funds in cash to the amount of £3,487 128. Branch societies have been formed in Manchester, Glasgow, and Aberdeen. But Furs Clavigera, the oflicial joui-nal of the Guild, is no more issued, and the whole concern is reported to be moribund, if not dead. See the Intro- duction for further details.' SOCIAL PIIILOSOPHYST. OEORQ&S GUILD. 313 land in England, which shall not be built upon, but cultivated by Englishmen, with their own hands, and such help of force as they can find in wind and wave. I do not care with how many, or how few, this thing is begun, nor on what inconsiderable scale— if it be but in two or three poor men's gardens. So much, at least. I can buy, myself and give them. If no help come, I have done and said what I could, and there will be an end. If any help come to me, it is to be on the following conditions :— We will try to make some small piece of English ground, beautiful, peaceful, and fruitful. We will have no steam-engines upon it, and no railroads; we will have no untended or unthought-of creatures on it; none wretched, but the sick; none idle, but the dead. We will have no liberty upon it; but instant obedience to known law, and appointed persons; no equality upon it; but recognition of every bet- terness that we can find, and reprobation of every worseness. When we want to go anywhere, we will go there quietly and safely, not at forty miles an hour in the risk of our lives; when we want to carry anything anywhere, we will carry it either on the backs of beasts, or on our own, or in carts, or boats ; we will have plenty of flowers and vege- tables in our gardens, plenty of corn and grass in our fields,— and few bricks. We will have some music and poetry; the children shall learn to dance to it and sing it;— perhaps some of the old people, in time, may also. We will have some art, more- over; we will at least try if, like the Greeks, we can't make some pots. The Greeks used to paint pictures of gods on their pots; Ave, probably, can- not do as much, but we may put some pictures of insects on them, and reptiles;— butterflies, and frogs, if nothing better. There was an excellent old potter in France who used to i^ut frogs and vipers into his dishes, to the admiration of man- kind; we can surely put something nicer than that. Little by little, some higher art and imagination may manifest themselves among us; and feeble rays 816 A RVSKIN ANTHOLOGY. oi science may dawn for us. Botany, though too dull to dispute the existence of flowers; and history, though too sinii^le to question the nativity of men; — nay — even perhaps an unealculating and uncov- etous wisdom, as of rude Magi, presenting, at such nativity, gifts of gold and frankincense. — Fors, I., p. 73. Not an Experiment. — The very gist and essence of everything St. George orders is that it shall not be new, and not an "experiment"; but the re- declaration and re-doing of things known and practised successfully since Adam's time. ... Is the earth new, and its bread ? Are the plow and sickle new in men's hands ? Are Faith and God- liness new in their hearts ? Are common human charity and courage new ? By God's grace, lasting yet, one sees in miners' hearts and sailors'. Your po- litical cowardice is new, and your public rascality, and your blasphemy, and your equality, and your science of Dirt. New in their insolence and ram- pant infinitude of egotism — not new in one idea, or in one possibility of good. — Fors, IV., p. 45. An Ounce of Prevention.— To divei-t a little of the large current of English charity and justice from watching disease to guarding health, and from the punishment of crime to the reward of virtue; to establish, here and there, exercise grounds instead of hospitals, and training schools instead of peni- tiaries, is not, if you will slowly take it to heart, a frantic imagination. — Fors, I., p. 132. Contributions to the Fund op St. George.— First, let whoever gives us any, be clear in their minds that it is a Gift. It is not an Investment. It is a frank and simple gift to the British peojile; nothing of it is to come back to the giver. But also, nothing of it is to be lost. This money is not to be spent in feeding Woolwich infants with gunpowder. It is to be spent in dressing the earth and keeping it— in feeding human lips— in clothing human bod- ies — in kindling human souls. First of all, I say, in dressing tlie earth. As soon SOCIAL rUILOSOPHY—ST. GEORGE'S GflLB. 317 as the fund reaches any sufficient amount, the Trustees shall buy with it any kind of land offered them at just pi-ice in Britain. Rock, moor, marsh, or sea-shore — it matters not what, so it be British ground, and secured to us. Then, we will ascertain the absolute best that can be made of every acre. We will first examine what flowers and herbs it naturally bears; every whole- some floAver that it will grow shall be sown in its wild places, and every kind of fruit tree that can prosper ; and arable and pasture land extended by every expedient of tillage, with humble and simple cottage dwellings under faultless sanitary regula- tion. AVhatever piece of land we begin work upon, we shall treat thoroughly at once, putting unlimited manual labor on it, until we have every foot of it under as strict care as a flower garden : and the laborers shall be paid sufficient, unchanging wages; and their children educated compulsorily in agri- cultural schools inland, and naval schools by the sea; the indispensable first condition of such education being that boys learn either to ride or to sail; the girls to spin, weave, and sew, and at a proper age to cook all ordinary food exquisitely; the youths of both sexes to be disciplined daily in the strictest ijractice of vocal music; and for moral- ity, to be taught gentleness to all brute creatures — finished courtesy to each other — to speak truth with rigid care— and to obey orders with the precision of slaves. Then, as they get older, they are to learn the natural history of the place they live in — to know Latin, boys and gii'ls both — and the history of five cities: Athens, Rome, Venice, Florence, and Juoudon.—Fors, I., pp. 109, 110. The Company of Mont Rose.— Within my St. George's Company, — which shall be of persons still following their own business, wherever they are, but who will give the tenth of what they have, or make, for the purchase of land in England, to be cultivated by hand, as aforesaid in my last May number,— shall be another company, not distinc- 318 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. tive, called of " Monte Rosa," or " Mont Rose," be- cause Monte Rosa is the central mountain of the range between north and south Europe, which keeps the gift of the rain of heaven. And the motto or watchword of this company is to be the old French " Mont-joie." And they are to be entirely devoted, according to their power, first to the man- ual labor of cultivating pure land, and guiding of pure streams and rain to the places where they are needed; and secondly, together with this manual labor, and much by its means, they are to carry on the thoughtful labor of true education, in them- selves and of othei's. And they are not to be monks nor nuns; but are to learn, and teach all fair arts, and sweet order and obedience of life; and to educate the children entrusted to their schools in such practical arts and patient obedience; but not at all, necessai'ily, in either arithmetic, writing, or reading. — Fors, I., p. 229. Creed of St. George's Guild.— I. 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 good- ness of His work. And I Avill strive to love Him, and keep His law, and see His work, while I live. II. I trust in the nobleness of human nature, in the majesty of its faculties, the fulness of its mercy, and the joy of its love. And I will strive to love my neighbor as myself, and, even when I cannot, will act as if I did. III. I will labor, with such strength and oppor- tunity as God gives me, for my own daily bread; and all that my hand finds to do, I will do with my might. IV. I will not deceive, or cause to be deceived, any human being for my gain or pleasure; nor hurt, or cause to be hurt, any human being for my gain or pleasure; nor rob, or cause to be robbed, any human being for my gain or pleasure. V. 1 will not kill nor hurt any living creature SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ST. GEORGE'S GUILD. Zl% needlessly, nor destroy any beautiful thing, but Avill strive to save and comfort all gentle life, and guard and perfect all natural beauty, upon the earth. VI. 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. VII. I will obey all the laws of my country faith- fully; and the orders of its monarch, and of all persons appointed to be in authority under its monarch, so far as such laws or commands are consistent with what I suppose to be the law of God; and when they are not, or seem in anywise to need change, I will oppose them loyally and delib- erately, not with malicious, concealed, or disorderly violence. VIII. 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 w^ill obey the laws of the Society called of St. George, into which I am this day received; and the orders of its masters, and of all persons appointed to be in authority under its masters, so long as I remain a Companion, called of St. George. — Foi's, III., p. 40. IN RUSKIN'S UTOPIA. It would be part of my scheme of physical educa- tion that every youth in the State — from the King's son downwards — should learn to do something finely and thoroughly with his hand, so as to let him know what touch meant; and Avliat stout craft- manship meant; and to inform him of many things besides, which no man can learn but by some se- verely accurate discipline in doing. — Time and Tide, p. 91. In the case of great old families, which always ought to be, and in some measure, however deca- dent, still triily are, the noblest monuniental archi- 320 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. tecture of the kingdom, living temples of sacred tradition and hero's religion, so much land ought to be granted to them in perpetuity as may enable them to live thereon with all circumstances of state and outward nobleness,— J'^ we and Tide, p. 100. All our actual and professed soldiers, whether professed for a time only, or for life, must be kept to hard work of hand, when not in actual war; their honor consisting in being sent to services of more pain and danger than others : to lifeboat ser- vice; to redeeming of ground from furious rivers or sea — or mountain ruin; to subduing wild and unhealthy land, and extending the confines of col- onies in the front of miasm and famine, and savage races. — Time and Tide, p. 119. Music. — In their first learning of notes, the young people shall be taught the great purpose of music, which is to say a thing that you mean deeply, in the strongest and clearest possible way; and they shall never be taught to sing what they don't mean. They shall be able to sing merrily when they are happy, and earnestly when they are sad; but they shall find no mirth in mockery, nor in obscenity; neither shall they waste and jjrofane their hearts with artificial and lascivious sorrow: Regulations which will bring about some curious changes in piano-playing, and several other things. — Fo7's, I., p. 123. Sumptuary Laws- — One of the most important conditions of a healthful system of social economy would be the restraint of the properties and in- comes of the upper classes within certain fixed limits. The temptation to use every energy in the accumulation of wealth being thus removed, an- other, and a higher ideal of the duties of advanced life would be necessarily created in the national mind; by withdrawal of those who had attained the i^rescribed limits of wealth from commercial com- petition, earlier worldly success, and earlier mar- riage, with all its beneficent moral results, would become possible to the young; while tlie older men of active intellect, whose sagacity is now lost or SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY— ST. GEORGE'S GUILD. 321 warped in the furtherance of tlieir own meanest interests, would he induced unselfishly to occupy themselves in the superintendence of public insti- tutions, or furtherance of public advantage. — Time and Tide, p. 15. The Propessiojvs in Utopia.— So far from want- ing any lawyers, of the kind that live by talking, I shall have the strongest possible objection to their appearance in the country. For doctors, I shall always entertain a profound respect; but when I get my athletic education established, of what help to them will my respect be ? They will all starve! And for clergymen, it is true, I shall have a large number of episcopates — one over every hundred families— (and many positions of civil au- thority also, for civil officers, above them and below), but all these places will involve much hard work, and be anything but covetable; while, of clergymen's usual work — admonition, theological demonstration, and the like — I shall want very little done indeed, and that little done for nothing! for I will allow no man to admonish anybody, until he has jjreviously earned his own dinner by more prodvictive work than admonition. — Time and Tide, p. 73. Co-operative Trade Guilds.— I use the word co-oi3eration, as opposed, not to masterhood, but to competition. I do not mean, for instance, by co- operation, that all the master-bakers in a town are to give a share of their i^roflts to the men who go out with the bread; but that the masters are not to try to undersell each other, nor seek each to get the other's business, but are all to form one society, selling to the public under a common law of severe penalty for unjust dealing, and at an established price. 1 do not mean that all bankers' clei'ks should be partners in the bank; but I do mean that all bankers should be members of a great national body, answerable as a society for all de- Ijosits; and that the private business of speculating with other people's money should take another name than that of " banking." And, for final in- 322 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. stance, I mean by " co-operation " not only fellow- ships between trading firms, but between trading nations; so that it shall no more be thought (as it is now, with ludicrous and vain selfishness) an ad- vantage for one nation to undersell another, and take its occupation away from it; but that the primal and eternal law of vital commerce shall be of all men understood — namely, that every nation is fitted by its character, and the natvire of its terri- tories, for some particular employments or manu- factures; and that it is the true interest of every other nation to encourage it in such specialty, and by no means to interfere with, but in all ways for- ward and protect its efforts, ceasing all rivalship with it, so soon as it is strong enough to occupy its proper place. — Time mid Tide, p. 11. The chief difficulty in the matter would be to fix your standard. This would have to be done by the guild of every trade in its own manner, and within certain easily recognizable limits; and this fixing of standard would necessitate much simplicity in the forms and kinds of articles sold. You could only warrant a certain kind of glazing or painting in china, a certain quality of leather or cloth, bricks of a certain clay, loaves of a defined mixture of meal. Advisable improvements or varieties in manufacture would have to be examined and ac- cepted by the trade guild : when so accepted, they would be announced in public reports; and all puffery and self-proclamation, on the part of trades- men, absolutely forbidden, as much as the making of any other kind of noise or disturbance. But observe, this law is only to have force over tradesmen whom I suppose to have joined volun- tarily in carrying out a better system of commerce. Outside of their guild, they would have to leave the rogue to puff and cheat as he chose, and the public to be gulled as they chose. All that is neces- sary is that the said public should clearly know the shops in which they could get warranted arti- cles; and, as clearly, those in which they bought at their own risk.— Tiwe and Tide, pp. 57-59. PART III. CONDUCT OF LIFE. A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. PART III.— CONDUCT OF LIFE. CHAPTER 1. Morals. Every great evil brings some good in its back- ward eddies. — Lectures on Art, p. 43. Youth never yet lost its modesty where age had not lost its honor; nor did childhood ever refuse its reverence, except wdiere age had forgotten correc- tion. — Lectures on Architecture, p. 139. Believe me, every virtue of the higher phases of manly character begins in this; — in truth and modesty before the face of all maidens; in truth and pity, or truth and reverence, to all womanhood. Croum of Wild Olive, Lect. III., p. 91. He only is advancing in life, whose heart is getting softer, whose blood Avarmer, whose brain quicker, whose spirit is entering into living peace. — Sesame and Lilies, p. 67. Virtue ceases to be such, if expecting reward: it is therefore never materially rewarded. (I ought to have said, except as one of the appointed means of physical and mental health.)— ^07*5, III., p. 330. Many of our capacities for receiving noblest emo- tion are abused, in mere idleness, for pleasure's sake, and jjeople take the excitement of a solemn sensation, as they do that of a strong drink. — Mod- ern Painters, IV., p. 49. If you have faithfully loved the noble work of others, you need not fear to speak with respect of tilings duly done, of your own. — Athena, p. 104. 329 330 A EUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. Let the reader be assured of this, that unless important changes are occurring in his opinions continually, all his life long, not one of those opin- ions can be on any questionable subject true. 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. — Mod- ern Painters, V., p. 13. Ill-got money is always finally spent on the harlot. Look at Hogarth's two 'prentices; the sum of social wisdom is in that bit of rude art- work, if one reads it solemnly. — Arrot>os of the Chaee, p. 134. The automatic amours and involuntary proposals of recent romance acknowledge little further law of morality than the instinct of an insect or the effer- vescence of a chemical mixture. — Fiction — Fair and Foul, p. 17. Self-saci*ifice which is sought after and triumiAed in, is usually foolish; and calamitous in its issue: and by the sentimental proclamation and pursuit of it, good people have not only made most of their own lives useless, but the whole framework of their religion hollow. — Ethics of the Dust, p. 79. Poetical Justice ix Miss Edgeworth's Books. — It is very nice, in the midst of a wild world, to have the very ideal of poetical justice done always to one's hand:— to have everybody found out, who tells lies; and everybody decorated with a red riband who doesn't; and to see the good Laura, who gave away her half sovereign, receiving a grand ovation from an entire dinner party disturbed for the pur- pose; and poor, dear, little Rosamond, who chooses purple jars instead of new shoes, left at last without either her shoes or her bottle. But it isn't life: and in the way children might easily understand it, it isn't morals. — Ethics of the Dust, p. 89. Dependence, and not Independpjnce, the Law OP Life. — The true strength of every human soul is to be dependent on as many nobler as it can discern, and to be depended upon by as many inferior as it can reach. — Eagle's Nest, p. 54. CONDUCT OF LIFE— MORALS. 331 Independence you had better cease to talk of, for you are dependent not only on every act of people whom you never heard of, who are living around you, but on every past act of what has been dust for a thousand years. So also, does the course of a thousand years to come depend upon the little per- ishing strength that is in you.— Fors, I., p. 3o. Capital Pujjishment. — It is only rogues who have a violent objection to being hanged, and only abettors of rogues who would desire anything else for them. Honest men don't in the least mind being hanged occasionally by mistake, so only that the general principle of the gallows be Justly main- tained; and they have the jjleasure of knowing that the world they leave is positively minded to cleanse Itself of the human vermin with which they have been classed by mistake. The contrary move- ment — so vigorously progressive in modern days — has its real root in a gradually increasing convic- tion on the i^art of the English nation that they are all vermin. (" Worms " is the orthodox Evangeli- cal expression.) — Fors, II., p. 100. I believe it to be quite one of the crowning wick- ednesses of this age that we have starved and chilled our faculty of indignation, and neither desire nor dare to punish crimes justly. — Lectures on Art, j). 60. Your modern conscience will not incur the respon- sibility of shortening the hourly moi-e guilty life of a single rogue; but will contentedly fire a salvo of mitrailleuses into a regiment of honest men — leaving Providence to guide the shot. — Fors, II., p. 211. Three Forms of Asceticism. — Three principal forms of asceticism have existed in this weak world. Religious asceticisn), being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake (as supposed) of religion ; seen chiefly in the middle ages. Military asceticisni, being the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for the sake of power; seen chiefly in the early days of Sparta and Rome. And monetary asceticism, con- sisting in the refusal of pleasure and knowledge for 332 A liUSKII^ ANTHOLOGY. the sake of money; seen in the ])vesent days of Lon- don and Manchester. — Modern Painters, V., p. 850. The noble Tower needs no Help, — Your noble tower must need no help, must be sustained by no crutches, must give place to no suspicion of decrepitude. Its office may be to withstand war, look forth for tidings, or to point to heaven: but it must have in its own walls the strength to do this; it is to be itself a bulwark not to be sustained by other bulwarks; to rise and look forth, "the tower of Lebanon that looketh toward Damascus,'* like a stern sentinel, not like a child held up in its nurse's arms. — Stones of Venice, I., p. 20G. Looking Facts full in the Face.— As the igno- ble person, in his dealings with all that occurs in the world about him, first sees nothing clearly, — looks nothing fairly in the face, and then allows himself to be swept away by the trampling torrent, and unescapable force, of the things that he would not foresee, and could not understand: so the noble person, looking the facts of the world full in the face, and fathoming them Avith deep faculty, then deals with them in unalarmed intelligence and unhurried strength, and becomes, with his human intellect and will, no unconscious nor insignificant agent, in consummating their good, and restraining their evil— The Two Paths, p. 32. The Mystery op Life.— "What is your life? It is even as a vapor that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away.' I suppose few people reach the middle or latter period of their age, with- out having, at some moment of change or disap- pointment, felt the truth of those bitter words; and been startled by the fading of the sunshine from the cloud of their life, into the svidden agony of the knowledge that the fabric of it was as fragile as a dream, and the endurance of it as transient as the dew. But it is not always that, even at such times of melancholy surprise, we can enter into any true perception that this human life shares, in the nature of it, not only the evanescence, but the mystery of CONDUCT OF LIFE— MORALS. 333 the cloud; that its avenues are wreathed in dark- ness, and its forms and courses no less fantastic, than spectral smAohBunYe.— Mystery of Life, p. 103. Meliorism.— Though faint with sickness, and encumbered in ruin, the true workers redeem inch by inch the wilderness into garden ground; by the help of their joined hands the order of all things is surely sustained and vitally expanded, and although Avith strange vacillation, in the eyes of the watcher, the morning conieth, and also the night, there is no hour of human existence that does not draw on towards the perfect A&y .—Lectures on Art, p. 64. The Strength of Greece was in Moral Life.— Scarcely any of the moral power of Greece depended on her admiration of beauty, or strength in the body. The power of Greece depended on practice in military exercise, involving severe and continual ascetic discipline of the senses; on a perfect code of military heroism and patriotic honor; on the desire to live by the laws of an admittedly divine justice; and on the vivid conception of the presence of spir- itual heiugs.—Eagle\s Nest, •^. 130. People who are ashamed of honest Work.— People usually reason in some such fashion as this: " I don't seem quite fit for a head-manager in the firm of & Co., therefore, in all probability, I am fit to be Chancellor of the Exchequer." Whereas they ought rather to reason thus: " I don't seem to be quite fit to be head-manager in the firm of & Co., but I daresay J might do some- thing in a small green-grocery business ; I used to be a good judge of peas;' that is to say, always trying lower instead of trying higher, until they find bot- tom: once well set on the ground, a man may build up by degrees, safely, instead of disturbing every one in his neighborhood by perpetual catastrophes. Pre-Raphaelitism, p. 8. There are a few, a very few persons born in each generation, whose words are worth hearing; whose art is worth seeing. These born few will preach, or 334 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. sing, or paint, in spite of you; they Avill starve like grasshoppers, ratlier than stop singing ; and even if you don't choose to listen, it is charitable to throw them some crumbs to keep them alive. But the people who take to writing or painting as a means of livelihood, because they think it genteel, ai-e just by so much more contemjitible than com- mon beggars, in that they are noisy and offensive beggars. I am quite willing to pay for keeping our poor vagabonds in the workhouse; but not to pay them for grinding organs outside my door, defacing the streets with bills and caricatures, tempting young girls to read rubbishy novels, or deceiving the whole nation to its ruin, in a thousand leagues square of dirtily printed falsehood, every morning at breakfast. Whatever in literature, art, or relig- ion, is done for money, is poisonous itself ; and doubly deadly, in preventing the hearing or seeing of the noble literature and art which have been done for love and truth. — Fors, III., p. 241. Profanity ix rare Cases Justifiable.— In Mr. Kinglake's " History of the Crimean War," you will find the — th Regiment at Alma is stated to have been materially assisted in maintaining a position quite vital to the battle l)y the steady imjirecation delivered at it by its colonel for half-an-hour on end. No quantity of benediction Avould have answered the purpose; the colonel might have said, " Bless you, my children," in the tenderest tones, as often as he pleased, — yet not have helped his men to keep their ground. — Fors, I., p. 264. Dislike of Live Truths.— We are all of us will- ing enough to accept dead truths or blunt ones; which can be fitted harmlessly into spare niches, or shrouded and coiflned at once out of the way, we holding complacently the cemetery keys, and sup- posing we have learned something. , But a sajjling truth, with earth at its root and blossom on its branches; or a trenchant truth, that can cut its way through liars and sods; most men, it seems to me, dislike the sight or entertainment of, if by any CONDUCT OF LIFE— MORALS. 335 means such guest or vision maybe avoided. And, indeed, this is no wonder; for one such truth, thor- oughly accepted, connects itself strangely with others, and there is no saying what it may lead us to.— The Two Paths, Preface, p. 3. Lawykry.— In the trial of Kit in "Pickwick" you have deliberate, artistic, energetic, dishonesty; skilfuUest and resolutest endeavor to prove a crime against f^n innocent person,— a crime of which, in the case of the boy, the reputed commission will cost him at least the prosperity and honor of his life— nic^e to him than life itself. And this you for- give, or udmire, because it is not done in malice, but for money, and in pride of art. Because the assasslr is paid,— makes his living in that line of busincg",— and delivers his thrust with a bravo's artistic i«nesse, you think hiu) a respectable person; so nwA\ better in style than a passionate one who does his murder gratis, vulgarly, with a club,— Bill Sykes for instance ? It is all balanced fairly, as the systex'1 goes, you think. " It works round, and two and two make four. He accused an innocent person to-day:— to-morrow he Avill defend a rascal."— For.?, p. 291. Ar-'tiRATiox, Hope, and Love.— There are three Mat'*»vial things, not only useful but essential to L-Af'^. No one " knows how to live" till he has got thf^m. These are. Pure Air, Water, and Earth. Tl'^ere are three Immaterial things, not only useful bivt essential to Life. No one knows how to live tiil he has got them also. These are, Admiration, Hope, and Love.— -For.?, I., p. 67. "fHE UNDONES and not THE DONES.— Young p*^ple will find it well, throughout life, never to t-"uble themselves about what they ought not to d", but about what they ouglit to do. The condem- nation given from the judgment throne— most sol- eijujily described— is all for the unclones and not for tlu) dones. People are perpetually afraid of doing Avrong; but unless they are doi;ig its reverse energet- ics ly, they do it all day long, and the degree does 336 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. not matter. The commandments are necessarily negative, because a new set of j^ositive ones would be needed for every person: Avhile the negatives are constant. But Christ sums them all into two rigorous positions, and the first position for young people is active and attentive kindness to animals, suppos- ing themselves set by God to feed Ilis real sheep and ravens before the time comes for doing either figuratively. There is scarcely any conception left of the character which animals and birds might have if kindly treated in a wild state. — Arrows of the Chase, II., p. 131. You will find it less easy to uproot faults, than to choke thenj by gaining virtues. Do not think of your faults; still less of othex-s' faults: in every per- son who comes near you, look for what is good and strong: honor that; rejoice in it; and, as you can, try to imitate it: and your faults will drop off, like dead leaves, when their time comes. If, on looking back, your whole life should seem rugged as a palm- tree stem; still, never mind, so long as it has been growing; and has its grand green shade of leaves, and weight of honied fruit, at top. And even if you cannot find much good in yourself at last, think that it does not much matter to the ui^iverse either what you were, or are; think how many peo- ple are noble, if you ca.nnot be; and rejoice in tJieir nobleness.— Mhics of the Dust, p. 67. Reverenck. — A man's happiness consists in- finitely more in admiration of the faculties of others than in confidence in his own. That reverent ad- miration is the perfect human gift in him; all lower animals are happy and noble in the degree they can share it. A dog reverences you, a fly does not; the capacity of i^artly understanding a creature above him, is the dog's nobility. — Fors, I., p. 117. Idleness.— There are no chagrins so venomous as the chagrins of the idle; there are no pangs so sick- ening as the satieties of pleasure: Nay, the bitterest and most enduring sorrow may be borne through CONDUCT OF LIFE— MORALS. 337 the burden and heat of day bi'avely to the due tiiue of death, by a true worker.— i^ors, IV., p. 359. When men are rightly occupied, their amusement grows out of tlieir work, as the color-jjetals out of a fruitful floAver;—wIien tliey are faithfully helpful and compassionate, all their emotions become steady, deep, perpetual, and vivifying to the soul as the natural i)ulse to the body. — Sesame and Lilies, p. 6.5. All the vital functions, — and, like the rest and with the rest, the pure and wholesome faculties of the brain,— rise and set with the sun : your diges- tion and intellect arealike dependent on its beams. —Eagles Nest, p. 71. Idleness, — this is chief cause, now and always, of evil everywhere; and I see it at this moment, in its deadliest form, out of the window of my quiet Eng- lish inn. It is the 21st of May, and a bright morn- ing, and the sun shines, for once, warmly on the wall opposite, a low one, of ornamental pattern, imitative in brick of wood-work (as if it had been of wood-work it would, doubtless, have been painted to look like brick). Against this low decorative edifice leans a ruddy-faced English boy of seventeen or eighteen, in a white blouse and brown corduroy trousers, and a domical felt hat; with the sun, as as much as can get vinder the rim, on his face, and his hands in his jjockets; listlessly watching two dogs at play. He is a good boy, evidently, and does not care to tvirn the play into a fight;* still it is not interesting enough to him, as play, to relieve the extreme distress of his idleness, and he occasion- ally takes his hands out of his pockets, and claps them at the dogs to startle them. . . . He leans i^lacidly against the pi'ison-wall this bright Sunday morning, little thinking what alumi- nous sign-post he is making of himself, and living gnomon of sun-dial, of which the shadow points sharply to the subtlest cause of the fall of France, * This was at seven in the morning, he had them fighting at halt-past nine. 338 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. and of England, as is too likely, after her. Your hands in your own pockets, in the morning. That is the beginning of the last day; your hands in other people's pockets at noon; that is the height of the last day; and the jail, ornamented or other- wise (assuredly the great jail of the grave), for the night.— i^or^, I., pp. 79-81. Fools and foolish People. — There is not, to my mind, a more woful or wonderful matter of thought than the power of a fool. In the world's affairs there is no design so great or good but it will take tAventy wise men to help it forward a few inches, and a single fool can stop it; there is no evil so great or so terrible but that, after a multitude of counsel- lors have taken means to avert it, a single fool will bring it down. Pestilence, famine, and the sword, ai*e given into the fool's hand as the arrows into the hand of the giant: and if he were fairly set forth in the right motley, the web of it should be sackcloth and sable; the bells on his cap, passing- bells; his badge, a bear robbed of her whelps; and his bauble, a sexton's spade. — Modern Painters, IV., p. 415. The crabby, or insect-like, joint, which you get in seaweeds and cacti, means either that the plant is to be dragged and wagged here and there at the will of waves, and to have no sirring nor mind of its own; or else that it has at least no springy inten- tion and elasticity of pvirpose, but only a knobby, knotty, prickly, malignant stubbornness, and incoherent opiniativeness ; crawling about, and coggling, and grovelling, and aggregating anyhow, like the minds of so many people whom one knows ! — Proserpina, p. 113. There are always a number of people who have the nature of stones; they fall on other persons and crush them. Some again have the nature of weeds, and twist about other people's feet and entangle them. More have the nature of logs, and lie in the Avay, so that every one falls over them. And most of all have the nature of thorns, and set themselves CONDUCT OF LIFE— MORALS. 339 by waysides, so that every passer-by must be torn, and all good seed choked; or perhaps make wonder- ful crackling' under various pots, even to the extent of practically boiling water and working ijistons. — 3Ioclern Painters, V., p. 180. Conscience. — "I must do what / think right." IIow often is this sentence uttered and acted on — bravely— nobly — innocently; but always — because of its egotism — erringly. You must not do what yoii think right, but, whether you or anybody think, or don't think it, what is riglit. " I must act according to the dictates of my con- science." By no means, my conscientious friend, unless you are quiet sure that yours is not the conscience of an ass. " I am doing my best — what can man do more ? " You might be doing much less, and yet much better: — perhaps you are doing your best in produc- ing, or doing, an eternally bad thing. — Fors, II., p. 420. A RIGHT Action not always to be imitated. — It is not only possible, but a frequent condition of human action, to do right and he right — yet so as to mislead other people if they rashly imitate the thing done. For there are many rights which are not absolutely, but relatively right — right only for that person to do under those circumstances, — not for this person to do under other circumstances.— I'he Two Paths, p. 135. The good Seed of Life choked by Weeds and Nettles. — It is the sorrowful law of this universe that evil, even unconscious and unintended, never fails of its effect; and in a state where the evil and the good, under conditions of individual " liberty," are allowed to contend together, not only every stroke on the Devil's side tells— but evei-y slip (the mistakes of wicked men being as mischievous as their successes); while on the side of right, there Avill be much direct and fatal defeat, and, even of its measures of victory, half will be fruitless. 340 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. It is true, of course, that, iii the end of ends, no- thing but the right conquers: the prevalent thorns of wrong at last crackle away in indiscriminate flaine: and of the good seed soAvn, one grain in a thou- sand, at last, verily comes up, and somebody lives by it; but most of our great teachers — not except- ing Carlyle and Emerson themselves— are a little too encouraging in their proclamation of this com- fort, not, to mj^ mind, very sufficient, when for the l^resent our fields are full of nothing but nettles and thistles, instead of wheat; and none of them seem to me yet to have enough insisted on the in- evitable power and infectiousness of all evil, and the easy and utter extinguishableness of good. Medicine often fails of its effect— but poison never: and while, in summing the observation of past life, not unwatchfully spent, I canti-uly say that I have a thousand times seen patience disappointed of her hope, and wisdom of her aim, I have never yet seen folly fruitless of mischief, nor vice conclude but in calamity. — Time and Tide, p. 51. Little Habits. — Every one of those notable i-avines and crags is the expression, not of any sudden vio- lence done to the mountain, but of its little habits, persisted in continually. It was created with one ruling instinct; but its destiny depended neverthe- less, for effective result, on the dii-ection of the small and all but invisible tricklings of water, in Avhich the first shower of rain found its way down its sides. The feeblest, most insensible oozings of the drops of dew among its dust were in reality arbiters of its eternal form; commissioned, with a touch more tender than that of a child's finger, — as silent and slight as the fall of a half-checked tear on a maiden's cheek, — to fix forever the forms of peak and precii)ice, and hew those leagues of lifted granite into the shapes that were to divide the earth and its kingdoms. Once the little stone evaded,— once the dim furrow traced, — and the peak was for ever invested with its majesty, the ravine for ever doomed to its degradation. Thencefor- CONDUCT OF LIFE— MORALS. 341 ward, day by day, the subtle habit gained in pow- er; the evaded stone was left with wider basement; the chosen furrow deepened with swifter-sliding wave; repentance and arrest wei-e alike impossible, and hour after hour saw written in larger and rockier characters upon the sky, the history of tl * choice that had been directed by a drop of rain, and of the balance that had been turned by a grain of ii&n^..— Modern Painters, TV., p. 332. Whenever you hear a man dissuading you from attempting to do well, on the ground that perfection is " Utopian," beware of that man. Cast the word out of your dictionary altogether. There is no need for it. Things are either possible or impossible— you can easily determine which, in any given state of human science. If the thing is imiDOSsible, you need not trouble yourselves about it; if possible, try for it. It is very Utopian to hope for the entire doing away with drvinkenness and misery out of the Cannongate; but the Utopianism is not our business— the loork i^.— Lectures on Architecture, p. 43. No man ever knew, or can know, what will be the ultimate result to himself, or to others, of any given line of conduct. But every man may know, and most of us do know, what is a just and unjust act. And all of us may know also, that the conse- quences of justice will be ultimately the best possi- ble, both to others and ourselves, though we can neither say what is best, nor how it is likely to come to Ymsn.—TJnto This Last, p. 14. The Neniean Lion is the first great adversary of life, whatever that may be— to Hercules, or to any of us. then or now. The first monster we have to strangle, or be destroyed by, fighting in the dark, and with none to help us, only Athena standing by to encourage with her smile. Every man's Nenjean Lion lies in wait for him somewhere. The slothful man says, there is a lion in the path. He says well. The quiet ?tMslothful man says the same, and knows it too. But they differ in their farther reading of S42 A liUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. the text. The slothful man says, /shall be slain, and the unslothful, It shall be. It is the first ugly and strong enemy that rises against us, all future victory depending on victory over that. Kill it; and through all the rest of life, what was once dreadful is your armor, and you are clothed with that conquest for every other, and helmed with its crest of fortitude for evermore. — Athena, p. 127. Saintship. — The ordinary needs and labors of life, the ordinary laws of its continuance, require many states of temijer and phases of character, in- consistent with the perfectest types of Christianity. Pointed ci-ystals cannot be made sea-beaches of, — or they must lose their points. Pride, the desire of bodily pleasure, anger, ambition, ^ — at least so far as the word implies a natural pleasure in govern- ing, — pugnacity, obstinacy, and the selfish family and personal affections, have all their necessary offices, — for the most part, wide and constant, — in the economy of the world. The saintly virtues, humility, resignation, patience (in the sense of feel- ing no anger), obedience (meaning the love of obey- ing rather than of commanding), fortitude against all temptation of bodily pleasure, and the full-flow- ing charity which forbids a selfish love, — are all conditions of mind possible to few and manifestly meant to furnish forth those who are to be seen as fixed lights in the world; — and by no means to be the native inheritance of all its fire-flies. Wherever these virtues truly and naturally exist, the persons endowed with them become, Avithout any doubt or difficulty, eminent in blessing to, and in rule over, the people round them; and are thankfully beloved and remembered as Princes of Grod for evermore. . . . The most imperative practical cor- ollary which must follow from our rightly under- standing these things, is that, seeing the first of the saintly virtues is Humility. Nobody must set them- selves up to be a saint. . . . For so it is, that the white robes of daily humanity are ahvaj's in some way or other a little the worse for the wear; and to CONDUCT OF LIFE-MORALS. 343 keep them wholly uiisp,otted from the world, and hold the cross in the rij^ht hand, and i^alm in the left, steadilj^ through all the rongh walking of it, is granted to very, very few creatures that live by breath and bread. — Roadside Songs of Tuscany, II., p. 38. Affiliating with Rogues.— For the failure of all good people nowadays is that, associating polite- ly with wicked i^ersons, countenancing them in their wickedness, and often joining in it, they think to avert its consequences by collaterally laboring to repair the ruin it has caused; and while, in the morning, they satisfy their hearts by ministering to the wants of two or three destitute persons, in the evening they dine with, envy, and pi-epare them- selves to follow the example of the rich speculator who has caused the destitution of two or three thousand. They are thus destroying moi-e in hours than they can amend in years; or, at the best, vainly feeding the f;imine-struck populations, in the rear of a devouring army, always on the in- crease in mass of numbers, and rapidity of march. . . Of every person of your acquaintance, you are solemnly to ask yourselves, ''Is this njan a swindler, a liar, a gambler, an adulterer, a selfish oppressor, and taskmaster?" Don't suppose you can't tell. You can tell with perfect ease; or, if you meet any my^iterious personage of Avhom it proves difficult to ascertain whether he be rogue or not, keep clear of him till you Ivuow. With those whom you knovi to be honest, know to be innocent, knoio to be striv- ing, with main purpose, to serve mankind and honor their God. you are humbly and lovingly to associate yourselves : and with none others. — Fors, 111., p. 149. The Cross is fitted to the Back.— Taking up one's cross means simply that you are to go the road which you see to be the straight one; carrying Avhatever you find is given you .to carry, as Avell and stoutly as you can; without making faces, or calling people to come and look at you. Above all. 344 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. you are neither to load nor unload yourself; nor cut your cross to you own liking. Some people think it would be better for them to have it large; and many, that they could carry it much faster if it were small; and even those who like it largest are usually very particular about its being orna- mental, and made of the best ebony. But all that you have really to do is to keep your back as straight as you can; and not think about what is iipon it — above all, not to boast of what is upon it. —Ethics of the Dust, p. 89. The Modern Tejn' Commandments.—" Thou shalt have any other god but me. Thou shalt worship every beastly imagination on earth and under it. Thou shalt take the name of the Lord in vain to mock the poor, for the Lord will hold him guiltless who rebukes and gives not; thou shalt remember the Sabbath day to keep it profane; thou shalt dis- honor thy father and thy mother; thou shalt kill, and kill by the million, with all thy might and mind and wealth spent in machinery for multifold killing; thou shalt look on every woman to lixst after her; thou shalt steal, and steal from morning till evening, — the evil from the good, and the rich from the poor; * thou shalt live by continual lying in million-fold sheets of lies (neAvspaper); and covet thy neighbor's house, and country, and wealth, and fame, and everything that is his." And finally, by word of the Devil, in short summary, through Adam Smith, "A new commandment give I unto you: that ye hate one another."— i^ors, IV., p. 48. A NEW Kind of Tombstones.— How beautiful the variety of sepulchral architecture might be, in any extensive place of burial, if the public would meet the small expense of thus expressing its opin- ions, in a verily instructive manner; and if some of the tombstones accordingly terminated in fools' caps; and others, instead of crosses or cherubs, * stealing by the poor from the rich is of course still forbidden, :ind even in a languid Avay by the poor from tlie poor ; but every form of tbeft, forbidden and approved, is practically on the increase. CONDUCT OF LIFE—MOIiALS. 345 bore engravings of eats-of-nine-tails, as typical of tlie probable methods of entertainment, in the next world, of the persons, not, it is to be hoped, repos- ing, below. — Fors, I., p. 214. Imagination the Basis of Sympathy. — Peoi^le would instantly care for others as well as themselves if only they could imagine others as well as them- selves. Let a child fall into the river before the roughest man's eyes; — he will usually do what he can to get it out, even at some risk to himself; and all the town will triumph in the saving of one little life. Let the same man be slioAvn that hundreds of children are dying of fever for want of some sanitary measure which it will cost him trouble to urge, and he will make no effort; and probably all the town Avould resist him if he did. — Lectures on Art, p. 63. The imaginative understanding of the natures of others, and the power of putting ourselves in their place, is the faculty on which the virtue depends. So that an unimaginative person can neither be reverent nor kind. The main use of works of fiction, and of the drama, is to supplj% as far as possible, the defect of this injagination in common minds. — Fors, II., p. 79. Impossible to be too sensitive. — The ennob- ling 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 in- stant 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 propoi'tion to our passion. — Sesame and Lilies, p. 48. Cark and Care wear out our Powers.— My dear friend and teacher, Lowell — right as he is in almost everything — is for once wrong in these lines, though with a noble wrongness: — 346 A liUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. "DisappointiiH'ut's dry and bitter root, Envy's harsili borries, and the choking- pool Of the world's scorn, are the right niotlier-niilk To the tough hearts that pioneer their kind." They are not so; love and trust are the only niother-niilk of any man's soul. So far as he is hated and mistrusted, his powers are destroyed. — Modern Painters, V., p. 373. Swiss Cottages and Peasants.— Is it not strange to reflect, that hardly an evening passes in London or Paris hut one of those cottages is painted for the better amusement of the fair and idle, and shaded with pasteboard pines by the scene- shifter; and that good and kind jieople, — poeti- cally minded, — delight themselves in imagining the happy life led by peasants who dwell by Alpine fountains, and kneel to crosses upon jieaks of rock? that nightly we lay down our gold to fashion forth simulacra of peasants, in gay ribands and white ■ bodices, singing sweet songs, and bowing gracefully to the picturesque crosses; and all the while the veritable peasants are kneeling, song- lessly, to veritable crosses, in another temper than the kind and fair audiences dream of, and assuredly with another kind of answer than is got ovit of the opera catastrophe; an answer having re- ference, it may be, in dim futurity, to those very audiences themselves ? If all the gold that has gone to paint the simulacra of the cottages, and to put new songs in the mouths of the simulacra of the peasants, had gone to brighten the existant cottages, and to put new songs into the mouths of the existant peasants, it might in the end, perhaps, have turned out better so, not only for the peasants, but for even the audience. For that form of the False Ideal has also its correspondent True Ideal, — consisting not in the naked beauty of statues, nor in the gauze flowers and crackling tinsel of theatres, but in the clothed and fed beauty of living men and in the lights and laughs of happy homes. Night after night, the desire of such an ideal springs up in every idle human heart; and night after night, as CONDUCT OF LIFE— MORALS. 347 far as idleness can, we work out this desire in costly lies. We paint the faded actress, build the lath landscape, feed our benevolence with fallacies of fe- licity, and satisfy our righteousness with poetry of justice. The time will come when, as the heavy- folded curtain falls upon our own stage of life, we shall begin to comprehend that the justice we loved Avas intended to have been done in fact, and not in poetry, and the felicity we sympathized in, to have been bestowed and not feigned. We talk much of money's worth, yet perhaps n)ay one day be sur- prised to find that what the wise and charitable European public gave to one night's rehearsal of hypocrisy — to one hour's pleasant warbling of Linda or Lucia — would have filled the whole Alpine V^al- ley with happiness, and poured the waves of harvest over the famine of many a Lammermoor. — Modern Painters, IV., p. 343, 344. The Casket-Talismans, or invisible Gold.— If there were two valleys in California or Austra- lia, with two different kinds of gravel in the bottom of them; and in the one stream-bed you could dig up, occasionally and by good fortune, nuggets of gold; and in the other stream-bed, certainly and without hazard, you could dig up little caskets, containing talismans which gave length of days and peace, and alal)aster vases of precious balms, which were better than the Arabian Der- vish's ointment, and made not only the eyes to see, but the mind to know whatever it would, — I wonder in Avhich of the stream- beds there would be most diggers ? . . . Health is money, wit is money, knowledge is money; and all your health, and wit, and knowl- edge may be changed for gold; and the happy goal so reached, of a sick, insane, and blind, auriferous old age; but the gold cannot be changed in its turn back into health and wit. — Time and Tide, jip. (55, 66. A man's hand may be full of invisible gold, and the wave of it, or the grasp, shall do more than another's with a shower of bullion. This invisible 348 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. gold, also, does not necessarily dlniinish in spend- ing. Political economists will do well some day to take heed of it, though they cannot take measure. — Unto This Last, p. 41. Charities. — All measures of reformation are effective in exact proportion to their timeliness : partial decay may be cut away and cleansed; in- cipient error corrected : but there is a point at which corruption can no more be stayed, nor wa,n- dering recalled. It has been the manner of modern philanthropy to remain passive until that precise period, and to leave the sick to perish and the fool- ish to stray, while it spent itself in frantic exertions to raise the dead, and reform the dust. — Athena, p. 95. If, suddenly, in the midst of the enjoyments of the l^alate and lightnesses of heart of a London dinner- party, the walls of the chamber were parted, and through their gap, the nearest human beinge who Avere famishing, and in misery, were borne into the midst of the company — feasting and fancy-free — if, pale with sickness, horrible in destitution, broken by despair, body by body, they were laid upon the soft carpet, one beside the chair of every guest, would only the crumbs of the dainties be cast to them — would only a passing glance, a passing thought be vouchsafed to them ? — Oldening of the Crystal Palace, p. 13. Letter to Thomas Pocock. — The reason 1 nevef' answered was — I now [July 1879] find — the difficulty of explaining my fixed principle never to join ip any invalid charities. All the foolish world is ready to help in them; and will spend large incomes in try- ing to make idiots think, and the blind read, but will leave the noblest intellects to go to the Devil, and the brighest eyes to remain sijiritually blind forever ! All my work is to he! j) those who have eyes and see not. Ever faithfully yours, J. Ruskijv^.* * A letter sent by Mr. Riiskin to the Secretary of the Protes- tant Blind Pension Society in answev to an application for pnb- scriptions. VONDVCT OF LIFE—MOBALS. U9 1 must add that, to int/ niiud. the prefix of " Prot- estant " to your society's name indicates far stonier bUndness than any it will relieve. — Aitows of the Chace, II., p. 129. The Beauty of uncomplaining Labor.— Yon- der poor horse, calm slave in daily chains at the railroad siding, who drags the detached rear of the train to the front again, and slij^s aside so deftly as the buffers meet; and, within eighteen inches of death every ten minutes, fulfils his dexterous and changeless duty all day long, content for eternal reward with his night's rest and his champed mouth- ful of hay; — anything more earnestly moral and beautiful one cannot imagine— I never see the crea- ture without a kind of worsliip. — Time and Tide, p. 33. Countryman and Cit.— It is a sorrowful proof of the mistaken ways of the world that the " coun- try," in the simple sense of a place of fields and trees, has hitherto been the source of reproach to its inhabitants, and that the words " countryman," " rustic," " clown," " pajsan," " villager," still sig- nify a rude and untaught person, as opposed to the words " townsman," and " citizen." We accept this usage of words, or the evil which it signifies, somewhat too quietly; as if it were quite necessary and natural that country-people should be rude, and towns-people gentle. Whereas I believe that the result of each mode of life may, in some stages of the worlds progress, be the exact reverse; and that another use of words may be forced upon us by a new aspect of facts, so that we maj' find our- selves saying: "Such and such a person is very gentle and kind — he is quite rustic; and such and such another i^erson is very rude and ill-taught — he is quite urban." — Modern Painters, V., p. 18. DOMESTIC SERVANTS. The relation of master and servant involves every other — touches every condition of moral health 350 A liUSKlN ANTHOLOGY. through the State. Put that right, and you put all right. . . . There are broadly two ways of mailing good ser- vants; the first, a sound, wholesome, thorough- going slavery — which was the heathen way, and no bad one either, provided you understand that to make real " slaves " you must make yourself a real "master" (which is not easy). The second is the Christian's way: " Whoso delicately bringeth up his servant from a child, shall have him become his son at the last." And as few people want their servants to become their sons, this is not a way to their lik- ing. So that, neither having courage or self-disci- pline enough on the one hand to make themselves nobly dominant after the heathen fashion, nor tenderness or justice enough to make themselves nobly protective after the Christian, the present public thinks to manufacture servants bodily out of powder and liay-stufRng— mentally by early in- stillation of Catecliism and other m.echanico-relig- ious appliances — and economically, as you help- lessly suggest, by the law of supply and demand, Avith such results as we all see, and most of us more or less feel, and shall feel daily more and more to our cost and selfish sorrow. There is only one way to have good servants; that is, to be worthy of being well served. All nature and all humanity will serve a good master and rebel against an ignoble one. And there is no surer test of the quality of a nation than the quality of its servants, for they are their masters' shadoAvs and distort their faults in a flattened mimicry. . . . I am somewhat conceited on the subject of servants just now, because I have a gardener who lets nie keep old-fashioned plants in the green-hovise, understands that my cherries are grown for the blackbirds, and sees me gather a bunch of my own gTapes without making a wry face. — Arrows of the Chace, II., pp. 90-94. All the " flunkey-ism," and " servant-gal-ism " of modern days, is the exact reflection of the same CONDUCT OF LIFE— MORALS. 351 qualities in the masters and mistresses. A gentle- man always makes his servants gentle. — Roadside Songs of Tuscany, II., p. 78. If you keep slaves to furnish forth your dress — to glut your stomach — to sustain your indolence — or deck your pride, you are a barbarian. If you keep servants, properly cared for, to furnish you with Avhat you verily want, and no more than that — you are a "civil" person — a person capable of the qualities of citizenship. — Time and Tide, p. 90. Consider, for instance, what I am doing at this very instant — half-past seven, morning, 25th February, 1873. It is a bitter black frost, the ground deep in snow, and moi'e falling. I am writing com- fortably in a perfectly warm room; some of my servants were up in the cold at half-past five to get it ready for me; others, a few days ago, were digging my coals near Durham, at the risk of their lives; an old woman brought me my water-cresses through the snow for breakfast yesterday; another old woman is going two miles through it to-day to fetch me my letters at ten o'clock. Half-a-dozen men are building a wall for me, to keep the sheej) out of my garden, and a railroad stoker is holding his own against the north wind to fetch me some Brob- dignag raspberry plants to put in it. Somebody in the east-end of London is making boots for me, for I can't wear those I have much longer; a wash- erwoman is in suds, somewhere, to get me a clean shirt for to morrow; a fisherman is in dangerous weather, someAvhere, catching me some fish for Lent; and my cook will soon be making me jDan- cakes, for it is Shrove Tuesday. Having written this sentence, I go to the fire, warm my fingers, saunter a little, listlessly, about the room, and grumble because I cant see to the other side of the lake. And all these people, my serfs or menials, who are undergoing any quantity or kind of hardship I choose to put on them, — all these people, neverthe- less, are more contented than I am; I can't be hapi)j', not I, — for one thing, because I haven't got 352 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. the MS. Additional (never mind what number), in the British Museum, which they bought in 1848, for two hundred pounds, and I never saw it ! And have never been easy in my mind, since.— i^or.s, I., p. 39S. THE LIQUOR QUESTION. The providence of the Father who would fill men's hearts with food and gladness is destroyed among us by prostitution of joyless drink; and the never to be enough damned guilt of men, and gov- ernments, gathering pence at the corners of the streets, standing there, pot in hand, crying, " Turn in hither; come, eat of my evil bread, and drink of my beer, which I have venomously mingled.'' — Fors, II., p. 123. The sum you spend in liquors, aud in tobacco, annually, is One Hundred and Fifty-six Millions nf Pounds; on which the pure profit of the richer classes (putting the lower alehouse gains aside) is, roughly, a hundi-ed millions. That is the way the rich Christian Englishman provides against the Day of Judgment, expecting to hear his Master say to him, " I w^as thirsty — and ye gave me drink — Two shillings' worth for twenty-seven and sixpence." —Fors,!., p. 383. Suppose even in the interest of science, to which you are all so devoted, I were myself to bring into this lecture-room a country lout of the stupidest, — the sort whom you produce by Church of England education, and then do all you can to get emigrated out of your way; fellows whose life is of no use to them, nor anybody else; and that— always in the interests of science — I were to lance just the least drop out of that beast's [ an asp's ] tooth into his throat, and let you see him swell, and choke, and get blue and blind, and gasp himself away — you wouldn't all sit quiet there, and have it so done — would you ? — in the interests of science. . . . Well ; but how then if in your own interests ? CONDUCT OF LIFE—MOBALS. 3.53 Suppose the poor lout had his week's wages in his pocket — thirty shillings or so; and, after his inocu- lation, 1 were to pick his pocket of them; and then order in a few more louts, and lance their throats likewise, and pick their pockets likewise, and divide the pi'oceeds of, say, a dozen of poisoned louts, among you all, after lecture: for the seven or eight hundred of you, I could perhaps get sixpence each out of a dozen of poisoned louts; yet you would still feel the proceedings painful to your feelings, and wouldn't take the sixpen'orth — ^wouldyou. . . Well, I know a village, some few nules frojn Ox- ford, numbering of inhabitants some four hundred louts, in which my own College of the Body of Christ keeps the public-house, and therein sells — by its deputy — such poisoned beer that the Rector's wife told me, only the day before yesterday, that she sent for some to take out a stain in a dress with, and couldn't touch the dress with it, it was so filthy with salt and acid, to provoke thirst ; and that while the public-house was there she had no hope of doing any good to the men, who always prepared for Sunday by a fight on Saturday night. And that my own very good friend the Bursar, and we the Fellows, of Corpus, being appealed to again and again to shut up that tavern, the answer is always, " The College can't aiford it : we can't give up that fifty pounds a year, out of those peasant sots' pockets, and yet, ' as a College,' live." —Deucalion, pp. 200, 201. Tobacco. — It is not easy to estimate the demoral- izing effect on the youth of Europe of the cigar, in enabling them to pass their time haj^pily in idle- ness. — Athena, p. G3. Tobacco., the most accursed of all vegetables, the one that has destroyed for the joreseni even the pos- sibility of European civilization. — Proserpina, p. 78. Betting. — Of all the ungentlemanly habits into wliich you can fall, the vilest is betting, or interest- ing yourselves in the issues of betting. It unites nearly every condition of folly and vice; you con- 351 A liUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. centrate your interest upon a matter of chance, in- stead of upon a subject of true knowledge; and you back opinions which you have no grounds for form- ing, merely because they are your own. All the insolence of egotism is in this; and so far as the love of excitement is complicated with the hope of winning money, you turn yourselves into the basest sort of tradesmen — those who live by speculation. — Croivn of Wild Olive, Lect. III., p. 90. Running up Bills.— I would rather, ten times ra- ther, hear of a youth that (certain degrees of tempt- ation and conditions of resistance being under- stood), he had fallen into any sin you chose to name, of all the mortal ones, than that he was in the habit of running up bills which he could not pay. — Time and Tide, p. 117. GENTLEMANLINESS AND VULGARITY. Vulgarity consists in a deadness of the heart and body, resulting from prolonged, and especially from inherited conditions of " degeneracy," or literally " unraeing;" — gentlemanliness, being another Avord for an intense humanity. And vulgarity shows it- self primarily in dulness of heai-t, not in rage or cruelty, but in inability to feel or conceive noble character or emotion. ... It is merely one of the forms of Death. The illiterateness of a Spanish or Calabrian peasant is not vulgar, because they had never an opportimity of acquiring letters; but the illiterate- ness of an English school-boy is. So again, provin- cial dialect is not vulgar; but cockney dialect, the corruption, by blunted sense, of a finer language continually heard, is so in a deep degree. . . . What Constitutes a Gentleman. — A gentle- man's first characteristic is that fineness of struct- ure in the body, which renders it capable of the most delicate sensation; and of structure in the mind which renders it capable of the most delicate syjupathies — one may say, sim^jly, " fineness of na- CONDUCT OF LIFE— MORALS. 355 ture." This is, of course, compatible with heroic bodily strength and mental firmness; in fact, heroic strength is not conceivable without such delicacy. Elephantine strength may drive its Avay through a forest and feel no touch of the boughs; but the white skin of Homer's Atrides would have felt a bent rose- leaf, yet subdue its feeling in glow of battle, and behave itself like iron. . . . A perfect gentleman is never reserved, but sweetly and entirely open, so far as it is good for others, or possible, that he should be. In a great many re- spects it is impossible that he should be open except to men of his own kind. To them, he can open himself, by a word, or syllable, or a glance ; but to men not of his kind he cannot open himself, though he tried it through an eternity of clear grammatical speech. . . . Whatever he said, a vulgar man Avould misinterpret: no Avords that he could use would bear the same sense to the vulgar man that they do to him. If he used any, the vulgar man would go away saying, " He had said so and so, and meant so and so "' (something assuredly he never meant); but he keeps silence, and the vulgar man goes away saying, " lie didn't know what to make of him." Which is precisely the fact, and the only fact Avhich he is anywise able to announce to the vulgar man concerning himself. There is yet another quite as efficient cause of tho apparent reserve of a gentleman. His sensibility being constant and intelligent, it will be seldom that a feeling touches him, however acutely, but it has touched him in the same way often before, and in some sort is touching him always. It is not that he feels little, but that he feels habitually; a vulgar man having some heart at the bottom of him, if you can by talk or by sight fairly force the pathos of anything down to his heart, will be excited about it and demonstrative; the sensation of pity being strange to him, and wonderful. But your gentle- man has walked in pity all day long; the tears have never been out of his eyes: you thought the eyes were bright only;' but they were wet. You 356 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. tell him a sorrowful story, and his countenance does not change; the eyes can but be wet still; he does not speak, neither, there being, in fact, no- thing to be said, only something to be done; some vulgar person, beside you both, goes away saying, " How hard he is!" Next day he hears that the hard person has put good end to the sorrow he said nothing about; — and then he changes his wonder, and exclaims, " How reserved he is ! " Self-command is often thought a characteristic of high-breeding : and to a certain extent it is so, at least it is one of the means of forming and strength- ening character; but it is rather a way of imitating a gentleman than a characteristic of him; a true gentleman has no need of self-command; he simjily feels rightly on all occasions : and desiring to ex- press only so much of his feeling as it is right to express, does not need to command himself. The Letters of the Alphabet in Art. — One of the most curious minor qviestions in this matter is respecting the vulgarity of excessive neatness, complicating itself with inquiries into the distinc- tion between base neatness, and the perfectness of good execution in the fine arts. It will be found on final thought that precision and exquisiteness of arrangement are always noble; but become vulgar only when they arise from an equality (insensibili- ty) of temperament, which is incapable of fine pas- sion, and is set ignobly, and with a dullard mechan- ism, on accuracy in vile things. In the finest Greek coins, the letters of the inscriptions are pur- posely coars9 and rude, while the relievi are wrought with inestimable care. But in an English coin, the letters are the best done, and the whole is unredeemably vulgar. ... Letters are always ugly things. Titian often wanted a certain quantity of ugliness to oppose his beauty with, as a certain quantity of black to op- pose his color. He could regulate the size and quantity of inscription as he liked; and, therefore, made it as neat — that is, as effectively ugly — aspos- CONDUCT OF LIFE-RELIGION. 357 si bio. Bvit the Greek sculptor could not regulate either size or quantity of inscription. Legible it must be to common eyes, and contain an assigned group of words. He had more ugliness than he wanted, or could endure. There was nothing for it but to make the letters themselves rugged and picturesque; to give them, that is, a certain quan- tity of organic vsiriety.—lfodern Painters, \., pp. 384, 298. CHAPTER II. Religion.* I do not myself believe in Evangelical theology. — Fors, II., p. 4. I have been hori-ibly plagued and misguided by evangelical people, all my life; and most of all lately; but my mother was one, and my Scotch aunt; and I have yet so much of the superstition left in me, that I can't help sometimes doing as evangelical people wish, — for all I know it comes to nothing. — Furs, II., p. 184. All piety begins in modesty. You must feel that you are a very little creature, and that you had better do as you are bid. You Avili then begin to think what you are bid to do, and who bids it. — Vccl D'Arno, p. 104. The question to my mind most requiring discus- sion and explanation is not, why workmen don't go to church, but — why other people do. — Time and Tide, p. G5. Perhaps if, in this garden of the world, you would leave off telling its Master your opinions of him, and, much more, your quarrelling about your opinions of him; but would simply trust him, and * See also the Introduction. 358 A BUSKIN' ANTHOLOGY.^ mind your own business modestly, he miglit have more satisfaction in you than he has had yet these eighteen hundred and- seventy-one years, or than he seems likely to have in the eighteen hundred and seventy-second. — Fors, I., p. 162. I write this morning, wearily, and withovit spirit, being nearly deaf with the bell-ringing and bawl- ing which goes on here, at Florence, ceaselessly, in advertisement of prayers, and wares; as if people could not wait on Grod for what they wanted, but God had to ring for them, like waiters, for whati/e wanted: and as if they could think of nothing they were in need of, till the need was suggested to them by bellowing at their doors, or bill-posting on their house-corners. — Fois, I., pp. 27.5, 276. In Memoriam.— Respect for the dead is not really shown by laying great stones on them to tell us where they are laid; but by remembering where they are laid, without a stone to help us; trusting them to the sacred grass and saddened flowers. — A Joy For Ever, p. 47. The Vice and Ignorance of the modern Evan- gelical Sect. — They consist especially in three things: First, in declaring a bad translation of a group of books of various qualities, accidently associated, to be the " Word of God." Secondly, reading, of this singular " Word of God," only the bits the}' like; and never taking any pains to un- derstand even those. Thirdly, resolutely refusing to practice even the very small bits they do under- stand, if such practice happen to go against theii own worldly — especially money — interests. — Fors, II., p. 101. The Existence of God.— It never seems to strike any of our religious teachers, that if a child has a father living, it either knows it has a father, or doe* not: it does not "believe" it has a father. Wet should be surprised to see an intelligent child stand- ing at its garden gate, crying out to the passers-by : *' I believe in my father, because he built thi? house." — Modern Painters, V., p. 271. CONDUCT OF LIFE—BELIGION. 339 Manufactory Chimneys.— The obelisks of our English religion.— i'brs', II., p. 807. Heaven. — Can you answer a single bold question unflinchingly about that other world — Are you sure there is a heaven ? Sure there is a hell ? Sure that men are drojiping before your faces through the pavements of these streets into eternal fire, or sure that they are not? Sure that at your own death j'ou are going to be delivered from all sorrow, to be endowed with all virtue, to be gifted with all fecility, and raised into perpetual companionship with a King, compared to whom the kings of the earth are as grasshoppers, and the nations as the dust of His feet? Are you sure of thi^ ?—3If/stery of Life, p. in. Vicarious Salvation.— There are briefly two, and two only, forms of possible Christian, Pagan, or any other Gospel, or '' good message :" one, that men are saved by themselves doing Avhat is right; and the other, that they are saved by believing that somebody else did right instead of them. The first of these Gospels is eternally true, and holy; the other eternally false, damnable, and damning. — Fors, III., p. 17. Father Dollar. — The creed of the Dark Ages was, •' I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth;" and the creed of the Light Ages has become, " I believe in Father Mud, the Almighty Plastic; and in Father Dollar, the Almighty Drastic." — Fors, IV., p. 281. The First recorded Words of Venice.— In- scriptions discovered by Mr.Ruskin on the church of St. James of the Rialto: "Be thy Cross, O Christ, the true safety of this place." " Around this temple, let the merchant's laAV be just — his weights true, and his agreements guile- less."— Fors, IV., p. 17. English Religion a Mockery.— Notably, within the last hundred years, all rel'^gion has perished 360 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. from the practically active national mind of France and England. No statesman in the senate of either country would dare to use a sentence out of their acceptedly divine Revelation, as having now a literal authority over them for their guidance, or even a suggestive wisdom for their contemi^lation. England, especially, has cast her Bible full in the face of her former God; and proclaimed, with open challenge to Him, her resolved worship of His de- clared enemy. Mammon. All the arts, therefore, founded on religion — and sculpture chiefly — are here in England effete and corrupt, to a degree which arts never were hitherto in the history of mankind. — Aratra Pentelici, p. 38. Even your simple country Queen of Maj'', whom once you worshipped for a goddess — has not little Mr. Faraday analyzed her, and jiroved her to con- sist of charcoal and water, combined under Avhat the Duke of Argyll calls the "reign of law?" Your once fortune-guiding stars, which used to twinkle in a mysteriovis manner, and to make you wonder what they were^everybody knows what they are now : only hydrogen gas; and they stink as they twinkle. — Fors, II., p. 199. The dramatic Christianity of the organ and aisle, of dawn-service and twilight-revival .... this gas- lighted, and gas-insi^ired, Christianity, we are triumphant in, and drav/ back the hem of our robes from the touch of the heretics who dispute it. But to do a piece of common Christian right- eousness in a plain English word or deed; to make Christian law any rule of life, and found one national act or hope thereon,— we know too well what our faith comes to for that. — Sesame arid Lilies, p. 64. Truly it is fine Christianity we have come to, which, professing to expect the perpetual grace or charity of its Founder, has not itself grace or char- ity enough to hinder it from overreaching its friends in sixpenny bargains ; and which, supplicating evening and morning the forgiveness of its own CONDUCT OF LIFE— RELIGION. 361 debts, goes forth at noon to take its fellow-servants by the throat, saying, — not merely " Pay me that thou owest." but " Pay me that thou owestme/io^." — Munera Pulveris, p. 136. Nature and God. — The second volume of " Modern Painters," though in affected language, yet with sincere and very deep feeling, expresses the lirst and foundational law respecting human contemplation of the natural phenomena under whose influence we exist, — that they can only be seen with their properly belonging joy, and inter- preted up to the measure o^ proper human intelli- gence, when they are accepted as the work, and the gift, of a Living Spirit greater than our own. — Deucalion, p. 304. The Religious Life, — whex possible. — The delicacy of sensation and refinements of imagina- tion necessary to understand Christianity belong to the mid period, when men risen from a life of brutal hardship are not yet fallen to one of brutal luxury. You can neither comprehend the char- acter of Christ while you are chopping flints for tools, and gnawing raw bones for food; nor Avhen you have ceased to do anything with either tools or hands, and dine on gelded capons. — Val D' Arno, p. 26. The unprodigal Son.— I recollect some years ago, throwing an assembly of learned persons who had met to delight themselves with interpretations of the parable of the prodigal son, (interpretations which had up to that moment gone very smoothly,) into mute indignation, by inadvertently asking who the ?t?iprodigal son was, and what was to be learned by his example. The leading divine of the company, Mr. Molyneux, at last explained to me that the unprodigal son was a lay figure, put in for dramatic effect, to make the story prettier, and that no note was to be taken of him. — Munera Pulveris, p. 135. Guardian Angels. — Those parents who love their children most tenderly cannot but sometimes 362 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. dwell on the old Christian fancy, that they have guardian angels. I call it an old fancy, in deference to 3'our njodern enlightenment in religion; but I assure you nevertheless, in spite of all that illumi- nation, there remains yet some dark possibility that the old fancy may be true: and that, although the modern apothecary cannot exhibit to you either an angel, or an imp, in a bottle, the spiritual powers of heaven and hell are no less now, than heretofore, contending for the souls of your children; and con- tending with you — for the ijrivilege of their tutor- ship. — Deucalion, pp. 143, 144. Religion to the earlier SciENa'isTs.— In the earlier and happier days of Linnfeus, de Saussure, von Humboldt, and the multitude of quiet workers on whose secure foundation the fantastic expa- tiations of modern science depend for whatever of good or stability there is in them, natural religion was always a part of natural science; it becomes with Linnaeus a part of his definitions; it under- lies, in serene modesty, the courage and enthusiasm of the great travellers and discoverers, from Colum- bus and Hudson to Livingstone; and it has saved the lives, or solaced the deaths, of myriads of men whose nobleness asked for no memorial but in the gradual enlargement of the realm of manhood, in habitation, and in social virtue. — Deucalion, p. 209. Milton and Dante.— I tell you truly that, as I strive more with this strange lethargy and trance in myself, and awake to the meaning and power of life, it seems daily more amazing to me that men such as Milton and Dante, should dare to play with the most precious truths (or the most deadly un- truths), by Avliich the whole human race listening to them could be informed, or deceived; — all the world their audiences for ever, with pleased ear, and passionate heart; — and yet, to this submissive infinitude of souls and evermore succeeding and succeeding multitude, hungry for bread of life, they do but play upon sweetly modulated pipes; with pompous nomenclature adorn the councils of CONDUCT OF LIFE-RELIGION. 363 hell; touch a troubadour's guitar to the courses of the suns; and fill the openings of eternity, before which prophets have veiled their faces, and which angels desire to look into, with idle puppets of their scholastic iuiagination, and melancholy lights of frantic faith in their lost mortal love. — Mystery of Life, p. 113. Metaphysicians and Philosophers.— I believe that metaphysicians and philosophers are, on the whole, the greatest troubles the world has go to deal with; and that while a tja-ant or bad man is of some use in teaching people submission or indigna- tion, and a thoroughly idle man is only harmful in setting an idle example, and communicating to other lazy people his own lazy misunderstandings, busy metaphysicians are always entangling good and active people, and weaving cobwebs among the finest wheels of the world's business ; and are as much as possible, by all prudent persons, to be brushed out of their way, like spiders,, and the meshed weed that has got into the Cambridgeshire canals, and other such impediments to barges and business. — Modern Painters, III., p. 387. There is some difficulty in understanding why some of the lower animals were made. I lost great part of my last hour for reading, yesterday even- ing, in keeping my kitten's tail out of the candles, — a useless beast, and still more useless tail — aston- ishing and inexplicable even to herself. Inexplic- able, to me, all of them — heads and tails alike. "Tiger — tiger — burning bright'" — is this then all you were made for — this ribbed hearthrug, tawny and black ? If only the Rev. James McCosh were here! His book is; and I'm sur% I don't know how, but it turns up in re-arranging my library : Method of the Divine Government, Physical and Moral. Preface begins. " We live in an age in which the reflecting portion of mankind are much addicted to the con- templation of the works of Nature. It is the object of the author in this Treatise to interrogate Nature 364 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. with the view of iiiakiiifj^ her utter her voice in answer to some of the most important questions which the inquiring spirit of man can put." Here is a catechumen for you ! — and a catechist ! Na- ture with her hands behind her back — Perhaps Mr. McCosh would kindly put it to her about the tiger. Farther on, indeed, it is stated that the finite cannot comprehend the infinite, and I observe that the author, with the shrinlving modesty characteristic of the clergy of his persuasion, feels that even the intellect of a McCosh cannot, without risk of error, embrace more than the present method of the Divine management of Creation. Wherefore "no man," he says, "should presume to point out all the ways in which a God of unbounded resources might govern the universe." — Fors, I., p. 381. Immortality, or the Gradation of Life. — You may at least earnestly believe, that the presence of the spirit which culminates in your own life, shows itself in dawning, wherever the dust of the earth begins to assume any oi'derly and lovely state. You will find it impossible to separate this idea of gradated manifestation from that of the vital power. Things are not either wholly alive, or wholly dead. They are less or more alive. Take the nearest, most easily examined instance — the life of a flower. Notice what a different degree and kind of life there is in the calyx and the corolla. The calyx is nothing but the swaddling clothes of the floAver; the child-blossom is bound up in it, hand and foot; guarded in it, restrained by it, till the time of birth. The shell is hardly more subor- dinate to the germ in the egg, than the calyx to the blossom. It bursts at last; but it never lives as the corolla does. It may fall at the moment its task is fulfilled, as in the poppy; or Avither gradu- ally, as in the buttercup; or persist in a ligneous apathy, after the flower is dead, as in the rose; or harmonize itself so as to share in the aspect of the real flower, as in the lily; but it never shares in the corolla's bright passion of life. And the grada- CONDUCT OF LIFE— RELIGION. 365 tions which thus exist between tlie different mem- bers of organic creatures, exist no less between the different ranges of organism. We know no higher or more energetic life than our own; but there seems to me this great good in the idea of gradation of life — it admits the idea of a life above us, in other creatures, as much nobler than ours, as ours is nobler than that of the dust. — Ethics of the Dust, Lect. X., p. 130. Co^vsECRATED WATER. — The water which has been refused to the cry of the weary and dying is unholy, though it had been blessed by every saint in heaven; and the water which is found in the vessel of mercy is holy, though it had been defiled with corpses. — King of the Golden River, p. 47. Consecrated Grou^'d.— Put a rough stone for an altar under the hawthorn on a village green;^ separate a portion of the green itself with an ordi- nary i^aling from the rest; — then consecrate, with wh^itever form you choose, the space of grass you have enclosed, and meet within the wooden fences often as you desire to pray or preach; yet you will not easily fasten an impression in the minds of the villagers, that God inhabits the space of grass inside the fence, and does not extend His presence to the common beyond it: and that the daisies and violets on one side of the railing are holy, — on the other, pi-ofane. But, instead of a wooden fence, build a wall; pave the interior space; roof it over, so as to make it comparatively dark;— and you may per- suade the villagers with ease that jou have built a house which Deity inhabits, or that you have be- come, in the old French phrase, a logeur du Bon Dieu-— Lectures on Art, p. 43. Bad Art i:v Religion.— The habitual use of bad art (ill-made dolls and bad pictures), in the services of religion, naturally blunts the delicacy of the senses, by requiring reverence to be paid to ugli- ness, and familiarizing the eye to it in moments of strong and pui'e feeling; I do not think we can overrate the probable evil results of this enforced 366 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. discordance between the sight and imagination.— Modern Painters, IV., p. 357. Statues as Symbols and Statues as Idols.— When tlie popuhice of Paris adorned tlie statue of Strasbourg witli immortelles, none, even the sim- plest of the pious decorators, would suppose that the city of Srasbourg itself, or any spirit or ghost of the city, was actually there, sitting in the Place de la Concorde. The figure was delightful to them as a visible nucleus for their fond thoughts about Strasbourg; but never for a moment supposed to he Strasbourg. Similarly, they might have taken delight in a statue purporting to represent a river instead of a city, — the Rhine, or Gfaronne, suppose, — and have been touched with strong emotion in looking at it, if the real river were dear to them, and yet never think for an instant that the statue was the river. And yet again, similarly, but much more distinctly, they might take delight in the beautiful image of a god, because it gathered and perpetuated their thoughts about that god; and yet never suppose, nor be capable of being deceived by any arguments into supposing, that the statue vms the god. On the other hand, if a meteoric stone fell from the sky in the sight of a savage, and he picked it up hot, he would most probably lay it aside in some, to him, sacred place, and believe the stone itself to be a kind of god, and offer prayer and sacrifice to it.— Aratra Pentelici, p. 34. The Olympic Zeus may be taken as a sufficiently central type of a statue which was no more sup- posed to &e Zeus, than the gold or elephants' tusks it was made of; but in which the most splendid powers of human art were exhausted in represent- ing a believed and honored God to the happy and holy imagination of a sincerely religious people.— Aratra Pentelici, p. 3G. I am no advocate for image-worship, as I believe the reader Avill elsewhere sufficiently find; but I am very sure that the Protestantism of London would have found itself quite as secure in a cathedral CONDUCT OF LIFE— RELIGION. 367 decorated with statues of good men, as in one hung round with bunches of Ribston pippins. — Stones of Venice, I., p. 333. Sensational Religious Art.— I do not thinlt that any man, wlio is thoroughly certain that Christ is in the room, will care what sort of pictures of Christ he has on its walls; and, in the plurality of cases, the delight taken in art of this kind is, in reality, nothing more than a form of graceful indulgence of those sensibilities which the habits of a disciplined life restrain in other directions. Such art is, in a word, the opera and drama of the monk. Sometimes it is worse than this, and the love of it is the mask under which a general thirst for morbid excitement will pass itself for religion. The young lady who rises in the middle of the day, jaded by her last night's ball, and utterly incapable of any simple or wholesome religious exercise, can still gaze into the dark eyes of the Madonna di San Sisto, or dream over the whiteness of an ivory crucifix, and returns to the course of her daily life in fvill persuasion that her morning's feverishness has atoned for her evening's folly. — Modern Paint- ers, III., p. 75. THE BIBLE. The Bible is the grandest group of writings ex- istent in the rational world, put into the grandest language of the rational world in the first strength of the Christian faith, by an entirely wise and kind saint, St. Jerome : translated afterwards with beauty and felicity into every language of the Christian world; and the guide, since so translated, of all the arts and acts of that world which have been noble, fortunate and hajipy. — Letter to ''Pall Mall Gazette;' 18S6. The Word of God, by which the heavens were, of old, and by which they are now kept in store, cannot be made a i^resent of to anybody in morocco binding ; nor sown on any wayside by help either 368 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. 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. — Sesame and Lilies, p. 39. The way in which common people read their Bibles is just like the way that the old monks thought hedgehogs ate grapes. They rolled them- selves (it was said), over and over, where the grapes lay on the ground. What fruit stuck to their spines, they carried off, and ate. So your hedge- hoggy readers roll themselves over and over their Bibles, and declare that whatever sticks to their own spines is Scripture; and that nothing else is. — M7iics of the Dust, Lect. V., p. 68. I am a simpleton, am I, to quote such an exploded book as Genesis ? My good wiseacre readers, I knoAV as many flaws in the book of Grenesis as the best of you, but I knew the book before I knew its flaws, while you know the flaws, and never have known the book, nor can know it. And it is at present much the worse for you ; for indeed the stories of this book of Grenesis have been the nursery tales of men mightiest whom the world has yet seen in art, and policy, and virtue, and none of yon will write better stories for your children, yet awhile. — Fors, II., p. 199. The Bible is, indeed, a deep book, when depth is required, that is to say, for deep peoijle. But it is not intended, particularly, for profound persons; on the contrary, much more for shallow and sim- ple persons. And therefoi-e the first, and generally the main and leading idea of the Bible, is on its surface, written in plainest possible Greek, Hebrew, or English, needing no penetration, nor amplifica- tion, needing nothing but what we all might give — attention. But this, which is in every one's power, and is the only thing that God wants, is just the last thing any one will give Him. We are delighted to ram- ble away into day-dreams, to repeat pet verses from other places, suggested by chance words; to snap at CONDUCT OF LIFE— RELIGION. 369 an expression which suits oiu* own particuhir views, or to di}^- up a meaning from under a verse, M^hich we sliould be amiably grieved to think any human being luid been so happy as to find before. But the plain, intended, immediate, fruitful meaning, which every one ought to find always, and espe- cially that which depends on our seeing the rela- tion of the verse to those near it, and getting the force of the whole passage, in due relation — this sort of significance we do not look for ; — it being, truly, not to be discovered unless we really attend to what is said, instead of to our own feelings. It is unfortunate also, but very certain, that in order to attend to what is said, we must go through the irkesomeness of knowing the meaning of the words. And the first thing that children should be taught about their Bibles is, to distinguish clearly between words that they understand and words that they do not; and to put aside the words they do not understand, and verses connected with them, to be asked about, or for a future time; and never to think they are reading the Bible when they are merely repeating phrases of an unknoAvn tongue. — Modern Painters, V., p. 166. IiELii AND THE DEVIL. — I do not merely believe thei-e is such a place as hell. I know there is such a place; and I know also that when men have got to the point of believing virtue imi^ossible but through dread of it, they have got into it. . . . I mean, that according to the distinctness with Avhich they hold such a creed, the stain of nether fire has passed upon them. . . . Yet though you should assuredly be able to hold your own in the straight ways of God, without al- ways believing that the Devil is at your side, it is a state of mind much to be dreaded, that you should not knoio the Devil when you see him there. For the probability is, that when you see him, the way you are walking in is not one of God's ways at all, but is leading you into quite other neighborhoods than His. On His way, indeed, you may often, like 370 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. Albert Durer's Knight, see the Fiend behind you, but you will find that he drops always farther and farther behind; Avhereas if he jogs with you at your side, it is probably one of his own by-paths you are got on. . . . Every faculty of man's soul, and every instinct of it by which he is meant to live, is exposed to its own special form of corruption : and whether within Man, or in the external world, there is a power or condition of temptation which is perpetu- ally endeavoring to reduce every glory of his soul, and every power of his life, to such corruption as is possible to them. And the more beautiful they are, the more fearful is the death which is attached as a penalty to their degradation. . . . Take for instance religion itself : the desire of finding out Grod, and placing one's self in some true son's or servant's relation to Him. The Devil, that is to say, the deceiving spirit within us, or outside of us, mixes up our own vanity with this desire ; makes us think that in our love to God we have established some connection Avith Him which se^Dar- ates us from our fellow-men, and renders us supe- rior to them. Then it takes but one wave of the Devil's hand ; and we are burning them alive for taking the liberty of contradicting us. Take the desire of teaching — the eternally unself- ish and noble instinct for telling to those Avho are ignorant, the truth we know, and guarding them from the errors we see them in danger of ;— there is no nobler, no more constant instinct in honorjible breasts ; but let the Devil formalize, and mix the pride of a profession with it — get foolish people entrusted with the business of instruction, and make their giddy heads giddier by putting them up in pulpits above a submissive crowd — and you have it instantly corrupted into its own reverse ; you have an alliance against the light, shrieking at the sun, and moon, and stars, as profane spectra : — a company of the blind, beseeching those they lead to remain blind also. " The heavens and the lights that rule them are untrue; the laws of creation are CUNDUCT OF LIFR-RELiaiON. 371 treacherous; the poles of the earth are out of poise. But loe are true. Light is in us only. Shut your eyes close and fast, and we will lead you." . . . Take the instinct for justice, and the natural sense of indignation against crime ; let the Devil color it with personal passion, and you have a mighty race of true and tender-hearted men living for centuries in such bloody feud that every note and word of their national songs is a dirge, and every rock of their hills is a grave-stone. . . . Now observe— I leave you to call this deceiving sijirit what you like — or to theorize about it as you like. All that I desire you to recognize is the fact of its being here, and the need of its being fought with. . . . This oHMw'-present fiend — . . . He is the person to be "voted" against, my working friend; it is worth something, having a vote against Mm, if you can get it! Which you can, indeed; but not by gift from Cabinet Ministers; you must work warily with your own hands, and drop sweat of heart's blood, before yovi can record that vote effectually. — Time and Tide, pi?. 40-44. Liturgies. — All that has ever been alleged against forms of worship, is justly said only of those which are compiled without sense, and em- ployed without sincerity. The earlier services of the Catholic Church teach men to think, as well as pray ; nor did ever a soul in its immediate distress or desolation, find the forms of petition learnt in childhood, lifeless on the lips of age. — Broadside Songs, p. 142. I think that our couimon prayer that God " would take away all ignorance, hardness of heart, and contempt of His word, from all Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Heretics," is an entirely absurd one. I do not think all Jews have hard hearts; nor that all Infi- dels would despise God's word, if only they could hear it ; nor do 1 in the least know whether it is my neighbor or myself who is really the Heretic. But 1 pray that prayer for myself as well as others; 372 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. and in this form, that God would make all Jews hon- est Jews, all Turks honest Turks, all Infidels honest Infidels, and all Evangelicals and Heretics honest Evangelicals and Heretics ; that so these Israelites in whom there is no guile, Turks in whom there is no guile, and so on, may in due time see the face, and know the power, of the King alike of Israel and Esau. — Fors, II., p. 4. " The English Liturgy — evidently drawn up with the amiable intention of making religion as pleas- ant as possible, to a peojile desirous of saving their souls with no great degree of personal inconvenience — is perhaps in no point more unAvholesomely lenient than in its concession to the popular con- viction that we may obtain the present advantage, and escape the future punishment, of any sort of iniquity, by dexterously concealing the manner of it from man, and triumphantly confessing the quantity of it to God." — The Lord's Prayer and The Church, Letter X. Ecclesiastical Fish-Mongers.— In order to have fresh fish you must have no middlemen, or peddlers, but the carrying of the fish must be done for you by gentlemen. They may stagger on perhai:)S a year or two more in their vain ways; but the day must come when your poor little honest puppy, whom his people have been wanting to dress up in a surplice, and call " The to be Feared," that he might have pay enough, by tithe or tax, to marry a pretty girl, and live in a parsonage — some poor lit- tle honest wretch of a puppy, I say, will eventually get it into his glossy head that he would be incom- parably more reverend to mortals, and acceptable to St. Peter and all Saints, as a true monger of sweet fish, than a false fisher for rotten souls ; and that his wife would be incomparably more " lady-like" — not to say Madonna-like — marching beside him in purple stockings and sabots — or even frankly barefoot — with her creel full of caller herring on her back, than in administering anj^ quantity of Ecclesiastical scholarship to her Sunday-schools. CONDUCT OF LIFE—liELIGION. 373 "How dreadful— how atrocious ! "—thinks the tender clerical lover. "J/y wife walk with a fish- basket ou her back ! " Yes, you young scamp, yours. You Avere going to lie to the Holy Ghost, then, were you, only that she might wear satin slippers, and be called a "lady?" .... To hew wood— to draw water;— you think these base businesses, do you ? and that you are noble, as well as sanctified, in binding faggot-burdens on poor men's backs, Avhich you Avill not touch with your own fingers;— and in preaching the efficacy of baptism inside the church, by yonder stream (under the first bridge of the Seven Bridge Road here at Oxford,) while the sweet waters of it are choked with dust and dung, within ten fathoms from your font;— and in giving benediction with two fingers and your thumb, of a superfine quality, to the Marquis of B. ? llonester benediction, and more efficacious, can be had cheaper, gentlemen, in the existing market. Under my own system of regulat- ing prices, I gave an Irish woman twopence yester- day for two oranges, of which fruit— under pressure of competition— she was ready to supply me with three for a penny. "The Lord Almighty take you to eternal glory ! " said she.— Foy^, II., pp. 150, 1.51. Bishops.— Does any man, of all the men who have received this charge, of the office of Bishop, in England, know what it is to be a wolf ?— recog- nize in himself the wolfish instinct, and the thirst for the blood of God's flock ? For if he does not know what is the nature of a wolf, how should he know what it is to be a shepherd ? If he never felt like a wolf himself, does he know the people who do ? lie does not expect them to lick their lips and bare their teeth at him, I suppose, as they do in a pantomime ? Did he ever in his life see a wolf com- ing, and debate with himself whether he should fight or fly?— or is not rather his whole life one headlong iilreling's flight, without so much as turn- ing his head to see what manner of beasts they are 374 ^ It US KIN ANTHOLOGY. that follow ?— nay, are not his very hireling's wages paid him /or flying instead of fighting? Dares any one of them answer me— here from my College of the Body of Christ I challenge every mitre of them : definitely, the Lord of St. Peter's borough, whom I note as a pugnacious and accur- ately worded person, and hear of as an outsi^oken one, able and ready to answer for his fulfilment of the charge to Peter : How many wolves does he know in Peterborough— how many sheep ?— what battle has he done— what bites can he show the scars of? — whose sins has he remitted in Peter- borough — whose retained ?— has he not remitted, like his brother Bishops, all the sins of the rich, and retained all those of the poor ?— does he know, in Peterborough, who are fornicators, v/ho thieves, who liars, who murderers ?— and has he ever dared to tell any one of them to his face that he was so— if the man had over a hundred a jea.r?—Fors, II., p. 329. 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 child- hood 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 Jiad his eye upon them? Can he circumstantially explain to us how Bill got into the habit of beating Nancy about the liead ? If he cannot, he is no bishop, though he had a mitre as high as Salisbury steeple.— Sesame and Lilies, p. 43. The real difficulty of our Ecclesiastical party has of late been that they could not venture for their lives to explain the Decalogue, feeling that Modern- ism and all the practices of it must instantly be turned inside-out, and upside down, if they did ; but if, without explaining it, they could manage to get it said every Sunday, and a little agreea,ble tune on the organ played after every clause of it, CONDUCT OF LTFE—RELIGIOK. 375 that perchance would do, (on the assumption, rend- ered so highly probable by Mr. Darwin's discoveries, respecting the modes of generation in the Orchidese, that there laas no God, except the original Baalze- bub of Ekron, Lord of Bluebottles and fly-blowing in general; and that this Decalogue was only ten crotchets of Moses's and not God's at all,)— on such assumption, I say, they thought matters might still be "kept quiet a few years longer in the Cathe- dral Close, especially as Mr. Bishop was always so agreeably and iuoifensively pungent an element of London Society ; and Mrs. Bishop and Miss Bishop so extremely proper and pleasant to behold, and the grass of the lawn so smooth shaven. But all that is drawing very fast to its end. Poor dumb dogs that they are, and blind mouths, the grim wolf with privy paw daily devouring apace, and nothing said, and their people loving to have it so, I know not what they will do in the end thereof ; but it is near. Disestablishment? Yes, and of more powers than theirs. — Fors, IV., p- 26. The Pulpit of To-day. —The particular kinds of folly also which lead youths to become clergymen, uncalled, are especially intractable. That a lad just out of his teens, and not under the influence of any deep religious enthusiasm, should ever contem- plate the possibility of his being set up in the mid- dle of a mixed company of men and women of the world, to instruct the aged, encourage the valiant, support the weak, reprove the guilty, and set an example to all ; — and not feel what a ridiculous and blasphemous business it would be, if he only pretended to do it for hire; and what a ghastly and murderous business it would be, if he did it sti-enu- ously wrong; and what a marvellous and all but incredible thing the Church and its power must be, if it were possible for him, with all the good mean- ing in the world, to do it rightly;— that any youth, I say, should ever have got himself into the state of recklessness, or conceit, required to become a clergy- man at all, under these existing circumstances, 876 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. must put him quite out of the pale of those whom one appeals to on any reasonable or moral question, in serious writing. I went into a ritualistic church, the other day, for instance, in the West End. It was built of bad Gothic, lighted with bad painted glass, and had its Litany intoned, and its sermon delivered — on the (Subject of wheat and chaff— by a young man of, as far as I could judge, very sincere religious sentiments, but very certainly the kind of person whom one might have brayed in a mortar among the very best of the wheat with a pestle, without making his foolishness depart from him. And, in general, any man's becoming a clergyman in these days implies that, at best, his sentiment has over- poAvered his intellect; and that, whatever the feeble- ness of the latter, the victory of his impertinent piety has been probably owing to its alliance with his conceit, and its iDromise to him of the gratifica- tion of being regarded as an oracle, without the trouble of becoming wise, or the grief of being so. It is not, hoAvever, by men of this stamp that the princii^al mischief is done to the Church of Christ. Their foolish congregations are not enough in earnest even to be mislead ; and the increasing London or Liverpool respectable suburb is simply provided with its baker's and butcher's shop, its ale-house, its itinerant organ-grinders for the week, and stationary organ-grinder for Sunday, himself his monkey, in obedience to the commonest condi- tion of demand and supply, and without much more danger in their Sunday's entertainment than in their Saturday's. But the importunate and zeal- ous ministrations of the men who have been strong enough to deceive themselves before they deceive others ; — who give the grace and glow of vital sin- cerity to falsehood, and lie for God from the ground of their heart, produce forms of moral corruption in their congregations as much more deadly than the consequences of recognizedly vicious conduct, as the hectic of consumption is more deadly than the flush of tempoi-ary fever. — Fors, II., pp. 335-327. CONDUCT OF LIFE-BELI(;lON. 377 The Simony of to-day dilTers only from that of apostolic times, in that, while the elder Simon thought the gift of the Holy Ghost worth a consid- erable offer in ready money, the modern Simon Avould on the whole refuse to acceftt the same gift of the Third Person of the Trinity, Avithout a nice little attached income, a pretty church, with a steeple restored by Mr. Scott, and an eligible neigh- borhood. . . . In defence of this Profession, with its pride, privi- lege, and more or less roseate repose of domestic felicity, extremely beautiful and enviable in coun- try parishes, the clergy, as a body, have, with what energy and power was in them, repelled the advance both of science and scholarship, so far as either interfered with what they had been accustomed to teach ; and connived at every abuse in public and private conduct, with which they felt it would be considered uncivil, and feared it might ultimately prove unsafe, to interfere. — Furs, II., i^p. 439, 440. The extreme degradation and exhaustion of the power of the priests, or clergy, of so-called civilized "society" is shown, it seems to me, conclusively, by their absence from the dramatis persona', in higher imaginative literature. It is not through courtesy that the clergy never appear upon the stage, but because the playwright thinks that thej' have no more any real share in human events* and this estimate is still more clearly shown by their nonentity in the stories of powerful novels. Con- sider what is really told us of the priesthood in modern England, by the fact that in the work of our greatest metropolitan novelist, it appears, as a consecrated body, not at all; and as an active or visible one, only in the figures of Mr. Stiggins and Mr. Chadband ! To the fall of the Church in Scot- land, the testimony of the greatest of Scotchmen is still more stern, because given with the profoundest knowledge of all classes of Scottish society. In The Antiquary, how much higher, in all moral and spiritual function, Edie Ochiltree stands than Mr. 373 A BUSKm ANTHOLOGY. Blattergowl ; in The Heart of Mid-Lothian, liow far superior Jeaiiie is to her husband. . .- . I have always said that everything evil in Europe is pri- marily the fault of her bishoi^s. . . . But while the faults of the clergy are open to the sight and cavil of all men, their modest and constant virtues, past and present, acting continually like mountain wells, through secret channels, in the kindlj' min- istry of the parish priest, and the secluded prayer of the monk, are also the root of what yet remains vital and happy among European races. — Roadside iSongs of Tuscany, pp. 100, 107. The Religio:v of the Greeks.— You may obtain a more truthful idea of the nature of Greek religion and legend from the poems of Keats, and the nearly as beautiful, and, in general grasi? of subject, far more powerful, recent work of Morris, than from frigid scholarship, however extensive. — Athena, p. 19. The Greek creed was, of course, different in its character, as our own creed is, according to the class of people who held it. The common people's Avas quite literal, simple, and happy : their idea of Athena was as clear as a good Roman Cath- olic peasant's idea of the Madonna. . . . Then, secondly, the creed of the upper classes was more refined and spiritual, but quite as honest, and even more forcible in its effect on the life. . . . Then, thirdly, the faith of the poets and artists was, necessarily, less definite, being continually modified by the involuntary action of their own fancies ; and by the necessity of presenting, in clear verbal or material form, things of which they had no authoritative knowledge. Their faith was, in some respects, like Dante's or Milton's : firm in general conception, but not able to vouch for every detail in the forms they gave it : but they Avent considerably farther, even in that minor sinceritj', than subsequent poets ; and strove with all their might to be as near the truth as they could. Pindar says, quite simply, "I cannot think so-and-so of CONDUCT OF LIFE— RELIGION. 379 the Gods. It must have been this way— it cannot have been that way— that the thing was done." And as late among the Latins as the days of Hor- ace, this sincerity remains. Horace is just as true and simple in his religion as Wordsworth. . . . '' Operosa parmis carmina Jingo — \, little thing that I am, weave my laborious songs " as earnestly as the bee among the bells of thyme on the Matin mountains. Yes, and he dedicates his favorite pine to Diana, and he chants his autumnal hymn to the Faun that guards his fields, and he guides the noble youths and maids of Rome in their choir to Apollo, and he tells the farmer's little girl that the Gods will love her, though she has only a handful of salt and meal to give them— just as earnestly as ever English gentleman taught Christian faith to English youth in England's truest days. —.4f7t6'Jia, pp. 45-47. Christianity in the Middle Ages.— For many centuries the Knights of Christendom wore their religion gay as their crest, familiar as their gaunt- let, shook it high in the summer air, hurled it fiercely in other people's faces, grasped their spear the firmer for it, sat their horses the prouder; but it never entered into their minds for an instant to ask the meaning of it ! " Forgive us our sins: " by all means — yes, and the next garrison that holds out a day longer than is convenient to us, hang them every man to his battlement. "Give us this day our daily bread," — yes, and our neighbor's also, if Ave have any luck. " Our Lady and the Saints ! " Is there any infidel dog that doubts of them ?— in God's name, boot and spur — and let us have the head ofif him. It went on so, frankly and bravely, to the twelfth century, at the earliest ; when men begin to think in a serious manner; more or less of gentle manners and domestic comfort being also then conceivable and attainable. Rosamond is not any more asked to drink out of her father's skull. Rooms begin to be matted and Avainscoted ; shops to hold store of marvellous foreign wares ; knights 380 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. and ladies learn to spell, and to read, with pleasure, Music is everywhere; — Death, also. Much to enjoy — much to learn, and to endure — with Death always at the gates. " If war fail thee in thine own country, get thee with haste into another," says the faithful old French knight to the boy- chevalier, in early fourteeth century days. No country stays more than two centuries in this intermediate phase between Faith and Reason. In France it lasted from about 1150 to 1350 ; in Eng- land, 1200 to 1400 ; in Venice, 1300 to 1500. The course of it is always in the gradual development of Christianity,— till her yoke gets at once too aerial, and too straight, for the mob, who break through it at last as if it were so much gossamer; and at the same fatal time, Avealth and luxury, with the vanity of corrupt learning, foul the faith of the upper classes, who now begin to wear their Christianity, not tossed for a crest high over their armor, l)ut stuck as a plaster over their sores, inside of their clothes. Then comes j^rinting, and universal gab- ble of fools ; gunpowder, and the end of all the noble methods of war.— /SY. Mark's Rest, p. 49. CHAPTER III. Women. A woman may always help her husband by what she knows, however little; by what she half-knows, or mis-knows, she will only teaze him. — /Sesame and Lilies, p. 88. For a long time I used to say, in all my element- ary books, that, except in a graceful and Jiiinor way, Avomen could not paint or draw. I am begin- ning, lately [1883], to bow myseif to the much more delightful conviction that nobody else can. — Art of England, jd. 15. The soul's aruior is never well sot to the heart CONDt/CT OF LIFli-WOMEX. 381 unless a wunuiirs hand lias braced it ; and it is only when she braces it loosely that the honor of manhood fails. — Sesame and Lilies, p. 81. You fancy, perhaps, as you have been told so often, that a wife's rule should only be over her husband's house, not over his mind. Ah, no! the true rule is just the reverse of that ; a true wife, in her husbands house, is his servant; it is in his heart that she is queen. Whatever of the best he can conceive, it is her part to be ; whatever of highest he can hope, it is hers to promise ; all that is dark in him she must purge into purity ; all that is fail- ing in him she must strengthen into truth: from her, through all the world's clamor, he must win his praise; in her, through all the world's warfare, he must find his peace. — Crown, of Wild Olive, Lect. III., p. 02. Women's Wo.rk.— Then, for my meaning as to women's work, what should I mean, but sci-ubbing furniture, dusting walls, sweeping floors, making the beds, washing up the crockery, ditto the chil- dren, and whipping them when they want it, — mending their clothes, cooking their dinners, — and when there are cooks more than enough, helping with the farm work, or the garden, or the dairy? Is that plain speaking enough ? — Fors, IV., p. 375. The man's poAver is active, j^rogressive, de- fensive. He is eminently the doer, the creator, the discoverer, the defender. His intellect is for speculation and invention ; his energy for adven- ture, 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 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. Bj' her office, and place, she is protected from all danger and temptation. The man, in his rough work in open world, must encounter all peril and 882 A BUSKIN' ANTHOLOGY. trial :— to him, therefore, the failure, the offence, 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 sougiit it, need enter no danger, no temptation, no cause of error or offence. 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 j)ene- trate 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 re- ceive 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 fulfils 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 where- ever she is ; and for a noble woman it stretches far round her, better than ceiled with cedar, or painted with vei-milion, shedding its quiet light far, for those who else were homeless.— iSesame and Lilies, pp. 82, 83. The Public Duties of Women.— The man's duty, as a member of a commonwealth, is to assist in the maintenance, in the advance, in the defence of the State. The woman's duty, as a member of the commonwealth, is to assist in the oi-dering, in the comforting, and in the beautiful adornment of the State. What the man is at his own gate, CONDUCT OF LIFE— WOMEN. 383 defending it, if need be, against insult and spoil, that also, not in a less, but in a more devoted meas- ure, lie is to be at the gate of his country, leaving Ills 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 centre 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 im- minent, loveliness more rare. — Sesame and Lilies, p. 95. Woman's Power if she but realized it.— I am surjDrised at no depths to which, Avhen once warped from its honor, humanity can be degraded. . . . But this is wonderful to me— oh, how Avonderful ! — to see the tender and delicate woman among you, Avith 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 Avhich 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 prece- dence with her next-door neighbor ! This is wonder- ful — oh, wonderful I — 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 droop- ing, 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 torn up by the agony of men, and beat level by the drift of their life- blood. — Sesame and Lilies, pp. 1)8, 99. AVoMEN AND THEIR LovERS.— Believe me, the whole course and character of your lovers' lives is in your hands; what you would have them be, they shall be, if you not only desire to have them so, but deserve to have them so ; for they are but mirrors 364 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. ill which you Avill see yourselves iumged. If you are frivolous, they will be so also ; if you have no understanding of the scope of their duty, they also will forget it ; they will listen — they can listen— to no other interpretation of it than that uttered from your lips. Bid them be brave, they will be brave for you ; bid them be cowards, and, how noble so- ever they be, they will quail for you. Bid them be wise, and they will be wise for you ; mock at their counsel, they will be fools for you : such and so absolute is your rule over them. — Crown of Wild Olive, Lect. III., p. 92. Women's Dress. — A queen may dress like a wait- ing-maid, — perhaps succeed, if she chooses, in pass- ing for one ; but she will not, therefore, be vulgar ; nay, a waiting-maid may dress like a queen, and jaretend to be one, and yet need not be vulgar, unless there is inherent vulgarity in her. — Modern Painters, V., p. 291. You ladies like to lead the fashion : — by all means lead it : lead it thoroughly, lead it far enough. Dress yourselves nicely, and dress everybody else nicely. Lead i\\e fashions for the poor first ; make them look well, and you yourselves will look, in ways of which you have now no conception, all the better. The fashions you have set for some time among your peasantry are not pretty ones ; their doublets are too irregularly slashed, and the wind blows too frankly through them. — Crown of Wild Olive, Lect. I., p. 22. For literal truth of your jewels themselves, ab- solutely search out and cast away all manner of false, or dyed, or altered stones. And at present, to make quite sure, wear your jewels uncut : they will be twenty times more interesting to you, so. The ruby in the British crown is uncut; and is, as far as my knowledge extends — I have not had it to look at close— the loveliest precious stone in the world. . . . And as you are true in the choosing, be just in the sharing, of your jewels. They are but dross and dust after all ; and you, my sweet CONDUCT OF LIFE—WOMEX. 385 religious friends, who are so anxious to inijoart to the poor your pearls of gi'eat price, may surely also share with them your pearls of little price. — Deuca- lion, p. 86. It would be strange, if at any great assembly which, while it dazzled the young and the thought- less, beguiled the gentler hearts that beat 1)eneath the embroidei-y, with a placid sensation of luxurious benevolence — as if by all that they wore in way- wardness of beauty, comfort had been first given to the distressed, and aid to the indigent ; it would be strange, I say, if, for a moment, the sjairits of Truth and of Terror, which walk invisibly among the masques of the earth, would lift the dimness from our erring thoughts, and show us how (inasmuch as the sums exhausted for that magiiilicence would have given back the failing breath to many an un- sheltered outcast on moor and street) they who wear it have literally entered into partnership with Death, and dressed themselves in his spoils. Yes, if the veil could be lifted not only from your thoughts, but from your human sight, you would see— the angels do see — on those gay Avhite dresses of yours, strange dark sjDots, and crimson patterns that you knew not of — sjiots of the inextinguishable red that all the seas cannot wash away ; yes, and among the i^leasant flowers that crown your fair heads, and glow on your wreathed hair, you would see that one weed was always twisted which no one thought of — the grass that grows on graves. — A Joy For Ever, p. 38. Women usually apologize to themselves for their pride and vanity, by saying, " It is good for trade." Now you may soon convince yourself, and every- body about you, of the monstrous folly of this, by a very simple piece of definite action. Wear, your- self, becoming, pleasantly varied, but simple dress, of the best possible material. What you think necessary to buy (beyond this) " for the good of trade," buy, and immediately hum. Even your dullest friends will see the folly of that proceeding. 386 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. You can then explain to them that by wearing wliat tliey don't want (instead of burning it) for the good of trade, they are merely adding insolence and vulgarity to absurdity.— i^ors, II., p. 157. WOMEN AND RELIGION. Theology a dangerous Science for Women. — There is one dangerous science for women — one which let them 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 whei-e 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. — Sesame and Lilies, p. 87. Women and the Bible. — You women of England are all now shrieking with one voice— you and your clergymen together — because you hear of your Bibles being attacked. If you choose to obey your Bibles, you will never care who attacks them. It is just because you never fulfil a single downright precept of the Book, that you are so careful for its credit : and just because you don't care to obey its Avhole words, that you are so particular about the letters of them. The Bible tells you to dress plainly,— and you are mad for finery ; the Bible tells you to have pity on the poor, — and you crush them under your carriage-wheels ; the Bible tells you to do judgment and justice, — and you do not know, nor care to know, so much as what the Bible word " justice " means.— Croton of Wild Olive, Lect. III., p. 93. Sisters of Charity. — I am frightened out of my wits, every noAV and then, here at Oxford, by seeing something come out of poor people's houses, all dressed in black down to the ground ; which, (having been much thinking of wicked things CONDUCT OF LIFE— WOMEN. 387 lately,) I at first take for the Devil, and then find, to my extreme relief and gratification, that it's a Sister of Charity.— i^or*', I., p. 325. I know well how good the Sisters of Charity are, and how much we owe to them ; but all these pro- fessional pieties (except so far as distinction or asso- ciation may be nece.ssary for effectiveness of work) are in their spirit wrong, and in practice merely plaster the sores of disease that ought never have been perniitted to exist ; encouraging at the same time the herd of less excellent women in frivolity, by leading them to think that they must either be good up to the black standard, or cannot be good for anything. Wear a costume, by all means, if you like; but let it be a cheerful and becoming one; and be in your heart a Sister of Charity always, without either veiled or voluble declaration of it. — Sesame and Lilies, Preface of 1871, p. 14. The PA.SSION of Christ.— When any you of next go abroad, observe, and consider the meaning of, the sculptures and paintings, Avhich of every rank in art, and in every chapel and cathedral, and by every mountain path, recall the hours, and repre- sent the agonies, of the Passion of Christ : and try to form some estimate of the efforts that have been made by the four arts of eloquence, music, painting, and sculpture, since the twelfth century, to wring out of the hearts of women the last drops of pity that could be excited for this merely physical agony: for the art nearly always dwells on the physical wounds or exhaustion chiefly, and degrades, far more than it animates, the conception of pain. Then try to conceive the quantity of time, and of excited and thrilling emotion, which have been wasted by the tender and delicate women of Chris- tendom, during these last six hundred years, in thus picturing to themselves, under the influence of such imagery, the bodily pain, long since passed, of One Person;— which, so far as they indeed conceived it to be sustained by a Divine Nature, could not for that reason have been less endurable than the 388 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. agonies of any simple liuman death by torture : and then try to estimate what might have been the better result, for the righteousness and felicity of mankind, if these same women had been taught the deep meaning of the last words that wei-e ever spoken by their Master to those who had ministered to Him of their substance: " Davighters of Jeru- salem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children." — Lectures on Art, p. 40. A Dinner-Party with Christ.— I wrotea lettei to one of my lady friends, who gives rather frequent dinners, the other day, which may perhaps be use- ful to others : it was to this effect mainly, though I add and alter a little to make it more general : — " You probably will be having a dinner-party to- day; now, please do this, and remember I am quite serious in what I ask you. We all of us, who have any belief in Christianity at all, wish that Christ were alive now. Suppose, then, that He is. I think it very likely that if He were in London you would be one of the people whom He Avould take some notice of. Now, suppose He has sent you word that He is coming to dine Avith you to-day ; but that you are not to make any change in your guests on His ac- count; that He wants to meet exactly the party you have, and no other. Suppose you have just received this message, and that St. John has also left woril, in passing, with tlie butler, that his ujaster will come alone ; so that you won't have any trouble with the Apostles. Now, this is what I Avant you to do. First, determine what you will have for dinner. You are not ordered, observe, to make no changes in your bill of fare. Take a piece of paper, and ab- solutely write fresh orders to your cook, — you can't realize the thing enough Avithout writing. Tliat done, consider hoAv you AVill arrange your guests — who is to sit next Christ on the other side — Avho opposite, and so on ; finally, consider a little AA'hat you AA'ill talk about, supposing, which is just possi- ble, that Christ should tell you to go on talking as if He were not there, and never to mind Hiin. Yon CONDUCT OF LIFE— WOMEN. 389 couldu't, you will tell lue ? Then, my dear lady, how t-au you in general ? Uon't you i^rofess— nay, don't you much more than profess— to believe that Christ is always there, Avhether you see Him or not ? AVhy should the seeing make such a difference ? "— Fors, II., p. 283. GIRLS. At no period, so far as I am able to gather by the most careful comparison of existing portraiture, has there ever been a loveliness so variably refined, so modestly and kindly virtuous, so innocently fan- tastic, and so daintily pure, as the i^resent girl- beauty of our British Islands.— J.r^ of England, p. 87. A young lady sang to me a Miss Somebody's "great song," Live, and Love, and Die. Had it been written for nothing better than silkworms, it should at least have added— Spin. — Fiction, Fair and Foul, p. 19. 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 also to keep her in a lofty and pure element of thought. — Sesame and Lilies, p. 88. Thkir first Virtue is to be happy. — The first virtue of girls is to be intensely happy;— so hapi^y that they don't know what to do with themselves for happiness, — and dance, instead of walking. Don't you recollect, " No fountain from a rocky cave E'er tripped witlx foot so free; Slie seemed as luippy as a wave Tliat dances on the sea." A girl is alwaj'S like that, when everything's right with her.— Mhics of the Dust, p. 85. 390 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. Cinderella and Virtue. — In the play, Cinder- ella makes herself generally useful, and sweeps the doorstep, and dusts the door;— and none of the au- dience think any the Avorse of her on that acdount. They think the worse of her proud sisters who make her do it. But when they leave the Circus, they never think for a moment of making themselves useful, like Cinderella. They forthwith play the proud sisters as much as they can; and try to make anybody'else, who will, sweep their doorsteps. Also, nobody advises Cinderella to write novels, instead of doing her washing, by way of bettering herself. The audience, gentle and simple, feel that the only chance she has of pleasing her Godmother, or mar- rying a Prince, is in remaining patiently at her tub, as long as the Fates will have it so, heavy though it he.—Fors, II., p. 100. Girls Reading the Bible.— You may see con- tinually girls who have never been taught to do a single useful thing thoroughly; who cannot sew, who cannot cook, who cannot cast an account, nor prepare a medicine, whose whole life has been passed either in i^lay or in pride; you will find girls like these when they are earnest-hearted, cast all their innate passion of religious spirit, which was meant by God to support them through the iiksomeness of daily toil, into grievous and vain meditation over the meaning of the great Book, of which no syllable was ever yet to be understood but through a deed; all the instinctive wisdom and mercy of their womanhood made vain, and the glory of their pure consciences Avarped into fruitless agony con- cerning questions which the laws of common ser- viceable life would have either solved for them in an instant, or kept out of their way. Give such a girl any true work that will make her active in the dawn, and weary at night, with the consciousness that her fellow-creatures have indeed been the bet- ter for her day, and the powerless sorrow of her enthusiasm will transform itself into a majesty of radiant and beneficent peace. — Mystery of Life, p. 133. COt^BUGT OF LIFE— WOMEN. 391 Cooking. — Oookiiifj; means the knoAvIedge of Me- dea, and of Circe, and of Calypso, and of Helen, and of Rebekah, and of the Qtieen of Sheba. It means the knowledge of all herbs, and fruits, and balms, and spices; and of all that is healing and sweet in fields and groves, and savory in meats; it means carefulness, and inventiveness, and watch- fulness, and willingness, and readiness of appliance; it means the economy of your great-grandmothers, and the science of modern chemists; it means much tasting, and no wasting; it means English thorough- ness, and French art, and Arabian hospitality; and it means, in fine, that you are to be perfectly and always, ladies — "• loaf-givers;" and, as you are to see, imperatively, that everybody has something Ijretty to put on, — so you are to see, yet more im- peratively, that everybody has something nice to eat. — Ethics of the Dust, p. 87. A Dialogue on SEv>a:,'G axd Dress-makixg.— L. — What do you think the beautiful word wife comes from ? Dora. — I don't think it is a particularly beautiful woi'd. -Zi.— Perhaps not. At your ages you may think hride sounds better; but wife is the word for wear, dejjend upon it. It is the great word in which the English and Latin languages conquer the French and the Grreek. I hope the French will some day get a word for it, yet, instead of their dreadful femme. But what do you think it comes from ? Dora.— I never did think about it. X.— Nor you, Sibyl? ^ibyl.—l^o; I thought it was Saxon and stopped there. X.— Yes; but the great good of Saxon words is, that they usually do mean something. Wife means " weaver." You have all the right to call yourselves little ''housewives," when you sew nea.tly. —M7iics of the Dust, p. 121. Dora.— Then, we are all to learn dress-making, are we ? 392 A EUSKIN ANTHOLOGT. L. — Yes; and always to dress yourselves beautiful- ly — not finely, unless on occasion; but then very finely and beautifully too. Also, you are to dress as many other people as you can; and to teach them how to dress, if they don't know; and to con- sider every ill-dressed woman or child whom j^ou see anywhere, as a personal disgrace; and to get at them, somehow, until everybody is as beauti- fully dressed as birds. — Ethics of the Bust, p. 87. Bits of Work for Girls —Early rising— on all grounds — is for yourself indispensable. You must be at work by latest at six in summer and seven in winter. (Of course that iDuts an end to evening parties, and so it is a blessed condition in two direc- tions at once.) Every day do a little bit of house- maid's work in your oAvn house, thoroughlj^ so as to be a pattern of perfection in that kind. Your actual housemaid will then follow your lead, if there's an atom of woman's spirit in her — (if not, ask your mother to get another). Take a step or two of stair, and a corner of the dining-room, and keep them i)olished like bits of a Dutch picture. If you have a garden, spend all spare minutes in it in actual gardening. If not, get leave to take care of part of some friend's, a j^oor person's, but always out of doors. Have nothing to do with green- houses, still less with hothouses. When thei-e are no flowers to be looked after, there are dead leaves to be gathered, snow to be swept, or matting to be nailed, and the \\\s.e.—Fors, II., p. 97. Gardening for Girls.— .F/r^'^.— The primal ob- ject of your gardening, for yourself, is to keep you at work in the open air, whenever it is possible. The greenhouse will always be a refuge to you from the wind; which, on the contrary, you ought to be able to bear; and will tempt you into clippings and pottings and pettings, and mere standing dilettan- tism in a damp and over-scented room, instead of true labor in fresh air. Secondly.— It will not only itself involve unneces- CONDUCT OF LIFE— WOMEN. 393 sary expense — (for the greenhouse is sure to turn into a hothouse in the end; and even if not, is al- ways having its panes broken, or its bhnds going wrong, or its stands getting rickety); but it will tempt you into buying nursery plants, and waste your time in anxiety about them. Thirdly. — The use of your garden to the house- hold ought to be mainly in the vegetables you can raise in it. And, for these, your proper observance of season, and of the authority of the stars, is a vital duty. Every climate gives its vegetable food to its living creatures at the right time; your business is to know that time, and be prepared for it, and to take the healthy luxury which nature appoints you, in the rare annual taste of the thing given in those its due days. The vile and gluttonous modern habit of forcing never allows people properly to taste anything. Lastly, and chiefly. — Your garden is to enable you to obtain such knowledge of plants as you may best use in the country in which you live, by com- municating it to others; and teaching them to take pleasure in the green herb, given for meat, and the colored flower, given for joy. And your business is not to make the greenhouse or hothouse rejoice and blossom like the rose, but the wilderness and solitary place. And it is, therefore, not at all of camellias and air-plants that the devil is afraid ; on the con- trary, the Dame aux Camellias is a very especial servant of Wi^.—Fors, II., p. 284. Idleness and Cruelty in Girls.— How many soever you may find or fancy your faults to be, there are only two that ai-e of real consequence, —Idleness and Cruelty. Perhaps you may be proud. Well, we can get much good out of pride, if only it be not religious. Perhaps you may be vain : it is highly probable ; and very pleasant for the people who like to praise you. Perhaps you are a little envious : that is really very shocking ; but then — so is everybody else. Perhaps, also, you are a little malicious, which I am truly concerned 394 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. to hear, but should probably only the more, if I knew you, enjoy your conversation. But whatever else you may be, you must not be useless, and you must not be cruel. If there is any one point which, in six thousand years of thinking about right and wrong, wise and good men have agreed upon, or successively by experience discovered, it is that God dislikes idle and cruel people more than any other; — that Ilis first order is, "Work while you have light;" and His second, "Be merciful while you have mercy," — Sesame and Lilies, Vreiixce, 1871, p. 81. Vanity rebuked. — First, be quite sure of one thing, that, however much you may know, and whatever advantages you may possess, and however good you may be, you have not been singled out, by the God who made you, from all the other girls in the world, to be especially informed respecting His own nature and character. You have not been born in a luminoiis point upon the surface of the globe, where a perfect theology might be expounded to you from your youth up, and where everything you were taught would be true, and everything that was enforced upon you, right. Of all the insolent, all the foolish persuasions that by any chance could enter and hold your empty little heart, this is the proudest and foolishest, — that you have been so much the darling of the Heavens, and favorite of the Fates, as to lie born in the very nick of time, and in the punctual place, when and where pure Divine truth had been sifted from the errors of the Nations ; and that your papa had been providen- tially disposed to buy a house in the convenient neighborhood of the steeple under which that immaculate and final verity would be beautifully pi'oclaimed. Do not think it, child ; it is not so. This, on the contrary, is the fact, — unpleasant you may think it ; pleasant, it seems to me, — that you, with all your pretty dressses, and dainty looks, and kindly thoughts, and saintly aspirations, are not one Avhitmore thought of or loved by the great CONDUCT OF LIFE— women: 395 Maker and Master than any poor little red. black, or blue savage, running wild in the pestilent woods, or naked on the hot sands of the earth : and that, of the two, you pi'obably know less about God than she does ; the only difference being that she thinks little of Him that is right, and you, njuch that is yfYon^.— Sesame and Lilies, Preface, 1871, p. 6. The two Mirrors.— I do not doubt but that the mind is a less pleasant thing to look at than the face, and for that very reason it needs more looking at ; so always have two mirrors on your toilet table, and see that Avith proper care you dress body and mind before them daily. After the dressing is once over for the day, think no more about it: as your hair will blow about your ears, so your temper and thoughts will get ruffled with the day's work, and may need, sometimes, twice dressing ; but I don't want you to carry about a mental pocket- comb ; only to be smooth braided alwaj^s in the morning. — Sesame and Lilies, Preface, 1871, jj. 9. An Engraving op the Cross of Christ.— This engraving represents a young lady in a very long and, though plain, very becoming white dress, tossed upon the waves of a terrifically stormy sea, by which neither her hair nor her becoming dress is in the least wetted ; and saved from despair in that situation by closely embracing a very thick and solid stone Cross. By which far-sought and orginal metaphor young ladies are expected, after some effort, to understand the recourse they may have, for support, to the Cross of Christ, in the midst of the troubles of this world. As those troubles are for the present, in all prob- ability, limited to the occasional loss of their thim- bles Avhen they have not taken care to put them into their workboxes, — the concern they feel at the unsympathizing gaiety of their companions, — or perhaps the disappointment at not hearing a favor- ite clergyman preach, — (for I will not suppose the young ladies interested in this picture to be affected by any chargin at the loss of an invitation to a 39G A RUSKIN AKTHOLOOY. ball, or tlie like worldliness,) — it seems to me the .stress of such calamities might be represented, in a picture, by less appalling imagery. And I can as- sure my fair little hidy friends, — if I still have any, — that whatever a young girl's ordinary troubles or annoyances may be, her true virtue is in shak- ing them olY, as a rose-leaf shakes oft' rain, and remaining debonnaire and bright in spirits, or even, as the rose would be, the brighter for the troubles ; and not at all in allowing herself to be either drifted or depressed to the point of requiring religious con- solation. — Ariadne, p. 18. On the Education of Girls.— 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 lind Avhat 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 flow- er does, — she will wither without sun; she will de- cay in her sheath, as the narcissus does, if you do not give her air enough; she may fall, and defile her head in dust, if you leave her without help at sonje moments of her life; but you cannot fetter her; she must take her own fair form and Wciy, if she take any, and in mind as in body, must have always " Her honscliokl iiiotions light and free And steps of vii'gln liberty." — Sesame and Lilies, p. 90. 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 knoM'l- edge, — not as if it were, or could be, for her an ob- ject 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 CONDUCT OF LIFE— WOMEN. 397 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 tlie highest that she should be trained in habits of accurate thought ; that she should un- derstand 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 wasest and bravest of men can de- scend, owning themselves forever children, gather- ing pebbles on a boundless shore. It is of little consequence how many positions of cities she knows, or how many dates of events, or how many names of celebrated persons — it is not the object of educa- tion to turn a woman into a dictionary; but it is deeply necessary that she should be taught to enter with her Avhole personality into the history she reads; to picture the passages of it vitally in her own bright imagination; to apiorehend, 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 dark- ness, of the fateful threads of Avoven fire that con- nect error with its retribution. But, chiefly of all. she is to be taught to extend the limits of her sym- pathy 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 contem- porary calamity which, were it but rightly mourned by her, would recur no more hereafter. — Sesame ami LUies, pp. 86, 87. Two AMERicAJf Girls in Italy.— I had to go to Verona by the afternoon train. In the carriage with me were two American girls with their father and mother, people of the class which has lately made so much money suddenly, and does not know what to do with it : and these two girls, of about 393 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. fifteen and eighteen, had evidently been indulged in everything, (since they had had the means,) which western civilization could imagine. And here they were, specimens of the utmost which the money and invention of the nineteenth century could produce in maidenhood, — children of its most progressive race, — enjoying the full advan- tages of political liberty, of enlightened philosophi- cal education, of cheap pilfered literature, and of luxury at any cost. Whatever money, machinery, or freedom of thought, could do for these two chil- dren, had been done. No superstition had de- ceived, no restraint degraded them:— types, they could not but be, of maidenly wisdom and felicity, as conceived by the forwardest intellects of our time. And they were travelling throiigh a district which, if any in the world, should touch the hearts and de- light the eyes of young girls. Between Venice and Vei'ona ! Portia's villa perhaps in sight upon the Brenta, — Juliet's tomb to be visited in the evening, — blue against the southern sky, the hills of Petrarch's home. Exquisite midsummer sunshine, with low rays, glanced through the vine-leaves; all the Alps were cl«far, from the lake of Garda to C adore, and to farthest Tyrol. What a princess's chamber, this, if these are princesses, and what dreams might they not dream , therein ! But the two American girls were neither prin- cesses, nor seers, nor dreamers. By infinite self-in- dulgence, they had reduced themselves simply to two pieces of white putty that could feel pain. The flies and dust stuck to them as to clay, ?bnd they perceived, between Venice and Verona, nothing but the flies and the dust. They pulled down the blinds the moment they entered the carriage, and then sprawled, and writhed, and tossed among the cushions of it, in vain contest, during the whole fifty miles, with every miserable sensation of bodily affliction that could make time intolerable. They Avere dressed in thin white frocks, coming vaguely open at the backs as they stretched or wriggled; CONDUCT OF LIFE-WOMEN. 399 they had French novels, lemons, and lumps of sugar, to beguile their state with; the novels hang- ing together by the ends of string that had once stiched them, or adhering at the corners in densely bruised dog's-ears, out of which the girls, wetting their fingers, occasionally extricated a gluey leaf. From time to time they cut a lemon open, ground a lump of sugar backwards and forwards over it till every fibre was in a treacly pulp; then sucked the pulp, and gnawed the white skin into leathery strings for the sake of its bitter. Only one sentence was exchanged, in the fifty miles, on the subject of things outside the carriage (the Alps being once vis- ible from a station where they had drawn up the blinds). " Don't those snow-caps make you cool ?" " No — I wisli they did." And so they went their way, with sealed eyes and tormented limbs, their numbered miles of pain.— Fors, I., pp. 269, 370. Carpaccio's Princess.— In the year 1869, just before leaving Venice, I liad been carefully looking at a picture by Victor Carpaccio, representing the dream of a young pi'incess. Carpaccio lias taken nuich pains to explain to us, as far as he can, the kind of life she leads, by completely painting her little bedroom in the light of dawn, so that you can see everything in it. It is lighted by two doubly- arched windows, the arches being painted crimson round their edges, and the capitals of the shafts that bear them, gilded. They are filled at the top with small round panes of glass ; but beneath, are open to the blue morning sky, with a low lattice across them ; and in the one at the back of the room are set two beautiful white Greek vases with a plant in each; one having rich dark and pointed green leaves, the other crimson flowers, but not of any species known to me, each at the end of a branch like a spray of heath. These flower-i^ots stand on a shelf which runs all round the room, and beneath the window, at about 400 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. the height of the elbow, and serves to put things on anywhere : beneath it, down to the floor, the walls are covered with green cloth ; but above, are bare and white. The second windoAv is nearly opposite the bed, and in front of it is the princess's reading-table, some two feet and a half square, covered by a red cloth Avith a white border and dainty fringe : and beside it her seat, not at all like a reading chair in Oxford, but a very small three- legged stool like a music-stool, covered with crim- son cloth. On the table are a book set up at a slope fittest for reading, and an hour-glass. Under the shelf, near the table, so as to be easily reached by the outstretched arm, is a press full of books. The door of this has been left open, and the books, I am grieved to say, are rather in disorder, having been pulled about before the i^rincess went to bed, and one left standing on its side. Ojiposite this window, on the white wall, is a small shrine or picture (I can't see which, for it is in sharp retiring perspective), with a lami^ before it, and a silver vessel hung from the lamp, looking like one for holding incense. The bed is a broad four-poster, the posts being beautifully wrought golden or gilded rods, variously wreathed and branched, carrying a canopy of warm red. The princess's shield is at the head of it, and the feet are raised entirely above the floor of the room, on a dais which projects at the lower end so as to form a seat, on which the child has laid her crown. Her little blue slippers lie at the side of the bed, — her white dog beside them. The coverlid is scarlet, the white sheet covered half way back over it ; the young girl lies straight, bending neither at waist nor knee, the sheet rising and falling over her in a narrow unbroken Avave, like the shape of the coverlid of the last sleep, when the turf scarcely rises. She is some seventeen or eighteen years old, her head is turned towards us on the pilloM', the cheek resting on her hand, as if she Avere thinking, yet utterly calm in sleep, and almost colorless- CONDUCT OF LIFE— WOMEN. 4=01 Her hair is tied with a narrow riband, and divided into two wreaths, which encircle her head like a double crown. The white nightgown hides the arm raised on the pillow, down to the wrist. At the door of the room an angel enters ; (the lit- tle dog, though Ijang awake, vigilant, takes no notice.) He is a very small angel, his head just rises a little above the shelf round the room, and Avoiild only reach as high as the princess's chin, if she were standing up. He has soft gray wings, lustreless ; and his dress of subdued blue, has violet sleeves, open above the elbow, and showing white sleeves below. He comes in Avithout haste, his body, like a mortal one, casting shadow from the light through the door behind, his face perfectly quiet; a palm-branch in his right hand— a scroll in his left. So dreams the princess, with blessed eyes, that need no earthly dawn. It is very pretty of Car- paccio to make her dream out the angel's dress so particularly, and notice the slashed sleeves ; and to dream so little an angel — very nearly a doll angel, — bringing her the branch of palm, and message. But the lovely characteristic of all is the evident delight of her continual life. Royal power over her- self, and happiness in her flowers, her books, her sleeping and waking, her praj-ers, her dreams, her earth, her heaven. . . . " How do I know the princess is industrious? " Partly by the trim state of her room, — by the hour-glass on the table, — by the evident use of all the books she has, (well bound, every one of them, in stoutest leather or velvet, and Avith no dog's- ears), but more distinctly from another picture of her, not asleep. In that one, a prince of England has sent to ask her in marriage: and her father, lit- tle liking to part with her, sends for her to his room to ask her what she would do. He sits, moody and sorrowful; she, standing before him in a plain housewifely di-ess, talks quietly, going on with her needlework all the time. A work-woiuan, friends, she, no less than a prin. 402 A HUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. cess; and princess most in being so.* — Fors, I., pp. 267-271. Courtship.— When a youth is fully in love with a gii'l, and feels that he is wise in loving her, he should at once tell her so plainly, and take his chance bravely, with other suitors. No lover should have the insolence to think of being accepted at once, nor should any girl have the cruelty to refuse at once ; without severe reasons. If she simply doesn't like him, she may send him away for seven years or so — he vowing to live on cresses, and wear sackcloth meanwhile, or the like penance : if she likes him a little, or thinks she might come to like him in time, she may let him stay near her, jiutting him always on sharp trial to see Avhat stuff he is made of, and requiring, figuratively, as many lion- skins or giants' heads as she thinks herself worth. The whole meaning and power of true courtshii^ is Probation; and it oughtn't to be shorter than three years at least, — seven is, to my own mind, the ortho- dox time. And these relations between the young- people should be openly and simply known, not to their friends only, but to everybody who has the least interest in them : and a girl Avorth anything ought to have always half a dozen or so of suitors under vow for her. — Fors, IV., p. 321. * To my great satisfaction,.! am asked by a pleasant corre- spondent, where and what the picture of the Princess's Dream is. High np, in an out-of-the-M-ay corner of tlie Academy of Venice, seen by no man— nor woman neither,— of all pictures ni Knrope the one I should choose for a gift, if a fairy queen gave me choice,— Victor Carpaccio's " Vision of St. Ursula,"— Fors, 11., p. 189. I have to correct a mistake in Fors, which it will be great de- light to all Amorites to discover; namely, that the Princess, whom I judged to be industrious because she went on working while she talked to her father about her marriage, cannot, on this ground, be praised beyond Princesses in general ; for, in- deed, the little mischief, instead of working, as I thought,— while her father is leaning his head on his hand in the greatest distress at the thought of parting with her,— is trying on her marriage-ring \—Furs, IH., p. 318. \;C! CONDUCT OF LIFE—" THE MOUy 403 CHAPTER IV. " The Mob." Positive in a pertinent and practical manner, I have been, and shall be; with such stern and steady wedge of fact and act as time may let nie drive into the gnarled blockheadism of the British mob. — Fors, II., p. 131. The Minotaur has a man's body, a bull's head (which is precisely the general type of the English nation to-day). — Fors, I., p. 331. The word " manly " has come to mean xiractically, among us, a schoolboy's character, not a. man's. We ai'e, at our best, thoughtlessly impetuous, fond of adventure and excitement; curious in knowledge for its novelty, not for its system and results; faith- ful and affectionate to those among whom we are by chance cast, but gently and calmly insolent to strangers; we are stupidly conscientious, and in- stinctively brave, and always ready to cast away the lives we take no pains to make valuable, in causes of which we have never ascertained the jus- tice. — Athena, p. 144. Men called King Richard I. " Lion-heart," not un- truly; and the English, as a people, have prided themselves somewhat ev^er since on having, every man of them, the heai'tof a lion; without inquiring particularly either what sort of a heart a lion has, or whether to have the heart of a lanjb might not sometimes be more to the purpose. — Fors, I., p. 36. Dickens is said to have made people good-natured. If he did, I wonder what sort of natures they had before! Thackeray is similarly asserted to have chastised and repressed flunkeydom — which it greatly puzzles me to hear, because, as far as I can see, there isn't a carriage now left in all the Row 404 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. with anybody sitting inside it : the people who ought to have been in it are, every one, lianging on behind, the carriage in front. — Fors, II., p. 30. If the British public were informed that engineers were now confident, after their practice in the Cenis and St. Gotliard tunnels, that they could make a railway to Hell — the British public Avould instantly invest in the concern to any amount; and stop church-bnilding all over the country, for fear of diminishing the dividends. — Fors, II., p. 302. In recent days, it is fast becoming the only defini- tion of aristocracy, that tlie principal business of its life is the killing of sparrows. Sparrows, or pigeons, or partridges, what does it matter? "Centum mille, perdrices plumbo confecit ; " that is, indeed, too often the sum of the life of an English lord ; much questionable now, if indeed of more value than that of many sparrows. — Love's Meinie, p. G. As to our not massacring cliildren, it is true that an English gentleman will not now himself will- ingly put a knife into the throat either of a child or a lamb; but he will kill any quantity of children by disease in order to increase his rents, as uncon- cernedly as he, will eat any quantity of mutton. — Val D'Arno, p. 115. The Destruction op Landscape by the Brit- ish Philistines.— You might liave the rivers of England as pure as the crystal of the rock ; — beautiful in falls, in lakes, in living pools ;— so full of fish that you might take them out witli your hands instead of nets. Or you may do always as you have done now, turn every river of England into a common sewer, so that you cannot so much as baptize an English baby but with filth, unless you hold its face out in the rain ; and even that falls dirty.— i^or*', I., p. 69. You think it a great triumph to make the sun draw brown landscapes for you. That Avas also a discovery, and some day may be useful. But the CONDUCT OF LIFK-'' THE MOB.'' 403 sun had drawn landscapes before for you, not in brown, but in green, and blue, and all imaginable colors, here in England. Not one of you ever looked at them then ; not one of you cares for the loss of them noAv, when you have shut the sun out with smoke, so that he can draw nothing more, except brown blots through a hole in a box. — Fors, I., p. 64. As far as your scientific hands and scientific brains, inventive of explosive and deathful, instead of blossoming and life-giving Dust, can contrive, you have turned the Mother-Earth — Demeter, into the Avenger-Earth — Tisiphone — with the voice of your brother's blood crying out of it, in one Avild harmony round all its murderous sphere. — Fors, I., p. 69. There was a rocky valley between Buxton and Bakewell, once upon a time, divine as the Vale of TemiDe ; you might have seen the Gods there morning and evening — Apollo and all the sweet Muses of the Light — walking in fair procession on the lawns of it, and to and fro among the pinnacles of its crags. You eared neither for Gods nor grass, but for cash (which you did not know the way to get) ; you thought you could get it by what the Times calls "Railroad Enterprise." You Enter- prised a Railroad through the valley — you blasted its rocks away, heaped thousands of tons of shale into its lovely stream. The valley is gone, and the Gods with it ; and now, every fool in Buxton can be at Bakewell in half an hour, and every fool in Bakewell at Buxton ; which you think a lucrative process of exchange— you Fools everywhere.— Fors, I., p. 64. You have made race-courses of the cathedrals of the earth— the mountains. Your one conception of pleasure is to drive in railroad carriages round their aisles, and eat off their altars. You have put a railroad bridge over the fall of Scliaffhausen. You have tunnelled the cliffs of Lucerne by Tell's chapel ; you have destroyed the Clarene shore of 406 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. the Lake of Geneva; there is not a qniet 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 ; 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 lei^rosy of new hotels and perfumers' shops: the Alps themselves, which your own poets used to love so reverently, you look upon as soaped jjoles in a bear-garden, which you set yourselves to climb, and slide doAvn again, with " shrieks of delight." — Sesame and Lilies, p. 58. The E:!^^glish Jonah to the English Lords.— Truly, as you have divided the fields of the poor, the poor, in their time, shall divide yours. . . . For the gipsy hunt is up also, as well as Hariy our King's ; and the hue and cry loud against your land and you ; your tenure of it is in dispute before a multiplying mob, deaf and blind as you — frantic for the spoiling of you. The British Constitution is breaking fast. It never was, in its best days, entirely what its stout owner flattered himself. Neither British Constitution, nor British law, though it blanch every acre with an acre of parchment, sealed with as many seals as the meadow had buttercujos, can keep your landloi-dships safe, henceforward, for an hour. You will have to fight for them, as your fathers did, if you mean to keep them. . . . And are you ready for that toil to-day ? It will soon be called for. Sooner or later, within the next few years, you will find yourselves in Par- liament in front of a majority resolved on the establishment of a Republic, and the division of lands. Vainly the landed mill-owners will shriek for the " operation of natural laws of political econ- omy." The vast natural law of carnivorous rapine which they have declared their Baal-Grod, in so many words, Avill be in equitable operation then; and not, as they fondly hoped to keep it, all on their own side. . . . Are you prepared to clear the streets with the CONDUCT OF LIFE-'' THE MOB:' 407 Woolwich infant— thinking- that out of the mouth of that suckling, God will perfect your praise, and ordain your strength ? Be it so ; but every grocer's and chandler's shop in the thoroughfares of London is a magazine of petroleum and percus- sion powder; and there are those who will use both, among the Rei)ublicans. And you will see your father the Devil's will done on earth, as it is in hell. I call him your father, for you have denied your mortal fathers, and their Heavenly One. You have declared, in act and thought, the ways and laws of your sires — obsolete, and of your God — ridiculous ; above all, the habits of obedience, and the elements of justice. You were made lords over God's heri- tage. You thought to make it your own heritage; to be lords of your own land, not of God's land. And to this issue of ownership you are come. . . . To think how many of your dull Sunday morn- ings have been spent, for proprietj^'s sake, looking chiefly at those carved angels blowing trumpets above your family vaults; and never one of you has had Christianity enough in him to think that he might as easily have his moors full of angels as of grouse. And now, if ever you did see a real angel before the Day of Judgment, your first thought would be — to shoot it. And for your " family " vaults, what will be the use of them to you ? Does not Mr. Darwin show you that you can't wash the slugs out of a lettuce without disrespect to your ancestoi's ? Nay, the ancestors of the modern political economist cannot have been so pure; — they were not — he tells you himself — vegetarian slugs, but carnivorous ones — those, to wit, that you see also carved on your tomb- stones going in and out at the eyes of skulls. And, truly, I don't know what else the holes in the heads of modern political economists were made for. . . . This essential meaning of Religion it was your office mainly to teach — each of you captain and king, leader and lawgiver, to his people; — viceger- ents of your Captain, Christ. And now— you mis- 408 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. erable jockeys and gamesters — you can't get a, seat in Parliament for those all but worn-out buckskin breeches of yours, but by taking off your hats to the pot-boy. Pretty classical statues you will make, Coriolanuses of the nineteenth century, humbly promising, not to your people gifts of corn, but to your pot-boys, stealthy sale of adulterated beer ! Obedience ! — you dare not so much as utter the word, whether to pot-boy or any other sort of boy, it seems, lately ; and the half of you still calling themselves, Lords, Marquises, Sirs, and other such ancient names, which — though omniscient Mr. Buckle says they and their heraldry are nought — some little prestige lingers about still. You your- selves, what do you yet ;mean by them — Lords of what? — Herrs, Signors, Dukes of what? — of Avhom ? Do you mean merely, when you go to the root of the matter, that you sponge on the British farmer for your living, and are strong-bodied paupers com- pelling your dole ? To that extent, there is still, it seems, some force in you. Heaven keep it in you; for, as I have said, it wall be tried, and soon; and you would even your- selves see what was coming, but that in your hearts — not from cowardice, but from shame — you are not sure whether you Avill be ready to fight for your dole ; and w^ould fain persuade yourselves it will still be given you for form's sake, or pity's. No, my lords and gentlemen: you won it at the lance's point, and must so hold it, against the clubs of Sempach, if still you may. No otherwise. . . . And the real secret of those strange breakings of the lance by the clubs of Sempach, is — " that vil- lanous saltpetre "—you think? No, Shakespearian lord; nor even the sheaf-binding of Arnold, which so stopped the shaking of the fruitless spiculte. The utter and inmost secret is, that you have been fight- ing these three hundi-ed years for what you could get, instead of what you could give. You were ravenous enough in rapine in the olden times ; but you lived fearlessly and innocently by it, because, essentially, you Avanted money and food to give— not toconsume; CONDUCT OF LIFE—'' THE MOUr J.09 to inaiiitaiu yuur followers with, not to swallow yourselves. Your chivalry was founded, invai-iably, by knights who were content all their lives with their horse and armor, and daily bread. Your kings, of true power, never desired for theuiselves more — down to the last of them, Friedrich. What they did desire was strength of manhood round them, and, in their own hands, the power of lar- gesse. — Furs Claciyt^ra, II., j^p. 250-204. Real Kixgs. — Because you are king of a nation, it does not follow that you are to gather for youx*- seli all the wealth of that nation; neither, because you are king of a small part of the nation, and lord over the means of its maintenance — over field, or mill, or mine — are you to take all the produce of that i^iece of the foundation of national existence for yourself. Real kings, on the contrary, are known invariably by their doing quite the reverse of this ; by their taking the least possible quantity of the nation's work for themselves. There is no test of real king- hood so infallible as that. Does the crowned crea- ture live simply, bravely, unostentatiouslj^? proba- blj' he is a King. Does he cover his bodj^ with jewels, and his table with delicates ? in all probabil- ity he is n(jt a King. It is possible he may be, as Solomon w'as; but that is w4ien the nation shares liis splendor with him. Solomon made gold, not only to be in his own palace as stones, but to be in Jerusalem as stones. But even so, for the most part, these splendid kinghoods expire in ruin, and only the true kinghoods live, which are of royal laborers governing loyal laborers; who, both lead- ing rough lives, establish the true dynasties. — Crown of Wild Olive, Lect. II., p. 02. How comes it to pass that a captain will die with his jjassengers, and lean over the gunwale to give the parting boat its course; but that a king will not usually die with — much less for — his passengers; thinks it rather incumbent on his passengers, in any number, to die for him f — Crown of Wild Olive, Lect. 111., p. 80. 410 A liUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. Strange! to think how the Moth-kings lay xip treasures for the moth, and the Rust-kings, who are to tlieir jjeoples' 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 — treas- ures of Avhich, the more thieves there were, the bet- ter ! Broidered robe, only to be rent ; helm and sword, only to be dimmed ; jewel and gold, only to be 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 i5ure gold. A web more fair in the weaving, by Athena's shuttle ; an armor, forged in diviner fire by Vulcanian force ; a gold onlj?' 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, if we would, with their winged power, and guide us, with their inescapable eyes, by the path which no fowl know- eth, and which the vulture's eye has not seen ! Sup- pose kings should ever arise, who heard and be- lieved this word, and at last gathered and brought forth treasures of— Wisdom— for their people ? Think Avhat 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 I — organize, drill, maintain with pay, and good gener- alship, armies of thinkers, instead of armies of stabbers ! — find national amusement in reading- rooms as weli as rifle-grounds; give prizes for a fair shot at a fact, as well as for a leaden splash on a target. — Sesame and Lilies, p. 69. The English Squire. — It remains true of the J^nglish. squire to this day, that for the m ost part, CONDUCT OF LIFE—'' THE MOB." 411 be thinks that his kingdoiu is given him that he may be bright and brave; and not at all that the sunshine or valor in him is meant to be of use to his kingdom.— i^oy.s', I., p. 39. Squires, are you, and not Workmen, nor Labor- ers, do you answer next ?— Yet, I have certainly sometimes seen engraved over your family vaults, and especially on the more modern tablets, those comfortful words, " Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord." But I observe that yovi are usually content, with the help of the village stone-mason, to say onli/ this concerning your dead ; and that you but rarely venture to add the "yea "of the Spirit, " that they may rest from their Labors, and their Works do follow then)." If there be one rather than another who will have strict scrutiny made into his use of every instant of his time, every syllable of his speech, and every action of his hand and foot— on peril of having hand and foot bound, and tongue scorched, in Tophet— that responsible person is the British Squire. Very strange, the unconsciousness of this, in his own mind, and in the minds of all belonging to him. p]ven the greatest painter of him— the Reynolds who has filled England with the ghosts of her noble squires and dames;— though he ends his last lecture in the Academy with " the name of Michael Angelo," never for an instant thought of following out the purposes of Michael Angelo, and painting a Last Judgment upon Squires, with the scene of it laid in Leicestershire. Appealing lords and ladies on either hand : "Behold, Lord, here is Thy land; which I have— as far as my distressed circumstances would permit— laid up in a napkin. Perhaps there may be a cottage or so less upon it than when I came into the estate,— a tree cut down here and there imprudently;— but the grouse and foxes are undi- minished. Behold, there Thou hast that is Thine." And what capacities of dramatic effect in the cases ' of less prudent owners— those who had said in their 412 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. hearts, " My Lord delayeth His coming." Michael Angelo's St. Bartholomew, exhibiting his own skin flayed off him, awakes but a minor interest in that classic picture. How many an English squire might not we, with more pictorial advantage, see repre- sented as adorned with the flayed skins of other people ?—Fors, II., pp. 356, 257. Loiv^dojV as a Squirrel-cage.— England has a vast quantity of ground still food-producing, in corn, grass, cattle, or game. With that territory she educates her squire, or typical gentleman, and his tenantry, to Avhoni, together, she owes all her power in the world. With another large portion of territory — now continually on the increase — she educates a mercenary pojoulation, ready to produce any quantity of bad articles to anybody's order ; population which every hour that passes over them makes acceleratingly avaricious, immoral, and in- sane. In the increase of that kind of territory and its people, her ruin is just as certain as if she were deliberately exchanging her corn-growing land, and her heaven above it, for a soil of arsenic, and rain of nitric acid. . . . Now the action of the squire for the last fifty years has been, broadly, to take the food from the ground of his estate, and carry it to London, where he feeds with it a vast number of builders, uphol- sterers (one of them charged me five pounds for a footstool the other day), carriage and harness makers, dress-makers, grooms, footmen, bad musi- cians, bad painters, gamblers, and harlots; and in supply of the wants of these main classes, a vast number of shopkeepers of minor useless articles. The muscles and the time of this enoi-mous popula- tion being wholly unproductive — (for of course time spent in the mere process of sale is unproductive, and much more that of the footnum and groom, while that of the vulgar upholsterer, jeweller, fid- dler, and painter, etc., is not only unproductive, but mischievous) — the entire mass of this London population do nothing whatever either to feed or CONDUCT OF LIFE^" THE MOli^ 413 clothe themselves ; and their vile lite preventing' them from all rational entertainment, they are com- pelled to seek some pastime in vile literatux'e, the demand for which again occupies another enormous class, who do nothing to feed or dress themselves ; finally, the vain disputes of this vicious poinilation give employment to the vast industry of the law- yers and tlieir clerks, Avho similarly do nothing to feed or dress themselves. Now the peasants might still be able to sui^ply this enormous town population with food (in the form of the squire's rent) ; but it cannot, without machinery, supply the llimsy dresses, toys, metal work, and other rubbish belonging to their accursed life. Hence over the whole country the sky is blackened and the air made pestilent, to supply London and other such towns with their iron I'ail- ings, vulgar upholstery, jewels, toys, liveries, lace, and other means of dissipation and dishonor of life. Gradually the country people cannot even supply food to the voracity of the vicious centre ; and it is necessary to import food from other coun- tries, giving in exchange any kind of commodity we can attract their itching desires for, and pro- duce by machinery. The tendency of the entire national energy is therefore to approximate more and more to the state of a squirrel in a cage, or a turnspit in a Avheel, fed by foreign masters with nuts and dog's-meat. And indeed when we rightly conceive the relation of London to the country, the sight of it becomes more fantastic and wonderful than any dream. Hyde Park, in the season, is the great rotatory form of the vast squirrel-cage; round and round it go the idle company, in their reversed streams, urging themselves to their necessary exercise. They can- not with safety even eat their niTts, without so much" revolution " as shall, in Venetian language, " comply with the demands of hj^giene." Then they retire into their boxes, with due quantity of straw ; the Belgravian and Piccadillian streets outside the railings being, when one sees clearly, nothing but 414 A nVSKlN ANTHOLOGY. the squirrel's box at the side of his wires. And then think of all the rest of the metropolis as the crea- tion and ordinance of these squirrels, that they may squeak and whirl to their satisfaction, and yet be ied.—Fors, II., pp. 343-245. "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves."— The pantomime was, as I said, Ali Baba and the Forty 27iieves. The forty thieves were girls. The forty thieves had forty companions, who were girls. The forty thieves and their forty companions were in some way mixed up with about four hundred and forty fairies, who were girls. There was an Oxford and Cambridge boat-race, in which the Oxford and Cambridge men were girls. There was a transformation scene, Avith a forest, in Avhich the flowers were girls, and a chandelier, in which the lamps were girls, and a great rainbow, Avhieli was all of girls. . . . And there was a little actress, of whom I have chiefly to speak, Avho played ex- quisitely the little part she had to play, a pas cle deux dance with the donkey. . . . She did it beauti- fully and simply, as a child ought to dance. She was not an infant prodigy ; there was no evidence, in the finish or strength of her motion, that she had been put to continual torture through half her eight or nine years. . . . She danced her joy- ful dance with perfect grace, spirit, sweetness, and self-forgetfulness. And through all the vast theatre, full of English fathers and mothers and children, there was not one hand lifted to give her sign of praise but mine. Presently after this, came on the forty thieves, who, as I told you, were girls; and, there being no thiev- ing to be presently done, and time hanging heavy on their hands, arms, and legs, the forty thief-girls proceeded to light forty cigars. Whereupon the British public gave them a round of applause. Whereupon I fell a-thinking ; and saw little more of the piece, except as an ugly and disturbing dream. — Time and Tide, pp. 33-25. The Conscience of the Briton a Dark Lan- tern. — The British soul, I observe, is of late years CONDUCT OF LIFE—'' THE MOB:' 415 pec'uliiirly innanied with rage at the sound of the words " (!onfession " and '"inquisition." The rea- son of which sentiment is essentially that the Brit- ish soul has been lately living the life of a Gruy Fawkes ; and is in perpetual conspiracy against God and man — evermore devising how it may wheedle the one, and rob the other. If your con- science is a dark lantern, — then, of course, you will shut it up when you see a policeman coming; but if it is the candle of the Lord, no man when he hath lighted a candle puts it under a bushel. — Fors, IV., p. 30. India as a Resource for Lovers.— Every mutiny, every danger, every terror, and every crime, occurring under, or paralyzing, our Indian legislation, arises directly out of our national desire to live on the loot of India, and the notion always entertained by P]nglish young gentlemen and ladies of good position, falling in love with each other without immediate prospect of establishment in Belgrave Square, that they can find in India, in- stantly on landing, a bungalow ready furnished Avith tlie loveliest fans, china, and shawls ; ices and sherbet at command ; four-and-twenty slaves suc- ceeding each other hourly to swing the punkah, and a regiment with a beautiful band to ''keep order" outside, all round the house. — Pleasures of England, p. 52. Irrevebea'^ce. — Have you ever taken the least pains to know what kind of Person the God of England once was ? and yet, do you not think your- selves the cleverest of liujnan creatures, because you have thrown His yoke oft', with scorn. You need not crow so loudly about your achievement. Any young gutter-bred blackguard your police pick up in the streets, can mock your Fathers' God with the best of \ou.— Fors, IV.. p. 12. Hippomaxia axd Oixomaxia.— The power of the English currency has been, till of -late, largely based on the national estimate of horses and of wine: so that a man might always give any price to fur- 416 A nVSKI^ ANTHOLOGY. iiish choicely his stable, or his cellar, and receive pub- lic approval therefor : but if he gave the same suui to furnish his library, he was called mad, or a biblio- maniac. And although he might lose his fortune by his horses, and his health or life by his cellar, and rarely lost either bj^ his books, he was yet never called a Hipijo-maniac nor an Oino-maniac ; but only Bibliomaniac, because the current worth of money Avas understood to be legitimately founded on cattle and wine, but not on literature. — Munera Pnlveris, p. 5G. MoDERN^ Heroines.— You have one of them in perfection, for instance, iii Mr. Charles Reade's Griffith Oauut — " Lithe, and vigorous, and one with her great white gelding; " and liable to be entirely changed in her mind about the destinies of her life by a quarter of an hour's conversation with a gen- tleman unexpectedly handsome ; the hero also being a person who looks at people whom he dislikes, with eyes " like a dog's in the dark ; " and both hero and heroine having souls and intellects also precisely corresponding to those of a dog's in the dark, Avhich is indeed the essential picture of the practical English national mind at this moment — happy it it renjains doggish — Circe not usually be- ing content with changing people into dogs only. — Val D'Arno, p. 99. The Umfraville Hotel.— lU/i January, 1874.— Thinking I should be the better of a look at the sea, I have come doAvn to an old watering- place, where one used to be able to get into a decent little inn, and possess one's self of a parlor with a bow window looking out on the beach, a pretty carpet, and a print or two of revenue cutters, and the Battle of the Nile. One could have a chop) and some good cheese for dinner; fresh cream and cresses for bi-eakfast, and a plate of shrimps. I find myself in the Umfraville Hotel, a quarter of a mile long by a furlong deep ; in a ghastly roonj, five-and-twenty feet square, and eighteen high, — CONDUCT OF LIFE—'' THE MOB^ 417 that is to say, just four times as big as I want, and which I can no more light with my caudles in the evening than I could the Peak cavern. A gas ap- paratus iu the middle of it serves me to knock my head against, but I take good care not to light it, or I should soon be stopped from my evening's work by a headache, and be unfit for my morning's busi- ness besides. The carpet is threadbare, and has the look of having been spat upon all over. There is only one window, of four huge panes of glass, through which one commands a view of a plaster balcony, some ornamental iron railings, an espla- nade ; and — well, I suppose — in the distance, that is really the sea, where it used to be. — Fors, II., p. 153. The Light-outspeeding Telegraph. —There was some excuse for your being a little proud when, about last sixth of April (Coeur de Lion's death-day, and Albert Diirer's), you knotted a copper wire all the way to Bombay, and flashed a message along it, and back. But what was the message, and what the answer ? Is India the better for what you said to her ? Are you the better for what she replied ? If not, you have only wasted an all-around-the- world's length of copper wire — which is, indeed, about the sum of your doing. If you had had, per- chance, two words of common sense to say, though you had taken wearisome time and trouble to send them ; — though you had written them slowly in gold, and sealed them with a hundred seals, and sent a squadron of ships of the line to carry the scroll, and the squadron had fought its way round the Cape of Good Hope, through a year of storms, with loss of all its ships but one — the two words of coiinnon sense would have been worth the carriage, and more. But you have not anything like so much as that, to sa.j, either to India, or to any other j>lace. — Fors, I., p. 68. England thf cruellest and foolishest Nation ON THE Earth.— In a little Avhile, the discoveries of v.'iiich we are now so proud will be familiar to all. 418 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. The marvel of the future will not be that we should have discerned them, but that our predecessors were blind to them. We may be envied, but shall not be praised, for having been allowed first to perceive and proclaim what could be concealed no longer. But the misuse we made of our discoveries will be remembered against us, in eternal history ; our in- genuity in the vindication, or the denial, of species, will be disregarded in the face of the fact that we destroyed, in civilized Europe, every rare bird and secluded flower ; our chemistry of agriculture will be taunted with the memories of irremediable fam- ine ; and our mechanical contrivance will only make the age of the mitrailleuse more abhorred than that of the guillotine. Yes, believe me, in spite of our political liberality, and poetical philanthropy ; in spite of our alms- houses, hospitals, and Sunday-schools ; in spite of our missionary endeavors to preach abroad Avhat we cannot get believed at home ; and in spite of our wars against slavery, indemnified by the pre- sentation of ingenious bills — we shall be remem- bered in history as the most cruel, and therefore the most unwise, generation of men that ever yet troubled the earth : — the most cruel in proportion to their sensibility — the most unwise in proportion to their science.— ^a^/e's Nest, p. 28. The feudal and monastic buildings of Europe, and still more the streets of her ancient cities, are A^anishing like dreams : and it is difficult to imagine the mingled envy and contempt with Avhicli future generations will look ))ack to us, who still possessed such things, yet made no effoi-t to preserve, and scarcely any to delineate them. — Le(-tures on Art, p. 73. JoHX Bull as a small Peddler.— If war is to be made by money and machinery, the nation which is the largest and most covetous multitude will win. You may be as scientific as you choose ; the mob that can pay more for sulphuric acid and gunpow- der will at last poison its bullets, thi'ow acid in your CONDUCT OF LIFE-'' THE MOB^ 419 faces, and make an end of you ; — of itself, also, in good time, but of you first. And to the English j)eople the choice of its fate is very near now. It may spasmodically defend its property with iron walls a fathom thick, a few years longer — a very few. No walls will defend either it, or its havings, against the multitude that is breeding and spread- ing, faster than the clouds, over the habitable earth. We shall be allowed to live by small ped- dler's business and ironmongery — since Ave have chosen those for our line of life — as long as we are found useful black servants to the Americans ; and are content to dig coals and sit in the cinders ; and have still coals to dig : they once exhausted, or got cheaper elsewhere, we shall be abolished. But if we think more wisely, while there is yet time, and set our minds again on multiplying Englishmen, and not on cheapening English wares ; if we resolve to submit to wholesome laws of labor and econo- my, and, setting our political squabbles aside, try how many strong creatures, friendly and faithful to each other, we can crowd into every spot of Eng- lish dominion, neither poison nor iron will prevail against us ; nor traffic, nor hatred: the noble nation will yet, by the grace of Heaven, rule over the ig- noble, and force of heart hold its own against fire- balls. — Athena, p. 88. Address by a mangled Coj^vict to a benevolent Gentleman. At breakfast this morning, Oct. 34, 1873, 1 took up the Pall Mall Gazette, for the 31st, and chanced on the following stanzas : — Mr. P. Taylor, honnered Sir, Accept these verses I indict. Thanks to a gentle mother dear AVhitch taught these infant hands to rite And thanks nnto the Chaplin here, A heminent relidjous man, As kind a one as ever dipt A beke into the flowing can. 420 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. He points out to me most clear How sad and sinful! is my ways, And numerous is the briney tear Whitch for that man I nightly prays. " Cohen," he ses, in sech a voice 1 " Your lot is hard, your stripes is sore; But Cohen," he ses, "rejoice! rejoice! And never never steale no more! " His langwidge is so kind and good, It Avorks so strong on me inside, I woold not do it if I could, I coold not do it if I tryed. All, wence this moisteur im my eye Whot makes mu turn agin my food ? O, Mister Taylor, arsk not why, line so cut up with gratitood. Fansy a gentleman like you, No paultry Beak, but a IM.P., A riggling in your heasy chair The riggles they put onto me. I see thee shudderin ore thy wine,^ You hardly know what you ai-e at, Whenere you think of Us emplyin The bloody and unhenglish Cat. Well may your indigernation rise ! I call it Manley what you feeled At seeln Briton's n-k-d b-cks By brutial jailors acked and weald. Habolish these yere torchiers! Dont liave no horgies any more Of arf a dozen orflcers All wallerin in a fellers goar. Imprisonment alone is not A thing of whitch we woold complane; Add ill-conwenience to our lot, But do not give the convick pain. And well you know that's not the wust. Not if you went and biled us whole; The Lash's degeradation !— that's What cuts us to the wery soul ! —Fors, I., pp. 305, 306. The Americans.— This is their speciality, thie their one gift to their race : — to show men how oiuf. to worsliip — how never to be asliaiued in the jv «t; ence of anything. — Foi's, I., p. 170. CONDUCT OF LIFE—"' THE MOB." 421 For the oil of the trees of Getliseiiuine, your American friends have struck oil more finely in- flammable. Let Aaron look to it, how he lets any run down his beard ; and the wise virgins trim their wicks cautiously, and Madelaine laPutroleuse, with her improved spikenard, take good heed how she breaks her alabaster, and comjiletes the wor- ship of her Christ.— Fo;-5, I., p. 169. If I had to choose, I would tenfold rather see the tyranny of old Austria triumphant in the old and new worlds, and trust to the chance (or rather the distant certainty) of some day seeing a true Emperor born to its throne, than, with every privilege of thought and act, run the most distant risk of see- ing the thoughts of the j^eople of Germany and England become like the thoughts of the people of America.* — Time and Tide, p. 95. * My Americans friends— of wliora one, Charles Eliot Norton, of Canibriclf?e, is tire best I have in the world— tell me I know nothing about America. It may be so, and they must do mo the justice to otserve tliat I, therefore, usually say nothing about America. But this I say, because th.e Americans as a nation set their trust in liberty and in equality, of which I detest the one, and deny the possiljility of the otlier; and be- cause, also, as a nation, they are wholly undcsirous of Rest, and incapable of it; irrevent of tlienisi^lvcs, both in the present and in the future; discontejited with what they are, yot having no idml of anything which they desire to become, as the tide of the troubled sea, when it cannot rest. PART IV. SCIENCE. A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. PART IV.-SCIENCE. CHAPTER I. Serpents and Birds. SERPENTS. A SPECTRAL Procession op spotted Dust.— The serpent crest of the king's crown, or of the god's, on the pillars of Egypt, is a mystery ; but the ser- pent itself, gliding past the pillar's foot, is it less a mystery? Is there, indeed, no tongue, except the mute forked flash from its lips, in that running brook of horror on the ground ? . . . That rivulet of smooth silver— how does it flow, think you ? It literally rows on the earth, with every scale for an oar ; it bites the dust with the ridges of its body. Watch it, when it moves sloAvly :— A wave, but with- out wind ! a current, but with no fall ! all the body moving at the same instant, yet some of it to one side, some to another, or some forv^^ard, and the rest of the coil backwards ; but all with the same calm will and equal way— no contraction, no exten- sion ; one soundless, causeless, march of sequent rings, and spectral procession of spotted dust, with dissolution in its fangs, dislocation in its coils. Startle it ;— the winding stream will become a twisted arrow;— the wave of poisoned life will lash through the grass like a cast lance. It scarcely breathes with its one lung (the other shrivelled and abortive); it is passive to the sun and shade, and is cold or hot like a stone ; yet " it can outclinib the monkey, outswim the fish, outleap the zebra, out- wrestle the athlete, and crush the tiger." It is a 425 426 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. divine hieroglyph of the demoniac power of the earth— of the entire earthly nature. As the bird is the clothed power of the air, so this is the clothed power of the dust ; as the bii-d the symbol of the spirit of life, so this of the grasp and sting of death. — Athena, p. 58. A Honeysuckle with a Head put on. — I said that a serpent was a honeysuckle with a head 2)ut on. You perhaps thought 1 was jesting ; but no- thing is more mysterious in the compass of creation than the relation of flowers to the serpent tribe. . . . In the most accurate sense, the honeysuckle is an anguis—Si strangling thing. The ivy stem increases with age, Avithout compressing the tree trunk, any more than the rock, that it adorns ; but the wood- bine retains, to a degree not yet measured, but almost, I believe, after a certain time, unchanged, the first scope of its narrow contortion ; and the growing wood of the stem it has seized is contorted with it, and at last paralyzed and killed. — Deuca- lion, p. 189. Deadly Serpents all have sad Colors.— The fatal serpents are all of the French school of art — French gray ; the throat of the asp, French blue, the brightest thing I know in the deadly snakes. The rest are all gravel color, mud color, blue-pill color, or in general, as I say, French high-art color. — BeurMlion, p. 191. A Serpent in Motion. — Yoii see that one-half of it can move anywhere without stirring the other ; and accordingly you may see a foot or two of a large snake's body moving one way, and another foot or two moving the other way, and a bit be- tween not moving at all; which I, altogether, think we may siDCcifically call "Parliamentary" motion. — Deucalion, p. 193. A Serpent's Tongue.— But now, here's the first thing, it seems to me, Ave've got to ask of the scientific people, what use a serpent has for his tongue, since it neither wants it to talk with, to taste with, to hiss with, nor, so far as I know, to SCIENCE— SERPENTS AND BIRDS. ^_ 427 lick with, and least of all to sting with ; and yet, for people who do not know the creature, the little vibrating forked thread, flashed out of its mouth, and back again, as quick as lightning, is the most threatening part of the beast; but what is the use of it? Nearly every other creature but a snake can do all sorts of mischief with its tongue. A woman worries with it, a chameleon catches flies with it, a snail files away fruit with it, a humming- bird steals honey with it, a cat steals milk with it, a pholas digs holes in rocks with it, and a gnat digs holes in us with it ; but the poor snake cannot do any manner of harm with it Avhatsoever; and what is 7iis tongue forked for ? — Deucalion, p. 185. How Eels swim.— Nothing in animal instinct or movement is more curious than the way young eels get up beside the waterfalls of the highland streams. They get first into the jets of foam at the edge, to be thrown ashore by them, and then wrig- gle up the smooth rocks — heaven knows how. If you like, any of you, to put on greased sacks, with your arms tied down inside, and your feet tied together, and then try to wriggle up after them on rocks as smooth as glass, I think even the skilfulest members of the Alpine Club will agree with me as to the difficulty of the feat ; and though I have watched them at it for hours, I do not know how much of serpent, and how much of fish, is mingled in the motion.— Deucalion, p. 188. BIRDS. The bird is little more than a drift of the air brought into form by plumes ; the air is in all its quills ; it breathes through its whole frame and flesh, and glows with air in its fiying, like blown llame : it rests upon the air, subdues it, surpasses it, outraces it ; — is the air, conscious of itself, conquer- ing itself, ruling itself. Also, into the throat of the bird is given the voice of the air. All that in the wind itself is weak, wild, 428^ A nUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. useless in sweetness, is knit together in its song. As we may imagine the Avild form of the clone! closed into the i^erfect form of the bird's wings, so the wild voice of the cloud into its ordered and com- manded voice ; unwearied, rii^pling through the clear heaven in its gladness, interpreting all intense passion through the soft spring nights, bursting into acclaim and rapture of choir at daybreak, or lisping and twittering among the boughs and hedges through heat of daj', like little winds that only make the cowslip bells shake, and ruffle the petals of the wild rose. Also, upon the jjlumes of the bird are put the colors of the air : on these the gold of the cloud, that can- not be gathered by any covetousness; the rubies of the clouds, that are not the price of Athena, but are Athena ; the vermilion of the cloud-bar, and the flame of the cloud crest, and the snow of the cloud, and its shadow, and the melted blue of the deep wells of the sky — all these, seized by the creating spirit, and woven by Athena hei'self into films and threads of plume ; with wave on wave following and fading along breiist, and tliroat, and opened wings, infinite as the dividing of the foam and the sifting of the sea-sand ;^even the white down of the cloud seeming to flutter up between the stronger plumes, seen, but too soft for touch. — Athena, \). 56. A Bird's Beak.— I do not think it is distinctly enough felt by us that the beak of a bird is not only its mouth, but its hand, or rather its two hands. For, as its arms and hands are turned into wings, all it has to depend upon, in economical and jjrac- tical life, is its beak. The beak, therefore, is at once its sword, its carpenter's tool-box, and its dressing-case; partly also its musical instrument; all this besides its function of seizing and prepar- ing the food, in which function alone it has to be a trap, carving-knife, and teeth, all in one. — Love's Meinie, p. IG. The Marriage of the Hair-brush and the "Whistle. — Feathers are smoothed down, as a field SCIENCE— SEliFENTS AND BIRDS. 429 of corn by wind with rain; only the swathes laid in beautiful order. They are fur, so structurally plciced as to imply, and submit to, the perpetually swift forward motion. In fact, I have no doubt the Darwinian theory on the subject is that the feathers of birds once stuck up all erect, like the bristles of a brush, and have only been blown flat by continual flying. jN'ay, we might even suffl- ciently represent the general manner of conclusion in the Darwinian system by the statement that if you fasten a hair-brush to a mill-wheel, with the handle forward, so as to develop itself into a neck by moving always in the same direction, and within continual hearing of a steam-whistle, after a cer- tain number of revolutions the hair-brush will fall in love with the whistle ; they will marry, lay an egg, and the produce will be a nightingale. — Love's Meinie, p. 20. No Natural History of Birds yet written.— We have no natural history of birds written yet. It cannot be written but by a scholar and a gentle- man ; and no English gentleman in recent times* has ever thought of birds except as flying targets, or flavorous dishes. ... In general, the scientific natural history of a bird consists of four articles : First, the name and estate of the gentleman whose gamekeeper shot the last that was seen in England ; Secondly, two or three stories of doubtful origin, printed in every book on the subject of birds for the last fifty years ; Thirdly, an account of the feathers from the comb to the rump, with enumer- ation of the colors which are never more to l>e seen on the living bird by English eyes ; and, lastly, a discussion of the reasons why none of the twelve names which former naturalists have given to the bird are of any further use, and why the present author has given it a thirteenth, which is to be universally, and to the end of time, accepted.— Love's Meinie, p. 7. The Eagle.— Wheiy next you are travelling by express sixty miles an hour, past a grass bank, try A30 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOaY. to see a grasshopper, and you will get some idea of an eagle's oi^tical business, if it takes only the line of ground underneath it. Does it take more ? — Eagle's Nest, p. 74. The Robin^.— If you think of it, you will find one of the robin's very cliief ingratiatory faculties is his dainty and delicate movement — his footing it featly here and there. Whatever prettiness there may be in his red breast, at his brightest he can always be outshone by a brickbat. But if he is rationally proud of anything about him, I should think a robin must be proud of his legs. Hundreds of birds have longer and more imposing ones, but for real neatness, finish, and precision of action, commend me to his fine little ankles, and fine little feet. — Love's Meinie, p. 18. The Swallow.— The bird which lives Avith you in your own houses, and which purifies for you, from its insect pestilence, the air that you breathe. Thus the sweet domestic thing has done, for men, at least, these four thousand years. She has been their companion, not of the home merely, but of the hearth and the threshold ; companion only endeared by departure, and showing better her loving-kindness by her faithful return. Type sometimes of the stranger, she has softened us to hospitality ; type always of the suj^pliant, she has enchanted us to mercy; and in her feeble jjresence, the cowardice, or the wrath, of sacrilege has changed into the fidelities of sanctuary. Herald of our summer, she glances through our days of glad- ness ; numberer of our years, she would teach us to apjjly our hearts to Avisdom; — and yet, so little have we regarded her, that this very day, scarcely able to gather from all I can find told of her enough to explain so much as the unfolding of her wings, I can tell you nothing of her life — nothing of her journeying. I cannot learn how she builds, nor how she chooses the place of her wandering, nor how she traces the path of her return. Remaining thus blind and careless to the true ministries of the SGIEJSfCE—SEBPEJSfTS AND BIRDS. 431 humble creature whom God has really sent to serve us, we in our pride, thinking ourselves sur- rounded by the pursuivants of the sky, can yet only invest them with majesty by giving them the calm of the bird's motion, and shade of the bird's plume : — and after all, it is well for us, if, when even for God's best mercies, and in His temples marble-built, we think that, "with angels and archangels, and all the company of Heaven, we laud and magnify His glorious name " — well for us, if our attempt be not only an insult, and His ears open rather to the inarticulate and unintended praise, of "the Swallow, twittering from her straw- built shed." — Love's Meinie, p, 53. I never watch the bird for a moment without finding myself in some fresh jjuzzle out of which there is no slue in the scientific books. I want to know, yor instance, how the bird turns. What does it do Avith om wing, what with the other? Fancy the pace that has to be stopped ; the force of bridle-hand put out in an instant. Fancy how the wings must bend Avith the strain ; what need there must be for the perfect aid and work of every feature in them. There is a i>roblem for you, stu- dents of mechanics — How does a swallow turn ? . . , Given the various proportions of weight and wingj the conditions of possible increase of muscular force and quill-strength in proportion to size ; and the different objects and circumstances of flight — you have a sei-ies of exquisitely complex problems, and exquisitely perfect solutions, which the life of the youngest among you cannot be long enough to read through so much as once, and of which the future infinitudes of human life, however granted or extended, never will be fatigued in admiration, . . . The mystery of its dart remains always inex- plicable to me ; no eye can trace the bending of bow that sends that living arrow. — Love's Meinie, pp. 30, 43, 40. 432 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOQt, CHAPTER II. Botany.* It is better to know the habits of one plant than the names of a thousand ; and wiser to be happily familiar with those that grow in the nearest field, than arduously cognizant of all that plume the isles of the Pacific, or illumine the Mountains of the Moon. — Proserinna, p. 139. Ruskin's Tribulations in the Study of Bot- any. — Balfour's Manual of Botany. " Sap " — yes, at last. " Article 357. Course of fluids in exogenous stems." I don't care about the course just now: I want to know where the fluids come from. " If a plant be plunged into a weak solution of acetate of lead.' — I don't in the least want to know what happens. "From the minuteness of the tissue, it is not easy to determine the vessels through which the sap moves." Who said it was? If it had been easy, I should have done it myself. " Changes take place in the composition of the sap in its up- Avard course." I dare say; but I don't know yet what its composition is before it begins going up. "The Elaborated Sap by Mr. Schultz has been called latex.''' I wish Mr. Schultz were in a hogs- head of it, with the top on. " On account of these movements in the latex, the laticiferous vessels have been denominated cinenchymatous." I do not venture to print the expressions which I here mentally make use of. — Proserpina, p. 37. A sudden doubt troubles me, whether all poppies have two petals smaller than the other two. Whereupon I take down an excellent little school- book on botany — the best I have yet found, think- ing to be told quickly; and I find a great deal about opium; and, apropos of opium, that the juice of * See also Part II. , Chapter 11. SCIENCE— BOTANY. 433 couimon celandine is of a bright orange color ; and I pause for a bewildered five minutes, wondering if a celandine is a poppy, and how many petals it has: going on again — because I nivist, without making up my mind, on either question — I am told to " observe the floral recei^tacle of the Calif ornian genus Eschscholtzia." Now I can't observe any- thing of the sort, and I don't want to ; and I wish California and all that's in it were at the deepest bottom of the Pacific. Next I am told to compare the poppy and water-lily; and I can't do that, neither — though I should like to ; and there's the end of the article ; and it never tells me whether one pair of petals is always smaller than the other, or not. — Proserpina, pp. 53, 54. Perfume, or Essence, is the general term for the condensed dew of a vegetable vapor, Avhich is with grace and fitness called the "being" of a plant, because its properties are almost always character- istic of the species ; and it is not, like leaf tissue or wood fibre, approximately the same material in different shapes ; but a separate element in each family of flowers, of a mysterious, delightful, or dan- gerous influence, logically inexplicable, chemically inconstructible, and wholly, in dignity of nature, above all modes and faculties of form. . . . Yet I find in the index to Dr. Lindley's Introduction to' Botany — seven hundred pages of close print — not one of the four words "Volatile," "Essence," "Scent," or "Perfume." I examine the index to Gray's Structural and Systematic Botany, with pre- cisely the same success. I next consult Professors Balfour and Grindon, and am met by the same dignified silence. Finally, I think over the possi- ble chances in French, and try in Figuier's indices to the Histoire des Flantes for " Odeur " — no such word ! " Parfum "—no such word ! " Essence " — no such word ! " Encens "—no such word ! I try at last " Pois de Senteur," at a venture, and am re- ferred to a page which describes their going to sleep. —Proserpina, pp. 341, 343. 434 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. Botanic Nomenclature.— Perhaps nothing is more curious in the history of the human mind than the way in which the science of botany has become oppressed by nomenclature. Here is perhaps the first question which an intelligent child would think of asking about a tree : " Mamma, how does it make its trunk?" and you may open one botanical work after another, and good ones too, and by sensible men — you shall not find this child's question fairly put, much less fairly answered. You will be told gi-avely that a stem has received many names, such as culmus, stipes, and trunciis ; that twigs were once called flagella, but are now called ramuli ; and that Mr. Link calls a straight stem, wutli branches on its sides, a cauHs exciirreiis; and a stem, which at a certain distance above the earth bi-eaks out into irregular ramifications, a caulis delique- scens. All thanks and honor be to Mr. Link ! But at this moment, when we want to know lohy one stem breaks out " at a certain distance," and the other not at all, we find no great help in those splendid excurrencies and deliquescencies. — Modern Painters, V., p. 65. On heat and force, life is inseparably dependent ; and I believe, also, on a form of substance, which the philosophers call " protoplasm." I wish they would use English instead of Greek words. When I want to know why a leaf is green, they tell me it is colored by " chloi-ophyll," which at first sounds very instructive; but if they would only say plainly that a leaf is colored green by a thing which is called " green leaf," we should see more precisely how far we had ^ot.— Athena, p. 5L Why is Cinnamon aromatic and Sugar sweet ? — It is of no use to determine, by microscope or retort, that cinn-amon is made of cells with so many walls, or grape-juice of molecules with so many sides; — we are just as far as ever from understand- ing why these particular interstices should be aromatic, and these special parallelopipeds exhilar- ating, as we were in the savagely unscientific days SCIEXCE— BO TANT. 435 wlieii we could only see with our eyes, and smell with our noses. — Proserpina, p. 159. Thk Biographies op Plants.— Our scientific botanists are occupied in microscopic investigations of structure which have not hitlierto completely exjilained to us either the origin, the energy, or the course of the sap ; and which, however subtle or successful, bear to the real natural history of ijlants only the relation that anatomy and organic chem- istry bear to the history of men. . . . What we esi3ecially need at present for educational purposes is to know, not the anatomy of [)lants, but their biography — how and where they live and die, their tempers, benevolences, malignities, distresses, and virtues.— Lectures on Art, p. 70. Sap. — At every pore of its surface, under ground and above, the plant in the spring al)sorbs moist- ure, which instantly disperses itself through its whole sj\stem " by means of some permeable quality of the membranes of the cellular tissue invisible to our eyes even by the most powerful glasses ; " in this way subjected to the vital power of the tree, it beconjes sap, properly so called, which passes down- wai-ds through this cellular tissue, slowly and secretly; and then upwards, through the great vessels of the tree, violently, stretching out the supple twigs of it as you see a flaccid water-pipe swell and move when the cock is turned to fill iv. And the tree -becomes literally a fountain, of which the springing streamlets are clothed with new- woven garments of green tissue, and of which the silver spray stays in the sky,— a spray, now, of leaves.— Proserpina, p. 38. The Root, of a Plant.- The feeding function of the root is of a very delicate and discriminating kind, needing much searching and mining among the dust, to find what it Avants. If it only wanted water, it could get most of that by spreading in iuere soft senseless limbs, like sponge, as far, and as far down, as it could— but to get the salt out of the earth it has to sift all the earth, and taste and 436 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. tonch everj' grain of it that it can, with fine fibres. And therefore a root is not at all a merelj^ pas'sive sponge or absorbing thing, bnt an infinitel}' subtle tongue, or tasting and eating thing. That is why it is always so fibrous and divided and entangled in the clinging earth.— Proserpina, p. 20. The Flower the Final Cause op the Seed.— The Spirit in the plant — that is to say, its pov/er of gathering dead matter out of the wreck round it, and shaping it into its own chosen shape — is of course strongest at the inonient of its flowering, for it then not only gathers, but forms, with the great- est energy. . . . Only, with respect to plants, as animals, we are wrong in speaking as if the object of this strong life were only the bequeathing of it- self. The flower is the end or proper object of the seed, not the seed of the flower. The reason for seeds is that flowers may be; not the reason of flow- ers that seeds may be. The flower itself is the creat- ure which the sjjirit makes ; only, in connection Avith its perfectness, is placed the giving birth to its successor. . . . The main fact, then, about a flower is that it is the part of the plant's form developed at the mo- ment of its intensest life : and this inner rapture is usually marked externally for us by the flush of one or jnore of the primary colors. What the character of the flower shall be, depends entirely upon the portion of the plant into which this rapture of spirit has been put. Sometimes the life is put into its outer sheath, and then the outer sheath becomes white and pure, and full of sti-ength and grace; sometimes the life is put into the common leaves, just under the blossom, and they become scarlet or purple; sometimes the life is put into the stalks of the flower, and they Hush blue; sometimes into its outer enclosure or calyx; mostly into its inner cup; but, in all cases, the presence of the strongest life is asserted by characters in which the human sight takes pleasure, and which seem prepared with dis- tinct reference to us, or rather, bear, in being de- SCIENCE— BOTANY. 437 lightful, evidence of having been produced by the power of the same spirit as our own. — Athena, p. 54. Fruit. — I find it convenient in this volume, and wish I liad tliought of the expedient before, wlien- ever I get into a difficulty, to leave the reader to work it out. lie will perhaps, therefore, be so good as to define fruit for himself. — Modern Painters, v., p. 112. All the most perfect fruits are developed //'o/^i ex- qiiisite forms either of foliage or flower. The vine leaf, in its generally decorative power, is the most important, both in life and in art, of all that shade the habitations of men. The olive leaf is, Avithout any rival, the most beautiful of the leaves of timber trees ; and its blossom, though minute, of extreme beauty. The ai3ple is essentially the fruit of the rose, and the peach of her only rival in her own color. The cherry and orange blossom ai-e the two types of floral snow. — Proserinna, p. 163. An Orange.— In the orange, the fount of fragrant juice is interposed between the seed and the husk. It is wholly independent of both; the aurantine rind, with its white lining and divided compart- ments, is the true husk ; the orange pips are the true seeds ; and the eatable part of the fruit is formed between them, in clusters of delicate little flasks, as if a fairy's store of scented Avine had been laid up by her in the holloAV of a chestnut shell, be- tween the nut and rind ; and then the green changed to gold. — Proserpina, 155. The Poppy.— 1 have in my hand a small red poppy which I gathered on Whit Sunday on the palace of the Caesars. It is an intensely simple, in- tensely floral, flower. All silk and flame: a scarlet cup, perfect-edged all round, seen among the wild grass far away, like a burning coal fallen from Heaven's altars. You cannot have a more complete, a more stainless, type of flower absolute; inside and outside, all flower. No sparing of color anyAvhere — no outside coarseness — no interior secrecies ; open as the sunshine that creates it ; fine finished on both 438 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. sides, down to the extreiuest point of insertion on its narrow stalk; and robed in the purple of the Cfssars. Gather a green poppy bud, just when It shows tlie scai'let line at its side; break it open and unpack the popi^y. The whole flower is there com- plete in size and color; its stamens full-grown, but all packed so closely that the fine silk of the petals is crushed into a million of shapeless wrinkles. When the flower opens, it seems a deliverance from torture : the two imprisoning green leaves are shaken to the ground; the aggrieved corolla smooths itself in the svin, and comforts itself as it can; but remains visibly crushed and hurt to the end of its days. — Proserjnua, pp. 53, 58. The Oa^ion and the Garlic as Ethical Fac- tors. — The star-group, of the squills, garlics, and onions, has always caused me great wonder. I cannot understand why its beauty, and serviceable- ness, should have been associated with the rank scent whicli has been really among the most pow- erful means of degrading peasant life, and separ- ating it from that of the higher classes. — Athena, p. 67. The Oat. — Here is the oat germ^after the wheat, most vital of divine gifts; and assuredly, in days to come, fated to grow on many a naked rock in hitherto lifeless lands, over which the glancing (^heaves of it Avill shake Eweet treasure of innocent gold. And who shall tell us how they grow; and the fashion of their rustling pillars — bent, and again erect, at every breeze. Fluted shaft or clustered pier, how poor of art, beside this grass-shaft — built, first to sustain the food of men, then to be strewn under their feet ! — Proserinua, p. 106. The Martyr Moss.— You remember, I doubt not, how often in gathering what most invited gather- ing, of deep green, starry, jierfectly soft and living wood-moss, you found it fall asunder in your hand into multitudes of separate threads, each with its bright green crest, and long root of blackness. That blackness at the root— though only so notable SCIENCE- BOTANY. ^ in this wood-moss and collateral sj^eeies, is indeed a general character of the mosses, Avith rare excep- tions. It is their funeral blackness ; — that, I pei"- ceive, is the way the moss-leaves die. They do not fall — they do not visibly decay. But they decay in- visibly, in continual secession, beneath the ascend- ing crest. They rise to form that crest, all green and bright, and take the light and air from those out of whicli they grew; and those, their ancestors, darken and die slowly, and at last become a mass of njouldering ground. In fact, as I perceive far- ther, their final duty is so to die. The main work of other leaves is in their life — but these have to form the earth out of which all other leaves are to grow. Not to cover the rocks with golden velvet only, but to fill their crannies with the dark earth, through which nobler creatures shall one day seek their being. — Proserpina, p. 17. Leaves ribbed axd u:s'dulated.— When a leaf is to be spread Avide, like the burdock, it is sup- ported by a framework of extending ribs like a Gothic roof. The supporting function of these is geometrical ; every one is constructed like the gir- ders of a bridge, or beams of a floor, with all man- ner of science in the distribution of their substance in the section, for narrow and deep strength; and the shafts are mostly hollow. But Avhen the ex- tending space of a leaf is to be enriched with fulness of fokls, and become beautiful in wrinkles, this may 1)e done either by pure undulation as of a li(iuid current along the leaf edge, or by sharp " drawing " — or " gathering" I believe ladies would call it — and stitching of the edges together. And tliis stitching together, if to be done vei-y strongly, is done round a bit of stick, as a sail is reefed round a mast; and tliis bit of stick needs to be compactly, not geometrically strong; its function is essentially that of starch — not to hold the leaf up off the gi'ound against gravity; but to stick the edges out, stiffly, in a crimped frill. And in beautiful work of this kind, which wo are meant to study, the stays ftR" A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. of the leaf — or stay-bones — are finished off very sharply and exquisitely at the points ; and indeed so much so, that they prick our fingers when we touch theiu ; for they are not at all meant to be touched, but admired.— Proserpina, pp. 80, 81. CHAPTER III. Minerals. Crystals. — The crystalline power is essentially a styptic power, and wherever the earth is torn, it heals and binds; nay, the torture and grieving of the earth seem necessary to bring out its full energy; for you only find the crystalline living power fully in action, where the rents and faults are deep and many. — Ethics of the Dust, p. 114. The mineral crystals group themselves neither in succession, nor in sympathy; but great and small recklessly strive for place, and deface or distort each other as they gather into opponent asperities. The confused croAvd fills the rock cavity, hanging to- gether in a glittering, yet sordid heap, in which neai'ly every crystal, OAving to their vain conten- tion, is imperfect, or impure. Here and there one, at the cost and in defiance of the rest, rises into un- warped shape or unstained clearness. — Modern Painters, V., p- 48. The goodness of crystals consists chiefly in purity of substance, and perfectness of form : but those are rather the effects of their goodness, than the goodness itself. The inherent virtues of the crys- tals, resulting in these outer conditions, might really seem to be best described in the words we should use respecting living creatures — "force of heart" and "steadiness of jiurpose.'' There seem to be in some crystals, from the beginning, an un- conquerable i:)urity of vital power, and strength of crystal si^irit. Whatever dead substance, unaccep- tant of this energy, comes [in their way, is either SClEyX'E-MINEliA L S. 441 rejected, or forced to take some ljea,utiful subordi- nate form ; the purity of the crystal remains unsul- ' lied, and every atouj of it bright with coherent energy. Then the second condition is, that from the begin- ning of its whole structure, a fine crj-stal seems to have determined that it will be of a certain size and of a certain shape ; it persists in this jjlan, and comi^letes it. Here is a i^erfect crystal of quartz for you. It is of an unusual form, and one which it might seem very difficult to build — a pyramid with convex sides, composed of other minor pyra- mids. But there is not a flaw in its contour through- out; not one of its myriads of component sides but is as bright as a jeweller's facetted work (and far finer, if you saw it close). The crystal points are as sharp as javelins ; their edges will cut glass with a touch. Anything more resolute, consummate, determinate in form, cannot be conceived. Ilei'e, on the other hand, is a erysfal of the same substance, in a perfectly simple type of form — a plain six sided prism ; but from its base to its point, — and it is nine inches long, — ithasnever for one instant made up its mind what thickness it will have. It seems to have begun by making itself as thick as it thought possible with the quantity of material at conimand. Still not being as thick as it would like to be, it has clumsily glued on more substance at one of its sides. Then it has thinned itself, in a panic of economy; then puffed itself out again ; then starved one side to enlarge another ; then warped itself quite out of its first line. Opaque, rough-surfaced, jagged on the edge, distorted in the spine, it exhibits a quite human image of decrepi- tude and dishonor ; but the worst of all the signs of its decay and helplessness, is that half-way up, a parasite crystal, smaller, but just as sickly, has rooted itself in the side of the larger one, eating out a cavity round its root, and then growing back- wards, or downwards, contrary to the direction of the main crystal. Yet I cannot trace the least difference in purity of substance between the first 442 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. most noble stone, and this ignoble and dissolute one. The impurity of the last is in its will, or want of will. — Ethics of the Dust, p. 58. The Marbles.— The soft white sediments of the sea draw themselves, in process of time, into smooth knots of sphered symmetry; burdened and strained under increase of pressure, they pass into a nascent marble ; scorched by fervent heat, they brighten and blanch into the snowy rock of Paros and Carrara. — Ethics of the Dust, i>. 140. These stones, Avliich men have been cutting into slabs, for thousands of years, to ornament their Ijrincipal buildings with, — and which, under the general name of " marble," have been the delight of the eyes, and the wealth of architecture, among all civilized nations — ai"e precisely those on which the signs and brands of these earth-agonies have been chiefly struck; and there is not a purple vein nor flaming zone in them, which is not the record of their ancient torture. — Ethics of the Dust, p. IIG, The substance appears to have been ijrepai'ed expressly in order to afford to human art a perfect means of carrying out its purposes. They are ot exactly the necessary hardness — neither so soft as to be incapable of maintaining themselves in deli- cate forms, nor so hard as always to require a blow to give effect to the sculptor's touch ; the mere pressure of his chisel produces a certain effect upon them. The color of the Avhite varieties is of exquis- ite delicacj-, owing to the partial translucency of the pure rock ; and it has always ajopeai-ed to me a most wonderful ordinance — one of the most marlfG A Cloud.-How is a cloud outlined "^ trranted whatever you choose to ask, concerning its material, or its aspect, its loftiness and luminous- ness-how of its limitation ? What hews it into a heap, or spins it into a web ? Cold, it is usually shapeless, I suppose, extending over large spaces equally, or with gradual diminution. You cannot have in the open air, angles, and wedges, and coils and cliffs of cold. Yet the vapor stops suddenly sharp and steep as a rock, or thrusts itself across the gates of heaven in likeness of a brazen bar • or bi-aids Itself in and out, and across and across, like a tissue of tapestry; or falls into ripples, hke sand: or into waving shreds and tongues, as fire. On what anvils and wheels is the vapor pointed, twisted, hammered, whirled, as the potter's clay ? By what hands IS the incense of the sea built up into domes of marble -^.-Modern Painters, V., p. 124. Cloud LusTREs.-The gilding to our eyes of a burnished cloud depends, I believe, at least for a measure of its lustre, upon the angle at which the rays incident upon it are reflected to the eye, just as much as the glittering of the sea beneath it-or the sparkling of the windows of the houses on the »i\ove.— Storm Cloud, Lect. II. 448 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. Attached Clouds. — The opposed conditions of the higher and lower orders of clond, M'ith the bal- anced intermediate one, are beautifully seen on mountain summits of rock or earth. On snowy ones wihey are far more complex : but on rock summits there are three distinct forms of attached cloud in serene weather ; the first that of cloud veil laid over them, ancT falling in folds through their ravines (the obliquely descending clouds of the entering chorus in Aristoi^hanes) ; secondly, the ascending cloud, Avhich develops itself loosely and mdei^endently as it rises, and does not attach itself to the hillside, while the falling veil cloud clings to it close all the way down ; — and lastly the throned uloud, which rests indeed on the mountain summit, with its base, but rises high above into the sky, con- tinually changing its outlines, but holding its seat perhaps all day long. — Storm Cloud, Lect. II. Cirrus Clouds.— Their chief characters are— First, Symmetry : They are nearly always ai-- langed in some definite and evident order, common- ly in long ranks reaching sometimes from the zen- ith to the horizon, each rank composed of an infinite number of transverse bars of about the same length, each bar thickest in the middle, and terminating in a traceless vaporous point at each side ; the ranks are in the direction of the Avind, and the bars of course at right angles to it ; these latter are com- monly slightly bent in the middle. — Secondly, Sliarja- ness of Edge : The edges of the bars of the upper clouds which are turned to the wind, are often the sharpest Avhich the sky shows ; no outline M'hat- ever of any other kind of cloud, however marked and energetic, ever approaches the delicate decis- ion of these edges. — Thirdly, Multitude : The deli- cacy of these vapors is sometimes carried into such an infinity of division, that no other sensation of number that the earth or heaven can give is so h\\\)re'g,i-.i\e.— Fourthly, Purity of Color : They are composed of the purest aqueous vapor, free from all foulness of earthly gases, and of this in the lightest SCIENCE— CLOUDS. 449 and most ethereal state in which it can be, to be A'isible. . . . Their colors are more pure and vivid,* and their white less sullied than those of any other cXond^.— Lastly, Variety : Variety is never so con- spicuous, as when it is united with symmetry. The perpetual change of form in other clouds, is monot- onous in its very dissimilarity, nor is difference striking where no connection is implied • but if through a range of barred clouds, crossing half the heaven, all governed by the same forces and falling into one general form, there be yet a nuirked and evident dissimilarity between each member of the great mass-«one more finely drawn, the next more delicately moulded, the next more gracefully bent — each broken into differently modelled and var- iously numbered groups, the variety is doubly striking, because contrasted with the perfect sym- metry of which it forms a pa.Yi.— Modern Painters, I., pp. 390-393. Thk Storm-Cloud of the Ninetkenth Cea'- TURY. — The first time I i-ecognized the clouds brought by the plague-wind as distinct in character was in walking back from Oxford, a,fter a hard day's work, to Abingdon, in the early spring of 1871. It would take too long to give you any account this evening of the particulars which drew my attention to them ; but during the following months I had too frequent opportunities of verifying my first thoughts of them, and on the first of July in that year wrote the descrijotion cf them which begins the Fors Clavigera of August, thus :— " It i;; the first of July, and I sit down to write by the dismalest light that ever yet I wrote by; name- ly, the light of this mid-summer morning, in mid- England (Matlock, Derbyshire), in the year 1871. For the sky is covered with grey clouds ; — not rain- cloud, but a dry black veil, which no ray of sun- shine can pierce ; partly diffused in mist, feeble mist, enough to make distant objects unintelligible, yet without any substance, or wreathing, or color of its own. And everywhere the leaves of the trees are shaking fitfully, as they do before a thunder- 450 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. storm ; only not violently, but enough to show the passing to and fro of a strange, bitter, blighting wind. Dismal enough, had it been the first morn- ing of its kind that summer had sent. But during all this spring, in London, and at Oxford, through meagre March, through changelessly sullen April, through despondent May, and darkened June, morning after morning has come grey-shrouded thus. " And it is a new thing to me, and a very dreadful one. I am fifty years old, and more ; and since I was five, have gleaned the best hours of my life in the sun of spring and summer mornings ; and I never saw such as these, till now. Amd the scien- tific men are busy as ants, examining the sun, and the moon, and the seven stars, and can tell me all aliout them, I believe, by this time ; and how they move, and what they are made of. " And I do not care, for my part, two copper spangles how they move, nor what they are made of. I can't move them any other way than they go. nor make them of anything else, better than they are made. But I would care much and give much, if I could be told where this bitter wind comes from, and what it is made of. For, perhaps, with fore- thought, and fine laboratory science, one might make it of something else. "It looks i^artly as if it were made of poison- ous smoke ; very possibly it may be : there are at least two hundred furnace chimneys in a square of two miles on every side of me. But mere smoke would not blow to and fro in that wild way. It looks more to me as if it were made of dead men's souls — such of them as are not gone yet Mdiere they have to go, and may be flitting hither and thith- er, doubting, themselves, of the fittest place for them. ..." Since that Midsummer day, my attention, how- ever otherwise occupied, has never relaxed in its record of the phenomena characteristic of the plague-wind ; and I now define for you, as briefly jks possible, the essential signs of it : 1. It is a wind of darkness:— all the former condi- SCIENCE—CLOUDS. 461 tions of tormenting winds, wliether from the north or east, were more or less capable of co-existing with sunlight, and often with steady and bright sunlight ; but whenever, and wherever the plague- wind blows, be it but for ten minutes, the sky is darkened instantly. — 2. It is a malignant quality of wind unconnected with any one quarter of the com- pass ; it blows indifferently from all, attaching its own bitterness and malice to the worst characters of the proper winds of each quarter. It will blow either with drenching rain, or dry rage, from the south— with ruinous blasts from the west— Avith bitterest chills from the north — and with venomous blight from the east. Its own favorite quarter, however, is the south-west, so that it is distinguished in its maligiiity equally from the Bise of Provence, which is a north wind always, and from our own old friend, the east. — 3. It always blows tremulously, making the leaves of the trees shudder as if they were all aspens, but with a peculiar fitfulness which gives them — and I watch them this moment as I write — an expression of anger as well as of fear and distress. You may see the kind of quivering, and hear the ominous whimpering, in the gusts that precede a great thunder-storm ; but plague- wind is more pa;iic-struck, and feverish ; and its sound is a hiss instead of a wail. — 4. Not only tremulous at every moment, it is also intermittent with a rapidity quite unexampled in former weather. There are, indeed, days — and weeks, on which it blows without cessation, and is as inevitable as the Gulf Stream ; but also there are days when it is contending with healthy weather, and on such days it will remit for half an hour, and the sun will begin to show itself, and then the wind will come back and cover the whole sky with clouds in ten minutes ; and so on every half-hour, through the whole day; so that it is often impossible to go on with any kind of drawing in color, the light being never for two seconds the same from morning till evening. — 5. It degrades, while it intensifies, ordi- nary storm. 452 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. Take the following sequences of accurate descrip- tion of thunderstorm, with plague-wind : "June 22, 1876.— Thunderstorm; pitch dark, with no blackness— hut deep, high, fllthiness of lurid, yet not sublimely lurid, smoke-cloud; dense manu- facturing mist ; fearful squalls of shivery wind, making Mr. Severn's sail quiver like a man in a fever-fit — all about fovir, afternoon — but only two or three claps of thunder, and feeble, though near, flashes. I never saw such a dirty, weak, foul storm. It cleared suddenly, after raining all afternoon, at half-past eight to nine, into jjure, natural weather, — low rain-clouds on quite clear, green, wet hills. ^'August 13, 1879. — Quarter to eight, morning. — Thunder returned, all the air collapsed into one black fog, the hills invisible, and scarcely visible the opposite shore ; heavy rain in short fits, and frequent, though less formidable, flashes, and shorter thunder. While I have written this sentence the cloud has again dissolved itself, like a nasty solution in a bottle, with miraculous and unnat- ural rapidity, and the hills are in sight again. Half-past eight.— Three times light and three times dark since last I wrote, and the darkness seeming each time as it settles more loathsome, at last stop- ping my reading in mere blindness. One lurid gleam of white cumulus in upper lead-blue sky, seen for half a minute through the sulphuro s chimney-pot vomit of blackguardly cloud beneath, where its rags were thinnest. ^'August 17, 1879. — Raining in foul drizzle, slow and steady; sky jiitch-dark, and I just got a little light by sitting in the bow- window; diabolic clouds over everything : and looking over my kitchen garden yesterday, I found it one miserable mass of weeds gone to seed, the roses in the higher garden putrefied into brown sponges, feeling like dead snails ; and the half-ripe strawbei-ries all rotten at the stalks." '' February 22, 1883.— Yesterday a fearfully dark mist all afternoon, with steady, south plague-wind of the bitterest, nastiest, poisonous blight, and fret- ful flutter. I could scarcely stay in the wood for the horror of it. To-day, really rather Ijright blue, and bright semi-cumuli, with the frantic Old Man blowing sheaves of lancets and chisels across the lake — not in strength enough, or whirl enough, to SCIENCE— BITS OF THOUGHT. 453 raise it in spray, but tracing every squall's outline in black on the silvery grey waves, and whistling meanly, and as if on a flute made of a file. 6. And now I come to the most important sign of the plague-wind and the plague-cloud : that in bringing on their peculiar darkness, they blanch the sun instead of reddening it. . . . I should have liked to have blotted down for you a bit of plague- cloud ; but Heaven knows, you can see enough of it nowadays without any trouble of mine ; and if you want, in a hurry, to see what the sun looks like through it, you've only to throw a bad half-crown into a basin of soap and waXew— Storm-Cloud, Lect. I., pp. 36-35. CHAPTER V. Bits op Thought. RusKO's First Piece of Published "Writij^g. —I do not think the causes of the color of trans- parent water have been sufficiently ascertained. I do not mean that effect of color which is simply op- tical, as the color of the sea, which is regulated by the sky above, or the state of the atmosphere ; but 1 mean the settled color of transparent water, which has, when analyzed, been found pure. Now, copper will tinge water green, and that very strongly ; but water thus impregnated will not be transparent, and will deposit the copper it holds in solution upon any piece of iron which may be thrown into it. There is a lake in a defile on the north-west flank of Snowdon, which is supplied by a stream, which previously passes over several veins of copper : this lake is, of course, of a bright ver- digrise green, but it is not transparent. Now, the coloring effect of Avhich I speak, is well seen in the waters of the Rhone and Rhine. The former of these rivers, when it enters the Lake of Geneva, after having received the torrents descending from 454 A BUSKIN- ANTHOLOGY. the mountains of the Valais, is fouled with nmd, or white with the calcareous matter which it holds in solution. Having deposited this in the Lake Le- man (thereby forming- an immense delta), it issues from the lake perfectly pure, and flows through the streets of Geneva so transparent, that the bottom can be seen 20 feet below the surface, yet so blue, that you might imagine it to be a solution of indigo. In like manner, the Rhine, after purifying itself in the Lake of Constance, flows forth, colored of a clear green ; and this under all circumstances, and in all weathers. It is sometimes said that this arises from the torrents which supply these rivers gener- ally flowing from the glaciers, the green and blue color of which may have given rise to this opinion; but the color of the ice is jiureiy optical, as the frag- ments detached from the mass appear simply white. Perhaps some correspondent can afford me some information on the subject. — Magazine of Natural History, 1834. Envy among Scientific Men.— The retardation of science by envy is one of the most tremendous losses in the economy of the present century. — Unto this Last, p. 51. Ruskin's Opinion of Modern Science, written IN 1853. — That modern science, Avith all its addi- tions to the comforts of life, and to the fields of ra- tional contemplation, has placed the existing races of mankind on a higher platform than any that preceded them, none can doubt for an instant ; and I believe the position in Avhich we find ourselves is somewhat analogous to that of thoughtful and la- borious youth succeeding a restless and heedless int'einKiy.— Stones of Fe/lice, III., p. 166. Pure Scientific Research never Rewarded. —My ingenious friends, science has no more to do with making steam-engines than with making breeches ; though she condescends to help you a little in such necessary (or it may be, conceivably, in both cases, sometimes unnecessary) businesses. SCIENCE— BITS OF THOUGHT. 455 Science lives only in quiet places, and with odd peo- ple, mostly poor. ... You cannot be simple enough, even in April, to think I got my three thousand pounds Avorth of minerals by studying mineralogy ? Not so ; they were earned for me by hard labor ; my father's in England, and many a sunburnt vineyard-dresser's in Spain. — Fors, I., p. 44. 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. — Sesame and Lilies, p. 56. The Vibrations op the Ttmpa;^um.— It is quite true that the tympanum of the ear vibrates under sound, and that the surface of the water in a ditch vibrates too : but the ditch hears nothing for all that ; and my hearing is still to me as blessed a mystery as ever, and the interval between the ditch and me, quite as great. If the trembling sound in my ears was once of the marriage-bell which began my happiness and is now of the passing-bell which ends it, the difference between those two sounds to me cannot be counted by the number of concus- sions. — Athena, p. 50. The Study op Natural History. — For one man who is fitted for the study of words, fifty are fitted for the study of things, and were intended to have a per- petual, simple, and religious delight in watching the processes, or admiring the creatures, of the natural universe. Deprived of this source of pleasure, no- thing is left to them but ambition or dissipation ; and the vices of the upper classes of Europe are, I believe, chiefly to be attributed to this single cause. — Stones of Venice, III., p. 216. Only simple Tools needed.- A quick eye, a candid mind, and an earnest heart, are all the microscopes and laboratories which any of us need ; and with a little clay, sand, salt, and sugar, a man may find out more of the methods of geological phe- 456 A RUSKIlsr ANTHOLOGY. nojiienon than ever wei-e knoAvn to Sir Charles Lyell. — In Montibus Sanctis, p. 25. Nondescript Species of Animals. — Between the gentes, or races of animals, and between the species, or families, there are invariably links — mongrel creatures, neither one thing nor another — but clumsy, blundering, hobbling, misshapen things. You are always thankful when you see one that you are not it. They are, according to old philosophy, in no process of development up or down, but are necessary, though much pitiable, where they are. Thus betw^een the eagle and the trout, the mongrel or needful link is the penguin. Well, if you ever saw an eagle or a windhover flying, I am sure you must have sometimes wished to be a windhover ; and if ever you saw a trout or a dolphin swimming, I am sure, if it was a hot day, you wished you could be a trout. Btit did ever anybody wish to be a pen- guin ? — Deucalion, p. 182. Would peep and botanize upon their Moth- er's Grave. — Men who have the habit of cluster- ing and harmonizing their thoughts are a little too apt to look scornfully upon the harder workers who tear the bouquet to pieces to examine the stems. This was the chief narrowness of Wordsworth's mind ; he could not understand that to break a rock with a hammer in search of crystal may sometimes be an act not disgraceful to liviman nature, and that to dissect a flower may sometimes be as proper as to dream over it ; whereas all experience goes to teach us, that among men of average intellect the most useful members of society are the dissectors, not the dreamers. — Modern Painters, HI., p. 309. The Spectrum op Blood.— My friend showed me the rainbow of the rose, and the rainbow of the violet, and the rainbow of the hyacinth, and the rainbow of forest leaves being born, and the rain- bow of forest leaves dying. And, last, he showed me the rainbow^ of blood. It was but the three hundredth part of a grain, dis- solved in a drop of water : and it cast its measured SCIENCE— BITS OF THOUGHT. 457 bars, forevei" recognizable now to human sight, on the chord of tlie seven colors. And no drop of that red rain can now be shed, so small as that the stain of it cannot be known, and the voice of it heard out of the ground. — Time and Tide, p. 110. MoDBRX Scientific Knowledge an Asses' Bridge. — The fact is that the greater quantity of the knowledge which modern science is so saucy about, is only an asses' bi'idge, which the asses all stop at the top of, and which, moreover, they can't help stopping at the top of ; for they have from the beginning taken the wrong road, and so come to a broken bridge — a Ponte rotto over the River of Death, by which the Pontifex Maximus allows thein to pass no step farther. For instance — having invented telescopes and photography, you are all stuck up on your hobby- horses, because you know how big the moon is, and can get pictures of the volcanoes in it ! But you never can get any more i\\ii,n 2nctures of these, while in your own planet there are a thousand vol- canoes which yoia may jump into, if you have a mind to; and may one day jierhaps be blown sky high by, whether you have a mind or not. The last time the great volcano in Java was in erup- tion, it threw out a stream of hot water as big as Lancaster Bay, and boiled twelve thousand jjeople. That's what I call a volcano to be interested about, if you want sensational science. But if not, and you can be content in the wonder and the power of Nature, without her terror, — here is a little bit of a volcano, close at your very doors — Yewdale Crag, which I think will be quiet for our time ; and on Avhich the Anagallis tenella, and the golden potentilla, and the sun-dew grow to- gether among the dewy moss in peace. And on the cellular surface of one of the blocks of it, you may find more beauty, and learn more precious things, than with telescope or photograph from all the moons in the milky way, though every drop of it were another solar system.— i)et(ca7fow, pp. 142, 143. 458 A BUS KIN ANTHOLOGY. Mr. Darwin's Account op the Peacock's Feathe:r. — I went to it myself, hoiking to leai-n some of the existing laws of life which regulate the local disposition of the color. But none of these appear to be known ; and I am informed only that peacocks have grown to be jjeacocks out of brown pheasants, because the young feminine brown pheasants like fine feathers. Wherevipon I say to myself, " Then either there was a distinct species of brown pheasants originally born with a taste for fine feathers ; and therefore with remarkable eyes in their heads, — which would be a much more won- derful distinction of species than being born with remarkable eyes in their tails,— or else all pheas- ants would have been peacocks by this time!" And I trouble myself no more about the Darwinian theory. — Ragle's Nest, p. 112. Science and Song.— You have, I doubt not, your new science of song, as of nest-building: and I am happy to think you could all explain to me, or at least you will be able to do so before you pass your natural science examination, how, by the accurate connection of a larynx with a bill, and by the ac- tion of heat, originally derived from the sun, upon the muscular fibre, an undulatory motion is pro- duced in the larynx, and an opening and shutting one in the bill, which is accompanied, necessarily, by a piping sound. — Eagle's Nest, p. 41. There are Sciences op the Arts, too.— It has become the permitted fashion among modern math- ematicians, chemists, and apothecaries, to call them- selves "scientific men," as oi^posed to theologians, poets, and artists. They know their sphere to be a separate one; but their ridiculous notion of its being a peculiarly scientific one ought not to be alloAved in our Universities. There is a science of Morals, a science of History, a science of Grammar, a science of Music, and a science of Painting ; and all these are quite beyond comparison higher fields for human intellect, and require accuracies of intens^r SCIENCE— BITS OF THOUGHT. 459 observation, than either chemistry, electricity, or geology. — Ariadne, p. 85. The Cult of Ugliness.— And the universal in- stinct of blasphemy in the modern vulgar scientific mind is above all manifested in its love of what is ugly, and natural enthralment by the abominable; — so that it is ten to one if, in the description of a new bii'd, you learn much more of it than the enum- erated species of vermin that stick to its feathers ; and in the natui-al history museum of Oxford, hu- manity has been hitherto taught, not by portraits of great men, but by the skulls of cretins. — Storm Cloud, Lect. II., § 30. SciEXCE m. Art. — " It is very fine," sculptors and painters say, " and very useful, this knocking the light out of the sun, or into it, by an eternal cataract of planets. But you may hail away, so, for ever, and you will not knock out what we can. Here is a bit of silver, not the size of half-a-crown, on which, with a single hammer stroke, one of us, two thousand and odd years ago, hit out the head of the Apollo of Clazomenae. It is merely a matter of form; but if any of you philosophers, with your whole planetary system to hammer with, can hit out such another bit of silver as this, — we will take off our hats to you. For the present, we keep them on." — Ethics of the Dust, p. 127. Rivers not deepening but filling up their Beds.— Niagara is a vast Exception — and Decep- tion. The true cataracts and falls of the great mountains, as the dear little cascades and leaplets of your own rills, fall where they fell of old ; — that is to say, wherever there's a hard bed of rock for them to jump over. They don't cut it away— and they can't. They do form pools heneath in a mys- tic way, — they excavate them to the depth which will break their fall's force — and then they excavate no move.— Deucalioii, p. 136. Decay in the Scale op animated Life.— The decomposition of a crystal is not necessarily impure at all. The fermentation of a wholesome liquid be- 460 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. gins to admit the idea slightly ; the decay of leaves yet more; of flowers, more; of animals, Avith greater painfulness and terribleness in exact proportion to their original vitality ; and the foulest of all cor- ruption is that of the body of man ; and, in his body, that which is occasioned by disease, more than that of natural death.— llodern Painters, V., p. 174. Geology. — Though an old member of the Geolog- ical Society, my geological observations have always been as completely ignored by that society as my remarks on political economy by the direc- tors of the Bank of England. — In Moidibns iSancti's. I do not believe that one in a hundred of our youth, or of our educated classes, out of directly scientific circles, take any real interest in geology. And for my own part, I do not wonder,— for it seems to me that geology tells us nothing really interest- ing. It tells us much about a world that once Avas. But, for my part, a world that only was, is as lit- tle interesting as a world that only is to be. I no more care to hear of the forms of mountains that crumbled away a million of years ago to leave room for the town of Kendal, than of forms of mountains that some future day may swallow up the town of Kendal in the cracks of them. I am only inter- ested — so ignoble and unspeculative is my disposi- tion — in knowing how God made the Castle Hill of Kendal, for the Baron of it to build on, and how he brought the Kent through the dale of it, for its peo- l^le and flocks to drink of. And these things, if you think of them, you Avill find are precisely what the geologists cannot tell you. They never trouble themselves about matters so recent, or so visible ; and while you niaj' always obtain the most satisfactory information from them respecting the congelation of the whole globe out of gas, or the direction of it in space, there is i-eally not one who can exjilain to you the making of a pebble, or the running of a rivulet. — Deucalion, p. 137. SCIENCE-BITS OF THOUGHT. 401 There are, broadly, three great demonstrable pnriotls of the Earth's history: That in which it was crystallized ; that in which it was sculptured ; and that in which it is now being unsculptured, or deformed. These three periods interlace with eacli other, and gradate into each other — as the periods of liuman life do. Something dies in the child on the day that it is born — something is born in the man on the day that he dies : nevertheless, his life is broadly divided into youth, strength, and decrep- itude. In such clear sense, the Earth has its three ages : of their length we know as yet nothing, except that it has been greater than any man had imagined. The First Period. — But there was a period, or a succession of periods, dui-ing which the rocks which are now hard were soft ; and in wliich, out of entirely different positions, and under entirely different con- ditions from any now existing or describable, the masses, of which the mountains you now see are made, were lifted and hardened, in the positions they now occupy, though in what forms we can now no more guess than we can the original outline of the block from the existing statue. The Second Period. — Then, out of those raised masses, more or less in lines compliant with their crystalline structure, the mountains we now see were hewn, or worn, during the second period, by forces for the most part differing both in mode and vio- lence from any now in operation, but the result of which was to bring the surface of the earth into a form approximately that which it has possessed as far as the records of human history extend. — The Ararat of Moses's time, the Olympus and Ida of Homer's, are practically the same mountains now, that they wei-e then. The Third Period. — Not, however, without some calculable, though superficial, change, and that change, one of steady degradation. For in the third, or historical jieriod, tlie valleys excavated in the second period, are being filled up, and the moun- tains hewn in the second period, worn or ruined down. In tlie second era the valley of the Rhone 462 A BUSKIN' ANTHOLOGY. was being cut deeper every day; now it is every day being filled up with gravel. In the second era, the scars of Derbyshire and Yorkshire were cut white and steep ; now they are being darkened by vegeta- tion, and crumbled by frost. You cannot, I repeat, separate the periods with precision ; but, in their characters, they are as distinct as youth from age. —Deucalion, pp. 22, 23. The Discovery by James Forbes of the vis- cous Nature op Glacier Ice. — Professor Agas.siz, of Neuchatel, had then [1841] been some eight or ten years at work on the glaciers : had built a cabin on one of them ; walked a great many times over a great many of them ; described a number of their phenomena quite correctly; proposed, and in some cases performed, many ingenious experiments upon them ; and indeed done almost everything that was to be done for them — except find out the one thing that we wanted to know. As his malicious fortune would have it, he invited in that year (1841) a man of acute brains — James Forbes — to see what he was about. The invitation was accepted. The visitor was a mathematician ; and after examining the question, for discussion of which Agassiz was able to supply him with all the data except those which were essential, resolved to find out the essential ones himself. Which in the next year (1842) he quietly did ; and in 1843 solved the problem of glacier motion forever: announcing, to everybody's astonishment, and to the extreme disgust and mortification of all glacier students — including my poor self, (not the least envious, I fancy, though with as little right to be envious as any one) — that glaciei'S wei-e not solid bodies at all, but semi-liqviid ones, and ran down in their beds like so much treacle. . . . But fancy the feelings of poor Agassiz in his Hotel des Neuchatelois ! To have had the thing under his nose for ten years, and missed it ! There is nothing in the annals of scientific mischance — (perhaps the ti'uer word would be scientific dulness) — to match it ; certainly it would be difficult for provocation SCIENCE— BITS OF THOUGHT. 463 to be more bitter, — at least, for a man who thinks, as most of our foolish modern scientific men do think, that there is no good in knowing anything for its own sake, but only in being tlie first to find it out. Nor am I prepared altogether to justify Forbes in his method of proceeding, except on the terms of battle which men of science have laid down for themselves. Here is a man has been ten years at his diggings ; has trenched here, and bored there, and been over all the ground again and again, ex- cept just where the nugget is. He asks one to din- ner — and one has an eye for the run of a stream ; one does a little bit of pickaxing in the afternoon on one's own account — and walks off Avith his nug- get.— i^ors, II., pp. 90, 91. A Glacier is a River of Honey. — Above all substances that can be proposed for definition of quality, glacier ice is the most defeating. For it is practically plastic ; but actually viscous; — and that tothe full extent. You can beat or hammer it, like gold ; and it will stay in the form you have bcatfen it into, for a time ; — and so long a time, that, on all instant occasions of plasticity, it is practi- cally plastic. But only have patience to wait long enough, and it will run down out of the form you have stamped on it, as honey does, so that actvially and inherently, it is viscous, and not plastic. — Deucalion, p. 56. PART V. NATUflE AND LITERATURE. A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. PART V.-NATURE AND LITERATURE. CHAPTER I. Nature. The Air. — The deep of air that surrounds the earth enters into union with the earth at its surface, and with its waters ; so as to be the apparent cause of their ascending into life. First, it warms them, and shades, at once, staying the heat of the sun's rays in its own body, but warding their force with its clouds. It warms and cools at once, with traffic of balm and frost ; so that the white wreaths are withdrawn from the field of the Swiss peasant by the glow of Libyan rock. It gives its own strength to the sea ; forms and fills every cell of its foam ; sustains the jjrecipices, and designs the valleys of its waves ; gives the gleam to their moving under the night, and the white fire to their plains under sunrise ; lifts their voices along the rocks, bears above them the spray of birds, pencils through them the dimpling of unfooted sands. It gathers out of them a portion in the hollow of its hand : dyes, with that, the hills into dark blue, and their glaciers with dying rose ; inlays with that, for sap- phire, the dome in which it has to set the cloud ; shapes out of that the heavenly flocks : divides them, numbers, cherishes, bears them on its bosom, calls them to their journeys, waits by their rest; feeds from them the brooks that cease not, and strews with them the dews that cease. It spins and weaves their fleece into wild tapestry, rends it, and 467 468 A HUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. renews ; and flits and flames, and whispers, among the golden threads, thrilling them with a plectrum of strange fire that traverses them to and fro, and is enclosed in them like life. It enters into the surface of the earth, subdues it, and falls together with it into fruitful dust, from which can be moulded flesh; it joins itself, in dew, to the substance of adamant ; and becomes the green leaf out of the dry ground; it enters into the separ- ated shapes of the earth it has tempered, commands the ebb and flow of the current of their life, fills their limbs with its own lightness, measures their exist- ence by its indwelling pulse, moulds upon their lips the words by Avhich one soul can be known to another ; is to them the hearing of the ear, and the beating of the heart ; and, passing away, leaves them to the peace that hears and moves no more. —Athena, p. 78. Clouds among the Hills- — There is more beau- ty in a single wreath of early cloud, pacing its way up an avenue of pines, or pausing among the points of their fringes, than in all the white heaps that fill the arched sky of the plains from one horizon to the other. And of the nobler cloud manifestations — the breaking of their troublous seas against the crags, their black spi-ay sparkling with lightnirig ; or the going forth of the morning along their pave- ments of moving marble, level-laid between dome and dome of snow ; — of these things there can be as little imagination or understanding in an inhabi- tant of the plains as of the scenery of another planet than his o\wi\.— Modern Painters, IV., p. 373. The Cumulus Cloud. — I have never succeeded in drawing a cumulus. Its divisions of surface are grotesque and endless, as those of a mountain ; — perfectly defined, brilliant beyond all power of color, and transitory as a dream. Even Turner never at- tempted to paint them, any more than he did the snows of the high Alps. — Modern Painter's, V., p. 140. RaijV in Temperate Climes. — The great Angel of the Sea — rain ;— the Angel, observe, the messen- NATURE AND LITERATURE— NATURE. -iGO ger sent to a special place on a special errand. Not the diffused perpetual presence of the burden of luist, but the going and returning of intermittent cloud. All turns upon that internuttence. Soft moss on stone and rock ;— cave-fern of tangled glen ; wayside well —perennial, patient, silent, clear; stealing through its square font of rough-hewn stone ; ever thus deep— no more— which the winter wreck sullies not, the summer thirst wastes not, in- capable of stain as of decline— where the fallen leaf floats, undecayed, and the insect darts undefiling. Cressed brook and ever-eddying river, lifted even in flood scarcely over its stepping-stones,— but through all sweet summer keeping tremulous music with harp-strings of dark water among the silver fingering of the pebbles. Far away in the south the strong river Gods have all hasted, and gone down to the sea. Wasted and burning, white furnaces of blasting sand, their broad beds lie ghastly and bare ; but here the soft wings of the Sea Angel droop still with dew, and the shadows of their plumes falter on the hills : strange laughings, and glitterings of silver streamlets, born suddenly, and twined about the mossy heights in trickling tin- sel, answering to them as they wave. — Modern Painters, V., p. 154. The Hurrica:xe Storm.— The fronting clouds come leaning forward, one thrusting the other aside, or on ; impatient, ponderous, impendent, like globes of rock tossed of Titans— Ossa on Olympus —but hurled forward all, in one Avave of cloud- lava— cloud whose throat is as a sepulchre. Fierce behind them rages the oblique wrath of the rain, white as ashes, dense as showers of driven steel ; the pillars of it full of ghastly life ; Rain-Furies, shrieking as they fly ;— scourging, as with whips of scorpions ;— the earth ringing and trembling under them, heaven wailing wildly, the trees stooped blindly down, covering their faces, quivering in every leaf with horror, ruin of their branches fly- ing by them like black stubble.— J/bcZeni Painters. v., p. 156. 470 • A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. The Miracles of Ice and Frost.— Every crys- talline substance has a brick of a particular form to build with, usually, in some angle or modification of angle, quite the minei-al's own special property — and if not absolutely peculiar to it, at least pecu- liarly used by it. Thus, though the brick of gold, and that of the ruby-colored oxide of copj)er, are alike cubes, yet gold gi'ows trees with its bricks, and ruby copper weaves samite with them. Gold cannot plait samite, nor ruby copper branch into trees ; and ruby itself, with a far more convenient and adajDtable form of brick, does neither the one nor the other. But ice, which has the same form of bricks to build with as ruby, can, at its pleasure, bind them into branches, or weave them into wool ; buttress a polar cliff with adamant, or flush a dome of Alp with light lovelier than the ruby's. — Deucalion, p. 220. Icicles, and all other such accretions of ice formed by additions at the surface, by flowing or dropping water, are always, Avhen unaffected by irregular changes of temperature or other disturbing acci- dents, composed of exquisitely transparent vitreous ice (the water of course being supposed transparent to begin with) — compact, flawless, absolutely smooth at the surface, and presenting on the fracture, to the naked eye, no evidence Avhatever of crystalline structure. They will enclose living leaves of holly, fern, or ivy, without disturbing one fold or fringe of them, in clear jelly (if one may use the word of anything frozen so hard), like the dantiest candy- ings by Parisian confectioner's art, over glace fruit, or like the fixed juice of the white currant in the pei'fect confiture of Bar-le-Duc ; — and the frozen gelatine melts, as it forms, stealthily, serenely, showing no vestige of its crystalline power ; push- ing nowhere, pulling nowhere ; revealing in disso- lution, no secrets of its structure ; affecting flexile bi'anches and foliage only by its weight, and letting them rise when it has passed away, as they rise after being bow-ed under rain. NATURE AND LITER ATUIiE-NA TUBE. ^<5»:ij A small cascade, falling lightly, and shattering itself only into drops, will always do beautiful things, and often incomprehensible ones. After some fortnight or so of clear frost in one of our recent hard winters at Coniston, a fall of about twenty-five feet in the stream of Leathes-water, beginning with general glass basket-making out of all the light grasses at its sides, built for itself at last a complete veil or vault of finely interwoven ice. under which it might be seen, when the em- broidery was finished, falling tranquilly: its strength being then too far subdued to spoil by overloading or over-laboring the poised traceries of its incandes- cent canopy. — Deucalion, pp. 217-319. The Earth-veil.— The earth in its depths must remain dead and cold, incapable except of slow crystalline change; but at its surface, which human beings look upon and deal with, it ministers to them through a veil of strange intermediate being ; which breathes, but has no voice ; moves, but can- not leave its appointed place ; passes through life without consciousness, to death Avithout bitterness; wears the beauty of youth, v»dthout its passion ; and declines to the weakness of age, without Its regret. And in this mystery of intermediate being, en- tirely subordinate to us, with which we can deal as we choose, having just the greater power as we have the less responsibility for ourtreatment of the unsuffering creature, most of the pleasures which we need from the external world are gathered, and most of the lessons we need are written, all kinds of precious grace and teaching being united in this link between the Earth and Man : wonderful in universal adai)tation to his need, desire, and disci- pline ; God's daily preparation of the earth for him, with beautiful nieans of life. First a carpet to make it soft for him ; then, a colored fantasy of embroidery thereon ; then, tall spreading of foliage to shade him from sun-heat, and shade also the fallen rain, that it may not dry quickly back into :it< A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. the clouds, but stay to nourish the springs among the moss. Stout wood to bear this leafage : easily to be cut, yet tough and light, to make houses for him, or instruments (lance-shaft, or plough-handle, according to his temi^er) ; useless it had been, if harder; useless, if less fibrous; useless, if less elastic. Winter comes, and the shade of leafage falls away, to let the sun warm the earth ; the strong boughs remain, breaking the strength of winter winds. The seeds which are to prolong the race, innumerable according to the need, are made beautiful and palatable, varied into infinitude of -appeal to the fancy of man, or provision for his service : cold juice, or glowing spice, or balm, or incense, softening oil, perserving resin, medicine of styptic, febrifuge, or lulling charm : and all these presented in forms of endless change. Fragility or force, softness and strength, in all degrees and as- pects ; unerring uprightness, as of temple pillars, or undivided wandering of feeble tendrils on the ground ; mighty resistances of rigid arm and limb to the storms of ages, or wavings to and fro with faintest pulse of summer streamlet. Roots cleav- ing the strength of rock, or binding the transcience of the sand ; crests basking in sunshine of the desert, or hiding by dripping spring and lightless cave ; foliage far tossing in entangled fields, be- neath every wave of ocean — clothing with varie- gated, everlasting films, the peaks of the trackless mountains, or ministering at cottage doors to every gentlest j)assion and simplest joy of humanity. — Moder7i Painters, V., pp. 6-17. Branches and Leaves. — Branches float on the wind more than they yield to it; and in their tossing do not so much bend under a force, as rise on a wave, which penetrates in liquid threads through all their sprays. — Modern Painters, V., p. 79. Caprice is an essential source of branch beauty: being in reality the written story of all the branch's life — of the theories it formed, the accidents it suf- fered, the fits of enthusiasm to which it yielded ixx NATUPxE AND LIT Eli ATURE— NATURE. 473 certain delicious warm springs ; tlie disgusts at weeks of east wind, the mortifications of itself for its friends' sakes ; or the sudden and successful in- ventions of neAV ways of getting out to the sun. — Modern Painters, V., p. 84. Paint a leaf indeed ! Above-named Titian has done it: Correggio, moreover, and Giorgione : and Leonardo, very nearly, trying hard. Holbein, three or four times, in precious pieces, highest wrought. Raphael, it may be, in one or two crowns of Muse or Sibyl. If any one else, in later times, we have to consider. — Modern Painters, \., p. 49. The leaves of the herbage at our feet take all kinds of strange shapes, as if to invite us to ex- amine them. Star-shajoed, heart-shaped, spear- shaped, arrow-shaped, fretted, fringed, cleft, fur- rowed, serrated, sinuated ; in whorls, in tufts, in spires, in wreaths endlessly expressive, deceptive, fantastic, never the same from footstalk to blossoiu ; they seem perpetually to tempt our watchfulness, and take delight in outstripping our wonder. And observe, their forms are such as will not be visibly injured by crushing. Their complexity is already disorded : jags and rents are their laws of being ; rent by the footstep they betray no harm. — Modern Painters, V., p. 109. By a power of which I believe no sufficient ac- count exists, as each leaf adds to the thickness of the shoot, so each shoot to the branch, so each branch to the stem, and that with so perfect an order and regularity of duty, that from every leaf in all the countless crowd at tlie tree's summit, one slender fibre, or at least fibre's thickness of wood, descends through shoot, through spray, through branch, and through stem ; and having thus added, in its due proportion, to form the strength of the tree, laboi's yet farther and more painfully to pro- vide for its security ; and thrusting forward into the root, loses nothing of its miiihty energy, until, mining through the darkness, it has taken hold in cleft of rock or depth of earth, as extended as the sweep of its green crest in the free air. . . . 474 A EUSKIJSr ANTHOLOGY. These ridges, which rib the shoot so distinctly, are not on the ascending jiart of it. They are the contributions of eacli successive leaf thrown out as it ascended. Every leaf sent down a slender cord, covering and clinging to the shoot beneath, and in- creasing its thickness. Each, according to his size and strength, wore his little strand of cable, as a spider his thread ; and cast it down the side of the sijringing tower by a marvellous magic — irresisti^ ble ! The fall of a granite pyramid from an Alp may perhaps be stayed ; the descending force of that silver thread shall not be stayed. It will split the rocks themselves at its roots, if need be, rather than fail in its work. — 3Iodern Painters, V., pp. 55, 57. Every single leaf-cluster presents the general as- pect of a little family, entirely at unity among themselves, but obliged to get their living by va- rious shifts, concessions, and infringements of the family rules, in order not to invade the privileges of other peo^^le in their neigliborhood. And in the arrangement of these concessions there is an exquis- ite sensibility among the leaves. They do not grow each to his own liking, till they run against one another, and then turn back suVk>ly ; but by a watchful instinct, far apart, tliey anticipate their companions' coui'ses, as ships M sea, and in every new unfolding of their edgt^d tissue, guide them- selves by the sense of eacp other's remote j^resence, and by a watchful penetration of leafy purj^ose in the far future. iSo that every shadow which one casts on the next, ind every glint of sun which each reflects to the next, and every touch which in toss of stovm each receives from the next, aid or arrest the development of their advancing form, and di- rect, as will be safest and best, the curve of every fold and the current of every vein. — Modern Paint- ers, v., pp. 46, 47. To conclude, then, we find that the beauty of these buildings of the leaves consists, from the first fitep of it to the last, in its showingtheir jjerfect fel- NATURE AND LITERATURE—NATURE. 475 lowship ; and a single aim uniting them under cir- cumstances of various distress, trial, and pleasure. Without the fellowship, no beauty ; without the steady purpose, no beauty ; without trouble and death, no beauty ; without individual pleasure, freedom, and caprice, so far as mav be consistent Avith the universal good, no beauty. Tree-loveliness might be thus lost or killed in many ways. Discordance would kill it — of one leaf with another ; disobedience would kill it — of any leaf to the ruling law ; indulgence would kill it, and the doing away with pain ; or slavisli symme- try would kill it. and the doing away with deliglit. — Modern Painters, V., p. 88. Flowers. — All plants are composed of essen- tially two parts — the leaf and root ; one loving the light, the other darkness ; one liking to be clean, the other to be dirty ; one liking to grow for the most part up, the other for the most part down ; and each having faculties and purposes of its own. But the pure one, which loves the light, has, above all things, the purpose of being mai'ried to another leaf, and having child-leaves, and children's chil- dren of leaves, to make the earth fair for ever. And when the leaves marry, they put on wedding-robes, and are more glorious than Solomon in all his glory, and they have feasts of honey, and we call them "Flowers."— For6% I., p. 63. Few people care about flowers. Many, indeed, are fond of finding a new shape of blossom, caring for it as a child cares about a kaleidoscope. Many, also, like a fair service of flowers in the greenhouse, as a fair service of plate on the table. Many are scientificallj^ interested in them, though even these in the nomenclature rather than the flowers. And a few enjoy their gardens : but I have never heard of a piece of land, which would let well on a build- ing lease, remaining unlet because it was a flowery piece. I have never heard of parks being kept for wild hyacinths, though often of their being kept for wild beasts. And the blossoming time of the year 476 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. being principally spring, I perceive it to be the mind of most people, during tliat period, to stay in towns. . . . Flowers seem intended for the solace of ordinary humanity: children love them; quiet, tender, con- tented ordinary people love them as they grow ; luxurious and disorderly people rejoice in them gathered : They are the cottager's treasure ; and in the crowded town, mark, as with a little broken fragment of rainbow, the windows of the w^orkers in whose heart rests the covenant of peace. Pas- sionate or religious minds contemplate them with fond, feverish intensity ; the affection is seen se- verely calm in the works of many old religious l^ainters, and mixed with more open and true country sentiment in those of our own pre-K.a- phaelites. To the child and the girl, the peasant and the manufacturing operative, to the grisette and the nun, the lover and monk, they are pre- cious always. But to the men of supreme power and thoughtfulness, precious only at times ; sym- bolically and pathetically often to the poets, but rarely for their own sake. They fall forgotten from the great workmen's and soldiers' hands. Such men will take, in thankfulness, crowns of leaves, or crowns of thorns — not crowns of flowers. A curious fact, this ! Here are men whose lives are spent iia the study of color, and the one thing they will not paint is a flower ! Anything but that. A furred mantle, a jewelled zone, a silken gown, a brazen corslet, nay, an old leathern chair, or a wall-paper if you will, with utmost care and de- light ;— but a flower by no manner of means, if avoidable. When the thing has perforce to be done, the great painters of course do it rightly. Titian, in his eai-ly work, sometimes carries a blos- som or two out with affection, as the columbines in our Bacchus and Ariadne. So also Holbein. But in his later and mightier work, Titian will only paint a fan or a wristband intensely, never a flower. The utuiost that Turner ever allows in his fore- NATCRE AND LITERATURE— NATURE. 477 grounds is a Wcitev-lily or two, a cluster of heath or fox's OF THE RoCK. — It is Strange to think ot the gradually diminished power and withdrawn freedom among the orders of leaves — from the sweep of the chestnut and gadding of the vine, down to the close-shrinking trefoil, and contented daisy, pressed on earth ; and, at last, to the leaves that are not merely close to earth, but themselves a part of it; fastened down to it by their sides, here and there only a wrinkled edge rising from the granite crystals. . . . They will not be gathered, like the flowers, for chaplet or love-token ; but of these the wild bird will make its nest, and the Avearied child his pillow. And, as the earth's first mercy, so they are its last gift to us. AVhen all other service is vain, from plant and tree, the soft mosses and gray lichen take up their watch by the head-stone. The woods, the blossoms, the gift-bearing grasses, have done their imrts for a time, but these do service for ever. 482 A BUSKIN- ANTHOLOGY. Trees for the builder's yard, flowers for the bride's chamber, corn for the granary, moss for the grave. . . . Sharing the stillness of the unimpassioned rock, they share also its endurance ; and while the winds of departing spring scatter the white hawthorn blossom like drifted snow, and summer dims on the parched meadow the drooping of its cowslip-gold, — far above, among the mountains, the silver lichen-spots, rest, starlike, on the stone ; and the gathering orange stain upon the edge of yonder western peak reflects the sunsets of a thousand years. — Modern Painters, V., pp. 116, 117. THE SEA. Day by day, the morning winds come coursing to the shore, every breath of them with a green wave rearing before it ; clear, crisp, ringing, merry- minded waves, that fall over and over each other, laughing like children as they near the beach, and at last clash themselves all into dust of crystal over the dazzling sweeps of sand. — Stones of Venice, I., p. 226. The Breaking of a Sea-wave against a Cliff. — One moment a flint cave — the next, a marble pillar,— the next a fading cloud. — Harbors of England. The Unshovelled Graves of the Sea.— The calm gray abyss of the sea, that has no fury and no voice, but is as a grave always open, which the green sighing mounds do but hide for an instant as they peiss. —Hai'bors of England. Moonlight on a swelling Sea. — Let us stand on the sea-shore on a cloudless night, with a full moon over the sea, and a swell on the water. Of course a long line of splendor will be seen on the waves under the moon, reaching from the horizon to our very feet. But are those waves between the moon and us actually more illuminated than any NATURE AND LITERATURE— NATURE. 483 other part of the sea ? Not one whit. The whole surface of the seals under the same fulUight, but the waves between the moon and us are the only ones Avhich are in a position to reflect that light to our eyes. The sea on both sides of that path of light is in perfect darkness — almost black. But is it so from shadow ? Not so, for there is nothing to intercept the moonlight from it : it is so from posi- tion, because it cannot reflect any of the rays Avhich fall on it to our eyes, but reflects instead the dark vault of the night sky. Both the darkness and the light on it, therefore— and they are as violently con- trasted as may well be— are nothing but reflections, the whole surface of the water being under one blaze of moonlight, entirely unshaded by any inter- vening object whatsoever.— JL /to ?/J.9 of the Chace, I., p. 188. " He weigheth the Waters by Measure."— Let us go down and stand by the beach of it,— of the great irregular sea, and count whether the thunder of it is not out of time. One— two :— here comes a well-formed wave at last, trembling a little at the top, but, on the whole, orderly. So, crash among the shingle, and up as far as this grey pebble; now stand by and watch ! Another :— Ah, careless wave ! why couldn't you haveiiept your crest on ? it is all gone away into spray, striking up against the cliffs there-- I thought as much— missed the mark by a couple of feet ! Another:— How now, impatient one ! couldn't you have waited till your friend's reflux was done with, instead of rolling yourself up with it in that unseemly manner? You go for nothing. A fourth, and a goodly one at last. What think we of yonder slow rise, and crystalline hollow, without a flaw ? Steady, good wave ; not so fast ; not so fast ; where are you coming to?— By our architectural word, this is to bad ; two yards over the mark, and ever so much of you in our face besides ; and a wave which we had some hope of, behind there, broken all to pieces out at sea, and laying a great white table-cloth of foam all the w^ay to the shore, as if the marine gods were to dine off it ! Alas, for 484 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. these unhappy arrow shots of Nature ; she Aviil never hit her mark with those unruly waves of hers, nor get one of them into the ideal shape, if Ave wait for a thousand years. — Stones of Venice, I., p. 343. THE MOUNTAINS. The hills, which, as compared with living beings, seem "everlasting," are, in truth, as perishing as they : its veins of flowing fountain weary the mountain heart, as the crimson pulse does ours ; the natural force of the iron crag is abated in its appointed time, like the strength of the sinews in a human old age; and it is but the lapse of the longer years of decay which, in the sight of its Creator, distinguishes the mountain range from the moth and the worm. — Modern Painters, IV., p. 152. Dawn on the Mountains. — Wait yet for one hour, until the east again becomes purple and the heaving mountains, rolling against it in darkness, like waves of a wild sea, are drowned one by one in the glory of its burning ; watch the white gla- ciers blaze in their winding paths about the moun- tains, like mighty serpents with scales of fire ; watch the columnar peaks of solitary snow, kind- ling downwards, chasm by chasm, each in itself a new morning ; their long avalanches cast down in keen streams brighter than the lightning, sending each bis tribute of driven snow, like altar-smoke, up to the heaven ; the rose-light of their silent domes flushing that heaven about them and above them, piercing Avith purer light through its purple lines of lifted cloud, casting a new glory on every wreath as it passes by, until the Avhole heaven — one scarlet canopy — is interwoven Avith a roof of Avaving f^auie, and tossing, vault beyond vault, as Avith the drifted wings of many companies of angels ; and then, when you can look no more for gladness, and when you are bowed doAvn with fear and loA'^e of the Maker and Doer of this, tell me who has best de- NATURE AND LITERATURE— NATURE. 485 Jlvered this His message unto men ! — Modern Paint- ers, I., p. 341. MoR^"ING ijf THE MouNTAI^^s.— Level lines of dewy mist lay stretched along the valley, out of which rose the massy mountains— their lower cliffs in pale gray shadow, hardly distinguishable from the floating vapor, but gradually ascending till they caught the sunlight, which ran in sharp touches of ruddy color along the angular crags, and pierced, in long level rays, through their fringes of spear-like pine. Far above, shot up red splintered masses of castellated rock, jagged and shivered into myriads of fantastic forms, with here and there a streak of sunlit snow, traced down their chasms like a line of forked lightning ; and, far be- yond, and far above all these, fainter than the Hiorning cloud, but purer, and changeless, slept, in the blue sky, the utmost peaks of the eternal snow. —King of the Golden River, p. 36. Distance lends Enchantment.— It is, in reality, better for mankind that the forms of their common landscape should offer no violent stimulus to the emotions ; that the gentle upland, browned by the bending furrows of the jjlough, and the fresh sweep of the chalk down, and the narrow winding of the copse-clad dingle, should be more frequent scenes of human life than the Arcadias of cloud-capped mountain or luxuriant vale; and that, while hum- bler (though always infinite) sources of interest are given to each of us around the homes to which we are restrained for the greater part of our lives, these mightier and stranger glories should become the objects of adventure — at once the cynosures of the fancies of childhood, and themes of the happy mem- ory, and the winter's tale of age. — Modern Painters, IV., p. 14.5. The Uses op Mountains.— It is not, in reality, a degrading, but a true, large, and ennobling view of the mountain ranges of tl-.e world, if we compare them to heaps of fertile and fresh earth, laid up by a prudent gardener beside his garden beds, whence, 486 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. at intervals, he casts on them some scattering of new and virgin ground. That which we so often lament as convulsion or destruction is nothing else than the momentary shaking of the dust from the spade. The winter floods, which inflict a temporary devas- tation, bear Avith them the elements of succeeding fertility; the fruitful field is covered with sand and shingle in momentary judgment, but in enduring- mercy; and the great river, which chokes its mouth with marsh, and tosses terror along its shore, is but scattering the seeds of the harvest of futurity, and preparing the seats of unborn generations. — Modern Painters, IV., p. 111. The first use of mountains is of course to give motion to water. Evei-y fountain and river, from the inch-deep streamlet that crosses the village lane in trembling clearness, to the massy and silent march of the everlasting multitude of waters in Amazon or Ganges, owe their play, and purity, and power, to the ordained elevations of the earth, (jrentle or steep, extended or abrupt, some deter- mined slope of the earth's surface is of course necessary, before any wave can so much as over- take one sedge in its pilgrimage. And how seldom do we enough consider, as we walk beside the margins of our pleasant brooks, how beautiful and wonderful is that ordinance, of which every blade of grass that waves in their clear water is a perpetual sign ; that the dew and rain fallen on the face of the earth shall find no resting- place ; shall find, on the contrary, fixed channels traced for them, from the ravines of the central crests down which they roar in sudden ranks of foam, to the dark hollows beneath the banks of low- land pasture, round which they must circle slowly among the stems and beneath the leaves of the lilies; paths prepared for them, by which, at some ap- pointed rate of journey, they must evermore de- scend, sometimes sIoav and sometimes swift, but never pausing ; the daily portion of the earth they have to glide over marked for them at each succes- NATURE AND LITERATURE— NATURE. 487 si ve sunrise, the place which has known them know- ing them no more, and the gateways of guarding mountains opened for them in cleft and chasm, none letting them in their pilgrimage ; and, from far off, the great heart of the sea calling them to itself ! Deep calleth unto dee^.— Modern Painters, IV., p. 107. The great mountains lift the lowlands on their sides. Let the readei- imagine, first, the appearance of the most varied plain of some richly cultivated country ; let him imagine it dark with graceful woods, and soft with deepest pastures ; let him fill the space of it, to the utmost horizon, with innum- erable and changeful incidents of scenery and life ; leading pleasant streamlets through its meadows, strewing clusters of cottages beside their banks, tracing sweet footpaths through its avenues, and animating its fields with happy flocks, and slow wandering spots of cattle ; and when he has wea- ried himself with endless imagining, and left no space without some lovelinf^ss of its own, let him conceive all this great plain, Avith its infinite treasures of natural beauty and happy human life, gathered up in God's hands from one edge of the horizon to the other like a woven garment; and shaken into deep, falling folds, as the robes droop from a king's shoulders; all its bright rivers leaping into cataracts along the hollows of its fall, and all its forests rear- ing themselves aslant against its slopes, as a rider rears himself back when his horse lilunges ; and all its villages nestling themselves into the new wind- ings of its glens ; and all its pastures thrown into steep waves of greensward, dashed Avith dew along the edges of their folds, and sweeping down into endless slopes, with a cloud here and there lying quietly, half on the grass, half in the air; and he will have as yet, in all this lifted world, only the foundation of one of the great Alps. And whatever is lovely in the lowland scenery becomes lovelier in this change : the trees which grew heavily and stiffly from the level line of plain assume strange 488 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. curves of strength and grace as they bend theui' selves against the mountain side ; they breatlie more freely, and toss their branches more carelessly as each climbs higher, looking to the clear light above the topmost leaves of its brother tree : the flowers which on the arable plain fell befoi-e the plough, now find out for themselves unapproach- able places, where year by year they gather into happier fellowship, and fear no evil ; and the streams which in the level land ci*ept in dark eddies by unwholesome banks, now move in showers of silver, and are clothed with rainbows, and bring health and life wherever the glance of their waves can resich.— Modern Painters, IV., p. 106. The Difficulty of drawing a Mountain.— Nothing is more curious than the state of embarrass- ment into which the unfortunate artist must soon be cast when he endeavors honestly to draw the face of the simplest mountain clitf — ^say a thousand feet high, and two or three miles distant. It is full of exquisite details, all seemingly decisive and clear; but when he tries to arrest one of them, he cannot see it — cannot find where it begins or ends — and presently it runs into another ; and then he tries to draw that, but that will not be drawn, neither, until it has conducted him to a third, which, some- how or another, made part of the first ; presently he finds that, instead of three, there are in reality four, and then he loses his place altogether. He tries to draw clear lines, to make his work look craggy, but finds that then it is too hard ; he tries to draw soft lines, and it is immediately too soft ; he draws a curved line, and instantly sees it should have been straight ; a straight one, and finds Avhen he looks up again, that it has got curved while he was drawing it. There is nothing for him but de- spair, or some sort of abstraction and short-hand for cliff. Then the only question is, what is the wisest abstraction; and out of the multitude of lines that cannot altogether be interpreted, w^hich are the really dominant ones ; so that if we cannot give NATURE AND LITERATURE-NATURE. 4S9 the whole, we may at least give what Avill convey the most important facts about the aWn.— Modern Painters, IV., p. 20G. The Matterhorx.— Unlike the Chamouni aig- uilles, there is no aspect of destruction about the Matterhorn cliffs. They are not torn remnants of separating spires, yielding flake by flake, and band by band, to the continual process of decay. They are, on the contrary, an unaltered monument, seemingly sculptured long ago, the huge walls re- taining yet the forms into which they Avere first engraven, and standing like an Egyptian temple— delicate-fronted, softly colored, the suns of un- counted ages rising and falling upon it continually, but still casting the same line of shadows from east to west, still, century after century, touching the same purple stains on the lotus pillars ; while the desert sand ebbs and flows about their feet, as those autumn leaves of rock lie heaped and weak about the base of the Cevyiri.— Modern Painters, IV., p. 357. MouxT Cervix.— It has been falsely represented as a peak or tower. It is a vast ridged promontory, connected at its western root with the Dent d'Erin, and lifting itself, hke a rearing horse, with its face to the east. All the way along the flank of it, for half a day's journey on the Zmutt glacier, the grim black terraces of its foundations range almost without a break ; and the clouds, when their day's work h done, and they are weary, lay themselves down on those foundation steps, and rest till dawn, each with his leagues of gray mantle stretched along the grisly ledge, and the cornice of the mighty wall gleaming in the" moonlight, three thousand feet Sihoye.— Stones of Venice, I., p. 69. Higher up, the ice opens into broad white fields and furrows, hard and di-y, scarcely fissured at all, except just under the Cervin, and forming a silent and solemn causeway, paved, as it seems, Avith white marble from side to side ; broad enough for the march of an army in line of battle, but quiet as 490 A BUS KIN ANTHOLOGY. a street of tombs in a buried city, and bordered on each hand by ghostly cliffs of that faint granite purple which seems, in its far-away height, as un- substantial as the dai'k blue that bounds it ;— the whole scene so changeless and soundless ; so re- moved, not merely from the presence of men, but even from their thoughts ; so destitute of all life of tree or herb, and so immeasurable in its lonely brightness of majestic death, that it looks like a world from which not only the human, but the spiritual, presences had perished, and the last of its archangels, building the great mountains for their monuments, had laid themselves down in the sun- light to an eternal rest, each in his white shroud. — Modern Painters, IV., p. 255. An Arcadian Valley.— I do not know any dis- trict possessing more pure or uninterrupted fulness of mountain character (and that of the highest order), or which aj^pears to have been less dis- turbed by foreign agencies, than that which bor- ders the course of the Trient between Valorsine and Martigny. The paths which lead to it out of the valley of the Rhone, rising at first in steej) circles among the walnut trees, like winding stairs among the pillars of a Gothic tower, retire over the shoulders of the hills into a valley almost unknown, but thickly in- habited by an industrious and patient population. Along the ridges of the rocks, smoothed by old gla- ciers into long, dark, billowy swellings, like the backs of plunging dolphins, the peasant watches the slow coloring of the tufts of moss and roots of herb which, little by little, gathei: a feeble soil over the iron substance ; then, supporting the narrow strip of clinging ground with a few stones, he sub- dues it to the spade ; and in a year or two a little crest of corn is seen waving upon the rocky casque. The irregular meadows run in and out like inlets of lake among these harvested rocks, sweet with perpetual streamlets, that seem always to have chosen the steepest places to come down, for the NATURE AND LITERATURE— NAT UBE. 491 sake of the leaps, scattering tlieii* handfuls of crys- tals this way and that, as the wind takes them, with all the grace, but with none of the formalism, of fountains; dividing into fanciful change of dash and spring, j^et with the seal of their granite chan- nels upon them, as the lightest play of human speech may bear the seal of past toil, and closing back out of their spray to lave the rigid angles, and brighten with silver fringes and glassy films each lower and lower step of sable stone ; until at last, gathered all together again— except, perhaps, some chance drops caught on the apple-blossom, where it has bvidded a little nearer the cascade than it did last spring — they find their way down to the turf, and lose themselves in that silently ; with quiet depth of clear Avater furrowing among the grass blades, and looking only like their shadow, but presently emerging again in little startled gushes and laughing hurries, as if they had remembered suddenly that the day was too short for them to get down the hill.— 3Iod€ru Painters, IV., p. 340. Slaty Precipices. — Such precipices are among^ the most impi'essive as well as the most really dan- gerous of mountain ranges; in many spots inaccess- ible with safety either from below or from above ; dark in color, robed with everlasting mourning, for ever tottering like a great fortress shaken by war, fearful as much in their weakness as in their strength, and yet gathered after every fall into darker frowns and unhumiliated threatening; for ever incapable of comfort or of healing from herb or flower, nourishing no root in their crevices, touched by no hue of life on buttress or ledge, but, to the utmost, desolate ; knowing no shaking of leaves in the wind, nor of grass beside the stream ; no motion but their own mortal shivering, the deathful crunabling of atom from atom in their corruioting stones ; knowing no sound of living voice or living tread, cheei'ed neither by the kid's bleat nor the marmot's cry ; haunted only by un- interrupted echoes from far off, wandering hither 492 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. and thither among their Avails, iTnahle to escape, and by the hiss of angry torrents, and sometimes the shriek of a bird that flits near the face of them, and sweeps frightened back from under their sha- dow into the gulf of air: and, sometimes, when the echo has fainted, and the wind has carried the sound of the torrent away, and the bird has van- ished, and the mouldering stones are still for a little time — a brown moth, opening and shutting its wings upon a grain of dust, may be the only thing that moves, or feels, in all the waste of weary precipice, darkening five thousand feet of the blue depth of heaven. — Modern Painters, IV., p. 261. It is almost impossible to make a cottage built in a granite country look absolutely miserable. Rough it may be ; neglected, cold, full of aspect of hard- ship ; but it never can look/owZ; no matter how carelessly, how indolently, its inhabitants may live, the water at their doors will not stagnate, the soil beneath their feet will not allow itself to be trodden into slime, the timbers of their fences will not rot; they cannot so much as dirty their faces or hands if they try ; do the worst they can, thei-e will still be a feeling of firm ground under them, and pure air about them, and an inherent wholesomeness in their abodes Avhich it will need the misery of years to conquer. And, as far as I remember, the inhabi- tants of granite countries have always a force and healthiness of character, more or less abated or mod- ified, of course, according to the other circumstances of their life, but still definitely belonging to them, as distinguished from the inhabitants of the less pure districts of the hills.— J/odern Painters; IV., p. 126. Distance in^eeded for Mouxtain Effects.— Are not all natural things, it may be asked, as lovely near as far away ? Nay, not so. Look at the clouds, and watch the delicate sculpture of their alabaster sides, and the rounded lustre of their magnificent rolling. They are meant to be beheld far away ; they Avere shaped for their place, high NATURE AND LITERATURE— NATURE. 493 above your head; approach theiu, and they fuse into vague mists, or whirl away in fierce fragments of thunderous vapor. Look at the crest of the Alp, from the far-away plains over which its light is cast, whence human souls have communion with it by their myriads. The child looks up to it in the dawn, and the husbandman in the burden and heat of the day, and the old man in the going down of the sun, and it is to them all as the celestial city on the world's horizon ; dyed with the depth of heaven, and clothed with the calm of eternity. There was it set, for holy dominion, by Him who marked for the sun his journey, and bade the moon know her going down. It was built for its place in the far-off sky ; approach it, and as the sound of the voice of man dies away about its foundations, and the tide of human life shallowed upon the vast aerial shore, is at last met by the Eternal "Here shall thy waves be stayed," the glory of its aspect fades into blanched fearfulness ; its purple walls are rent into grisly rocks, its silver fretwork sad- dened into wasting snow, the storm-brands of ages are on its breast, the ashes of its own ruin lie sol- ennily on its white raiment. — Stones of Venice, I., p. 244. For every distance from the eye there is a peculiar kind of beauty, or a different system of lines of form ; the sight of that beauty is reserved for that distance, and for that alone. If you approach nearer, that kind of beauty is lost, and another suc- ceeds, to be disorganized and reduced to strange and incomprehensible means and appliances in its turn, ff you desire to perceive the great harmonies of the form of a rocky mountain, you must not ascend upon its sides. All is there disorder and accident, or seems so ; sudden starts of its shattered beds hither and thither ; ugly struggles of unexpected strength from under the ground ; fallen fragments, toppling one over another into more helpless fall. Retire from it, and, as your ej'e commands it more and more, as you see the ruined mountain world 494 A BUSKIN' ANTHOLOGY. with a wider glance — behold ! dim sympathies begin to bnsy themselves in the disjointed mass ; line binds itself into stealthy fellowship with line; group by group, the helpless fragments gather them- selves into ordered companies ; new captains of hosts and masses of battalions become visible, one by one, and far away answers of foot to foot, and of bone to bone, until the powerless chaos is seen risen up with girded loins, and not one piece of all the unregarded heap could now be spared from the mystic whole.— Stones of Veniee, I., p. 245. In a truly fine mountain or organic line, if it is looked at in detail, no one would believ^e in its being a continuous curve, or being subjected to any fixed law. It seems broken, and bending a thou- sand waj'S ; perfectly free and wild, and yielding to every impulse. But, after following with the eye three or four of its impulses, we shall begin to trace some strange order among them ; every added movement will make the ruling intent clearer; and when the whole life of the line is revealed at last, it will be found to have been, throughout, as obedi- ent to the true law of its course as the stars in their orbits. — Modern Painters, IV., p. 295. IlAPPixESS IX RURAL LiFE.— To watcli the corn grow, and the blossoms set ; to draw hard breath over ploughshare or spade ; to read, to think, to love, to hope, to pray — these are the things that make men happy; they have always had the power of doing these, they never will have poAver to do more. The world's prosperity or adversity depends upon our knowing and teaching these few things : but upon iron, or glass, or electricity, or steam, in no wiiie.^ Modern Painters, III., p. 320. The Loveliness of fruitful Landscape inex- haustible. — The desert has its appointed place and work; the eternal engine, whose beam is the earth's axle, whose beat is its year, and whose breath is its ocean, will still divide imperiously to their desert kingdoms, bound with unfurrowable rock, and swept by unarrested sand, their powers of frost NATUIiE AND LIT BEAT U RE-NAT UBE. dOo and fire : but the zones and lands between, habita- ble, will be loveliest in habitation. The desire of the heart is also the light of the eyes. No scene is continually and untiringly loved, but one rich by joyful human labor; smooth in field, fair in garden; full in orchard ; trim, sweet, and frequent in home- stead ; ringing with voices of vivid existence. No air is sweet that is silent ; it is only sweet when full of low currents of under sound — triplets of birds, and murmur and chirp of insects, and deep-toned words of men, and wayward trebles of childhood. — Unto This Last, p. 88. O'S THE ASSERTED PROBABILITY OF THE DE- STRUCTION OF Natural Scexery. — We may spare our anxieties on this head. Men can neither drink steam, nor eat stone. . . . No amount of ingenui- ty will ever make iron digestible by the million, nor substitute hydrogen for wine. Neither the avarice nor the rage of men will ever feed them, and how- ever the apple of Sodom and the grape of Gomorrah may spread their table for a time with dainties of ashes, and nectar of asjDS — so long as men live by bread, the far-away vallej^s must laugh as they are covered with the gold of God, and the shouts of His happy multitudes ring round the wine-press and the -vfeW—Unto This Last, p. 87. Ruskin's Love of Crags aa^d Hills.— If the scenery be resolutely level, insisting upon the dec- laration of its own flatness in all the detail of it, as in Holland, or Lincolnshire, or Central Lombar- dy, it appeai-s to me like a prison, and I cannot long endure it. But the slightest rise and fall in the road — a mossy bank at the side of a crag of chalk, with brambles at its brow, overhanging it — a rip- ple over three or four stones in the stream by the bridge— above all, a wild bit of ferny ground under a fir or two, looking as if, possibly, one might see a hill if one got to the other side of the trees, will in- stantly give me intense delight, because the shadow, or the hope, of the hills is in them. — Modern Paint- ers, IV., p. 3G8. 496 A BUS KIN ANTHOLOGY, \^ Not Everybody can see a Landscape.— A cu- riously balanced condition of the powers of uiind is necessary to induce full admiration of any nat- ural scene. Let those powers be themselves inert, and the mind vacant of knowledge and destitute of sensibility, and the external object becomes lit- tle more to us than it is to birds or insects ; we fall into the temper of the clown. On the other hand, let the reasoning powers be shrewd in excess, the knowledge vast, or sensibility intense, and it will go hard but that the visible object will suggest so much that it shall be soon itself forgotten, or be- come, at the utmost, merely a kind of key-note to the course of purposeful thought. Newton, prob- ably, did not perceive whether the apple which sug- gested his meditations on gravity Avas withered or rosy ; nor could Howard be affected by the pictur- esqueness of the architecture which held the suf- ferers it was his occupation to relieve. — 3Ioclern Painters, III., p. 308. The ethical Significance op a Love of Nature. — Intense love of nature is, in modern times, char- acteristic of persons not of the first order of intellect, but of brilliant imagination, quick sympathy, and undefined religious principle, suffering also usually under strong and ill-governed passions. . . . Our main conclusion is, that though the absence of the love of nature is not an assured condemnation, its presence is an invariable sign of goodness of heart and justness of moral j)^^''"-^Pii'^^^^' though by no means of moral jiractice ; that in proportion to the degree in Avhich it is felt, will 2)f'obabli/ he the degree in which all nobleness and beauty of character will also be felt ; that when it is originally absent from any mind, that mind is in many other respects hard, worldly, and degraded ; that where, having been originally present, it is repressed by art or educa- tion, that repression appears to have been detri- mental to the person suffering it ; and that where- ever the feeling exists, it acts for good on the char- acter to which it belongs, though, as it may belong NATURE AND LITERATURJE— NATURE. 49"? to cliaracters weak in other respects, it may care- lessly be mistaken for a soui-ce of evil in them. . . . Take, as conspicuous instances of men totally de- void of love of nature, Le Sage and Smollett, and you will find, in meditating over their works, that they are utterly incapable of conceiving- a human soul as endowed with any nobleness whatever; their lieroes are simply beasts endowed with some degree of human intellect ;— cunning, false, passionate, reckless, ungrateful, and abominable, incapable of noble joy, of noble sorrow, of any spiritual percep- tion or hope. I said, " beasts with human intel- lect ; " but neither Gril Bias nor Roderick Random reach, morally, tinything near the level of dogs ; while the delight which the writers themselves feel in mere filth and pain, with an unmitigated foul- ness and cruelty of heart, is just as manifest in ever}' sentence as the distress and indignation which with pain and injustice are seen by Shelley and Byron.— Modern Painters, III., pp. 311,328, 324. Nature ix the South axd i:s^ the North.— While the Greek could hardly have trodden the for- mal furrow, or plucked the clusters from The trel- lised vine, without reverent thoughts of the deities of field and leaf, who gave the seed to fructifj', and the bloom to darken, the medieval knight plucked the violet to wreathe in his lady's hair, or strewed the idle rose on the turf at her feet, with little sense of anything in the nature that gave them, but a frail, accidental, involuntary exuberance. — Modern Painters, III., p. 215. How different must the thoughts about nature have been, of the noble who lived among the bright mar- ble porticos of the Grreeiv groups of temple or palace — in the midst of a plain covered with corn and olives, and by the shore of a sparkling and freighted sea — from those of the master of some mountain promontory in the green recesses of Northern Europe, watching night by night, from amongst liis heaps of storm-broken stone, rounded into towers, the lightning of the lonely sea flash round 498 A RUSKIN ANTHOLOGY, the sands of Harlech, or the mists changing their shapes for ever, among the changeless pines, that fringe the crests of Jura. — Modern Painters, III., p. 216. In the climates of Greece and Italy, the monoto- nous sunshine, burning away the deep colors of everything into white and gray, and wasting the strongest mountain sti-eams into threads among their shingle, alternates with the blue-fiery thunder- cloud, with sheets of flooding rain, and volleying musketry of hail. But throughout all the wild ujolands of the former Saxon kingdom of Northum- bria, from Edwin's Crag to Hilda' s-Cliff, the wreaths of softly resting mist, and wandering to and fro of capricious shadows of clouds, and drooping swathes, or flying fringes, of the benignant western rain, cherish, on every moorland summit, the deejj fibred moss, embalm the myrtle, gild the asphodel, en- chant along the valleys the wild grace of their woods, and the green elf-land of their meadows ; and passing away, or melting into the translucent calm of mountain air, leave to the open sunshine a world with every creature ready to rejoice in its comfort, and every i-ock and flower reflecting new loveliness to its light. — Art of England, p. 94. Frexch Landscape.— Much of the majesty of French landscape consists in its grand and gray village churches and tui-reted farm-houses, not to speak of its cathedrals, castles, and beautifully placed cities. — Modern Painters, IV., p. 369. One op Turner's Loire Drawings.— It is only a coteau, scarce a hundred feet above the river, nothing like so high as the Thames banks between here and Reading ; only a coteau, and a recess of calm water, and a breath of mist, and a ray of sun- set. The simplest things, the frequentest, the deai'- est ; things that you may see any summer evening by a thousand thousand streams among the low hills of old familiar lands. Love them, and see them rightly ; Andes and Caucasus, Amazon and. NAirUE AXI) LITERATURE-NATURE. 499 Indus, can give you no move.— Art of England, p. 70. Injury to Swiss Scenery.— This first day of May, 18(59, I am writing wliere my work was begun thirty-five years ago— within siglit of the snows of the higlier Alps. In that half of the permitted life of man, I have seen strange evil brought upon every scene that I best loved, or tried to make beloved by others. The light which once flushed those pale summits with its rose at dawn, and pui'- ple at sunset, is now umbered and faint ; the air which once inlaid the clefts of all their golden crags with azure, is now defiled with languid coils of smoke, belched from worse than volcanic fires ; their very glacier waves are ebbing, and tlieir snows fading, as if Hell had breathed on them ; the waters that once sank at their feet into crystalline rest, are now dimmed and foul, from deep to deep, and shore to shore. These are no careless words— they are accurately, horribly, true. I know what the Swiss lakes were ; no pool of Alpine fountain at its source was clearer. This morning, on the Lake of Geneva, at half a mile from the beach, I could scarcely see my oar-blade a fathom deep.— Athena, p. 4. Cluse and Chamouni.— The valley of Cluse, through which unhappy travellers consent now to be invoiced, packed in baskets like fish, so only that they may cheaply reach, in the feverous haste which has become the law of their being, the glen of Chamouni whose every lovely foreground rock has now been broken up to build hotels for them, contains more beauty in half a league of it, than the entire valley they have devastated, and turned into a casino, did in its uninjured pride.— Sesame and Lilies, Preface, p. 22. Bells in the Valley op Cluse.— But presently, as I walked, the calm was deepened, instead of in- terrupted, by a murmur ; first low, as of bees, and then rising into distinct harmonious chime of deep bells, ringing in true cadences— but I could not tell 500 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. where. The cliffs on each side of the valley of Cluse vary from 1,500 to above 2,000 feet in height ; and, withovit absolutely echoing the chime, they so ac- cepted, prolonged, and diffused it, that at first I thought it came from a village high up and far away among the hills; then presently it came down to me as if from above the cliff' under which I was walking ; then I turned about and stood still, won- dering ; for the whole valley was filled with the sweet sound, entirely without local or conceivable origin : and only after some twenty minutes' walk, the depth of tones gradually increasing, showed me that they came from the tower of Magians in front of me ; but when I actually got into the village, the cliffs on the other side so took up the ringing, that I again thought for some moments 1 was wrong. Perfectly beautiful, all th* while, the sound, and exquisitely varied — from ancient bells of perfect tone and series, rung with decent and joyful art. " What are the bells ringing so to-day for — it is no fete ? " I asked of a woman who stood watching at a garden gate. " For a baptism, Sir." And so I went on, and heard them fading back, and lost among the same bewildering answers of the mountain air. — Deucalion, p. 51. A Swiss RURAL Sce:ve.— A few steps only beyond the firs that sti'etch their branches, angular, and Avild, and white, like forks of lightning, into the air of the ravine, and we are in an arable country of the most perfect richness ; the swathes of its corn glowing and burning frouj field to field ; its pretty hamlets all vivid with fruitful orchards and flowery gardens, and goodly Avith steep-roofed storehouse and barn ; its Avell-kept, hard, park-like roads ris- ing and falling from hillside to hillside, or disap- pearing among brown banks of moss, and thickets of the wild raspberry and rose ; or gleaming through lines of tall trees, half glade, half avenue, where the gate opens, or the gateless path turns NATURE AND LlTEIl AT U RE— NATURE. 501 trustedly aside, uii hindered, into the garden of some statelier house, surrounded in rural pride with its golden hives, and carved granaries, and irregular domain of latticed and espaliered cottages, gladdening to look upon in their delicate homeli- ness — delicate, yet, in some sort, rude ; not like our English homes — trim, laborious, formal, irreproach- able in comfort ; but with a peculiar carelessness and lariieness in all their detail, hai-monizing with the outlawed loveliness of their country. — Modern Painters, IV., p. 147, Garde;^^ Walls. — Your garden or park wall of bi'ick has indeed often an unkind look on the out- side, but there is more modesty in it than vinkind- ness. It generally means, not that the builder of it wants to shut you out from the view of his garden, but from the view of himself : it is a frank state- ment that as he needs a certain portion of time to himself, so he needs a certain portion of ground to himself, and must not be stared at when he digs there in his shirt-sleeves, or plays at leapfrog with his boys from school, or talks over old times with his wife, Avalking up and down in the evening sun- shine. Besides, the brick wall has good practical service in it, and shelters you from the east wind, and ripens your peaches and nectarines, and glows in autumn like a sunny bank. And, moreover, your brick wall, if you build it properly, so that it shall stand long enough, is a beautiful thing when it is old, and has assumed its grave purple red, touched with mossy green. — The Two Paths, p. 115. 502 A RU8KIN ANTHOLOGY. CHAPTER II. Literature. The more I see of wi'iting the less I care for it : one may do more with a man by getting ten words spoken with him face to face, than by the black let- tering of a whole life's thought. — Fors, I., p. 239. Men do not sing themselves into love or faith ; but they are incapable of true song, till they love, and believe. — Deucalion, p. 208. Not one word of any book is readable by you ex- cept so far as your mind is one with its author's, and not merely his words like your words, but his thoughts like your thoughts. — Fors, I., p. 349. You think the function of words is to excite? Why, a red rag will do that, or a blast through a brass pipe. But to give calm and gentle heat ; to be as the south wind, and the iridescent rain, to all bitterness of frost ; and bring at once strength, and healing. This is the work of human lips, taught of God.— Mornings in Florence, p. 83. BOOKS. If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying. No book is worth anything which is not worth mticJi; nor is it serviceable, until it has been read, and re-read, 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 NATCHE A^'^I) LITERATrRK-LITEliATURE. 503 multipliable bai'ley-loaves, pay their baker's bill. We call ourselves a rich jiation. and we are filthy and foolish enough to thumb each other's books out of circulating libraries. — Sesame and Lilies i p. 55. In old times what a delicious thing a book used to be in a chimney corner, or in the gai-den, or in the fields, Avhere one usedreally toread a book, and nibble a nice bit here and there if it was a bride- cakey sort of book, and cut oneself a lovely slice — fat and lean — if it was a round-of-beef sort of book. But what do you do with a book now, be it ever so good ? You give it to a reviewer, first to skin it, and then to bone it, and then to chew it, and then to lick it, and then to give it you down your throat like a handful of pilau. And when you've got it, you've no relish for it, after all. — Deucalion. When you come to a good book, you must ask youi'self, " Am I inclined to work as an Australian miner would? Are my pickaxes and shovels in good order, and am 1 in good trim myself, my sleeves well up to the elljow, and my breath good, and my temper? " — Sesame and Lilies, p. 36. As I meditate more and more closely what reply I may safely make to the now eagerly i)ressed ques- tioning of my faithful scholars, what books I would have them read, 1 find the first broadlj^-swept defi- nition may be — Books written in the country. None worth spending time on, and few that are quite safe to touch, have been written in towns. And my next narrowing definition would be, Books that have good miisic in them — that are rightly-rhythmic : a definition which includes the delicacy of perfect prose, such as Scott's ; and Avhich eajcludes at once a great deal of modern poetry, in which a dislocated and convulsed versi- fication has been imposed on the ear in the attempt to express uneven temper, and unprincij^led feel- ing. — Fors, IV., p. o51. Very ready we are to say of a book, "How 504 A EUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. good this is — that's exactly what I think i " 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. ... As we read, 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 I 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. — Sesame and Lilies, pp. 36, 46. Though few can be rich, yet every man who honestly exerts himself may, I think, still provide, for himself and his family, good shoes, good gloves, strong harness for his cart or carriage horses, and stout leather binding for his books. And I would urge upon every young man, as the beginning of his due and wise provision for his household, to obtain as soon as he can , by the severest economy, a restricted, serviceable, and steadily — however slowly — increas- ing series of books for use through life ; making his little library, of all the furniture in his room, the most studied and decorative piece ; every volume having its assigned place, like a little statue in its niche, and one of the earliest and strictest lessons to the children of the house being how to turn the pages of their own literary possesions lightly and deliberately, with no chance of tearing or dog's eeirs.— Sesame and Lilies, Preface, 1871, p. 5. In my island of Barataria, when I get it well into order. I assure you no book shall be sold for less than a pound sterling ; if it can be published cheaper than that, the surplus shall all go into my treasury, and save my subjects taxation in other directions ; only people really poor, who cannot pay the pound, shall be supplied with the books NATURE AND LITEnATURE-LITERATURE. !-)05 tliey want fov nothing, in a certain limited qiian- tity.— ^ Joy For Ever, p. 44. There is a society continually open to us, of peo- ple 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 with thanks if we listen to them. And this society, because it is so numer- ous and so gentle — and can be kept waiting round us all day long, not to grant audience, but to gain it ; — kings and statesmen lingering patiently in those plainly furnished and narrow anterooms, our bookcase shelves.— ^SeA-ame and Lilies, p. 32. This court of the past differs from all living aris- tocracy in this : — it is open to labor and to merit, but to nothing else. No wealth will bribe, no name overawe, no artifice deceiv^p, 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 understand it, and you shall hear it. But on other terms ? — no. If yovi 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 con- siderable pain ; but here we neither feign nor inter- pret ; you must rise to the level of our thoughts if you would be gladdened by them, and share our feelings, if you would recognize our presence." — Sesame and Lilies, p. 35. You ought to read books, as you take medicine, by advice, and not advertisement. . . . But you have no acquaintance, you say, among peoijle who know good books from bad ones? Possibly not ; and yet, half the poor gentlemen of England are fain now-a-days to live by selling their opinions on this subject. It is a bad trade, let me tell them. Whatever judgment they have, likely to be useful to the human beings about them, may 506 A nUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. be expressed in few words ; and those words of sacred advice ought not to be articles of commerce. Least of all ought they to be so ingeniously con- cocted that idle readers may remain content with reading their eloquent account of a book, instead of the book itself.— i^or^, I., pp. 274, 275. If you want to understand any subject whatever, read the best book upon it, you can hear of ; not a review of the book. If you don't like the first book you try, seek for another ; but do not hope ever to understand the subject without pains, by a reviewer's help. Avoid especially that class of lit- erature which has a knowing tone ; it is the most poisonous of all. Every good book, or piece of book, is full of admiration and awe ; it may con- tain firm assertion or stern satire, but it never sneers coldly, nor asserts haughtily, and it always leads you to reverence or love something with your whole heart. It is not always easy to distinguish ' the satire of the venomous race of books from the . satire of the noble and pui-e ones ; but in general you may notice that the cold-blooded Crustacean and Batrachian books will sneer at sentiment; and the warm-blooded, human books, at sin. Then, in general, the more you can restrain your serious reading to reflective or lyric poetry, history, and natural history, avoiding fiction and the drama, the healthier your mind will become. Of modern poetry keep to Scott, Wordsworth, Keats, Crabbe, Tennyson, the two Brownings, Lowell, Longfellow, and Coventry Patmore, w^hose Angel in the House is a most finished piece of writing, and the sweetest analysis we possess of quiet modern domestic feel- ing ; while Mrs. Browning's Aurora Leigh is, as far as I know, the greatest poem which the century has produced in any language. Cast Coleridge at once aside, as sickly and useless : and Shelley as shallow and verbose; Byron, until your taste is fully formed, and you are able to discern the magnificence in him from the wrong. Never read bad or common poetry, nor write any poetry yourself j there is, per- XATrnE AXT) LITERATURE— LITERATURE. 507 haps, rather too much than too little in the world aXveenXy.— Elements of Drawing, pp. 193, 194. Write pure English. — Whenever you write or read Englisli, write it pure, and make it pure, if ill written, by avoiding all unnecessary foreign — espe- cially (jrreek — forms of words yourself, and translat- ing them when used by others. Above all, make this a practice in science. Great part of the sup- posed scientific knowledge of the day is simply bad English and vanishes the moment you ti'anslate it. — Deucalion, p. 143. Derivatiois^ of Words. — The derivation of words is like that of rivers : there is one real source, usually small, unlikely, and difficult to find, far up among the hills ; then, as the word flows on and conies into service, it takes in the force of other Avords from other sources, and becomes quite another word — often much more than one word, after the junction — a word as it were of many waters, sometimes both sweet and bitter. — Munera Pulveris, p. 361. Coventry Patmore.— You cannot read him too often or too carefully ; 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. — Sesame and Lilies, p. 89. Virgil and Pope.— These are the two most ac- complished Artists, mei'ely as such, whom I know in literature. — Lectures on Art, p. 49. Trashy Poetry. — AVith poetry second-rate in quality no one ought to be allowed to trouble mankind. There is quite enough of the best — much more than we can ever read or enjoy in the length of a life ; and it is a literal wrong or sin in any per- son to encumber us with inferior work. I have no patience with apologies made by young pseudo- poets, " that they believe there is some good in what they have written : that they hope to do bet- ter in tinie," etc. hioiae good I If there is not all 508 A EUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. good, there is no good. If they ever hope to do bet ter, why do they trouble us now ? Let them rathei courageously burn all they have done, and wait for the better days. There are few men, ordinarily educated, who in moments of strong feeling could not strike out a poetical thought, and afterwards jsolish it so as to be presentable. But men of sense know better than so to waste their time ; and those who sincerely love poetry, know the touch of the master's hand on the chords too well to fumble among them after him.—lfodern Painters, III., p. 176. Pastoral Poetry.— The essence of pastoral poetry is the sense of strange delightfulness is grass, which is occasionally felt by a man who has seldom set his foot on it ; it is essentially the poetry of the cockney, and for the most part corresponds in its aim and rank, as compared with other litera- ture, to the porcelain shepherds and shepherdesses on a chimney-piece as compa,red wltli great works of sculptui-e. Of course all good. poetry, descri[)tive of rural life, is essentially pastoral, or has the effect of the pastoral on the minds of men living in cities ; but the class of poetry which I mean, and which you probably understand, by the term pastoral, is that in which a farmer's girl is spoken of as a " nymph," and a farmer's boy as a " swain," and in Avhich, throughout, a ridiculous and unnatural refinement is supposed to exist in rural life, merely because the poet himself has neither had the cour- age to endure its hardships, nor the Avit to conceive* its Idealities. — Lectures on Architecture, p. 191. First and last Impressions.— Gfenerally speaks ing, I find that when we first look at a subject, we get a glimpse of some of the greatest truths about it : as we look longer, our vanity, and false reason- ing, and half-knowledge, lead us into various wrong opinions ; but as we look longer still, we gradual- ly return to our first impressions, onlj^ with a full understanding of their mystical and inneiniost reasons ; and of much beyond and beside them, not NATtrnE AND LlTFAtATrnB-LITEBATVEE. 509 then known to us, now added (partly as a founda- tion, partly as a corollary) to what at first we felt or saw. — Modern Patnters, IV., p. 61. Wordsworth. — Wordsworth is simply a West- moreland peasant, with considerably less shrewd- ness than most border Englishmen or Scotsmen in- herit ; and no sense of humor : but gifted (in this singularly) with vivid sense of natural beauty, and a pretty turn for reflections, not always acute, but, as far as they reach, inedicinal to the fever of the restless and corrupted life around him. Water to parched lips may be better than Samian wine, but do not let us therefore confuse the qualities of wine and water. I much doubt there being many inglo- rious Miltons in our country churchyards ; but I am very sure there are many Wordsworths resting there, who wei;e inferior to the renowned one only in caring less to hear themselves talk. . . . I am by no meiins sure that his influence on the stronger minds of his time was anyAvise hastened or extended by the spirit of tunefulness under whose guidance he discovered that Heaven rhymed to seven, and Foy to boy. Tuneful nevertheless at heart, and of the heavenly choir, I gladly and frank- ly acknowledge him ; and our English literature enriched with a new and singular virtue in the aerial purity and healthful rightness of his quiet song ; — but aerial only — not ethereal ; and lowly in its privacy of light. A measured mind, and calm; innocent, unrepent- ant ; helpful to sinless ci-eatures and scatheless, such of the flock as do not stray. Hopeful at least, if not faithful ; content with intimations of immor- tality such as may be in skipping of lambs, and laughter of children — incurious to see in the hands the print of the nails. A gracious and constant mind ; as the herbage of its native hills, fragrant and pure ; — yet, to the sweep and the shadow, the stress and distress, of the greater souls of men, as the tufted thyme to the laurel wilderness of Tempe, — as the gleaming euphrasy to the dark branches of Y>o(}ion-A.—Fivtiun—Fair and Foul, pp. 4G-48. 510 A RUSKIN ANTHOIOQY. BHAKEsrEARE.— The intellectual measure of every man since born, in the domains of creative thought, may be assigned to him, according to the degree in which he has been tauglit by Shakespeare. — Mystery of Life, p. 113. At the close of a Shakespeare tragedy nothing re- mains but dead march and clothes of burial. At the close of a Greek tragedy there are far-off sounds of a divine triumph, and a glory as of resurrection. Modern Painters, V., p. 231. With a stern view of humanity, Shakespeare , and never sticking as they were let down, formed one large moving oriel, out of which one saw the country round, to the full half of the hori- zon. My own prospect was more extended still, for my seat was the little box containing my clothes, strongly made, with a cushion on one end of it; set upright in front (and well forward), between my father and mother. I was thus not the least in their way, and my horizon of sight the widest possible. When no object of particular interest presented itself, I trotted, keeping time with the postboy — on my trunk cushion for a saddle, and whipped my father's legs for horses ; at first theoretically only, with dextrous motion of wrist ; but ultimately in a quite practical and efHcient manner, my father having presented me with a silver-mounted postil- ion's whip. The Midsummer holiday, for better enjoyment of which Mr. Telford provided us with these luxuries, began usually on the fifteenth of May, or there- abouts ; — my father's birthday was on the tenth ; on that day I was always allowed to gather the gooseberries for his first gooseberry pie of the year, from the tree between the buttresses on the north wall of the Ilerne Hill garden ; so that we could not leave before that festa. The holiday itself consisted in a tour for ordei-s through half the English coun- ties ; and a visit (if the counties lay northward) to my aunt in Scotland. The mode of journeying was as fixed as that of our home life. We went from forty to fifty miles a day, starting always early enough in the morning to arrive comfortably to four o'clock dinner. Gen- erally, therefore, getting off at six o'clock, a stage or two were done before breakfast, with the dew on the grass, and first scent from the haw^- thorns : if in the course of the mid-day drive there were any gentleman's house to be seen — or, better still, a lord's, or, best of all, a duke's — my father baited the horses, and took my mother and me rev- erently through the state rooms ; always sjieaking a little under our breath to the housekeeper, major- AUTOniOGBAFHICAL. 547 domo, or other authority in charge ; and gleaning worshipfully what fragmentary iUustrations of the history and domestic ways of the family might fall from their lips. My father had a qviite infallible natural judgment in painting ; and though it had never been cultivated so as to enable him to under- stand the Italian schools, his sense of the power of the nobler masters in northern work was as true and passionate as the most accomplished artist's. He never, when I was old enough to care for what he himself delighted in, allowed me to look for an instant at a bad picture ; and if there were a Rey- nolds, Velasquez, Vandyck, or Rembrandt in the rooms, he would pay the surliest housekeepers into patience until he had seen it to heart's content ; if none of these, I was allowed to look at Guido, Carlo Dolce, or the more skilful masters of the Dutch school— Cuyp, Teniers, liobbima. Wouvermans ; but never any second-rate or doubtful examples. I wonder how many of the lower middle class are now capable of going through a nobleman's house, with judgment of this kind; and yet with entirely unenvious and reverent delight in the splendor of the abode of the supreme and beneficent being who allo^vs them thus to enter his paradise. If there were no nobleman's house to be seen, there was certainly, in the course of the day's jour- ney, some ruined castle or abbey ; some celebrated village church, or stately cathedral. We had always unstinted time for these ; and if I was at disad- vantage because neither my father nor mother could tell me enough history to make the buildings authoritatively interesting, I had at least leisure and liberty to animate them with romance in my own fashion. —-Fors, III., pp. T-IO. Tours ox the Coxtixent.— Very early in Conti- nental transits we had found out that the family travelling carriage, taking much time and ingenuity to load, needing at the least three— usually four- horses, and on Alpine passes six, not only jolted and lagged painfully on bad roads, but was liable 5^8 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. in every way to more awkward discomfitures tlian ligliter vehicles ; getting itself jammed in archways, wrenclied with damage out of ruts, and involved in volleys of justifiable reprobation among market stalls. So when we knew better, my father and mother always had their own old-fashioned light two-horse carriage to themselves, and I had one made with any quantity of front and side pockets for books and picked-up stones ; and hung very low, with a fixed side-step, which I could get off or on with the horses at the trot ; and at any rise or fall of the road, relieve them, and get my own walk, without troubling the driver to think of me. — Proserpina, p. 223. Early Nurture.— In mj^'childhood, for best and truest beginning of all blessings, I had been taught the perfect meaning of Peace, in thought, act, and word. I never had heard my father's or mother's voice once raised in any question with each other ; nor seen an angry, or even slightly hurt or offended glance, in the eyes of either. I had never heard a servant scolded, nor even suddenly, passionately. or in any severe manner blamed. 1 had never seen a moment's trouble or disorder in any household matter ; nor anything whatever either done in a hurry, or undone in due time. . . . Next to this quite priceless gift of Peace, I had received the perfect understanding of the natures of Obedience and Faith. I obeyed word, or lifted finger, of father or mother, simply as a ship her helm ; not only without idea of resistance, but receiving the direction as a part of my own life and force, a helpful law, as necessary to me in every moral action as the law of gravity in leap- ing. . . . My parents were— in a sort— visible powers of nature to me, no more loved than the sun and the moon : only I should have been annoyed and puz- zled if either of them had gone out ; (how much, now, when both are darkened !)— still less did I love God ; not that I had any quarrel with Him, or fear AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL. 549 of Iliin ; but simply found what people told me was His service, disagreeable; and what people told me was His book, not entertaining.— i^o/'s, II-, pp. 430, 427. Religious Trainijn^g.— WhenI was a child, I lost the pleasure of some three-sevenths of my life be- cause of Sunday ; for I always had a way of look- ing forward to things, and a lurid shade was cast over the whole of Friday and Saturday by the hor- rible sense that Sunday was coming, and inevitable. Not that I was rebellious against my good mother or aunts in any wise ; feeling only that we were all crushed under a relentless faith.— i^or^, I,, p- 326. My mother took me very early to church ;— where, in spite of my quiet habits, and my mother's golden vinaigrette, alwavs indulged to me there, and there only, with its lid unclasped that I might see the wreathed, open pattern above the sponge, I found the bottom of the pew so extremely dull a place to keep quiet in, (my best story-books being also taken away from me in the morning.) that— as I have somewhere said before— the horror of Sunday used even to cast its prescient gloom as far back in the week as Friday— and all the glory of Monday, with i-hurch seven days removed again, was no equiv- alent for it. Nothwithstanding, I arrived at some abstract in my own mind of the Rev. Mr. Howell's sermons ; and occasionally— in imitation of hiin, preached a sermon at home over the red sofa cushions ;— this performance being always called for by my mother's dearest friends, as the great accomplishment of my childhood. The sermon was— I believe— some eleven words long ;— very exemplary, it seems to me, in that respect-and I still think must have been the purest gospel, for I know it began with " People, be good."— -Fors, II., p. 378. Bible Studies.— As soon as I was able to read with fluency, my mother be-an a course of Bible work with me, which never ceased till I went to Oxford. She read alternate verses with me, watch- 550 A BUSKIN' ANTHOLOGY. ing, at first, every intonation of my voice, and cor- recting the false ones, till she made me tindei'stand the verse, if within my reach, rightly, and energet- ically. It might be beyond me altogether ; that she did not cai-e about; but she made sure that as soon as I got hold of it at all, I should get hold of it by the right end. In this way she began with the first verse of Gene- sis, and went straight through to the last verse of the Apocalypse; hard names, numbers, Levitical law, and all ; and began again at Genesis the next day ; if a name was hard, the better the exercise in pro- nunciation — if a chapter was tiresome, the better lesson in patience — if loathsome, the better lesson in faith that there was some use in its being so outspoken. After our chapters (from two to three a day, according to their length, the first thing after breakfast, and no interruption from servants alloAved — none from visitors, who either' joined in the reading or had to stay upstairs — and none from any visitings or excursions, except real travelling), I had to learn a few verses by heart, or repeat, to make sure I had not lost, something of what was already known ; and, with the chapters below enumerated, I had to learn the whole body of the fine old Scottish paraphrases, which are good, melodious, and forceful verse; and to which, to- gether with the Bible itself, I owe the first cultiva- tion of my ear in sound. — Fo7's, II., p. 39G. I opened my oldest Bible just now, to look for the accurate words of David about the killed lamb ; — a small, closely, and vei-y neatly printed volume it is, printed in Edinburgh by Sir D. Hunter Blair and J. Bruce, Printers to the King's Most Excellent Majesty, in 1816. Yellow, now, with age, and flexi- ble, but not unclean Avith much use, except that the lower corners of the pages at 8th of 1st Kings, and 32d Deuteronomy are worn somewhat thin and dark, the learning of those two chapters having cost me much pains. My mother's list of the chapters with Avhicli, learned every syllable accurately, she estab- lished my soul in life, has just fallen out of it : AUTOBIOGBAPHICAL. 551 Exodus, chapters 15th and 20th.— 2 Samuel, chap- ter 1st, from 17th verse to theeud.— 1 Kings, chapter 8th.— Psalms, 23rd, 32nd, 90th, 91st, 103rd, 112th, 119th, 139th.— Proverbs, chapters 2nd, 3rd, 8th, 12th, —Isaiah, chapter 58th.— Matthew, chapters 5th, 6th, 7th.— Acts, chapter 26th.— 1 Corinthians, chapters 13th, 15th.— James, chapter 4th.— Revelation, chap- ters 5 th, 6th. And truly, though I have ijicked up the elements of a little further knowledge— in mathematics, meteorology, and the like, in after life— and owe not a little to the teaching of many people, this ma- ternal installation of my mind in tliat property of chapters, I count very confidently the most pre- cious, and, on the whole, the one essential part of all my education.— -For.y, II., p. 213. It is only by deliberate effort that I recall the long morning hours of toil, as regular as sunrise- toil on both sides equal— by which, year after year, my mother forced me to learn all the Scotch para- phrases by heart, and ever so many chapters of the Bible besides, (the eighth of 1st Kings being one- try it, good reader, in a leisure hour !) allowing not so much as a syllable to be missed or misplaced ; while every sentence was required to be said ovei and over again till she was satisfied with the accent of it. I recollect a struggle between us of about three weeks, concerning the accent of the " of" in the lines " ShaU any following spring revive The ashes of the urn ? " I insisting, partly in childish obstinacy, and partly in true instinct for rhythm (being wholly carelesd on the subject both of urns and their contents), on reciting it, " The ashes of the urn." It was not, I say, till after three weeks' labor, that n)y mother got the accent laid upon the ashes, to her mind. But had it taken three years, she would have done it, having once undertaken to do it. And, assur- edly, had she not done it, I had been simply an ava- ricious picture collector, or perhaps even a more 552 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. avaricious money collector, to this day; and had she done it wrongly, no after-study would ev«r have enabled me to read so much as a single line of verse. — Fors, II., p. 70. A Reminiscence. — [Looking one day at a copy of Front's Hotel de Ville, Brussels, done by him, when a young man, at Heme Hill, Ruskin exclaimed] " Had I been permitted at this time to put my whole strength into drawing and geology, my life, so far as I can judge, would have been an entirely harmonious and serviceable one. Bvit I was too foolish and sapless myself to persist in the healthy bent ; and my friends mistook me for a ' genius,' and were minded to make me a poet, or a bishoj), or a member of Parliment. Had I done heartily and honestly what they wished, it had also been well. But I sulked and idled, between their way and my own, and went all to pieces, just in the years when I ought to have been nailing myself well together." — Notes 071 my Own Draioinys, etc., p. 113. Love op the Sea. — Whenever I could get to a beach it was enough for me to have the waves to look at and hear and pursue and fly from. I never took to natural history of shells, or shrimps, or weeds, or jelly-fish. Pebbles ? — yes if there were any ; otherwise, merelj^ stared all day long at the tumbling and creaming strength of the sea. Idiotically, it now apjjears to me, wasting all that priceless youth in mere dream and trance of ad- miration. It had a certain strain of Byronesque passion in it, which meant something : but it was a fearful loss of i\va.e.—Fr(jeterita, p. 134. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL. 553 LEAVES FROM RUSKIN'S PRIVATE ACCOUNTS* £ s.d Balance in Bank, 20tli Jan. 1876 537 17 9 Received: Mr. Allen, on Pub'g Account 50 Mr. Ellis, on ditto ... 700 Lecture, London Institution 10 10 595 7 9 Jan. 2^. Royal Insurance Co. (a). . . 37 10 27. F.Crawley (6) 35 31. Taxes on Amorial Bear- ings, etc 7 19 Feb. 4. Warren and Jones — Tea for Shop 36 10 6. Buying a lad off who had enlisted and repented 30 7. Christmas Gifts in Oxford 14 10 7. Klein (c) 5 00 7. Pocket Money 10 10 7. Crawley 5 00 8. Miss Rudkin, Clifford Street id) 14 14 11. Dr. Parsons if) 21 11, The Bursar of Corpusf/).. 37 7 3 13. Professor Westwood ( ^ ). . 50 14. Mr. Sly(;i), Coniston, Wat- erheadlnn 33 19. Downs {i) 35 20. Subscriptions to Societies, learned and other (fc). . 37 11 360 3 Balance Feb. 20 £235 5 9 (a) Insurance on £15,000 worth of drawings and books in my rooms at Oxford. (&) Paticulars of this account to be afterwards * [Published by him, from time to time, in Fors Clavigera, as part of his official reports as Master of St. George's Guild. The one given above is accompanied by this foot-note] : — My friends (see a really kind article in the Monetary Gazette) much doubt, and very naturally, the wisdom of this exposition. I indeed expected to appear to some better advantage; but that the confession is not wholly pleasant, and appears imprudent, only makes it the better example. Fors [Fate] would have it 554 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. given ; iny Oxford assistant having just lost his wife, and been subject to unusual expenses. (c) My present valet, a delightful old German, on temporary service. {d) Present, on my birthday, of a silk frock to one of my pets. It became her very nicely ; but I think there Avas a little too much silk in the flounces. (e) My good doctor at Coniston. Had to drive over from Hawkshead every other winter day, because I wouldn't stop drinking too much tea — also my servants were ill. (/) About four times this sum will keep me com- fortably — all the year round — here among my Oxford friends — when I have reduced myself to the utmost allowable limit of a St. George's Master's income — 306 jjounds a year (the odd pound for luck). ig) For copies of the Book of Kells, bought of a poor artist. Very beautiful, and good for gifts to St. George. (h) My honest host (happily falsifying his name), for friends when I haven't houseroom, etc. This bill chiefly for hire of carriages. (i) Downs shall give account of himself in next Fors. {k) £ s. Athenaeum 7 7 Alpine Clu b 1 1 Early English Text Society 10 10 Horticultural 4 4 Geological 2 2 Architectual 1 1 Historical 1 1 Anthropological 2 2 Consumption Hosjjital 3 3 Lifeboat 5 £37 11 —Fors, III., pp. 166, 167. My father left all his fortune to my mother and me : to my mother, thirty-seven thousand pounds* and the house at Denmark Hill for life ; to me, a * 15,00 Bank Stock. " AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL. 555 hundred and twentj" thousand,* his leases at Heme and Denmark Hills, his freehold jjottery at Greenwich, and his pictures, then estimated by him as worth ten thousand pounds, but now worth at least three times that sum. My mother made two wills ; one immediately after my father's death ; the other— (in {gentle forgetfulness of all worldly things past) — immedi- ately before her own. Both are in the same terms, '' I leave all I have to my son." This sentence, exi:)anded somewhat by legal artifice, remains yet pathetically clear, as the bi'ief substance of both documents. I have therefore to-day, in total account of my stewardship, to declare what I have done with a hundred and fifty seven thousand pounds ; and certain houses and lands besides. In giving which account I shall say nothing of the share that other people have had in counselling or mis-counselling me ; nor of my reasons for what I have done. St. George's bishops do not ask people who advised them, or what they intended to do ; but only what they did. My first performance was the investment of fifty thousand pounds in ''entirely safe" mortgages, which gave me five per cent, instead of three. I very soon, howev^er, perceived it to be no less desir- able, than difficult, to get quit of these "entirely safe " mortgages. The last of them that was worth anything came conveniently in last year (see Fors accounts). I lost about twenty thousand pounds on them, altogether. In the second place, I thought it rather hard on my father's relations that he should have left all his money to me only; and as I was very fond of some of them, indulged myself, and relieved my conscience at the same time, by giving seventeen thousand pounds to those I liked best. Money Avhicli has turned out to be quite rightly invested, and at a high interest ; and has been fruitful to me of many good things, and much haj^piness. * I count Consols as thousands, forty thousand of this were in stocks. 556 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. Next I parted with some of my pictures, too large for the house I proposed to live in, and bought others at treble the price, the dealers always assur- ing me that the public would not look at any pic- ture which I had seen reason to part with ; and that I had onlj' my own eloquence to thank for the prices of those I wished to buy.* I bought next a collection of minerals (the foundation now of what are jn-eparing Sheffield and other schools) for a stipulated sum of three thousand pounds, on the owner's statement of its value. It proved not to be worth five hundred. I went to law about it. The lawyers charged me a thousand pounds for their own services ; gave me a thousand pounds back out of the three ; and made the defendant give me another five hundred pounds' worth of minerals. On the whole, a satis- factory legal performance; but it took two years in the doing, and caused me much worry; the lawyers spending most of the time they charged me for, in cross-examining me, and other witnesses, as to whether the agreement was made in the front or the back shop, with other particulars, interesting in a picturesque point of view, but wholly irrele- vant to the business. Then Brantwood was offered me, whidi I bought, without seeing it, for fifteen hundred pounds ; (the fact being that 1 have no time to see things, and must decide at a guess ; or not act at all). Then the house at Brantwood, a mere shed of rotten timber and loose stone, had to be furnished, and repaired. For old acquaintance sake, I went to my father's upholsterer in London, (instead of the country Coniston one, as I ought,) and had five pounds charged me for a footstool, the repairs also l,)roving worse than complete rebuilding ; and the * Fortune also went always against me. I gave carte-Nanche at Christie's for Turner's drawing of Terni (five Indies by seven), and it cost me Ave hundred pounds. I put a limit of two hundred on the Roman Forum, and it was bouglit over me for a hundred and fifty, and I gnash my teeth whenever I think of it, because a commission had been given up to three hundred. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL. 557 moving one's chattels from London, no small mat- ter. I got myself at last settled at my tea-table, one summer evening, with my view of the lake— for a net four thousand pounds all told. I afterwards built a lodge nearly as big as the house, for a mar- ried servant, and cut and terraced a kitchen gar- den out of the '• steep wood " ''' — another two thou- sand transforming themselves thus into " utilities embodied in material objects"; but these latter operations, under my own immediate direction, turning out approvable by neighbors, and, I imagine, not unprofitable as investment. All these various shiftings of harness, and getting into saddle, — with the furnishing also of my rooms at Oxford, and the pictures and universal acquisi- tions aforesaid — may be very moderately put at fifteen thousand for a total. I then proceeded to assist my young relation in business ; with result- ant loss as before related of fifteen thousand ; of which indeed he still holds himself responsible for ten, if ever able to pay it ; but one of the jjieces of the private message sent me, with St. Ursiila's on Christmas Day, was that I should forgive this debt altogether. Which hereby my cousin will please observe, is very heartily done ; and he is to be my cousin as he used to be, without any more thought of it. Then, for my St. George and Oxford gifts— there are good fourteen thousand gone — nearer fifteen — even after allowing for stock prices, but say fourteen. And finally, you see what an average year of carefully restricted expense .has been to me !— Say '£o,500 for thirteen years, or, roughly, seventy thousand; and we have this — I hope not beyond me — sum in addition : — Loss on mortgages £20,000 Gift to relations 17,000 Loss to relations 15,000 Harness and stable expenses 15,000 St. George and Oxford 14,000 And added yearly spending 70,000 £151,000 * " Brant " Westmoreland for steep. 558 A IIU8K1X ANTHOLOGY. Those are the clearly stateable and memorable heads of expenditure— more I could give, if it were needful ; still, when one is living on one's capital, the melting away is always faster than one expects; and the final state of affairs is, that on this 1st of April, 1877, my goods and chattels are simply these following :— In funded cash — six thousand Bank Stock, Avorth, at x^resent prices, something more than fifteen thousand i)Ounds. Brantwood — worth, certainly with its house, and furnitures, five thousand. Marylebone freehold and leaseholds— three thou- sand five hundred. Greenwich freehold — twelve hundred. llerne Hill leases and other little holdings— thii'- teen hundred. And pictures and books, at present lowest auction prices, worth at least double my Oxford insurance estimate of thirty thousand ; but put them at no more, and you will find that, gathering the wrecks of me together, I could still now retire to a mossy hermitage, on a little property of fifty-four thou- sand odd pounds ; more than enough to find me in meal and cresses. So that I have not at all yet reached my limit proposed in Munera Pulveris—oi dying "as poor as possible," nor consider myself ready for the digging scenes in Timon of Athens. Accordingly, I intend next year, Avhen St. George's work really begins, to redress my affairs in the fol- lowing manner : — First. I shall make over the Marylebone prop- erty entirely to the St. George's Company, under Miss liiirs superintendence always. I have already had the value of it back in interest, and have no business now to keep it any more. Secondly. The Greenwich property was my father's, and I am sure he would like me to keep it. I shall keep it therefore; and in some way, make it a Garden of Tuileries, honorable to my father, and to the London he lived in. Thirdly. Brantwood I shall keep, to live u^ion. AUrOBIOGRAnnCAL. 559 with its present servants — necessary, all, to keep it in good order; and to keep me comfoi'table, and fit for my work. I may not be able to keep quite so open a house there as I liave been accustomed to do : that remains to be seen. Fourthly. My Heme Hill leases and little pro- perties that bother me, I shall make over to my pet cousin — whose children, and their donkey, need good supplies of bread and butter, and hay : she always promising to keep my old nursery for a lodging to me, when I come to town. Fifthly. Of my ready cash, I mean to spend to the close of this year, another three thousand pounds, in amusing myself — with such amusement as is yet possible to me — at Venice, and on the Alps, or elsewhere; and as, at the true beginning of St. George's work, I must quit myself of usury and the Bank of England, I shall (at some loss you will find, on estimate) then buy for myself twelve thousand of Consols stock, which, if the nation hold its word, will provide me with three hundred and sixty pounds a-year — the proper degrees of the annual circle, according to my estimate, of a bach- elor gentleman's proper income, on which, if he cannot live, he deserves speedily to die. And this, with Brantwood strawberries and cream, I will for my own poor part, undertake to live upon, uncom- plainingly, as Master of St. Greorge's Company — or die. But, for my dependants, and customary char- ities, further provision must be made ; or such dependencies and charities must end. Virtually, I should then be giving away the lives of these peo- ple to St. George, and not my own. Wherefore, Sixthly. Though I have not made a single farthing by my literary work last year,* I have paid Messrs. Hazell, Watson, and Viney an approximate sum of £800 for printing my new books, which sum has been provided by the sale of the already printed ones. I have only therefore now to stop working; and I shall * Counting from last April fool's day to this. 560 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY", receive regular pay for my past work — a gradually increasing, and I have confidence enough in St. George and myself to say an assuredly still increas- ing, income, on which I have no doubt I can suflB- ciently maintain all my present servants and pen- sioners ; and perhaps even also sometimes indulge myself with a new missal. New Turner drawings are indeed out of the question ; but, as I have al- ready thirty large and fifty or more ?mall ones, and some score of illuminated MSS., I may get through the declining years of my aesthetic life, it seems to me, on those terms, resignedly, and even spare a book or two— or even a Turner or two, if needed— to my St. George's schools. Now, to stop working for the press, will be very pleasant to me — not to say medicinal, or even necessary — very soon. But that does not mean stopping work. Deucalion and Proserpina can go on far better without printing; and if the public wish for them, they can subscribe for them. In any case, I shall go on at leisure, God willing, with the works I have undertaken. Lastly. My Oxford professorship will provide for my expenses at Oxford as long as I am needed there. Such, Companions mine, is your Master's posi- tion in life; — and such his plan for the few years of it which may yet remain to him. You will not, I believe, be disposed wholly to deride either what I have done, or mean to do ; but of this you may be assured, that my spending, whether foolish or wise, has not been the Avanton lavishness of a man who could not restrain his desires; but the deliberate distribution, as 1 thought best, of the wealth I had received as a trust, while I yet lived, and had power over it. For what has been consumed by swind- lers, your modern principles of trade are answer- able ; for the rest, none even of that confessed to have been given in the partiality of affection, has been bestowed but in real self-denial. My own complete satisfaction would have been in buying every Turner drawing I could afford, and passing ODDS AND ENDS. 561 quiet days at Brantwood between my garden and my gallery, praised, as 1 should have been, by all the \vt)rld, for doing good to myself. 1 do not doubt, had God condemned me to that selfishness, He would also have inflicted on me the curse of liappiness in it. But He has lead me by other ways, of which my friends who are wise and kind, neither as j^et praising me, nor condemn- ing, may one day be gladdened in witness of a nobler issue. — Fors, IV., pp. 17-32. CHAPTER IV. Odds and Ends. The Chef-d'ceuvre of Man. —The greatest thing a liuman soul ever does in this world is to see something, and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talli for one who can think, but thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, prophecy, and religion, — all in one. — Modern Painters, III., p. 386. The Diffusion of Taste. — As I Avas walking up Fleet Street the other day, my eye caught the title of a book standing open in a bookseller's window. It was — ''On tlie necessity of tlie diffusion of taste among all classes." "Ah," I thought to mj'self, "my classifying fi-iend, when you have diffused your taste, wliere will your classes be? "' — Croiau of Wild Olive, Lect. II., p. 47. Drowned in Wonder.— The true miracle, to my mind, would not be in the sun's standing still, but IS in its going on ! We are all of us being swept down to death in a sea of miracle; we are drowned in wonder, as gnats in a Rhine wdiirlpool. — Fors, III., p. 313. Extreme Fatigue. — Fatigue yourself, but once, to utter exhaustion, and to the end of life you shall not recover the former vigor of your frame. Let heart-sickness pass beyond a certain bitter point, 562 A BUSKIlsr ANTHOLOGY, and the heart loses its life forever. — Sesame and Lilies, Preface, 1871, p. 13. The Decisive Instant.— There is a decisive in- stant in all matters ; and if you look languidly, you are sure to miss it. Nature seems always, some- how, trying to make you miss it. " I will see that through," you must say, "without turning my head" ; or you won't see the trick of it at all. — Mornings in Florence, p. 37. Music and Song.— Music is the nearest at hand, the most orderly, the most delicate, and the most perfect, of all bodily pleasures ; it is also the only one which is equally heljjful to all the ages of man — helpful from the nurse's song to her infant, to the music, unheard of others, which often, if not most frequently, haunts the death-bed of pure and inno- cent sj^irits. — Time and Tide, p. 46. All right human song is the finished expression, by art, of the joy or grief of noble persons, for right causes. And accxirately in proportion to the Tight- ness of the cause, and purity of the emotion, is the possibility of the fine art. A maiden may sing of her lost love, but a miser cannot sing of his lost money. — LecUires on Art, p. 47. The only really beautiful piece of song which I heard at Verona, during several month's stay there in 1869, Avas the low chant of girls unwinding the cocoons of the silkworm, in the cottages among the olive-clad hills on the north of the city. Never any in the streets of it ; — there, only insane shrieks of Reijublican populace, or senseless dance-music, played by operatic-military bands. — Fors, II., p. 50. Solomon. — Some centuries before the Christian era, a Jew merchant largely engaged in business on the Gold Coast, and reported to have made one of the largest fortunes of his time (held also in repute for much practical sagacity), left -among his ledgers some general maxims concerning wealth, which have been preserved, strangely enough, even to our own days, They were held in considerable resjject by ODDS AND ENDS. 563 the most active traders of the middle ages, espe- cially by the Venetians, who even went so far in their admiration as to place a statue of the old Jew on the angle of one of their principal j)ublic buildings. Of late years these Avritings have fallen into disrepute, being ojjposed in every particular to the spirit of modern commerce.— ?7«to 2'his Last, p. 43. The Fatigued Imagination.— Whenever the imagination is tired, it is necessary to find for it something, not more admirable but less admirable ; such as in that weak state it can deal with ; then give it peace, and it will recover. I well recollect the walk on which I first found out this; it was on the winding road fronj Sallenche, sloping up the hills toward St. Gervais, one cloud- less Sunday afternoon. The road circles softly be- tween bits of rocky bank and mounded iDasture ; little cottages and chapels gleaming out from, among the trees at every turn. Behind me, some leagues in length, rose the jagged range of the mountains of the Reposoir ; on the other side of the valley, the mass of the Aiguille de Varens, heaving its seven thousand feet of cliff into the air at a single effort, its gentle gift of waterfall, the Nant d'Arpenaz, like a pillar of cloud at its feet ; Mount Blanc and all its aiguilles, one silver flame, in front of me ; marvellous blocks of mossy granite and dark glades of pine around me ; but I could enjoy nothing, and could not for a long while make out what was the matter with me, until at last I discovered that if I confined myself to one thing — and that a little thing — a tuft of moss, or a single crag at the top of the Varens, or a wreath or two of foam at the bottom of the Nant d'ArjDenaz, I began to enjoy it directly, because then I had mind enough to put into the thing, and the enjoy- ment arose from the quantitj^ of the imaginative energy I could bring to bear upon it. — Modern Painters, III., p. 157. _ An " Olds" Paper.— If any journal would limit 5Gi A nUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. itself to statements of well-sifted facts, making itself not a " news" paper, but an " olds " i^aper, and giving its statements tested and true, like old wine, as soon as tilings could be known accurately; choos- ing also, of tlie many things that might be known, those which it was most vital to know, and sum- ming them in few words of pure English, — I cannot say whether it would ever pay well to sell it; but I am sure it would pay well to read it, and to read no other. — Fors, I., p. 29. Rebuilding op Warwick Castle.— I am at this hour endeavoring to find work and food for a boy of seventeen, one of eight people — two married couples, a woman and her daughter, and this boy and his sister— who all sleep together in one room, some 18 ft. square, in the heart of London ; and you call upon me for a subscription to help to rebuild Warwick Castle. Sir, I am an old and thoroughbred Tory, and as such I say, " If a noble family cannot rebuild their own castle, in God's name let them live in the nearest ditch till they can.". . . The sum of what I have to say in this present matter may be put in few words. As an antiquary — which, thank Heaven, I am — I say, " Part of Warwick Castle is burnt— 'tis pity. Take better care of the rest." As an old Tory — which, thank HeaA^en, I am — 1 say, "Lord Warwick's house is burned. Let Lord Warwick build abetterif hecan^a worseif he must; but in any case, let him neither beg nor borrow." As a modern renovator and Liberal — which, thankHeaven, lam not — I would say, " Byallmeans let the public subscribe to build a spick-and-span new Warwick Castle, and let the pictures be touched up, and exhibited by gas light ; let the family live in the back rooms, and let there be a table cVhute in the great hall at two and six every day, 2s. 6cZ. a head, and let us have Guy's bowl for a dinner he\\.''—Arrotos of the Chace, I., pp. 148-150. Gardens and Libraries. — The human race may ODDS AND ENDS. 5G5" be projoerly divided by zoologists into " men who have gardens, libraries, or works of art ; and who have none ; " and tlie former class will include all noble persons, except only a few who make the world their garden or museum ; while the people who have not, or, Avhich is the same thing, do not care for gardens or libraries, but care for nothing but money or luxuries, will include none but ignoble persons : only it is necessary to un- derstand that I mean by the term " garden " as much the Carthusian's plot of ground fifteen feet square between his monastery buttresses, as I do the grounds of Chatsworth or Kew ; and I mean by the term " art " as much the old sailor's print of the Arethusa bearing up to engage the Belle Poule, as I do Raphael's " Disputa," and even rather more.— J. Joy For Ever, pp. 111-113. Concerning Handwriting. — The scholar who among my friends does the most as well as the best work, writes the most deliberately beautiful hand : and that all the hands of sensible people agree in being merely a reduction of good print to a form pro- ducible by the steady motion of a pen, and are there- fore alwaj^s round and extremelj' upright, becom- ing more or less picturesque according to the humor of the writer, but never slurred into any unbecoming speed, nor subdued by any merely mechanical habit, whereas the writing of foolish people is almost always mechanically monotonous ; and that of begging-letter writers, with rare exception, much sloped, and sharp at the turns. — Fors, W~., ]i. 371. Thk Theatre. — The idea of making money by a theatre, and making it educational at the same time, is utterly to be got out of people's heads. You don't make money out of a Ship of the Line, nor should you out of a church, nor should you out of a College, nor should you out of a Theatre. — Arrows of the Chace, II., p. 172. Words to Shoemakers. — You are to make shoes with extremest care to please your customers in all matters which they ought to ask ; by fineness of 566 A liUSKiy ANTHOLOGY. fit, excellence of work, and exactitude of compli- ance with special orders : but you are not to please them in things which they ought not to ask. It is 2/OW7' business to know how to protect, and adorn, the human foot. When a customer wishes you really to protect and adorn his or her foot, you are to do it with finest care : but if a customer wishes you to injure their foot, or disfigure it, you are to refuse their pleasure in those particulars, and bid them— if they insist on such dis-sevviee—to go else- where. You are not, the smiths of you, to put horseshoes hot on hoofs; and you are not, the shoe- makers of you, to make any shoes with high heels, or with vulgar and iiseless decorations, or — if made to measure— that will pinch the wearer. — Fors, IV., p. 29. Legal Documents. — Do you not see how infinite- ly advantageous it would be for me (if only I could get the other sufferers under this black letter liter- ature of legal papers to be of my mind), to clap the lawyer and his clerk, once for all, fairly out of the way in a dignified almshouse, with parchment un- limited, and ink turned on at a tap, and mainte- nance for life, on the mere condition of their never troubling humanity more, with either their script- ures or opinions on any subject. — Foi'S, I., p. 216. Dyspepsia. — I believe that a large amount of the dreamy and sentimental sadness, tendency to rev- erie, and general patheticalness of modern life re- sults merely from derangement of stomach; holding to he Grreek life the same relation that the feverish night of an adult does to a child's sleep.— ifo(Zer?i Painters, III., p. 200. Cuttle-pish Misanthropy.— I came by surprise, the other day, on a cuttle-fish in a pool at low tide. On being touched with the point of my umbrella, he first filled the pool with ink, and then finding himself still touched, in the darkness, lost his temper, and attacked the umbrella with much psyche, or anima, hugging it tightly with all his eight arms, and making efforts, like an impetuous 07)7)5 AND ENDS. 5GT baby with a coral, to get it into his mouth. On my offering hiiu a finger instead, he sucked that Avith two or three of his arms, with an apparently ma- lignant satisfaction, and, on being shaken off, re- tired with an air of frantic misanthroi^y into the cloud of his ink. Now, it seems to me not a little instructive to reflect how entirely useless such a manifestation of a superior being was to his cuttle- fish mind ; and how fortunate it was for his fellow- octopods that he had no command of pens as well as ink, nor any disposition to write on the nature of umbrellas or of men. — Contemporary Review, 1871. Proving a Nkgative.— Nothing delights a true blockhead so much as to prove a negative ; — to show that everybody has been wrong. Fancy the delicious sensation, to an empty-headed creature, of fancying for a moment that he has emptied everybody else's head as well as his own ! nay, that, for once, his own hollov>^ bottle of a head has had the best of other bottles, and has been first empty; first to know— nothing. — Ariadne, p. 38. The House Fly. — I believe we can nowhere find a better type of a perfectly free creature than in the common house fly. Nor free only, but brave; and irreverent to a degree which I think no human republican could by any philosophy exalt himself to. . , . Strike at him with your hand ; and to him, the mechanical fact and external aspect of the matter is, Mdiat to you it would be, if an acre of red clay, ten feet thick, tore itself up from the ground in one massive field, hovered over you in the air for a second, and came crashing down with an aim. That is the external aspect of it ; the inner aspect, to his fly's mind, is of a quite natural and unim- portant occurrence — one of the momentary condi- tions of his active life. He steps out of the way of your hand, and alights on the back of it. — Athena, p. 112. Logic. — Any man who can reason at all, does it instinctivelj', and takes leaps over intermediate syl- logisms by the score, yet never misses his footing at m A RUSKiy ANTHOLOnY. the end of the leap ; but he who cannot instinc- tively argue, might as well, with the gout in both feet, try to follow a chamois hunter by the help of crutches, as to follow, by the help of syllogism, a person who has the right use of his reason. — 3Iodern Painters, III., p. 11. System-makers.— I suspect that system-makers, in general, are not of much more use, each in his own domain, than, in that of Pomona, the old women who tie cherries upon sticks, for the more convenient portableness of the same. To cultivate well, and choose well, your cherries, is of some im- portance ; but if they can be had in their own wild way of clustering about their crabbed stalk, it is a better connection for them than any other ; and, if they cannot, then, so that they be not bruised, it makes to a boy of a j^ractical disposition, not much difference whether he gets them by handfuls, or in beaded symmetry on the exalting stick. — Modern Painters, III., p. 18. Gipsy Fortune-telling.— The poor servant- maid who has hoped that in the stars above might be read, by the stained Avanderer's dark eyes, some twinkling sentence of her narrow destiny, is below contempt, forsooth, in the minds of persons who believe, on the delicatest suggestion of Mr. Tiggs and the Board, that it is the placid purpose of Heaven, through its rolling years forevermore, to pay them forty per cent, on their unpaid-up capi- tal, for smoking their cigars and picking their teeth. — Roadside Songs of Tuscany, p. 201, Eng. Ed. Fishing Boats. — I doubt if ever academic grove were half so fit for profitable meditation as the little strip of shingle between two black, steep over- hanging sides of stranded fishing-boats. The clear, heavy water-edge of ocean rising and falling close to their bows, in that unaccountable way which the sea lias always in calm weather, turning the pebbles over and over, as if with a rake, to look for something, and then stopping a moment down at the bottom of the bank, and coming up again ODDS AXD E^^DS. 56d with a little nni and clash, throwing a foot's depth of salt crystal in an instant between you and the round stone you were going to take in your hand, sighing alfthe while as if it would infinitely rather be doing something else. And the dark flanks of the fishing-boats all aslope above, in their shining quietness, hot in the morning sun, rusty and seamed with square patches of plank nailed over their rents, just rough enough to let the little flat-footed fisher-children haul or twist them- selves up to the gunwales, and drop back again along some stray rope; just round enough to remind us, in their broad and gradual curves, of the sweep of the green surges they know so well, and of the hours wlien those old sides of seared timber, all ashine with the sea, plunge and dip into the green purity of the mounded waves more joy- fully than a deer lies down among the grass of spring, the soft white cloud of foam opening momentarily at the bows, and fading or flying high into the breeze where the sea-gulls toss and shriek,— the joy and beauty of it, all the while, so mingled with the sense of unfathomable danger, and the human effort and sorrow going on perpet- ually from age to age, waves rolling for ever, and winds moaning for ever, and faithful hearts trusting and sickening for ever, and brave lives dashed away about the rattling beach like weeds for ever ; and still at the helm of every lonely boat, through starless night and hopeless dawn, His hand, who spread the fisher's net over the dust of the Sidonian palaces, and gave into the fisher's hand the keys of the kingdom of heaven. —Harbors of England, pp. 9-10. Ships of the Lixe.— It will always be said of us with unabated reverence "They Built Ships OF THE Line." Take it all in all, a Ship of the Line is the most honorable thing that man, as a gregarious animal, has ever produced.— i?ar&o?s of England, p. 12. The Bow of a Ship.— That rude simplicity of 570 A llUSKm ANTHOLOGY. bent plank that can breast its way through the death that is in the deei^ sea, has in it the soul of shipping. Beyond this we may have more work, more men, more money; Ave cannot have more mir- acle. . . . The boat's bow is naively perfect : com- plete without effort. The man wTio made it knew not he was making anything beautiful, as he bent its jilanks into those mysterious, ever changing curves. It grows under his hand into the image of a sea-shell ; the seal, as it were, of the flowing of the great tides and streams of ocean stamped on its delicate rounding. He leaves it, when all is done, without a boast. It is simple work, but it will keep out water. And every plank thenceforward is a Fate, and has men's lives wreathed in the knots of it, as the cloth-yard shaft had their deaths in its plumes.— Har&or^ of England, p. 112. Fox-HuNTiKG. — Reprobation of fox-hunting on the ground of cruelty to the fox is entirely futile. More pain is caused to the draught-horses of London in an hour by avariciously overloading them, than to all the foxes in England by the hunts of the year; and the rending of body and heart in human death, caused by neglect, in our country cottages, in any one winter, could not be equalled by the death- pangs of any quantity of foxes. The real evils of fox-hunting are that it wastes the time, misapplies the energy, exhausts the wealth, narrows the capacity, debases the taste, and abates the honor of the upper classes of this country ; and instead of keeping, as your correspondent " Forest- er " supposes, "thousands from the work-house," it sends thousands of the poor, both there, and into the grave. The athletic training given by fox-hunting is ex- cellent; and such training is vitally necessary to the upper classes. But it ought always to be in real service to their country ; in personal agricultural labor at the head of their tenantry ; and in extend- ing English life and dominion in waste regions, against the adverse powers of nature. Let them ODDS AND ENDS. 571 become Captains of Eiiiigration ; — hunt clown the foxes that spoil the Vineyard of the World ; and keep their eyes on the leading hound, in Packs of Men. — Arrows of the Chace, II., p. 118. Children in Art.— If you will overpass quickly in your minds what you reuiember of the treasures of Greek antiquity, you Avill find that, among them all, you can get no notion of what a Greek little girl was like. Matronly Junos, and tremendous Deme- ters, and Gorgonian Minervas, as many as you please ; but for my own part, always speaking as a Goth, I had much rather have had some idea of the Spartan Helen dabbling with Castor and Pollux in the Eurotas,— none of them over ten years old. ... I noted the singular defect in Greek art, that it never gives you any conception of Greek children. Neither— up to the thirteen century -does Gothic art give you any conception of Gothic children ; for, until the thirteenth century, the Goth was not perfectly Christianized, and still thought only of the strength of humanity as admirable in battle or venerable in judgment, but not as dutiful in peace, nor happy in simplicity. But from the moment when the spirit of Christi- anity had been entirely interpreted to the Western races, the sanctity of womanhood worshipped in the Madonna, and the sanctity of childhood in unity with that of Christ, became the light of every honest hearth, and the joy of every pure 9,nd chastened soul. . . . Till at last, bursting out like one of the sweet Surrey fountains, all dazzling and pure, you have the radiance and innocence or reinstated infant divinity showered again among the flow^ers of English meadows by Mrs. Allingham and Kate Greenaway.— ^r^ of England, pp. 45, 61-63. The Child-angels.- [Here is a pretty descrip- tion of the work of ministering angels, as shown in Richter's lovely illustrati-o-ns of the Lord's Prayer] :— 572 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. The real and living death-angel, girt as a pilgrim for journey, and softly crowned with flowers, beck- ons at the dying mother's door ; child-angels sit talking face to face with mortal children, among the flowers ; — hold them by their little coats, lest they fall on the stairs • — Avhisper dreams of heaven to them, leaning over their pillows ; carry the sound of the church bells for them far through the air ; and even descending lower in service, fill little cups with honey, to hold out to the weary bee.— Mhics of the Dust, p. 135. The Ve^^etian Doggie.— It was to be drowned, soon after its eyes had opened to the light of sea and sky, — a poor worthless wet flake of floss silk it had like to have been, presently. Toni pitied it. pulled it out of the water, bought it for certain sous, brought it home under his arms. What it learned out of his heart in that half-hour, again, St. Theodore knows ; — but the mute spiritual creat- ure has been his own, verily, from that day, and only lives for him. Toni, being a pious Toni as well as a pitiful, went this last autumn, in his holi- day, to s'ee the Pope ; but did not think of taking the doggie with him, (who, St. Theodore would surely have said, ought to have seen the Pope too). Whereupon, the little silken mystery Avholly re.- fused to eat. No coaxing, no tempting, no nurs- ing, would cheer the desolate-minded thing from that sincere fast. It would drink a little, and was warmed and medicined as best might be. Toni came back from Rome in time to save it ; but it was not its gay self again for many and many a day after ; the terror of such loss, as yet again possible, weighing on the reviving mind, (stomach, sujipos- ably, much oiit of order also). It greatly dislikes getting itself wet ; for, indeed, the tangle of its mor- tal body takes half a day to dry ; some terror and thrill of uncomprehended death, perhaps, remain- ing on it, also, — who knows ; but once, after this terrible Roman grief, running along the quay cheerfully beside rowing Toni, it saw him turn the ODDS AND ENDS. 573 gondola's head six feet aside, as if going away. The dog dashed into the water hke a mad thing. " See, now, if aught but deatli part thee and me." — Fors, III., p. 413. Heaven lies about us in our Infancy.— What do you suppose makes all men look back to the time of childhood with so much regret, (if their childhood has been, in any moderate degree, healthy or peaceful) ? That rich charm, which the least possession had for us, was in consequence of the poorness of our treasures. That miraculous aspect of the nature around us, was because we had seen little, and knew less. Every increased posses- sion loads us with a new weariness ; every piece of new knowledge diminishes the faculty of admira- tion ; and Death is at last appointed to take us from a scene in which, if we wei-e to stay longer, no gift could satisfy us, and no miracle surprise. — Eagle's Nest, p. 58. As to school and college studies making you very happy, I know something, myself, of nearly all these matters — not much, but still quite as much as jnost men under the ordinary chances of life, with a fair education, are likely to get together — and I assure you the knowledge does not make mehappj- at all. When I was a boy I used to like seeing the sunrise. I didn't know, then, there were any spots on the sun ; now I do, and am alwaj'S frightened least any more should come. When I was a boy, 1 used to care about pretty stones. I got some Bristol diamonds at Bristol, and some dog-tooth spar in Derbyshire ; my whole collection had cost, perhaps three half-crowns, and was worth considei-ably less ; and I knew nothing whatever, rightlj', about any single stone in it ; — could not even spell their names : but words cannot tell the joy they used to give me. Now, I have a collection of minerals worth, perhaps, fi-om two to three thou- sand pounds; and I know more about some of them than most other people. But I am not a whit hap- pier, either for my knowledge, or possessions, fox* D74 A nUSKlN' ANTHOLOGY. other geolog'ists dispute my theories, to my grievous indignation and discontentment ; and I am miser- able about all my best specimens, because there are better in the British Museum.— i^'orif, I., p. 43. No toy you can bestow will supersede the pleas- ure the child has in fancying something that isn't there ; and the most instructive histories you can compile for it of the wonders of the world will never conquer the interest of the tale which a clever child can tell itself, concerning the shipwreck of a rose- leaf in the shallows of a rivulet. One of the most curious proofs of the need to chil- dren of this exercise of the inventive and believ- ing power, — the hesoin de croire, which precedes the besoin (Vaimer, you will find in the way you destroy the vitality of a toy to them, by bringing it too near the imitation of life. You never find a child make a pet of a mechanical mouse that runs about the floor — ^of a poodle that yelps — of a tumbler who jumps upon Avires. The child falls in love with a quiet thing, with an ugly one — nay, it may be, with one, to us, totally devoid of meaning. My little — ever-so-many-times-grand — cousin, Lily, took a bit of stick with a round knob at the end of it for her doll one day ; — nursed it through any number of illnesses with the most tender solicitude; and, on the deeply-important occasion of its hav- ing a new nightgown made for it, bent down her mother's head to receive the cofidential and timid whisper — " Mamma, perhaps it had better have no sleeves, because, as Bibsey has no arms, she mightn't like it.''— Art of England, pp. 54-55 National Traits. — 1 have seen much of Irish character, and have watched it closely, for I have also much loved it. And I think the form of fail- ure to which it is most liable is this, that being gen- erous-hearted, and wholly intending always to do right, it does not attend to the external laws of right, but thinks it must necessarily do right because it means to do so, and therefore does wrong without finding it out ; and then wlien the conse- ODDS AND ENDS. 675 QUences of its wrong come uiwu it, or upon others connected with it, it cannot conceive tliat the wrong is in anywise of its causing or of its doing, but flies into wratli, and a strange agony of desire for justice, as feoling itself wholly innocent, which leads it farther astray, until there is nothing that it is not capable of doing with a good conscience. — Mystery of Life, p. 132. Scottish ast> Irish Valor— This much remains of Arthurian blood in us, that the richest fighting element in the British army and navy is British native,— that is to say, Highlander, Irish, Welsh, and CoTni&h.— Pleasures of England, p. 22. The battles both of Waterloo and Alma were won by Irish and Scots — by the terrible Scots Greys, and by Sir Colin's Highlanders. Your ' thin red line,' was kept steady at Alma only by Colonel Yea's swearing at them. — Pleasures of England, p. 53. The Scottish Character.— It is strange that, after much hunting, I cannot find authentic note of the day when Scotland took the thistle for her emblem ; and I have no space (in this chapter at least) for tradition ; but, with whatever lightness of construing we may receive the symbol, it is ac- tually the truest that could hav^e been found, for some conditions of the Scottish mind. There is no flower which the Proserpina of our Northern Sicily cherishes more dearly : and scarcely any of us recognize enough the beautiful power of its close- set stars, and rooted radiance of ground leaves ; yet the stubbornness and ungraceful rectitude of its stem, and the besetting of its wholesome sub- stance with that fringe of offence, and the forward- ness of it, and dominance, — I fear to lacess some of my dearest friends if I went on : — let them rather, with Bailie Jarvie's true conscience, take their Scott from the inner slielf in their heart's library which all true Scotsmen give him, and trace, with the swift reading of memory, the characters of Fergus M'lvor, Hector M'lntyre, Mause Headrigg, 576 A BUSKIN ANTHOLOGY. Alison Wilson, Richie Mouiplies, and Andrew Fairservice ; and then say, if the faults of all these, drawn as they are with a precision of touch like a Corinthian sculptor's of the acanthus leaf, can be found in anything like the same strength in other races, or if so stobbornly folded and starched nioni- plies of irritating kindliness, selfish friendliness, lowly conceit, and intolerable fidelity, are native to any other spot of the wild earth of the habitable globe. . . . In exact opposition to the most solemn virtue of Scotland, the domestic truth and tender- ness breathed in all Scottish song, you have this special disease and mortal cancer, this woody-fibri- ness, literally, of temper and thought : the consum- mation of which into pvirc lignite, or rather black Devil's charcoal — the sap of the birks of Aberfeldy become cinder, and the blessed juices of them, deadly gas, — you may know in its pure blackness best in the work o'f the greatest of these ground- growing Scotchmen, Adam Smith. No man of like capacitj^ I believe, born of any other nation, could have deliberately, and with no momentary shadow of suspicion or question, for- malized the spinous and monstrous fallacy that hu- man commerce and policy are natiiraUy founded on the desire of every man to possess his neighbor's goodii.— Proserpina, pp. 87-89. Scotch Streets axd Scotch Lassies. — I observe the good j)eople of Edinburgh rejoice proudly at having got an asphalt esplanade at the end of Prince's Street, instead of cabbage-sellers. Alas ! my Scottish friends; all that Prince's Street of yours has not so much beauty in it as a single cabbage- stalk, if you had eyes in your heads, — rather the extreme reverse of beauty ; and there is not one of the lassies who now stagger up and down the burn- ing marie in high-heeled boots and French bonnets, who would not look a thousand-fold prettier, and feel, there's no counting how much nobler, bare- headed but for the snood, and bare-foot on old- fashioned grass b}^ the Nor' loch side, bringing ODDS AND ENDS. 577 home from market, basket on arm, pease for papa's dinner, and a bunch of cherries for baby.- ^f)t. Mark's Best, p. 31. The French and German Natures.— A French- man is selfish only when he is vile and lustful ; but a German, selfish in the purest states of virtue and morality. A Frencliman is arrogant only in ignor- ance ; but no quantity of learning ever makes a German modest. "Sir," says Albert Diirer of his own work, (and he is the raodestest German I know,) "it cannot be better done." Luther se- renely damns the entire gospel of St. James, be- cause St. James happens to bo not percisely of his own opinions. Accordingly, when the Germans get command of Lombardy, they bombard Venice, steal her pictures, (which they can't understand a single touch of,) and entirely ruin the country, morally and pliysi- cally, leaving behind them misery, vice, and intense hatred of themselves, wlierever their accursed feet have trodden. They do precisely the same thing by France — crush her, rob her, leave her in misery of rage and shame ; and return home, smacking their lips, and singing Te Deums. But when tlie Frencli conquer England, their action upon it is entirely beneficent. Gradually, the country, from a nest of restless savages, be- comes strong and glorious; and having good ma- terial to work upon, tliey make of us at last a nation stronger than themselves. Then the strength of France pei'islies, virtually, through the folly of St. Louis ; — her piety evapor- ates, her lust gathers infectious poAver, and the modern Cite rises round the Sainte Chapelle. — Fors, IL, p. 184. French Insensibility. — I was beguiled the other day, by seeing it announced as a '' Comedie," into going to see "Frou-Frou.''' Most of you probably know that the three first of its five acts are comedy, or at least playful drama, and that it plunges doAvn, in the two last, to the sorrowfulest catastrophe of 578 A EUSKIIf ANTHOLOGY. all conceivable — though too frequent In daily life — in which inetrievable grief is brought about by the passion of a moment, and the ruin of all that she loves, caused by the heroic error of an entirely good and unselfish person. The sight of it made me thoroughly ill, and I was not myself again for a week. But, some time afterwards, I was speaking of it to a lady who knew French character well ; and asked her how it was possible for a j^eople so quick in feeling to endure the action before them of a sor- row so poignant. She said, "It is because they have not sympathy enough : they are interested only by the external scene, and are, in truth, at present, dull, not quick in feeling. My own French maid went the other evening to see that very play : when she came home, and I asked her what she thought of it, she said, ' it was charming, and she had amused herself immensely.' ' Amused ! but is not the story very sad ? ' ' Oh, yes, mademoiselle, it is bien triste, but it is charming ; and then, how pretty Frou-Frou looks in her silk dress ! ' " — Eagle s Nest, p. 51. The Swiss " States of the Forest."— Beneath the glaciers of Zermatt and Evolena, and on the scorching slopes of the Valais, the peasants re- mained in an aimless torpor, unheard of but as the obedient vassals of the great Bishopric of Sion. But where the lower ledges of calcareous rock were broken by the inlets of the Lake Lucerne, and brac- ing winds penetrating from the north forbade the growth of the vine, compelling the peasantry to adopt an entirelj^ pastoral life, was reared another race of men. Their narrow domain should be luarked by a small green spot on every map of Europe. It is about forty miles from east to west ; as many from north to south : yet on that shred of rugged ground, while every kingdom of the world around it rose or fell in fatal change, and every multitudinovis race mingled or wasted itself in various dispersion and decline, the sim- ODDS AND ENDS. 679 ])le shepherd dynasty remained changeless. There is no record of their origin. They are neither Goths, Burgundians, Romans, nor Germans. They have been for ever Helvetii, and for ever free. — Modern Painters, V., p. 101. The Italian Peasantry. — The people of Italy are dying for need of love: only in returning love for love they become themselves, and enter into possession of their own souls by the gift of them. I have learned this not from Francesca only. Strangely, another dear American friend, Charles Eliot Norton, with his wife and family, residing in Italy — I forget how long — (I was with them in their villa near Siena in 1873), were the first to tell me this quite primary character of the Italian peasan- try. Their own princes have left them, and abide in their great cities — no one cares for the moun- taineers ; and their surprise, in the beginning, at finding any one living amidst them who could love ihem; their answer, in the end, of gratitude flowing iiie the Fonte Branda, as he described them to me, have remained ever since among the brightest and the SMoidest beacons, and reproaches, of my own too selfish ^Ke- — Roadside Songs of Tuscany, p. 313. /" APPENDIX. -RPSKTl^'S WRITINGS IN CLASSIFIED GROUPS. WITH THE DATES OF TIKST PUBLICATION. PAINTING. Modern Painters— 1843-1860. Various Papers on Pre-Raphaelitism -1851-1883. Giotto and liis Works in Padna— 1853. The Harbors of England (Letterpress to Engravings of Turner Drawings)— 1856. Relation Between Michael Angelo and Tnitoret— 1872. Mornings in Florence (Chiefly Guide-books to Florentine Paintings)— 1875-1877. St. Mark's Rest— 1877. Notes by Mr. Ruskin on his Drawings by the late J. M. W. Tur- ner— 1878. The Art of England— 1883. MISCELLANEOUS ART WRITINGS. Tlie Two Paths (Lectures on Art in its Application to Decora- tion and Manufacture) — 1859. Lectures on Art — 1870. Ariadne Florentina (Engraving)— 1873. Val d'Arno (Lectures on Tuscan Art)— 1874. Laws of Fgsole (Elements of Drawing)— 1877. Arrows of the Cliace, Vol. I. (Miscellaneous Newspaper Arti- cles)— 1880. The Art of England (Leeh, Du Maurier, etc.)— 1883. Roadside Songs of Tuscany (Notes on Miss Francesca Alexan- der's Drawings)— 1883. ARCHITECTURE. Seven Lamps of Architecture — 1849. Stones of Venice— 1851-1853. Edinburgh Lectures on Arcliitecture (I. and H.) — 1853. 580 APPENDIX. 581 The Two ruths (Lecture IV., Influence of Imagination on Archi- tecture)— 1859. Bible of Amiens— 1881. Arrows of the Chace, I., pp. 122-161—1880. SCULPTURE. Stones of Venice— 1851-1853. Aratra Pen telici -1872. ECONOMIC WORKS. Unto This Last— 1860. IMunera Pulveris— 1862. Crown of Wild Olive— 1866. Time and Tide, by Weare and Tyne— 1867. Fors Clavlgera (Here and There)— 1871-1878. A Joy Forever— 1880. NOTE.^Compare also article on Usury In " Contemporary Review," 1880, p> 316, et 6eq.; and " Home and its Economies " in the same Review for May 1873. Also "Arrows of the Chace," VoL II. SCIENCE. (-Ethics of the Dust— 1866. ) } In Montibus Sanctis, Part I.-1885. V Mineralogy. (.Deucalion— 1875-1880. j f Deucalion— 1875-1880. . I Geolosv. I Modern Painters, Vol. IV. (Blountains)— 1856. j " =•' f Proserpina— 1879. , , .„ 1 Botany. I Modern Painters, Vol. V. (Leaves)— IbfaO. J r Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century -1884. 1 ci^mig 1 Modern Painters, Vol. V.— 1860. J Love's Meinie— 1873 (Birds). The Eagle's Nest (Relation of Science to Art)— 1872. Athena, Queen of the Air (Myths)— 1869. Arrows of the Chace (Miscellaneous)— 1880. EDUCATION. Elements of Perspective— 1&59. Sesame and Lilies (Books and Reading, and Education of Girls) —1865. Fors Clavigera (See especially Letters L.-LIV., also XCV.)— 1871-187S. Elements of Drawing— 1857. Instructions in Elementary Drawing— 1872. Laws of Fesole (Best Work on Drawing)— 1877. Prosei-pina (Botany)— 1879. A Museum or Picture Gallery (Six Letters in London Art Journal for June and August, 1880). LITERATURE. King of the Golden River (Fairy Tale)— 1851. Modern Painters, Vol. lU.— 1856. Fiction, Fair and Foul {Nineteenth Century, 1880, 1881). 582 AFPENBIX. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. Fors Clavigera— 1871-1878. Notes by Mr. Ruskin on his Drawings by the late J. M. W. Turner— 1878. My First Editor. An Antobiograpliical Reminiscence {Uni- versity Magazine, April, 1878). Prseterita. Outlines of Scenes and Thoughts perhaps worthy of Memory in my Past Life— 1885. FIVE BEST WORKS. Modern Painters. Unto This Last. Crown of Wild Olive. Fors Clavigera (first half of it). Sesame and Lilies. BEST SINGLE WOEK. Modern Painters. INDEX. PAGE Aakon 4-,'l Accurate work 512 Achilles 65 Address, of convict 419 Admiration, element of education 269 Admiration, Hope, and Love 335 Agassiz. Prof. Louis A&i Age, old 8:i9 Air, the 467 AH Baba 414 Americans, the, 420, 421 ; civil war of 249 American girls in Italy, 397-399 Amiens 167 Anatomy, destructive to art 40 Ancestors 29 Angelico 88, 89 Angels, Guardian 361 Apollo Belvidere 27, 168 Arcadian Valley 490 Architect, materials of 151 Architecture, 142-165; a and sculpture, 143. 144; five orders, 144; medium-sized blocks in. 145; of cities, 147, 148; suburban, 148; European, 152; Roman, Lombard and Arabian styles, 152, 153; Gothic, 154-161; (Gothic not the work of the clergy, 154; not derived from vegetation, 155; true sources of, 156; poetry of Gothic terms, 158; Gothic porch, 158; arch. 158; how to tell good Gothic, 159-161;) Renaissance, 161-163; decoration of a., 164 ; asymmetry and vital carving 164 Art. Proceeds from the heart, 21; art and mechanism, 22; defi- nitions of, 21 and 22; not teachable by rules, 22, 23, 29, 30; con- ditions of a school of, 23; grass, flowers, etc.. 24; world's focus of, 21; rooted in moral nature. 24. 25: connoisseurs of, 25, 27; a. and nature-stud j', 26; best art not always wanted, 26; discipline in art-work, 29; earliest a. linear, 31; creative power in, 33; quality, not quantity, of art-study desirable, 33; three rules of. 33 ; the same for all time, 33; Etruscan a., 33; destruction of, 34; criticism of , 35. 36; a. in the history of nations, 41-44; a. in Middle Ages, 46-50: finish, 50-56; g"reat a. and great men, 60-67; perambulant, 81, 82; should not be too familiar, 146; any a. is good, 313; a. in England, 360; bad art in religion, 365-367; there is a science of, 458; science vs. art, 459; children in 571 Art-education, 298-314; to foster art-genius in a youth. 301 ; great- est art cannot be taught, 301-303: young folks in picture-gal- leries. 307, 308; color, 299; drawing, 299-307; museums. . . .309-315 Artist, definition of, 22; society and the a., 25; boi-n. not made, 29; reveals liimself in his work, 31; the British, 61, 62; gen- tleness of 75 Asceticism, three forms of 331 Association of ideas 68 Astronomy 297 Audiences (smooth-downy-curry, etc) 513 584 INDEX. PAGE Authorship, 502 (comp. Writing); realism, 511; invention, 510; accurate work 513 Beauty, among the Greeks, 28; distinguished from truth 28, 39 Betting 353 Bewick 136 Bible, 367-369; characters not yet painted 89 Bills, running up 354 Birds 427-433 Bishops 373-375 Blackfriars Bridge 149 Blackwood's Magazine 514 Blake, William 134 Boats 568 Books. 416, 503-507; reading a book in the leisurely fashion of old, 503; best books written in country, 503; get the author's meaning, not your own, 504: stout, well-bound books, 504 ; price of, 504: tlie patient fellows in leathern jackets. 505: the charmed circle of the great authors. 505; the poor ti-ade of the reviewer, .505, 506; some of Ruskin's favorites, .506; too many. 513; Ruskinonhisown, 536-.540; (comp. Librui-ies,\^4.) Botany, 432-440; 296-297 (teaching of j; nomenclature 4.34 Bourges cathedral 58 Boy, and dog-flght 337 Boys 289, 392 Brantwood, 12, .556. See Coniston, 540. Brick and terra-cotta 145 Browning, Robert 49 Buffoonery 69 Burne-Jones ■ ■. 131 Cacti 338 Capital, a ploughshare the type of, 205; investments of, 206; in- terest-takers, 206; invested, 210-214; (cp. 351.) Capital punishment 331 Capitalists, 194, 210-214; (see 360, 361.) Caricature 138 Cark and Care 345 Carly le, on the fine arts 51 Carpaccio's Princess 399 Casket-talismans of knowledge 347 Cathedrals, 149-151 ; English c, 150; French c 1.55 Cervin, Mt 489 Chaiuouni 499 Character-painting 511 Charities, 318. See Ruskin. Cheapness 232 Cliiaroscuro 125, 139 Child-angels 571-573 Children, in art, 571 ; parable of the 256-258 Chimnej's 359 Chirography 565 Chiron... " 65 Christianity, theatrical, 360; in the Middle Ages 379 Church, going to, 357; the English .371-378 Cinnamon 434 Cinderella 390 Clay, Ume. and flint 443-445 Classic style 46 Classical school 106-109 Claude 107, 108, 114 Clergy 371-378 Clouds, 446-453; Storm-CIoud of the Nineteenth Century, 449- 453: among hills, 468; cumulus cloud 468 Cluse, bells of 499 Color. 123-130, 299; color-sense with the Greeks, 126; among the Chinese and Hindoos, 127: dead c . 128: five laws of, 129, 1.30; in sculpture, 164; of cla.y, lime, and flint 443-445 INDEX. 888 PAGE 263 Communism 222 Coinimine of 1871 • aac. Coinpetitiou, among minerals j^ ^2 Composition 241 540 Coniston '333 (.oiiseieiice 3g5 Consecrated water gg^ Consecrated ground 'aqq Constitution, the British -^j ^gg Consumption of wealth g'ggg Conventionalism ^^jj Convict, the ' ggj Cooking 225 226 Cooperation ■ ■ • ' o.ji Co-operative Trade Guilds ''gj Copies 26 Copyists • ■ ■ inn Correggio, 52, 56 ; best work by • • • iX^ Cottage, English ' 2jg Cottager ; 349 Countryman and Cit — 265 Country life 402 Courtship '^'[^''35, 36 Criticism, 513; art 343 Cross, one's 395 Cross, engraving of the .j3g Cruilishank '^q 44^ Crystals 30 ' 144' 170 Crystal Palace ' ' 5g5 Cuttle fish, the jOg Cuyp 362 D.\NTE i' • ■ u" ■ \' Darwin, 458 (peacocks feather). „. . Debt, national. 212; getting into ^^ Decay of life-forms ggo Decisive instant 56-58 Decoration 540 Denmark Hill 33(j Dependence ; g^ Design, imagination in 369-371 Devil, the , ■ •. 3gg Dinrer-party with Christ 207 DixDM, Thos 73 Doggie, the . . . ' ' • in^na Doges, tombs of the 359 DolUvr. Father j4q iJl^wili^Snctness in; 61 V free iiand ■in,'2C3; ' p.^portion:^ 299; ra ki c 803: treasuring, 304: errors of the existing school, 30] : perspective. 306. 307; drawing Greek mountains 300 I )ress. in historical painting 352-354 l»'iiik .^ '■■■.■■■■.'.■.'.'.!'.... 153 Ducal Palace ■• 32 Duke of Wellington, statue of • ^q I>iiier. ' ' " "/_'i()i^ 106 Dutch art 5g5 Dyspepsia ^ , 40 Eaolk"s hooded eye 4.^^ Earth veil, the ggO Edgevvorth, Miss 586 INDEX. PAQH elective sj^stem, 274; virtue instinctive, 275; labor and schol- arship, 276; grammar of music, 276; emulation bad. 277; com- petition injurious, 277-279; words, 279, 280; beautiful speaking, 281, 282; reading aloud; seeing things, 282; sympathy, 283; bright children and stupid, 283-285; unjustifiable anibi- tiou of would-be geniuses, 283-285; how to be wise, 285; edu- cation of children, 287-298; telling what they have seen or heard, 287; ed. for different spheres, 288; nature as an edu- cator, 288; learning by heart, 288; riding and sailing, 289; boys of St. George's Guild, 289; grammar, 290; lying, 290; self- reliance, 290; history, 290; English ideas of education, 291; sentimental lies in children's books, 291; boys aud squirrels, 292; ideal elementary scliool, 293; decorations of school- rooms, 294; teaching "science, 295; Sir W. Scott, 295-298; ed. in art, 298-314; teaching adjusted to capacity, 298; color, 299; museums 309-315 Eels 427 Egotism 329 Eliot, George 521 Elocution 281 , 282 Employment 193,194 England, green fields in, 264; cruellest and foolishest nation on the earth, 417, 418; John Bull as a small peddler 418 English nation, the bull the type of, 403; always wanting to kill something, 404; destruction of landscapes by, 404-406; con- science of 414 Engraving 133, 155 Equality 421 Etching 138 Etruscan art 33 Eva, in " Uncle Tom's Cabin" 27 Exchange, analyzed 234, 235 Executions of poor 220 Expenditure of wealth 235-238 Facts, looking them in the face 332 Faith 503 Fancy 67 Fate, confronting of 66 Fathers, our, imitation of 29 Fatigue 561 Fields, green 264 Fiction, 518-530; literature of prison-house, 519-521; Scott, 521; and realism 511 Finish 50-56 Fishing-boats 568 Fislimongers 372, 373 Flaxman 138 Florentine art 73 Flowers, 475-477; final cause of seed 436 Fools 338 Forbes. James 462 Fortune-telling . 508 Fortunes, large 202, 203 Forty Thieves 414 Fountain 541 Fox-hunting 570 Fra Angelico 128 France (commune of 1S71) 222 Francesca ( Alexander) 574 Fraud, in trade 227-230 Free hand ■. 263 Free trade 233, 235 French, the, 572; Insensibility of 573 French landscape 109 Fresh air and light 264-2G7 Friendship's Offering 538 Fruit 437 INDEX. 68t PAQB Gardens 564 Gardening 392 Garden walls 5^1 Garlic 438 Gentlemanliness 354-357 Geography 298 Geology.. 460-462 Germans, the ^'<^ German Sciiwarmerei 510 Giotto, 130: great colorist, 75, 76; his "O" 76 Girl, little g. with large shoes 216 Girls, 389-403; are to be happy, 389; Cinderella, 390; reading the Bible, 390; cooking, 391; sewing and dress-making, 391; bits of work for, 39^; gardening for, 39-^; cruelly of, 393; vanity of, 394; two mirrors 395; general hints on edncation of, 396, 397; American girls in Italy, 397-399; courtship 402 Glaciers 463.463 Glass 59, 60 God, existence of, 3,58; and nature 361 Gold of knowledge, invisible 347 Gold coin 186 Gothic. See Architecture. Gothic palaces of Venice 94, 95 Government, 358-264; necessity of law, 260, 261; American 421 Grass 479^81 Greek, 73; G. ideal is design, 28; G. art in general, 44-46; religion of. 378, 379; tragedy, 510; vase, type of fiction, 518; children. 571 Greenaway, Miss Kate 110, 571 '• Griffith Gaunt" 416 Grotesque, definition of the 33 Habits, little 340, 341 Handwriting f i?i Harrison, Mr. W. H 538 Hawthorn (bush) ?^ Heaven ^So Hedgehogs and grapes ocn o-i Hell and the Devil a\1 Heroines, modern -■ ■ 4].^ Historical painting **' i^i, Holbein 41-2 Holyoake, Geo. Jacob ~~'^ Homes, permanent. 146; suitable 14" Honest man. 184 (is that all?). Horse, at railway station 3J.) Horses and wine 41.5 Hotel, Umf raville ■ • 411; Human work as ornament ^"' ^', Hunt, William '4 Hurricane 469 Ice and frost 470, 471 Idleness ^'^'i^Jh Idolatry : '''•S Illuminated windows, 136; manuscripts. 135,136; wntmg 399 Imagination, in art, 67-70; basis of sympathy, 345; fatigue of... _ 563 Imitation and finish or i Immortality *4 Impressions, first and also last ^0« India, resource for lovers 415 Instinct "^ Interest. 210-214; (comp. 251.) ^ Invention and composition ' • Invention (of the Germans) °i'^ Irreverence l}p Italian peasantry • ■ • 5';* Italy 39(-399 588 INDEX. Kerosene 421 Kings, mosquitoes, or gad-flies, 259; real 40t), 410 Knowledge, meat of 270 Labor, 191-194, (cp. 243. 244,— machinery,) 221-225; paid at fixed rate, 221 ; head and hand compared 221 Labor and Capital 206-210, 217-219 Laborer's pension 219 Land 238-243 Landscape, modern profanation of. and low idea of. 47, 48; (see 109-111 and 56;i;) destruction of, in Great Britain, 404-406; aesthetic aspects of, 494-^96; French, 498; Swiss 499-501 Law 565 Lawyers 185 Lawerv 335 Leaves 439, 472-475 Lectures, 512. Comp. Audiences. Leech, John , 138, 139 Legal documents 565 Leonardo, 29, 114; as finisher 51 Leslie 74 Le ters of alphabet in art 356 Lewis, John 139 Liberty 262-264, 421 Libraries, 564 ; national 275 Lichens 481 Life, a mystery, 332; gradation of 364 Liquor Question 352-354 Literature 502-531 Liturgies 371, 372 Logic 567 London (a squirrel-cage) 412-414 Longfellow 49 Loire river 498 Lords of Great Britain, Raskin on, 406-410; strong-bodied pau- pers 408-414 Lovers 415 Love-making, modern 330 Lowell, James Russell 346 Luxury 236 Luini 29,84 Machinery 243,244 Mantegna 73 Maimfactory chimneys 359 Marbles, the , 442, 443 Massacio 109 Masters, the 60-67; 222, 223 Matterhorn 489 McCosh, Rev. James 363 Meliorism 333 Memory of great artists 68 INlerchant. function of, in a state, 226-230; heroism needed 227-230 ]\letaphj'sicians 363 Michael Angelo. 38-40. 51, 56 (best work). Middle Ages, 46-.50; castles in the, 144; asceticism in, 331; Chris- tianitj' in 379 Millais 131 Blillionaire, the beggared 238 " Mill on the Floss" 521 Milton 363 Minerals, 440-446; Ruskin's 556 Miracles 561 Mirrors, the two 395 Mob. the 403-419 " Modern Painters." 538; do., vol. II 361 Money, 1S5. 186. 189: defined, 19.'); ill-got 330 Money-making mob 183 INDEX. 589 FAQB . . . .317, 318 the cross fitted to the back '.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'.'..■■ -i^^ Moss .... ,„ ,-,i,y.- :,Vj,.i,iJie Ages ' 47;' dawn ontheV484; morn- ''^"i^fou:'^'^ disrance'!485,4&4; uses, 485-488 ; drawing a ^^^ m., 488; slaty precipices • -5 Miirillo ."..!!.!!!... .309-315 Musl^ grammaV of; 276 ; in Ruskiii's Utopia; ;;;;;;;;;; ■ • ■ • 3|0 Music and song 514-518 Myths Nations, three books of, 21; intense life, or vitality, of, 184; a ^^^ Natux^^-^ril^alsignificauce of loveof:490;497; u. inth« ^^^ Nat^^ih£?^-y:29n^:456;inmuseums;;:;;:::.;;;:;:::::;;3.o,3n Negative, proving a ...203 Noblesse ^^^''S>i ■■■-■■■■ --i:,:-: ; ; ; ; . 89, 431 , 574 Norton, Professor Charles Ehot ....;.... 28 Nude, the 438 Oat. ' 421 Oil 70 Oil-painting 438 Onion , 330 Opinions, always changing ■ 340 Optimism 437 Orange ■ 36, 37 Ornament, human work as 286 Oxford Park ■ • • 286 Oxford students, advice to PAIKTIKO, 70-130; i. Ih. ^^^^^l^!:J!l "^^^ r ^;%J.etr^'' a.^d ^p.',^ "^^ftu^ of touch 74, English ParS^^llS,223rstatueofstrasbou;-gin.-.-.v.;;;;;;;;;..366 Parties, national ... 387 Passion of Christ 507 Patmore, Coventry ' ^75 " Pauvre Enfant " 055 Peace, two kinds [ 4.-,8 Peacock 338 People, foolish 433 Perfumes ' ' 3O6, 307 Perspective 363 Philosophers .38 Photography, in art .. 194, 195 Picnic Party, the great. ..._ ■ ^ 39^ 40 Picture, most precj^ous jn the woikl ... ■ v- , ' -gj- p / perambu- ^'°S'8l':'^2r|aIi^rl^s, ^'^e^^X^'t^^r. urJ^e? glass .^^313 Picturesque, the 535 Pig. the Bewickiaa ' ' ' 85 Pigments 477-479 Pines ■■■■ ••; 170 Pfea, in middle ages, 49; duomoof • ^gg Pisano, Niccola 435 Plant 58 Plate, gold and silver 348 Pocock, Thomas 590 INDEX. PAGE Poetry, and painting. 74; trashy poetry, 507; pastoral, 508; Ras- kin's 530, 531 Poetical justice 330 Political economy. Compare under specific heads, as " Demand and Supply," "Money," etc. (comp. also 408); defined, 181- 183; summed up, 10, 17; distinguished from mercantile eoon- omy, 182; object of, 183; currency. 185, 180; money, 185, 186; intrinsic value, 186; wealth, 189-191 ; wealth, money, and riches defined, 189; property defined, iS5; on cooperative trade- guilds, see 321 (see also 314-319). Politics, young men in, 260; machinery and p 263 Poor, executions of the 220 Pope 507 Poppy 437 Porcelain-painting 85 Portrait-painting 71 Potter, Paul 105 Pound piece, the English 31 Poussin, Nicolo 108, 109 Poverty, origin of, 206 210; 214-220; little girl with large shoes, 216 ; Savoyard cottage 216 Prayer ' 857, :i58 Pre-Raphaelitism 130-132 Prodigal Son ,^ 361 Profanity 334 Professions, in Ruskin's Utopia 321 Property, defined, 235 (comp. Wealth, Riches, etc.). Protestant Blind Pension Society 348 Provincial art 61, 64 Pucelle 222 Pulpit, of to-day 375-378 Queen of May 360 Railroads, 240-243, nation should own, 242; to Hell 404 Rain 468 Rapliael. 38-40, 51, 56 (best work), 73, 87, 139 (chiaroscuro). Reade, Chailes , 416 Reading aloud 281, 282 Realism, 511; of great artists 64 Red ink 15 Reh'gion, 357-380; r. and women, 386; evangelical people, 357, 3")S; prayer. 357, 358; church, .3.57; English r. a mockery, 359; leligious life, when possible, 361; bad religious art, 365-367; of tlie Greeks 378 Rembrandt 54, 134, 139 Rent 239 Reverence 336 Reynolds, Sir Joshua 58 Riches, 189 (definition), 194-210; power and opportunities of, 1 98-201 and 203. 204 ; origin of 206-210, 237 Richter, illustrations of 571, 572 Rivers, geologically considered 459 Roland ., 222 Root of plant 485 Ro.ssetti 1.31 Rubens 106 Rural life 265, 494 Ruskin, John, childhood, 11; teacher in London and Cambridge, 12; personal appearance, 19; Carlyle and R., 13; st\ le of, 14. 15; cardinal dates in his art-life, 15; art-teachings summed up, 15; religion, 15, 16; charities. 16; political economy of, 16. 17; paints Lake of Como, 52; first piece of published writ- ing, 453; any one welcome to read his letters, .531 ; " Ai, Ai," 531; his friends, .532; love of money, 532: nied);i?val tenden- cies. 532; charity by stealth, 532; on capital punishment, .5.32' St. Bruno's lilies. .533; contradictions of, 533; conimnnist or the old school, 533; not altogether a conservative, 534; Apolo- INDEX. M PAGE gia (" because I have passed my life," etc.), S34; in Assisi, 535; thinks his proper business is science, 536; " nolo episco- pari," 53(j; as a publisher. 536-538; about his own books, 536- 540; first printed piece, 538; how he ivrites, 539; at Denmark Hill, 540; reform experiments, 540-.'542 (tea-shop, etc.); remi- niscences of childhood, 542-553; tours with parents, 543-548; early religious traiuiugr and Bible studies, 549-552; love of the sea. 552; leaves from Ruskin's accounts, 553-561; Brantwood bought, 556; his collection of minerals, 556; wishes to die poor. 558 Saintship 3"*^ lalvltor ....75.110,111,128 Sap '*^^ Savoyard cottage 216 Savoyaid guide *'5 Sciences, system in teaching, 279, 453-463 (miscellaneous); envy in, 454; Ruskin's opinion of, 454; researches of science never rewarded, 454; analysts, 456; modern, 457; genesis of song, 458; sciences of the arts 458 Scientists, religion of the earlier 362 Scott. Sir Walter, dislikes dry scientific sch«ol-books, 295 (note); his novels, 521-530; at Ashestiel, 522-524; best romances, 524; heroes, 524 ; Scotch dialect in novels. 525-530 Sculpture, stone dolls, 27 ; color in, 164; vital carving, 164, 166, 167; portrait s., 166; on the choir at Amiens, 167; on Greek coins 356, 35r Sea, 482-484 (comp. Boats, 568, 569). Seaweeds 338 Seeing things 561 Sel L-sacriflce 330 Sensitiveness 345 Serpents 425-427 Servant-maid ^68 Servants 349-352 Seven Lamps of Architecture, see pp. 163, 164. Sev/ing 391 Shafton, SirPiercie 6* Shakespere 510 Ship, painted 37 Ships of the line, 569; bow of s 569 Shoemakers ; 5fi5 Sisters of Chanty 386, 38i Sistine Chapel J3 Sky,bluefire '^ Slavery, American and English 220 Slugs, of a lettuce 407 Soldiers, 184, 227, 228, 255; the true, 254; advice to 2.54 Solomon 562 Song 562 Spectrum of blood "ISb Spending of wealth 235, 2.38 Spjder 24.3 Spin 389 Spring at Carshalton 541 Squires. English ^^'^ilS Squirrels and boys "g' St. Brimo's lilies ' ■ 533 St. George's Guild, 17, 18; education of boys in, 289; details of, 314-322; creed 318 St. George and the dragon 31, 107, 108 St. Mark's 173-177 Stamped paper 140 Stars, of stinking hydrogen •ioo Stealing nVo t!i Steam machinery 243, 244 Steam -nightingale ~4J Stones of Venice '"'* m INDEX. PAOS Study, of a subject 508 Supply and Demand 233-225 Swiss cottages and peasants 346 Swiss sceneiy .- 499-501 Swiss States of the Forest 573 Symbols 34 Sympathy 345 System-makers 568 System in science 279 Taste, diffusion of — . . 561 Taxation 210-214; comp. 251 Tea-shop 541,542 Telegraph, the 417 Ten Commandments, the modern 344 Teniers 74, 106 Terra-cotta 151, 171 Theatre 414,565 Ticino river 226 Tintoret, 38-40, 52, 56; 101-104 (San Rocco, massacre, Last Judg- ment) ; ruined pictures in 1851 187 Titian 99, 104, 109, 114 Tobacco 24,353 Tombstones, new kind, see 358 344 Tourists, advice to 26 Tower, needs no help 332 Trade, 226-238; making and selling of bad goods, 230, 231; middle- men, 233; free trade 233,234 Trees, see 471-475 ; the pine 477^77 Tribune, the, in Florence 313 Truth, dislike of 334 Turner, 63; as finisher, 51; anecdotes and judgments on, 111-123; Turner and Lawrence in the Exhibition, 115; Emerson and Turner. 116; kindness of, 116; the Splugen drawing, 117-120; will, 120; slave-ship, 120-122; as a colorist, 126, 127; Loire, drawing of, 498; drawing of Terni 566 (n.) Tympanum 455 Ugliness, cult of 456 Ulverstone 241 Umfraville Hotel 416 Undones, not the Dones 335 Unprodigal Son 361 " Upper Classes " 194-205 Valley, Arcadian 490 Vase 518 Venetian character, 97, 98; painting, 99-105; glass 59 Venice, 90-97; religion of, 98 (and note) and 99; source of the Renaissance style, 161; tombs of the doges, 171-173; first re- corded words of 359 Verona 24 Veronese, 54, 104, 109; as finisher 52 Vicarious salvation 359 Virgil 507 Virtue 329 Vulgar, the 137 Vulgarity 854-857 Wages, not determined by competition Walls, garden • ■„■ ^^ War, 244-258: as a game, 245; w. the foundation of the arts, 846; w an evil, 247-48; modern war, 248-356; American w., 349; steel traps, 250; England and Poland in '59, 252; girl mur- dered, 252; dream-parable of . 256-258 War and t ixation 211-214; comp. 251 Warwick Oastle, rebuilding 564 Waves 483-484 INDEX. 593 PAGE Wealth, 189-191 ; 196-205; no w. but life; eidolon of, 200; spending of 235-238 Words, 279; derivation of 509 \Vords\vorth 507 Wordsworth school-house 291 Work, (see Labor;) good w. ill paid, 192; people ashanied of.. 333, 334 AVorkingmen 221-225 Women, 380-403; women and religion, 386; see 329; as artists, 380; women's work, 381-383; public duties, 382; power of, 383; w. and their lovers, 383 ; dress, 384-386; w. and religion, 380- 389; girls 389-103 Woodcuts 136-138 Woolwich Infant 407 Writing (authorship), 502 ; good English 507 Yorkshire 243 Young men in politics 260 MAY 16 1900 Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 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