Ex Libris 
 I C. K. OGDEN 

 

 
 THE 
 
 CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 f jm f ctlra 
 
 ON 
 
 WORK, TRAFFIC, AND WAR. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN, M.A. 
 
 ' And indeed it should have been of gold, had not Jupiter been so 
 poor.' ARISTOPHANES (Plutns). 
 
 LONDON: 
 SMITH, ELDER, & CO., 65 CORNHILL. 
 
 1866. 
 
 Tlie right of translation is reserved.
 
 LONDON 
 
 PRINTED BV SPOTTISWOODE AND CO. 
 NEW-STREET SQUARE
 
 Stack 
 Annex 
 
 R 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 TWENTY YEARS ago, there was no lovelier 
 piece of lowland scenery in South England, 
 nor any more pathetic, in the world, by 
 its expression of sweet human character 
 and life, than that immediately bordering 
 on the sources of the Wandle, and includ- 
 ing the lower moors of Addington, and the 
 villages of Beddington and Carshalton, with 
 all their pools and streams. No clearer or 
 diviner waters ever sang with constant lips 
 of the hand which ' giveth rain from heaven ; 
 no pastures ever lightened in spring time 
 with more passionate blossoming ; no
 
 IV PREFACE. 
 
 sweeter homes ever hallowed the heart of 
 the passer-by with their pride of peaceful 
 gladness fain-hidden yet full-confessed. 
 The place remains, or, until a few months 
 ago, remained, nearly unchanged in its 
 larger features; but, with deliberate mind 
 I say, that I have never seen anything so 
 ghastly in its inner tragic meaning, not 
 in Pisan Maremma, not by Campagna 
 tomb, not by the sand-isles of the Tor- 
 cellan shore, as the slow stealing of as- 
 pects of reckless, indolent, animal neglect, 
 over the delicate sweetness of that English 
 scene : nor is any blasphemy or impiety 
 any frantic saying or godless thought 
 more appalling to me, using the best power 
 of judgment I have to discern its sense and 
 scope, than the insolent defiling of those 
 springs by the human herds that drink 01 
 them. Just where the welling of stainless
 
 PREFACE. V 
 
 water, trembling and pure, like a body of 
 light, enters the pool of Carshalton, cutting 
 itself a radiant channel down to the gravel, 
 through warp of feathery weeds, all waving, 
 which it traverses with its deep threads of 
 clearness, like the chalcedony in moss-agate, 
 starred here and there with the white gre- 
 nouillette; just in the very rush and mur- 
 mur of the first spreading currents, the 
 human wretches of the place cast their 
 street and house foulness ; heaps of dust 
 and slime, and broken shreds of old metal, 
 and rags of putrid clothes ; they having 
 neither energy to cart it away, nor decency 
 enough to dig it into the ground, thus shed 
 into the stream, to diffuse what venom of it 
 will float and melt, far away, in all places 
 where God meant those waters to bring joy 
 and health. And, in a little pool, behind 
 some houses farther in the village, where
 
 vi PREFACE. 
 
 another spring rises, the shattered stones of 
 the well, and of the little fretted channel 
 which was long ago built and traced for it 
 by gentler hands, lie scattered, each from 
 each, under a ragged bank of mortar, and 
 scoria ; and bricklayers' refuse, on one side, 
 which the clean water nevertheless chas- 
 tises to purity ; but it cannot conquer the 
 dead earth beyond ; and there, circled and 
 coiled under festering scum, the stagnant 
 edge of the pool effaces itself into a slope 
 of black slime, the accumulation of indolent 
 years. Half-a-dozen men, with one day's 
 work, could cleanse those pools, and trim 
 the flowers about their banks, and make 
 every breath of summer air above them 
 rich with cool balm ; and every glittering 
 wave medicinal, as if it ran, troubled of 
 angels, from the porch of Bethesda. But 
 that day's work is never given, nor will be ;
 
 PREFACE. . Vll 
 
 nor will any joy be possible to heart of 
 man, for evermore, about those wells of 
 English waters. 
 
 When I last left them, I walked up 
 slowly through the back streets of Croy- 
 don, from the old church to the hospital ; 
 and, just on the left, before coming up 
 to the crossing of the High Street, there 
 was a new public-house built. And the 
 front of it was built in so wise manner, that 
 a recess of two feet was left below its front 
 windows, between them and the street- 
 pavement a recess too narrow for any pos- 
 sible use, (for even if it had been occupied 
 by a seat, as in old time it might have been, 
 everybody walking along the street would 
 have fallen over the legs of the reposing 
 wayfarers). But, by way of making this 
 two feet depth of freehold land more ex- 
 pressive of the dignity of an establishment
 
 viii PREFACE. 
 
 for the sale of spirituous liquors, it was 
 fenced from the pavement by an impos- 
 ing iron railing, having four or five spear- 
 heads to the yard of it, and six feet high ; 
 containing as much iron and iron-work, 
 indeed, as could well be put into the space ; 
 and by this stately arrangement, the little 
 piece of dead ground within, between wall 
 and street, became a protective receptacle 
 of refuse ; cigar ends, and oyster shells, 
 and the like, such as an open-handed 
 English street-populace habitually scatters 
 from its presence, and was thus left, un- 
 sweepable by any ordinary methods. Now 
 the iron bars which, uselessly, (or in great 
 degree worse than uselessly) enclosed this 
 bit of ground, and made it pestilent, re- 
 presented a quantity of work which would 
 have cleansed the Carshalton pools three 
 times over ; of work, partly cramped and
 
 , PREFACE. IX 
 
 deadly, in the mine; partly fierce* and ex- 
 haustive, at the furnace ; partly foolish and 
 
 * 'A fearful occurrence took place a few days 
 since, near Wolverhampton. Thomas Snape, aged 
 nineteen, was on duty as the " keeper " of a blast 
 furnace at Deepfield, assisted by John Gardner, 
 aged eighteen, and Joseph Swift, aged thirty-seven. 
 The furnace contained four tons of molten iron, 
 and an equal amount of cinders, and ought to have 
 been run out at 7.30 P.M. But Snape and his 
 mates, engaged in talking and drinking, neglected 
 their duty, and, in the meantime, the iron rose in 
 the furnace until it reached a pipe wherein water 
 was contained. Just as the men had stripped, and 
 were proceeding to tap the furnace, the water in the 
 pipe, converted into steam, burst down its front 
 and let loose on them the molten metal, which 
 instantaneously consumed Gardner ; Snape, ter- 
 ribly burnt, and mad with pain, leaped into the 
 canal and then ran home and fell dead on the 
 threshold ; Swift survived to reach the hospital, 
 where he died too.'
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 sedentary, of ill-taught students making 
 bad designs : work from the beginning to 
 the last fruits of it, and in all the branches 
 of it, venomous, deathful, and miserable. 
 Now, how did it come to pass that this 
 work was done instead of the other; that 
 the strength and life of the English opera- 
 tive were spent in defiling ground, instead 
 of redeeming it ; and in producing an 
 entirely (in that place) valueless piece of 
 metal, which can neither be eaten nor 
 breathed, instead of medicinal fresh air, 
 and pure water ? 
 
 There is but one reason for it, and at 
 
 In further illustration of this matter, I beg the 
 reader to look at the article on the ' Decay of 
 the English Race,' in the 1 P all-Mall Gazette 1 of 
 April 17, of this year; and at the articles on the 
 ' Report of the Thames Commission/ in any jour- 
 nals of the same date.
 
 PREFACE. Xi 
 
 present a conclusive one, that the capital- 
 ist can charge per-centage on the work in 
 the one case, and cannot in the other. If, 
 having certain funds for supporting labour 
 at my disposal, I pay men merely to keep 
 my ground in order, my money is, in that 
 function, spent once for all ; but if I pay 
 them to dig iron out of my ground, and 
 work it, and sell it, I can charge rent for 
 the ground, and per-centage both on the 
 manufacture and the sale, and make my 
 capital profitable in these three bye-ways. 
 The greater part of the profitable invest- 
 ment of capital, in the present day, is in 
 operations of this kind, in which the public 
 is persuaded to buy something of no use 
 to it, on production, or sale, of which, the 
 capitalist may charge percentage ; the said 
 public remaining all the while under the 
 persuasion that the per-centages thus ob-
 
 Xll PREFACE. 
 
 tained are real national gains, whereas, 
 they are merely filchings out of par- 
 tially light pockets, to swell heavy ones. 
 Thus, the Croydon publican buys the 
 iron railing, to make himself more conspic- 
 uous to drunkards. The public-house- 
 keeper on the other side of the way pre- 
 sently buys another railing, to out-rail 
 him with. Both are, as to their relative 
 attractiveness to customers of taste, just 
 where they were before; but they have 
 lost the price of the railings; which they 
 must either themselves finally lose, or 
 make their aforesaid customers of taste 
 pay, by raising the price of their beer, 
 or adulterating it. Either the publicans, 
 or their customers, are thus poorer by 
 precisely what the capitalist has gained; 
 and the value of the work itself, mean- 
 time, has been lost to the nation ; the
 
 PREFACE. Xlll 
 
 iron bars in that form and place being 
 wholly useless. It is this mode of taxa- 
 tion of the poor by the rich which is re- 
 ferred to in the text (page 36), in com- 
 paring the modern acquisitive power of 
 capital with that of the lance and sword ; 
 the only difference being that the levy 
 of black mail in old times was by force, 
 and is now by cozening. The old rider 
 and reiver frankly quartered himself on 
 the publican for the night; the modern 
 one merely makes his lance into an iron 
 spike, and persuades his host to buy it. 
 One comes as an open robber, the other 
 as a cheating pedlar; but the result, to 
 the injured person's pocket, is absolutely 
 the same. Of course many useful in- 
 dustries mingle with, and disguise the 
 useless ones ; and in the habits of energy 
 aroused .by the struggle, there is a certain
 
 XIV PREFACE. 
 
 direct good. It is far better to spend four 
 thousand pounds in making a good gun, 
 and then to blow it to pieces, than to pass 
 life in idleness. Only do not let it be 
 called ' political economy.' There is also 
 a confused notion in the minds of many 
 persons, that the gathering of the property 
 of the poor into the hands of the rich does 
 no ultimate harm ; since, in whosesoever 
 hands it may be, it must be spent at 
 last, and thus, they think, return to the 
 poor again. This fallacy has been again 
 and again exposed ; but grant the plea 
 true, and the same apology may, of course, 
 be made for black mail, or any other form 
 of robbery. It might be (though practi- 
 cally it never is) as advantageous for the 
 nation that the robber should have the 
 spending of the money he extorts, as that 
 the person robbed should have spent it.
 
 PREFACE. XV 
 
 But this is no excuse for the theft. If I 
 were to put a turnpike on the road where 
 it passes my own gate, and endeavour to 
 exact a shilling from every passenger, the 
 public would soon do away with my gate, 
 without listening to any plea on my part 
 that ' it was as advantageous to them, in 
 the end, that I should spend their shillings, 
 as that they themselves should.' But if, 
 instead of out-facing them with a turnpike, 
 I can only persuade them to come in and 
 buy stones, or old iron, or any other use- 
 less thing, out of my ground, I may rob 
 them to the same extent, and be, more- 
 over, thanked as a public benefactor, and 
 promoter of commercial prosperity. And 
 this main question for the poor of Eng- 
 land for the poor of all countries is 
 wholly omitted in every common treatise 
 on the subject of wealth. Even by the
 
 XVI PREFACE. 
 
 labourers themselves, the operation of ca- 
 pital is regarded only in its effect on 
 their immediate interests; never in the 
 far more terrific power of its appoint- 
 ment of the kind and the object of la- 
 bour. It matters little, ultimately, how 
 much a labourer is paid for making any- 
 thing; but it matters fearfully what the 
 thing is, which he is compelled to make. 
 If his labour is so ordered as to produce 
 food, and fresh air, and fresh water, no 
 matter that his wages are low; the 
 food and fresh air and water will be at 
 last there; and he will at last get them. 
 But if he is paid to destroy food and fresh 
 air, or to produce iron bars instead of them, 
 the food and air will finally not be there, 
 and he will not get them, to his great and 
 final inconvenience. So that, conclusively, 
 in political as in household economy, the
 
 PREFACE. XVll 
 
 great question is, not so much what money 
 you have in your pocket, as what you will 
 buy with it, and do with it. 
 
 I have been long accustomed, as all men 
 engaged in work of investigation must be, 
 to hear my statements laughed at for 
 years, before they are examined or be- 
 lieved ; and I am generally content to wait 
 the public's time. But it has not been 
 without displeased surprise that I have 
 found myself totally unable, as yet, by any 
 repetition, or illustration, to force this plain 
 thought into my readers' heads, that the 
 wealth of nations, as of men, consists in 
 substance, not in ciphers ; and that the real 
 good of all work, and of all commerce, 
 depends on the final worth of the thing 
 you make, or get by it. This is a prac- 
 tical enough statement, one would think : 
 but the English public has been so
 
 XV111 PREFACE. 
 
 possessed by its modern school of econo- 
 mists with the notion that Business is 
 always good, whether it be busy in mis- 
 chief or in benefit ; and that buying and 
 selling are always salutary, whatever the 
 intrinsic worth of what you buy or sell, 
 that it seems impossible to gain so much 
 as a patient hearing for any inquiry re- 
 specting the substantial result of our 
 eager modern labours. I have never felt 
 more checked by the sense of this im- 
 possibility than in arranging the heads 
 of the following three lectures, which, 
 though delivered at considerable intervals 
 of time, and in different places, were not 
 prepared without reference to each other. 
 Their connection would, however, have 
 been made far more distinct, if I had ' 
 not been prevented, by what I feel to 
 be another great difficulty in addressing
 
 PREFACE. xix 
 
 English audiences, from enforcing, with any 
 decision, the common, and to me the most 
 important, part of their subjects. I chiefly 
 desired (as I have just said) to question 
 my hearers operatives, merchants, and 
 soldiers, as to the ultimate meaning of the 
 business they had in hand ; and to know 
 from them what they expected or intended 
 their manufacture to come to, their selling 
 to come to, and their killing to come to. 
 That appeared the first point needing 
 determination before I could speak to 
 them with any real utility or effect. 
 ' You craftsmen salesmen swordsmen, 
 do but tell me clearly what you want ; 
 then, if I can say anything to help you, I 
 will ; and if not, I will account to you as I 
 best may for my inability.' But in order 
 to put this question into any terms, one 
 had first of all to face the difficulty just
 
 XX PREFACE. 
 
 spoken of to me for the present insupe- 
 rable, the difficulty of knowing whether to 
 address one's audience as believing, or not 
 believing, in any other world than this. 
 For if you address any average modern 
 English company as believing in an Eter- 
 nal life, and endeavour to draw any con- 
 clusions, from this assumed belief, as to 
 their present business, they will forth- 
 with tell you that 'what you say is very 
 beautiful, but it is not practical.' If, on 
 the contrary, you frankly address them 
 as unbelievers in Eternal life, and try 
 to draw any consequences from that un- 
 belief, they immediately hold you for an 
 accursed person, and shake off the dust 
 from their feet at you. And the more I 
 thought over what I had got to say, the 
 less I found I could say it, without some 
 reference to this intangible or intractable
 
 PREFACE. XXI 
 
 part of the subject. It made all the dif- 
 ference, in asserting any principle of war, 
 whether one assumed that a discharge of 
 artillery would merely knead down a cer- 
 tain quantity of red clay into a level line, 
 as in a brick-field ; or whether, out of 
 every separately Christian-named portion of 
 the ruinous heap, there went out, into the 
 smoke and dead-fallen air of battle, some 
 astonished condition of soul, unwillingly 
 released. It made all the difference, in 
 speaking of the possible range of commerce, 
 whether one assumed that all bargains 
 related only to visible property or whether 
 property, for the present invisible, but 
 nevertheless real, was elsewhere purchase- 
 able on other terms. It made all the dif- 
 ference, in addressing a body of men subject 
 to considerable hardship, and having to 
 find some way out of it whether one
 
 XX11 PREFACE. 
 
 could confidently say to them, ' My friends, 
 you have only to die, and all will be 
 right;' or whether one had any secret mis- 
 giving that such advice was more blessed 
 to him that gave, than to him that took it. 
 And therefore the deliberate reader will 
 find, throughout these lectures, a hesitation 
 in driving points home, and a pausing short 
 of conclusions which he will feel I would 
 fain have come to ; hesitation which arises 
 wholly from this uncertainty of my hearers' 
 temper. For I do not now speak, nor have 
 I ever spoken, since the time of first for- 
 ward youth, in any proselyting temper, as 
 desiring to persuade any one of what, in 
 such matters, I thought myself; but, whom- 
 soever I venture to address, I take for the 
 time his creed as I find it ; and endeavour 
 to push it into such vital fruit as it seems 
 capable of. Thus, it is a creed with a great
 
 PREFACE. XX111 
 
 part of the existing English people, that 
 they are in possession of a book which tells 
 them, straight from the lips of God all they 
 ought to do, and need to know. I have 
 read that book, with as much care as most 
 of them, for some forty years; and am 
 thankful that, on those who trust it, I can 
 press its pleadings. My endeavour has 
 been uniformly to make them trust it more 
 deeply than they do ; trust it, not in their 
 own favourite verses only, but in the sum 
 of all; trust it, not as a fetish or talisman, 
 which they are to be saved by daily repe- 
 tions of; but as a Captain's order, to be 
 heard and obeyed at their peril. I was 
 always encouraged by supposing my hearers 
 to hold such belief. To these, if to any, I 
 once had hope of addressing, with accept- 
 ance, words which insisted on the guilt of 
 pride, and the futility of avarice; from
 
 XXIV PREFACE. 
 
 these, if from any, I once expected ratifi- 
 cation of a political economy, which as- 
 serted that the life was more than the meat, 
 and the body than raiment ; and these, it 
 once seemed to me, I might ask, without 
 accusation of fanaticism, not merely in 
 doctrine of the lips, but in the bestowal of 
 their heart's treasure, to separate themselves 
 from the crowd of whom it is written, 
 ' After all these things do the Gentiles 
 seek.' 
 
 It cannot, however, be assumed, with 
 any semblance of reason, that a general 
 audience is now wholly, or even in majo- 
 rity, composed of these religious persons. 
 A large portion must always consist of 
 men who admit no such creed ; or who, at 
 least, are inaccessible to appeals founded 
 on it. And as, with the so-called Chris- 
 tian, I desired to plead for honest declara-
 
 PREFACE. XXV 
 
 tion and fulfilment of his belief in life, 
 with the so-called Infidel, I desired to 
 plead for an honest declaration and fulfil- 
 ment of his belief in death. The dilemma 
 is inevitable. Men must either hereafter 
 live, or hereafter die ; fate may be bravely 
 met, and conduct wisely ordered, on either 
 expectation ; but never in hesitation be- 
 tween ungrasped hope, and unconfronted 
 fear. We usually believe in immortality, 
 so far as to avoid preparation for death ; 
 and in mortality, so far as to avoid pre- 
 paration for anything after death. Where- 
 as, a wise man will at least hold himself 
 prepared for one or other of two events, 
 of which one or other is inevitable; and 
 will have all things in order, for his sleep, 
 or in readiness, for his awakening. 
 
 Nor have we any right to call it an 
 ignoble judgment, if he determine to put
 
 XXVI PREFACE. 
 
 them in order, as for sleep. A brave belief 
 in life is indeed an enviable state of mind, 
 but, as far as I can discern, an unusual one. 
 I know few Christians so convinced of the 
 splendour of the rooms in their Father's 
 house, as to be happier when their friends 
 are called to those mansions, than they 
 would have been if the Queen had sent 
 for them to live at court : nor has the 
 Church's most ardent ' desire to depart, 
 and be with Christ,' ever cured it of 
 the singular habit of putting on mourn- 
 ing for every person summoned to such 
 departure. On the contrary, a brave 
 belief in death has been assuredly held 
 by many not ignoble persons, and it 
 is a sign of the last depravity in the 
 Church itself, when it assumes that such 
 a belief is inconsistent with either purity 
 of character, or energy of hand. The
 
 PREFACE. XXV11 
 
 shortness of life is not, to any rational 
 person, a conclusive reason for wasting the 
 space of it which may be granted him ; nor 
 does the anticipation of death to-morrow 
 suggest, to any one but a drunkard, the ex- 
 pediency of drunkenness to-day. To teach 
 that there is no device in the grave, may 
 indeed make the deviceless person more 
 contented in his dullness ; but it will make 
 the deviser only more earnest in devising : 
 nor is human conduct likely, in every case, 
 to be purer, under the conviction that all 
 its evil may in a moment be pardoned, 
 and all its wrong-doing in a moment re- 
 deemed ; and that the sigh of repentance, 
 which purges the guilt of the past, will 
 waft the soul into a felicity which forgets 
 its pain, than it may be under the sterner, 
 and to many not unwise minds, more pro- 
 bable, apprehension, that ' what a man
 
 XXV111 PREFACE. 
 
 soweth that shall he also reap ' or others 
 reap, when he, the living seed of pes- 
 tilence, walketh no more in darkness, but 
 lies down therein. 
 
 But to men whose feebleness of sight, 
 or bitterness of soul, or the offence given 
 by the conduct of those who claim higher 
 hope, may have rendered this painful creed 
 the only possible one, there is an appeal to 
 be made, more secure in its ground than any 
 which can be addressed to happier persons. 
 I would fain, if I might offencelessly, have 
 spoken to them as if none others heard ; 
 and have said thus : Hear me, you dying 
 men, who will soon be deaf for ever. For 
 these others, at your right hand and your 
 left, who look forward to a state of infinite 
 existence, in which all their errors will be 
 overruled, and all their faults forgiven ; for 
 these, who, stained and blackened in the
 
 PREFACE. xxix 
 
 battle smoke of mortality, have but to dip 
 themselves for an instant in the font of 
 death, and to rise renewed of plumage, as 
 a dove that is covered with silver, and her 
 feathers like gold ; for these, indeed, it may 
 be permissible to waste their numbered 
 moments, through faith in a future of innu- 
 merable hours ; to these, in their weak- 
 ness, it may be conceded that they should 
 tamper with sin which can only bring forth 
 fruit of righteousness, and profit by the 
 iniquity which, one day, will be remembered 
 no more. In them, it may be no sign of 
 hardness of heart to neglect the poor, over 
 whom they know their Master is watching ; 
 and to leave those to perish temporarily, 
 who cannot perish eternally. But, for you, 
 there is no such hope, and therefore no 
 such excuse. This fate, which you ordain 
 for the wretched, you believe to be all
 
 XXX PREFACE. 
 
 their inheritance ; you may crush them, 
 before the moth, and they will never rise 
 to rebuke you ; their breath, which fails 
 for lack of food, once expiring, will never 
 be recalled to whisper against you a word 
 of accusing; they and you, as you think, 
 shall lie down together in the dust, and 
 the worms cover you ; and for them 
 there shall be no consolation, and on you no 
 vengeance, only the question murmured 
 above your grave : ' Who shall repay 
 him what he hath done ? ' Is it there- 
 fore easier for you in your heart to inflict 
 the sorrow for which there is no remedy ? 
 Will you take, wantonly, this little all of 
 his life from your poor brother, and make 
 his brief hours long to him with pain ? 
 Will you be readier to the injustice which 
 can never be redressed; and niggardly 
 of mercy which you can bestow but once,
 
 PREFACE. xxxi 
 
 and which, refusing, you refuse for ever ? I 
 think better of you, even of the most selfish, 
 than that you would do this, well under- 
 stood. And for yourselves, it seems to 
 me, the question becomes not less grave, in 
 these curt limits. If your life were but a 
 fever fit, the madness of a night, whose 
 follies were all to be forgotten in the dawn, 
 it might matter little how you fretted away 
 the sickly hours, what toys you snatched 
 at, or let fall, what visions you followed 
 wistfully with the deceived eyes of sleepless 
 phrenzy. Is the earth only an hospital ? 
 Play, if you care to play, on the floor of the 
 hospital dens. Knit its straw into what 
 crowns please you ; gather the dust of it for 
 treasure, and die rich in that, clutching at 
 the black motes in the air with your dying 
 hands ; and yet, it may be well with you. 
 But if this life be no dream, and the world
 
 xxxii PREFACE. 
 
 no hospital ; if all the peace and power and 
 joy you can ever win, must be won now ; 
 and all fruit of victory gathered here, or 
 never ; will you still, throughout the puny 
 totality of your life, weary yourselves in the 
 fire for vanity ? If there is no rest which 
 remaineth for you, is there none you might 
 presently take ? was this grass of the earth 
 made green for your shroud only, not for 
 your bed ? and can you never lie down upon 
 it, but only under it ? The heathen, to 
 whose creed you have returned, thought 
 not so. They knew that life brought its 
 contest, but they expected from it also the 
 crown of all contest : No proud one ! no 
 jewelled circlet flaming through Heaven 
 above the height of the unmerited throne ; 
 only some few leaves of wild olive, cool to 
 the tired brow, through a few years of 
 peace. It should have been of gold, they
 
 PREFACE. XXX111 
 
 thought; but Jupiter was poor; this was 
 the best the god could give them. Seeking 
 a greater than this, they had known it a 
 mockery. Not in war, not in wealth, not in 
 tyranny, was there any happiness to be 
 found for them only in kindly peace, 
 fruitful and free. The wreath was to be of 
 wild olive, mark you : the tree that grows 
 carelessly, tufting the rocks with no vivid 
 bloom, no verdure of branch; only with 
 soft snow of blossom, and scarcely fulfilled 
 fruit, mixed with grey leaf and thorn- 
 set stem ; no fastening of diadem for you 
 but with such sharp embroidery ! But this, 
 such as it is, you may win while yet you 
 live ; type of grey honour and sweet rest* 
 Free-heartedness, and graciousness, and 
 undisturbed trust, and requited love, and 
 
 * /wXiroEfftra, rt(?Xwi> y* svaetv.
 
 XXXIV PREFACE. 
 
 the sight of the peace of others, and the 
 ministry to their pain; these, and the 
 blue sky above you, and the sweet waters 
 and flowers of the earth beneath ; and 
 mysteries and presences, innumerable, of 
 living things, these may yet be here your 
 riches ; untormenting and divine : service- 
 able for the life that now is ; nor, it may 
 be, without promise of that which is to 
 come.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 I'AOE 
 
 WORK i 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 TRAFFIC .76 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 WAR 139
 
 WOBK.
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 WQHJC 
 
 (Delivered before the Working Metis Institute, 
 at Camberwell.) 
 
 MY FRIENDS, I have not come among 
 you to-night to endeavour to give you an 
 entertaining lecture ; but to tell you a 
 few plain facts, and ask you some plain, 
 but necessary, questions. I have seen and 
 known too much of the struggle for life 
 among our labouring population, to feel at 
 ease, even under any circumstances, in in- 
 viting them to dwell on the trivialities of 
 my own studies; but, much more, as I 
 meet to-night, for the first time, the mem- 
 bers of a working Institute established in
 
 4 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 the district in which I have passed the 
 greater part of my life, I am desirous that 
 we should at once understand each other, 
 on graver matters. I would fain tell you, 
 with what feelings, and with what hope, I 
 regard this Institution, as one of many such, 
 now happily established throughout Eng- 
 land, as well as in other countries ; Insti- 
 tutions which are preparing the way for a 
 great change in all the circumstances of 
 industrial life; but of which the success 
 must wholly depend upon our clearly 
 understanding the circumstances and ne- 
 cessary limits of this change. No teacher 
 can truly promote the cause of education, 
 until he knows the conditions of the life 
 for which that education is to prepare his 
 pupil. And the fact that he is called upon 
 to address you, nominally, as a 'Work- 
 ing Class,' must compel him, if he is in
 
 WORK. 5 
 
 any wise earnest or thoughtful, to enquire 
 in the outset, on what you yourselves 
 suppose this class distinction has been 
 founded in the past, and must be founded 
 in the future. The manner of the amuse- 
 ment, and the matter of the teaching, 
 which any of us can offer you, must 
 depend wholly on our first understanding 
 from you, whether you think the dis- 
 tinction heretofore drawn between work- 
 ing men and others, is truly or falsely 
 founded. Do you accept it as it stands? 
 do you wish it to be modified? or do you 
 think the object of education is to efface 
 it, and make us forget it for ever? 
 
 Let me make myself more distinctly 
 understood. We call this you and I a 
 'Working Men's' Institute, and our college 
 in London, a ' Working Men's ' College. 
 Now, how do you consider that these
 
 6 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 several institutes differ, or ought to differ, 
 from ' idle men's ' institutes and ' idle 
 men's ' colleges ? Or by what other word 
 than 'idle' shall I distinguish those whom 
 the happiest and wisest of working men 
 do not object to call the 'Upper Classes?' 
 Are there really upper classes, are there 
 lower ? How much should they always 
 be elevated, how much always depressed? 
 And, gentlemen and ladies I pray those 
 of you who are here to forgive me the 
 offence there may be in what I am going 
 to say. It is not / who wish to say it. 
 Bitter voices say it ; voices of battle and of 
 famine through all the world, which must 
 be heard some day, whoever keeps silence. 
 Neither is it to you specially that I say 
 it. I am sure that most now present 
 know their duties of kindness, and fulfil 
 them, better perhaps than I do mine.
 
 WORK. 7 
 
 But I speak to you as representing your 
 whole class, which errs, I know, chiefly 
 by thoughtlessness, but not therefore the 
 less terribly. Wilful error is limited by 
 the will, but what limit is there to that 
 of which we are unconscious ? 
 
 Bear with me, therefore, while I turn to 
 these workmen, and ask them, also as re- 
 presenting a great multitude, what they 
 think the ' upper classes ' are, and ought 
 to be, in relation to them. Answer, you 
 workmen who are here, as you would 
 among yourselves, frankly; and tell me 
 how you would have me call those 
 classes. Am I to call them would you 
 think me right in calling them the idle 
 classes ? I think you would feel some- 
 what uneasy, and as if I were not treating 
 my subject honestly, or speaking from my 
 heart, if I went on under the supposition
 
 8 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 that all rich people were idle. You would 
 be both unjust and unwise if you allowed 
 me to say that; not less unjust than 
 the rich people who say that all the 
 poor are idle, and will never work if they 
 can help it, or more than they can help. 
 
 For indeed the fact is, that there are idle 
 poor and idle rich ; and there are busy poor 
 and busy rich. Many a beggar is as lazy 
 as if he had ten thousand a year ; and 
 many a man of large fortune is busier than 
 his errand-boy, and never would think of 
 stopping in the street to play marbles. 
 So that, in a large view, the distinction 
 between workers and idlers, as between 
 knaves and honest men, runs through 
 the very heart and innermost economies 
 of men of all ranks and in all positions. 
 There is a working class strong and 
 happy, among both rich and poor; there
 
 WORK. 9 
 
 is an idle class weak, wicked, and miser- 
 able, among both rich and poor. And 
 the worst of the misunderstandings arising 
 between the two orders come of the 
 unlucky fact that the wise of one class 
 habitually contemplate the foolish of the 
 other. If the busy rich people watched 
 and rebuked the idle rich people, all 
 would be right; and if the busy poor 
 people watched and rebuked the idle poor 
 people, all would be right. But each 
 class has a tendency to look for the faults 
 of the other. A hard-working man of 
 property is particularly offended by an 
 idle beggar; and an orderly, but poor, 
 workman is naturally intolerant of the 
 licentious luxury of the rich. And what is 
 severe judgment in the minds of the just 
 men of either class, becomes fierce enmity 
 in the unjust but among the unjust only.
 
 10 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 None but the dissolute among the poor 
 look upon the rich as their natural ene- 
 mies, or desire to pillage their houses and 
 divide their property. None but the disso- 
 lute among the rich speak in opprobrious 
 terms of the vices and follies of the poor. 
 
 There is, then, no class distinction be- 
 tween idle and industrious people ; and I 
 am going to-night to speak only of the 
 industrious. The idle people we will put 
 out of our thoughts at once they are mere 
 nuisances what ought to be done with 
 them, we '11 talk of at another time. But 
 there are class distinctions among the in- 
 dustrious themselves ; tremendous distinc- 
 tions, which rise and fall to every degree 
 in the infinite thermometer of human pain 
 and of human power, distinctions of high 
 and low, of lost and won, to the whole 
 reach of man's soul and body.
 
 WORK. 1 1 
 
 These separations we will study, and 
 the laws of them, among energetic men 
 only, who, whether they work or whether 
 they play, put their strength into the 
 work, and their strength into the game; 
 being in the full sense of the word ' in- 
 dustrious,' one way or another, with a 
 purpose, or without. And these distinc- 
 tions are mainly four: 
 
 I. Between those who work, and those 
 who play. 
 
 II. Between those who produce the 
 means of life, and those who consume 
 them. 
 
 III. Between those who work with the 
 head, and those who work with the hand. 
 
 IV. Between those who work wisely, 
 and who work foolishly. 
 
 For easier memory, let us say we are 
 going to oppose, in our examination,
 
 12 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 I. Work to play ; 
 
 II. Production to consumption ; 
 p 
 
 III. Head to hand; and, 
 
 IV. Sense to nonsense. 
 
 I. First, then, of the distinction between 
 the classes who work and the classes who 
 play. Of course we must agree upon a 
 definition of these terms, work and play, 
 before going farther. Now, roughly, not 
 with vain subtlety of definition, but for 
 plain use of the words, 'play' is an exer- 
 tion of body or mind, made to please 
 ourselves, and with no determined end; 
 and work is a thing done because it ought 
 to be done, and with a determined end. 
 You play, as you call it, at cricket, for 
 instance. That is as hard work as any- 
 thing else ; but it amuses you, and it has 
 no result but the amusement. If it were 
 done as an ordered form of exercise, for
 
 WORK. 13 
 
 health's sake, it would become work 
 directly. So, in like manner, whatever 
 we do to please ourselves, and only for 
 the sake of the pleasure, not for an ulti- 
 mate object, is 'play,' the 'pleasing thing,' 
 not the useful thing. Play may be useful, 
 in a secondary sense; (nothing is indeed 
 more useful or necessary) ; but the use of 
 it depends on its being spontaneous. 
 
 Let us, then, enquire together what sort 
 of games the playing class in England 
 spend their lives in playing at. 
 
 The first of all English games is making 
 money. That is an all-absorbing game ; 
 and we knock each other down oftener 
 in playing at that, than at foot-ball, or 
 any other roughest sport : and it is abso- 
 lutely without purpose; no one who en- 
 gages heartily in that game ever knows 
 why. Ask a great money-maker what
 
 14 THE CROWN OF WILD 'OLIVE. 
 
 he wants to do with his money, he 
 never knows. He doesn't make it to do 
 anything with it. He gets it only that 
 he may get it. 'What will you make of 
 what you have got ? ' you ask. ' Well, 
 I'll get more,' he says. Just as, at cricket, 
 you get more runs. There's no use in 
 the runs, but to get more of them than 
 other people is the game. And there's 
 no use in the money, but to have more 
 of it than other people is the game. So 
 all that great foul city of London there, 
 rattling, growling, smoking, stinking, 
 a ghastly heap of fermenting brickwork, 
 pouring out poison at every pore, you 
 fancy it is a city of work ? Not a street of 
 it ! It is a great city of play ; very nasty 
 play, and very hard play, but still play. 
 It is only Lord's cricket ground without 
 the turf: a huge billiard table without
 
 WORK. 1 5 
 
 the cloth, and with pockets as deep as 
 the bottomless pit ; but mainly a billiard 
 table, after all. 
 
 Well, the first great English game is 
 this playing at counters. It differs from 
 the rest in that it appears always to be 
 producing money, while every other game 
 is expensive. But it does not always pro- 
 duce money. There's a great difference 
 between 'winning' money and 'making' it: 
 a great difference between getting it out of 
 another man's pocket into ours, or filling 
 both. Collecting money is by no means 
 the same thing as making it; the tax- 
 gatherer's house is not the Mint ; and 
 much of the apparent gain, (so called), in 
 commerce, is only a form of taxation on 
 carriage or exchange. 
 
 Our next great English game, however, 
 hunting and shooting, is costly altogether;
 
 16 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 and how much we are fined for it annually 
 in land, horses, gamekeepers, and game 
 laws, and all else that accompanies that 
 beautiful and special English game, I 
 will not endeavour to count now ; but 
 note only that, except for exercise, 
 this is not merely a useless game, but a 
 deadly one, to all connected with it. 
 For through horse-racing, you get every 
 form of what the higher classes every- 
 where call ' Play,' in distinction from all 
 other plays; that is, gambling; by no 
 means a beneficial or recreative game : 
 and, through game-preserving, you get 
 also some curious laying out of ground ; 
 that beautiful arrangement of dwelling- 
 house for man and beast, by which we 
 have grouse and blackcock so many 
 brace to the acre, and men and women 
 so many brace to the garret. I often
 
 WORK. 1 7 
 
 wonder what the angelic builders and 
 surveyors the angelic builders who build 
 the 'many mansions' up above there; 
 and the angelic surveyors, who measured 
 that four-square city with their measur- 
 ing reeds I wonder what they think, 
 or are supposed to think, of the laying 
 out of ground by this nation, which 
 has set itself, as it seems, literally to ac- 
 complish, word for word, or rather fact 
 for word, in the persons of those poor 
 whom its Master left to represent him, what 
 that Master said of himself that foxes and 
 birds had homes, but He none. 
 
 Then, next to the gentlemen's game of 
 hunting, we must put the ladies' game of 
 dressing. It is not the cheapest of games. 
 I saw a brooch at a jeweller's in Bond 
 Street a fortnight ago, not an inch wide, 
 and without any singular jewel in it, yet 
 C
 
 1 8 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 worth 3,ooo/. And I wish I could tell 
 you what this ' play ' costs, altogether, in 
 England, France, and Russia annually. 
 But it is a pretty game, and on certain 
 terms, I like it ; nay, I don't see it played 
 quite as much as I would fain have it. 
 You ladies like to lead the fashion: by 
 all means lead it lead it thoroughly, 
 lead it far enough. Dress yourselves 
 nicely, and dress everybody else nicely. 
 Lead \hz fashions for the poor first; make 
 them look well, and you yourselves will 
 look, in ways of which you have now no 
 conception, all the better. The fashions 
 you have set for some time among your 
 peasantry are not pretty ones ; their 
 doublets are too irregularly slashed, and 
 the wind blows too frankly through them. 
 
 Then there are other games, wild 
 enough, as I could show you if I had time.
 
 WORK. 19 
 
 There's playing at literature, and play- 
 ing at art very different, both, from work- 
 ing at literature, or working at art, but 
 I Ve no time to speak of these. I 
 pass to the greatest of all the play of 
 plays, the great gentlemen's game, which 
 ladies like them best to play at, the 
 game of War. It is entrancingly pleasant 
 to the imagination; the facts of it, not 
 always so pleasant. We dress for it, how- 
 ever, more finely than for any other sport ; 
 and go out to it, not merely in scarlet, as 
 to hunt, but in scarlet and gold, and all 
 manner of fine colours: of course we could 
 fight better in grey, and without feathers ; 
 but all nations have agreed that it is good 
 to be well dressed at this play. Then the 
 bats and balls are very costly; our En- 
 glish and French bats, with the balls and 
 wickets, even those which we don't make
 
 2O THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. . 
 
 any use of, costing, I suppose, now about 
 fifteen millions of money annually to each 
 nation ; all which you know is paid for by 
 hard labourer's work in the furrow and 
 furnace. A costly game ! not to speak 
 of its consequences ; I will say at present 
 nothing of these. The mere immediate 
 cost of all these plays is what I want you 
 to consider; they all cost deadly work 
 somewhere, as many of us know too well. 
 The jewel-cutter, whose sight fails over 
 the diamonds ; the weaver, whose arm fails 
 over the web ; the iron-forger, whose 
 breath fails before the furnace they know 
 what work is they, who have all the work, 
 and none of the play, except a kind they 
 have named for themselves down in the 
 black north country, where ' play ' means 
 being laid up by sickness. It is a pretty 
 example for philologists, of varying dialect,
 
 WORK. 2 1 
 
 this change in the sense of the word 
 ' play/ as used in the black country of 
 Birmingham, and the red and black 
 country of Baden Baden. Yes, gentle- 
 men, and gentlewomen, of England, who 
 think 'one moment unamused a misery, 
 not made for feeble man,' this is what 
 you have brought the word ' play ' to 
 mean, in the heart of merry England ! 
 You may have your fluting and piping ; 
 but there are sad children sitting in the 
 market-place, who indeed cannot say to 
 you, ' We have piped unto you, and ye 
 have not danced : ' but eternally shall 
 say to you, ' We have mourned unto you, 
 and ye have not lamented.' 
 
 This, then, is the first distinction be- 
 tween the ' upper and lower' classes. And 
 this is one which is by no means neces- 
 sary ; which indeed must, in process of
 
 22 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 good time, be by all honest men's consent 
 abolished. Men will be taught that an 
 existence of play, sustained by the blood 
 of other creatures, is a good existence for 
 gnats and sucking fish ; but not for men : 
 that neither days, nor lives, can be made 
 holy by doing nothing in them : that the 
 best prayer at the beginning of a day is 
 that we may not lose its moments; and 
 the best grace before meat, the conscious- 
 ness that we have justly earned our dinner. 
 And when we have this much of plain 
 Christianity preached to us again, and 
 enough respect what we regard as in- 
 spiration, as not to think that ' Son, go 
 work to-day in my vineyard,' means 
 'Fool, go play to-day in my vineyard,' we 
 shall all be workers, in one way or another ; 
 and this much at least of the distinction 
 between ' upper ' and ' lower ' forgotten.
 
 WORK. 23 
 
 II. I pass then to our second distinction ; 
 between the rich and poor, between Dives 
 and Lazarus, distinction which exists 
 more sternly, I suppose, in this day, than 
 ever in the world, Pagan or Christian, till 
 now. I will put it sharply before you, to 
 begin with, merely by reading two para- 
 graphs which I cut from two papers that 
 lay on my breakfast table on the same 
 morning, the 25th of November, 1864. 
 The piece about the rich Russian at Paris 
 is common-place enough, and stupid be- 
 sides; (for fifteen francs, 12s. 6d., is no- 
 thing for a rich man to give for a couple 
 of peaches, out of season). Still, the two 
 paragraphs printed on the same day are 
 worth putting side by side. 
 
 'Such a man is now here. He is a 
 Russian, and, with your permission, we 
 will call him Count Teufelskine. In dress
 
 24 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 he is sublime; art is considered in that 
 toilet, the harmony of colour respected, the 
 chiar oscuro evident in well-selected con- 
 trast. In manners he is dignified nay, 
 perhaps apathetic; nothing disturbs the 
 placid serenity of that calm exterior. One 
 day our friend breakfasted chez Bignon. 
 When the bill came he read, " Two peaches, 
 I5f." He paid. "Peaches scarce, I pre- 
 sume ?" was his sole remark. " No, sir," 
 replied the waiter, " but Teufelskines are." ' 
 Telegraph, November 25, 1864. 
 
 'Yesterday morning, at eight o'clock, a 
 woman, passing a dung heap in the 
 stone yard near the recently-erected alms- 
 houses in Shadwell Gap, High Street, 
 Shadwell, called the attention of a Thames 
 police-constable to a man in a sitting 
 position on the dung heap, and said she 
 was afraid he was dead. Her fears proved
 
 WORK. 25 
 
 to be true. The wretched creature ap- 
 peared to have been dead several hours. 
 He had perished of cold and wet, and 
 the rain had been beating down on him 
 all night. The deceased was a bone- 
 picker. He was in the lowest stage 
 of poverty, poorly clad, and half-starved. 
 The police had frequently driven him 
 away from the stone yard, between sun- 
 set and sunrise, and told him to go home. 
 He selected a most desolate spot for his 
 wretched death. A penny and some bones 
 were found in his pockets. The deceased 
 was between fifty and sixty years of age. 
 Inspector Roberts, of the K division, has 
 given directions for inquiries to be made at 
 the lodging-houses respecting the deceased, 
 to ascertain his identity if possible.' 
 Morning Post, November 25, 1864. 
 
 You have the separation thus in brief
 
 26 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 compass ; and I want you to take notice 
 of the ' a penny and some bones were 
 found in his pockets,' and to compare 
 it with this third statement, from the 
 Telegraph of January i6th of this year: 
 
 ' Again, the dietary scale for adult and 
 juvenile paupers was drawn up by the 
 most conspicuous political economists in 
 England. It is low in quantity, but it 
 is sufficient to support nature ; yet within 
 ten years of the passing of the Poor 
 Law Act, we heard of the paupers in 
 the Andover Union gnawing the scraps 
 of putrid flesh and sucking the marrow 
 from the bones of horses which they 
 were employed to crush.' 
 
 You see my reason for thinking that 
 our Lazarus of Christianity has some ad- 
 vantage over the Jewish one. Jewish 
 Lazarus expected, or at least prayed, to
 
 WORK. 27 
 
 be fed with crumbs from the rich man's 
 table ; but our Lazarus is fed with crumbs 
 from the dog's table. 
 
 Now this distinction between rich and 
 poor rests on two bases. Within its proper 
 limits, on a basis which is lawful and ever- 
 lastingly necessary; beyond them, on a 
 basis unlawful, and everlastingly corrupt- 
 ing the frame-work of society. The lawful 
 basis of wealth is, that a man who works 
 should be paid the fair value of his work ; 
 and that if he does not choose to spend 
 it to-day, he should have free leave to keep 
 it, and spend it to-morrow. Thus, an in- 
 dustrious man working daily, and laying 
 by daily, attains at last the possession of 
 an accumulated sum of wealth, to which he 
 has absolute right. The idle person who 
 will not work, and the wasteful person 
 who lays nothing by, at the end of the
 
 28 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 same time will be doubly poor poor in 
 possession, and dissolute in moral habit ; 
 and he will then naturally covet the 
 money which the other has saved. And 
 if he is then allowed to attack the 
 other, and rob him of his well-earned 
 wealth, there is no more any motive for 
 saving, or any reward for good conduct ; 
 and all society is thereupon dissolved, or 
 exists only in systems of rapine. There- 
 fore the first necessity of social life is the 
 clearness of national conscience in enforc- 
 ing the law that he should keep who has 
 JUSTLY EARNED. 
 
 That law, I say, is the proper basis of 
 distinction between rich and poor. But 
 there is also a false basis of distinction ; 
 namely, the power held over those who 
 earn wealth by those who levy or exact it. 
 There will be always a number of men
 
 WORK. 29 
 
 who would fain set themselves to the 
 accumulation of wealth as the sole ob- 
 ject of their lives. Necessarily, that class 
 of men is an uneducated class, inferior 
 in intellect, and more or less cowardly. It 
 is physically impossible for a well-educated, 
 intellectual, or brave man to make money 
 the chief object of his thoughts ; as physi- 
 cally impossible as it is for him to make 
 his dinner the principal object of them. All 
 healthy people like their dinners, but their 
 dinner is not the main object of their lives. 
 So all healthily minded people like making 
 money ought to like it, and to enjoy the 
 sensation of winning it : but the main 
 object of their life is not money; it is some- 
 thing better than money. A good soldier, 
 for instance, mainly wishes to do his fight- 
 ing well. He is glad of his pay very 
 properly so, and justly grumbles when you
 
 30 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 keep him ten years without it still, his 
 main notion of life is to win battles, not 
 to be paid for winning them. So of clergy- 
 men. They like pew-rents, and baptismal 
 fees, of course ; but yet, if they are brave 
 and well educated, the pew-rent is not the 
 sole object of their lives, and the bap- 
 tismal fee is not the sole purpose of the 
 baptism ; the clergyman's object is essen- 
 tially to baptize and preach, not to be paid 
 for preaching. So of doctors. They like 
 fees no doubt, ought to like them ; yet if 
 they are brave and well educated, the entire 
 object of their lives is not fees. They, on 
 the whole, desire to cure the sick ; and, if 
 they are good doctors, and the choice were 
 fairly put to them, would rather cure their 
 patient, and lose their fee, than kill him, 
 and get it. And so with all other brave 
 and rightly trained men ; their work is first,
 
 WORK. 3 1 
 
 their fee second very important always, 
 but still second. But in every nation, as I 
 said, there are a vast class who are ill- 
 educated, cowardly, and more or less stupid. 
 And with these people, just as certainly 
 the fee is first, and the work second, as 
 with brave people the work is first and the 
 fee second. And this is no small distinc- 
 tion. It is the whole distinction in a man ; 
 distinction between life and death in him, 
 between heaven and hell for him. You 
 cannot serve two masters ; you must serve 
 one or other. If your work is first with 
 you, and your fee second, work is your 
 master, and the lord of work, who is God. 
 But if your fee is first with you, and your 
 work second, fee is your master, and the 
 lord of fee, who is the Devil ; and not only 
 the Devil, but the lowest of devils the 
 ' least erected fiend that fell.' So there
 
 32 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 you have it in brief terms; Work first 
 you are God's servants ; Fee first you are 
 the Fiend's. And it makes a difference, 
 now and ever, believe me, whether you 
 serve Him who has on His vesture and thigh 
 written, ' King of Kings,' and whose ser- 
 vice is perfect freedom ; or him on whose 
 vesture and thigh the name is written, 
 ' Slave of Slaves,' and whose service is 
 perfect slavery. 
 
 However, in every nation there are, and 
 must always be, a certain number of these 
 Fiend's servants, who have it principally 
 for the object of their lives to make money. 
 They are always, as -I said, more or less 
 stupid, and cannot conceive of anything 
 else so nice as money. Stupidity is 
 always the basis of the Judas bargain. We 
 do great injustice to Iscariot, in think- 
 ing him wicked above all common wicked-
 
 WORK. 33 
 
 ness. He was only a common money- 
 lover, and, like all money-lovers, didn't 
 understand Christ ; couldn't make out 
 the worth of Him, or meaning of Him. 
 He didn't want Him to be killed. He 
 was horror-struck when he found that 
 Christ would be killed ; threw his money 
 away instantly, and hanged himself. How 
 many of our present money-seekers, think 
 you, would have the grace to hang them- 
 selves, whoever was killed ? But Judas 
 was a common, selfish, muddle-headed, 
 pilfering fellow ; his hand always in the 
 bag of the poor, not caring for them. 
 He didn't understand Christ ; yet be- 
 lieved in Him, much more than most of 
 us do ; had seen Him do miracles, thought 
 He was quite strong enough to shift for 
 Himself, and he, Judas, might as well 
 make his own little bye-perquisites out of 
 D
 
 34 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 the affair. Christ would come out of it 
 well enough, and he have his thirty 
 pieces. Now, that is the money-seeker's 
 idea, all over the world. He doesn't 
 hate Christ, but can't understand Him 
 doesn't care for Him sees no good in 
 that benevolent business ; makes his own 
 little job out of it at all events, come 
 what will. And thus, out of every mass 
 of men, you have a certain number of bag- 
 men your ' fee-first ' men, whose main 
 object is to make money. And they do 
 make it make it in all sorts of unfair 
 ways, chiefly by the weight and force of 
 money itself, or what is called the power of 
 capital; that is to say, the power which 
 money, once obtained, has over the labour 
 of the poor, so that the capitalist can take 
 all its produce to himself, except the 
 labourer's food. That is the modern
 
 WORK, 35 
 
 Judas's way of 'carrying the bag/ and 
 'bearing what is put therein.' 
 
 Nay, but (it is asked) how is that an 
 unfair advantage ? Has not the man who 
 has worked for the money a right to use 
 it as he best can ? No ; in this respect, 
 money is now exactly what mountain pro- 
 montories over public roads were in old 
 times. The barons fought for them fairly : 
 the strongest and cunningest got them ; 
 then fortified them, and made every- 
 one who passed below pay toll. Well, 
 capital now is exactly what crags were 
 then. Men fight fairly (we will, at least, 
 grant so much, though it is more than we 
 ought) for their money : but, once having 
 got it, the fortified millionaire can make 
 everybody who passes below pay toll to 
 his million, and build another tower of his 
 money castle. And I can tell you, the
 
 36 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 poor vagrants by the roadside suffer now 
 quite as much from the bag-baron, as ever 
 they did from the crag-baron. Bags and 
 crags have just the same result on rags. 
 I have not time, however, to-night to 
 show you in how many ways the power 
 of capital is unjust: but this one great 
 principle I have to assert you will find 
 it quite indisputably true, that when- 
 ever money is the principal object of 
 life with either man or nation, it is both 
 got ill, and spent ill; and does harm 
 both in the getting and spending; but 
 when it is not the principal object, it 
 and all other things will be well got, and 
 well spent. And here is the test, with 
 every man, of whether money is the prin- 
 cipal object with him, or not. If in mid- 
 life he could pause and say, ' Now I have 
 enough to live upon, I'll live upon it; and
 
 WORK. 37 
 
 having well earned it, I will also well 
 spend it, and go out of the world poor, as 
 I came into it,' then money is not prin- 
 cipal with him ; but if, having enough to 
 live upon in the manner befitting his 
 character and rank, he still wants to make 
 more, and to die rich, then money is the 
 principal object with him, and it becomes 
 a curse to himself, and generally to those 
 who spend it after him. For you know it 
 must be spent some day ; the only question 
 is whether the man who makes it shall 
 spend it, or some one else. And gene- 
 rally it is better for the maker to spend it, 
 for he will know best its value and use. 
 This is the true law of life. And if a man 
 does not choose thus to spend his money, 
 he must either hoard it or lend it, and the 
 worst thing he can generally do is to lend 
 it ; for borrowers are nearly always ill-
 
 38 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 spenders, and it is with lent money that all 
 evil is mainly done, and all unjust war 
 protracted. 
 
 For observe what the real fact is, respect- 
 ing loans to foreign military governments, 
 and how strange it is. If your little boy 
 came to you to ask for money to spend 
 in squibs and crackers, you would think 
 twice before you gave it him ; and you 
 would have some idea that it was wasted, 
 when you saw it fly off in fireworks, even 
 though he did no mischief with it. But the 
 Russian children, and Austrian children, 
 come to you, borrowing money, not to spend 
 in innocent squibs, but in cartridges and 
 bayonets to attack you in India with, and 
 to keep down all noble life in Italy with, 
 and to murder Polish women and children 
 with ; and that you will give at once, be- 
 cause they pay you interest for it. Now,
 
 WORK. 
 
 in order to pay you that interest, they 
 must tax every working peasant in their 
 dominions ; and on that work you live. 
 You therefore at once rob the Austrian 
 peasant, assassinate or banish the Polish 
 peasant, and you live on the produce of the 
 theft, and the bribe for the assassination ! 
 That is the broad fact that is the practical 
 meaning of your foreign loans, and of most 
 large interest of money; and then you 
 quarrel with Bishop Colenso, forsooth, as if 
 he denied the Bible, and you believed it ! 
 though, wretches as you are, every delibe- 
 rate act of your lives is a new defiance of 
 its primary orders; and as if, for most of 
 the rich men of England at this moment, 
 it were not indeed to be desired, as the 
 best thing at least for them, that the Bible 
 should not be true, since against them these 
 words are written in it : ' The rust of your
 
 40 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 gold and silver shall be a witness against 
 you, and shall eat your flesh, as it were 
 fire.' 
 
 III. I pass now to our third condition 
 of separation, between the men who work 
 with the hand, and those who work with 
 the head. 
 
 And here we have at last an inevitable 
 distinction. There must be work done by 
 the arms, or none of us could live. There 
 must be work done by the brains, or the 
 life we get would not be worth having. 
 And the same men cannot do both. There 
 is rough work to be done, and rough men 
 must do it; there is gentle work to be 
 done, and gentlemen must do it; and it 
 is physically impossible that one class 
 should do, or divide, the work of the 
 other. And it is of no use to try to 
 conceal this sorrowful fact by fine words,
 
 WORK. 41 
 
 and to talk to the workman about the 
 honourableness of manual labour, and the 
 dignity of humanity. That is a grand 
 old proverb of Sancho Panza's, ' Fine 
 words butter no parsnips;' and I can tell 
 you that, all over England just now, you 
 workmen are buying a great deal too much 
 butter at that dairy. Rough work, honour- 
 able or not, takes the life out of us; and 
 the man who has been heaving clay out of 
 a ditch all day, or driving an express train 
 against the north wind all night, or holding 
 a collier's helm in a gale on a lee shore, or 
 whirling white hot-iron at a furnace mouth, 
 that man is not the same at the end of his 
 day, or night, as one who has been sitting 
 in a quiet room, with everything comfort- 
 able about him, reading books, or classing 
 butterflies, or painting pictures. If it is 
 any comfort to you to be told that the
 
 42 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 rough work is the more honourable of the 
 two, I should be sorry to take that much 
 of consolation from you ; and in some 
 sense I need not. The rough work is at 
 all events real, honest, and, generally, 
 though not always, useful ; while the 
 fine work is, a great deal of it, foolish 
 and false as well as fine, and there- 
 fore dishonourable : but when both kinds 
 are equally well and worthily done, the 
 head's is the noble work, and the hand's 
 the ignoble ; and of all hand work what- 
 soever, necessary for the maintenance of 
 life, those old words, ' In the sweat of thy 
 face thou shalt eat bread,' indicate that the 
 inherent nature of it is one of calamity ; 
 and that the ground, cursed for our sake, 
 casts also some shadow of degradation 
 into our contest with its thorn and its 
 thistle ; so that all nations have held
 
 WORK. 43 
 
 their days honourable, or ' holy,' and con- 
 stituted them ' holydays ' or ' holidays,' by 
 making them days of rest ; and the pro- 
 mise, which, among all our distant hopes, 
 seems to cast the chief brightness over 
 death, is that blessing of the dead who 
 die in the Lord, that ' they rest from their 
 labours, and their works do follow them.' 
 
 And thus the perpetual question and 
 contest must arise, who is to do this rough 
 work ? and how is the worker of it to be 
 comforted, redeemed, and rewarded ? and 
 what kind of play should he have, and 
 what rest, in this world, sometimes, as well 
 as in the next ? Well, my good working 
 friends, these questions will take a little 
 time to answer yet. They must be an- 
 swered : all good men are occupied with 
 them, and all honest thinkers. There 's 
 grand head work doing about them; but
 
 44 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 much must be discovered, and much 
 attempted in vain, before anything de- 
 cisive can be told you. Only note these 
 few particulars, which are already sure. 
 
 As to the distribution of the hard 
 work. None of us, or very few of us, do 
 either hard or soft work because we think 
 we ought ; but because we have chanced 
 to fall into the way of it, and cannot help 
 ourselves. Now, nobody does anything 
 well that they cannot help doing : work 
 is only done well when it is done with a 
 will ; and no man has a thoroughly sound 
 will unless he knows he is doing what he 
 should, and is in his place. And, depend 
 upon it, all work must be done at last, 
 not in a disorderly, scrambling, doggish 
 way, but in an ordered, soldierly, human 
 way a lawful way. Men are enlisted for 
 the labour that kills the labour of war :
 
 WORK. 45 
 
 they are counted, trained, fed, dressed, and 
 praised for that. Let them be enlisted 
 also for the labour that feeds : let them be 
 counted, trained, fed, dressed, praised for 
 that. Teach the plough exercise as care- 
 fully as you do the sword exercise, and let 
 the officers of troops of life be held as 
 much gentlemen as the officers of troops 
 of death ; and all is done : but neither this, 
 nor any other right thing, can be accom- 
 plished you can't even see your way to 
 it unless, first of all, both servant and 
 master are resolved that, come what will 
 of it, they will do each other justice. 
 People are perpetually squabbling about 
 what will be best to do, or easiest to do, 
 or adviseablest to do, or profitablest to 
 do ; but they never, so far as I hear 
 them talk, ever ask what it is just to 
 do. And it is the law of heaven that
 
 46 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 you shall not be able to judge what is 
 wise or easy, unless you are first re- 
 solved to judge what is just, and to do 
 it. That is the one thing constantly reite- 
 rated by our Master the order of all 
 others that is given oftenest 'Do justice 
 and judgment.' That's your Bible order; 
 that 's the ' Service of God,' not praying 
 nor psalm-singing. You are told, indeed, 
 to sing psalms when you are merry, and 
 to pray when you need anything ; and, by 
 the perversion of the Evil Spirit, we get 
 to think that praying and psalm-singing 
 are 'service.' If a child finds itself in 
 want of anything, it runs in and asks its 
 father for it does it call that, doing its 
 father a service ? If it begs for a toy or 
 a piece of cake does it call that serving 
 its father ? That, with God, is prayer, 
 and He likes to hear it : He likes you
 
 WORK. 47 
 
 to ask Him for cake when you want it; 
 but He doesn't call that 'serving Him.' 
 Begging is not serving: God likes mere 
 beggars as little as you do He likes 
 honest servants, not beggars. So when a 
 child loves its father very much, and is very 
 happy, it may sing little songs about him ; 
 but it does n't call that, serving its father ; 
 neither is singing songs about God, serving 
 God. It is enjoying ourselves, if it's any- 
 thing ; most probably it is nothing : but if 
 it 's anything, it is serving ourselves, not 
 God. And yet we are impudent enough to 
 call our beggings and chauntings ' Divine 
 Service : ' we say ' Divine service will be 
 " performed " ' (that 's our word the form 
 of it gone through) ' at eleven o'clock.' 
 Alas ! unless we perform Divine ser- 
 vice in every willing act of life, we never 
 perform it at all. The one Divine work
 
 48 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 the one ordered sacrifice is to do justice; 
 and it is the last we are ever inclined to 
 do. Anything rather than that ! As much 
 charity as you choose, but no justice. ' Nay,' 
 you will say, 'charity is greater than jus- 
 tice.' Yes, it is greater; it is the summit of 
 justice it is the temple of which justice is 
 the foundation. But you can't have the 
 top without the bottom ; you cannot build 
 upon charity. You must build upon justice, 
 for this main reason, that you have not, at 
 first, charity to build with. It is the last 
 reward of good work. Do justice to your 
 brother (you can do that, whether you 
 love him or not), and you will come to love 
 him. But do injustice to him, because you 
 don't love him ; and you will come to hate 
 him. It is all very fine to think you can 
 build upon charity to begin with ; but you 
 will find all you have got to begin with,
 
 WORK. 49 
 
 begins at home, and is essentially love of 
 yourself. You well-to-do people, for in- 
 stance, who are here to-night, will go to 
 ' Divine service' next Sunday, all nice and 
 tidy, and your little children will have 
 their tight little Sunday boots on, and 
 lovely little Sunday feathers in their hats ; 
 and you '11 think, complacently and piously, 
 how lovely they look ! So they do : and 
 you love them heartily, and you like 
 sticking feathers in their hats. That's 
 all right : that is charity ; but it is charity 
 beginning at home. Then you will come 
 to the poor little crossing-sweeper, got 
 up also, it, in its Sunday dress, the 
 dirtiest rags it has, that it may beg 
 the better : we shall give it a penny, and 
 think how good we are. That's charity 
 going abroad. But what does Justice say, 
 walking and watching near us ? Christian 
 E
 
 50 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 Justice has been strangely mute, and 
 seemingly blind ; and, if not blind, decrepit, 
 this many a day : she keeps her accounts 
 still, however quite steadily doing them 
 at nights, carefully, with her bandage off, 
 and through acutest spectacles (the only 
 modern scientific invention she cares about). 
 You must put your ear down ever so close 
 to her lips to hear her speak ; and then you 
 will start at what she first whispers, for 
 it will certainly be, 'Why shouldn't that 
 little crossing-sweeper have a feather on its 
 head, as well as your own child ?' Then 
 you may ask Justice, in an amazed man- 
 ner, ' How she can possibly be so foolish as 
 to think children could sweep crossings 
 with feathers on their heads ? ' Then you 
 stoop again, and Justice says still in her 
 dull, stupid way 'Then, why don't you, 
 every other Sunday, leave your child to
 
 WORK. 5 1 
 
 sweep the crossing, and take the little 
 sweeper to church in a hat and feather?' 
 Mercy on us (you think), what will she say 
 next? And you answer, of course, that 
 ' you don't, because every body ought to 
 remain content in the position in which 
 Providence has placed them.' Ah, my 
 friends, that's the gist of the whole ques- 
 tion. Did Providence put them in that 
 position, or did you ? You knock a man 
 into a ditch, and then you tell him to re- 
 main content in the ' position in which Pro- 
 vidence has placed him.' That 's modern 
 Christianity. You say ' We did not knock 
 him into the ditch.' How do you know 
 what you have done, or are doing ? That 's 
 just what we have all got to know, and 
 what we shall never know, until the question 
 with us, every morning, is, not how to do 
 the gainful thing, but how to do the just
 
 52 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 thing ; nor until we are at least so far on 
 the way to being Christian, as to have un- 
 derstood that maxim of the poor half-way 
 Mahometan, ' One hour in the execution of 
 justice is worth seventy years of prayer.' 
 
 Supposing, then, we have it determined 
 with appropriate justice, who is to do the 
 hand work, the next questions must be 
 how the hand-workers are to be paid, and 
 how they are to be refreshed, and what 
 play they are to have. Now, the possible 
 quantity of play depends on the possible 
 quantity of pay; and the quantity of 
 pay is not a matter for consideration to 
 hand-workers only, but to all workers. 
 Generally, good, useful work, whether of 
 the hand or head, is either ill-paid, or not 
 paid at all. I don't say it should be so, 
 but it always is so. People, as a rule, only 
 pay for being amused or being cheated,
 
 WORK. 53 
 
 not for being served. Five thousand a \ 
 year to your talker, and a shilling a day 
 to your fighter, digger, and thinker, is the 
 rule. None of the best head work in art, 
 literature, or science, is ever paid for. 
 How much do you think Homer got for his 
 Iliad ? or Dante for his Paradise ? only 
 bitter bread and salt, and going up and 
 down other people's stairs. In science, the 
 man who discovered the telescope, and 
 first saw heaven, was paid with a dungeon ; 
 the man who invented the microscope, and 
 first saw earth, died of starvation, driven 
 from his home : it is indeed very clear that 
 God means all thoroughly good work and 
 talk to be done for nothing. Baruch, the 
 scribe, did not get a penny a line for 
 writing Jeremiah's second roll for him, I 
 fancy ; and St. Stephen did not get bishop's 
 pay for that long sermon of his to the
 
 54 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 Pharisees ; nothing but stones. For indeed 
 that is the world-father's proper payment. 
 So surely as any of the world's children 
 work for the world's good, honestly, with 
 head and heart; and come to it, saying, 
 ' Give us a little bread, just to keep the 
 life in us,' the world-father answers them, 
 ' No, my children, not bread ; a stone, if 
 you like, or as many as you need, to keep 
 you quiet.' But the hand-workers are 
 not so ill off as all this comes to. The 
 worst that can happen to you is to break 
 stones ; not be broken by them. And for 
 you there will come a time for better 
 payment; some day, assuredly, more pence 
 will be paid to Peter the Fisherman, and 
 fewer to Peter the Pope ; we shall pay 
 people not quite so much for talking in 
 Parliament and doing nothing, as for hold- 
 ing their tongues out of it and doing some-
 
 WORK. 5 5 
 
 thing ; we shall pay our ploughman a little 
 more, and our lawyer a little less, and so 
 on : but, at least, we may even now take 
 care that whatever work is done shall be 
 fully paid for; and the man who does it 
 paid for it, not somebody else ; and that it 
 shall be done in an orderly, soldierly, well- 
 guided, wholesome way, under good cap- 
 tains and lieutenants of labour; and that 
 it shall have its appointed times of rest, 
 and enough of them ; and that in those 
 times the play shall be wholesome play, 
 not in theatrical gardens, with tin flowers 
 and gas sunshine, and girls dancing be- 
 cause of their misery ; but in true gardens, 
 with real flowers, and real sunshine, and 
 children dancing because of their glad- 
 ness; so that truly the streets shall be 
 full (the 'streets,' mind you, not the 
 gutters) of children, playing in the midst
 
 56 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 thereof. We may take care that working 
 men shall have at least as good books to 
 read as anybody else, when they've time 
 to read them ; and as comfortable firesides 
 to sit at as anybody else, when they've 
 time to sit at them. This, I think, can 
 be managed for you, my working friends, 
 in the good time. 
 
 IV. I must go on, however, to our last 
 head, concerning ourselves all, as workers. 
 What is wise work, and what is foolish 
 work ? What the difference between sense 
 and nonsense, in daily occupation ? 
 
 Well, wise work is, briefly, work with 
 God. Foolish work is work against God. 
 And work done with God, which He will 
 help, may be briefly described as ' Putting 
 in Order ' that is, enforcing God's law of 
 order, spiritual and material, over men and 
 things. The first thing you have to do,
 
 WORK. 57 
 
 essentially; the real 'good work' is, with 
 respect to men, to enforce justice, and with 
 respect to things, to enforce tidiness, and 
 fruitfulness. And against these two great 
 human deeds, justice and order, there are 
 perpetually two great demons contending, 
 the devil of iniquity, or inequity, and the 
 devil of disorder, or of death; for death 
 is only consummation of disorder. You 
 have to fight these two fiends daily. So 
 far as you don't fight against the fiend 
 of iniquity, you work for him. You 'work 
 iniquity,' and the judgment upon you, for 
 all your ' Lord, Lord's,' will be ' Depart 
 from me, ye that work iniquity.' And so 
 far as you do not resist the fiend of dis- 
 order, you work disorder, and you yourself 
 do the work of Death, which is sin, and 
 has for its wages, Death himself. 
 
 Observe then, all wise work is mainly
 
 58 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 threefold in character. It is honest, useful, 
 and cheerful. 
 
 I. It is HONEST. I hardly know any- 
 thing more strange than that you recognise 
 honesty in play, and you do not in work. 
 In your lightest games, you have always 
 some one to see what you call ' fair-play.' 
 In boxing, you must hit fair; in racing, 
 start fair. Your English watchword is 
 fair-play, your English hatred, foul-play. 
 Did it ever strike you that you wanted 
 another watchword also, fair-work, and 
 another hatred also, foul-work ? Your prize- 
 fighter has some honour in him yet; and 
 so have the men in the ring round 
 him : they will judge him to lose the 
 match, by foul hitting. But your prize- 
 merchant gains his match by foul selling, 
 and no one cries out against that. You 
 drive a gambler out of the gambling-room
 
 WORK. 59 
 
 who loads dice, but you leave a tradesman 
 in flourishing business, who loads scales ! 
 For observe, all dishonest dealing is load- 
 ing scales. What does it matter whether 
 I get short weight, adulterate substance, 
 or dishonest fabric ? The fault in the 
 fabric is incomparably the worst of the 
 two. Give me short measure of food, and 
 I only lose by you ; but give me adulterate 
 food, and I die by you. Here, then, is 
 your chief duty, you workmen and trades- 
 men, to be true to yourselves, and to us 
 who would help you. We can do nothing 
 for you, nor you for yourselves, without 
 honesty. Get that, you get all ; without 
 that, your suffrages, your reforms, your 
 free-trade measures, your institutions of 
 science, are all in vain. It is useless to 
 put your heads together, if you can't put 
 your hearts together. Shoulder to shoulder,
 
 60 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 right hand to right hand, among your- 
 selves, and no wrong hand to anybody 
 else, and you'll win the world yet. 
 
 II. Then, secondly, wise work is USEFUL. 
 No man minds, or ought to mind, its being 
 hard, if only it comes to something; but 
 when it is hard, and comes to nothing; when 
 all our bees' business turns to spiders' ; 
 and for honey-comb we have only resultant 
 cobweb, blown away by the next breeze, 
 that is the cruel thing for the worker. 
 Yet do we ever ask ourselves, personally, 
 or even nationally, whether our work is 
 coming to anything or not ? We don't 
 care to keep what has been nobly done ; 
 still less do we care to do nobly what 
 others would keep ; and, least of all, to 
 make the work itself useful instead of 
 deadly to the doer, so as to use his life 
 indeed, but not to waste it. Of all wastes,
 
 WORK. 6 1 
 
 the greatest waste that you can commit 
 is the waste of labour. If you went 
 down in the morning into your dairy, and 
 you found that your youngest child had 
 got down before you ; and that he and the 
 cat were at play together, and that he 
 had poured out all the cream on the floor 
 for the cat to lap up, you would scold 
 the child, and be sorry the milk was 
 wasted. But if, instead of wooden bowls 
 with milk in them, there are golden bowls 
 with human life in them, and instead 
 of the cat to play with, the devil to 
 play with; and you yourself the player; 
 and instead of leaving that golden bowl to 
 be broken by God at the fountain, you 
 break it in the dust yourself, and pour the 
 human blood out on the ground for the 
 fiend to lick up that is no waste ! What ! 
 you perhaps think, 'to waste the labour of
 
 62 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 men is not to kill them.' Is it not ? I 
 should like to know how you could kill 
 them more utterly kill them with second 
 deaths, seventh deaths, hundredfold deaths? 
 It is the slightest way of killing to stop a 
 man's breath. Nay, the hunger, and the 
 cold, and the little whistling bullets our 
 love-messengers between nation and nation, 
 have brought pleasant messages from us 
 to many a man before now ; orders of 
 sweet release, and leave at last to go where 
 he will be most welcome and most happy. 
 At the worst you do but shorten his life, you 
 do not corrupt his life. But if you put him 
 to base labour, if you bind his thoughts, 
 if you blind his eyes, if you blunt his hopes, 
 if you steal his joys, if you stunt his body, 
 and blast his soul, and at last leave him 
 not so much as to reap the poor fruit of his 
 degradation, but gather that for yourself,
 
 WORK. 63 
 
 and dismiss him to the grave, when you 
 have done with him, having, so far as in 
 you lay, made the walls of that grave ever- 
 lasting : (though, indeed, I fancy the goodly 
 bricks of some of our family vaults will 
 hold closer in the resurrection day than the 
 sod over the labourer's head), this you think 
 is no waste, and no sin ! 
 
 III. Then, lastly, wise work is CHEER- 
 FUL, as a child's work is. And now I want 
 you to take one thought home with you, 
 and let it stay with you. 
 
 Everybody in this room has been taught 
 to pray daily, ' Thy kingdom come.' Now, 
 if we hear a man swear in the streets, 
 we think it very wrong, and say he ' takes 
 God's name in vain.' But there 's a twenty 
 times worse way of taking His name in 
 vain, than that. It is to ask God for wJiat 
 we don't want. He does n't like that sort
 
 64 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 of prayer. If you don't want a thing, don't 
 ask for it : such asking is the worst mockery 
 of your King you can mock Him with ; the 
 soldiers striking Him on the head with the 
 reed was nothing to that. If you do not 
 wish for His kingdom, don't pray for it. But 
 if you do, you must do more than pray for 
 it ; you must work for it. And, to work for 
 it, you must know what it is : we have all 
 prayed for it many a day without thinking. 
 Observe, it is a kingdom that is to come 
 to us ; we are not to go to it. Also, it is 
 not to be a kingdom of the dead, but of 
 the living. Also, it is not to come all at 
 once, but quietly; nobody knows how. 
 ' The kingdom of God cometh not with 
 observation.' Also, it is not to come out- 
 side of us, but in the hearts of us : ' the 
 kingdom of God is within you.' And, 
 being within us, it is not a thing to be seen,
 
 WORK. 65 
 
 but to be felt ; and though it brings all 
 substance of good with it, it does not con- 
 sist in that : ' the kingdom of God is not 
 meat and drink, but righteousness, peace, 
 and joy in the Holy Ghost : ' joy, that 
 is to say, in the holy, healthful, and 
 helpful Spirit. Now, if we want to work 
 for this kingdom, and to bring it, and enter 
 into it, there's just one condition to be first 
 accepted. You must enter it as children, 
 or not at all : ' Whosoever will not receive 
 it as a little child shall not enter therein.' 
 And again, ' Suffer little children to come 
 unto me, and forbid them not, for of such 
 is the kingdom of heaven.' 
 
 Of sztch, observe. Not of children them- 
 selves, but of such as children. I believe 
 most mothers who read that text think 
 that all heaven is to be full of babies. 
 But that 's not so. There will be children 
 F
 
 66 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 there, but the hoary head is the crown. 
 'Length of days, and long life and peace,' 
 that is the blessing, not to die in baby- 
 hood. Children die but for their parents' 
 sins ; God means them to live, but He 
 can't let them always; then they have 
 their earlier place in heaven : and the little 
 child of David, vainly prayed for ; the 
 little child of Jeroboam, killed by its 
 mother's step on its own threshold, they 
 will be there. But weary old David, and 
 weary old Barzillai, having learned chil- 
 dren's lessons at last, will be there too : 
 and the one question for us all, young or 
 old, is, have we learned our child's lesson ? 
 it is the character of children we want, 
 and must gain at our peril ; let us see, 
 briefly, in what it consists. 
 
 The first character of right childhood 
 is that it is Modest. A well-bred child
 
 WORK. 67 
 
 does not think it can teach its parents, 
 or that it knows everything. It may 
 think its father and mother know every- 
 thing, perhaps that all grown-up people 
 know everything ; very certainly it is sure 
 that it does not. And it is always asking 
 questions, and wanting to know more. 
 Well, that is the first character of a good 
 and wise man at his work. To know 
 that he knows very little ; to perceive 
 that there are many above him wiser than 
 he; and to be always asking questions, 
 wanting to learn, not to teach. No one 
 ever teaches well who wants to teach, or 
 governs well who wants to govern ; it is 
 an old saying (Plato's, but I know not if 
 his, first), and as wise as old. 
 
 Then, the second character of right child- 
 hood is to be Faithful. Perceiving that 
 its father knows best what is good for it,
 
 68 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 and having found always, when it has tried 
 its own way against his, that he was right 
 and it was wrong, a noble child trusts 
 him at last wholly, gives him its hand, 
 and will walk blindfold with him, if he 
 bids it. And that is the true character 
 of all good men also, as obedient workers, 
 or soldiers under captains. They must 
 trust their captains ; they are bound for 
 their lives to choose none but those 
 whom they can trust. Then, they are not 
 always to be thinking that what seems 
 strange to them, or wrong in what they 
 are desired to do, is strange or wrong. 
 They know their captain : where he 
 leads they must follow, what he bids, 
 they must do ; and without this trust and 
 faith, without this captainship and sol- 
 diership, no great deed, no great salva- 
 tion, is possible to man. Among all the
 
 WORK. 69 
 
 nations it is only when this faith is attained 
 by them that they become great : the Jew, 
 the Greek, and the Mahometan, agree at 
 least in testifying to this. It was a deed of 
 this absolute trust which made Abraham 
 the father of the faithful ; it was the decla- 
 ration of the power of God as captain over 
 all men, and the acceptance of a leader 
 appointed by Him as commander of the 
 faithful, which laid the foundation of what- 
 ever national power yet exists in the East ; 
 and the deed of the Greeks, which has 
 become the type of unselfish and noble 
 soldiership to all lands, and to all times, 
 was commemorated, on the tomb of those 
 who gave their lives to do it, in the most 
 pathetic, so far as I know, or can feel, of 
 all human utterances : ' Oh, stranger, go 
 and tell our people that we are lying here, 
 having obeyed their words.'
 
 7O THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 Then, the third character of right child- 
 hood is to be Loving and Generous. Give 
 a little love to a child, and you get a great 
 deal back. It loves everything near it, 
 when it is a right kind of child would 
 hurt nothing, would give the best it has 
 away, always, if you need it does not 
 lay plans for getting everything in the 
 house for itself, and delights in helping 
 people ; you cannot please it so much as 
 by giving it a chance of being useful, in 
 ever so little a way. 
 
 And because of all these characters, 
 lastly, it is Cheerful. Putting its trust in 
 its father, it is careful for nothing being 
 full of love to every creature, it is happy 
 always, whether in its play or its duty. 
 Well, that's the great worker's character 
 also. Tajdng no thought for the mor- 
 row ; taking thought only for the duty of
 
 WORK. 71 
 
 the day; trusting somebody else to take 
 care of to-morrow ; knowing indeed what 
 labour is, but not what sorrow is ; and 
 always ready for play beautiful play, 
 for lovely human play is like the play of 
 the Sun. There's a worker for you. He, 
 steady to his time, is set as a strong man 
 to run his course, but also, he rejoiceth as 
 a strong man to run his course. See how 
 he plays in the morning, with the mists 
 below, and the clouds above, with a ray 
 here and a flash there, and a shower of 
 jewels everywhere; that's the Sun's play; 
 and great human play is like his all 
 various all full of light and life, and 
 tender, as the dew of the morning. 
 
 So then, you have the child's character in 
 these four things Humility, Faith, Cha- 
 rity, and Cheerfulness. That's what you 
 have got to be converted to. ' Except ye
 
 72 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 be converted and become as little children ' 
 You hear much of conversion now-a- 
 days; but people always seem to think 
 they have got to be made wretched by 
 conversion, to be converted to long faces. 
 No, friends, you have got to be converted 
 to short ones ; you have to repent into 
 childhood, to repent into delight, and de- 
 lightsomeness. You can't go into a con- 
 venticle but you'll hear plenty of talk of 
 backsliding. Backsliding, indeed ! I can 
 tell you, on the ways most of us go, 
 the faster we slide back the better. 
 Slide back into the cradle, if going on 
 is into the grave back, I tell you; 
 back out of your long faces, and into 
 your long clothes. It is among chil- 
 dren only, and as children only, that you 
 will find medicine for your healing and 
 true wisdom for your teaching. There is
 
 WORK. 73 
 
 poison in the counsels of the men of this 
 world ; the words they speak are all bitter- 
 ness, 'the poison of asps is under their lips,' 
 but ' the sucking child shall play by the 
 hole of the asp.' There is death in the 
 looks of men. ' Their eyes are privily 
 set against the poor;' they are as the un- 
 charmable serpent, the cockatrice, which 
 slew by seeing. But 'the weaned child 
 shall lay his hand on the cockatrice den.' 
 There is death in the steps of men : ' their 
 feet are swift to shed blood; they have 
 compassed us in our steps like the lion that 
 is greedy of his prey, and the young lion 
 lurking in secret places,' but, in that king- 
 dom, the wolf shall lie down with the 
 lamb, and the fatljng with the lion, and 
 'a little child shall lead them.' There 
 is death in the thoughts of men: the world 
 is one wide riddle to them, darker and
 
 74 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 darker as it draws to a close; but the secret 
 of it is known to the child, and the Lord of 
 heaven and earth is most to be thanked 
 in that ' He has hidden these things from 
 the wise and prudent, and has revealed 
 them unto babes.' Yes, and there is 
 death infinitude of death in the princi- 
 palities and powers of men. As far as 
 the east is from the west, so far our sins 
 are not set from us, but multiplied 
 around us : the Sun himself, think you 
 he now ' rejoices' to run his course, when 
 he plunges westward to the horizon, so 
 widely red, not with clouds, but blood? 
 And it will be red more widely yet 
 Whatever drought of the early and latter 
 rain may be, there will be none of that red 
 rain. You fortify yourselves, you arm 
 yourselves against it in vain; the enemy 
 and avenger will be upon you also, unless
 
 WORK. 75 
 
 you learn that it is not out of the mouths 
 of the knitted gun, or the smoothed 
 rifle, but ' out of the mouths of babes 
 and sucklings' that the strength is or- 
 dained, which shall ' still the enemy and 
 avenger.'
 
 LECTURE II. 
 
 TRAFFIC. 
 
 (Delivered in the Town Hall, Bradford.) 
 
 MY good Yorkshire friends, you asked 
 me down here among your hills that I 
 might talk to you about this Exchange 
 you are going to build : but earnestly and 
 seriously asking you to pardon me, I am 
 going to do nothing of the kind. I can- 
 not talk, or at least can say very little, 
 about this same Exchange. I must talk 
 of quite other things, though not will- 
 ingly; I could not deserve your pardon, 
 if, when you invited me to speak on one 
 subject, I wilfully spoke on another. But
 
 8o THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 I cannot speak, to purpose, of anything 
 about which I do not care; and most 
 simply and sorrowfully I have to tell you, 
 in the outset, that I do not care about 
 this Exchange of yours. 
 
 If, however, when you sent me your in- 
 vitation, I had answered, ' I won't come, I 
 don't care about the Exchange of Brad- 
 ford,' you would have been justly offended 
 with me, not knowing the reasons of so 
 blunt a carelessness. So I have come 
 down, hoping that you will patiently let 
 me tell you why, on this, and many other 
 such occasions, I now remain silent, when 
 formerly I should have caught at the 
 opportunity of speaking to a gracious 
 audience. 
 
 In a word, then, I do not care about 
 this Exchange, because you don't; and 
 because you know perfectly well I cannot
 
 TRAFFIC. 8 1 
 
 make you. Look at the essential circum- 
 stances of the case, which you, as business 
 men, know perfectly well, though perhaps 
 you think I forget them. You are going 
 to spend 3O,ooo/., which to you, collectively, 
 is nothing ; the buying a new coat is, as to 
 the cost of it, a much more important 
 matter of consideration to me than build- 
 ing a new Exchange is to you. But you 
 think you may as well have the right thing 
 for your money. You know there are a 
 great many odd styles of architecture 
 about ; you don't want to do anything 
 ridiculous ; you hear of me, among others, 
 as a respectable architectural man-milliner: 
 and you send for me, that I may tell you 
 the leading fashion ; and what is, in our 
 shops, for the moment, the newest and 
 sweetest thing in pinnacles. 
 
 Now, pardon me for telling you frankly, 
 G
 
 82 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 you cannot have good architecture merely 
 by asking people's advice on occasion. All 
 good architecture is the expression of 
 national life and character; and it is pro- 
 duced by a prevalent and eager national 
 taste, or desire for beauty. And I want 
 you to think a little of the deep signifi- 
 cance of this word 'taste ;' for no statement 
 of mine has been more earnestly or oftener 
 controverted than that good taste is essen- 
 tially a moral quality. ' No,' say many of 
 my antagonists, ' taste is one thing, mo- 
 rality is another. Tell us what is pretty ; 
 we shall be glad to know that : but preach 
 no sermons to us.' 
 
 Permit me, therefore, to fortify this old 
 dogma of mine somewhat. Taste is not 
 only a part and an index of morality; it 
 is the ONLY morality. The first, and last, 
 and closest trial question to any living
 
 TRAFFIC. 83 
 
 creature is, 'What do you like ?' Tell me 
 what you like, and I '11 tell you what you 
 are. Go out into the street, and ask the 
 first man or woman you meet, what their 
 'taste' is ; and if they answer candidly, you 
 know them, body and soul. 'You, my 
 friend in the rags, with the unsteady gait, 
 what do you like ?' 'A pipe, and a quar- 
 tern of gin.' I know you. ' You, good 
 woman, with the quick step and tidy bon- 
 net, what do you like ? ' 'A swept hearth and 
 a clean tea-table ; and my husband oppo- 
 site me, and a baby at my breast.' Good, 
 I know you also. ' You, little girl with the 
 golden hair and the soft eyes, what do you 
 like ?' ' My canary, and a run among the 
 wood hyacinths.' ' You, little boy with 
 the dirty hands, and the low forehead, what 
 do you like?' 'A shy at the sparrows, 
 and a game at pitch-farthing.' Good; we
 
 84 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 know them all now. What more need 
 we ask ? 
 
 ' Nay,' perhaps you answer ; ' we need 
 rather to ask what these people and children 
 do, than what they like. If they do right, it 
 is no matter that they like what is wrong; 
 and if they do wrong, it is no matter that 
 they like what is right. Doing is the great 
 thing ; and it does not matter that the 
 man likes drinking, so that he does not 
 drink; nor that the little girl likes to be 
 kind to her canary, if she will not learn her 
 lessons; nor that the little boy likes throw- 
 ing stones at the sparrows, if he goes to 
 the Sunday school.' Indeed, for a short 
 time, and in a provisional sense, this is true. 
 For if, resolutely, people do what is right, 
 in time they come to like doing it. But 
 they only are in a right moral state when 
 they have come to like doing it ; and as
 
 TRAFFIC. 85 
 
 long as they don't like it, they are still 
 in a vicious state. The man is not in 
 health of body who is always thirsting 
 for the bottle in the cupboard, though he 
 bravely bears his thirst ; but the man who 
 heartily enjoys water in the morning and 
 wine in the evening, each in its proper 
 quantity and time. And the entire object 
 of true education is to make people not 
 merely do the right things, but enjoy the 
 right things not merely industrious, but 
 to love industry not merely learned, but to 
 love knowledge not merely pure, but to 
 love purity not merely just, but to hunger 
 and thirst after justice. 
 
 But you may answer or think, ' Is the 
 liking for outside ornaments, for pictures, 
 or statues, or furniture, or architecture, 
 a moral quality ? ' Yes, most surely, if a 
 rightly set liking. Taste for any pictures
 
 86 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 or statues is not a moral quality, but taste 
 for good ones is. Only here again we 
 have to define the word 'good.' I don't 
 mean by 'good,' clever or learned or 
 difficult in the doing. Take a picture 
 by Teniers, of sots quarrelling over their 
 dice : it is an entirely clever picture ; so 
 clever that nothing in its kind has ever been 
 done equal to it ; but it is also an entirely 
 base and evil picture. It is an expres- 
 sion of delight in the prolonged contem- 
 plation of a vile thing, and delight in that 
 is an ' unmannered,' or ' immoral ' quality. 
 It is ' bad taste ' in the profoundest sense 
 it is the taste of the devils. On the other 
 hand, a picture of Titian's, or a Greek 
 statue, or a Greek coin, or a Turner land- 
 scape, expresses delight in the perpetual 
 contemplation of a good and perfect thing. 
 That is an entirely moral quality it is the
 
 TRAFFIC. 87 
 
 taste of the angels. And all delight in art, 
 and all love of it, resolve themselves into 
 simple love of that which deserves love. 
 That deserving is the quality which we call 
 'loveliness' (we ought to have an opposite 
 word, hateliness, to be said of the things 
 which deserve to be hated) ; and it is not 
 an indifferent nor optional thing whether 
 we love this or that ; but it is just the vital 
 function of all our being. What we like 
 determines what we are, and is the sign of 
 what we are ; and to teach taste is inevi- 
 tably to form character. As I was think- 
 ing over this, in walking up Fleet Street 
 the other day, my eye caught the title of- 
 a book standing open in a bookseller's 
 window. It was ' On the necessity of the 
 diffusion of taste among all classes.' 'Ah/ 
 I thought to myself, ' my classifying friend, 
 when you have diffused your taste, where
 
 88 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 will your classes be ? The man who likes 
 what you like, belongs to the same class 
 with you, I think. Inevitably so. You may 
 put him to other work if you choose ; but, 
 by the condition you have brought him 
 into, he will dislike the other work as much 
 as you would yourself. You get hold of a 
 scavenger, or a costermonger, who enjoyed 
 the Newgate Calendar for literature, and 
 " Pop goes the Weasel " for music. You 
 think you can make him like Dante and 
 Beethoven ? I wish you joy of your les- 
 sons; but if you do, you have made a 
 gentleman of him : he won't like to go 
 back to his costermongering.' 
 
 And so completely and unexceptionally 
 is this so, .that, if I had time to-night, I 
 could show you that a nation cannot be 
 affected by any vice, or weakness, without 
 expressing it, legibly, and for ever, either
 
 TRAFFIC. 89 
 
 in bad art, or by want of art; and that 
 there is no national virtue, small or great, 
 which is not manifestly expressed in 
 all the art which circumstances enable 
 the people possessing that virtue to 
 produce. Take, for instance, your great 
 English virtue of enduring and patient 
 courage. You have at present in England 
 only one art of any consequence that is, 
 iron-working. You know thoroughly well 
 how to cast and hammer iron. Now, do 
 you think in those masses of lava which 
 you build volcanic cones to melt, and which 
 you forge at the mouths of the Infernos 
 you have created ; do you think, on those 
 iron plates, your courage and endurance 
 are not written for ever not merely with 
 an iron pen, but on iron parchment ? And 
 take also your great English vice Euro- 
 pean vice vice of all the world vice of
 
 90 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 all other worlds that roll or shine in 
 heaven, bearing with them yet the at- 
 mosphere of hell the vice of jealousy, 
 which brings competition into your com- 
 merce, treachery into your councils, and 
 dishonour into your wars that vice which 
 has rendered for you, and for your next 
 neighbouring nation, the daily occupations 
 of existence no longer possible, but with 
 the mail upon your breasts and the sword 
 loose in its sheath; so that, at last, you 
 have realised for all the multitudes of the 
 two great peoples who lead the so-called 
 civilisation of the earth, you have realised 
 for them all, I say, in person and in policy, 
 what was once true only of the rough 
 Border riders of your Cheviot hills 
 ' They carved at the meal 
 
 With gloves of steel, 
 
 And they drank the red wine through the helmet 
 barr'd ;
 
 TRAFFIC. 91 
 
 do you think that this national shame 
 and dastardliness of heart are not written as 
 legibly on every rivet of your iron armour as 
 the strength of the right hands that forged 
 it ? Friends, I know not whether this 
 thing be the more ludicrous or the more 
 melancholy. It is quite unspeakably both. 
 Suppose, instead of being now sent for by 
 you, I had been sent for by some private 
 gentleman, living in a suburban house, with 
 his garden separated only by a fruit-wall 
 from his next door neighbour's; and he 
 had called me to consult with him on the 
 furnishing of his drawing-room. I begin 
 looking about me, and find the walls 
 rather bare ; I think such and such a 
 paper might be desirable perhaps a little 
 fresco here and there on the ceiling 
 a damask curtain or so at the windows. 
 ' Ah,' says my employer, ' damask cur-
 
 92 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 tains, indeed ! That's all very fine, but 
 you know I can't afford that kind of thing 
 just now!' 'Yet the world credits you 
 with a splendid income!' 'Ah, yes,' says 
 my friend, 'but do you know, at present, 
 I am obliged to spend it nearly all in steel- 
 traps ?' ' Steel-traps ! for whom ? ' ' Why, 
 for that fellow on the other side the wall, 
 you know : we 're very good friends, capi- 
 tal friends ; but we are obliged to keep 
 our traps set on both sides of the wall ; we 
 could not possibly keep on friendly terms 
 without them, and our spring guns. The 
 worst of it is, we are both clever fellows 
 enough ; and there 's never a day passes 
 that we don't find out a new trap, or a 
 new gun-barrel, or something; we spend 
 about fifteen millions a year each in our 
 traps, take it all together; and I don't 
 see how we 're to do with less.' A highly
 
 TRAFFIC. 93 
 
 comic state of life for two private gentle- 
 men ! but for two nations, it seems to 
 me, not wholly comic ? Bedlam would 
 be comic, perhaps, if there were only one 
 madman in it ; and your Christmas panto- 
 mime is comic, when there is only one 
 clown in it ; but when the whole world 
 turns clown, and paints itself red with its 
 own heart's blood instead of vermilion, it 
 is something else than comic, I think. 
 
 Mind, I know a great deal of this is 
 play, and willingly allow for that. You 
 don't know what to do with yourselves for 
 a sensation : fox-hunting and cricketing 
 will not carry you through the whole of 
 this unendurably long mortal life : you 
 liked pop-guns when you were schoolboys, 
 and rifles and Armstrongs are only the 
 same things better made: but then the 
 worst of it is, that what was play to you
 
 94 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 when boys, was not play to the sparrows ; 
 and what is play to you now, is not play 
 to the small birds of State neither ; and for 
 the black eagles, you are somewhat shy of 
 taking shots at them, if I mistake not. 
 
 I must get back to the matter in hand, 
 however. Believe me, without farther in- 
 stance, I could show you, in all time, that 
 every nation's vice, or virtue, was written 
 in its art : the soldiership of early Greece ; 
 the sensuality of late Italy ; the visionary 
 religion of Tuscany ; the splendid human 
 energy and beauty of Venice. I have no 
 time to do this to-night, (I have done it 
 elsewhere before now); but I proceed to 
 apply the principle to ourselves in a more 
 searching manner. 
 
 I notice that among all the new build- 
 ings which cover your once wild hills, 
 churches and schools are mixed in due,
 
 TRAFFIC. 95 
 
 that is to say, in large proportion, with 
 your mills and mansions; and I notice 
 also that the churches and schools are 
 almost always Gothic, and the mansions 
 and mills are never Gothic. Will you 
 allow me to ask precisely the meaning of 
 this ? For, remember, it is peculiarly a 
 modern phenomenon. When Gothic was 
 invented, houses were Gothic as well as 
 churches; and when the Italian style su- 
 perseded the Gothic, churches were Italian 
 as well as houses. If there is a Gothic 
 spire to the cathedral of Antwerp, there is 
 a Gothic belfry to the Hotel de Ville at 
 Brussels; if Inigo Jones builds an Italian 
 Whitehall, Sir Christopher Wren builds an 
 Italian St. Paul's. But now you live under 
 one school of architecture, and worship 
 under another. What do you mean by 
 doing this ? Am I to understand that you
 
 96 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 are thinking of changing your architecture 
 back to Gothic ; and that you treat your 
 churches experimentally, because it does 
 not matter what mistakes you make in a 
 church ? Or am I to understand that you 
 consider Gothic a pre-eminently sacred and 
 beautiful mode of building, which you 
 think, like the fine frankincense, should be 
 mixed for the tabernacle only, and re- 
 served for your religious services? For 
 if this be the feeling, though it may seem 
 at first as if it were graceful and reverent, 
 you will find that, at the root of the mat- 
 ter, it signifies neither more nor less than 
 that you have separated your religion from 
 your life. 
 
 For consider what a wide significance 
 this fact has ; and remember that it is not 
 you only, but all the people of England, 
 who are behaving thus just now.
 
 TRAFFIC. 97 
 
 You have all got into the habit of calling 
 the church 'the house of God.' I have 
 seen, over the doors of many churches, the 
 legend actually carved, ' This is the house 
 of God, and this is the gate of heaven.' 
 Now, note where that legend comes from, 
 and of what place it was first spoken. A 
 boy leaves his father's house to go on a 
 long journey on foot, to visit his uncle : he 
 has to cross a wild hill-desert ; just as if 
 one of your own boys had to cross the 
 wolds of Westmoreland, to visit an uncle 
 at Carlisle. The second or third day your 
 boy finds himself somewhere between 
 Hawes and Brough, in the midst of the 
 moors, at sunset. It is stony ground, and 
 boggy ; he cannot go one foot farther that 
 night. Down he lies, to sleep, on Wharn- 
 side, where best he may, gathering a few 
 of the stones together to put under his 
 
 H
 
 98 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 head ; so wild the place is, he cannot get 
 anything but stones. And there, lying 
 under the broad night, he has a dream; 
 and he sees a ladder set up on the earth, 
 and the top of it reaches to heaven, and 
 the angels of God are ascending and de- 
 scending upon it. And when he wakes 
 out of his sleep, he says, ' How dreadful 
 is this place ; surely, this is none other 
 than the house of God, and this is the 
 gate of heaven.' This PLACE, observe; 
 not this church; not this city; not this 
 stone, even, which he puts up for a me- 
 morial the piece of flint on which his 
 head has lain. But this place; this windy 
 slope of Wharnside; this moorland hol- 
 low, torrent-bitten, snow-blighted ; this any 
 place where God lets down the ladder. 
 And how are you to know where that 
 will be ? or how are you to determine
 
 TRAFFIC. 99 
 
 where it may be, but by being ready for 
 it always ? Do you know where the 
 lightning is to fall next ? You do know 
 that, partly; you can guide the lightning; 
 but you cannot guide the going forth of 
 the Spirit, which is as that lightning when 
 it shines from the east to the west. 
 
 But the perpetual and insolent warping 
 of that strong verse to serve a merely 
 ecclesiastical purpose, is only one of the 
 thousand instances in which we sink back 
 into gross Judaism. We call our churches 
 ' temples.' Now, you know, or ought to 
 know, they are not temples. They have 
 never had, never can have, anything what- 
 ever to do with temples. They are 
 ' synagogues ' ' gathering places ' where 
 you gather yourselves together as an as- 
 sembly ; and by not calling them so, you 
 again miss the force of another mighty
 
 100 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 text 'Thou, when thou prayest, shalt 
 not be as the hypocrites are; for they 
 love to pray standing in the churches' [we 
 should translate it], 'that they may be 
 seen of men. But thou, when thou 
 prayest, enter into thy closet, and when 
 thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy 
 Father,' which is, not in chancel nor in 
 aisle, but ' in secret.' 
 
 Now, you feel, as I say this to you I 
 know you feel as if I were trying to take 
 away the honour of your churches. Not 
 so; I am trying to prove to you the 
 honour of your houses and your hills; I 
 am trying to show you not that the 
 Church is not sacred but that the whole 
 Earth IS. I would have you feel, what 
 careless, what constant, what infectious sin 
 there is in all modes of thought, whereby, 
 in calling your churches only ' holy,' you
 
 TRAFFIC. 101 
 
 call your hearths and homes profane ; and 
 have separated yourelves from the heathen 
 by casting all your household gods to the 
 ground, instead of recognising, in the 
 places of their many and feeble Lares, 
 the presence of your One and Mighty 
 Lord and Lar. 
 
 ' But what has all this to do with our 
 Exchange ? ' you ask me, impatiently. My 
 dear friends, it has just everything to do 
 with it ; on these inner and great questions 
 depend all the outer and little ones; and if 
 you have asked me down here to speak to 
 you, because you had before been interested 
 in anything I have written, you must know 
 that all I have yet said about archi- 
 tecture was to show this. The book I 
 called ' The Seven Lamps' was to show that 
 certain right states of temper and moral 
 feeling were the magic powers by which all
 
 IO2 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 good architecture, without exception, had 
 been produced. 'The Stones of Venice' 
 had, from beginning to end, no other aim 
 than to show that the Gothic architecture 
 of Venice had arisen out of, and indicated 
 in all its features, a state of pure national 
 faith, and of domestic virtue ; and that its 
 Renaissance architecture had arisen out of, 
 and in all its features indicated, a state of 
 concealed national infidelity, and of do- 
 mestic corruption. And now, you ask me 
 what style is best to build in ; and how can 
 I answer, knowing the meaning of the two 
 styles, but by another question do you 
 mean to build as Christians or as Infidels ? 
 And still more do you mean to build as 
 honest Christians or as honest Infidels ? 
 as thoroughly and confessedly either one 
 or the other ? You don't like to be asked 
 such rude questions. I cannot help it ; they
 
 TRAFFIC. 103 
 
 are of much more importance than this 
 Exchange business; and if they can be 
 at once answered, the Exchange business 
 settles itself in a moment. But, before I 
 press them farther, I must ask leave to 
 explain one point clearly. In all my past 
 work, my endeavour has been to show 
 that good architecture is essentially reli- 
 gious the production of a faithful and 
 virtuous, not of an infidel and corrupted 
 people. But in the course of doing this, I 
 have had also to show that good architec- 
 ture is not ecclesiastical. People are so apt 
 to look upon religion as the business of the 
 clergy, not their own, that the moment they 
 hear of anything depending on ' religion,' 
 they think it must also have depended on 
 the priesthood; and I have had to take 
 what place was to be occupied between 
 these two errors, and fight both, often
 
 104 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 with seeming contradiction. Good archi- 
 tecture is the work of good and believing 
 men ; therefore, you say, at least some 
 people say, ' Good architecture must es- 
 sentially have been the work of the clergy, 
 not of the laity.' No a thousand times 
 no ; good architecture has always been 
 the work of the commonalty, not of the 
 clergy. What, you say, those glorious 
 cathedrals the pride of Europe did their 
 builders not form Gothic architecture ? 
 No ; they corrupted Gothic architecture. 
 Gothic was formed in the baron's castle, 
 and the burgher's street. It was formed 
 by the thoughts, and hands, and powers 
 of free citizens and soldier kings. By 
 the monk it was used as an instrument 
 for the aid of his superstition : when that 
 superstition became a beautiful madness, 
 and the best hearts of Europe vainly
 
 TRAFFIC. 105 
 
 dreamed and pined in the cloister, and 
 vainly raged and perished in the crusade, 
 through that fury of perverted faith 
 and wasted war, the Gothic rose also to 
 its loveliest, most fantastic, and finally, 
 most foolish dreams ; and, in those dreams, 
 was lost. 
 
 I hope, now, that there is no risk of 
 your misunderstanding me when I come 
 to the gist of what I want to say to-night ; 
 when I repeat, that every great national 
 architecture has been the result and ex- 
 ponent of a great national religion. You 
 can't have bits of it here, bits there you 
 must have it everywhere, or nowhere. It 
 is not the monopoly of a clerical com- 
 pany it is not the exponent of a theo- 
 logical dogma it is not the hieroglyphic 
 writing of an initiated priesthood ; it is 
 the manly language of a people inspired
 
 IO6 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 by resolute and common purpose, and 
 rendering resolute and common fidelity 
 to the legible laws of an undoubted God. 
 
 Now there have as yet been three dis- 
 tinct schools of European architecture. I 
 say, European, because Asiatic and African 
 architectures belong so entirely to other 
 races and climates, that there is no ques- 
 tion of them here; only, in passing, I 
 will simply assure you that whatever is 
 good or great in Egypt, and Syria, and 
 India, is just good or great for the 
 same reasons as the buildings on our side 
 of the Bosphorus. We Europeans, then, 
 have had three great religions : the Greek, 
 which was the worship of the God of 
 Wisdom and Power ; the Mediaeval, which 
 was the worship of the God of Judgment 
 and Consolation ; the Renaissance, which 
 was the worship of the God of Pride and
 
 TRAFFIC. lO/ 
 
 Beauty : these three we have had they 
 are past, and now, at last, we English 
 have got a fourth religion, and a God of 
 our own, about which I want to ask you. 
 But I must explain these three old ones 
 first. 
 
 I repeat, first, the Greeks essentially 
 worshipped the God of Wisdom; so that 
 whatever contended against their religion, 
 to the Jews a stumbling block, was, 
 to the Greeks Foolishness. 
 
 The first Greek idea of deity was that 
 expressed in the word, of which we keep 
 the remnant in our words *Z?z-urnal' and 
 ' ZV-vine ' the god of Day, Jupiter the 
 revealer. Athena is his daughter, but 
 especially daughter of the Intellect, spring- 
 ing armed from the head. We are only 
 with the help of recent investigation be- 
 ginning to penetrate the depth of mean-
 
 IO8 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 ing couched under the Athenaic symbols : 
 but I may note rapidly, that her aegis, 
 the mantle with the serpent fringes, in 
 which she often, in the best statues, is 
 represented as folding up her left hand 
 for better guard, and the Gorgon on 
 her shield, are both representative mainly 
 of the chilling horror and sadness, 
 (turning men to stone, as it were,) of 
 the outmost and superficial spheres of 
 knowledge that knowledge which sepa- 
 rates, in bitterness, hardness, and sor- 
 row, the heart of the full-grown man 
 from the heart of the child. For out of 
 imperfect knowledge spring terror, dis- 
 sension, danger, and disdain; but from 
 perfect knowledge, given by the full- 
 revealed Athena, strength and peace, in 
 sign of which she is crowned with the 
 olive spray, and bears the resistless spear.
 
 TRAFFIC. 
 
 This, then, was the Greek conception 
 of purest Deity, and every habit of life, 
 and every form of his art developed 
 themselves from the seeking this bright, 
 serene, resistless wisdom; and setting 
 himself, as a man, to do things evermore 
 rightly and strongly ; * not with any 
 ardent affection or ultimate hope ; but 
 
 * It is an error to suppose that the Greek wor- 
 ship, or seeking, was chiefly of Beauty. It was 
 essentially of Rightness and Strength, founded on 
 Forethought : the principal character of Greek 
 art is not beauty, but Design : and the Dorian 
 Apollo-worship and Athenian Virgin-worship are 
 both expressions of adoration of divine Wisdom 
 and Purity. Next to these great deities rank, in 
 power over the national mind, Dionysus and Ceres, 
 the givers of human strength and life : then, for 
 heroic example, Hercules. There is no Venus- 
 worship among the Greeks in the great times : and 
 the Muses are essentially teachers of Truth, and of 
 its harmonies.
 
 IIO THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 with a resolute and continent energy of 
 will, as knowing that for failure there 
 was no consolation, and for sin there 
 was no remission. And the Greek archi- 
 tecture rose unerring, bright, clearly de- 
 fined, and self-contained. 
 
 Next followed in Europe the great 
 Christian faith, which was essentially the 
 religion of Comfort. Its great doctrine is 
 the remission of sins; for which cause it 
 happens, too often, in certain phases of 
 Christianity, that sin and sickness them- 
 selves are partly glorified, as if, the more 
 you had to be healed of, the more divine 
 was the healing. The practical result of 
 this doctrine, in art, is a continual con- 
 templation of sin and disease, and of 
 imaginary states of purification from them; 
 thus we have an architecture conceived in 
 a mingled sentiment of melancholy and
 
 TRAFFIC. 1 1 1 
 
 aspiration, partly severe, partly luxuriant, 
 which will bend itself to every one of our 
 needs, and every one of our fancies, and 
 be strong or weak with us, as we are 
 strong or weak ourselves. It is, of all 
 architecture, the basest, when base people 
 build it of all, the noblest, when built by 
 the noble. 
 
 And now note that both these religions 
 Greek and Mediaeval perished by false- 
 hood in their own main purpose. The 
 Greek religion of Wisdom perished in a 
 false philosophy ' Oppositions of science, 
 falsely so called.' The Mediaeval religion 
 of Consolation perished in false comfort ; 
 in remission of sins given lyingly. It was 
 the selling of absolution that ended the 
 Mediaeval faith ; and I can tell you more, 
 it is the selling of absolution which, to 
 the end of time, will mark false Chris-
 
 112 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 tianity. Pure Christianity gives her re- 
 mission of sins only by ending them ; but 
 false Christianity gets her remission of 
 sins by compounding for them. And there 
 are many ways of compounding for them. 
 We English have beautiful little quiet 
 ways of buying absolution, whether in 
 low Church or high, far more cunning than 
 any of Tetzel's trading. 
 
 Then, thirdly, there followed the re- 
 ligion of Pleasure, in which all Europe 
 gave itself to luxury, ending in death. 
 First, bals masquts in every saloon, and 
 then guillotines in every square. And all 
 these three worships issue in vast temple 
 building. Your Greek worshipped Wis- 
 dom, and built you the Parthenon 
 the Virgin's temple. The Mediaeval wor- 
 shipped Consolation, and built you Virgin 
 temples also but to our Lady of Salva-
 
 TRAFFIC. 113 
 
 tion. Then the Revivalist worshipped 
 beauty, of a sort, and built you Versailles, 
 and the Vatican. Now, lastly, will you tell 
 me what we worship, and what we build ? 
 
 You know we are speaking always of 
 the real, active, continual, national wor- 
 ship ; that by which men act while they 
 live ; not that which they talk of when 
 they die. Now, we have, indeed, a nomi- 
 nal religion, to which we pay tithes of 
 property and sevenths of time ; but we 
 have also a practical and earnest religion, 
 to which we devote nine-tenths of our 
 property and six-sevenths of our time. 
 And we dispute a great deal about the 
 nominal religion; but we are all unani- 
 mous about this practical one, of which I 
 think you will admit that the ruling 
 goddess may be best generally described 
 as the ' Goddess of Getting-on,' or ' Bri- 
 I
 
 114 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 tannia of the Market.' The Athenians 
 had an 'Athena Agoraia,' or Minerva of the 
 Market ; but she was a subordinate type 
 of their goddess, while our Britannia 
 Agoraia is the principal type of ours. 
 And all your great architectural works 
 are, of course, built to her. It is long 
 since you built a great cathedral ; and 
 how you would laugh at me, if I proposed 
 building a cathedral on the top of one 
 of these hills of yours, taking it for an 
 Acropolis! But your railroad mounds, 
 prolonged masses of Acropolis ; your rail- 
 road stations, vaster than the Parthenon, 
 and innumerable ; your chimneys, how 
 much more mighty and costly than ca- 
 thedral spires ! your harbour-piers ; your 
 warehouses ; your exchanges ! all these 
 are built to your great Goddess of ' Getting- 
 on;' and she has formed, and will con-
 
 TRAFFIC. 115 
 
 tinue to form, your architecture, as long 
 as you worship her; and it is quite vain 
 to ask me to tell you how to build to 
 her\ you know far better than I. 
 
 There might indeed, on some theories, 
 be a conceivably good architecture for Ex- 
 changes that is to say if there were any 
 heroism in the fact or deed of exchange, 
 
 o ' 
 
 which might be typically carved on the 
 outside of your building. For, you know, 
 all beautiful architecture must be adorned 
 with sculpture or painting ; and for sculp- 
 ture or painting, you must have a subject. 
 And hitherto it has been a received opinion 
 among the nations of the world that the 
 only right subjects for either, were heroisms 
 of some sort. Even on his pots and his 
 flagons, the Greek put a Hercules slaying 
 lions, or an Apollo slaying serpents, or 
 Bacchus slaying melancholy giants, and
 
 Il6 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 earth-born despondencies. On his temples, 
 the Greek put contests of great warriors 
 in founding states, or of gods with evil 
 spirits. On his houses and temples alike, 
 the Christian put carvings of angels con- 
 quering devils; or of hero-martyrs ex- 
 changing this world for another; subject 
 inappropriate, I think, to our manner of 
 exchange here. And the Master of Chris- 
 tians not only left his followers without 
 any orders as to the sculpture of affairs 
 of exchange on the outside of buildings, 
 but gave some strong evidence of his dislike 
 of affairs of exchange within them. And 
 yet there might surely be a heroism in 
 such affairs ; and all commerce become a 
 kind of selling of doves, not impious. The 
 wonder has always been great to me, that 
 heroism has never been supposed to be in 
 anywise consistent with the practice of
 
 TRAFFIC. II/ 
 
 supplying people with food, or clothes; but 
 rather with that of quartering oneself upon 
 them for food, and stripping them of their 
 clothes. Spoiling of armour is an heroic 
 deed in all ages ; but the selling of clothes, 
 old, or new, has never taken any colour 
 of magnanimity. Yet one does not see 
 why feeding the hungry and clothing the 
 naked should ever become base busi- 
 nesses, even when engaged in on a large 
 scale. If one could contrive to attach 
 the notion of conquest to them anyhow ? 
 so that, supposing there were anywhere 
 an obstinate race, who refused to be com- 
 forted, one might take some pride in giv- 
 ing them compulsory comfort; and as it 
 were, ' occupying a country ' with one's 
 gifts, instead of one's armies ? If one 
 could only consider it as much a victory to 
 get a barren field sown, as to get an eared
 
 Il8 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 field stripped ; and contend who should 
 build villages, instead of who should 
 'carry' them. Are not all forms of heroism, 
 conceivable in doing these serviceable 
 deeds ? You doubt who is strongest ? It 
 might be ascertained by push of spade, as 
 well as push of sword. Who is wisest ? 
 There are witty things to be thought of 
 in planning other business than campaigns. 
 Who is bravest ? There are always the 
 elements to fight with, stronger than men ; 
 and nearly as merciless. The only abso- 
 lutely and unapproachably heroic element 
 in the soldier's work seems to be that he 
 is paid little for it and regularly : while 
 you traffickers, and exchangers, and others 
 occupied in presumably benevolent busi- 
 ness, like to be paid much for it and by 
 chance. I never can make out how it is 
 that a knight-errant does not expect to
 
 TRAFFIC. 119 
 
 be paid for his trouble, but a pedlar-errant 
 always does; that people are willing to 
 take hard knocks for nothing, but never 
 to sell ribands cheap ; that they are ready 
 to go on fervent crusades to recover the 
 tomb of a buried God, never on any 
 travels to fulfil the orders of a living God ; 
 that they will go anywhere barefoot to 
 preach their faith, but must be well bribed 
 to practise it, and are perfectly ready to 
 give the Gospel gratis, but never the 
 loaves and fishes. If you chose to take the 
 matter up on any such soldierly principle, 
 to do your commerce, and your feeding 
 of nations, for fixed salaries; and to be 
 as particular about giving people the best 
 food, and the best cloth, as soldiers are 
 about giving them the best gunpowder, I 
 could carve something for you on your 
 exchange worth looking at. But I can
 
 120 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 only at present suggest decorating its 
 frieze with pendant purses ; and making its 
 pillars broad at the base, for the sticking 
 of bills. And in the innermost chambers 
 of it there might be a statue of Britannia 
 of the Market, who may have, perhaps 
 advisably, a partridge for her crest, typical 
 at once of her courage in fighting for noble 
 ideas ; and of her interest in game ; and 
 round its neck the inscription in golden 
 letters, ' Perdix fovit quae non peperit,' * 
 Then, for her spear, she might have a 
 weaver's beam ; and on her shield, instead 
 of her Cross, the Milanese boar, semi- 
 fleeced, with the town of Gennesaret 
 proper, in the field and the legend ' In the 
 
 * Jerem. xvii. 1 1 (best in Septuagint and Vul- 
 gate). ' As the partridge, fostering what she 
 brought not forth, so he that getteth riches, not by 
 right, shall leave them in the midst of his days, 
 and at his end shall be a fool.'
 
 TRAFFIC. 121 
 
 best market,' and her corslet, of leather, 
 folded over her heart in the shape of a 
 purse, with thirty slits in it for a piece of 
 money to go in at, on each day of the 
 month. And I doubt not but that people 
 would come to see your exchange, and 
 its goddess, with applause. 
 
 Nevertheless, I want to point out to 
 you certain strange characters in this god- 
 dess of yours. She differs from the great 
 Greek and Mediaeval deities essentially 
 in two things first, as to the continuance 
 of her presumed power; secondly, as to 
 the extent of it. 
 
 ist, as to the Continuance. 
 
 The Greek Goddess of Wisdom gave 
 continual increase of wisdom, as the Chris- 
 tian Spirit of Comfort (or Comforter) con- 
 tinual increase of comfort. There was no 
 question, with these, of any limit or cessa-
 
 122 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 tion of function. But with your Agora 
 Goddess, that is just the most important 
 question. Getting on but where to ? Ga- 
 thering together but how much ? Do you 
 mean to gather always never to spend ? 
 If so, I wish you joy of your goddess, for 
 I am just as well-off as you, without the 
 trouble of worshipping her at all. But if 
 you do not spend, somebody else will 
 somebody else must. And it is because of 
 this (among many other such errors) that I 
 have fearlessly declared your so-called sci- 
 ence of Political Economy to be no science ; 
 because, namely, it has omitted the study 
 of exactly the most important branch of 
 the business the study of spending. For 
 spend you must, and as much as you 
 make, ultimately. You gather corn : will 
 you bury England under a heap of grain ; 
 or will you, when you have gathered,
 
 TRAFFIC. 123 
 
 finally eat ? You gather gold : will you 
 make your house-roofs of it, or pave your 
 streets with it ? That is still one way of 
 spending it. But if you keep it, that you 
 may get more, I '11 give you more ; I '11 
 give you all the gold you want all you 
 can imagine if you can tell me what 
 you '11 do with it. You shall have thou- 
 sands of gold pieces ; thousands of 
 thousands millions mountains, of gold : 
 where will you keep them ? Will you put 
 an Olympus of silver upon a golden 
 Pelion make Ossa like a wart ? Do you 
 think the rain and dew would then come 
 down to you, in the streams from such 
 mountains, more blessedly than they will 
 down the mountains which God has made 
 for you, of moss and whinstone ? But 
 it is not gold that you want to gather ! 
 What is it ? greenbacks ? No ; not those
 
 124 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 neither. What is it then is it ciphers 
 after a capital I ? Cannot you practise 
 writing ciphers, and write as many as you 
 want ? Write ciphers for an hour every 
 morning, in a big book, and say every 
 evening, I am worth all those noughts 
 more than I was yesterday. Won't that 
 do ? Well, what in the name of Plutus 
 is it you want? Not gold, not greenbacks, 
 not ciphers after a capital I ? You will 
 have to answer, after all, ' No ; we want, 
 somehow or other, money's worth' Well, 
 what is that ? Let your Goddess of 
 Getting-on discover it, and let her learn 
 to stay therein. 
 
 II. But there is yet another question to 
 be asked respecting this Goddess of Getting 
 on. The first was of the continuance of 
 her power; the second is of its extent. 
 
 Pallas and the Madonna were supposed
 
 TRAFFIC. 125 
 
 to be all the world's Pallas, and all the 
 world's Madonna. They could teach all 
 men, and they could comfort all men. 
 But, look strictly into the nature of the 
 power of your Goddess of Getting-on ; and 
 you will find she is the Goddess not of 
 everybody's getting on but only of some- 
 body's getting on. This is a vital, or 
 rather deathful, distinction. Examine it 
 in your own ideal of the state of national 
 life which this Goddess is to evoke and 
 maintain. I asked you what it was, when 
 I was last here ; * you have never told 
 me. Now, shall I try to tell you ? 
 
 Your ideal of human life then is, I think, 
 that it should be passed in a pleasant un- 
 dulating world, with iron and coal every- 
 where underneath it. On each pleasant 
 bank of this world is to be a beautiful 
 
 * Two Paths, p. 117.
 
 126 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 mansion, with two wings ; and stables, and 
 coachhouses ; a moderately sized park ; a 
 large garden and hot-houses ; and pleasant 
 carriage drives through the shrubberies. 
 In this mansion are to live the favoured 
 votaries of the Goddess ; the English gen- 
 tleman, with his gracious wife, and his 
 beautiful family; always able to have the 
 boudoir and the jewels for the wife, and 
 the beautiful ball dresses for the daughters, 
 and hunters for the sons, and a shooting 
 in the Highlands for himself. At the 
 bottom of the bank, is to be the mill ; 
 not less than a quarter of a mile long, with 
 a steam engine at each end, and two in 
 the middle, and a chimney three hundred 
 feet high. In this mill are to be in con- 
 stant employment from eight hundred to a 
 thousand workers, who never drink, never 
 strike, always go to church on Sunday, and
 
 TRAFFIC. 
 
 always express themselves in respectful 
 language. 
 
 Is not that, broadly, and in the main 
 features, the kind of thing you propose to 
 yourselves ? It is very pretty indeed, seen 
 from above; not at all so pretty, seen from 
 below. For, observe, while to one family 
 this deity is indeed the Goddess of Getting 
 on, to a thousand families she is the God- 
 dess of not Getting on. ' Nay/ you say, 
 ' they have all their chance.' Yes, so has 
 every one in a lottery, but there must 
 always be the same number of blanks. 
 ' Ah ! but in a lottery it is not skill and 
 intelligence which take the lead, but blind 
 chance.' What then ! do you think the 
 old practice, that ' they should take who 
 have the power, and they should keep who 
 can,' is less iniquitous, when the power has 
 become power of brains instead of fist? and
 
 128 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 that, though we may not take advantage of 
 a child's or a woman's weakness, we may of 
 a man's foolishness ? ' Nay, but finally, 
 work must be done, and some one must 
 be at the top, some one at the bottom.' 
 Granted, my friends. Work must always 
 be, and captains of work must always be ; 
 and if you in the least remember the tone 
 of any of my writings, you must know 
 that they are thought unfit for this age, 
 because they are always insisting on need 
 of government, and speaking with scorn of 
 liberty. But I beg you to observe that 
 there is a wide difference between being 
 captains or governors of work, and taking 
 the profits of it. It does not follow, be- 
 cause you are general of an army, that 
 you are to take all the treasure, or land, it 
 wins (if it fight for treasure or land) ; 
 neither, because you are king of a nation,
 
 TRAFFIC. 129 
 
 that you are to consume all the profits of 
 the nation's work. Real kings, on the 
 contrary, are known invariably by their 
 doing quite the reverse of this, by their 
 taking the least possible quantity of the 
 nation's work for themselves. There is 
 no test of real kinghood so infallible as 
 that. Does the crowned creature live 
 simply, bravely, unostentatiously ? pro- 
 bably he is a King. Does he cover his 
 body with jewels, and his table with deli- 
 cates ? in all probability he is not a King. 
 It is possible he may be, as Solomon 
 was ; but that is when the nation shares 
 his splendour with him. Solomon made 
 gold, not only to be in his own palace as 
 stones, but to be in Jerusalem as stones. 
 But, even so, for the most part, these 
 splendid kinghoods expire in ruin, and 
 only the true kinghoods live, which are of 
 
 K
 
 130 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 royal labourers governing loyal labourers; 
 who, both leading rough lives, establish the 
 true dynasties. Conclusively you will 
 find that because you are king of a 
 nation, it does not follow that you are to 
 gather for yourself all the wealth of that 
 nation ; neither, because you are king of a 
 small part of the nation, and lord over the 
 means of its maintenance over field, or 
 mill, or mine, are you to take all the 
 produce of that piece of the foundation 
 of national existence for yourself. 
 
 You will tell me I need not preach 
 against these things, for I cannot mend 
 them. No, good friends, I cannot ; but 
 you can, and you will ; or something else 
 can and will. Do you think these phe- 
 nomena are to stay always in their pre- 
 sent power or aspect ? All history shows, 
 on the contrary, that to be the exact
 
 TRAFFIC. 131 
 
 thing they never can do. Change must 
 come; but it is ours to determine whether 
 change of growth, or change of death. 
 Shall the Parthenon be in ruins on its 
 rock, and Bolton priory in its meadow, 
 but these mills of yours be the con- 
 summation of the buildings of the earth, 
 and their wheels be as the wheels of 
 eternity ? Think you that ' men may 
 come, and men may go,' but mills go 
 on for ever ? Not so ; out of these, better 
 or worse shall come ; and it is for you 
 to choose which. 
 
 I know that none of this wrong is done 
 with deliberate purpose. I know, on the 
 contrary, that you wish your workmen 
 well; that you do much for them, and 
 that you desire to do more for them, if 
 you saw your way to it, safely. I 
 know that many of you have done,
 
 132 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 and are every day doing, whatever you 
 feel to be in your power; and that 
 even all this wrong and misery are brought 
 about by a warped sense of duty, each 
 of you striving to do his best, without 
 noticing that this best is essentially and 
 centrally the best for himself, not for 
 others. And all this has come of the 
 spreading of that thrice accursed, thrice 
 impious doctrine of the modern econo- 
 mist, that 'To do the best for yourself, 
 is finally to do the best for others.' 
 Friends, our great Master said not so ; 
 and most absolutely we shall find this 
 world is not made so. Indeed, to do the 
 best for others, is finally to do the best 
 for ourselves; but it will not do to have 
 our eyes fixed on that issue. The Pagans 
 had got beyond that. Hear what a Pagan 
 says of this matter ; hear what were, per-
 
 TRAFFIC. 133 
 
 haps, the last written words of Plato, if 
 not the last actually written, (for this 
 we cannot know), yet assuredly in fact 
 and power his parting words in which, 
 endeavouring to give full crowning and 
 harmonious close to all his thoughts, and 
 to speak the sum of them by the imagined 
 sentence of the Great Spirit, his strength 
 and his heart fail him, and the words 
 cease, broken off for ever. It is the close 
 of the dialogue called 'Critias,' in which 
 he describes, partly from real tradition, 
 partly in ideal dream, the early state of 
 Athens ; and the genesis, and order, and 
 religion, of the fabled isle of Atlantis ; in 
 which genesis he conceives the same first 
 perfection and final degeneracy of man, 
 which in our own Scriptural tradition is 
 expressed by saying that the Sons of God 
 intermarried with the daughters of men,
 
 134 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 for he supposes the earliest race to have 
 been indeed the children of God ; and to 
 have corrupted themselves, until ' their 
 spot was not the spot of his children/ 
 And this, he says, was the end ; that 
 indeed ' through many generations, so long 
 ' as the God's nature in them yet was full, 
 ' they were submissive to the sacred laws, 
 ' and carried themselves lovingly to all that 
 ' had kindred with them in divineness; for 
 ' their uttermost spirit was faithful and 
 ' true, and in every wise great ; so that, in 
 ' all meekness of wisdom, they dealt with 
 ' each other, and took all the chances of 
 ' life ; and despising all things except virtue, 
 ' they cared little what happened day by 
 ' day, and bore lightly the burden of gold 
 ' and of possessions ; for they saw that, if 
 ' only their common love and virtue in- 
 ' creased, all these things would be in-
 
 TRAFFIC. 135 
 
 ' creased together with them ; but to set 
 ' their esteem and ardent pursuit upon 
 ' material possession, would be to lose 
 1 that first, and their virtue and affection 
 ' together with it. And by such reasoning, 
 ' and what of the divine nature remained 
 ' in them, they gained all this greatness 
 ' of which we have already told ; but 
 ' when the God's part of them faded and 
 ' became extinct, being mixed again and 
 ' again, and effaced by the prevalent 
 ' mortality ; and the human nature at 
 ' last exceeded, they then became unable 
 ' to endure the courses of fortune ; and 
 ' fell into shapelessness of life, and base- 
 ' ness in the sight of him who could see, 
 ' having lost everything that was fairest of 
 ' their honour ; while to the blind hearts 
 ' which could not discern the true life, tend- 
 ' ing to happiness, it seemed that they were
 
 136 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 ' then chiefly noble and happy, being filled 
 ' with all iniquity of inordinate possession 
 ' and power. Whereupon, the God of 
 ' Gods, whose Kinghood is in laws, be- 
 ' holding a once just nation thus cast 
 ' into misery, and desiring to lay such 
 ' punishment upon them as might make 
 ' them repent into restraining, gathered 
 ' together all the gods into his dwelling 
 ' place, which from heaven's centre over- 
 ' looks whatever has part in creation ; and 
 ' having assembled them, he said '- 
 
 The rest is silence. So ended are the 
 last words of the chief wisdom of the 
 heathen, spoken of this idol of riches; 
 this idol of yours; this golden image, 
 high by measureless cubits, set up where 
 your green fields of England are furnace- 
 burnt into the likeness of the plain of 
 Dura: this idol, forbidden to us, first of
 
 TRAFFIC. 137 
 
 all idols, by our own Master and faith; 
 forbidden to us also by every human lip 
 that has ever, in any age or people, been 
 accounted of as able to speak according 
 to the purposes of God. Continue to 
 make that forbidden deity your principal 
 one, and soon no more art, no more 
 science, no more pleasure will be pos- 
 sible. Catastrophe will come; or, worse 
 than catastrophe, slow mouldering and 
 withering into Hades. But if you can 
 fix some conception of a true human state 
 of life to be striven for life for all men as 
 for yourselves if you can determine some 
 honest and simple order of existence ; 
 following those trodden ways of wisdom, 
 which are pleasantness, and seeking her 
 quiet and withdrawn paths, which are 
 peace ; then, and so sanctifying wealth 
 into 'commonwealth,' all your art, your
 
 138 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 literature, your daily labours, your do- 
 mestic affection, and citizen's duty, will 
 join and increase into one magnificent 
 harmony. You will know then how to 
 build, well enough ; you will build with 
 stone well, but with flesh better; temples 
 not made with hands, but riveted of hearts; 
 and that kind of marble, crimson-veined, 
 is indeed eternal.
 
 WAH+
 
 LECTURE III. 
 
 WABL 
 
 (JDelivered at the Royal Military Academy, 
 Woolwich.) 
 
 YOUNG SOLDIERS, I do not doubt but 
 that many of you came unwillingly to- 
 night, and many in merely contemptuous 
 curiosity, to hear what a writer on paint- 
 ing could possibly say, or would venture 
 to say, respecting your great art of war. 
 You may well think within yourselves, 
 that a painter might, perhaps without im- 
 modesty, lecture younger painters upon 
 painting, but not young lawyers upon law, 
 nor young physicians upon medicine
 
 142 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 least of all, it may seem to you, young 
 warriors upon war. And, indeed, when 
 I was asked to address you, I declined at 
 first, and declined long; for I felt that 
 you would not be interested in my special 
 business, and would certainly think there 
 was small need for me to come to teach you 
 your's. Nay, I knew that there ought to 
 be no such need, for the great veteran 
 soldiers of England are now men every way 
 so thoughtful, so noble, and so good, that 
 no other teaching than their knightly ex- 
 ample, and their few words of grave and 
 tried counsel, should be either necessary for 
 you, or even, without assurance of due 
 modesty in the offerer, endured by you. 
 
 But being asked, not once nor twice, I 
 have not ventured persistently to refuse; 
 and I will try, in very few words, to lay 
 before you some reason why you should
 
 WAR. 143 
 
 accept my excuse, and hear me patiently. 
 You may imagine that your work is wholly 
 foreign to, and separate from mine. So 
 far from that, all the pure and noble arts 
 of peace are founded on war ; no great art 
 ever yet rose on earth, but among a nation 
 of soldiers. There is no art among a 
 shepherd people, if it remains at peace. 
 There is no art among an agricultural 
 people, if it remains at peace. Commerce 
 is barely consistent with fine art; but 
 cannot produce it. Manufacture not only 
 is unable to produce it, but invariably de- 
 stroys whatever seeds of it exist. There 
 is no great art possible to a nation but 
 that which is based on battle. 
 
 Now, though I hope you love fighting for 
 its own sake, you must, I imagine, be sur- 
 prised at my assertion that there is any 
 such good fruit of fighting. You supposed,
 
 144 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 probably, that your office was to defend the 
 works of peace, but certainly not to found 
 them : nay, the common course of war, you 
 may have thought, was only to destroy 
 them. And truly, I, who tell you this of 
 the use of war, should have been the last 
 of men to tell you so, had I trusted my 
 own experience only. Hear why : I have 
 given a considerable part of my life to the 
 investigation of Venetian painting ; and the 
 result of that enquiry was my fixing upon 
 one man as the greatest of all Venetians, 
 and therefore, as I believed, of all painters 
 whatsoever. I formed this faith, (whether 
 right or wrong matters at present nothing,) 
 in the supremacy of the painter Tintoret, 
 under a roof covered with his pictures; 
 and of those pictures, three of the noblest 
 were then in the form of shreds of ragged 
 canvas, mixed up with the laths of the
 
 WAR. 145 
 
 roof, rent through by three Austrian shells. 
 Now, it is not every lecturer who could 
 tell you that he had seen three of his 
 favourite pictures torn to rags by bomb- 
 shells. And after such a sight, it is not 
 every lecturer who would tell you that, 
 nevertheless, war was the foundation of all 
 great art. 
 
 Yet the conclusion is inevitable, from 
 any careful comparison of the states of 
 great historic races at different periods. 
 Merely to show you what I mean, I 
 will sketch for you, very briefly, the 
 broad steps of the advance of the best art 
 of the world. The first dawn of it is in 
 Egypt ; and the power of it is founded on 
 the perpetual contemplation of death, and 
 of future judgment, by the mind of a nation 
 of which the ruling caste were priests, and 
 the second, soldiers. The greatest works
 
 146 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 produced by them are sculptures of their 
 kings going out to battle, or receiving the 
 homage of conquered armies. And you 
 must remember also, as one of the great 
 keys to the splendour of the Egyptian 
 nation, that the priests were not occupied 
 in theology only. Their theology was the 
 basis of practical government and law; 
 so that they were not so much priests as 
 religious judges; the office of Samuel, 
 among the Jews, being as nearly as pos- 
 sible correspondent to theirs. 
 
 All the rudiments of art then, and much 
 more than the rudiments of all science, 
 are laid first by this great warrior-nation, 
 which held in contempt all mechanical 
 trades, and in absolute hatred the peaceful 
 life of shepherds. From Egypt art passes 
 directly into Greece, where all poetry, and 
 all painting, are nothing else than the
 
 WAR. 147 
 
 description, praise, or dramatic representa- 
 tion of war, or of the exercises which pre- 
 pare for it, in their connection with offices of 
 religion. All Greek institutions had first 
 respect to war; and their conception of 
 it, as one necessary office of all human 
 and divine life, is expressed simply by 
 the images of their guiding gods. Apollo 
 is the god of all wisdom of the intellect ; 
 he bears the arrow and the bow, before 
 he bears the lyre. Again, Athena is the 
 goddess of all wisdom in conduct. It is 
 by the helmet and the shield, oftener 
 than by the shuttle, that she is distin- 
 guished from other deities. 
 
 There were, however, two great differ- 
 ences in principle between the Greek and 
 the Egyptian theories of policy. In Greece 
 there was no soldier caste; every citizen was 
 necessarily a soldier. And, again, while the
 
 148 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 Greeks rightly despised mechanical arts 
 as much as the Egyptians, they did not 
 make the fatal mistake of despising agri- 
 cultural and pastoral life; but perfectly 
 honoured both. These two conditions of 
 truer thought raise them quite into the 
 highest rank of wise manhood that has yet 
 been reached; for all our great arts, and 
 nearly all our great thoughts, have been 
 borrowed or derived from them. Take 
 away from us what they have given ; and I 
 hardly can imagine how low the modern 
 European would stand. 
 
 Now, you are to remember, in passing 
 to the next phase of history, that though 
 you -must have war to produce art you 
 must also have much more than war; 
 namely, an art-instinct or genius in the 
 people ; and that, though all the talent for 
 painting in the world won't make painters
 
 WAR. 149 
 
 of you, unless you have a gift for fighting 
 as well, you may have the gift for fighting, 
 and none for painting. Now, in the next 
 great dynasty of soldiers, the art-instinct 
 is wholly wanting. I Rave not yet inves- 
 tigated the Roman character enough to 
 tell you the causes of this ; but I believe, 
 paradoxical as it may seem to you, that, 
 however truly the Roman might say of 
 himself that he was born of Mars, and 
 suckled by the wolf, he was nevertheless, 
 at heart, more of a farmer than a soldier. 
 The exercises of war were with him prac- 
 tical, not poetical; his poetry was in do- 
 mestic life only, and the object of battle, 
 'pads imponere morem.' And the arts 
 are extinguished in his hands, and do not 
 rise again, until, with Gothic chivalry, 
 there comes back into the mind of Europe 
 a passionate delight in war itself, for the
 
 150 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 sake of war. And then, with the romantic 
 knighthood which can imagine no other 
 noble employment, under the fighting 
 kings of France, England, and Spain; and 
 under the fighting dukeships and citizen- 
 ships of Italy, art is born again, and rises 
 to her height in the great valleys of Lom- 
 bardy and Tuscany, through which there 
 flows not a single stream, from all their 
 Alps or Apennines, that did not once 
 run dark red from battle : and it reaches 
 its culminating glory in the city which 
 gave to history the most intense type 
 of soldiership yet seen among men ; 
 the city whose armies were led in their 
 assault by their king, led through it to 
 victory by their king, and so led, though 
 that king of theirs was blind, and in the 
 extremity of his age. 
 
 And from this time forward, as peace is
 
 WAR. 1 5 I 
 
 established or extended in Europe, the 
 arts decline. They reach an unparalleled 
 pitch of costliness, but lose their life, en- 
 list themselves at last on the side of 
 luxury and various corruption, and, among 
 wholly tranquil nations, wither utterly 
 away ; remaining only in partial practice 
 among races who, like the French and 
 us, have still the minds, though we can- 
 not all live the lives, of soldiers. 
 
 ' It may be so,' I can suppose that a 
 philanthropist might exclaim. < Perish then 
 the arts, if they can flourish only at such 
 a cost. What worth is there in toys of 
 canvas and stone, if compared to the joy 
 and peace of artless domestic life ? ' And 
 the answer is truly, in themselves, none. 
 But as expressions of the highest state of 
 the human spirit, their worth is infinite. 
 As results they may be worthless, but, as
 
 152 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 signs, they are above price. For it is an 
 assured truth that, whenever the faculties 
 of men are at their fullness, they must ex- 
 press themselves by art ; and to say that 
 a state is without such expression, is to 
 say that it is sunk from its proper level of 
 manly nature. So that, when I tell you 
 that war is the foundation of all the arts, 
 I mean also that it is the foundation of all 
 the high virtues and faculties of men. 
 
 It was very strange to me to discover 
 this ; and very dreadful but I saw it 
 to be quite an undeniable fact. The 
 common notion that peace and the virtues 
 of civil life flourished together, I found 
 to be wholly untenable. Peace and the 
 vices of civil life only flourish together. 
 We talk of peace and learning, and of 
 peace and plenty, and of peace and civi- 
 lisation ; but I found that those were not
 
 WAR. 153 
 
 the words which the Muse of History 
 coupled together: that, on her lips, the 
 words were peace and sensuality, peace 
 and selfishness, peace and corruption, 
 peace and death. I found, in brief, that 
 all great nations learned their truth of 
 word, and strength of thought, in war ; 
 that they were nourished in war, and 
 wasted by peace; taught by war, and 
 deceived by peace ; trained by war, and 
 betrayed by peace ; in a word, that they 
 were born in war, and expired in peace. 
 Yet now note carefully, in the second 
 place, it is not all war of which this can be 
 said nor all dragon's teeth, which, sown, 
 will start up into men. It is not the ravage 
 of a barbarian wolf-flock, as under Genseric 
 or Suwarrow ; nor the habitual restlessness 
 and rapine of mountaineers, as on the old 
 borders of Scotland ; nor the occasional
 
 154 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 struggle of a strong peaceful nation for 
 its life, as in the wars of the Swiss with 
 Austria; nor the contest of merely ambi- 
 tious nations for extent of power, as in the 
 wars of France under Napoleon, or the just 
 terminated war in America. None of these 
 forms of war build anything but tombs. 
 But the creative or foundational war is 
 that in which the natural restlessness and 
 love of contest among men are disciplined, 
 by consent, into modes of beautiful 
 though it may be fatal play : in which 
 the natural ambition and love of power 
 of men are disciplined into the aggressive 
 conquest of surrounding evil : and in 
 which the natural instincts of self-defence 
 are sanctified by the nobleness of the insti- 
 tutions, and purity of the households, which 
 they are appointed to defend. To such 
 war as this all men are born ; in such war
 
 WAR. 1 5 5 
 
 as this any man may happily die ; and 
 forth from such war as this have arisen, 
 throughout the extent of past ages, all the 
 highest sanctities and virtues of humanity. 
 
 I shall therefore divide the war of which 
 I would speak to you into three heads. 
 War for exercise or play; war for do- 
 minion ; and, war for defence. 
 
 I. And first, of war for exercise or play. 
 I speak of it primarily in this light, because, 
 through all past history, manly war has 
 been more an exercise than anything else, 
 among the classes who cause, and proclaim 
 it. It is not a game to the conscript, or 
 the pressed sailor; but neither of these 
 are the causers of it. To the governor 
 who determines that war shall be, and 
 to the youths who voluntarily adopt it as 
 their profession, it has always been a grand 
 pastime; and chiefly pursued because they
 
 156 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 had nothing else to do. And this is true 
 without any exception. No king whose 
 mind was fully occupied with the develop- 
 ment of the inner resources of his king- 
 dom, or with any other sufficing subject of 
 thought, ever entered into war but on 
 compulsion. No youth who was earnestly 
 busy with any peaceful subject of study, 
 or set on any serviceable course of action, 
 ever voluntarily became a soldier. Oc- 
 cupy him, early and wisely, in agriculture 
 or business, in science or in literature, 
 and he will never think of war otherwise 
 than as a calamity. But leave him idle; 
 and, the more brave and active and 
 capable he is by nature, the more he will 
 thirst for some appointed field for action; 
 and find, in the passion and peril of battle, 
 the only satisfying fulfilment of his un- 
 occupied being. And from the earliest
 
 WAR. 157 
 
 incipient civilisation until now, the popu- 
 lation of the earth divides itself, when 
 you look at it widely, into two races; 
 one of workers, and the other of players 
 one tilling the ground, manufacturing, 
 building, and otherwise providing for the 
 necessities of life ; the other part proudly 
 idle, and continually therefore needing 
 recreation, in which they use the productive 
 and laborious orders partly as their cattle, 
 and partly as their puppets or pieces in the 
 game of death. 
 
 Now, remember, whatever virtue or good- 
 liness there may be in this game of war, 
 rightly played, there is none when you 
 thus play it with a multitude of small 
 human pawns. 
 
 If you, the gentlemen of this or any other 
 kingdom, choose to make your pastime of 
 contest, do so, and welcome ; but set not up
 
 158 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 these unhappy peasant-pieces upon the 
 green fielded board. If the wager is to 
 be of death, lay it on your own heads, not 
 theirs. A goodly struggle in the Olympic 
 dust, though it be the dust of the grave, 
 the gods will look upon, and be with you 
 in ; but they will not be with you, if you 
 sit on the sides of the amphitheatre, whose 
 steps are the mountains of earth, whose 
 arena its valleys, to urge your peasant 
 millions into gladiatorial war. You also, 
 you tender and delicate women, for whom, 
 and by whose command, all true battle 
 has been, and must ever be ; you would 
 perhaps shrink now, though you need 
 not, from the thought of sitting as queens 
 above set lists where the jousting game 
 might be mortal. How much more, then, 
 ought you to shrink from the thought of 
 sitting above a theatre pit in which even
 
 WAR. 159 
 
 a few condemned slaves were slaying each 
 other only for your delight ! And do you 
 not shrink from the fact of sitting above 
 a theatre pit, where, not condemned 
 slaves, but the best and bravest of the 
 poor sons of your people, slay each other, 
 not man to man, as the coupled gladia- 
 tors ; but race to race, in duel of genera- 
 tions ? You would tell me, perhaps, that 
 you do not sit to see this ; and it is indeed 
 true, that the women of Europe those who 
 have no heart-interest of their own at peril 
 in the contest draw the curtains of their 
 boxes, and muffle the openings; so that from 
 the pit of the circus of slaughter there may 
 reach them only at intervals a half-heard 
 cry and a murmur as of the wind's sighing, 
 when myriads of souls expire. They shut 
 out the death-cries ; and are happy, and 
 talk wittily among themselves. That is
 
 l6o THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 the utter literal fact of what our ladies do 
 in their pleasant lives. 
 
 Nay, you might answer, speaking for 
 them 'We do not let these wars come 
 to pass for our play, nor by our careless- 
 ness ; we cannot help them. How can 
 any final quarrel of nations be settled 
 otherwise than by war ?' I cannot now 
 delay, to tell you how political quarrels 
 might be otherwise settled. But grant 
 that they cannot. Grant that no law of 
 reason can be understood by nations ; no 
 law of justice submitted to by them: and 
 that, while questions of a few acres, and 
 of petty cash, can be determined by truth 
 and equity, the questions which are to 
 issue in the perishing or saving of king- 
 doms can be determined only by the truth 
 of the sword, and the equity of the rifle. 
 Grant this, and even then, judge if it will
 
 WAR. l6l 
 
 always be necessary for you to put your 
 quarrel into the hearts of your poor, and 
 sign your treaties with peasants' blood. 
 You would be ashamed to do this in your 
 own private position and power. Why 
 should you not be ashamed also to do 
 it in public place and power ? If you 
 quarrel with your neighbour, and the 
 quarrel be indeterminable by law, and 
 mortal, you and he do not send your foot- 
 men to Battersea fields to fight it out; 
 nor do you set fire to his tenants' cottages, 
 nor spoil their goods. You fight out your 
 quarrel yourselves, and at your own danger, 
 if at all. And you do not think it mate- 
 rially affects the arbitrement that one of 
 you has a larger household than the other ; 
 so that, if the servants or tenants were 
 brought into the field with their masters, 
 the issue of the contest could not be 
 
 M
 
 1 62 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 doubtful ? You either refuse the private 
 duel, or you practise it under laws of 
 honour, not of physical force; that so it 
 may be, in a manner, justly concluded. 
 Now the just or unjust conclusion of the 
 private feud is of little moment, while the 
 just or unjust conclusion of the public 
 feud is of eternal moment : and yet, in 
 this public quarrel, you take your servants' 
 sons from their arms to fight for it, and 
 your servants' food from their lips to sup- 
 port it; and the black seals on the parch- 
 ment of your treaties of peace are the 
 deserted hearth and the fruitless field. 
 There is a ghastly ludicrousness in this, 
 as there is mostly in these wide and uni- 
 versal crimes. Hear the statement of the 
 very fact of it in the most literal words 
 of the greatest of our English thinkers : 
 
 ' What, speaking in quite unofficial language,
 
 WAR. 163 
 
 is the net-purport and upshot of war 1 To my 
 own knowledge, for example, there dwell and 
 toil, in the British village of Dumdrudge, 
 usually some five-hundred souls. From these, 
 by certain " natural enemies " of the French, 
 there are successively selected, during the 
 French war, say thirty able-bodied men. Dum- 
 drudge, at her own expense, has suckled and 
 nursed them ; she has, not without difficulty and 
 sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even 
 trained them to crafts, so that one can weave, 
 another build, another hammer, and the weakest 
 can stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. 
 Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, 
 they are selected ; all dressed in red ; and 
 shipped away, at the public charges, some two 
 thousand miles, or say only to the south of 
 Spain ; and fed there till wanted. 
 
 ' And now to that same spot in the south of 
 Spain are thirty similar French artisans, from a 
 French Dumdrudge, in like manner wending ;
 
 1 64 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 till at length, after infinite effort, the two parties 
 come into actual juxtaposition ; and Thirty 
 stands fronting Thirty, each with a gun in his 
 hand. 
 
 ' Straightway the word "Fire!" is given, and 
 they blow the souls out of one another, and in 
 place of sixty brisk useful craftsmen, the world 
 has sixty dead carcases, which it must bury, 
 and anon shed tears for. Had these men any 
 quarrel 1 Busy as the devil is, not the smallest ! 
 They lived far enough apart ; were the entirest 
 strangers ; nay, in so wide a universe, there was 
 even, unconsciously, by commerce, some mutual 
 helpfulness between them. How then 1 Simple- 
 ton ! their governors had fallen out ; and instead 
 of shooting one another, had the cunning to 
 make these poor blockheads shoot.' (Sartor 
 Resartus.) 
 
 Positively, then, gentlemen, the game of 
 battle must not, and shall not, ultimately 
 be played this way. But should it be
 
 WAR. 165 
 
 played any way ? Should it, if not by 
 your servants, be practised by yourselves ? 
 I think, yes. Both history and human in- 
 stinct seem alike to say, yes. All healthy 
 men like fighting, and like the sense of 
 danger ; all brave women like to hear of 
 their fighting, and of their facing danger. 
 This is a fixed instinct in the fine race 
 of them ; and I cannot help fancying 
 that fair fight is the best play for them; 
 and that a tournament was a better game 
 than a steeple-chase. The time may per- 
 haps come in France as well as here, for 
 universal hurdle-races and cricketing : but 
 I do not think universal ' crickets' will 
 bring out the best qualities of the nobles 
 of either country. I use, in such question, 
 the test which I have adopted, of the 
 connection of war with other arts; and 
 I reflect how, as a sculptor, I should
 
 1 66 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 feel, if I were asked to design a monument 
 for a dead knight, in Westminster abbey, 
 with a carving of a bat at one end, and a 
 ball at the other. It may be the remains 
 in me only of savage Gothic prejudice ; 
 but I had rather carve it with a shield at 
 one end, and a sword at the other. And 
 this, observe, with no reference whatever 
 to any story of duty done, or cause de- 
 fended. Assume the knight merely to 
 have ridden out occasionally to fight his 
 neighbour for exercise ; assume him even 
 a soldier of fortune, and to have gained 
 his bread, and filled his purse, at the 
 sword's point. Still, I feel as if it were, 
 somehow, grander and worthier in him 
 to have made his bread by sword play 
 than any other play ; I had rather he had 
 made it by thrusting than by batting; 
 much more, than by betting. Much rather
 
 WAR. 167 
 
 that he should ride war horses, than 
 back race horses ; and I say it sternly 
 and deliberately much rather would I 
 have him slay his neighbour, than cheat 
 him. 
 
 But remember, so far as this may be true, 
 the game of war is only that in which the 
 full personal power of the human creature 
 is brought out in management of its wea- 
 pons. And this for three reasons : 
 
 First, the great justification of this game 
 is that it truly, when well played, determines 
 who is the best man; who is the highest 
 bred, the most self-denying, the most fear- 
 less, the coolest of nerve, the swiftest of eye 
 and hand. You cannot test these qualities 
 wholly, unless there is a clear possibility of 
 the struggle's ending in death. It is only 
 in the fronting of that condition that the 
 full trial of the man, soul and body, comes
 
 1 68 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 out. You may go to your game of wickets, 
 or of hurdles, or of cards, and any knavery 
 that is in you may stay unchallenged 
 all the while. But if the play may be 
 ended at any moment by a lance-thrust, a 
 man will probably make up his accounts a 
 little before he enters it. Whatever is 
 rotten and evil in him will weaken his 
 hand more in holding a sword hilt, than 
 in balancing a billiard cue ; and on the 
 whole, the habit of living lightly hearted, 
 in daily presence of death, always has had, 
 and must have, a tendency both to the 
 making and testing of honest men. But 
 for the final testing, observe, you must 
 make the issue of battle strictly depen- 
 dent on fineness of frame, and firmness 
 of hand. You must not make it the ques- 
 tion, which of the combatants has the 
 longest gun, or which has got behind the
 
 WAR. 169 
 
 biggest tree, or which has the wind in his 
 face, or which has gunpowder made by 
 the best chemists, or iron smelted with the 
 best coal, or the angriest mob at his back. 
 Decide your battle, whether of nations or 
 individuals, on those terms ; and you 
 have only multiplied confusion, and added 
 slaughter to iniquity. But decide your 
 battle by pure trial which has the strong- 
 est arm, and steadiest heart, and you 
 have gone far to decide a great many 
 matters besides, and to decide them rightly. 
 And the other reasons for this mode of 
 decision of cause, are the diminution both 
 of the material destructiveness, or cost, and 
 of the physical distress of war. For you 
 must not think that in speaking to you in 
 this, (as you may imagine), fantastic praise 
 of battle, I have overlooked the conditions 
 weighing against me. I pray all of you,
 
 I/O THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 who have not read, to read with the most 
 earnest attention, Mr. Help's two essays, on 
 War, and Government, in the first volume 
 of the last series of ' Friends in Council.' 
 Everything that can be urged against war 
 is there simply, exhaustively, and most 
 graphically stated. And all, there urged, 
 is true. But the two great counts of evil 
 alleged against war by that most thought- 
 ful writer, hold only against modern war. 
 If you have to take away masses of men 
 from all industrial employment, to feed 
 them by the labour of others, to move 
 them and provide them with destructive 
 machines, varied daily in national rivalship 
 of inventive cost ; if you have to ravage 
 the country which you attack, to destroy, 
 for a score of future years, its roads, its 
 woods, its cities, and its harbours; and 
 if, finally, having brought masses of men,
 
 WAR. I/I 
 
 counted by hundreds of thousands, face to 
 face, you tear those masses to pieces with 
 jagged shot, and leave the fragments of 
 living creatures, countlessly beyond all 
 help of surgery, to starve and parch, 
 through days of torture, down into clots of 
 clay what book of accounts shall record 
 the cost of your work ; What book of 
 judgment sentence the guilt of it ? 
 
 That, I say, is 'modern war, scientific 
 war, chemical and mechanic war, worse 
 even than the savage's poisoned arrow. 
 And yet you will tell me, perhaps, that 
 any other war than this is impossible now. 
 It may be so ; the progress of science can- 
 not, perhaps, be otherwise registered than 
 by new facilities of destruction ; and the 
 brotherly love of our enlarging Christianity 
 be only proved by multiplication of murder. 
 Yet hear, for a moment, what war was, in
 
 1/2 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 Pagan and ignorant days ; what war 
 might yet be, if we could extinguish our 
 science in darkness, and join the heathen's 
 practice to the Christian's theory. I read 
 you this from a book which probably 
 most of you know well, and all ought to 
 know Muller's 'Dorians;' but I have 
 put the points I wish you to remember 
 in closer connection than in his text. 
 
 ' The chief characteristic of the warriors 
 of Sparta was great composure and a sub- 
 dued strength ; the violence (Xuo-cra) of 
 Aristodemus and Isadas being considered 
 as deserving rather of blame than praise ; 
 and these qualities in general distinguished 
 the Greeks from the northern Barbarians, 
 whose boldness always consisted in noise 
 and tumult. For the same reason the 
 Spartans sacrificed to the Muses before an 
 action ; these goddesses being expected to
 
 WAR. 173 
 
 produce regularity and order in battle ; as 
 they sacrificed on the same occasion in Crete 
 to the god of love, as the confirmer of mutual 
 esteem and shame. Every man put on a 
 crown, when the band of flute-players gave 
 the signal for attack ; all the shields of 
 the line glittered with their high polish, and 
 mingled their splendour with the dark red 
 of the purple mantles, which were meant 
 both to adorn the combatant, and to conceal 
 the blood of the wounded ; to fall well and 
 decorously being an incentive the more to 
 the most heroic valour. The conduct of the 
 Spartans in battle denotes a high and noble 
 disposition, which rejected all the extremes 
 of brutal rage. The pursuit of the enemy 
 ceased when the victory was completed ; 
 and after the signal for retreat had been 
 given, all hostilities ceased. The spoiling 
 of arms, at least during the battle, was also
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 interdicted ; and the consecration of the 
 spoils of slain enemies to the gods, as, in 
 general, all rejoicings for victory, were 
 considered as ill-omened.' 
 
 Such was the war of the greatest soldiers 
 who prayed to heathen gods. What Chris- 
 tian war is, preached by Christian mi- 
 nisters, let any one tell you, who saw the 
 sacred crowning, and heard the sacred flute- 
 playing, and was inspired and sanctified by 
 the divinely-measured and musical lan- 
 guage, of any North American regiment 
 preparing for its charge. And what is the 
 relative cost of life in pagan and Christian 
 wars, let this one fact tell you : the Spar- 
 tans won the decisive battle of Corinth with 
 the loss of eight men ; the victors at inde- 
 cisive Gettysburg confess to the loss of 
 30,000. 
 
 II. I pass now to our second order of
 
 WAR. 175 
 
 war, the commonest among men, that un- 
 dertaken in desire of dominion. And let 
 me ask you to think for a few moments 
 what the real meaning of this desire of do- 
 minion is first in the minds of kings 
 then in that of nations. 
 
 Now, mind you this first, that I speak 
 either about kings, or masses of men, with 
 a fixed conviction that human nature is a 
 noble and beautiful thing ; not a foul nor a 
 base thing. All the sin of men I esteem as 
 their disease, not their nature ; as a folly 
 which may be prevented, not a necessity 
 which must be accepted. And my wonder, 
 even when things are at their worst, is always 
 at the height which this human nature can 
 attain. Thinking it high, I find it always a 
 higher thing than I thought it ; while those 
 who think it low, find it, and will find it, 
 always, lower than they thought it : the fact
 
 176 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 being, that it is infinite, and capable of infi- 
 nite height and infinite fall ; but the nature 
 of it and here is the faith which I would 
 have you hold with me the nature of. it 
 is in the nobleness, not in the catastrophe. 
 
 Take the faith in its utmost terms. When 
 the captain of the 'London' shook hands 
 with his mate, saying ' God speed you ! I 
 will go down with my passengers/ that I 
 believe to be ' human nature.' He does not 
 do it from any religious motive, from any 
 hope of reward, or any fear of punishment ; 
 he does it because he is a man. But when 
 a mother, living among the fair fields of 
 merry England, gives her two-year-old 
 child to be suffocated under a mattrass 
 in her inner room, while the said mother 
 waits and talks outside; that I believe to 
 be not human nature. You have the two 
 extremes there, shortly. And you, men,
 
 WAR. 
 
 and mothers, who are here face to face 
 with me to-night, I call upon you to say 
 which of these is human, and which inhu- 
 man, which ' natural ' and which ' unna- 
 tural ? ' Choose your creed at once, I 
 beseech you : choose it with unshaken 
 choice, choose it for ever. Will you take, 
 for foundation of act and hope, the faith 
 that this man was such as God made him, 
 or that this woman was such as God made 
 her ? Which of them has failed from their 
 nature, from their present, possible, actual 
 nature ; not their nature of long ago, but 
 their nature of now ? Which has betrayed 
 it falsified it ? Did the guardian who died 
 in his trust, die inhumanly, and as a fool ; 
 and did the murderess of her child fulfil 
 the law of her being ? Choose, I say ; in- 
 finitude of choices hang upon this. You 
 
 have had false prophets among you, for 
 
 N
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 centuries you have had them, solemnly 
 warned against them though you were ; 
 false prophets, who have told you that all 
 men are nothing but fiends or wolves, half 
 beast, half devil. Believe that, and indeed 
 you may sink to that. But refuse that, and 
 have faith that God 'made you upright,' 
 though you have sought out many inven- 
 tions ; so, you will strive daily to become 
 more what your Maker meant and means 
 you to be, and daily gives you also the 
 power to be, and you will cling more 
 and more to the nobleness and virtue that 
 is in you, saying, ' My righteousness I hold 
 fast, and will not let it go. 
 
 I have put this to you as a choice, as 
 if you might hold either of these creeds 
 you liked best. But there is in reality no 
 choice for you ; the facts being quite easily 
 ascertainable. You have no business to
 
 WAR. 1/9 
 
 think about this matter, or to choose in it. 
 The broad fact is, that a human creature of 
 the highest race, and most perfect as a 
 human thing, is invariably both kind and 
 true; and that as you lower the race, 
 you get cruelty and falseness, as you get 
 deformity: and this so steadily and as- 
 suredly, that the two great words which, 
 in their first use, meant only perfection of 
 race, have come, by consequence of the in- 
 variable connection of virtue with the fine 
 human nature, both to signify benevolence 
 of disposition. The word generous, and 
 the word gentle, both, in their origin, 
 meant only 'of pure race,' but because 
 charity and tenderness are inseparable 
 from this purity of blood, the words which 
 once stood only for pride, now stand as 
 synonyms for virtue. 
 
 Now, this being the true power of
 
 ISO THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 our inherent humanity, and seeing that 
 all the aim of education should be to 
 develope this ; and seeing also what 
 magnificent self-sacrifice the higher classes 
 of men are capable of, for any cause 
 that they understand or feel, it is wholly 
 inconceivable to me how well-educated 
 princes, who ought to be of all gentlemen 
 the gentlest, and of all nobles the most 
 generous, and whose title of royalty means 
 only their function of doing every man 
 ' right' how these, I say, throughout his- 
 tory, should so rarely pronounce them- 
 selves on the side of the poor and of jus- 
 tice, but continually maintain themselves 
 and their own interests by oppression of 
 the poor, and by wresting of justice; and 
 how this should be accepted as so natural, 
 that the word loyalty, which means faith- 
 fulness to law, is used as if it were only
 
 WAR. l8l 
 
 the duty of a people to be loyal to their 
 king, and not the duty of a king to be 
 infinitely more loyal to his people. How 
 comes it to pass that a captain will die 
 with his passengers, and lean over the 
 gunwale to give the parting boat its 
 course ; but that a king will not usually 
 die with, much less for, his passengers 
 thinks it rather incumbent on his pas- 
 sengers, in any number, to die for kirn ? 
 Think, I beseech you, of the wonder of 
 this. The sea captain, not captain by 
 divine right, but only by company's ap- 
 pointment ; not a man of royal descent, 
 but only a plebeian who can steer; not 
 with the eyes of the world upon him, 
 but with feeble chance, depending on one 
 poor boat, of his name being ever heard 
 above the wash of the fatal waves ; not 
 with the cause of a nation resting on his
 
 1 82 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 act, but helpless to save so much as a 
 child from among the lost crowd with 
 whom he resolves to be lost, yet goes 
 down quietly to his grave, rather than 
 break his faith to these few emigrants. 
 But your captain by divine right, your 
 captain with the hues of a hundred shields 
 of kings upon his breast, your captain 
 whose every deed, brave or base, will be 
 illuminated or branded for ever before 
 unescapable eyes of men, your captain 
 whose every thought and act are bene- 
 ficent, or fatal, from sunrising to setting, 
 blessing as the sunshine, or shadowing 
 as the night, this captain, as you 
 find him in history, for the most part 
 thinks only how he may tax his passen- 
 gers, and sit at most ease in his state 
 cabin ! 
 
 For observe, if there had been indeed in
 
 WAR. 183 
 
 the hearts of the rulers of great multitudes 
 of men any such conception of work for 
 the good of those under their command, as 
 there is in the good and thoughtful masters 
 of any small company of men, not only 
 wars for the sake of mere increase of power 
 could never take place, but our idea of 
 power itself would be entirely altered. Do 
 you suppose that to think and act even for 
 a million of men, to hear their complaints, 
 watch their weaknesses, restrain their vices, 
 make laws for them, lead them, day by 
 day, to purer life, is not enough for one 
 man's work ? If any of us were absolute 
 lord only of a district of a hundred miles 
 square, and were resolved on doing our 
 utmost for it ; making it feed as large a 
 number of people as possible; making 
 every clod productive, and every rock 
 defensive, and every human being happy ;
 
 1 84 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 should we not have enough on our hands 
 think you ? But if the ruler has any 
 other aim than this ; if, careless of the 
 result of his interference, he desire only 
 the authority to interfere ; and, regardless 
 of what is ill-done or well-done, cares 
 only that it shall be done at his bidding ; 
 if he would rather do two hundred 
 miles' space of mischief, than one hundred 
 miles' space of good, of course he will 
 try to add to his territory; and to add 
 inimitably. But does he add to his 
 power ? Do you call it power in a child, 
 if he is allowed to play with the wheels 
 and bands of some vast engine, pleased 
 with their murmur and whirl, till his un- 
 wise touch, wandering where it ought not, 
 scatters beam and wheel into ruin ? Yet 
 what machine is so vast, so incognisable, as 
 the working of the mind of a nation ;
 
 WAR. 185 
 
 what child's touch so wanton, as the word 
 of a selfish king ? And yet, how long 
 have we allowed the historian to speak of 
 the extent of the calamity a man causes, 
 as a just ground for his pride ; and to 
 extol him as the greatest prince, who is 
 only the centre of the widest error. Fol- 
 low out this thought by yourselves ; and 
 you will find that all power, properly so 
 called, is wise and benevolent. There 
 may be capacity in a drifting fire-ship 
 to destroy a fleet ; there may be venom 
 enough in a dead body to infect a nation : 
 but which of you, the most ambitious, 
 'would desire a drifting kinghood, robed 
 in consuming fire, or a poison-dipped 
 sceptre whose touch was mortal ? There 
 is no true potency, remember, but that of 
 help ; nor true ambition, but ambition to 
 save.
 
 1 86 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 And then, observe farther, this true 
 power, the power of saving, depends 
 neither on multitude of men, nor on 
 extent of territory. We are continually 
 assuming that nations become strong ac- 
 cording to their numbers. They indeed 
 become so, if those numbers can be made 
 of one mind ; but how are you sure you 
 can stay them in one mind, and keep 
 them from having north and south minds ? 
 Grant them unanimous, how know you 
 they will be unanimous in right ? If they 
 are unanimous in wrong, the more they 
 are, essentially the weaker they are. Or, 
 suppose that they can neither be of one 
 mind, nor of two minds, but can only be 
 of 110 mind? Suppose they are a mere 
 helpless mob; tottering into precipitant 
 
 catastrophe, like a waggon load of stones 
 when the wheel comes off. Dangerous
 
 WAR. 187 
 
 enough for their neighbours, certainly, but 
 not ' powerful.' 
 
 Neither does strength depend on extent 
 of territory, any more than upon number 
 of population. Take up your maps when 
 you go home this evening, put the 
 cluster of British Isles beside the mass 
 of South America; and then consider 
 whether any race of men need care how 
 much ground they stand upon. The 
 strength is in the men, and in their unity 
 and virtue, not in their standing room : a 
 little group of wise hearts is better than 
 a wilderness full of fools; and only that 
 nation gains true territory, which gains 
 itself. 
 
 And now for the brief practical outcome 
 of all this. Remember, no government is 
 ultimately strong, but in proportion to its 
 kindness and justice ; and that a nation
 
 1 88 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 does not strengthen, by merely multiplying 
 and diffusing itself. We have not strength- 
 ened as yet, by multiplying into America. 
 Nay, even when it has not to encounter 
 the separating conditions of emigration, a 
 nation need not boast itself of multiplying 
 on its own ground, if it multiplies only 
 as flies or locusts do, with the god of 
 flies for its god. It multiplies its strength 
 only by increasing as one great family, in 
 perfect fellowship and brotherhood. And 
 lastly, it does not strengthen itself by seiz- 
 ing dominion over races whom it cannot 
 benefit. Austria is not strengthened, but 
 weakened, by her grasp of Lombardy ; 
 and whatever apparent increase of majesty 
 and of wealth may have accrued to us 
 from the possession of India, whether these 
 prove to us ultimately power or weak- 
 ness, depends wholly on the degree in
 
 WAR. 1 89 
 
 which our influence on the native race 
 shall be benevolent and exalting. But, as 
 it is at their own peril that any race ex- 
 tends their dominion in mere desire of 
 power, so it is at their own still greater 
 peril that they refuse to undertake ag- 
 gressive war, according to their force, 
 whenever they are assured that their 
 authority would be helpful and protective. 
 Nor need you listen to any sophistical 
 objection of the impossibility of knowing 
 when a people's help is needed, or when 
 not. Make your national conscience clean, 
 and your national eyes will soon be clear. 
 No man who is truly ready to take part in 
 a noble quarrel will ever stand long in 
 doubt by whom, or in what cause, his aid 
 is needed. I hold it my duty to make 
 no political statement of any special 
 bearing in this presence ; but I tell you
 
 1 90 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE, 
 broadly and boldly, that, within these 
 
 x 
 
 last ten years, we English have, as a 
 knightly nation, lost our spurs : we have 
 fought where we should not have fought, 
 for gain ; and we have been passive where 
 we should not have been passive, for fear. 
 I tell you that the principle of noninter- 
 vention, as now preached among us, is as 
 selfish and cruel as the worst frenzy of 
 conquest, and differs from it only by being 
 not only malignant, but dastardly. 
 
 I know, however, that my opinions on 
 this subject differ too widely from those 
 ordinarily held, to be any farther intruded 
 upon you ; and therefore I pass lastly 
 to examine the conditions of the third 
 kind of noble war ; war waged simply 
 for defence of the country in which 
 we were born, and for the maintenance 
 and execution of her laws, by whom-
 
 WAR. 191 
 
 soever threatened or defied. It is to 
 this duty that I suppose most men enter- 
 ing the army consider themselves in reality 
 to be bound, and I want you now to 
 reflect what the laws of mere defence 
 are; and what the soldier's duty, as now 
 understood, or supposed to be under- 
 stood. You have solemnly devoted your- 
 selves to be English soldiers, for the 
 guardianship of England. I want you 
 to feel what this vow of yours indeed 
 means, or is gradually coming to mean. 
 You take it upon you, first, while you 
 are sentimental schoolboys; you go into 
 your military convent, or barracks, just 
 as a girl goes into her convent while she 
 is a sentimental schoolgirl ; neither of you 
 then know what you are about, though 
 both the good soldiers and good nuns 
 make the best of it afterwards. You don't
 
 IQ2 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 understand perhaps why I call you ' senti- 
 mental ' schoolboys, when you go into the 
 army ? Because, on the whole, it is the love 
 of adventure, of excitement, of fine dress 
 and of the pride of fame, all which are 
 sentimental motives, which chiefly make a 
 boy like going into the Guards better than 
 into a counting-house. You fancy, per- 
 haps, that there is a severe sense of duty 
 mixed with these peacocky motives ? And 
 in the best of you, there is ; but do not 
 think that it is principal. If you cared to 
 do your duty to your country in a prosaic 
 and unsentimental way, depend upon it, 
 there is now truer duty to be done in 
 raising harvests, than in burning them ; 
 more in building houses, than in shelling 
 them more in winning money by your 
 own work, wherewith to help men, than 
 in taxing other people's work, for money
 
 WAR. 193 
 
 wherewith to slay men; more duty 
 finally, in honest and unselfish living than 
 in honest and unselfish dying, though that 
 seems to your boys' eyes the bravest So 
 far then, as for your own honour, and the 
 honour of your families, you choose brave 
 death in a red coat before brave life in a 
 black one, you are sentimental; and now 
 see what this passionate vow of yours 
 comes to. For a little while you ride, and 
 you hunt tigers or savages, you shoot, and 
 are shot; you are happy, and proud, always, 
 and honoured and wept if you die ; and 
 you are satisfied with your life, and with 
 the end of it ; believing, on the whole, that 
 good rather than harm of it comes to 
 others, and much pleasure to you. But as 
 the sense of duty enters into your forming 
 minds, the vow takes another aspect. You 
 find that you have put yourselves into the 
 O
 
 194 THE- CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 hand of your country as a weapon. You 
 have vowed to strike, when she bids you, 
 and to stay scabbarded when she bids you ; 
 all that you need answer for is, that you 
 fail not in her grasp. And there is good- 
 ness in this, and greatness, if you can 
 trust the hand and heart of the Britomart 
 who has braced you to her side, and are 
 assured that when she leaves you sheathed 
 in darkness, there is no need for your flash 
 to the sun. But remember, good and noble 
 as this state may be, it is a state of slavery. 
 There are different kinds of slaves and 
 different masters. Some slaves are scourged 
 to their work by whips, others are scourged 
 to it by restlessness or ambition. It does 
 not matter what the whip is ; it is none the 
 less a whip, because you have cut thongs 
 for it out of your own souls : the fact, so 
 far, of slavery, is in being driven to your
 
 WAR. 195 
 
 work without thought, at another's bid- 
 ding. Again, some slaves are bought with 
 money, and others with praise. It matters 
 not what the purchase-money is. The 
 distinguishing sign of slavery is to have 
 a price, and be bought for it. Again, it 
 matters not what kind of work you are set 
 on ; some slaves are set to forced diggings, 
 others to forced marches; some dig fur- 
 rows, others field-works, and others graves. 
 Some press the juice of reeds, and some 
 the juice of vines, and some the blood of 
 men. The fact of the captivity is the 
 same whatever work we are set upon, 
 though the fruits of the toil may be dif- 
 ferent. But, remember, in thus vowing 
 ourselves to be the slaves of any master, 
 it ought to be some subject of fore- 
 thought with us, what work he is likely 
 to put us upon. You may think that
 
 196 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 the whole duty of a soldier is to be pas 
 sive, that it is the country you have left 
 behind who is to command, and you have 
 only to obey. But are you sure that you 
 have left all your country behind, or that the 
 part of it you have so left is indeed the best 
 part of it ? Suppose and, remember, it 
 is quite conceivable that you yourselves 
 are indeed the best part of England ; that 
 you, who have become the slaves, ought to 
 have been the masters; and that those 
 who are the masters, ought to have been 
 the slaves! If it is a noble and whole- 
 hearted England, whose bidding you are 
 bound to do, it is well ; but if you are 
 yourselves the best of her heart, and the 
 England you have left be but a half- 
 hearted England, how say you of your 
 obedience ? You were too proud to be- 
 come shopkeepers : are you satisfied then
 
 WAR. 197 
 
 to become the servants of shopkeepers ? 
 You were too proud to become merchants 
 or farmers yourselves : will you have mer- 
 chants or farmers then for your field mar- 
 shals ? You had no gifts of special grace for 
 Exeter Hall : will you have some gifted 
 person thereat for your commander-in- 
 chief, to judge of your work, and reward it ? 
 You imagine yourselves to be the army of 
 England : how if you should find your- 
 selves, at last, only the police of her 
 manufacturing towns, and the beadles of 
 her little Bethels ? 
 
 It is not so yet, nor will be so, I trust, 
 for ever; but what I want you to see, 
 and to be assured of, is, that the ideal 
 of soldiership is not mere passive obe- 
 dience and bravery; that, so far from 
 this, no country is in a healthy state 
 which has separated, even in a small de-
 
 198 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 gree, her civil from her military power. 
 All states of the world, however great, fall 
 at once when they use mercenary armies ; 
 and although it is a less instant form of 
 error, (because involving no national taint 
 of cowardice,) it is yet an error no less 
 ultimately fatal it is the error especially 
 of modern times, of which we cannot yet 
 know all the calamitous consequences, 
 to take away the best blood and strength 
 of the nation, all the soul-substance of it 
 that is brave, and careless of reward, and 
 scornful of pain, and faithful in trust ; and 
 to cast that into steel, and make a mere 
 sword of it ; taking away its voice and will ; 
 but to keep the worst part of the nation 
 whatever is cowardly, avaricious, sen- 
 sual, and faithless and to give to this the 
 voice, to this the authority, to this the 
 chief privilege, where there is least ca-
 
 WAR. 199 
 
 pacity, of thought. The fulfilment of your 
 vow for the defence of England will by 
 no means consist in carrying out such a 
 system. You are not true soldiers, if you 
 only mean to stand at a shop door, to 
 protect shop-boys who are cheating inside. 
 A soldier's vow to his country is that he 
 will die for the guardianship of her do- 
 mestic virtue, of her righteous laws, and 
 of her any-way challenged or endangered 
 honour. A state without virtue, without 
 laws, and without honour, he is bound 
 not to defend ; nay, bound to redress by 
 his own right hand that which he sees 
 to be base in her. So sternly is this 
 the law of Nature and life, that a nation 
 once utterly corrupt can only be redeemed 
 by a military despotism never by talking, 
 nor by its free effort. And the health 
 of any state consists simply in this; that
 
 200 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 in it, those who are wisest shall also be 
 strongest ; its rulers should be also its 
 soldiers; or, rather, by force of intellect 
 more than of sword, its soldiers also its 
 rulers. Whatever the hold which the aris- 
 tocracy of England has on the heart of 
 England, in that they are still always in 
 front of her battles, this hold will not 
 be enough, unless they are also in front 
 of her thoughts. And truly her thoughts 
 need good captain's leading now, if ever! 
 Do you know what, by this beautiful 
 division of labour (her brave men fight- 
 ing, and her cowards thinking), she has 
 come at last to think ? Here is a bit of 
 a paper in my hand,* a good one too, 
 
 * I do not care to refer to the journal quoted, 
 because the article was unworthy of its general 
 tone, though in order to enable the audience to 
 verify the quoted sentence, I left the number con-
 
 WAR. 201 
 
 and an honest one; quite representative 
 of the best common public thought of 
 England at this moment ; and it is holding 
 forth in one of its leaders upon our ' social 
 welfare,' upon our 'vivid life' upon the 
 ' political supremacy of Great Britain. ' 
 
 taining it on the table, when I gave this lecture. 
 But a saying of Baron Liebig's, quoted at the head 
 of a leader on the same subject in the 'Daily 
 Telegraph' of January n, 1866, summarily digests 
 and presents the maximum folly of modern thought 
 in this respect. ' Civilization,' says the Baron, ' is 
 the economy of power, and English power is coal.' 
 Not altogether so, my chemical friend. Civilization 
 is the making of civil persons, which is a kind of 
 distillation of which alembics are incapable, and 
 does not at all imply the turning of a small com- 
 pany of gentlemen into a large company of iron- 
 mongers. And English power, (what little of it 
 may be left) is by no means coal, but, indeed, of 
 that which, ' when the whole world turns to coal, 
 then chiefly lives.'
 
 202 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 And what do you think all these are owing 
 to ? To what our English sires have done 
 for us, and taught us, age after age ? No : 
 not to that. To our honesty of heart, or 
 coolness of head, or steadiness of will ? 
 No : not to these. To our thinkers, or our 
 statesmen, or our poets, or our captains, or 
 our martyrs, or the patient labour of our 
 poor ? No : not to these ; or at least not 
 to these in any chief measure. Nay, says 
 the journal, ' more than any agency, it is 
 the cheapness and abundance of our coal 
 which have made us what we are.' If it 
 be so, then 'ashes to ashes' be our epitaph! 
 and the sooner the better. I tell you, gen- 
 tlemen of England, if ever you would have 
 your country breathe the pure breath of 
 heaven again, and receive again a soul into 
 her body, instead of rotting into a car- 
 case, blown up in the belly with carbonic
 
 WAR. 203 
 
 acid, (and great that way) you must think, 
 and feel, for your England, as well as fight 
 for her : you must teach her that all the 
 true greatness she ever had, or ever can 
 have, she won while her fields were green 
 and her faces ruddy; that greatness is still 
 possible for Englishmen, even though the 
 ground be not hollow under their feet, nor 
 the sky black over their heads ; and that, 
 when the day comes for their country to lay 
 her honours in the dust, her crest will not 
 rise from it more loftily because it is dust of 
 coal. Gentlemen, I tell you, solemnly, that 
 the day is coming when the soldiers of Eng- 
 land must be her tutors ; and the captains 
 of her army, captains also of her mind. 
 
 And now, remember, you soldier youths, 
 who are thus in all ways the hope of your 
 country ; or must be, if she have any hope : 
 remember that your fitness for all future
 
 2O4 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 trust depends upon what you are now. 
 No good soldier in his old age was ever 
 careless or indolent in his youth. Many a 
 giddy and thoughtless boy has become a 
 good bishop, or a good lawyer, or a good 
 merchant; but no such an one ever be- 
 came a good general. I challenge you, 
 in all history, to find a record of a good 
 soldier who was not grave and earnest in 
 his youth. And, in general, I have no 
 patience with people who talk about ' the 
 thoughtlessness of youth' indulgently. I 
 had infinitely rather hear of thoughtless 
 old age, and the indulgence due to that. 
 When a man has done his work, and 
 nothing can any way be materially altered 
 in his fate, let him forget his toil, and jest 
 with his fate, if he will; but what excuse 
 can you find for wilfulness of thought, 
 at the very time when every crisis of
 
 WAR. 205 
 
 future fortune hangs on your decisions ? 
 A youth thoughtless ! when all the happi- 
 ness of his home for ever depends on the 
 chances, or the passions, of an hour! A 
 youth thoughtless ! when the career of all 
 his days depends on the opportunity of 
 a moment! A youth thoughtless! when 
 his every act is a foundation-stone of 
 future conduct, and every imagination a 
 fountain of life or death ! Be thoughtless 
 in any after years, rather than now 
 though, indeed, there is only one place 
 where a man may be nobly thoughtless, 
 his deathbed. No thinking should ever 
 be left to be done there. 
 
 Having, then, resolved that you will not 
 waste recklessly, but earnestly use, these 
 early days of yours, remember that all 
 the duties of her children to England 
 may be summed in two words industry,
 
 206 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 and honour. I say first, industry, for it 
 is in this that soldier youth are especially 
 tempted to fail. Yet, surely, there is no 
 reason, because your life may possibly or 
 probably be shorter than other men's, that 
 you should therefore waste more reck- 
 lessly the portion of it that is granted 
 you ; neither do the duties of your pro- 
 fession, which require you to keep your 
 bodies strong, in any wise involve the 
 keeping of your minds weak. So far from 
 that, the experience, the hardship, and 
 the activity of a soldier's life render his 
 powers of thought more accurate than 
 those of other men ; and while, for others, 
 all knowledge is often little more than 
 a means of amusement, there is no form 
 of science which a soldier may not at 
 some time or other find bearing on 
 business of life and death. A young
 
 WAR. 207 
 
 mathematician may be excused for lan- 
 guor in studying curves to be described 
 only with a pencil; but not in tracing 
 those which are to be described with a 
 rocket. Your knowledge of a wholesome 
 herb may involve the feeding of an army ; 
 and acquaintance with an obscure point 
 of geography, the success of a campaign. 
 Never waste an instant's time, therefore; 
 the sin of idleness is a thousand-fold 
 greater in you than in other youths; for 
 the fates of those who will one day be 
 under your command hang upon your 
 knowledge ; lost moments now will be lost 
 lives then, and every instant which you 
 carelessly take for play, you buy with 
 blood. But there is one way of wasting 
 time, of all the vilest, because it wastes, 
 not time only, but the interest and energy 
 of your minds. Of all the ungentlemanly
 
 208 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 habits into which you can fall, the vilest 
 is betting, or interesting yourselves in the 
 issues of betting. It unites nearly every 
 condition of folly and vice ; you concen- 
 trate your interest upon a matter of 
 chance, instead upon a subject of true 
 knowledge ; and you back opinions which 
 you have no grounds for forming, merely 
 because they are your own. All the 
 insolence of egotism is in this; and so 
 far as the love of excitement is com- 
 plicated with the hope of winning mo- 
 ney, you turn yourselves into the basest 
 sort of tradesmen those who live by 
 speculation. Were there no other ground 
 for industry, this would be a sufficient 
 one ; that it protected you from the temp- 
 tation to so scandalous a vice. Work 
 faithfully, and you will put yourselves in 
 possession of a glorious and enlarging
 
 WAR. 2O9 
 
 happiness; not such as can be won by 
 the speed of a horse, or marred by the 
 obliquity of a ball- 
 First, then, by industry you must fulfil 
 your vow to your country ; but all industry 
 and earnestness will be useless unless they 
 are consecrated by your resolution to be 
 in all things men of honour; not honour 
 in the common sense only, but in the 
 highest. Rest on the force of the two 
 main words in the great verse, integer 
 vitae, scelerisque purus. You have vowed 
 your life to England ; give it her wholly 
 a bright, stainless, perfect life a 
 knightly life. Because you have to fight 
 with machines instead of lances, there 
 may be a necessity for more ghastly 
 danger, but there is none for less worthi- 
 ness of character, than in olden time. 
 
 You may be true knights yet, though 
 p
 
 210 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 perhaps not equites ; you may have to call 
 yourselves ' cannonry ' instead of ' chivalry,' 
 but that is no reason why you should 
 not call yourselves true men. So the first 
 thing you have to see to in becoming 
 soldiers is that you make yourselves 
 wholly true. Courage is a mere matter 
 of course among any ordinarily well-born 
 youths; but neither truth nor gentleness 
 is matter of course. You must bind 
 them like shields about your necks; you 
 must write them on the tables of your 
 hearts. Though it be not exacted of you, 
 yet exact it of yourselves, this vow of 
 stainless truth. Your hearts are, if you 
 leave them unstirred, as tombs in which 
 a god lies buried. Vow yourselves cru- 
 saders to redeem that sacred sepulchre. 
 And remember, before all things for no 
 other memory will be so protective of
 
 WAR. 2 1 1 
 
 you that the highest law of this knightly 
 truth is that under which it is vowed to 
 women. Whomsoever else you deceive, 
 whomsoever you injure, whomsoever you 
 leave unaided, you must not deceive, nor 
 injure, nor leave unaided, according to 
 your power, any woman of whatever rank. 
 Believe me, every virtue of the higher 
 phases of manly character begins in this ; 
 in truth and modesty before the face 
 of all maidens ; in truth and pity, or truth 
 and reverence, to all womanhood. 
 
 And now let me turn for a moment to 
 you, wives and maidens, who are the 
 souls of soldiers; to you, mothers, who 
 have devoted your children to the great 
 hierarchy of war. Let me ask you to con- 
 sider what part you have to take for the 
 aid of those who love you ; for if you fail 
 in your part they cannot fulfil theirs ; such
 
 212 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 absolute helpmates you are that no man 
 can stand without that help, nor labour 
 in his own strength. 
 
 I know your hearts, and that the truth 
 of them never fails when an hour of trial 
 comes which you recognise for such. But 
 you know not when the hour of trial first 
 finds you, nor when it verily finds you. 
 You imagine that you are only called 
 upon to wait and to suffer; to surrender 
 and to mourn. You know that you must 
 not weaken the hearts of your husbands 
 and lovers, even by the one fear of which 
 those hearts are capable, the fear of 
 parting from you, or of causing you 
 grief. Through weary years of separation ; 
 through fearful expectancies of unknown 
 fate; through the tenfold bitterness of 
 the sorrow which might so easily have 
 been joy, and the tenfold yearning for
 
 WAR. 213 
 
 glorious life struck down in its prime; 
 through all these agonies you fail not, 
 and never will fail. But your trial is not 
 in these. To be heroic in danger is little ; 
 you are Englishwomen. To be heroic 
 in change and sway of fortune is little ; 
 for do you not love ? To be patient 
 through the great chasm and pause of 
 loss is little ; for do you not still love in 
 heaven ? But to be heroic in happiness ; 
 to bear yourselves gravely and righteously 
 in the dazzling of the sunshine of morning ; 
 not to forget the God in whom you trust, 
 when He gives you most ; not to fail 
 those who trust you, when they seem to 
 need you least ; this is the difficult forti- 
 tude. It is not in the pining of absence, 
 not in the peril of battle, not in the 
 wasting of sickness, that your prayer 
 should be most passionate, or your guar-
 
 214 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 dianship most tender. Pray, mothers and 
 maidens, for your young soldiers in the 
 bloom of their pride ; pray for them, 
 while the only dangers round them are 
 in their own wayward wills; watch you, 
 and pray, when they have to face, not 
 death, but temptation. But it is this forti- 
 tude also for which there is the crowning 
 reward. Believe me, the whole course and 
 character of your lovers' lives is in your 
 hands; what you would have them be, 
 they shall be, if you not only desire to 
 have them so, but deserve to have them 
 so ; for they are but mirrors in which you 
 will see yourselves imaged. If you are 
 frivolous, they will be so also ; if you have 
 no understanding of the scope of their 
 duty, they also will forget it; they will 
 listen, they can listen, to no other in- 
 terpretation of it than that uttered from
 
 WAR. 215 
 
 your lips. Bid them be brave ; they will 
 be brave for you : bid them be cowards ; 
 and how noble soever they be ; they will 
 quail for you. Bid them be wise, and 
 they will be wise for you ; mock at their 
 counsel, they will be fools for you : such 
 and so absolute is your rule over them. 
 You fancy, perhaps, as you have been told 
 so often, that a wife's rule should only be 
 over her husband's house, not over his 
 mind. Ah, no ! the true rule is just the re- 
 verse of that ; a true wife, in her husband's 
 house, is his servant ; it is in his heart that 
 she is queen. Whatever of best he can 
 conceive, it is her part to be ; whatever of 
 highest he can hope, it is hers to promise; 
 all that is dark in him she must purge into 
 purity ; all that is failing in him she must 
 strengthen into truth : from her, through 
 all the world's clamour, he must win his
 
 2l6 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 praise ; in her, through all the world's war- 
 fare, he must find his peace. 
 
 And, now, but one word more. You 
 may wonder, perhaps, that I have spoken 
 all this night in praise of war. Yet, truly, 
 if it might be, I, for one, would fain join 
 in the cadence of hammer-strokes that 
 should beat swords into ploughshares : 
 and that this cannot be, is not the fault 
 of us men. It is your fault. Wholly 
 yours. Only by your command, or by 
 your permission, can any contest take 
 place among us. And the real, final, rea- 
 son for all the poverty, misery, and rage 
 of battle, throughout Europe, is simply 
 that you women, however good, however 
 religious, however self-sacrificing for those 
 whom you love, are too selfish and too 
 thoughtless to take pains for any creature 
 out of your own immediate circles. You
 
 WAR. 2 1 7 
 
 fancy that you are sorry for the pain of 
 others. Now I just tell you this, that if the 
 usual course of war, instead of unroofing 
 peasants' houses, and ravaging peasants' 
 fields, merely broke the china upon your 
 own drawing-room tables, no war in civi- 
 lised countries would last a week. I tell 
 you more, that at whatever moment you 
 chose to put a period to war, you could 
 do it with less trouble than you take any 
 day to go out to dinner. You know, or 
 at least you might know if you would 
 think, that every battle you hear of has 
 made many widows and orphans. We 
 have, none of us, heart enough truly to 
 mourn with these. But at least we might 
 put on the outer symbols of mourning 
 with them. Let but every Christian lady 
 who has conscience toward God, vow that 
 she will mourn, at least outwardly, for His
 
 2l8 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE. 
 
 killed creatures. Your praying is useless, 
 and your churchgoing mere mockery of 
 God, if you have not plain obedience in 
 you enough for this. Let every lady in 
 the upper classes of civilised Europe 
 simply vow that, while any cruel war 
 proceeds, she will wear black; a mute's 
 black, with no jewel, no ornament, no ex- 
 cuse for, or evasion into, prettiness. I tell 
 you again, no war would last a week. 
 
 And lastly. You women of England are 
 all now shrieking with one voice, you 
 and your clergymen together, because 
 you hear of your Bibles being attacked. 
 If you choose to obey your Bibles, you will 
 never care who attacks them. It is just 
 because you never fulfil a single downright 
 precept of the Book, that you are so care- 
 ful for its credit: and just because you 
 don't care to obey its whole words, that you
 
 WAR. 219 
 
 are so particular about the letters of them. 
 The Bible tells you to dress plainly, and 
 you are mad for finery; the Bible tells you 
 to have pity on the poor, and you crush 
 them under your carriage wheels; the 
 Bible tells you to do judgment and jus- 
 tice, and you do not know, nor care to 
 know, so much as what the Bible word 
 'justice' means. Do but learn so much of 
 God's truth as that comes to ; know what 
 He means when He tells you to be just : 
 and teach your sons, that their bravery 
 is but a fool's boast, and their deeds but a 
 firebrand's tossing, unless they are indeed 
 Just men, and Perfect in the Fear of 
 God ; and you will soon have no more 
 war, unless it be indeed such as is willed 
 by Him, of whom, though Prince of Peace, 
 it is also written, ' In Righteousness He 
 doth judge, and make war.'
 
 LONDON 
 
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