"But 
 
 ye maun learn 
 
 to put 
 the heart into it"
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 FROM THE LIBRARY OF 
 BERNARD HERRMANN
 
 RUSKIN ON MUSIC
 
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 bar to trm.fartD timiffonnf 
 
 3=, 
 
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 tun er cot ytw me urn mtnam 
 
 Uirnnv tir nflron fun 
 
 a c m twain s tmnit 
 
 MINIATURE OF ST CECILIA. 
 From an Antiphonaire of 1290 which belonged to the Abbesse of Beau Pi>e 
 
 Size of original 19 in. X 13 ia. See page 136.
 
 AW , 
 V 
 
 L RUSKIN ON MUSIC 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 A. M. WAKEFIELD 
 
 " But ye maun learn to put the heart into it, man 
 To put the heart into it " 
 
 REDGAUN'TLET 
 
 GEORGE ALLEN, SUNNYSIDE, ORPINGTON 
 
 AND 
 
 156 CHARING CROSS ROAD, LONDON 
 
 1894 
 
 [A II rights reserved
 
 IN LOVING MEMORY OF HELP GIVEN IN ITS COMPILATION, 
 THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO 
 
 JOAN RUSKIN SEVERN, 
 
 WHO, MORE THAN ANY ONE, 
 
 ENTERS INTO THE SPIRIT OF HIM 
 
 WHO HAS EVER BEEN, AND STILL IS, 
 
 "JOANNA'S CARE " 
 
 A. M. WAKEFIELD
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE following extracts have been gathered 
 together merely with the view of putting in 
 collective form the thoughts of " Ruskin on 
 Music " for the use of his many students 
 who are also interested in the Art of Music ; 
 and who, accustomed to his manner of teaching, 
 will look behind his words for the thoughts 
 contained therein. To make people think, 
 ever has been Mr. Ruskin's aim, and the 
 passages he has written on Music are no 
 exception to the rule.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 Frontispiece FACSIMILE IN COLOUR OF LEAF FROM 
 
 ANTIPHONAIRE OF XIII. CENTURY 
 
 Seepages 136 and 138 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION OF THE IDEAL IN MUSIC . . I 
 
 II. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES Q 
 
 III. MUSIC AND PAINTING 37 
 
 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION 68 
 
 V. MUSIC AND MORALS 112 
 
 VI. CONCLUSION OF MUSIC AND " JOANNA'S CARE" 142
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 INTROD UCTION. 
 OF THE IDEAL IN MUSIC. 
 
 " The great purpose of Music, which is to say a 
 thing that you mean deeply, in the strongest and 
 clearest possible way." Fors, ix. 15. 
 
 WHEN a man is the possessor of world-wide 
 fame in one special line, it often happens 
 that some points in his work interesting in 
 themselves are eclipsed by the lustre of the 
 main theme, and remain overlooked by many 
 ardent students of his writings, who, per- 
 haps, belong, as a rule, to the one class to 
 which these writings first and specially appeal. 
 These, in Mr. Ruskin's case, of course, are, first 
 of all, the great brotherhood belonging to the
 
 2 I. OF THE IDEAL IN MUSIC. 
 
 arts of Painting, Drawing, and Architecture. 
 At the same time, even the lesser thoughts of 
 a great thinker contain much that is valuable 
 for those who care to study them, and it seems 
 as if those which have been specially interest- 
 ing to me come with a peculiar freshness and 
 originality from the fact of their not being, 
 so to speak, connected with the profession of 
 Ruskin's life, but with its relaxation. When- 
 ever a mind like his touches any subject, it 
 is bound to leave a particular stamp on 
 that subject ; and it is on that account, 
 as well as for the artistic teaching contained 
 in these by-thoughts of his, that they have 
 seemed to me to be of characteristic interest 
 and value. 
 
 The sentence selected as the heading for this 
 chapter may be taken to contain, in little, 
 Ruskin's musical creed, and indeed is the root 
 of everything contained in the following pages. 
 Even taken alone, these few words show per- 
 ception of, and instruction in, the deepest view 
 of the art of Music. What a revolution in
 
 I. OF THE IDEAL IN MUSIC. 3 
 
 many systems of teaching the realisation of this 
 little sentence, if properly understood, might 
 bring about ! Its result would be that, instead 
 of giving endless pupils a certain amount of 
 technical skill, teachers would understand and 
 search for that intellectual and spiritual quality 
 which enables the few " to say a thing you 
 mean deeply in the strongest and clearest 
 possible way" by means of Music. These 
 words express a power which carries those 
 who possess it through every range of human 
 feeling, and enables others to follow them ; 
 which has lifted the art of Music from a tinkling 
 of cymbals to a great intellectual force ; which, 
 in its highest efforts, has established Music as 
 a universal language of sympathy through the 
 power of Sound. 
 
 But alas ! in our generation, Music the ideal 
 and Music the practical seem to have agreed in 
 their ordinary rounds to part company the 
 practical, of course, in the nineteenth century, 
 triumphantly predominating ; though there are 
 few of us who, if asked the question, would not
 
 4 I. OF THE IDEAL IN MUSIC. 
 
 answer truthfully enough how greatly they pre- 
 ferred that simplicity in Music in which the 
 expression of the ideas of Love, Joy, or Sorrow 
 has often brought tears to the eyes, to meaning- 
 less technical achievements. Must it, then, be 
 forced upon us that this power of "meaning 
 deeply " is one of the rarest gifts of the gods ? 
 that it is akin to genius, and that no cultiva- 
 tion can give it ? Technical achievements have 
 shouldered it out of sight for long, but it is the 
 spirit of Music and of all true art the power 
 by which Orpheus won souls, which somehow 
 cannot be got into an examination paper, and 
 which hardly seems recognised when it exists. 
 Let us in imagination reverse all this, make the 
 higher ideal and meaning of Music sought for 
 before all in the work of our musical students, 
 and 
 
 "The great purpose of Music, which 
 is to say a thing you mean deeply, 
 in the strongest and clearest possible 
 way,"
 
 I. OF THE IDEAL IN MUSIC. 5 
 
 may produce 
 
 " Regulations which will bring about 
 some curious changes in piano-playing, 
 and several other things ! " 
 
 Naturally, this view of Music may be most 
 interesting to those in whom the intellectual 
 perception of Music's power is in advance 
 of their knowledge of its technicalities. It 
 has often excited interest to observe how 
 very distinct from musicianship is the power 
 of intellectual appreciation of Music, proving 
 the enormous value of the meaning of Music, 
 when such can exist, for those to whom its 
 simpler and more prominent forms of sound 
 do not appeal. Truly, " Powers there are 
 which touch each other to the quick, in modes 
 which the gross world no sense hath to per- 
 ceive, no soul to dream of." 
 
 In endeavouring to put together what Mr. 
 Ruskin has said to us on the subject of Music, 
 
 * " Fors Clavigera," No. ix. p. 15.
 
 6 I. OF THE IDEAL IN MUSIC. 
 
 I have found that nearly all his appreciative 
 writing regarding it belongs to the work of 
 his later years, though a few words as to its 
 moral power are to be found in the preface to 
 " Modern Painters," vol. i. p. xxiv., written in 
 1843. I* 1 youth Music does not seem to have 
 been an important influence in his life, so it 
 is the more striking that in after life he 
 gives it such full perception and importance. 
 It is easy to see that some vibrating influence 
 must have suddenly caused him to realise the 
 "deep meaning" of Music, and, indeed, it is 
 well known that Music is closely connected with 
 the romance of John Ruskin's life. But, that 
 perception, came in no sense from the result of 
 early training, rather, indeed, in spite of it, is 
 very evident ; though at the same time it was 
 impossible, even without a special influence, 
 that a mind like Ruskin's could go through life 
 without an understanding perception of any 
 art, and though full appreciation of Music 
 only belonged to his later years, he refers 
 to it again and again with almost curious
 
 T. OF THE IDEAL IN MUSIC. 7 
 
 insistency in his early works, as illustrating 
 canons of art. The intangibility of sound had 
 gotten a hold on him which he could not 
 understand, which perplexed and yet fascinated 
 him. These passages are interesting ; first, 
 as showing the close connection in Ruskin's 
 mind between two of the arts and how nearly 
 true critical perception of one art is interwoven 
 with that of another, and, secondly, as the words 
 of a master of language and word painting, on a 
 subject that much lacks intellectual expression 
 in treatment. There are not many Robert 
 Schumanns among us, whose writings, along 
 with those of such critics as Hueffer, have the 
 deepest value, combining as they do intel- 
 lectual and musical criticism. But there are 
 two sides to musical criticism, both equally 
 interesting ; the one, which is scientific analysis 
 of musical form and treatment, possible only to 
 experienced musicians, the other, which is the 
 spiritual perception of the aesthetic side and 
 influence of music, possible for any great mind 
 whose perceptions are keenly cultivated in the
 
 8 I. OF THE IDEAL IN MUSIC. 
 
 highest canons of any art. Schumann repre- 
 sented the ideal musical critic, in that both of 
 these essential points in criticism are to be 
 found in his writings. Ruskin, of course, never 
 realised music scientifically or technically at all 
 (and one does not claim for him the position of 
 a musical critic), but this perhaps renders his 
 thorough perception of its spiritual and aesthetic 
 value all the more remarkable, combined as it 
 is with a sort of clairvoyance (for it can only be 
 so named) into the "deeper meaning" which 
 must underlie all true art, and especially the art 
 of Music. 
 
 Such then must be the line upon which we 
 approach what Ruskin has written on Music. 
 He has applied the same search for "meaning" 
 to sound, which he did to colour, and as in the 
 blood red colour of some Turner skies, he felt 
 and traced the sorrow or destruction which it 
 always represented, so has he pointed out that 
 the value of musical sound is in proportion to 
 its faithful representation of the underlying, 
 truest, and deepest meanings of the human soul.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. 
 
 "'Hush-a-bye baby, upon the tree-top' my mother 
 used to sing to me : and I remember the dawn of 
 intelligence in which I began to object to the bad 
 rhyme which followed : ' when the wind blows, the 
 cradle will rock.'" Fors, xxiv. 19. 
 
 No doubt the early influences of childhood and 
 manhood were, in Ruskin's case, 'most antago- 
 nistic to Music. It is said, indeed, that music 
 and musicians did not enter into Mr. Ruskin 
 peres system of education, and that once 
 when, in a moment of youthful enthusiasm, 
 after hearing and meeting Jenny Lind, the son 
 asked leave to invite her to visit the family 
 mansion at Denmark Hill, permission was 
 kindly but firmly refused, an opera singer not 
 belonging to the sort of society that could be
 
 io II. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. 
 
 received there ! Such being the influences sur- 
 rounding his youth, Ruskin's later insight into 
 Music is the more remarkable, though no doubt 
 when he first turned towards it, and testified 
 his achieved allegiance to the art, it was more 
 that he recognised in it an important element 
 in general education, than from any very great 
 appreciation of the art for its own sake. 
 
 He tells in " Prseterita,"* however, in what 
 his early musical opportunities consisted, and 
 first, apparently, come the efforts of some ama- 
 teurs, constant visitors at Denmark Hill. The 
 first sentence on the subject has a sly hit at the 
 character of musicians in general, for we are 
 told that these were* "themselves both good 
 and pleasing musicians (the qualities are not 
 united in all musicians) ! " 
 
 Ruskin goes on to explain that, 
 
 "In this way, from early childhood, I 
 was accustomed to hear a great range of 
 good music completely and rightly ren- 
 
 * " Praeterita," vol. i. 313.
 
 II. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. n 
 
 dered, without breakings down, missings 
 out, affectations of manner, or vulgar pro- 
 minence of execution. Had the quartette 
 sung me English glees or Scotch ballads, 
 or British salt water ones, or had any one 
 had gift enough to render higher music 
 with its proper splendour, I might easily 
 have been led to spare some time from 
 my maps and mineralogy for attentive 
 listening. As it was, the scientific German 
 compositions were simply tiresome to me, 
 and the pretty modulations of Italian, 
 which I understood no syllable of, pleasant 
 only as the trills of the blackbirds, who 
 often listened, and expressed their satis- 
 faction by joining in the part songs 
 through the window that opened to the 
 back garden in the spring evening." * 
 
 This, however, does not sound like any real 
 attention to Music as an art, and on the same 
 * " Praeterita," vol. i. 318.
 
 12 II. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. 
 
 page Mr. Ruskin confesses that he did not 
 think he ever heard any masterly professional 
 Music 
 
 " until, as good hap was, I heard the 
 best, only to be heard during a narrow 
 space in those young days." 
 
 In connection with this first great oppor- 
 tunity he writes : 
 
 " It puzzles me that I have no recollec- 
 tion of any first sight and hearing of an 
 
 opera To be taken now at Paris 
 
 to the feebly dramatic ' Puritani ' was no 
 great joy to me ; but I then heard, 
 and it will always be a rare, and only 
 once or twice in a century possible, 
 thing to hear, four great musicians (Grisi, 
 Malibran, Mario, Lablache), all rightly to 
 be called of genius, singing together, with 
 sincere desire to assist each other, not 
 eclipse; and to exhibit, not only their own
 
 II. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. 13 
 
 power of singing, but the beauty of the 
 music they sang " 
 
 Here we have the dawn of a certain critical 
 attitude towards Music, for Ruskin, though 
 writing many years later, writes of what he felt 
 then, not now. Notwithstanding his hitherto 
 slight attention to Music, he at once grasped 
 three important points in connection with this 
 memorable performance ; first, the feebleness 
 of " Puritani " as an opera, which might all the 
 same have easily dazzled an uncritical mind ; 
 secondly, he shows keen perception of the 
 beauty of perfect musical execution ; and, thirdly, 
 points out of what such perfect execution must 
 always consist, an absolutely faithful rendering 
 of the Music's own beauties, not of each 
 singer's individual effects ; a truism, perhaps, 
 but a truism forgotten by ten performers out 
 of twelve. 
 
 " Afterwards, a season did not pass 
 without my hearing twice or thrice, at 
 
 * " Praeterita," vol. i. 319, 320, 321.
 
 14 H. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. 
 
 least, those four singers ; and I learned 
 the better because my ear was never jaded 
 by the intention of the music written for 
 them, or studied by them ; and am ex- 
 tremely glad now that I heard their ren- 
 derings of Mozart and Rossini, neither of 
 whom can be now said ever to be heard 
 at all, owing to the detestable quickening 
 of the time. Grisi and Malibran sang at 
 least one-third slower than any modern 
 cantatrice (it is a pretty conceit of 
 musical people to call themselves scien- 
 tific, when they have not yet fixed their 
 unit of time !) ; and Patti/the last time I 
 heard her, massacred Zerlina's part in 
 ' La ci darem,' as if the audience and 
 she had but the one object of getting 
 Mozart's air done with, as soon as pos- 
 sible Afterwards .... I was 
 
 brought to the point of trying to learn 
 to sing In which, though never
 
 II. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. 15 
 
 even getting so far as to read with ease, 
 I nevertheless, between my fine rhythmic 
 ear, and true lover's sentiment, got to 
 understand some principles of musical 
 art, which I shall perhaps be able to 
 enforce with benefit on the musical public 
 mind, even to-day "* 
 
 The first mention of any genuine musical 
 interest shown in Ruskin's early writings 
 occurs in an unpublished essay, dated 1838, 
 when he would be nineteen years old. Through 
 the kindness of Mrs. Arthur Severn I am able 
 to quote some hitherto unprinted portions of it. 
 It seemed at a first glance as if this essay 
 should wait for the chapter devoted to " Music 
 and Painting," but, on consideration, it will be 
 seen to represent early influences too strongly 
 not to be placed here. 
 
 Mr. Collingwood, in his recent " Life of 
 Ruskin," refers to this essay : "Just before the 
 
 * "Prseterita," vol. i. 322, 323, 324.
 
 1 6 II. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. 
 
 summer tour of 1838 to Scotland, John Ruskin 
 was introduced to Miss Charlotte Withers, a 
 young lady who was as fond of Music as he 
 was of Drawing. They discussed their favourite 
 studies with eagerness ; and to settle the matter 
 he wrote a long essay on ' The Comparative 
 Advantages of the Studies of Music and Paint- 
 ing,' in which he sets Painting as a means of 
 recreation and of education far above Music." 
 Ruskin also recalls the essay in " Prseterita ;"* 
 he says, speaking of it : 
 
 " We disputed on the relative dignities 
 of Music and Painting; and I wrote an 
 essay nine foolscap pages long, propos- 
 ing the entire establishment of my own 
 opinions, and the total discomfiture and 
 overthrow of hers, according to my usual 
 manner of paying court to my mistresses. 
 Charlotte Withers, however, thought I 
 did her great honour, and carried away 
 
 * " Prseterita," vol. i. 409.
 
 II. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. 17 
 
 the essay as if it had been a school 
 prize." 
 
 The extracts from it have been chosen 
 with special reference to the musical opinions 
 contained in it. The world knows Ruskin's 
 matured views on painting, but these youthful 
 views on music form a curious contrast to 
 opinions expressed later, and are not familiar. 
 
 " The power of enjoying Music is like 
 the power of distinguishing tastes in 
 food, a naturally implanted faculty ; the 
 power of being gratified by Painting is 
 either the acquired taste of a cultivated 
 mind, or the peculiar gift of an elevated 
 intellect. Brutes can enjoy Music ; mice, 
 in particular, are thrown into raptures by 
 it ; horses are strongly excited by trum- 
 pets, and may be taught to dance in excel- 
 lent time, or even to beat a tambourine 
 with their fore-feet ; the iguana, a kind 
 of lizard, is so passionately fond of music
 
 1 8 II. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. 
 
 that if you will but do him the favour to 
 whistle to him, even though you should 
 happen to be but a second-rate musician, 
 he will allow [you] to kill him rather 
 than stir. Snakes will dance in time, 
 elephants will perform elegant pas-seitls; 
 but I never heard of even that most 
 sagacious animal becoming an admirer 
 of Raphael, or a connoisseur in the works 
 of Correggio ; and the compliment of the 
 birds to Zeuxis was a mere mistake, for 
 they would have admired the bunch of 
 grapes much more.* The power, there- 
 
 * Zeuxis and Parrhasius contended for the prize of 
 Painting. Zeuxis painted a bunch of grapes; the birds 
 came and pecked at the picture, and everybody considered 
 the piece a chef d'auvre. Parrhasius produced a painting, 
 apparently covered with a curtain, which he told Zeuxis to 
 draw, and look at the picture. Zeuxis attempted to do so, 
 and was astonished when he found that the curtain was 
 painted. The prize was unanimously awarded to Parrhasius, 
 because Zeuxis had deceived birds only, but Parrhasius had 
 deceived Zeuxis.
 
 II. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. 19 
 
 fore, of enjoying Music, being common 
 to brutes, must be considered inferior to 
 the capability of appreciating Painting, 
 which is peculiar to him who was made 
 after the image of God. .... 
 
 "We will follow up this comparison 
 with instances assigning to Music its 
 utmost power; for in general it is a 
 mere sensual gratification, not even act- 
 ing on the feelings ;[!] it is only under 
 peculiar circumstances that it operates 
 with its whole power. There are few 
 things that appear to elevate the mind 
 more than fine sacred Music ; but this is 
 because it is fine, not because it is sacred. 
 Let a congregation sing a hymn without 
 instruments although that is hardly fair 
 to poor Music, for they'll be sure to play 
 the deuce with the tune, clerk and all 
 but let them be supposed to give it in 
 good style, in a little shabby chapel, no
 
 zo II. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. 
 
 echoes, no fine architecture, and in a 
 simple up and down hew-haw sort of 
 tune, it will produce no effect upon the 
 hearer. But let a glorious Te Deum be 
 thundered from a noble organ into the 
 dim and misty aisles of some vast and 
 shadowy cathedral, the clear voices of the 
 choristers joining at intervals, now low, 
 now loud, until the pure tones echo and 
 roll like the deep billows of a swelling 
 sea among the sculptured columns, and 
 every niche of Gothic tracery is full of 
 sound, the effect of such music upon the 
 mind is astonishing, and at first a person 
 would be ready to believe that the tones 
 were really addressing themselves to his 
 intellect. But this is not the case ; for, 
 first, the impression is not all made by 
 the music. The vast aisles, the sculp- 
 tured columns, the tinted windows, the 
 pale monuments, all add to the sublime
 
 II. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. 21 
 
 impression ; and, more than all these, the 
 sense of the purpose of the building 
 and the meaning of the music, the 
 awe that is produced by so sublime a 
 
 worship 
 
 " Let us observe the effect of Music in 
 other instances, in which, though more 
 simple, it will be found quite as power- 
 ful. The shepherds on the high Alps 
 live for months in a perfect solitude, not 
 perhaps seeing the face of a human being 
 for weeks together. Among these men 
 there is a very beautiful custom the 
 manner in which they celebrate their 
 evening devotions. When the sun is 
 just setting, and the peaks of eternal 
 snow become tinted of a pale but bright 
 rose-colour by his dying beams, the 
 shepherd who is highest upon the moun- 
 tains takes his horn and sounds through 
 it a few simple but melodious notes,
 
 22 II. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. 
 
 signifying ' Glory be to God ! ' Far and 
 wide on the pure air floats the sound ; 
 the nearest shepherd hears and replies ; 
 and from man to man, over the illimitable 
 deserts of a hundred hills, passes on the 
 voice of worship. Then there is a 
 silence, a deep, dead silence ; every head 
 is uncovered, every knee bowed ; and 
 from the stillness of the solitude rises 
 the voice of supplication heard by God 
 only. Again the highest shepherd sounds 
 through his horn ' Thanks be to God/ 
 again is the sound taken up and passed 
 on from man to man along the moun- 
 tains. It dies away ; the twilight comes 
 dimly down, and every one betakes him- 
 self to repose. 
 
 " In this custom there is something 
 peculiarly impressive, but it is owing 
 chiefly to concomitant circumstances ; 
 and the music of the horn, if it were
 
 II. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. 23 
 
 used for another purpose and in another 
 place, would be heard without any ex- 
 cited feeling. It is the stillness of the 
 solitude, the grandeur of the moun- 
 tains, the beauty of the twilight, and the 
 simplicity of the worship, which create 
 sensations so sublime in the hearer, 
 which makes so strong an impression on 
 his feelings, and appeal so vividly to his 
 mind. 
 
 "Again, in the effect which the air of 
 the ' Ranz des Vaches ' produces upon 
 the Swiss we have a striking instance of 
 the power of Music, but it is of music 
 combined with peculiar associations. This 
 air is one with which the veiy winds of 
 Switzerland are filled ; the chamois- 
 hunter sings it aloud as he flashes on 
 his dark and dreadful path ; the peasant 
 chants it in the valley among the brown 
 corn ; the maiden's clear voice flings it
 
 2 4 II. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. 
 
 upon the pure air as she wends to the 
 spring of waters ; and the child sings the 
 same notes when he is playing among 
 the flowers. What marvel, then, that 
 when the poor exile hears the same air 
 in a far land, the air which made his step 
 firm on the glacier, or his foot light on 
 the village green, which is associated 
 with all the pleasures and the dangers of 
 his childhood and his youth what mar- 
 vel that the yearning for the place of his 
 birth, for the land of his love, should 
 come near even unto death. I will grant 
 that nothing but Music could mingle 
 itself so intricately with the heart-strings, 
 and yet, in all these instances, it is not 
 Music alone ; it is combined with some- 
 thing of far higher power, and which 
 appeals to far deeper feelings, and arouses 
 infinitely mightier thoughts. We grant 
 that the association could not be raised
 
 II. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. 25 
 
 without the music. But what would the 
 music be without the association ? . . . . 
 " Thus, then, we have seen that, of the 
 different kinds of music, some owe their 
 astonishing power to association, others 
 to concomitant circumstances ; but that 
 in all cases it can operate upon the feel- 
 ings only. Josephine, when Napoleon 
 had exploded into one of his ungovern- 
 able furies, was wont to play to him one 
 simple but beautiful air, which always 
 soothed and pacified him. There is no 
 doubt that, as Music can raise violent 
 passions so it can allay them, or produce 
 softer passions in their room ; but we 
 cannot tell that much of the power of this 
 air upon the Emperor was not owing to 
 some association with the scenes of his 
 childhood, or some other circumstance, 
 which added to its power. When we 
 allow this mighty and almost irresistible
 
 26 II. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. 
 
 power of exciting the passions or calling 
 up the affections, when we have seen how 
 well it may be employed to stimulate 
 ardour, to favour meditation, or put the 
 mind in a proper temperament for devo- 
 tion, I think we have said nearly all that 
 can be said in favour of the art of Music 
 in the way of argument, though much may 
 be yet done by high authority 
 
 " Again, we are told that there will 
 be Music in heaven, but no Painting ; 
 but as the persons who tell us so have 
 hitherto never been there, and perhaps 
 are still far enough from it, their autho- 
 rity is not altogether to be depended 
 upon 
 
 " Lastly, to render perfect the com- 
 parison, let us consider the difference 
 between a fine air and a fine paint- 
 ing. The first thing that strikes us is 
 the proportionate time and labour
 
 [J. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. 27 
 
 requisite to produce them. The tune 
 may be dashed off by the inspiration of 
 five minutes ; [!] the picture is the 
 result of the labour and thought of 
 months. This, however, is of little im- 
 portance, for it is not the time occupied, 
 but the thing done which we have to 
 consider. Now, the music pleases the 
 ear, excites the feelings a little ; and that 
 is all. The painting, by its harmonious 
 arrangement of colour, and beautiful dis- 
 position of light and shade, gratifies the 
 eye as much as the music the ear ; but 
 then, it addresses itself to the mind ; it 
 is a representation of feeling and action 
 of man, or of the beauty and the soul of 
 Nature, and whether one or the other, is 
 a source of mental gratification of the 
 highest kind, a thing which we may look 
 upon day after day and hour after hour 
 with renewed feelings of wonder and
 
 28 II. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. 
 
 delight, a thing in which a story may 
 be told, a lesson taught, an example con- 
 veyed, a poem included nay, even a 
 Deity imagined. What ! shall that which 
 has been worshipped by mistaken zeal be 
 degraded and scorned by ignorant indif- 
 ference ? Shall that to which the error 
 of admiration has bowed the knee be 
 neglected by the blindness of imbecility, 
 or depreciated by the malignity of envy? 
 No : let both the arts be admired and 
 encouraged, but let them never be con- 
 sidered as equal ; let the musician be 
 honoured, but the painter be revered ; and, 
 above all, let his works be preserved and 
 protected as much as in us lies, since, 
 once lost they are lost for ever, and the 
 hand which alone could produce them is 
 now dust and ashes, and the soul which 
 alone could imagine them sleeping in the 
 stillness of the grave."
 
 II. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. 29 
 
 In connection with this essay, Mr. Colling- 
 wood's synopsis of the whole must be given, 
 and a few words of his deductions from it. 
 First the synopsis : 
 
 "To the higher forms of Music he (Ruskin) 
 awards no such power of compelling emotion, 
 and finds no intellectual interest in them to 
 make up for the loss ; whereas in painting, the 
 higher the art the stronger the appeal, both to 
 the senses and the intellect. He describes an 
 ideal ' Crucifixion ' by Vandyke or Guido, 
 insisting on the complexity of emotions and 
 trains of thought roused by such a picture. 
 He goes into ecstasies over a typical 'Madonna' 
 of Raphael ; discusses David's ' Horatii,' and 
 concludes that even in landscape this double 
 office of painting, at once artistic and literary, 
 gives it a supremacy to which Music has no 
 claim. As a practical means of education he 
 finds little difficulty in showing that 'with 
 regard to drawing, the labour and time required 
 is the same (as for Music), but the advantages 
 gained will,' he thinks, ' be found considerably
 
 30 II. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. 
 
 superior. These are four : namely (i) the 
 power of appreciating fine pictures ; (2) the 
 agreeable and interesting occupation of many 
 hours ; (3) the habit of quick observation, and 
 exquisite perception of the beauties of Nature ; 
 and, lastly, the power of amusing and gratifying 
 others.'" 
 
 Mr. Collingwood's deductions from the essay 
 are, that " in the examples chosen, we see the 
 boy who admired as yet without full discrimina- 
 tion ; in the line of thought taken we see the 
 man. He never was a musician : he learnt to 
 play and sing a little, and he has composed a 
 few pretty little melodies as an amusement of 
 his later years. He takes great delight in 
 ballad singing and in the simpler forms of 
 old operatic music. But he has no ear for 
 the higher efforts of the art ; is not what we 
 call musical." 
 
 Certainly not from an executive and technical 
 point of view, but that is not sought for here ; 
 and, moreover, these views on Music were the 
 views of youth, and must be qualified greatly
 
 II. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. 31 
 
 by the very apparent jealousy of the young art 
 critic for the art he loved best, though even 
 here is perception of the emotional power of 
 music. 
 
 Two years later, in a letter from Rome in 
 1840, we have a perfect bit of Ruskin's word 
 painting, again showing comprehension of the 
 emotional power of church music (possibly 
 belonging for the most part to the old Italian 
 church school, though Mr. Ruskin might 
 not know it), which argues a certain growing 
 appreciation of the best in Music. He says 
 of it : 
 
 " I heard a noble service in one of the 
 parish churches yesterday, and an hour 
 and a half of magnificent organ and 
 chorus three organs answering each 
 other, and the whole congregation join- 
 ing as Italians can do always in per- 
 fect melody ; the church, a favourable 
 specimen, one blaze of Oriental alabaster
 
 32 II. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. 
 
 and gold ; the altar, with pillars of lapis 
 lazuli running up fifty feet, more than a 
 foot in diameter, at a guinea an inch in 
 mere material, with groups of white 
 marble flying round and above them, 
 and the roof rising in an apparent infinite 
 height of glorious fresco ; and every pos- 
 sible power of music used to its fullest 
 extent the best pieces of melody chosen 
 out of standard operas and every variety 
 of style, exciting, tender, or sublime 
 given with ceaseless and overwhelming 
 effect, one solo unimaginably perfect, 
 by a chosen voice thrilling through 
 darkness. All music should be heard 
 in obscurity."* 
 
 So end those of Ruskin's thoughts about Music 
 which may be attributed to youthful influences. 
 No great appreciation of the value of the art can 
 possibly be argued from them ; but no man who 
 
 * "Essay on Literature and Letters," p. 67.
 
 II. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. 33 
 
 wrote our " Fors " motto could, at the same 
 time, have endorsed the views expressed in the 
 essay of 1838 ; and it seems curious, that one 
 who, later, so felt the depth of Music's power, 
 should at first have been struck by little but 
 its ear-tickling emotionalism. It is perfectly 
 true Ruskin never was a musician : his tunes, 
 his playing, and his singing will have no place 
 here ; but what the common herd expresses 
 as " inspired," is what Ruskin would call the 
 "deeper meaning" of Music, and that he under- 
 stood and deeply valued. Notes and words 
 are its implements, and must have their all- 
 important value, but the deeper meaning may 
 be understood by one who practically could 
 not use its implements. In later years Ruskin 
 loved Mozart and Scarlatti, which means a 
 certain classic appreciation, and I, personally, 
 well remember his teaching of the " meaning " 
 of " Voi che sapete " to be great in value to 
 the singer, because it came in where the notes 
 and the words ended. 
 
 Therefore, it does not seem to me that to
 
 34 II. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. 
 
 establish the value of Ruskin's thoughts on 
 Music it is necessary to prove which indeed 
 would be impossible that he was in any sense 
 a musical critic, in the ordinary acceptation of 
 the term. What is to be admired in what he 
 has said of the art, is the beautiful way in which 
 its spiritual meaning and teaching has been 
 expressed by him, in the short passages which 
 he has devoted to it, and in which no one has 
 ever excelled him, 
 
 He tells us in " Modern Painters " that 
 
 " The critical and executive faculties are 
 in great part independent of each other ; " 
 
 so that 
 
 "it is nearly as great an absurdity to 
 require of any critic that he should 
 equal in execution even the work 
 which he condemns, as to require of 
 the audience which hisses a piece of 
 vocal music that they should instantly
 
 II. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. 35 
 
 chant it in truer harmony themselves "* 
 
 though critics often take advantage of this 
 fact and executants suffer from it ! It is in 
 this critical perception of Music's highest sen- 
 timent, which may be found in its simplest 
 forms, that some of Ruskin's words about it 
 touch what is held to be the soul of Music. It 
 is more easy to express this simply by means 
 of an example, for which purpose such a song 
 as "The Land o' the Leal" may be taken. If 
 the singer, intellectually and emotionally, con- 
 veys through its means, to its hearers, human 
 longing, human sorrow, human loss, and the 
 belief in a future life, there we have the soul of 
 the Music not the mere words, not the mere 
 tune, but something far beyond either and 
 infinitely above them. This quality in Music, 
 so entirely its own, and so often absolutely 
 overlooked, Ruskin has touched upon as only 
 such a mind could do, and has told us of its 
 purpose, 
 
 * " Modern Painters," vol. iii. p. xiii. pref.
 
 36 II. MUSIC AND EARLY INFLUENCES. 
 
 " To say a thing that you mean deeply, 
 in the strongest and clearest possible 
 way." 
 
 Only from the standpoint I have endeavoured 
 to explain, can Mr. Ruskin's thoughts on Music 
 meet with a fair comprehension, and again let 
 me state that the position of a musical critic is 
 not claimed for him ; the object here, is merely, 
 to put before those who care for them, his 
 thoughts on Music from their varying points of 
 view. But as many of these thoughts certainly 
 are of a critical nature, it is best to say that those 
 persons who want practical, musical criticism, 
 must look for it elsewhere ; but for the few who 
 care to think, there is teaching to be gathered 
 from Ruskin's words on Music, and for all there 
 is beautiful expression of the fresh perceptions 
 of a singularly spiritual mind, unbiassed by, nay, 
 unknowing of, schools of musical opinion, but 
 searching always, and finding often, the highest 
 ideal meaning which exists in all true Art.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MUSIC AND PAINTING. 
 
 " The sequences of colour are like those of sound, 
 and susceptible of all the complexity and passion of 
 the most accomplished music." 
 
 " A great colourist will make even the absence of 
 colour lovely, as the fading of a perfect voice makes 
 silence sacred." Two Paths. 
 
 IN order to follow Ruskin's thoughts about 
 Music more easily, I have thought it well to 
 classify them to a certain extent ; those in 
 connection with painting seem naturally to 
 follow here, giving the first place to the art 
 that claimed and held his greatest lifelong 
 devotion. A commencement must be made 
 with the passages contained in "Modern 
 Painters," which succeed chronologically those
 
 38 III. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 
 
 from the early essay and letter, from which 
 quotation has already been made. 
 
 Throughout the five volumes of " Modern 
 Painters " there are a number of references 
 to Music, proving that, notwithstanding the 
 secondary position which we must conclude it 
 held with Ruskin in his youth, it still had made 
 a distinct mark in his mind. In most of these 
 references, Music is used as the best means of 
 illustrating artistic points, otherwise difficult to 
 express. Such is the passage on "unity of 
 sequence " (in a picture), where he says 
 
 " The effect of Variety is best exempli- 
 fied by the melodies of music, wherein, by 
 the differences of the notes, they are con- 
 nected with each other in certain pleasant 
 relations."* 
 
 A few pages further we find thoughts on 
 proportion, which are again explained by means 
 of their musical equivalents : 
 
 * "Modern Painters," vol. ii. p. 52.
 
 111. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 39 
 
 " It is utterly vain to endeavour to 
 reduce this proportion to finite rules, for 
 it is as various as musical melody, and 
 the laws to which it is subject are of the 
 same general kind, so that the determi- 
 nation of right or wrong proportion is 
 as much a matter of feeling and experi- 
 ence as the appreciation of good musical 
 composition, not but that there is a 
 science of both, and principles which 
 may not be infringed, but that within 
 these limits the liberty of invention is 
 infinite." * 
 
 Such passages as these, however, though 
 perhaps not strictly musical, are of interest, 
 and serve to strengthen the canon that the 
 rules of right feeling in any art are the same 
 for one and all. 
 
 The next passage of musical interest is not a 
 mere formal comparison, but may be looked 
 
 * "Modern Painters," vol. ii. p. 57.
 
 40 III. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 
 
 upon as one of Ruskin's teaching attitudes on 
 Art, including Music ; he says : 
 
 "The group calling themselves Evan- 
 gelical ought no longer to render their 
 religion an offence to men of the world 
 by associating it only with the most 
 vulgar forms of Art. It is not neces- 
 sary that they should admit either Music 
 or Painting into religious service ; but, 
 if they admit either the one or the 
 other, let it not be bad Music nor 
 bad Painting : it is certainly in nowise 
 more for Christ's honour that His praise 
 should be sung discordantly, or His 
 miracles painted discreditably, than that 
 His word should be preached ungram- 
 matically."* 
 
 If this passage received due attention, a 
 revolution would be effected in some church 
 
 * " Modern Painters," vol. iii. p. 60.
 
 III. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 41 
 
 and chapel singing, where often the sounds are 
 such, that the only possible conclusion is that 
 any howl will do for God ! 
 
 In the third volume of "Modern Painters" 
 Mr. Ruskin has evidently been greatly struck 
 with the words of de Stendhal, in the passage 
 which ends thus, in speaking of melody : "It 
 has no rules, no art is so utterly deprived of 
 precepts for the production of the beautiful ; " 
 to which Ruskin adds "so much the better for 
 it and for us." This, again, in Ruskin's mind is 
 translated (if one may put it so) to be of use to 
 the sister art of painting ; he says : 
 
 " I trust the time will soon come when 
 melody in painting will be understood, 
 no less than in music, and when people 
 will find that, there also, the great melo- 
 dists have no rules, and cannot have any, 
 and that there are in this, as in sound, 
 ' no precepts for the production of the 
 beautiful.'"* 
 
 * " Modern Painters," vol. iii. p. 89.
 
 42 III. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 
 
 Other passages occur throughout "Modern 
 Painters," showing that Ruskin has felt that in 
 certain matters of artistic expression nothing 
 could illustrate his meaning so clearly as 
 various points in Music. Here is one relating 
 to the inconsistencies 
 
 " between perception of colour and 
 form, which, I have had to insist upon in 
 other places, is exactly like that between 
 articulation and harmony. We cannot 
 have the richest harmony with the 
 sharpest and most audible articulation of 
 words : yet good singers will articulate 
 clearly ; and the perfect study of the 
 science of Music will conduct to a fine 
 articulation." * 
 
 A further passage illustrates the introduction 
 of colour : 
 
 " Whatever else should be wrong that 
 
 * " Modern Painters," vol. iv. p. 54.
 
 III. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 43 
 
 should be right : just as, though the music 
 of a song may not be so essential to its 
 influence as the meaning of the words, 
 yet if the music be given at all, // must 
 be right, or its discord will spoil the 
 words ; and it would be better, of the two, 
 that the words should be indistinct, than 
 the notes false." * 
 
 Such passages, though one may not agree 
 with their views, and though they were de- 
 signed to illustrate painting, have distinct 
 musical interest. 
 
 Later, in the same volume, one of the great 
 rules of all art is forcibly expressed : 
 
 " In all the noblest compositions, utmost 
 power is permitted, but only for a short 
 
 time, or over a small space Music 
 
 must rise to its utmost loudness and fall 
 from it, colour must be graduated to its 
 
 * " Modern Painters," vol. iv. p. 55.
 
 44 HI. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 
 
 extreme brightness, and descend from 
 it." * 
 
 The whole theory of artistic climax is here 
 brought before us in a few words, the realisation 
 of which every artist, every musician, be he 
 executant or composer, should ever have before 
 him, and without which, none of the finest effects 
 of any art are attainable or perceptible. 
 
 The last quotation concludes those gathered 
 from " Modern Painters." 
 
 Throughout the " Stones of Venice " are a 
 few more scattered musical allusions, not all, 
 however, separable from their context, and still 
 not so much used for their intrinsic musical 
 interest in the mind of the writer, as to illus- 
 trate, as before, artistic points of drawing and 
 painting. Thus, regarding a design intended 
 to be seen near, he says : 
 
 " Remove it to a distance and the 
 connecting delicacies vanish, the energies 
 
 * "Modern Painters," vol. iv. p. 276.
 
 III. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 45 
 
 alone remain .... there is alike a more 
 palpable effect, the retirement of a band 
 of music, in which the instruments are 
 of very unequal powers, the fluting and 
 fifing expire, the drumming remains." * 
 
 Again : " Order in its highest is one of the 
 necessities of Art, just as Time is a necessity of 
 Music." In this last quotation it seems as if 
 Ruskin's lack of musical technicality had led 
 him astray in his comparison, for "order," as 
 applied to the composition of Painting, is equally 
 necessary in the composition of Music ; time 
 alone would do badly without it ! 
 
 An important note occurs in the third volume 
 of the "Stones of Venice," showing that Ruskin's 
 mind had not yet undergone much change in 
 its view of Music from the first passage quoted 
 from the early essay of 1838 ;. a sort of jealousy 
 for the art of Painting almost seems to have 
 held him captive to prevent his giving Music 
 
 * " Stones of Venice," vol. iii.
 
 46 III. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 
 
 its due, though he is unable to help himself 
 partially recognising its true value. Of course 
 the subject embodied in the following quotation 
 is one that, perhaps, will ever be a matter 
 for discussion by the partisans of two great 
 arts ; but in this instance it compares somewhat 
 curiously with Ruskin's later utterances, where 
 " the power of sound " is extolled to the utmost 
 degree its worshippers could desire. Here he 
 says : 
 
 " Nothing is more wonderful to me 
 than to hear the pleasure of the eye in 
 colour spoken of with disdain as 'sensual,' 
 while people exalt that of the ear in 
 Music. Do they really suppose the eye 
 is a less noble bodily organ than the 
 ear?" . . . . " I do not mean to de- 
 preciate Music ; let it be loved and 
 reverenced as is just, only let the delight 
 of the eye be reverenced more. The 
 great power of music over the multitude
 
 111. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 47 
 
 is owing, not to its being less, but more 
 sensual in colour ; it is so distinctly 
 and so richly sensual, that it can be 
 idly enjoyed ; it is exactly at this point 
 where the lower and the higher plea- 
 sures of the senses and imagination are 
 balanced ; so that pure and great minds 
 love it for its invention and emotion, 
 lower minds for its sensual power." 
 
 Ruskin had also spoken in a letter of 1843 
 of "a keen eye for colour" as "a faculty far 
 more rare than an ear for music." 
 
 But, especially in the former passage, one 
 cannot help feeling that here speaks the art 
 critic, jealous of the supremacy for the art he 
 loves most. It could not be granted for an instant 
 that the power over a multitude, of such a song 
 as " Auld Lang Syne," the National Anthem, or 
 " The girl I left behind me," under certain cir- 
 cumstances, has even so much as a touch of what 
 is ordinarily understood by the word sensual ; and
 
 48 III. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 
 
 yet it is hardly possible to credit a whole crowd 
 with love for their " invention," though perhaps 
 for their "emotion." At any rate, a much higher 
 range of feeling is produced by such airs and 
 appealed to in them, than mere pleasure of the 
 senses. This expression of evidently misun- 
 derstood feeling makes one think that Mr. 
 Ruskin, in his retired student life, could not at 
 this time have experienced the effect on a crowd, 
 of simple strains, which he would have been the 
 very first to feel and acknowledge with admira- 
 tion ; as he did, later, in the following passage 
 from "Two Paths," which it is irresistible not 
 to place here for immediate reading after the 
 former one. Comparison has been made be- 
 tween Music and Architecture, and Ruskin goes 
 on to say : 
 
 "A well-disposed group of notes in 
 Music will sometimes make you weep 
 and sometimes laugh. You can express 
 the depth of all affections by these dispo- 
 sitions of sound ; you can give courage
 
 III. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 49 
 
 to the soldier, language to the lover, con- 
 solation to the mourner, more joy to the 
 joyful, more humility to the devout. 
 Can you do as much by your group of 
 lines ? Do you suppose the front of 
 Whitehall, a singularly beautiful one, 
 ever inspires the two Horse Guards, 
 during the hour they sit opposite to it, 
 with military ardour ?" * 
 
 A delightful victory for Sound had been 
 achieved between the writing of these two 
 passages ; a victory partly obtained, it seems to 
 me, by the importance given to Music in educa- 
 tion by Plato, partly by the instinctive growth 
 of Ruskin's perception of its powers. 
 
 To "Two Paths" we owe another interest- 
 ing comparison between every touch in a 
 painting and the least important notes in a 
 piece of music. 
 
 * "Two Paths," par. 104. 
 
 D
 
 50 III. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 
 
 " A misplaced touch may sometimes 
 annihilate the labour of hours. Nor are 
 any of us prepared to understand the 
 work of any great master, till we feel 
 this, and feel it as distinctly as we do 
 the value of arrangement in the notes 
 of music. Take any noble musical air, 
 and you find, on examining 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 passage is 
 twenty times more beautiful so intro- 
 duced, 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 may consider the 
 whole as a prolonged musical composition: 
 its parts, as separate airs connected in the 
 story ; its little bits and fragments of
 
 III. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 51 
 
 colour and line, as separate passages or 
 bars in melodies ; and down to the 
 minutest note of the whole down to the 
 minutest toztch if there is one that can 
 be spared that one is doing a mischief," 1 
 for " the touch of Titian, Correggio, or 
 Turner, is a far more marvellous piece of 
 nervous action than can be shown in 
 anything but colour, or in the very highest 
 executive expression in Music, "t 
 
 Mentions of Music, in connection with 
 painting, run through most of Ruskin's works 
 the one illustrative of the other art. The first 
 reference in the "Elements of Drawing" is a 
 funny little comparison between colour and 
 "correct singing," by which, it seems, Mr. 
 Ruskin means singing in tune, the shades of 
 tune being very like the shades of colour. 
 
 " If you are singing, and sing false 
 
 * "Two Paths," par. 44. \ Ibid. 160.
 
 52 III. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 
 
 notes, it does not matter how true the 
 words are. If you sing at all, you must 
 sing sweetly ; if you colour at all, you 
 must colour rightly."* 
 
 Also in "The Elements of Drawing" we 
 have another passage devoted to composition ; 
 here Ruskin arrives at its similarity, whether in 
 poetry, painting or music. He says : 
 
 " In a well-composed air, no note, how- 
 ever short or low, can be spared, but the 
 least is as necessary as the greatest : no 
 note, however prolonged, is tedious ; but 
 the others prepare for, and are benefited 
 by, its duration ; no note, however high, 
 is tyrannous ; the others prepare for, and 
 are benefited by, its exaltation ; no note, 
 however low, is overpowered, the others 
 prepare for, and sympathise with, its 
 humility : and the result is, that each and 
 
 * "Elements of Drawing," p. 194.
 
 III. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 53 
 
 every note has a value in the position 
 assigned to it, which, by itself, it never 
 possessed, and of which, by separation 
 from the others, it would instantly be 
 deprived." 
 
 Every point in this passage, Ruskin applies 
 equally to poetry and painting, going on to say 
 that the form of 
 
 " Composition in the arts should 
 strongly affect every order of mind, how- 
 ever unlearned or thoughtless. Hence 
 the popular delight in musical rhythm 
 and metre, and in simple musical 
 melodies. "t 
 
 Popular, otherwise uninstructed, delight in 
 musical composition, as in all else, naturally 
 turns to the simplest forms of it, as a child 
 does to the shortest words in the language. 
 
 * " Elements of Drawing," p. 240. f Ibid. p. 242.
 
 54- III. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 
 
 The law of contrast is also shown to be 
 necessary in Music, though spoken of perhaps 
 a little slightingly as an "artifice perpetual 
 in Music, and perpetual also in good illumina- 
 tion."* 
 
 An interesting passage on the law of expres- 
 sion occurs a few pages later in the same book. 
 
 Among those are laws which 
 
 " I never hope to be able to explain, 
 laws of expression, bearing simply on 
 simple matters ; but, for that very reason 
 more influential than any others .... 
 it being just as impossible, I think, 
 to explain why one succession of 
 musical notes shall be lofty and pathetic, 
 and such as might have been sung 
 by Casella to Dante, and why another 
 succession is base and ridiculous, and 
 would be fit only for the reasonably good 
 ear of Bottom."''' 
 
 * " Elements of Drawing," p. 295. f Ibid. pp. 315, 316.
 
 III. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 55 
 
 This matter of expression in certain sounds 
 has also again and again been noted by Ruskin 
 to explain the expression of certain colours ; 
 and he says here, speaking of the best arrange- 
 ment of colour, " we like it, just as we like an 
 old air in Music, but cannot reason any re- 
 fractory person into liking it " (I think one may 
 add because] 
 
 " The best part of every great work is 
 always inexplicable : it is good because it 
 is good."* 
 
 The next extract refers to the change that 
 might be brought about in public feeling for 
 art under certain conditions ; the passage is 
 introduced in connection with some thoughts 
 on the power of design which is so often to be 
 found far apart from real genius. 
 
 "The multiplication of designs by 
 painters of second-rate power is no 
 
 * " Elements of Drawing," pp. 315, 316.
 
 56 III. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 
 
 more desirable than the writing of Music 
 by inferior composers " 
 
 Ruskin goes on to say that in painting good 
 copies of great masters are better than bad 
 originals, just as 
 
 " The rendering of Music by an en- 
 thusiastic and highly-trained executant 
 differs from the grinding of a street 
 organ. And the change in the tone of 
 public feeling, produced by familiarity 
 with such work, would soon be no 
 less great than in their musical en- 
 joyment, if having been accustomed only 
 to hear black Christy's, blind fiddlers, 
 and hoarse beggars scrape or howl about 
 their streets, they were permitted daily 
 audience of faithful and gentle orchestral 
 rendering of the work of the highest 
 classical masters." 
 
 * "Ariadne Florentina," App. p. 245.
 
 III. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 57 
 
 Here is right appreciation of classic beauty 
 in Music, and a just if tardy admission that due 
 study is necessary for the appreciation of its 
 highest qualities. 
 
 Leaving design we return to Music in con- 
 nection with colour, in which comparisons 
 Mr. Ruskin has ever been specially happy : 
 part of this passage is one of the most 
 beautiful and happy descriptions of true artistic 
 feeling, and of the born artist. 
 
 " Painting is playing on a colour violin 
 seventy times seven stringed, and invent- 
 ing your tune as you play on it. This is 
 the easy, simple, straightforward busi- 
 ness you have to learn. Here is your 
 catgut and your mahogany ; better or 
 worse quality of both of course there 
 may be, Cremona tone, and so on .... 
 but the primary question is Can you 
 play ? Perfectly you never can but 
 by birth gift. The entirely first-rate
 
 58 III. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 
 
 musicians and painters are born ; like 
 Mercury, their words are music, and their 
 touch is gold ; sound and colour wait on 
 them from their youth, and no practice 
 will ever enable other human creatures to 
 
 do anything like them But the 
 
 matter must still depend on practice as 
 well as on genius .... your care as a 
 student, on the whole, is not to be given 
 to the quality of your piano, but of your 
 touch. This is the great fact which I 
 have to teach you respecting colour ; this 
 is the root of all excellent doing and 
 
 perceiving How divine the law 
 
 of Nature is, which has so connected the 
 immortality of beauty with patience of 
 industry ! " * 
 
 The one passage concerning Music from the 
 " Seven Lamps of Architecture " is an excellent 
 comparison between proportion and melody. 
 
 * " Laws of Fesote," p. 117.
 
 III. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 59 
 
 " Proportions are as infinite (and that 
 in all kinds of things, as severally in 
 colours, lines, shades, lights, and forms) 
 as possible airs in Music : and it is just 
 as rational an attempt to teach a young 
 architect how to proportion truly and 
 well by calculating for him the propor- 
 tions of fine works, as it would be to teach 
 him to compose melodies by calculating 
 the mathematical relations of the notes 
 in Beethoven's 'Adelaide' or Mozart's 
 1 Requiem.' "* 
 
 It may be doubted whether the following 
 quotation should not find a place in " Music 
 and Morals," but as its real subject is Music 
 and Colour, it is included here. 
 
 " The whole science of aesthetics is, in 
 the depth of it, expressed by one passage 
 of Goethe's in the end of the second part 
 
 * "Seven Lamps," pp. 124, 5.
 
 60 III. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 
 
 of " Faust; " the notable one that follows 
 the song of the Lemures, when the angels 
 enter to dispute with the Fiends for 
 the soul of Faust. They enter singing 
 ' Pardon to sinners, and life to the 
 dust.' Mephistopheles hears them first 
 and explains to his troop : ' Discord I 
 hear, and filthy jingling ' ' Mistone 
 hore ich ; garstiges Geklimper.' This, 
 you see, is the extreme of bad taste in 
 
 Music Both Music and Colour 
 
 are naturally influences of peace ; but 
 in the war trumpet, and the war 
 shield, in the battle song and battle 
 standard, they have concentrated, by 
 beautiful imagination, the cruel passions 
 of men." * 
 
 What Ruskin has written on Music and 
 Painting may be appropriately concluded with 
 his beautiful description of one of the frescoes 
 
 * " Aratra Pentelici," pp. 14, 15.
 
 III. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 61 
 
 in Santa Maria Novella, Florence. Here both 
 Painting and Music are searched through and 
 through for their powers of deep meaning. 
 The fresco consists of Simon Memmi's figure 
 representing " Music," following that of 
 "Reason." 
 
 " After learning to reason, you will 
 learn to sing; for you will want to. 
 There is so much reason for singing 
 in this sweet world, when one thinks 
 rightly of it. None for grumbling, 
 provided always you have entered in 
 at the strait gate. You will sing all 
 along the road then, in a little while, 
 in a manner pleasant for people to 
 hear." 
 
 " This figure has been one of the love- 
 liest in the series, an extreme refine- 
 ment and tender severity being aimed at 
 throughout. She is crowned, not with 
 laurel, but with small leaves I am not
 
 62 III. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 
 
 sure what they are, being too much in- 
 jured the face thin, abstracted and wist- 
 ful ; the lips not far open in their low 
 singing ; the hair rippling softly on the 
 shoulders. She plays on a small organ, 
 richly ornamented with Gothic tracery, 
 the slope of it set with crockets 
 like those of Santa Maria del Fiore. 
 Simon Memmi means that all music 
 must be ' sacred.' Not that you are 
 never to sing anything but hymns ; but 
 that whatever is rightly called Music, or 
 work of the Muses, is divine in help and 
 healing. 
 
 " The actions of both hands are singu- 
 larly sweet. The right is one of the 
 loveliest things I ever saw done in paint- 
 ing. She is keeping down one note only, 
 with her third finger, seen under the 
 raised fourth : the thumb, just passing 
 under; all the curves of the fingers
 
 III. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 63 
 
 exquisite, and the pale light and shade 
 of the rosy flesh relieved against the ivory 
 white and brown of the notes. Only 
 the thumb and end of the forefinger 
 are seen of the left hand, but they 
 indicate enough its light pressure on 
 the bellows. Fortunately, all these por- 
 tions of the fresco are absolutely intact. 
 
 " Underneath, Tubal-Cain. Not Jubal 
 as you would expect. Jubal is the inventor 
 of musical instruments. Tubal-Cain, 
 thought the old Florentines, invented 
 harmony itself. They, the best smiths 
 in the world, knew the differences in 
 tones of hammer strokes on anvil. 
 Curiously enough the only piece of true 
 part singing, done beautifully and joy- 
 fully, which I have heard this year (1874) 
 in Italy (being south of Alps exactly six 
 months and ranging from Genoa to 
 Palermo) was out of a busy smithy at
 
 64 III. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 
 
 Perugia. Of bestial howling, and entirely 
 frantic vomiting up of hopelessly damned 
 souls through their still carnal throats, I 
 have heard more than, please God, I will 
 ever endure the hearing of again, in one 
 of His summers. 
 
 You think Tubal-Cain very ugly? 
 Yes, much like a shaggy baboon : not 
 accidentally, but with most scientific 
 understanding of baboon character. Men 
 must have looked like that before 
 they had invented Harmony, or felt 
 that one note differed from another, 
 says Simon Memmi. Darwinism, like 
 all widely popular and widely mis- 
 chievous fallacies, has many a curious 
 gleam and grain of Truth in its tissue. 
 
 Under Moses. 
 
 Medallion, a youth drinking. Other- 
 wise, you might have thought only
 
 III. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 65 
 
 church music meant, not feast music 
 also." * 
 
 Such are the thoughts of Ruskin, linking 
 together, by laws applicable to both, the arts of 
 Painting and Music. He has given us in these 
 passages the laws of contrast, the laws of com- 
 position, the laws of expression, the laws of 
 design, the laws of power, and the laws of 
 colour. All these laws, as applied to Painting, 
 he has illustrated by means of musical descrip- 
 tion, the terms belonging to which having served 
 better to convey his meaning, than those terms 
 which belong to the art itself. Nearly every 
 illustration has, at the same time, intrinsic, musical 
 meaning. The passages have, in many instances, 
 a wider value than that of comparative illus- 
 trations, though interesting as such. Many a 
 word of musical truth is here ; many a sugges- 
 tion of artistic thought is given, of equal 
 value to the painter and the musician, save, in 
 that the musician is poorer than the painter in 
 
 * "The Strait Gate," p. 134.
 
 66 III. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 
 
 writings which touch the ideal side of his art, 
 so that, therefore, perhaps, the value of such 
 suggestions is greater to him. Throughout 
 all these passages, we see that the strength of 
 Ruskin's words on all art subjects, and their 
 greatest value, is, that he has never lowered 
 any branch of it to an amusement, never 
 allowed it other than a serious signification in 
 life, if we except the views contained in the 
 early Essay of 1838. Music has, of all the 
 arts, been most often lowered to the position 
 of an amusement, notwithstanding many a noble 
 record ; therefore, all serious views of it are 
 of special value, bearing in mind that 
 
 " The first great principle we have to 
 hold by in dealing with the matter is, 
 that the end of Art is not to amuse; 
 and that all Art which proposes amuse- 
 ment as its end, or which is sought for 
 that end, must be of an inferior, and is 
 probably of a harmful class.
 
 III. MUSIC AND PAINTING. 67 
 
 The end of Art is as serious as that of 
 other beautiful things of the blue sky, 
 and the green grass, and the clouds, and 
 the dew. They are either useless, or they 
 are of much deeper function than giving 
 amusement." * 
 
 * "Cestus of Aglaia VIII.," p. 528.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 
 
 "Every well-trained youth and girl ought to be 
 taught the elements of Drawing, as of Music, early 
 and accurately." Laws of FesoU.* 
 
 IN entering upon the portions of Mr. Ruskin's 
 writings which seem to come more immedi- 
 ately under this heading, it is necessary to note 
 how largely his views, and even the manner of 
 expressing them, were influenced by the well- 
 known sayings of Plato relating to Music con- 
 tained in the "Laws "and the "Republic." I 
 say "well-known," but it is possible that to many 
 of those who are not classical students, Ruskin's 
 fugitive extracts of portions of these Dialogues 
 
 * " Laws of Fesole," pref. p. vi.
 
 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 69 
 
 may stand as an introduction to ancient classic 
 thought on Music. For this reason his quota- 
 tions from Plato are included here, though, 
 indeed, it would have been difficult to separate 
 the subject-matter from his comments, so inter- 
 woven are they. It should, perhaps, also have 
 been stated sooner that many musical terms 
 used by Ruskin, are evidently used in the sense 
 of their exact translation from the Greek, not 
 by any means as they are now more technically 
 understood in Music. Thus, he often uses the 
 word "harmony," as taken to mean any harmo- 
 nious sound (not in its ordinarily accepted signi- 
 fication, of a combination of sounds, which Greek 
 Music did not contain). The Platonic view of 
 the use of Music is, without doubt (admitting 
 modifications of it), Ruskin's own view of the Art 
 as an Educator; the passages from Plato, and 
 Ruskin's comments on them, in connection with 
 the subject of Education, shall, therefore, stand 
 first, to be followed in natural sequence of idea, 
 with the musical portion of the latter's sketch 
 of " Ideal England," framing together, a not
 
 70 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 
 
 unimportant educational, musical code, from 
 the point of view of its higher meaning. 
 
 The musical teaching of Plato was produced 
 in " Fors," in answer to a Manchester corre- 
 spondent, who wished to make the art again 
 a teacher, and who wrote saying that Music 
 is one of the things most needed by working 
 people "good Music, not that which is to be 
 heard in Music-halls,"* to which Mr. Ruskin 
 answers : 
 
 " I will take up this subject at length, 
 with Plato's help, in next ' Fors.' Mean- 
 time, may I briefly ask if it would not be 
 possible, instead of keeping merely the 
 bad music out of the Hall, to keep the bad 
 men out of it ? Suppose the Music, in- 
 stead of being charged twopence for, were 
 given of pure grace ; suppose, for instance, 
 that rich people, who now endeavour to 
 preserve memory of their respected 
 
 * Correspondence to "Fors Clavigera," No. Ixxxi. p. 281.
 
 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 71 
 
 relations by shutting the light out of their 
 church windows with the worst glass that 
 ever good sand was spoiled into would 
 bequeath an annual sum to play a me- 
 morial tune of a celestial character? or 
 in any other pious way share some of 
 their own operatic and other musical 
 luxury with the poor ; or even appoint a 
 Christian lady visitor, with a voice, to 
 sing to them instead of preach ? 
 Would not the selection of the pieces 
 become easier under such conditions? "* 
 
 However, after offering these suggestions, 
 Ruskin faithfully keeps his promise, and takes 
 up in the following " Fors " the subject of 
 Music as treated by Plato, commencing with 
 the statement that : 
 
 " To-day, instead of merely using 
 
 Plato's help in talking of Music, I 
 shall give little more than his own 
 
 * " Fors Clavigera " No. Ixxxi. p. 282, note e.
 
 yz IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 
 
 words, only adding such notes as are 
 necessary for their application to modern 
 needs." * 
 
 A Greek gentleman's education, then, which 
 in some modified degree St. George proposes 
 to make universal for Englishmen who really 
 deserve to have it, consisted essentially in 
 perfect discipline in music, poetry, and military 
 exercises. Then came the question, as to what 
 view of these arts was really the highest ? with 
 the answer that 
 
 " Only brightness of heart can please 
 
 the gods The extreme importance 
 
 of this teaching is in its opposition to the 
 general Greek instinct, that tragedy or song 
 in honour of the gods should be sad." f 
 
 Next follows an interesting note showing the 
 effect on Ruskin's mind of this thought. He 
 says : 
 
 * "Fors Clavigera," No. Ixxxii. p. 301. 
 f Ibid. pp. 310, 311.
 
 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 73 
 
 " I thought to have collected into this 
 place the passages about the demoral- 
 ising effect of sad music (Verdi's, for in- 
 stance, the most corrupting type hitherto 
 known) [!] from the ' Republic ' as well 
 as the ' Laws ; ' but that must be for 
 next month." 
 
 Then comes the account of Plato's division 
 of education for a boy, which ended at sixteen.* 
 The ten years of childhood exclusively to 
 forming the disposition, then three years of 
 grammar, with the collateral sciences, and then 
 three years practice in executive music. For 
 these three years literary study is to be fore- 
 gone, even by those who are to take it up 
 again, that they may learn Music completely. 
 Upon this Ruskin comments as follows : 
 
 " Understanding thus much, we can now 
 c learly understand, whether we receive it 
 or not, Plato's distinct assertion that, as 
 
 * "Fors Clavigera," No. Ixxxii. p. 311.
 
 74 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 
 
 gymnastic exercise is necessary to keep 
 the body healthy, musical exercise is 
 necessary to keep the soul healthy ; and 
 that the proper nourishment of the intel- 
 lect and passions can no more take place 
 without Music, than the proper functions 
 of the stomach and the blood without 
 exercise. 
 
 Strange change of feeling from some 
 passages already quoted ! 
 
 " We may be little disposed at first, to 
 believe this, because we are unaware, in 
 the first place, how much Music, from the 
 nurse's song to the military band and 
 the lover's ballad, does really modify ex- 
 isting civilised life ; and, in the second 
 place, we are not aware how much higher 
 range, if rightly practical, its influence 
 would reach, of which right practice, I 
 must say, before going on with Plato's
 
 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 75 
 
 teaching, that the chief condition is com- 
 panionship, or choral association (not so 
 much marked by Plato in words, because 
 he could not conceive of Music practised 
 otherwise), and that for persons incapable 
 of song, to be content in amusement by a 
 professional singer, is as much a sign of 
 decay in the virtue and use of Music, as 
 crowded spectators in the amphitheatre 
 sitting to be amused by gladiators are a 
 sign of decline in the virtue and use of 
 war."* 
 
 Then again follows Plato's teaching, which 
 Ruskin chose for the ideal in Music, for St. 
 George's Guild, and upon which he has framed 
 his own : 
 
 " I say, then, there should be three 
 choirs to fill, as with enchantment of 
 singing, the souls of children while they 
 
 * " Fors Clavigera," No. Ixxxii, pp. 317, 318.
 
 y6 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATIQN. 
 
 are tender, teaching them many other 
 things, of which we have told and shall 
 tell, but this chiefly, and for the head 
 and sum of all, that the life which is the 
 noblest is also deemed by the gods the 
 happiest .... the entire city singing 
 to itself should never pause in repeating 
 such good lessons as we have explained, 
 yet somehow changing, and so enlaying 
 and varying them, that the singers may 
 always be longing to sing, and delighting 
 in it* 
 
 The three choirs thus referred to are the 
 Choir of the Muses, that of children, up to the 
 age of sixteen ; 
 
 "after that the Choir of Apollo, formed 
 of those who have perfectly learned the 
 mastery of the lyre from sixteen to 
 thirty; and then the Choir of Dionysus, 
 
 * "Fors Cl^vigera," No. Ixxxii. p. 321.
 
 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 77 
 
 of the older men, from thirty to sixty; 
 and after sixty, being no longer able to 
 sing, they should become mythologists, 
 relating in divine tradition the moral 
 truths they formerly had sung." 
 
 "At this point, if not long before" 
 Ruskin continues 
 
 " I imagine my reader stopping, hope- 
 lessly, feeling the supreme uselessness of 
 such a conception as this, in modern times, 
 and its utter contrariness to everything 
 taught as practical among us. ' Belief in 
 gods, belief in tradition of Myths ! Old 
 men, as a class, to become mythologists 
 instead of misers ! And Music, through- 
 out life, to be the safeguard of morality ! 
 What futility to talk of such things now'" 
 
 Notwithstanding the "futility" of this 
 scheme, which does indeed read like a dream 
 of some Goddess of Song, Mr. Ruskin believes 
 sufficiently in its vital principle to continue his
 
 78 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 
 
 researches in Plato for the benefit of his 
 readers in his next letter in " Fors Clavigera." 
 
 In reading and thinking over the Platonic 
 scheme, or, indeed, over Ruskin's comments on 
 it, of course it is impossible we should be 
 concerned with the "letter of the law" so to 
 speak ; but do they not in either case open 
 suggestions to us of high possibilities of song, 
 of its influences, so apt to be forgotten ? 
 Do they not remind us of its time-worn 
 services, not only to art, but to religion, war, 
 teaching, triumph ? No art has held such 
 personal connection with every human emotion 
 as Music, and therefore has it the speaking 
 force of a personality, in which lies its greatest 
 strength. 
 
 But to return to Plato as given in the next 
 " Fors." 
 
 " We said, then, that the sixty years old 
 singers in the service of Dionysus should 
 be, beyond other men, gifted with fine
 
 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 79 
 
 sense of rhythm, and of the meetings 
 together of harmonies ; so that being 
 able to choose out of imitative melody, 
 what is well and ill represented of the 
 soul in its passion, and well discerning 
 the picture of the evil spirit from the 
 picture of the good, they may cast away 
 that which has in it the likeness of evil, 
 and bring forward into the midst that 
 which has the likeness of good; and 
 hymn and sing that into the souls of the 
 young, calling them forth to pursue the 
 possession of virtue, by means of like- 
 nesses. And for this reason the sounds 
 of the lyre ought to be used for the sake 
 of clearness in the chords ; the master 
 and pupil keeping both their voices in 
 one note together with the chord : but 
 the changes of the voice and variety of the 
 lyre, the chords giving one tune and the 
 poet another melody, and the oppositions
 
 8o IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 
 
 of many notes to few, and of slow to 
 swift, sometimes in symphony, some- 
 times in antiphony, the rhythm of the 
 song also in every sort of complication 
 inlaying itself among the sounds of the 
 lyre with all this the pupils who have 
 to learn what is useful in Music in only 
 three years, must have nothing to do : 
 for things opposed, confusing each other, 
 are difficult to learn ; and youth, as far as 
 possible, should be set at ease in learn- 
 ing." (Plato.) 
 
 Ruskin continues : 
 
 " I think this passage alone may show 
 the reader that the Greeks knew more of 
 Music than modern orchestral fiddlers 
 fancy. For the essential work of Stradi- 
 uarius, in substituting the violin for the 
 lyre and harp, was twofold. Thence- 
 forward (a) instrumental music became
 
 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 81 
 
 the captain instead of the servant of the 
 voice; and (b) skill of instrumental music, 
 as so developed, became impossible in the 
 ordinary education of a gentleman. So 
 that, since his time, old King Cole has 
 called for his fiddlers three, and Squire 
 Western sent Sophia to the harpsichord 
 when he was drunk : but of souls won by 
 Orpheus, or cities built by Amphion, we 
 hear no more." * 
 
 Mr. Ruskin has ever been a warm upholder 
 of the powers of the human voice, and perhaps 
 in these days, when it is treated as a secondary 
 consideration (the natural reaction from its 
 having held an absurd value), it may not be 
 amiss to remember that the one, as a branch of 
 Music, is the gift of God, the other, merely 
 the result of man's cultivation of Art. So 
 important was the teaching of the voice looked 
 upon by ancient writers, that there is, says Mr. 
 Ruskin, 
 
 * " Fors Clavigera," No. Ixxxiii. pp. 345, 346. 
 
 F
 
 82 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 
 
 " scarcely a word in Greek social philo- 
 sophy which has not reference to musical 
 law, and scarcely a word in Greek musical 
 science which has not understood refer- 
 ence to social law." 
 
 Plato continues, in final definition : 
 ''The whole Choreia is whole child- 
 education for us, consisting, as we have 
 seen, in the rhythms and harmonies 
 which belong to sound (for as there is a 
 rhythm in the movement of the body, so 
 there is a rhythm in the movement of 
 sound, and the movement of sound we 
 call tune). And the movement of sound, 
 so as to reach the soul for the education 
 of it in mrtiie (we know not how), we 
 call Music." 
 
 " You see from this important passage 
 that the Greeks only called ' Music ' the 
 kind of sound which induced right moral 
 feeling (they knew not how,but they knew
 
 IV, MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 83 
 
 it did^) and any other kind of sound 
 than that, however beautiful to the ear or 
 scientific in composition, they did not 
 call ' Music ' (exercise under the Muses) 
 but ' Amusia ' the denial, or desolation 
 for want, of the Muses The pro- 
 per word for the opposed delightful art 
 would have been sirenic," 
 
 as an instance of which, Mr. Ruskin speaks of 
 
 "the oratorio, withering the life of religion 
 into dead bones on the Syren sands ; " 
 
 a sentence which has just a shade of truth, in 
 its exaggeration. 
 
 " But that we may get rid at once of 
 the need of speaking of such things, 
 shall we not accept for the mould and 
 seal of all song, Euphemy, the speak- 
 ing the good of all things, and not 
 Blasphemy, the speaking of their sorrow ? 
 
 "Which first law of noble song is
 
 84 JV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 
 
 taught us by the myth that Euphemy was 
 the nurse of the Muses." * 
 
 I have placed first, though it occurred in a 
 much later letter in " Fors " than its context, all 
 this thought, which sprung from his study of 
 Plato on " Music, as an educator." It certainly 
 must have been the root of the musical part 
 of Ruskin's sketch of "Ideal England" which, 
 however, follows it. The music for " Ideal 
 England" is valuable as intellectual recognition 
 of the educating influences of the art ; not 
 wholly a dreamer's sketch either, though, per- 
 chance a little, that of an enthusiastic idealist. 
 But where should we be if the world were 
 bereft of its idealists ? They are few enough. 
 
 A curious little link between " Plato " and 
 " Ideal England," showing always the bent of 
 Ruskin's mind on Music, may be supplied, in 
 passing (from "Val d'Arno"), as to the im- 
 portance of musical education in thirteenth 
 century Italy. He says : 
 
 * " Fors Clavigera," No. Ixxxiii. pp. 349, 350, 362.
 
 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 85 
 
 "Though a good knight held his edu- 
 cation to be imperfect unless he could 
 write a sonnet or sing it, he did not 
 esteem his castle to be at the mercy of 
 the ' editor ' of a manuscript. He might 
 indeed owe his life to the fidelity of a 
 minstrel, or be guided in his policy by 
 the wit of a clown ; but he was not the 
 slave of venial music or vulgar litera- 
 ture." * 
 
 The sketch of Music's part, in " Ideal 
 England," occurs in the fifth letter of " Fors 
 Clavigera," written in May 1871 on the twenty- 
 first page, this letter being preceded by the 
 significant picture of Giotto's " Hope," from 
 the chapel of the Arena at Padua. In this 
 sketch Music is allowed the utmost importance 
 educationally. 
 
 "We will have some music and poe- 
 try ; the children shall learn to dance to 
 
 * "Vald'Arno,"sec. 88.
 
 86 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION 
 
 it, and sing it perhaps some of the old 
 people, in time, may also that is to say, 
 when the various demons of England 
 have allowed them leisure, and [accord- 
 ing to Ruskin] the right spirit for song 
 and dance." * 
 
 Even in these few words we find the hint 
 developed, of " meaning deeply " in song. 
 
 Mr. Ruskin was never left long without 
 having the opportunity of correction for his 
 theories ! and in the very next " Fors," we 
 find him brought to book, by a Birmingham 
 correspondent, who reminds him that even his 
 musical instruments must be constructed by 
 the demons of steam, which he always so 
 forcibly denounced ; to which Ruskin 
 
 " ventured to answer that porcelain had 
 been painted before the time of James 
 Watt ; that even Music was not a recent 
 invention ; that my poor company (the 
 
 * "Fors Clavigera," No. v. p. 21.
 
 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 87 
 
 inhabitants of ' Ideal England ') would 
 deserve no better colours than Apelles 
 and Titian made shift with, or even the 
 Chinese ; and that I could not find any 
 notice of musical instruments in the time 
 of David, for instance, having been made 
 by steam.* 
 
 "To this my correspondent again re- 
 plied that he supposed David's ' twangling 
 upon the harp' would have been unsatis- 
 factory to modern taste." 
 
 Ruskin concludes : 
 
 "We shall have to be content, how- 
 ever, for our part (in ' Ideal England ') 
 with a little 'twangling' on such roughly 
 made harps as the Jews and Greeks got 
 their melody out of." 
 
 Here again we are reminded how triumph- 
 antly, in classic times, the ideal beauty must 
 have preponderated ; "the spirit of the song" 
 * " Fors Clavigera," No. vi. pp. 7, 8.
 
 88 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION 
 
 was the question, and represented the influ- 
 ence of Music ; and, verily, perfect sound is 
 as nought without it. 
 
 Taking the passages in order of date, we 
 come next to the beautiful one relating to the 
 ideal education of children, from which a few 
 words, already quoted, have been extracted. 
 
 " On every day, part of their morning 
 service shall be a song in honour of 
 the hero whose birthday it is : and part 
 of their evening service, a song of 
 triumph for the fair death of one whose 
 death-day it is : and in their first learn- 
 ing of notes they 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
 
 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 89 
 
 shall find no mirth in mockery, or 
 obscenity, neither shall they waste and 
 profane their hearts with artificial and 
 lascivious sorrow." 
 
 Much is to be learnt here if one searches 
 a little beyond the words into the real 
 meaning of this passage. It sweeps away the 
 artificial with a strong hand, and it places 
 Truth in Music in the highest place from the 
 " first learning of notes ; " it shows that in song 
 high and true sentiment, alike of melody and 
 idea, and in instrumental music, classic beauty in 
 elaborated form, combined with ideal sentiment, 
 should be the true ambition of the musician. 
 
 So and so only is the " strongest and 
 clearest possible way " attainable. 
 
 Next to Music's position in "Ideal England " 
 follow the rules for its pursuit, as laid down 
 for the benefit of St. George's Guild, in " Rock 
 Honeycomb," having for inspiration a strange 
 
 * "Fors Clavigera," No. ix. p. 15.
 
 90 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 
 
 medley, consisting of the Coniston village band 
 and Sir Philip Sidney's divine Psalmody ! 
 But let the laws speak for themselves : 
 
 " Yesterday evening, one of the sweet- 
 est and brightest of this hitherto sweet 
 summer, the ' Coniston Band,' consist- 
 ing of the musically minded working- 
 men of the village, rowed itself for its 
 Saturday at e'en delectation, into the 
 middle of the lake ; and floating just 
 between Brantwood and the ' Hall ' on 
 the opposite shore where Sir Philip 
 Sidney, it is delivered by tradition, lived 
 for a time, with his sister, in our Arcadia 
 of western meres poured forth divers 
 pipings and trumpetings, with meri- 
 torious endeavour, and I doubt not real, 
 innocent, and useful pleasure to itself, 
 and to the village hearers on the oppo- 
 site green shore.
 
 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 91 
 
 " Mostly, polka music with occasional 
 sublimities ' My Maryland ' and * God 
 save the Emperor ! ' and the like ; plea- 
 sant enough, sometimes, to hear from 
 this shore also ; but as it chanced yester- 
 day, very destructive of my comfort in 
 showing the bright roses and deep pur- 
 ple foxgloves on my banks to two guests, 
 for whom the flowers and the evening 
 light were good ; but gay music not so. 
 And it might, with little pains, have 
 been much otherwise ; for if, instead of a 
 somewhat briefly exercised band playing 
 on trumpets and shawms, concerning a 
 Maryland of which they probably did not 
 know, either the place or the history, 
 and an Emperor, a proposal for whose 
 instant expulsion from his dominions 
 would have been probably received with 
 as much applause in the alehouse as the 
 prayer that God would save him upon
 
 92 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 
 
 the lake if, I say, instead of this 
 tuneful, and occasionally out-of-tuneful, 
 metallic noise, produced with little mean- 
 ing beyond the noise itself, by the fathers 
 of the village, a few clearly understood 
 and rightly intended words had been 
 chanted for us in harmony by the 
 children of it suppose, for instance, in 
 truly trained concord and happy under- 
 standing, such words as these of Sir 
 Philip Sidney's own, echoed back from 
 the tender ruin of the walls that had 
 been his home, and rising to the fair 
 mountain heaven which is still alike his 
 home and ours : 
 
 "'From snare the fowler lays, 
 
 He shall thee sure untye; 
 The noisome blast that plaguing strays. 
 Untoucht, shall pass thee by. 
 
 " ' Soft hived with wing and plume, 
 Thou in his shroud shall lie ; 
 And on his truth no less presume 
 Than in his shield affy.'
 
 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 93 
 
 the July sunset would not have been less 
 happy to the little choir, and the peace of 
 it would have been deepened for those to 
 whom it could bring happiness no more. 
 
 " ' Is any among you afflicted ? let him 
 pray ; is any merry ? let him sing psalms.' 
 
 " The entire simplicity and literalness 
 of this command of the first Bishop of 
 the Christian Church cannot, of course, 
 be now believed, in the midst of our 
 luxurious art of the oratorio, and drama- 
 tically modulated speeches of Moses in 
 Egypt, and Elijah on Carmel. But the 
 command is, nevertheless, as kind and 
 wise as it is simple ; and if ever Old 
 England again becomes Merry England, 
 the first use she will make of her joyful 
 lips will be to sing psalms. I have 
 stated, in the first sketch of the design of 
 our St. George's education, that Music is 
 to be its earliest element, and I think it
 
 94 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 
 
 of so pressing importance to make the 
 required method of musical teaching un- 
 derstood, that I have thrown all other 
 employment aside for the moment, in 
 order to get this edition of Sir Philip 
 Sidney's Psalter prepared for school 
 service. 
 
 " I will state the principles of Music 
 and of Song, which it is intended to 
 illustrate as briefly as possible. 
 
 " All perfectly rhythmic poetry is meant 
 to be sung to Music, and all entirely 
 noble Music to the illustration of noble 
 words. The art of word and of note, 
 separate from each other, become de- 
 graded, and the muse-less sayings, or 
 senseless melodies, harden the intellect 
 or demoralise the ear. Yet better and 
 manifoldly better unvocal word and idle 
 note, than the degradation of the most 
 fateful truths of God to be the subjects
 
 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION, 95 
 
 of scientific piping for our musical pas- 
 time. There is excuse, among our un- 
 educated classes, for the Christmas Pan- 
 tomime, but none, among our educated 
 classes, for the Easter Oratorio. 
 
 "The law of nobleness in Music and 
 Poetry is essentially one. Both are the 
 necessary and natural expression of pure 
 and human joy or sorrow, by the lips 
 and fingers of persons trained in right 
 schools to manage their bodies and souls. 
 Every child should be taught, from its 
 youth, to govern its voice discreetly and 
 dexterously, as it does its hands ; and 
 not to be able to sing should be more 
 disgraceful than not being able to read 
 or write. For it is quite possible to lead 
 a virtuous and happy life without books 
 or ink, but not without wishing to sing 
 when we are happy, nor without meet- 
 ing with continual occasions when our
 
 96 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 
 
 song, if right, would be a kind service to 
 others. 
 
 " The best Music, like the best Paint- 
 ing, is entirely popular ; it at once com- 
 mends itself to every one, and does so 
 through all ages. The worst Music, 
 like the worst Painting, commends itself 
 at first, in like manner, to ninety-nine 
 people out of a hundred, but after doing 
 them its appointed quantity of mischief, 
 it is forgotten, and new modes of mis- 
 chief composed. The less we compose 
 at present the better; there is good 
 Music enough written to serve the world 
 for ever; what we want of it for our 
 schools may be gradually gathered under 
 the following general laws of song : 
 
 " i. None but beautiful and true words 
 are to be set to Music at all ; nor must 
 any be usually sung but those which 
 express the feelings of noble persons
 
 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION, 97 
 
 under the common circumstances of life, 
 and its actual joys and griefs. Songs 
 extreme in pathos are a morbid form of 
 the indulgence of our desire for excite- 
 ment; unless in actual dramatic func- 
 tion, becoming part of a great course of 
 thought in which they fulfil the highest 
 tone as Ophelia's 'White his shroud' 
 which may be properly sung in its 
 appointed place, but there only. It is 
 profane and vulgar to take these pieces 
 out of their shrines ; and injurious 
 to all the finer states of thought and 
 habits of life to compose such without 
 shrines. 
 
 " 2. Accompaniments are always to be 
 subordinate, and the voice of the singer, 
 or choir, supreme. But it is quite 
 possible to keep the richest combinations 
 of instrumental music subordinate to the 
 vocal notes, as great painters can make
 
 98 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 
 
 the richest decoration subordinate to a 
 simple story. And the noblest instru- 
 mental execution is felt by true musical 
 instinct to be more conspicuous in this 
 humility and precision of restraint, than 
 in its most consummate dexterity of sepa- 
 rate achievement. 
 
 "3. Independent instrumental music 
 is to singing what painted glass is to 
 painting ; it admits the extremest multi- 
 plication, fantasy, range, and concord of 
 note ; and has the same functions of 
 magnificence, and powers of awe or 
 pleasure, that the casements have in a 
 cathedral. But all the greatest music is 
 by the human voice, as all greatest 
 painting is of the human face. 
 
 " 4. All songs are to be sung to their 
 accompaniment, straightforward, as they 
 would be read, or naturally chanted. You 
 must never sing
 
 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 99 
 
 aw a- 
 
 " ' Scots whaw-aw aw aw aw-hae wi' Wa- a " a ~a-a- a "a- 
 
 a- a- a- a-al-lace bled.' 
 
 " nor 
 
 " ' Welcome, welcome, welcome to your go- to your 
 go- to your go-oo-ooo-ory bed ; ' 
 
 " but sing it as you would say it. 
 Neither, even if a song is too short, may 
 you ever extend it by such expedients. 
 You must sing ' Come unto these yellow 
 sands ' clear through, and be sorry when 
 it is done ; but never 
 
 a- a "a- a- a ~a- 
 : Come unto these ya- a- a- (etc.) -low sands.' 
 
 5. The airs of songs by great com- 
 posers must never be used for other 
 words than those they were written for. 
 Nothing is so destructive of all musical 
 understanding as the habit of fitting a 
 tune that tickles the ear to any syllables
 
 ioo IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 
 
 that it will stick on ; and a single instance 
 may show the point to which this bar- 
 barism has reached in the musical cata- 
 strophes of modern concert, prepared for 
 the uneducated and the idle. The other 
 day, on the table of my inn at Cambridge, 
 I chanced to take up a modern ' adapta- 
 tion ' of Rossini's ' Stabat Mater,' and 
 found that the music intended for the 
 Latin syllables, here given in the upper 
 lines, was to be sung indifferently to the 
 English ones below : 
 
 " f Sta-bat Ma-ter Do-lo-ro-sa 
 
 Lord most holy, Lord most migh-ty, 
 
 Juxta-ta-Cru-cem La-cry-mo-sa 
 Righ-teous ev-er are Thy judg-ments 
 
 Dum pen-de-bat Fi-li-us 
 
 Save us, for Thy Mer-cy's sake ! ' 
 
 " Imagine the idea thus conveyed to the 
 listening mob of the composer's inten- 
 tion, or of the dramatic power of his work.
 
 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 101 
 
 " 6. Ballad music is, of course, written 
 with the intent that it shall fit itself 
 to any sentiment by mere difference of 
 adopted time and accent. The right de- 
 livery of it will follow naturally on true 
 feeling of the ballad. The absurdity of 
 the ordinary supposition that Music can 
 express feeling definitely, without words, 
 is shown in a moment by the fact that 
 such general expressions can be written, 
 and that in any good and classic ballad 
 music, the merry and melancholy parts 
 of the story may be with entire propriety 
 and satisfaction sung to precisely the 
 same melody. 
 
 " 7. Playful and comic singing are 
 subject to the same laws as play in life 
 and jesting in conversation. No vulgar 
 person can be taught how to play or to 
 jest like a gentleman, and, for the most 
 part, comic songs are for the vulgar
 
 102 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 
 
 only. Their higher standard is fixed, in 
 note and word, by Mozart and Rossini ; 
 but I cannot at present judge how far 
 even these men may have lowered the 
 true function of the joyful Muse. 
 
 " Thus far of the great general laws 
 under which Music is to be taught in 
 St. George's schools."* 
 
 So far the passages quoted have referred to 
 a certain education in Music, which must be 
 present even in its simplest forms if they are 
 to pertain to what may be called the higher 
 ideals, even in simple Music. A passage from 
 the diary of Ruskin's father, shows that a great 
 deal of this manner of thought might almost be 
 considered inherited, at any rate in its germs, 
 notwithstanding the adverse musical conditions 
 of his youth. Mr. Ruskin describes a Swiss 
 family at the Giessbach, singing "Swiss songs in 
 the sweetest and most affecting manner, infinitely 
 
 * " Rock Honeycomb," preface.
 
 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 103 
 
 finer than opera singing, because true alike to 
 Nature and to Music ; no grimace nor affecta- 
 tion, nor strained efforts to produce effect." * 
 
 Ruskin adds this note : "I shall make this 
 sentence the text of what I have to say, when 
 I have made a few more experiments in our 
 schools here, of the use of Music in peasants' 
 education." 
 
 But now, we turn to the education necessary, 
 for appreciation of the higher forms of Music. 
 These Ruskin finds in a much better condition 
 regarding Music, in England, than as regards 
 Painting. He aaysn o 
 
 " It is, I believe, as certain that in the 
 last twenty years we have learnt to better 
 understand good Music, and to love it 
 more, as that in the same time our 
 knowledge and love of pictures have not 
 increased. The reason is easily found. 
 Our Music has been chosen for MS by 
 
 * " Dilecta," p. 60.
 
 104 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 
 
 masters, and our pictures have been 
 chosen by ourselves. If we can imagine 
 exhibitions where good and bad and 
 indifferent symphonies, quartettes, and 
 songs could be heard, not more imper- 
 fectly than pictures good, bad, and in- 
 different are seen at the Academy, and 
 works, to which at a concert we must 
 listen for twenty minutes, were to be 
 listened through in as many seconds, or 
 indeed by an ear glance at a few bars, 
 can we doubt that pretty tunes would be 
 more popular than the finest symphonies 
 of Beethoven, or the loveliest songs of 
 Schubert?"* 
 
 Then follows a scheme for doing for Painting 
 what has been done for Music, by the teaching of 
 such men as Charles Halle, in connection with 
 which, and in comparison with whom, some very 
 
 Fors Clavigera," No. Ixxix. p. 194.
 
 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 105 
 
 scathing remarks are addressed, to such picture 
 dealers as Agnew, who is mentioned by name. 
 
 From " Arrows of the Chace " two passages 
 are gathered, one of them perhaps containing 
 one of the earliest expressions of Ruskin's con- 
 version to Music, at any rate as a branch of 
 education. He finds here that Drawing and 
 Music are as necessary to a proper education 
 as writing and arithmetic, but on further con- 
 sideration fears 
 
 " That the cases of physical incapacity 
 of distinguishing sounds would be too 
 frequent to admit of musical knowledge 
 being made a requirement." * 
 
 This was written in 1857; since when it 
 has been amply proved that incapacity of ear 
 is not sufficiently general to be a draw- 
 back in those elementary schools where now 
 Music may be said to be a " requirement ; " on 
 the contrary, that it can be remedied to a 
 
 * Letter, 1857.
 
 io6 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 
 
 certain extent, for, no doubt, where the Tonic- 
 sol-fa system of teaching intervals prevails, 
 want of ear is to some extent overcome. It 
 is the so-called singing by ear, out of tune for 
 generations, which has materially injured the 
 ears of to-day, though they are at present in 
 a hopeful way towards recovery. 
 
 The second passage from "Arrows of the 
 Chace " is contained in a letter of 1878, where 
 Mr. Ruskin says : 
 
 "I wish I were able to add a few more 
 words with energy and clearness to my 
 former letters, respecting a subject of 
 which my best strength though in 
 great part lately given to it, has not 
 yet enforced the moment the function, 
 namely, of the arts of Music and Dancing 
 as leaders and governors of the bodily and 
 instructive mental passions. No nation 
 will ever bring up its youth to be at once 
 refined and pure till its masters have
 
 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 107 
 
 learned the use of all the arts and 
 
 primarily of these Let our youth 
 
 once more learn the meaning of the words 
 music, chorus, and hymns practically ; 
 and with the understanding that all such 
 practice, from lowest to highest, is, if 
 rightly done, always in the presence and 
 
 to the praise of God Have you 
 
 ever heard the charity children sing at 
 St. Paul's? Suppose we sometimes 
 allowed God the honour of seeing our 
 noble children collected in right manner 
 to sing to Him, what, think you, might 
 be the effect of such a festival even if 
 only held once a year on the national 
 manners and hearts ? " * 
 
 To many Ruskin students it may appear 
 strange that large extracts are not made here 
 from the "Elements of Prosody," which Mr. 
 
 * " Arrows of the Chace."
 
 io8 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 
 
 Ruskin wrote for the purpose of (among other 
 things) "obtaining more direct correspondence 
 between verbal and harmonic intention"; this 
 meant " the note to syllable theory," which has 
 already been referred to in the quotation from 
 "Rock Honeycomb." Mr. Ruskin goes on to say 
 in his preface to "Elements of English Prosody," 
 that all his " musical friends were incredulous 
 or disdainful of the propriety of such a corre- 
 spondence, and bent unanimously upon estab- 
 lishing a code of abstract sound which should 
 be entirely independent of its meaning." Who 
 these "musical friends" were, I know not, 
 because, in connection with song as a branch of 
 Music, nearly all national song, and many of the 
 finest songs of the greatest song-writers, carry 
 out the theory, virtually, of note to syllable in 
 hundreds of instances. Not of course, will this 
 be found in Handel or the Bellini-Donizetti 
 Italian school, but then one does not look 
 for the "meaning" of Music therein. It has 
 always been the meaning behind Music's sound 
 which has attracted Ruskin's thoughts towards
 
 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 109 
 
 it, and our interest in them, and the technical 
 part of his views, treated of in " English 
 Prosody," seems without much meaning in it, 
 or rather, with a meaning which is generally ac- 
 cepted, leaving little or nothing to fight about, 
 and making their statement unnecessary. 
 
 A passage of interest must at the same time 
 be extracted from this work as bearing on our 
 subject, though it was perhaps intended to 
 apply more to Poetry, than to Music. 
 
 " The strength of poetry is in its 
 thought, not in its form, and with great 
 lyrists, their music is always secondary, 
 and their substance of saying primary 
 (this should be the same in musical 
 sound). So much so that they will even 
 daringly and wilfully leave a syllable or 
 two rough, or even mean, and avoid a 
 perfect rhythm or sweetness, rather than 
 let the reader's mind be drawn away to 
 lean too definitely on the sound."
 
 no IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. 
 
 Would that students took for their text, 
 primarily " the substance of saying ! " 
 
 Mr. Ruskin, apart from other theories, wished 
 to prove in " English Prosody " the special 
 varieties of sounds, of which individual forms of 
 verse admit ; simply, on account of their in- 
 dividual form. But though he illustrates this 
 musically, and endeavours to arrive at a defi- 
 nite, poetical accent, by means of the different 
 lengths of notes ; still nothing of this practical 
 attempt compares with the interest of his words 
 on Music the Ideal. His views of musical 
 technicalities are most untechnical ! The ideal, 
 and the spiritual in the art alone, he fathomed ; 
 but is not that the Holy of Holies of the Temple ? 
 Technicalities have many able exponents, and 
 these matters may be left in their care. The 
 hidden meaning of Music, its inward powers, 
 its educative influences, have very few ; and, 
 upon these subjects alone, are Ruskin's words 
 of interest. No man has more fully realised 
 the spiritual essence of art, or given such 
 true expression to its possibilities. In his
 
 IV. MUSIC AND EDUCATION. in 
 
 expression of this, the few will find help and 
 education, but that such teaching can appeal 
 to many is, of course, impossible. General 
 interest, however, cannot be expected, for 
 
 'Real music of Doric eagerness, touched 
 of old for the vales and rills, while the 
 still morn went out with sandals grey." * 
 
 * " Laws of Fesol," p. 6.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 MUSIC AND MORALS. 
 
 " You cannot paint or sing yourselves into being 
 good men. You must be good men before you 
 can either paint or sing, and then the colour and 
 the sound will complete in you all that is best." 
 
 Lectures on Art, 1870. 
 
 THE foundation of art in moral character is 
 one of the things upon which Ruskin has 
 insisted most forcibly throughout his writings ; 
 even those who have followed so far this 
 little collection of his thoughts on Music, must 
 feel, that for him, the full importance of all true 
 art exists, principally, in its moral teaching. So 
 far as it conveys the finest emotions, so far the 
 art is fine ; that, which conveys to its hearers 
 base emotions, being no art at all. There is no
 
 V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 113 
 
 need to discuss this teaching here ; it is familiar 
 to all Ruskin students, and, whether accepted 
 or not, is inseparable from his views on art. 
 
 The first passage I find on the subject puts 
 these opinions very distinctly : 
 
 " Of course art gift and amiability of 
 disposition are two different things ; a 
 good man is not necessarily a painter, nor 
 does an eye for colour necessarily imply 
 an honest mind. But great art implies 
 the union of both powers : it is the 
 expression, by an art gift of a pure soul. 
 If the gift is not there we can have no art 
 at all ; and if the soul and a right soul 
 too is not there, the art is bad, however 
 dexterous. 
 
 But also remember, that the art gift 
 itself is only the result of the moral 
 character of generations. A bad woman 
 may have a sweet voice, but that sweet- 
 ness of voice comes of the past morality
 
 ii4 V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 
 
 of her race. That she can sing with it at 
 all, she owes to the determination of 
 laws of Music by the morality of the past. 
 Every act, every impulse of virtue and 
 vice, affects in any creature, face, voice, 
 nervous power and vigour and harmony 
 of invention, at once. Perseverance in 
 Tightness of human conduct renders, after 
 a certain number of generations, human 
 art possible ; every sin clouds it, be it 
 ever so little a one, and persistent vicious 
 living and following of pleasure render, 
 after a certain number of generations, all 
 art impossible. Men are deceived by the 
 long-suffering of the laws of Nature. . . . 
 And for the individual, as soon as you 
 have learned to read, you may, as I said, 
 know him to the heart's core, through his 
 art. Let his art gift be never so cultivated 
 to the height by the schools of a great 
 race of men ; it is still but a tapestry
 
 V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 115 
 
 thrown over his own being and inner 
 soul." * 
 
 "Sesame and Lilies" contains two passages 
 where Music and Morals are closely interwoven 
 in Ruskin's happiest and simplest manner, 
 studiously simple to suit the readers, to 
 whom " Sesame and Lilies " was more 
 especially addressed the girl-youth of Eng- 
 land. 
 
 " From the beginning, consider all your 
 accomplishments as means of assistance 
 to others ; .... in Music especially you 
 will soon find what personal benefit there 
 is in being serviceable : it is probable 
 that, however limited your powers, you 
 have voice and ear enough to sustain a 
 note of moderate compass in a concerted 
 piece ; that, then, is the first thing to 
 make sure you can do. Get your voice 
 
 * " Queen of the Air," pars. 106, 107.
 
 ii6 V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 
 
 disciplined and clear, and think only of 
 accuracy ; never of effect or expression : if 
 you have any soul worth expressing, it 
 will show itself in your singing ; but 
 most likely there are very few feelings in 
 you, at present, needing any particular 
 expression ; and the one thing you have 
 to do is to make a clear-voiced little 
 instrument of yourself, which other 
 people can entirely depend upon for the 
 note wanted." * 
 
 Next must come the passage from " Queen's 
 Gardens," where the necessary things for a 
 girl's moral education are considered. 
 
 "Then in art, keep the finest models 
 before her, and let her practice in all her 
 accomplishments to be accurate and 
 thorough, so as to enable her to under- 
 
 * " Sesame and Lilies," preface, p. 14.
 
 V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 117 
 
 stand more than she accomplishes. I 
 say the finest models that is to say, the 
 truest, simplest, usefullest. Note those 
 epithets : they will range through all the 
 arts. Try them in Music, where you 
 might think them the least applicable. I 
 say the truest, that in which the notes 
 most closely and faithfully express the 
 meaning of the words, or the character 
 of intended emotion ; again, the simplest, 
 that in which the meaning and melody 
 are attained with the fewest and most 
 significant notes possible ; and, finally, the 
 usefullest, that Music which makes the 
 best words most beautiful, which enchants 
 them in our memories each with its own 
 glory of sound, and which applies them 
 closest to the heart at the moment we 
 need them."* 
 
 * " Sesame and Lilies," par. 79.
 
 ii8 V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 
 
 The morals of cradle songs and carols, or 
 rather, those they ought to contain, and why 
 they may not, at present, speak as of old, seem 
 to have occupied Mr. Ruskin's mind in the 
 following passages. Chaucer's carol is re- 
 printed in connection with its context. Finally, 
 Mr. Stuart Mill is credited with producing a 
 terrible un-" Hush-a-by baby- England," with 
 dire results ! 
 
 " ' Hush-a-bye baby, upon the tree top ' 
 my mother used to sing to me : and I 
 remember the dawn of intelligence in 
 which I began to object to the bad rhyme 
 which followed : ' when the wind blows 
 the cradle will rock.' But the Christmas 
 winds must blow rudely, and warp the 
 waters askance indeed, which rock our 
 English cradles now.* 
 
 "Mendelssohn's songs without words 
 
 * "Fors Clavigera," No. xxiv., pp. 19, 20.
 
 V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 119 
 
 have been, I believe, lately popular in 
 musical circles. We shall, perhaps, 
 require cradle songs with very few words, 
 and Christmas carols with very sad ones, 
 before long ; in fact, it seems to me, we 
 are fast losing our old skill in carolling. 
 There is a different tone in Chaucer's 
 notion of it (though this carol of his is in 
 spring-time indeed, not at Christmas). 
 
 " ' Then went I forth on my right hand, 
 Down by a little path I found, 
 Of Mintes full and Fennel green. 
 
 " ' Sir Mirth I found, and found anon 
 Unto Sir Mirth gan I gone, 
 There where he was, him to solace 
 And with him, in that happy place, 
 So fair folke and so fresh had he, 
 That when I saw, I wondered me 
 From whence such folk might come, 
 So fair were they, all and some ; 
 For they were like, as in my sight 
 To angels, that be feathered bright. 
 These folke, of which I tell you so.
 
 izo Y. MUSIC AND MORALS. 
 
 " ' Upon a karole wenten tho,* 
 
 A Ladie karoled them, that hightf 
 
 Gladness, blisful and light. 
 
 She could make in song such refraining 
 
 It sate her wonder well to sing, 
 
 Her voice full clear was, and full sweet 
 
 She was not rude nor unmeet, 
 
 But couth + enough for such doing, 
 
 As longeth unto karolling; 
 
 For she was wont, in every place, 
 
 To singen first, men to solace, 
 
 For singing most she gave her to, 
 
 No craft had she so lefe to do." 
 
 " Mr. Stuart Mill would have set her 
 to another craft, I fancy (not but that 
 singing is a lucrative one, now-a-days, if 
 it be shrill enough) ; but you will not get 
 your wives to sing thus for nothing, if 
 you send them out to earn their dinners 
 (instead of earning them yourselves for 
 them), and put their babies summarily to 
 sleep." 
 
 * Then. t Was called. J Skilful. 
 
 Fond. || "Fors Clavigera," No. xxiv. p. 21.
 
 V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 121 
 
 A beautiful passage from Ruskin's third 
 Lecture on Art, may appropriately be intro- 
 duced here, being almost a summary of his art 
 teaching of Music and Morals. 
 
 "Accurately in proportion to the Tight- 
 ness of the cause and the 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. 
 And with absolute precision from high- 
 est to lowest, the fineness of the possible 
 art is an index of the moral purity 
 and majesty of the emotion it expresses. 
 You may test it at any instant. Ques- 
 tion with yourselves respecting any feel- 
 ing that has taken strong possession of 
 your mind, ' Could this be sung by a 
 master, and sung nobly with true 
 melody and art ? ' Then it is a right 
 feeling. Could it not be sung at all
 
 izz V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 
 
 or only sung ludicrously? It is a 
 base one."* 
 
 These passages refer mostly, to the innate 
 moral feeling which exists in the best art. We 
 now come to one touching the artistic morality 
 of the artist, in which, notwithstanding his 
 Mozart worship, Ruskin sees fit to take for his 
 text, on this subject, the librettos of " Zauber- 
 flaute" and "Don Giovanni" which he (with 
 many others, though perhaps not for the 
 same reasons) finds ''monstrous." These two 
 libretti, are so beneath contempt, in their literary 
 poverty, that it is impossible not to agree with 
 his argument, but when he applies the same 
 artistic moral criticism to "Faust" one feels at 
 issue with him. But, though it is impossible to 
 agree with the passage, most forcibly does it 
 point to his strong feeling, as to the moral 
 effect of art, and to its great importance, as a 
 factor in morals, as well as in education. 
 
 * " Lectures on Art," iii.
 
 V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 123 
 
 ''Yonder poor horse, calm slave in 
 daily chains at the railroad siding, who 
 drags the detached rear of the train to 
 the front again, and slips aside so deftly 
 as the buffers meet ; and, within eigh- 
 teen inches of death every ten minutes, 
 fulfils his changeless duty all day long, 
 content, for eternal reward, with his night's 
 rest, and his champed mouthful of hay ; 
 anything more earnestly moral and 
 beautiful one cannot imagine I never 
 see the creature without a kind of wor- 
 ship. And yonder musician, who used 
 the greatest power which (in the art he 
 knew) the Father of Spirits ever yet 
 breathed into the clay of this world ; 
 who used it, I say, to follow and fit with 
 perfect sound the words of the ' Zauber- 
 flaute' and of 'Don Giovanni,' foolishest 
 and most monstrous of conceivable 
 human words and subjects of thought,
 
 124 V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 
 
 for the future ' amusement' of his race ! 
 No such spectacle of unconscious (and in 
 that unconsciousness all the more fearful) 
 moral degradation of the highest faculty 
 to the lowest purpose can be found in 
 history. But Mozart is nevertheless, a 
 nobler creature than the horse at the 
 siding ; nor would it be the least nearer 
 the purpose of his Maker that he, and all 
 his frivolous audiences, should evade the 
 degradation of the profitless piping, only 
 by living, like horses, in daily physical 
 labour for daily bread." 
 
 Later we are told in the same book 
 
 "You do not perhaps know, though I 
 say this diffidently for I often find 
 working men know many things which 
 one would have thought were out of 
 
 * "Time and Tide," par. 20.
 
 V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 125 
 
 their way, that Music was among the 
 Greeks, quite the first means of educa- 
 tion ; and that it was so connected with 
 their system of ethics and of intellectual 
 training, that the God of Music is with 
 them also the God of Righteousness ; 
 .... and the Greeks were incontro- 
 vertibly right in this. 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 helpful to all the ages of 
 man, helpful from the nurse's song to 
 her infant, to the music unheard of 
 others, which so often haunts the death- 
 bed of pure and innocent spirits. And 
 the action of the deceiving or devilish 
 power is in nothing shown quite so 
 distinctly among us at this day, not 
 even in our commercial dishonesties, nor 
 in our social cruelties, as in its having
 
 126 V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 
 
 been able to take away Music, as an 
 instrument of education, altogether ; and 
 to enlist it almost wholly in the service 
 of superstition on the one hand, and of 
 sensuality on the other." 1 
 
 No man has ever been so delightfully incon- 
 sistent as Ruskin (who indeed who sees two 
 sides of a question can be otherwise ?). The 
 passage that follows from the " Stones of 
 Venice," is a curious contradiction of much 
 he has written, as to the ideal in art being its 
 greatest purpose, which we find elsewhere ; 
 but the quotation is interesting, in that it 
 points to a glimmering recognition of Music 
 as Music alone. He says : 
 
 " It is at our choice whether we will 
 accompany a poem with Music or not ; 
 but if we do the Music must be right 
 and neither discordant nor inexpressive. 
 
 * "Time and Tide," par. 61.
 
 V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 127 
 
 The goodness and sweetness of the poem 
 cannot save it, if the Music be false ; but 
 if the Music be right the poem may be 
 insipid or inharmonious and still saved 
 by the notes to which it is wedded'' * 
 
 It is very true, as an instance of this, that 
 intangible sound has thus preserved for us 
 endless national airs of value, the words of 
 which die, and often deserve to die, even 
 sooner than they do. 
 
 By way of contrast to the low level of artistic 
 morality with which he credits some musical 
 works, we shall now see, that Mr. Ruskin finds 
 consolation by returning, in " The Queen of the 
 Air," to some of his beloved Greek myths and 
 philosophy, where Music is the natural expres- 
 sion of a " lofty passion for a right cause." 
 
 " In all the loveliest representations in 
 central Greek art of the birth of Athena, 
 
 * "Stones of Venice," vol. iii. chap. iv.
 
 128 V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 
 
 Apollo stands close to the sitting Jupi- 
 ter, singing, with a deep, quiet joyfulness 
 to his lyre. The sun is always thought 
 of as the master of time and rhythm, and 
 as the origin of the composing and 
 inventive discovery of melody ; but the 
 air, as the actual element and substance 
 of the voice, the prolonging and sustain- 
 ing power of it, and the symbol of its 
 moral passion. Whatever in Music is 
 measured and designed, belongs there- 
 fore to Apollo and the Muses ; what- 
 ever is impulsive and passionate, to 
 Athena: .... The Apolline Lyre, 
 therefore, is not so much the instrument 
 producing sound, as its measurer and 
 divider by length or tension of string 
 into given notes ; and I believe it is in a 
 double connection with its office as a 
 measurer of time or motion, and its 
 relation to the transit of the sun in the
 
 V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 129 
 
 sky, that Hermes forms it from the 
 tortoise shell, which is the image of the 
 dappled concave of the cloudy sky. 
 Thenceforward all the limiting or re- 
 straining modes of Music belong to the 
 Muses ; but the passionate Music is 
 wind Music, as in the Doric flute. Then 
 when this inspired Music becomes de- 
 graded in its passion, it sinks to the pipe 
 of Pan, and the double pipe of Marsyas. 
 The myth which represents her doing 
 so is that she invented the double pipe 
 from hearing the hiss of the Gorgonian 
 serpents ; but when she played upon it, 
 chancing to see her face reflected in 
 water, she saw it was distorted, where- 
 upon she threw down the flute which 
 Marsyas found. Then the strife of 
 Apollo and Marsyas represents the en- 
 during contest between the Music in 
 which the words and thoughts lead, and
 
 130 V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 
 
 the lyre measures or melodises them 
 (which Pindar means when he calls his 
 hymns ' Kings over the Lyre '), and 
 Music in which the words are lost and 
 the wind or impulse leads generally 
 therefore, between intellectual, and brutal, 
 
 or meaningless, music 
 
 "And the opposition of these two kinds 
 of sound is continually dwelt upon by 
 the Greek philosophers, the real fact at 
 the root of all their teaching being this 
 that true Music is the natural expression 
 of a lofty passion for a right cause ; that 
 in proportion to the kingliness and force 
 of any personality, the expression either 
 of its joy or suffering becomes measured, 
 chastened, calm and capable of interpreta- 
 tion only by the majesty of ordered, 
 beautiful, and worded sound. Exactly in 
 proportion to the degree in which we be- 
 come narrow in the cause and conception
 
 V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 131 
 
 of our passions, incontinent in the utter- 
 ance of them, feeble of perseverance in 
 them, sullied or shameful in the indul- 
 gence of them, their expression by musical 
 sound becomes broken, mean, fatuitous, 
 and at last impossible ; the measured 
 waves of the air of heaven will not lend 
 themselves to expression of ultimate vice, 
 it must be for ever sunk into discordance 
 or silence. And since, as before stated, 
 every work of right art has a tendency to 
 reproduce the ethical state which first 
 developed it, this, which of all the arts is 
 most distinctly ethical in origin, is also 
 the most direct in power of discipline ; 
 the first, the simplest, the most effective 
 of all instruments of moral instruction ; 
 while in the failure and betrayal of its 
 functions, it becomes the subtlest aid of 
 moral degradation. Music is thus in her 
 health the teacher of perfect order, and is
 
 132 V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 
 
 the voice of the obedience of angels, 
 arid the companion of the course of 
 the spheres of heaven ; and in her de- 
 pravity she is also the teacher of per- 
 fect disorder -and disobedience, and the 
 ' Gloria in Excelsis ' becomes the ' Mar- 
 seillaise.'" . .--.'.* 
 
 " How much of the repose how much 
 of the wrath, folly and misery of men, has 
 literally depended on this one power of 
 the air on the sound of the trumpet and 
 of the bell on the lark's song and the 
 bees' murmur ! " t 
 
 The extract from " Fors " which follows is 
 given more for the sake of the Music of its 
 words on Music, than for any very direct 
 bearing (which it does not possess) on " Music 
 and Morals." At the same time, the moral 
 element does exist in it, as the whole passage 
 
 * "Queen of the Air," pars. 41 & 42. 
 f Ibid., par. 43.
 
 V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 133 
 
 turns upon the expression of "noble thoughts 
 and passions in song." 
 
 "The border district of Scotland was 
 at this time, of all districts of the in- 
 habited world, pre-eminently the singing 
 country, that which most naturally ex- 
 pressed its noble thoughts and passions 
 in song. 
 
 "The easily traceable reasons for this 
 character are, I think, the following : 
 
 11 First, distinctly pastoral life, giving 
 the kind of leisure which, in all ages and 
 countries, solaces itself with simple 
 Music, if other circumstances are favour- 
 able that is to say, if the summer air is 
 mild enough to allow repose, and the race 
 has imagination enough to give motive to 
 verse 
 
 " Secondly, the soldier's life, passing 
 gradually, not in cowardice or under 
 foreign conquest, but by his own
 
 134- V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 
 
 increasing kindness and sense, into that 
 of the shepherd ; thus without humilia- 
 tion leaving the war-wounded past to 
 be recalled for its sorrow and its fame. 
 
 " Thirdly, the extreme sadness of that 
 past itself: giving pathos and awe to all 
 the imagery and power of Nature. 
 
 " Fourthly (this is a merely physical 
 cause, yet a very notable one), the beauty 
 of the sound of Scottish streams .... 
 the pure crystal of the Scottish pebbles, 
 giving the stream its gradations of amber 
 to the edge, and the sound as of 
 ' ravishing division to the Lute,' make 
 the Scottish fords the happiest pieces 
 of all one's day walk 
 
 " One of the most curious points con- 
 nected with the study of Border life is 
 this connection of its power of song either 
 with its industry or human love, but 
 never with the religious passion of its
 
 V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 135 
 
 ' Independent ' mind. The definite sub- 
 ject of the piper or minstrel being always 
 war or love (peasant love as much 
 honoured as the proudest), his feeling 
 is steadily antagonistic to Puritanism ; 
 and the discordance of Scottish modern 
 psalmody is as unexampled among civil- 
 ised nations as the sweetness of their 
 ballads."* 
 
 Thus, it will be very plainly perceived, that 
 the word "moral" throughout this chapter 
 must be applied only in its widest art-significa- 
 tion ; for the bad art of the Scotch psalm sing- 
 ing (though" virtuous !) comes off as badly as the 
 perfect art, misapplied, does in "Don Giovanni!" 
 
 A few words must have place here as to an 
 ideal object for use of this much extolled art of 
 song. 
 
 * "Fors Clavigera," No. xxxii. pp. 13-17.
 
 136 .V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 
 
 lessons the remembrance and 
 
 honour of the dead with the workman- 
 ship for them of fair tombs of song." 
 
 Next comes a beautiful account of St. Cecilia 
 and her moral purpose, a study suggested to 
 Ruskin, it seems to me (as, perhaps, were many 
 of his accounts of the Saints, in his " Pleasures 
 of Fancy"), by his minute consideration of his 
 magnificent thirteenth-century musical service 
 book, or antiphonaire. This belonged to, and 
 was originally written for, the Abbesse of Beau 
 Pre. All the music is in the old four-line stave, 
 with the lozenge-shaped notes of the period ; 
 but what gorgeous colours, and what wondrous 
 gold, did those thirteenth-century masters shower 
 upon their well-loved vellum. That they fully 
 realised their work was for posterity, is proved 
 by the Latin dedication in this particular 
 volume, which runs to this effect that to him 
 who makes the charge of this book his special 
 care, it will bring a blessing, but if by chance 
 it falls into the hands of the destroyer
 
 V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 137 
 
 " Anathema " be upon his head! The dedica- 
 tion has guarded the book safely through five 
 centuries, for it is in perfect condition, and 
 those who spent so much beautiful labour on 
 its construction, would feel the aim of their 
 work fulfilled, did they but know the favour it 
 has won, in the eyes of one, who, perhaps in 
 this nineteenth century, stands alone in his 
 power of appreciation of its beauties. I cannot 
 forbear from quoting here a few lines from 
 "Praeterita" (though they only bear upon the 
 subject, in so far as Missals contain both 
 "Music and Morals"), in which Mr. Ruskin 
 tells us of his first missal possession, a little 
 fourteenth-century " Hours of the Virgin " 
 acquired by him in 1841. All missals should 
 be his, to whom they can so speak. 
 
 " The new worlds which every leaf of 
 this book opened to me and the joy I had 
 counting their letters and unravelling 
 their arabesques, as if they had all been 
 beaten gold as many of them indeed
 
 138 V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 
 
 were cannot be told. For truly a well 
 illuminated missal is a fairy cathedral, 
 full of painted windows, bound together 
 to carry in one's pocket with the music 
 and the blessing of all its prayers 
 inside." 
 
 From the former missal, however, to a certain 
 extent, may have come Ruskin's special interest 
 in the Saint of Song. [The specially beautiful 
 St. Cecilia leaf from it, is reproduced as the 
 frontispiece of this book, though of necessity 
 on a diminished scale.] And now, from this 
 long digression, we return to Ruskin's account 
 of her, who is, at once, the patron Saint, of 
 " Music and Morals." 
 
 "With much more clearness and his- 
 toric comfort we may approach the shrine 
 of St. Cecilia ; and even on the most 
 prosaic and realistic minds such as 
 my own a visit to her house has a com- 
 forting and establishing effect The
 
 .V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 139 
 
 ruling conception of her is deepened 
 gradually by the enlarged study of 
 religious Music ; and is at its best and 
 highest in the thirteenth century, when 
 she rather resists than complies with the 
 already tempting and distracting powers 
 of sound, and we are told that ' Cantantibus 
 organis, Cecilia virgo in corde suo soli 
 Domino decan-tabat, decius, Fiat Domine 
 cor meum et corpus meum immaculatum, 
 ut non confundar.' * 
 
 This sentence occurs in my great 
 service book of the Convent of Beau Prd, 
 witten in 1290, and it is illustrated with 
 a miniature of Cecilia sitting silent at a 
 banquet, where all manner of musicians 
 are playing. I need not point out to you 
 how the law, not of sacred Music only so 
 
 * Whilst the instruments played, Cecilia the Virgin sang 
 in her heart only to the Lord, saying, "O Lord, be my 
 heart and body made stainless, that she be not con- 
 founded."
 
 140 V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 
 
 called but of all Music, is determined by 
 this sentence, which means in effect that 
 unless Music exalt and purify it is not 
 under St. Cecilia's ordinance, and it is 
 not virtually Music at all. 
 
 " Her confessed power at last expires 
 amidst a hubbub of odes and sonatas ; 
 and I suppose her presence at a Morning 
 Popular is as little anticipated as desired. 
 Unconfessed, she is of all mythic saints 
 the greatest ; and the child in its nurse's 
 arms, and every tender and gentle spirit 
 which resolves to purify itself as the eye 
 for seeing so the ear for hearing may 
 still, whether behind the temple veil, or 
 at the fireside and by the wayside, hear 
 Cecilia sing." * 
 
 Even in this late paragraph comes the 
 technical deficiency, arising from want of musical 
 
 * " Pleasures of England," iv.
 
 V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 141 
 
 education, which it is impossible not to regret 
 in one, who so understood Music's spiritual 
 essence. For the " Morning Popular " must 
 be allowed to contain, in many ways, the 
 highest of Music's purpose, but still, the voice 
 by the wayside may be the spiritual version ; 
 the Music that lives within Music. 
 
 # * # * * 
 
 Throughout this little book, apology is neces- 
 sary, for interposing any ordinary words among 
 those that are of gold ; but it is believed that 
 any one, in whom the book may awaken 
 interest, will see in them only their real object, 
 the desire " to make plain the path," in some 
 instances, perhaps, to translate a hidden thought. 
 Two or three little fragments yet remain which 
 are gathered up, so that nothing may be lost in 
 connection with this subject, though not in two 
 instances, absolutely to be classed under the 
 heading of this chapter. 
 
 The first is from the " Laws of Fesol : " 
 
 "Joy and love are not arts, nor are
 
 142 V. MUSIC AND MORALS. 
 
 they limited to humanity. But the love- 
 song becomes art when, by reason and 
 discipline, the singer has become con- 
 scious of the ravishment in its divisions 
 to the lute." 
 
 Two short sentences from the " Ethics of the 
 Dust " repay thought. The last contains the 
 Music and Moral of Life. 
 
 "There is no music in a 'rest' that 
 I know of, but there's the making of 
 Music in it. And people are always 
 missing that part of the life melody, and 
 scrambling on without counting not 
 that it's easy to count ; but nothing on 
 which so much depends ever is easy 
 yet, 'All one's life is a Music, if one 
 touches the notes rightly and in time.' " * 
 
 * " Ethics of the Dust."
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 OF MUSIC AND "JOANNA'S CARE." 
 
 As far as they admitted of classification, the 
 thoughts of " Ruskin on Music" ended in the 
 last chapter, but perhaps, as so often happens, 
 the best of anything does not admit of class 
 selection at all. Such is the case with the 
 passages contained in the following few pages ; 
 they touch upon widely differing subjects, but 
 they contain some of the greatest music of 
 words ever sounded. 
 
 Of the extracts from " Joanna's Care " (now 
 for the first time separately printed), must it be 
 borne in mind that these beauteous thoughts on 
 Music are probably the last on any subject to 
 which this great mind will ever give expression.
 
 144 VI. OF MUSIC AND "JOANNA'S CARE." 
 
 For those who care specially for the expres- 
 sion of such a mind on an art they love, it is a 
 pleasure to think how near these thoughts have 
 been, and are, to his quiet eventide. 
 
 There is a curious significance for Ruskin 
 students even in this limited " Ruskin on 
 Music " selection, that much the largest part of 
 it should relate to what can only be called 
 " Music and Morals." Even in the compara- 
 tively small portion of his writings which Ruskin 
 has devoted to Music, the teaching of his life, 
 the insistence on art's moral value and influence, 
 remains its strongest purpose ; a value so often 
 ignored, a purpose so often denied to art, and 
 which yet, in the speech of that art, is as the 
 voice of its inner sanctuary ; which is to it (in 
 Mr. Ruskin's view) as the Holy Grail to the 
 seekers after Truth. 
 
 It is specially pleasant to be able to connect 
 Ruskin's last words on Music with the name 
 of one very dear to him, to whom I have 
 acknowledged my indebtedness, in connection 
 with this little book, in its dedication.
 
 VI. OF MUSIC AND "JOANNA'S CARE." 145 
 
 All the extracts in this chapter are from the 
 number of " Praeterita" entitled "Joanna's 
 Care," in which is told a love story of no 
 ordinary interest. A love story indeed, and one 
 of deep and wide significance, but one which 
 has nought to do with the loves of men and 
 maids, which tells of a woman's love for one 
 family, a love which for two generations has 
 been "Faithful unto death," and with which 
 the name of Joan Ruskin Severn must ever be 
 associated. 
 
 The words that follow here are, as it were", a 
 summing up of Ruskin's "Thoughts on Music," 
 showing belief in the voice as the eternal mu- 
 sical instrument, in the teaching of all Music to 
 be an eternal service of the highest thought, 
 and its " inner meaning " that which lifts the 
 art to heaven, its inspiration and spiritual 
 essence. 
 
 But we must first gather from " Praeterita " 
 the passages relating to "Wandering Willie" 
 of " Redgauntlet " fame, to understand all that 
 he suggested to Ruskin in connection with his
 
 I 4 6 VI. OF MUSIC AND "JOANNA'S CARE." 
 
 "prime fiddling, "and for a space, it is necessary 
 to look at the context of that which comes more 
 especially under our notice. 
 
 Darsie Latimer has escaped from his Quaker 
 friends to the downs of the coast, which had 
 formerly seemed so waste and dreary. 
 
 " A moment afterwards he catches the 
 tune of ' Old Sir Thorn a Lyne,' sung by 
 three musicians, cosily niched into what 
 you might call a bunker* a little sandpit, 
 dry and snug, surrounded by its banks, 
 and a screen of furze in full bloom. 
 Of whom the youngest, Benjie, at first 
 somewhat dismayed at my appearance, 
 but calculating on my placability, 
 almost in one breath assured the itine- 
 rants that I was a grand gentleman, and 
 had plenty of money, and was kind to 
 poor folk, and informed me that this 
 
 * This is a modern word, meaning, first, a large chest 
 then, a recess scooped in soft rock.
 
 VI. OF MUSIC AND "JOANNA'S CARE." 147 
 
 was Willie Steenson, ' Wandering Willie, 
 the best fiddler that ever kittled thairm 
 (catgut) with horsehair.' 
 
 " I asked him if he was of this country, 
 ' This country,' replied the blind man, 
 ' and of every country in broad Scotland, 
 and a wee bit of England to the boot. 
 But yet I am in some sense of this 
 country, for I was born within hearing of 
 the roar of Solway.' (Scott.) 
 
 " I must pause again to tell the modern 
 reader that no word is ever used by Scott 
 in a hackneyed sense. For three hundred 
 years of English commonplace, roar has 
 rhymed to shore, as breeze to trees ; yet 
 in this sentence the word is as powerful 
 as if it had never been written till now ! 
 for no other sound of the sea is for an 
 instant comparable to the breaking of 
 deep ocean, as it rises over great spaces 
 of sand. In its rise and fall on a rocky
 
 148 VI. OF MUSIC AND "JOANNA'S CARE." 
 
 coast, it is either perfectly silent, or if it 
 strike, it is with a crash, or a blow like 
 that of a heavy gun. Therefore, under 
 ordinary conditions, there may be either 
 splash, or crash, or sigh, or boom, but 
 not roar. But the hollow sound of the 
 countless ranks of surfy breakers, rolling 
 mile after mile in ceaseless following, 
 every one of them with the apparent 
 anger and threatening of a fate which is 
 assured death unless fled from, the 
 sound of this approach over quicksands, 
 and into inextricable gulfs of mountain 
 bay ; this, heard far out at sea, or heard 
 far inland, through the peace of secure 
 night, or stormless day, is still an eternal 
 voice, with the harmony in it of a 
 mighty law, and the gloom of a mortal 
 warning." 
 
 No finer, or more musical passage could well 
 be written, than this splendid reference to the
 
 VI. OF MUSIC AND "JOANNA'S CARE." 149 
 
 eternal voice of Nature's harmony, the root and 
 source of all harmony in art. 
 
 Ruskin continues, quoting from Scott : 
 
 "The old man preluded as he spoke, 
 and then taking the old tune of ' Gala- 
 shiels' for his theme, he graced it with 
 a wildness of complicated and beautiful 
 variations, during which it was wonder- 
 ful to observe how his sightless face was 
 lighted up under the conscious pride and 
 heartfelt delight in the exercise of his own 
 very considerable powers. 
 
 " ' What think you of that now, for 
 threescore and twa ? ' (Scott.) 
 
 "I pause again to distinguish this noble 
 pride of a man of unerring genius, in the 
 power which all his life has been too 
 short to attain, up to the point he con- 
 ceives of, from the base complacency of 
 the narrow brain and dull heart, in their 
 own chosen ways of indolence or error.
 
 ISO VI. OF MUSIC AND "JOANNA'S CARE." 
 
 " The feeling comes out more distinctly 
 still, three pages forward, when his wife 
 tells him, ' The gentleman is a gentle- 
 man, Willie; ye maunna speak that gate 
 to him, hinnie?' 
 
 " ' The deevil I maunna ! ' said Willie, 
 1 and what for maunna I ? If he was ten 
 gentles, he canna draw a bow like me, 
 can he?' (Scott.) 
 
 " I need to insist upon this distinction, 
 at this time in England especially, when 
 the names of artists, whose birth was an 
 epoch in the world's history, are dragged 
 through the gutters of Paris, Manchester, 
 and New York, to decorate the last puffs 
 written for a morning concert, or a 
 monthly exhibition. I have just turned 
 out of the house a book in which I am 
 told by the modern picture dealer that 
 Mr. A., B., C, D., or F. is 'the Mozart 
 of the nineteenth century '; the fact being
 
 VI. OF MUSIC AND "JOANNA'S CARE." 151 
 
 that Mozart's birth wrote the laws of 
 melody for all the world as irrevocably as 
 if they had been set down by the waves 
 of Solway ; and as widely as the birth of 
 St. Gregory in the sixth century fixed to 
 its date for ever the establishment of the 
 laws of musical expression. Men of per- 
 fect genius are known in all centuries by 
 their perfect respect to all law, and love 
 of past tradition ; their work in the world 
 is never innovation, but new creation, 
 without disturbing for an instant the 
 foundations which were laid of old time." 
 
 "Wandering Willie's" notion of the devil as 
 a fiddler, and Ruskin's criticisms on what may 
 be gathered from the passage, follow in rapid 
 succession : 
 
 " ' Honest folks like me! How do ye 
 ken whether I am honest, or what I am ? 
 I may be the deevil himsell for what ye
 
 152 VI. OF MUSIC AND "JOANNA'S CARE." 
 
 ken ; for he has power to come disguised 
 like an angel of light ; and besides, he is 
 a prime fiddler. He played a sonata to 
 Core Hi, ye ken.' 
 
 "This reference to the simplest and 
 purest writer of Italian melody being not 
 for the sake of the story, but because 
 Willie's own art had been truly founded 
 upon him, so that he had been really an 
 angel of music as well as light to him. 
 See the beginning of the dialogue in the 
 previous page. ' Do you ken the 
 Laird ? ' said Willie, interrupting an over- 
 ture of Corelli, of which he had whistled 
 several bars with great precision. 
 
 " I must pause again to crowd together 
 one or two explanations of the references 
 to Music in my own writings hitherto, 
 which I can here sum by asking the 
 reader to compare the use of the voice in 
 war, beginning with the cry of Achilles
 
 VI. OF MUSIC AND "JOANNA'S CARE." 153 
 
 on the Greek wall, down to what may be 
 named as the two great instances of 
 modern choral war-song ; the singing of 
 the known Church hymn * at the Battle 
 of Leuthen (' Friedrich,' vol. ii. p. 259), 
 in which 'five-and-twenty thousand victor 
 voices joined : ' 
 
 " ' Now thank God one and all, 
 
 With heart, with voice, with hands, 
 Who wonders great hath done 
 To us and to all lands; 
 
 and, on the counter side, the song of the 
 ' Marseillaise ' on the march to Paris, 
 which began the conquests of the French 
 Revolution, in turning the tide of its 
 enemies. Compare these, I say, with the 
 debased use of modern military bands 
 at dinners and dances, which inaugurate 
 such victory as we had at the Battle of 
 
 * Psalm, I believe, rather ; but see my separate notes on 
 " St. Louis's Psalter " (now in preparation).
 
 154 VI. OF MUSIC AND "JOANNA'S CARE." 
 
 Balaclava, and the modern no-Battle of 
 the Baltic, when our entire war fleet, a 
 vast job of ironmongers, retreated under 
 Sir C. Napier from before the Russian 
 fortress of Cronstadt. 
 
 " I preface with this question the repe- 
 tition of what I have always taught, that 
 the voice is the eternal musical instru- 
 ment of heaven and earth, from angels 
 down to birds. Half way between them, 
 my little Joanie sang me yesterday, I3th 
 May, 1889, ' Farewell, Manchester,' and 
 ' Golden Slumbers,' two pieces of con- 
 summate melody, which can only be 
 expressed by the voice, and belonging 
 to the group of like melodies which 
 have been, not invented, but inspired, to 
 all nations in the days of their loyalty 
 to God, to their prince, and to them- 
 selves 
 
 " But the distinction of the music of
 
 VI. OF MUSIC AND "JOANNA'S CARE." 155 
 
 Scotland from every other is in its asso- 
 ciation with sweeter natural sounds, and 
 filling a deeper silence. As ' Fors ' also 
 ordered it, yesterday afternoon, before 
 Joanie sang these songs to me, I had 
 been, for the first time since my return 
 from Venice, down to the shore of my 
 own lake, with her and her two youngest 
 children, at the little promontory of 
 shingle thrown out into it by the only 
 mountain brook on this eastern side (Beck 
 Leven), which commands the windings of 
 its wooded shore under Furness Fells, 
 and the calm of its fairest expanse of 
 mirror wave a scene which is in general 
 almost melancholy in its perfect solitude ; 
 but when the woods are in their gladness, 
 and the green how much purer, how 
 much softer than ever emerald ! of their 
 unsullied spring, and the light of dawning 
 summer, possessing alike the clouds and
 
 156 VI. OF MU-SIC AND "JOANNA'S CARE." 
 
 mountains of the west it is, literally, 
 one of the most beautiful and strange 
 remnants of all that was once most 
 sacred in this British land all to which 
 we owe, whether the heart, or the voice, 
 of the Douglas 'tender and true,' or the 
 minstrel of the Eildons, or the bard of 
 Plynlimmon, or the Ellen of the lonely 
 Isle, to whose lips Scott has entrusted 
 the most beautiful Ave Maria that was 
 ever sung, and which can never be sung 
 rightly again until it is remembered that 
 the harp is the true ancient instrument of 
 Scotland as well as of Ireland.* 
 
 * Although the violin was known as early as 1270, and 
 occurs again and again in French and Italian sculpture and 
 illumination, its introduction, in superseding both the voice, 
 the golden bell, and the silver trumpet, was entirely owing 
 to the demoralisation of the Spanish kingdom in Naples, of 
 which Evelyn writes in 1644: "The building of the city 
 is, for the size, the most magnificent in Europe. To it 
 belongeth three thousand churches and monasteries, and 
 those best built and adorned of any in Italy. They greatly 
 affect the Spanish gravity in their habit, delight in good
 
 VI. OF MUSIC AND "JOANNA'S CARE." 157 
 
 " I am afraid of being diverted too far 
 from Solway Moss, and must ask the 
 reader to look back to my description of 
 the Spirit of Music in the Spanish chapel 
 at Florence ('The Strait Gate/ pages 134 
 and 135), remembering only this passage 
 at the beginning of it, ' After learning to 
 reason, you will learn to sing : for you 
 will want to. There is much reason for 
 
 horses, the streets are full of gallants on horseback, and in 
 coaches and sedans, from hence first brought into England 
 by Sir Sanders Duncomb ; the country people so jovial, and 
 addicted to music, that the very husbandmen almost uni- 
 versally play on the guitar, singing and composing songs in 
 praise of their sweethearts, and will commonly go to the 
 field with their fiddle they are merry, witty, and genial, 
 all which I attribute to the excellent quality of the air." 
 
 What Evelyn means by the fiddle is not quite certain, 
 since he himself, going to study " in Padua, far beyond the 
 sea," there learned to play on " ye theorba, taught by 
 Signior Dominico Bassano, who had a daughter married 
 to a doctor of laws, that played and sung to nine several 
 instruments, with that skill and addresse as few masters in 
 Italy exceeded her ; she likewise composed divers excellent 
 pieces. I had never seen any play on the Naples viol 
 before."
 
 158 VI. OF MUSIC AND "JOANNA'S CARE." 
 
 singing in the sweet world, when one 
 thinks rightly of it. None for grumbling, 
 provided always you have entered in at 
 the strait gate. You will sing all along 
 the road then, in a little while, in a man- 
 ner pleasant for other people to hear/ ' 
 
 And so do these thoughts of the " Strait 
 Gate," of Scottish Music and of "Wandering 
 Willie " bring together, as it were, and conclude 
 Ruskin's "meaning" of Music. The humble 
 figure of this man, representative of the true 
 minstrel, being chosen, to record 
 
 "for ever the glory not of Scottish 
 music only, but of all Music, rightly so- 
 called which is a part of God's own 
 creation, becoming an expression of the 
 purest hearts." 
 
 Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & Co. 
 London & Edinburgh.
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
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