SESAME AND LILIES SESAME AND JOHN RUSKIN SESAME AND =L I L I E S= B Y JOHN RUSKIN ILLUSTRATED PHILADELPHIA HENRY ALTEMUS COMPANY Annex PR CONTENTS. PAftB I. OF KINGS' TREASURIES, 37 n. OF QUEENS' GARDENS, 117 ra. OF THE MYSTERY OF LIFE, . . . .171 NOTE. The admirable and thoroughly characteristic Preface to the present volume was written by Mr. RUSKIN on the occasion of beginning the publication of a new and revised edition of his works, in 1871. The Preface is given here entire, with the exception of two short passages relat- ing to other volumes of the series; and these omissions are denoted by asterisks or point*. PREFACE. i (. TOEING now fifty-one years old, and little D likely to change my mind hereafter on any important subject of thought (unless through weakness of age), I wish to publish a connected series of such parts of my works as now seem to me right, and likely to be of permanent use. In doing so I shall omit much, but not attempt to mend what I think worth reprinting. A young man necessarily writes otherwise than an old one, and it would be worse than wasted time to try to recast the juvenile language ; nor is it to be thought that I am ashamed even of what I cancel, for a great part of my earlier work was rapidly written for temporary purposes, and is now un- necessary, though true, even to truism. What I wrote about religion was, on the contrary, pains- taking, and, I think, forcible as compared with most religious writing, especially in its frankness and fearlessness ; but it was wholly mistaken, for I had been educated in the doctrines of a narrow (7) 8 PBEFACS. sect, and had read history as obliquely as sectarians necessarily must. Mingled among these either unnecessary or erroneous statements, I find, indeed, some that might be still of value, but these, in my earlier books, disfigured by affected languages partly through the desire to be thought a fine writer, and partly, as in the second volume of " Modern Painters," in the notion of returning as far as I could to what I thought the better style of old English literature, especially to that of my then favorite in prose, Richard Hooker- Ill. The first book of which a new edition is required chances to be "Sesame and lilies." . . . I am glad that it should be the first of the com- plete series, for many reasons, though in now look- ing over these lectures, I am painfully struck by the waste of good work in them. They cost me much thought and much strong emotion ; but it was foolish to suppose that I could rouse my audiences in a little while to any sympathy with the temper into which I had brought myself by years of thinking over subjects full of pain, while, if I missed my purpose at the time, it was little to be hoped I could attain it afterward, since phrases written for oral delivery become inefiect- PREFACE. 9 ive when quietly read. Yet I should only takb away what good is in them if I tried to translate them into the language of books; nor, indeed, could I at all have done so at the time of their delivery, my thoughts then habitually and impa- tiently putting themselves into forms fit only for emphatic speech. And thus I am startled, in my review of them, to find that though there is much (forgive me the impertinence) which seems to me accurately and energetically said, there is scarcely anything put in a form to be generally convincing, or even easily intelligible ; and I can well imagine a reader laying down the book without being at all moved by it, still less guided to any definite course of action. I think, however, if I now say briefly and clearly what I meant my hearers to understand, and what I wanted and still would fain have them to do, there may afterward be found some better service in the passionately written text. IV. The first lecture says, or tries to say, that life being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, we ought to waste none of them in reading valueless books ; and that valuable books should, in a civilized country, be within the reach of every one, printed in excellent form, for a just price, but not in any vile, vulgar, or, by reason of 10 PREFACE. smallness of type, physically injurious form, at a vile price. For we none of us need many books, and those which we need ought to be clearly printed on the best paper, and strongly bound. And though we are indeed now a wretched and poverty-struck nation, and hardly able to keep soul and body together, still, as no person in decent circumstances would put on his table con- fessedly bad wine, or bad meat, without being ashamed, so he need not have on his shelves ill- printed or loosely and wretchedly stitched books ; for though few can be rich, yet every man who honestly exerts himself may, I think, still provide, for himself and his family, good shoes, good gloves, strong harness for his cart or carriage horses, and stout leather binding for his books. And I would urge upon every young man, as the beginning of his due and wise provision for his household, to obtain as soon as he can, by the severest economy, a restricted, serviceable, and steadily however slowly increasing series of books for use through life, making his little library, of all the furniture in his room, the most studied and decorative piece, every volume having its assigned place, like a little statue in its niche, and one of the earliest and strictest lessons to the children of the house being how to turn the pages PREFACE. 11 of their own literary possessions lightly and de- liberately, with no chance of tearing or dogs' ears. V. That is my notion of the founding of Kings' Treasuries ; and the first lecture is intended to show somewhat the use and preciousness of their treasures, but the two following ones have wider scope, being written in the hope of awakening the youth of England, so far as my poor words might have any power with them, to take some thought of the purposes of the life into which they are en- tering, and the nature of the world they have to conquer. VI. These two lectures are fragmentary and ill-arranged, but not, I think, diffuse or much com- pressible. The entire gist and conclusion of them, however, is in the last six paragraphs, 135 to the end, of the third lecture, which I would beg the reader to look over, not once or twice, rather than any other part of the book, for they contain the best expression I have yet been able to put in words of what, so far as is within my power, I mean henceforward both to do myself, and to plead with all over whom I have any influence to do also, according to their means, the letters be- gun on the first day of this year, 1 to the workmen i " Fors Clavigera," begun in 1871. 12 PREFACE. of England, having the object of originating, if possible, this movement among them, in true alli- ance with whatever trustworthy element of help they can find in the higher classes. After these paragraphs, let me ask you to read, by the fiery light of recent events, the fable given at 117, and then 129-131, and observe my statement re- specting the famine of Orissa is not rhetorical, but certified by official documents as within the truth. Five hundred thousand persons, at least, died by starvation in our British dominions, wholly in con- sequence of carelessness and want of forethought. Keep that well in your memory, and note it as the best possible illustration of modern political econ- omy in true practice, and of the relations it has accomplished between Supply and Demand. Then begin the second lecture, and all will read clear enough, I think, to the end ; only, since that second lecture was written, questions have arisen respect- ing the education and claims of women which, have greatly troubled simple minds and excite^ restless ones. I am sometimes asked my thoughts on this matter, and I suppose that some girl read ers of the second lecture may at the end of it de-- sire to be told summarily what I would have them do and desire in the present state of things. This, , is what I would say to any girl who had con- PREFACE. 13 fidence enough in me to believe what I told her, or do what I ask her. VII. First, be quite sure of one thing, that, however much you may know, and whatever ad- vantages you may possess, and however good you may be, you have not been singled out by the God who made you from all the other girls in the world, to be especially informed respecting His own na- ture and character. You have not been born in a luminous point upon the surface of the globe, where a perfect theology might be expounded to you from your youth up, and where everything you were taught would be true, and everything that was enforced upon you, right. Of all the in- solent, all the foolish persuasions that by any chance could enter and hold your empty little heart, this is the proudest and foolishest, that you have been so much the darling of the Heavens and favorite of the Fates as to be born in the very nick of time, and in the punctual place, when and where pure Divine truth had been sifted from the errors of the nations ; and that your papa had been providentially disposed to buy a house in the convenient neighborhood of the steeple under which that immaculate and final verity would be beautifully proclaimed. Do not think it, child ; it is not so. This, on the contrary, is the fact, 14 PREFACE. unpleasant you may think it; pleasant, it seems to ttte, that you, with all your pretty dresses and dainty looks and kindly thoughts and saintly aspi- rations, are not one whit more thought of or loved by the great Maker and Master than any poor lit- tle red, black, or blue savage running wild in the pestilent woods, or naked on the hot sands of the earth ; and that of the two, you probably know less about God than she does, the only difference being that she thinks little of Him that is right, and you, much that is wrong. That, then, is the first thing to make sure of, that you are not yet perfectly well informed on the most abstruse of all possible subjects, and that, if you care to behave with modesty or propriety, you had better be silent about it. VIII. The second thing which you may make sure of is, that however good you may be, you have faults; that however dull you may be you can find out what some of them are ; and that however slight they may be, you had bet- ter make some not too painful, but patient ef- fort to get quit of them. And so far as you have confidence in me at all, trust me for this, that how many soever you may find or fancy your faults to be, there are only two that are cf real consequence, Idleness and Cruelty. Perhaps you may be PREFACE. 16 proud. Well, we can get much good out of pride, if only it be not religious. Perhaps you may be vain, it is highly probable, and very pleasant for the people who like to praise you. Perhaps you are a little envious, that is really very shocking ; but then so is everybody else. Perhaps, also, you are a little malicious, which I am truly con- cerned to hear, but should probably only the more, if I knew you, enjoy your conversation. But whatever else you may be, you must not be use- less, and you must not be cruel. If there is any one point which, in six thousand years of thinking about right and wrong, wise and good men have agreed upon, or successively by experience discovered, it is that God dislikes idle and cruel people more than any other ; that His first order is, " Work while you have light ; " and His second, " Be merciful while you have mercy." "Work while you have light," especially while you have the light of morning. There are few things more wonderful to me than that old people never tell young ones how precious their youth is. They sometimes sentimentally regret their own earlier days, sometimes prudently forget them, often foolishly rebuke the young, often more fool- ishly indulge, often most foolishly thwart and re- strain, but scarcely ever warn or watch them. 16 PREFACE. Remember, then, that I at least have warned you that the happiness of your life, and its power, and its part and rank in earth or in heaven, depend on the way you pass your days now. They are net to be sad days, far from that, the first duty of young people is to be delighted and delightful ; but they are to be in the deepest sense solemn days. There is no solemnity so deep, to a rightly thinking creature, as that of dawn. But not only in that beautiful sense, but in all their character and method, they are to be solemn days. Take your Latin dictionary, and look out "sollennis," and fix the sense of the word well in your mind, and remember that every day of your early life is ordaining irrevocably, for good or evil, the custom and practice of your soul, ordaining either sacred customs of dear and lovely recurrence, or trench- ing deeper and deeper the furrows for seed of sor- row. Now, therefore, see that no day passes in which you do not make yourself a somewhat bet- ter creature ; and in order to do that, find out, first, what you are now. Do not think vaguely about it ; take pen and paper, and write down at accurate a description of yourself as you can, with the date to it. If you dare not do so, find out why you dare not, and try to get strength of heart enough to look yourself fairly in the face, in mind PREFACE. 17 as well as body. I do not doubt but that the mind is a less pleasant thing to look at than the face, and for that very reason it needs more looking at ; so always have two mirrors on your toilet-table, and see that with proper care you dress body and mind before them daily. After the dressing is once over for the day, think no more about it. As your hair will blow about your ears, so your temper and thoughts will get ruffled with the day's work, and may need sometimes twice dressing ; but I don't want you to carry about a mental pocket-comb, only to be smooth braided always in the morning. IX. Write down, then, frankly, what you are, or at least what you think yourself, not dwelling upon those inevitable faults which I have just told you are of little consequence, and which the ac- tion of a right life will shake or smooth away ; but that you may determine to the best of your intel- ligence what you are good for, and can be made into. You will find that the mere resolve not to be useless, and the honest desire to help other people, will, in the quickest and delicatest ways, improve yourself. Thus, from the beginning, consider all your accomplishments as means of assistance to others; read attentively, in this volume, para- graphs 74, 75, 19, and 79, and you will under- 2 18 PREFACE. stand what I mean, with respect to languages and music. In music especially you will soon find what personal benefit there is in being serviceable ; it is probable that, however limited your powers p you have voice and ear enough to sustain a note oJ moderate compass in a concerted piece, that, then, is the first thing to make sure you can do. Get your voice disciplined and clear, and think only of accuracy, never of effect or expression. If you have any soul worth expressing, it will show itself in your singing ; but most likely there are very few feelings in you at present needing any particular expression, and the one thing you have to do is to make a clear-voiced little instrument ot yourself, which other people can entirely depend upon for the note wanted. So, in drawing, as soon as you can set down the right shape of any- thing, and thereby explain its character to another person, or make the look of it clear and interesting to a child, you will begin to enjoy the art vividly for its own sake, and all your habits of mind and powers of memory will gain precision ; but if you only try to make showy drawing for praise, 01 pretty ones for amusement, your drawing will have little of real interest for you, and no educational power whatever. Then, besides this more delicate work, resolve PREFACE. 19 to do every day some that is useful in the vulgar sense. Learn first thoroughly the economy of the kitchen, the good and bad qualities of every common article of food, and the simplest and best modes of their preparation ; when you have time, go and help in the cooking of poorer families, and show them how to make as much of everything as possible, and how to make little, nice, coaxing and tempting them into tidy and pretty ways, and pleading for well-folded table-cloths, however coarse, and for a flower or two out of the garden to strew on them. If you manage to get a clean table-cloth, bright plates on it, and a good dish in the middle, of your own cooking, you may ask leave to say a short grace ; and let your religious ministries be confined to that much for the present. X. Again, let a certain part of your day (as little as you choose, but not to be broken in upon) be set apart for making strong and pretty dresses for the poor. Learn the sound qualities of all useful stuffs, and make everything of the best you can get, whatever its price. I have many reasons *br desiring you to do this, too many to be told just now ; trust me, and be sure you get every- thing as good as can be. And if in the villanons state of modern trade, you cannot get it good at 20 PREFACE. any price, buy its raw material, and set some of the poor women about you to spin and weave, till you have got stuff that can be trusted ; and then, every day make some little piece of useful cloth- ing, sewn with your own fingers as strongly as it can be stitched, and embroider it or otherwise beautify it moderately with fine needlework, such as a girl may be proud of having done. And accumulate these things by you until you hear of some honest persons in need of clothing, which may often too sorrowfully be ; and even though you should be deceived, and give them to the dis- honest, and hear of their being at once ta!:en to the pawnbroker's, never mind that, for the pawn- broker must sell them to some one who has need of them. That is no business of yours; what concerns you is only that when you see a half- naked child, you should have good and fresh clothes to give it, if its parents will let it be taught to wear them. If they will not, consider how they came to be of such a mind, which it will be 'holesome for you beyond most subjects of inquiry to ascertain. And after you have gone on doing this a little while, you will begin to understand the meaning of at least one chapter of your Bible, Proverbs xxxi., without need of any labored comment, sermon, or meditation. PBBFACE. 21 XI. In these, then (and of course in all minor ways besides, that you can discover in your own household), you must be to the best of your strength usefully employed during the greater part of the day, so that you may be able at the end of it to say as proudly as any peasant that you have not eaten the bread of idleness. Then, secondly, I said, you are not to be cruel. Perhaps you think there is no chance of your being so, and indeed I hope it is not likely that you should be deliberately unkind to any creature ; but unless you are de- liberately kind to every creature, you will often be cruel to many. Cruel, partly through want of imagination (a far rarer and weaker faculty in women than men), and yet more, at the present day, through the subtle encouragement of your selfishness by the religious doctrine that all which we now suppose to be evil will be brought to 3 good end, doctrine practically issuing, not in less earnest efforts that the immediate unpleasant- ness may be averted from ourselves, but in our remaining satisfied in the contemplation of it: ultimate objects when it is inflicted on others. It is not likely that the more accurate methods of recent mental education will now long permit young people to grow up in the persuasion that in any danger or distress they may expect to be them- 22 PREFACE. selves saved by the providence of God, while those around them are lost by His improvidence ; but they may be yet long restrained from rightly kind action, and long accustomed to endure both their own pain occasionally, and the pain of others always, with an unwise patience, by mis- conception of the eternal and incurable nature of real evil. Observe, therefore, carefully in this matter : there are degrees of pain, as degrees of faultfulness, which are altogether conquerable, and which seem to be merely forms of wholesome trial or discipline. Your fingers tingle when you go out on a frosty morning, and are all the warmer afterward, your limbs weary with wholesome work, and lie down in the pleasanter rest ; you are tried for a little while by having to wait for some promised good, and it is all the sweeter when it comes. But you cannot carry the trial past a certain point. Let the cold fasten on your hand in an extreme degree, and your fingers will moulder from their sockets. Fatigue yourself but once to utter exhaustion, and to the end of life you shall not recover the former vigor of your frame. Let heart-sickness pass beyond a certain bitter point, and the heart loses its life forever. Now, the very definition of evil is in this irremediableness. It means sorrow, or sin, which PREFACE. 28 end in death ; and assuredly, as far as we know, or can conceive, there are many conditions both of pain and sin which cannot but so end. Of course we are ignorant and blind creatures, and we cannot know what seeds of good may be in present suffering, or present crime ; but with what we cannot know, we are not concerned. It is con- ceivable that murderers and liars may in some dis- tant world be exalted into a higher humanity than they could have reached without homicide or false- hood ; but the contingency is not one by which our actions should be guided. There is indeed a better hope that the beggar who lies at our gates in misery may within gates of pearl be com- forted ; but the Master, whose words are our only authority for thinking so, never Himself inflicted disease as a blessing, nor sent away the hungry unfed, or the wounded unhealed. XII. Believe me, then, the only right principle of action here, is to consider good and evil as de- fined by our natural sense of both, and to strive to promote the one, and to conquer the other, with as hearty endeavor as if there was indeed no other world than this. Above all, get quit of the absurd idea that Heaven will interfere to correct great errors, while allowing its laws to take their course in punishing small ones. If you prepare a dish 24 PREFACE. of food carelessly, you do not expect Providence to make it palatable ; neither if through years of folly you misguide your own life, need you expect Divine interference to bring round everything at last for the best. I tell you positively the world is not so constituted ; the consequences of great mistakes are just as sure as those of small ones, and the happiness of your whole life, and of all the lives over which you have power, depends as liter- ally on your own common-sense and discretion as the excellence and order of the feast of a day. XIII. Think carefully and bravely over these things, and you will find them true ; having found them so, think also carefully over your own posi- tion in life. I assume that you belong to the mid- dle or upper classes, and that you would shrink from descending into a lower sphere. You may fancy you would not, nay, if you are very good, strong-hearted, and romantic, perhaps you really would not ; but it is not wrong that you should, You have, then, I suppose, good food, pretty rooms to live in, pretty dresses to wear, power of obtaining every rational and wholesome pleasure ; you are, moreover, probably gentle and grateful, and in the habit of every day thanking God f . r these things. But why do you thank Him ? Is it because, in these matters, as well as in your relig PREFACE. 25 ious knowledge, you think He has made a favorite of you? Is the essential meaning of your thanks- giving, "Lord, I thank thee that I am not as other girls are, not in that I fast twice in the week while they feast, but in that I feast seven times a week, while they fast " ? And are you quite sure this is a pleasing form of thanksgiving to your Heavenly Father ? Suppose you saw one of your own true earthly sisters, Lucy or Emily, cast out of your mortal father's house, starving, helpless, heart-broken ; and that every morning when you went into your father's room, you said to him, ' ' How good you are, father, to give me what you don't give Lucy!" are you sure that whatevei anger your parent might have just cause for against your sister, he would be pleased by that thanks- giving, or flattered by that praise ? Nay, are you even sure that you are so much the favorite ? Sup- pose that all this while he loves poor Lucy just as well as you, and is only trying you through her pain, and perhaps not angry with her in anywise, but deeply angry with you, and all the more for your thanksgivings ? Would it not be well that you should think, and earnestly too, over this standing of yours ; and all the more if you wish to believe that text which clergyman so much dis- like preaching on, " How hardly shall they that 26 PREFACE. have riches enter into the Kingdom of God " ? You do not believe it now, or you would be leas complacent in your state. And you cannot believe it at all until you know that the Kingdom of God means, " not meat and drink, but justice, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost," nor until you know also that such joy is not by any means necessarily in going to church, or in singing hymns, but may be joy in a dance, or joy in a jest, or joy in any- thing you have deserved to possess, or that you are willing to give ; but joy in nothing that separates you, as by any strange favor, from your fellow- creatures, that exalts you through their degrada- tion, exempts you from their toil, or indulges you in time of their distress. XIV. Think, then, and some day, I believe, you will feel also, no morbid passion of pity such as would turn you into a black Sister of Charity, but the steady fire of perpetual kindness, which will make you a bright one. I speak in no dis- paragement of them. I know well how good the Sisters of Charity are, and much we owe to them ; but all these professional pieties (except so far as distinction or association may be necessary for effectiveness of work) are in their spirit wrong, and in practice merely plaster the sores of disease that ought never have been permitted to exist, PEEFACE. 2? encouraging at the same time the herd of less ex- cellent women in frivolity, by leading them to think that they must either be good up to the black standard, or cannot be good for anything. Wear a costume, by all means, if you like ; but let it be a cheerful and becoming one, and be in your heart a Sister of Charity always, without either veiled or voluble declaration of it. XV. As I pause, before ending my preface, thinking of one or two more points that are diffi- cult to write of, I find a letter in " The Times," from a French lady, which says all I want so beau- tifully that I will print it just as it stands : SIR, It is often said that one example is worth many sermons. Shall I be judged presumptuous if I point out one which seems to me so striking just now that, hov/ever painful, I cannot help dwelling upon it ? It is the share, the sad and large share, that French so- ciety and its recent habits of luxury, of expenses, of dress, of indulgence in every kind of extravagant dissipation, has to lay to its own door in its actual crisis of ruin, misery, and humiliation. If our minagtres can be cited as an ex- ample to English housewives, so, alas ! can other classes of our society be set up as an example net to be followed. Bitter must be the feelings of many a Frenchwoman whose days of luxury and expensive habits are at an end, and whose bills of bygone splendor lie with a heavy weight on her conscience, if not on her purse ! With us the evil has spread high and low. Everywhere 28 PREFACE. have the examples given by the highest ladies in the land been followed but too successfully. Every year did dress become more extravagant, entertainments more costly, expenses of every kind more considerable. Lower and lower became the tone of society, its good-breeding, its delicacy. More and more were monde and demi-monde associated in newspaper accounts of fashionable doings, in scandalous gossip, on race-courses, in premieres reprtsenta- tions, in imitation of each other's costumes, mobiliers, and slang. Living beyond one's means became habitual almost necessary for every one to keep up with, if not to go be- yond, every one else. What the result of all this has been we now see in the wreck of our prosperity, in the downfall of all that seemed brighest and highest. Deeply and fearfully impressed by what my own country has incurred and is suffering, I cannot help feeling sorrow- ful when I see in England signs of our besetting sins ap- pearing also. Paint and chignons, slang and vaudevilles, knowing " Anonymas " by name, and reading doubtfully moral novels, are in themselves small offences, although not many years ago they would have appeared very hein- ous ones ; yet they are quick and tempting conveyances on a very dangerous high-road. I would that all Englishwomen knew how they are looked up to from abroad, what a high opinion, what honor and reverence we foreigners have for their principles, their truthfulness, the fresh and pure innocence of their daughters, the healthy youthfulness of their lovely chil- dren. PREFACE. 29 May I illustrate this by a short example which happened very near me ? During the days of the emeutes of 1848, all the houses in Paris were being searched for fire-arms by the mob. The one I was living in contained none, as the .aaster of the house repeatedly assured the furious and in- credulous Republicans. They were going to lay violent hands on him, when his wife, an English lady, hearing the loud discussion, came bravely forward and assured them that no arms were concealed. " Vous etes anglaise, nous vous croyons ; les anglaises disent toujours la verite," was the immediate answer ; and the rioters quietly left Now, Sir, shall I be accused of unjustified criticism if, loving and admiring your country, as these lines will prove, certain new features strike me as painful discrepancies in English life ? Far be it from me to preach the contempt of all that can make life lovable and wholesomely pleasant. I love noth- ing better than to see a woman nice, neat, elegant, looking her best in the prettiest dress that her taste and purse can afford,' or your bright, fresh young girls fearlessly and per- fectly sitting their horses, or adorning their houses as pretty [sic; it is not quite grammar, but it is better than if it were] as care, trouble, and refinement can make them. It is the degree beyond that which to us has proved so fatal, and that I would our example could warn you from, .3 a small repayment for your hospitality and friendliness t us in our days of trouble. May Englishwomen accept this in a kindly spirit as a new-year's wish from FRENCH LADY. DECEMBER 29. 30 PREFACE. That, then, is the substance of what I would fain say convincingly, if it might be, to my girl friends ; at all events with certainty in my own mind that I was thus far a safe guide to them. XVI. For other and older readers it is needful 1 should write a few words more, respecting what opportunity I have had to judge, or right I have to speak, of such things ; for indeed too much of what I have said about women has been said in faith only. A wise and lovely English lady told me, when "Sesame and Lilies " first appeared, that she was sure the Sesame would be useful, but that in the Lilies I had been writing of what I knew nothing about. Which was in a measure too true, and also that it is more partial than my writ- ings are usually ; for as Ellesmere spoke his speech on the intervention, not indeed otherwise than he felt, but yet altogether for the sake of Gretchen, so I wrote the Lilies to please one girl, and were it not for what I remember of her, and of few be- sides, should now perhaps recast some of the sen- tences in the Lilies in a very different tone, fo- as years have gone by, it has chanced to me, UD towardly in some respects, fortunately in others (because it enables me to read history more clearly), to see the utmost evil that is in women, while I have had but to believe the utmost good. The PREFACE. 31 best women are indeed necessarily the most diffi- cult to know; they are recognized chiefly in the happiness of their husbands and the nobleness of their children. They are only to be divined, not discerned, by the stranger, and sometimes seem almost helpless except in their homes ; yet without the help of one of them, 1 to whom this book is dedicated, the day would probably have come be- fore now, when I should have written and thought no more. XVII. On the other hand, the fashion of the time renders whatever is forward, coarse, or sense- less in feminine nature, too palpable to all men. The weak picturesqueness of my earlier writings brought me acquainted with much of their empti- est enthusiasm ; and the chances of later life gave me opportunities of watching women in states of degradation and vindictiveness which opened to me the gloomiest secrets of Greek and Syrian tragedy. I have seen them betray their household charities to lust, their pledged love to devotion ; I have seen mothers dutiful to their children as Medea ; and children dutiful to their parents as the daughter of Herodias ; but my trust is still unmoved in the preciousness of the natures that are so fatal in their error, and I leave the words of 82 PREFACE. the Lilies unchanged ; believing, yet, that no man ever lived a right life who had not been chastened by a woman's love, strengthened by her courage, and guided by her discretion. XVIII. What I might myself have been, so helped, I rarely indulge in the idleness of think- ing ; but what I am, since I take on me the func- tion of a teacher, it is well that the reader should know, as far as I can tell him : Not an unjust person ; not an unkind one ; not a false one ; a lover of order, labor, and peace. That, it seems to me, is enough to give me right to say all I care to say on ethical subjects ; more, I could only tell definitely through details of auto- biography such as none but prosperous and (in the simple sense of the word) faultless lives could jus- tify, and mine has been neither. Yet if any one skilled in reading the torn manuscripts of the hu- man soul cares for more intimate knowledge of me, he may have it by knowing with what persons in past history I have most sympathy. I will name three : In all that is strongest and deepest in me, that fits me for my work, and gives light or shadow to my being, I have sympathy with Guide Guini- celli. PBBPACE. 83 In my constant natural temper, and thoughts of things and of people, with Marrnontel. In my enforced and accidental temper, and thoughts of things and of people, with Dean Swift. Any one who can understand the natures of those three men, can understand mine ; and hav- ing said so much, I am content to leave both life and work to be remembered or forgotten, as their uses may deserve. DENMARK HILL, Jan. i, 1*71. I ' <&oirie* SESAME AND LILIES. LECTURE L Kteamt. OF KINGS' TREASURIES. You shall each have a cake of sesame, and ten pound. LUCIAN : The Fisherman* i. JV/I Y first duty this evening is to ask your par- * * * don for the ambiguity of title under which the subject of lecture has been announced ; for indeed I am not going to talk of kings, known as regnant, nor of treasuries, understood to con- tain wealth, but of quite another order of royalty and another material of riches than those usually acknowledged. I had even intended to ask your attention for a little while on trust, and (as some- times one contrives, in taking a friend to see a fa- vorite piece of scenery) to hide what I wanted most to show, with such imperfect cunning as I (37) 38 SESAME AND LILIES. might, until we unexpectedly reached the best point of view by winding paths. But and as also I have heard it said, by men practiced in public address, that hearers are never so much fatigued as by the endeavor to follow a speaker who gives them no clew to his purpose I will take the slight mask off at once, and tell you plainly that I want to speak to you about the treasures hidden in books ; and about the way we find them, and the way we lose them. A grave subject, you will say, and a wide one ! Yes ; so wide that I shall make no effort to touch the compass of it. I will try only to bring before you a few simple thoughts about reading, which press themselves upon me every day more deeply, as I watch the course of the public mind with respect to our daily enlarg- ing means of education, and the answeringly wider spreading on the levels, of the irrigation of litera- ture. 2. It happens that I have practically some con- nection with schools for different classes of youth ; and I receive many letters from parents respecting the education of their children. In the mass of these letters I am always struck by the precedence which the idea of a " position in life " takes above all other thoughts in the parents' more especially in the mothers' minds. "The education befit- OF KINGS' TBEASUfilBS. 39 ting such and such a station in life," this is the phrase, this the object, always. They never seek, as far as I can make out, an education good in it- self ; even the conception of abstract Tightness in training rarely seems reached by the writers. But an education " which shall keep a good coat on my son's back ; which shall enable him to ring with confidence the visitors' bell at double-belled doors ; which shall result ultimately in the establishment of a double-belled door to his own house, in a word, which shall lead to advancement in life, this we pray for on bent knees ; and this is all wf pray for." It never seems to occur to the parent, that there may be an education which in itself is advancement in Life ; that any other than that may perhaps be advancement in Death ; and that this essential education might be more easily got, or given, than they fancy, if they set about in the right way, while it is for no price and by no favor to be got, if they set about it in the wrong. 3. Indeed, among the ideas most prevalent and effective in the mind of this busiest of countries, I suppose the first at least that which is confessed with the greatest frankness, and put forward as the fittest stimulus to youthful exertion is this of "Advancement in life." May I ask you to con- 40 SESAME AND LILIES. sider with me what this idea practically includes, and what it should include ? Practically, then, at present, "advancement in life" means, becoming conspicuous in life, ob- taining a position which shall be acknowledged by others to be respectable or honorable. We do not understand by this advancement, in general, the mere making of money, but the being known to have made it; not the accomplishment of any great aim, but the being seen to have accomplished it. In a word, we mean the gratification of our thirst for applause. That thirst, if the last infirm- ity of noble minds, is also the first infirmity of weak ones, and on the whole, the strongest impul- sive influence of average humanity. The greatest efforts of the race have always been traceable to the love of praise, as its greatest catastrophes to the love of pleasure. 4. I am not about to attack or defend this im- pulse. I want you only to feel how it lies at the root of effort, especially of all modern effort. It is the gratification of vanity which is, with us, the stimulus of toil and balm of repose. So closely does it touch the very springs of life that the wounding of our vanity is always spoken of (and truly) as in its measure mortal; we call it "mor- tification," using the same expression which we OF KINGS' TKEASUiitES. 4i should apply to a gangrenous and incurable bodily hurt. And although a few of us may be physician* enough to recognize the various effect of this pas sion upon health and energy, I believe most hon ?st men know, and would at once acknowledge, its leading power with them as a motive. The seaman does not commonly desire to be made cap- tain only because he knows he can manage the ship better than any other sailor on board; he wants to be made captain that he may be called captain. The clergyman does not usually want to be made a bishop only because he believes that no other hand can, as firmly as his, direct the diocese through its difficulties ; he wants to be made bishop primarily that he may be called "My Lord." And a prince does not usually desire to enlarge, or a subject to gain, a kingdom because he believes that no one else can as well serve the State upon its throne, but briefly, because he wishes to be addressed as "Your Majesty" by as many lips as may be brought to such utterance. 5. This, then, being the main idea of "ad- vancement in life," the force of it applies for all of us, according to our station, particularly to that secondary result of such advancement which we call "getting into good society." We want to get into good society, not that we may have it, but 42 SESAME AND LILIES. that we may be seen in it ; and our notion of its goodness depends primarily on its conspicuousness. Will you pardon me if I pause for a moment to put what I fear you may think an impertinent question? I never can go on with an address un- less I feel or know that my audience are either with me or against me. I do not much care which, in beginning ; but I must know where they are. And I would fain find out at this instant whether you think I am putting the motives of popular action too low. I am resolved to-night to state them low enough to be admitted as probable ; for whenever, in my writings on Political Econ- omy, I assume that a little honesty, or generosity, or what used to be called "virtue," may be calculated upon as a human motive of action, peo- ple always answer me, saying, " You must not cal- culate on that ; that is not in human nature. You must not assume anything to be common to men but acquisitiveness and jealousy ; no other feeling ever has influence on them, except accidentally, and in matters out of the way of business." I be- gin, accordingly, to-night low in the scale of mo- tives; but I must know if you think me right in doing so. Therefore, let me ask those who admit the love of praise to be usually the strongest motive in men's minds in seeking advancement, and the OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 43 honest desire of doing any kind of duty to be an entirely secondary one, to hold up their hands. (About a dozen hands held up, the audience , partly, not being sure the lecturer is serious, and partly, shy of expressing opinion.} I am quite serious, I really do want to know what you think ; however, I can judge by putting the reverse ques- tion. Will those who think that duty is generally the first, and love of praise the second, motive, hold up their hands ? ( One hand reported to have been held up, behind the lecturer,} Very good ; I see you are with me, and that you think I have not begun too near the ground. Now, without teasing you by putting farther question, I venture to assume that you will admit duty as at least a secondary or tertiary motive. You think that the desire of doing something useful, or obtaining some real good, is indeed an existent collateral idea, though a secondary one, in most men's de- sire of advancement. You will grant that moder- ately honest men desire place and office, at least in some measure, for the sake of beneficent power, and would wish to associate rather with sensible and well-informed persons than with fools and ig- norant persons, whether they are seen in the com- pany of the sensible ones or not. And finally, without being troubled by repetition of any com- 44 SESAME AND LILIES. mon truisms about the preciousness of friends and the influence of companions, you will admit, doubtless, that according to the sincerity of our desire that our friends may be true, and our com- panions wise, and in proportion to the earnestness and discretion with which we choose both, will be the general chances of our happiness and useful- ness. 6. But granting that we had both the will and the sense to choose our friends well, how few of us have the power ; or at least, how limited for most is the sphere of choice ! Nearly all our associa- tions are determined by chance ^ r necessity, and restricted within a narrow circle. We cannot know whom we would, and those whom we know we cannot have at our side when we most need them. All the higher circles of human intelli- gence are, to those beneath, only momentarily and partially open. We may by good fortune obtain a glimpse of a great poet, and hear the sound of his voice, or put a question to a man of science, and be answered good-humoredly. We may in- trude ten minutes' talk on a cabinet minister, answered probably with words worse than silence, being deceptive, or snatch, once or twice in our lives, the privilege of throwing a bouquet in the path of a princess, or arresting the kind glance of OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 4b a queen. And yet these momentary chances we covet, and spend our years and passions and powers in pursuit of little more than these; while, meantime, there is a society continually open to us of people who will talk to us as long as we like, whatever our rank or occupation, talk to us in the best words they can choose, and of the things nearest their hearts. And this society, because it is so numerous and so gentle, and can be kept waiting round us all day long (kings and states- men lingering patiently, not to grant audience, but to gain it), in those plainly furnished and narrow anterooms, our book-case shelves, we make no account of that company, perhaps never listen to a word they would say, all day long. 7. You may tell me, perhaps, or think within yourselves, that the apathy with which we regard this company of the noble, who are praying us to listen to them, and the passion with which we pur- sue the company probably of the ignoble, who despise us, or who have nothing to teach us, are grounded in this, that we can see the faces of the living men ; and it is themselves, and not their sayings, with which we desire to become familiar. Buc it is not so. Suppose yo'^ never were to see their faces ; suppose you could be put behind a screen in the statesman's cabinet or the 46 SESAME AND LILIES prince's chamber, would you not be glad to listen to their words, though you were forbidden to advance beyond the screen? And when the screen is only a little less, folded in two instead of four, and you can be hidden behind the cover of the two boards that bind a book, and listen all day long, not to the casual talk, but to the studied, determined, chosen addresses of the wisest of men, this station of audience and honorable privy council you despise ! 8. But perhaps you will say that it is because the living people talk of things that are passing, and are of immediate interest to you, that you desire to hear them. Nay, that cannot be so ; for the living people will themselves tell you about passing matters much better in their writings than in their careless talk. But I admit that this motive does influence you, so far as you prefer those rapid and ephemeral writings to slow and enduring writings, books, properly so-called. For all books are divisible into two classes, the books of the hour, and the books of all time. Mark this distinction ; it is not one of quality only. It is not merely the bad book that does not last, and the good one that does; it is a distinc- tion of species. There are good books for the hour, and good ones for all time ; bad books for OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 4T the hour, and bad ones for all time. I must define the two kinds before I go farther. 9. The good book of the hour, then, I do not speak of the bad ones, is simply the useful or pleasant talk of some person whom you cannot otherwise converse with, printed for you. Very useful often, telling you what you need to know ; very pleasant often, as a sensible friend's present talk would be. These bright accounts of travels ; good-humored and witty discussions of question ; lively or pathetic story-telling in the form of novel ; firm fact-telling, by the real agents con- cerned in the events of passing history, all these books of the hour, multiplying among us as educa- tion becomes more general, are a peculiar posses- sion of the present age. We ought to be entirely thankful for them, and entirely ashamed of our selves if we make no good use of them. But we make the worst possible use if we allow them to usurp the place of true books ; for, strictly speak- ing, they are not books at all, but merely letters or newspapers in good print. Our friend's letter may be delightful or necessary to-day, whether worth keeping or not, is to be considered. The newspaper may be entirely proper at breakfast- time, but assuredly it is not reading for all day ; 80, though bound up in a volume, the long letter 48 SESAME AND LILIES. which gives you so pleasant an account of the inns and roads and weather last year at such a place, or which tells you that amusing story, or gives you the real circumstances of such and such events, however valuable for occasional reference, may not be in the real sense of the word a " book " at all, nor in the real sense to be "read." A book is essentially not a talked thing, but a written thing, and written not with a view of mere com- munication, but of permanence. The book of talk is printed only because its author cannot speak to thousands of people at once ; if he could he would, the volume is mere multiplication of his voice. You cannot talk to your friend in India ; if you could, you would. You write instead ; that is mere conveyance of voice. But a book is written, not to multiply the voice merely, not to carry it merely, but to perpetuate it. The author has something to say which he perceives to be true and useful, or helpfully beautiful. So far as he knows, no one has yet said it ; so far as he knows, no one else can say it. He is bound to say it clearly and melodiously, if he may; clearly, at all events. In the sum of his life he finds this to be the thing or group of things manifest to him, this the piece of true knowl- edge or sight which his share of sunshine and OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 49 earth has permitted him to seize. He would fain set it down forever, engrave it on rock if he could, saying, ' ' This is the best of me ; for the rest, I ate and drank and slept, loved and hated like another. My life was as the vapor, and is not ; but this I saw and knew, this, if anything of mine, is worth your memory." That is his "writing; " it is in his small human way, and with whatever degree of true inspiration is in him, his inscription or scripture. That is a " book." 10. Perhaps you think no books were evei 10 written ? But, again, I ask you, do you at all believe in honesty or at all in kindness, or do you think there is never any honesty or benevolence in wise people ? None of us, I hope, are so unhappy as to think that. Well, whatever bit of a wise man's work is honestly and benevolently done, that bit is his book, or his piece of art. 1 It is mixed always with evil fragments, ill-done, re- dundant, affected work. But if you read rightly, you will easily discover the true bits, and those are the book. 11. Now, books of this kind have been written in all ages by their greatest men, by great read- * Note this sentence carefully, and compare the " Queen of the Air," 106. 4 50 SESAME AND LILIES. ers, great statesmen, and great thinkers. These are all at your choice; and Life is short. You have heard as much before ; yet have you meas- ured and mapped out this short life and its possi- bilities ? Do you know, if you read this, that you cannot read that ; that what you lose to-day you cannot gain to-morrow ? Will you go and gossip with your housemaid or your stable-boy, when you may talk with queens and kings ; or flatter your- selves that it is with any worthy consciousness of your own claims to respect that you jostle with the hungry and common crowd for entree here, and audience there, when 'all the while this eternal court is open to you, with iis society, wide as the world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen and the mighty of every place and time ? Into that you may enter always ; in that you may take fel- lowship and rank accordingly to your wish ; from that, once entered into it, you can never be an outcast but by your own fault ; by your aristocracy of companionship there, your own inherent aristoc- racy will be assuredly tested, and the motives with which you strive to take high place in the society of the living, measured, as to all the truth and sin- cerity that are in them, by the place you desire to take in this company of the dead. 12. "The place you desire, " and the place OF KINGS' TEEASURIBS. 51 you fit yourself for, I must also say, because, ob- serve, this court of the past differs from all living aristocracy in this, it is open to labor and to merit, but to nothing else. No wealth will bribe, no name overawe, no artifice deceive, the guard- ian of those Elysian gates. In the deep sense, no vile or vulgar person ever enters there. At the portieres of that silent Faubourg St. Germain, there is but brief question : " Do you deserve to enter ? Pass. Do you ask to be the companion of nobles? Make yourself noble, and you shall be. Do you long for the conversation of the wise ? Learn to understand it, and you shall hear it. But on other terms? No. If you will not rise to us, we cannot stoop to you. The living lord may assume courtesy, the living philosopher explain his thought to you with considerate pain ; but here we neither feign nor interpret. You must rise to the level of our thoughts if you would be gladdened by them, and share our feelings if you would recognize our presence." 13. This, then, is what you have to do, and I admit that it is much. You must, in a word, love these people, if you are to be among them. No ambition is of any use. They scorn your ambi- tion. You must love them, and show your love in these two following ways : 52 SESAME AND LILIES. (a) First, by a true desire to be taught by them, and to enter into their thoughts. To enter into theirs, observe, not to find your own expressed by them. If the person who wrote the book is not viser than you, you need not read it; if he be; e will think differently from you in many re- spects. Very ready we are to say of a book, "How good this is, that's exactly what I think ! " But the right feeling is, " How strange that is ! I never thought of that before, and yet I see it is true ; or if I do not now, I hope I shall some day." But whether thus submissively or not, at least be sure that you go to the author to get at his mean- ing, not to find yours. Judge it afterward if you think yourself qualified to do so ; but ascertain it first. And be sure also, if the author is worth anything, that you will not get at his meaning all at once, nay, that at his whole meaning you will not for a long time arrive in any wise. Not that he does not say what he means, and in strong words too ; but he cannot say it all, and what is more strange, will not, but in a hidden way and in parables, in order that he may be sure you want it. I cannot quite see the reason of this, nor analyze that cruel reticence in the breasts of wise men which makes them always hide their OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 53 deeper thought. They do not give it you by way of help, but of reward, and will make themselves sure that you deserve it before they allow you to reach it. But it is the same with the physic?' type of wisdom, gold. There seems, to you an* me, no reason why the electric forces of the earth should not carry whatever there is of gold within it at once to the mountain-tops ; so the kings and people might know that all the gold they could get was there, and without any trouble of digging, or anxiety, or chance, or waste of time, cut it away, and coin as much as they needed. But Nature does not manage it so. She puts it in little fis- sures in the earth, nobody knows where. You may dig long and find none ; you must dig painfully to find any. 14. And it is just the same with men's best wis- dom. When you come to a good book, you must ask yourself, ' ' Am I inclined to work as an Aus- tralian miner would ? Are my pickaxes and shovels in good order, and am I in good trim, my- self, my sleeves well up to the elbow, and my breath good, and my temper ? " And keeping the figure a little longer, even at cost of tiresomeness, for it is a thoroughly useful one, the metal you are in search of being the author's mind or meaning, his words are as the rock which you have to crush 64 SESAME AND LILIES. and smelt in order to get at it. And your pick- axes are your own care, wit, and learning ; your smelting furnace is your own thoughtful soul. Do not hope to get at any good author's meaning with- out those tools and that fire ; often you will need sharpest, finest chiselling and patientest fusing be- fore you can gather one grain of the metal. 15. And, therefore, first of all, I tell you earn- estly and authoritatively (I know I am right in this) you must get into the habit of looking intensely at words, and assuring yourself of their meaning, syllable by syllable nay, letter by letter. For though it is only by reason of the opposition of letters in the function of signs to sounds in the function of signs, that the study of books is called *' literature," and that a man versed in it is called, by the consent of nations, a man of letters instead of a man of books or of words, you may yet con- nect with that accidental nomenclature this real fact, that you might read all the books in the British Museum (if you could live long enough) and remain an utterly " illiterate," uneducated person ; but that if you read ten pages of a good book, letter by letter, that is to say, with real accuracy, you are forevermore in some measure an educated person. The entire difference between education and non -education (as regards the OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 55 mereiy intellectual part of it) consists in this ac- curacy. A well-educated gentleman may not know many languages, may not be able to speak any but his own, may have read very few books. But whatever language he knows, he knows pre- cisely; whatever word he pronounces, he pro- nounces rightly. Above all, he is learned in the peerage of words, knows the words of true descent and ancient blood, at a glance, from the words of modern canaille, remembers all their ancestry, their intermarriages, distant relationships, and the extent to which they were admitted, and offices they held, among the national noblesse of words at any time and in any country. But an uneducated person may know, by memory, many languages, and talk them all, and yet truly know not a word of any, not a word even of his own. An ordin- arily clever and sensible seaman will be able to make his way ashore at most ports, yet he has only to speak a sentence of any language to be known for an illiterate person ; so also the accent, or turn of expression of a single sentence, will at once mark a scholar. And this is so strongly felt, so conclusively admitted, by educated persons, that a false accent or a mistaken syllable is enough, in the parliament of any civilized nation, to assign 56 SESAME AND LILIES. to a man a certain degree of inferior standing for- ever. 16. And this is right ; but it is a pity that the accuracy insisted on is not greater, and required to a serious purpose. It is right that a false Latin quantity should excite a smile in the House of Commons ; but it is wrong that a false English meaning should not excite a frown there. Let the accent of words be watched, and closely; let their meaning be watched more closely still, and fewer will do the work. A few words, well chosen and distinguished, will do work that a thousand cannot, when every one is acting, equivocally, in the function of another. Yes ; and words, if they are not watched, will do deadly work some- times. There are masked words droning and skulking about us in Europe just now (there never were so many, owing to the spread of a shallow, blotching, blundering, infectious " information," or rather deformation, everywhere, and to the teaching of catechisms and phrases at schools in- stead of human meanings) there are masked vvords abroad, I say, which nobody understands, but which everybody uses, and most people will also fight for, live for, or even die for, fancying they mean this or that or the other of things dear to them; for such words wear chameleon cloaks, OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 57 "ground-lion " cloaks, of the color of the ground of any man's fancy ; on that ground they lie in wait, and rend him with a spring from it. There never were creatures of prey so mischievous, never diplomatists so cunning, never poisoners so deadly, as these masked words ; they are the un- just stewards of all men's ideas. Whatever fancy or favorite instinct a man most cherishes, he gives to his favorite masked word to take care of for him. The word at last comes to have an infinite power over him, you cannot get at him but by its ministry. 17. And in languages so mongrel in breed as the English, there is a fatal power of equivocation put into men's hands, almost whether they will or no, in being able to use Greek or Latin words for an idea when they want it to be awful, and Saxon or otherwise common words when they want it to be vulgar. What a singular and salutary effect, for instance, would be produced on the minds of people who are in the habit of taking the form of the " Word " they live by for the power of which that Word tells them, if we always either retained, or refused, the Greek form "biblos," or "bib- lion," as the right expression for "book," instead of employing it only in the one instance in which we wish to give dignity to the idea, and translat- 58 SESAME AND LILIES. ing it into English everywhere else. How whole- some it would be for many simple persons if in such places (for instance) as Acts xix. 19, we re- tained the Greek expression instead of translating it, and they had to read : " Many of them also which used curious arts brought their Bibles to- gether, and burned them before all men ; and they counted the price of them, and found it fifty thousand pieces of silver " ! Or if, on the other hand, we translated where we retain it, and always spoke of " the Holy Book," instead of " Holy Bible," it might come into more heads than it does at present that the Word of God, by which the heavens were of old, and by which they are now kept in store, 1 cannot be made a present of to any- body in morocco binding, nor sown on any way- side by help either of steam plough or steam press, but is nevertheless being offered to us daily, and by us with contumely refused, and sown in us daily, and by us, as instantly as may be, choked. 18. So, again, consider what effect has been pro- duced on the English vulgar mind by the use of the sonorous Latin form " damno,'' in translating the Greek karakpivio, when people charitably wish to make it forcible ; and the substitution of the temperate "condemn" for it, when they choose i 2 Peter iii. 5-7. OF KINGS TBEASUBIES. 59 to keep it gentle ; and what notable sermons have been preached by illiterate clergymen on ' ' Pie that believeth not shall be damned," though they would shrink with horror from translating Heb. xi. 7, "The saving of his house, by which he damned the world," or John viii. 10-11, "Wo- man, hath no man damned thee ? She said, No man, Lord. Jesus answered her, Neither do I damn thee ; go, and sin no more." And divisions in the mind of Europe, which have cost seas of blood, and in the defence of which the noblest souls of men have been cast away in frantic deso- lation, countless as forest-leaves, though, in the heart of them, founded on deeper causes, have nevertheless been rendered practically possible mainly by the European adoption of the Greek word for a public meeting, " ecclesia," to give peculiar respectability to such meetings, when held for religious purposes and other collateral equivoca- tions, such as the vulgar English one of using the word "priest" as a contraction for " presbyter." 19. Now, in order to deal with words rightly, this is the habit you must form. Nearly every word in your language has been first a word of some other language, of Saxon, German, French, Latin, or Greek (not to speak of Eastern and primitive dialects). And many words have been SO SESAME AND LILIES. all these ; that is to say, have been Greek first, Latin next, French or German next, and English last, undergoing a certain change of sense and use on the lips of each nation, but retaining a deep vital meaning, which all good scholars feel in em- ploying them, even at this day. If you do not know the Greek alphabet, learn it. Young or old, girl or boy, whoever you may be, if you think of reading seriously (which, of course, implies that you have some leisure at command), learn your Greek alphabet ; then get good dictionaries of all these languages, and whenever you are in doubt about a word, hunt it down patiently. Read Max Miiller's lectures thoroughly, to begin with ; and after that, never let a word escape you that looks suspicious. It is severe work ; but you will find it, even at first, interesting, and at last, endlessly amusing. And the general gain to your character in power and precision will be quite incalculable. Mind, this does not imply knowing, or trying to know, Greek or Latin or French. It takes a whole life to learn any language perfectly. But you can easily ascertain the meanings through which the English word has passed, and those which in a good writer's work it must still bear. 20. And now, merely for example's sake, I will, with your permission, read a few lines of a true OF KINGS' TBEASURIES. 61 book with you carefully, and see what will come out of them. I will take a book perfectly known to you all. No English words are more familiar to us, yet few perhaps have been read with less sin- cerity. I will take these few following lines of " Lycidas " : " Last came, and last did go, The pilot of the Galilean lake. Two massy keys he bore of metals twain (The golden opes, the iron shuts amain) : He shook his mitred locks, and stern bespake : 4 How well could I have spared for thee, young swain, Enow of such as for their bellies' sake Creep and intrude and climb into the fold ! Of other care they little reckoning make Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, And shove away the worthy bidden guest ; Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know how to hol away the key of knowledge, yet entered not in themselves." We have seen that the duties of bishop and pastor are to see and feed, and of all who do so it is said, " He that watereth, shall be watered also himself." But the reverse is truth also. He that watereth not, shall be withered himself; and he that seeth not, shall himself be shut out of sight, shut into the perpetual prison-house. And that prison opens here as well as hereafter ; he who is to be bound in heaven must first be bound on earth. That command to the strong angeis, of which the rock-apostle is the image, " Take him, and bind him hand and foot, and cast him out," issues, in its measure, a gainst the teacher, for every help withheld, and for every truth refused, and for every falsehood enforced ; so that he is more strictly fettered the more he fetters, and farther out- cast as he more and more misleads, till at last the bars of the iron cage close upon him, and as ' the golden opes, the iron shuts amain." 25. We have got something out of the lines, I think, and much more is yet to be found in them ; but we have done enough by way of example of the kind of word -by- word examination of your author which is rightly called "reading," watching every accent and expression, and put- 70 SESAME AND LILIES. ting ourselves always in the author's place, annihi- lating our own personality, and seeking to enter into his, so as to be able assuredly to say, ' ' Thus Milton thought, ' ' not ' ' Thus / thought, in mis- reading Milton." And by this process you will gradually come to attach less weight to your own " Thus I thought " at other times. You will be- gin to perceive that what you thought was a matter of no serious importance ; that your thoughts on any subjects are not perhaps the clearest and wisest that could be arrived at thereupon ; in fact, that unless you are a very singular person, you cannot be said to have any " thoughts" at all ; that you have no materials for them in any serious mat- ters, 1 no right to "think," but only to try to learn more of the facts. Nay, most probably all your life (unless, as I said, you are a singular per- son) you will have no legitimate right to an "opinion " on any business, except that instantly under your hand. What must of necessity be done you can always find out, beyond question, how to do. Have you a house to keep in order, a commodity to sell, a field to plough, a ditch to cleanse? There need be no two opinions about i Modern " education " for the most part signifies giving people the faculty of thinking wrong on every conceivable subject of importance to them. OF KINGS' TBEASURIES. 71 the proceedings ; it is at your peril if you have not much more than an "opinion" on the way to manage such matters. And also, outside of your own business, there are one or two subjects on which you are bound to have but one opinion, that roguery and lying are objectionable, and ure instantly to be flogged out of the way whenever* discovered; that covetousness and love of quar- relling are dangerous dispositions even in children, and deadly dispositions in men and nations ; that jn the end, the God of heaven and earth loves ac- tive, modest, and kind people, aud hates idle, proud, greedy, and cruel ones. On these general facts you are bound to have but one, and that a very strong, opinion. For the rest, respecting religions, governments, sciences, arts, you will find that on the whole you can know NOTHING, judge nothing ; that the best you can do, even though you may be a well-educated person, is to be silent, and strive to be wiser every day, and to understand a little more of the thoughts of others, which so soon as you try to do honestly, you will discover that the thoughts even of the wisest are very little more than pertinent questions. To put the difficulty into a clear shape, and ex- hibit to you the grounds for ///decision, that is all they can generally do for you ; and well for them 72 SESAME AND LILIES. and for us if indeed they are able "tomixth. music with our thoughts, and sadden us witU heavenly doubts." This writer from whom I have been reading to you is not among the first or wisest. He sees shrewdly as far as he sees, and therefore it is easy to find out his full meaning ; but with the greater men you cannot fathom their meaning ; they do not even wholly measure it themselves, it is so wide. Suppose I had asked you, for instance, to seek for Shakespeare's opinion instead of Milton's on this matter of church authority, or of Dante's ? Have any of you at this instant the least idea what either thought about it? Have you ever balanced the scene with the bishops in Richard III. against the character of Cranmer; the description of Saint Francis and Saint Dominic against that of him who made Virgil wonder to gaze upon him, " disteso, tanto vilmente, r.ell' eterno esilio ; " or of him whom Dante stood beside, " come '1 frate che confessa lo perfido assassin"? 1 Shakespeare and Alighieri knew men better than most of us, I presume. They were both in the midst of the main struggle be- tween the temporal and spiritual powers. They had an opinion, we may guess. I3:'.t \\'ne-:e is it? Bring it into court ! Put Shakespeare's r,( t)ante's i Inf. xxiii. 125, 126; xix. 49, 50 OF KINGS TREASURIES. 73 creed into articles, and send it up for trial by the ecclesiastical courts ! 26. You will not be able, I tell you again, for many and many a day to come at the real purposes and teaching of these great men ; but a very little honest study of them will enable you to perceive that what you took for your own " judgment " was mere chance prejudice and drifted, helpless, entangled weed of castaway thought, nay, you will see that most men's minds are indeed little better than rough heath wilderness, neglected and stubborn, partly barren, partly overgrown with pestilent brakes and venomous, wind-sown herbage of evil surmise ; that the first thing you have to do for them and yourself is eagerly and scornfully to set fire to this, burn all the jungle into whole- some ash-heaps, and then plough and sow. All the true literary work before you, for life, must begin with obedience to that order, " Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns" 27. () l Having then faithfully listened to the great teachers, that you may enter into their thoughts, you have yet this higher advance to make, you have to enter into their hearts. As you go to them first for clear sight, so you must stay with them that you may share at last their just i Compare 13 above. 74 SESAME AND LILIES. and mighty passion. Passion, or " sensation." I am not afraid of the word, still less of the thing. You have heard many outcries against sensation lately, but, I can tell you, it is not less sensation we want, but more. The ennobling difference be- tween one man and another between one animal and another is precisely in this, that one feels more than another. If we were sponges, perhaps sensation might not be easily got for us; if we were earth-worms, liable at every instant to be cut in two by the spade, perhaps too much sensa- tion might not be good for us. But being human creatures, // t's good for us; nay, we are only human in so far as we are sensitive, and our honor is precisely in proportion to our passion. 28. You know I said of that great and pure society of the dead that it would allow "no vain or vulgar person to enter there." What do you think I meant by a ' ' vulgar ' ' person ? What do you yourselves mean by " vulgarity " ? You will find it a fruitful subject of thought ; but, briefly, the essence of all vulgarity lies in want of sensation. Simple and innocent vulgarity is merely an untrained and undeveloped bluntness of body and mind ; but in true, inbred vulgarity there is a dreadful callousness which in extremity becomes capable of every sort of bestial habit and crime, without OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 75 fear, without pleasure, without horror, and with- out pity. It is in the blunt hand and the dead heart, in the diseased habit, in the hardened con- science, that men become vulgar ; they are for- ever vulgar, precisely in proportion as they are in- capable of sympathy, of quick understanding, of all that, in deep insistence on the common but most accurate term, maybe called the "tact " or " touch-faculty " of body and soul; that tact which the Mimosa has in trees, which the pure woman has above all creatures, fineness and full- ness of sensation, beyond reason, the guide and sanctifier of reason itself. Reason can but deter- mine what is true ; it is the God-given passion of humanity which alone can recognize what God has made good. 29. We come, then, to that great concourse of the dead, not merely to know from them- what is true, but chiefly to feel with them what is just. Now, to feel with them, we must be like them ; and none of us can become that without pains. As the true knowledge is disciplined and tested knowledge, not the first thought that comes, so the true passion is disciplined and tested passion, not the first passion that comes. The first that come ire the vain, the false, the treacherous ; if you yield to them, they will lead you wildly and far, 76 SESAME AND LILIES. in vain pursuit, in hollow enthusiasm, till you have no true purpose and no true passion left. Not that any feeling possible to humanity is in itself wrong, but only wrong when undisciplined. Its no- bility is in its force and justice ; it is wrong when it is weak, and felt for paltry cause. There is a mean wonder, as of a child who sees a juggler tossing golden balls, and this is base, if you will. But do you think that the wonder is ignoble, or the sensation less, with which every human soul is called to watch the golden balls of heaven tossed through the night by the hand that made them ? There is a mean curiosity, as of a child opening a forbidden door, or a servant prying into her mas- ter's business, and a noble curiosity, questioning, in the front of danger, the source of the great river beyond the sand, the place of the great con- tinent beyond the sea ; a nobler curiosity still, which questions of the source of the River of Life, ind of the space of the Continent of Heaven, things which " the angels desire to look into." So the anxiety is ignoble with which you linger over the course and catastrophe of an idle tale; but do you think the anxiety is less or greater with which you watch, or ought to watch, the dealings of fate and destiny with the life of an agonized tation ? Alas ! it is the narrowness, selfishness, OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 77 minuteness of your sensation that you have to de- plore in England at this day, sensation which spends itself in bouquets and speeches, in revel- lings and junketings, in sham fights and gay pup- uet-shows, while you can look on and see noble nations murdered, man by man, without an effort or a tear. 30. I said "minuteness" and "selfishness" of sensation ; but it would have been enough to have said "injustice" or "unrighteousness" of sensa- tion. For as in nothing is a gentleman better to be discerned from a vulgar person, so in nothing is a gentle nation (such nations have been) better to be discerned from a mob than in this, that their feelings are constant and just, results of due contemplation, and of equal thought. You can talk a mob into anything; its feelings may be, usually are, on the whole, generous and right, but it has no foundation for them, no hold f them. You may tease or tickle it into any at your pleasure ; it thinks by infection, for the most part, catching an opinion like a cold, and there is nothing so little that it will not roar itself wild about, when the fit is on, nothing so great but it will forget in an hour when the fit is past. But a gentleman's, or a gentle nation's, passions are just, measured, and continuous. A great nation, for 78 SESAME AND LILIES. instance, does not spend its entire national wits for a couple of months in weighing evidence of a single ruffian's having done a single murder, and for a couple of years see its own children murder each other by their thousands or tens of thousands a day, considering only what the effect is likely to be on the price of cotton, and caring nowise to determine which side of battle is in the wrong. Neither does a great nation send its poor little boys to jail for stealing six walnuts ; and allow its bankrupts to steal their hundreds of thousands with a bow, and its bankers, rich with poor men's savings, to close their doors "under circumstances over which they have no control," with a "by your leave;" and large landed estates to be bought by men who have made their money by going with armed steamers up and down the China Seas, selling opium at the cannon's mouth, and altering, for the benefit of the foreign nation, the common highwayman's demand of " your money or your life," into that of " your "money and your life." Neither does a great nation allow the lives of its innocent poor to be parched out of them by fog fever, and rotted cut of them by dunghill plague, for the sake of sixpence a life extra per week to its landlords, 1 and then debate, with driv- 1 See not* at end of lecture. I have put it in large type, OJEP KINGS' TEEASUBIES. 79 elling tears and diabolical sympathies, whether it ought not piously to save, and nursingly cherish, the lives of its murderers. Also, a great nation having made up its mind that hanging is quite the wholesomest process for its homicides in general, can yet with mercy distinguish between the de- grees of guilt in homicides, and does not yelp like a pack of frost-pinched wolf-cubs on the blood- track of an unhappy crazed boy, or gray-haired clodpate Othello, "perplexed i' the extreme," at the very moment that it is sending a minister of the crown to make polite speeches to a man who is bayoneting young girls in their fathers' sight, and killing noble youths in cold blood faster than a country butcher kills lambs in spring. And, lastly, a great nation does not mock Heaven and its Powers by pretending belief in a revelation which asserts the love of money to be the root of all evil, and declaring at the same time that it is actuated, and intends to be actuated, in all chief national deeds and measures, by no other love. 31. My friends, I do not know why any of us should talk about reading. We want some sharper discipline than that of reading ; but, at all events, be assured, we cannot read. No reading is pos- .Vcause the course of matters since it was written has made it perhaps better worth attention. 60 SESAME AND LILIES. sible for a people with its mind in this state. No sentence of any great writer is intelligible to them. It is simply and sternly impossible for the English public at this moment to understand any thought- ful writing, so incapable of thought has it be- come in its insanity of avarice. Happily, our disease is as yet little worse than this incapacity of thought; it is not corruption of the inner nature : we ring true still, when anything strikes home to us ; and though the idea that everything should "pay" has infected our every purpose so deeply that even when we would play the good Samaritan, we never take out our two-pence and sive them to the host without saying, "When I come again thou shalt give me fourpence," there is a capacity of noble passion left in our hearts' core. We show it in our work, I*; our war, even in those unjust domestic affections which make us furious at a small private wrong, while we are po- lite to a boundless public one. We are still indus- trious to the last hour of the day, though we add the gambler's fury to the laborer's patience; we are -still brave to the death, though incapable of discerning true cause for battle, and are still true in affection to our own flesh, to the death, as the sea-monsters are, and the rock-eagles. And there is hope for a nation while this can be still said of SIR WALTER SCOTT OF KINGS' TEEASUBIES. 81 it. As long as it holds its life in its hand, ready to give it for its honor (though a foolish honor), for its love (though a selfish love), and for its busi- ness (though a base business), there is hope for it. But hope only ; for this instinctive, reckless virtue cannot last. No nation can last which has made a mob of itself, however generous at heart. It must discipline its passions and direct them, 01 they will discipline /'/, one day, with scorpion- whips. Above all, a nation cannot last as a money-making mob; it cannot with impunity, it cannot with existence, go on despising literature, despising science, despising art, despising nature, despising compassion, and concentrating its soul on pence. Do you think these are harsh or wild words ? Have patience with me but a little longer. I will prove their truth to you, clause by clause. 32. (a) I say first we have despised literature. What do we, as a nation, care about books ? How much do you think we spend altogether on our libraries, public or private, as compared with what we spend on our horses ? If a man spends lavishly on his library, you call him mad, a bibliomaniac. But you never call any one a horse-maniac, though men ruin themselves every day by their horses, and you do not hear of people ruining themselves by their books. Or, to go lower still, how much do I 82 SESAME AND LILIES. you think the contents of the book-shelves of the United Kingdom, public and private, would fetch, as compared with the contents of its wine-cellars? What position would its expenditure on literature take, as compared with its expenditure on luxuri- ous eating ? We talk of food for the mind as of food for the body. Now, a good book contains such food inexhaustibly : it is a provision for life, and for the best part of us ; yet how long most people would look at the best book before they would give the price of a large turbot for it ! though there have been men who have pinched their stomachs and bared their backs to buy a book, whose libraries were cheaper to them, I think, in the end, than most men's dinners are. We are few of us put to such trial, and more is the pity ; for indeed, a precious thing is all the more precious to us if it has been won by work or economy. And if public libraries were half as costly as public dinners, or books cost the tenth part of what bracelets do, even foolish men and women might sometimes suspect there was good in reading, as well as in munching and sparkling ; whereas the very cheapness of literature is making even wise people forget that if a book is worth reading, it is worth buying. No book is worth anything which is not worth much ; nor is it serv- OF KINGS' TKEASUKIES. 83 iceable until it has been read and re-read, and loved and loved again, and marked, so that you can refer to the passages you want in it, as a sol- dier can seize the weapon he needs in an armory, or a house-wife bring the spice she needs from her store. Bread of flour is good, but there is bread, sweet as honey, if we would eat it, in a good book ; and the family must be poor indeed, which, once in their lives, cannot for such multipliable barley- loaves pay their baker's bill. We call ourselves a rich nation, and we are filthy and foolish enough to thumb each other's books out of circulating libraries. 33. () I say we have despised science. " What ! " you exclaim, "are we not foremost in all discovery, 1 and is not the whole world giddy by reason, or unreason, of our inventions?" Yes, but do you suppose that is national work ? That work is all done in spite of the nation, by private people's zeal and money. We are glad enough, indeed, to make our profit of science. We snap up anything in the way of a scientific bone that has meat on it, eagerly enough ; but if 1 Since this was written, the answer has become defin- itely No, v,-e have surrendered the field of Arctic discovery to the Continental nations, as being ourselves too poor to pay for ships. 84 SESAME AND LILIES. the scientific man comes for a bone or a crust to us, that is another story. What have we publicly done for science ? We are obliged to know what o'clock it is, for the safety of our ships, and there- fore we pay for an observatory ; and we allow oar- selves, in the person of our Parliament, to be annually tormented into doing something, in a slovenly way, for the British Museum, sullenly apprehending that to be a place for keeping stuffed birds in, to amuse our children. If anybody will pay for their own telescope, and resolve another nebula, we cackle over the discernment as if it were our own. If one in ten thousand of our hunting squires suddenly perceives that the earth was indeed made to be something else than a por- tion for foxes, and burrows in it himself and tells us where the gold is and where the coals, we understand that there is seme use in that, and very properly knight him ; but is the accident of kis having found out how to employ himself use- fully any credit to us ? (The negation of such discovery among his brother squires may perhaps be some accredit to us, if we would consider of it.) But if you doubt these generalities, here is one fact for us all to meditate upon, ill .'.strati ve of our love of science. Two years ago there was a collection of the fossils of Solenhofen to be sold OJT KINGS' TREASURIES. 85 in Bavaria, the best in existence, containing many specimens unique for perfectness, and one, unique as an example of a species (a whole king- dom of unknown living creatures being announced by that fossil). This collection, of which the mere market worth, among private buyers, would probably have been some thousand or twelve hundred pounds, was offered to the English nation for seven hundred ; but we would not give seven hundred, and the whole series would have been in the Munich museum at this moment, if Professor Owen 1 had not, with loss of his own time, and patient tormenting of the British public in person of its representatives, got leave to give four hundred pounds at once, and himself become answerable for the other three, which the said public will doubtless pay him eventually, but sulkily, and caring nothing about the matter all the while, only always ready to cackle if any credit comes of it. Consider, I beg of you, arith- metically, what this fact means. Your annual ex- penditure for public purposes (a third of it foi i I state this fact without Professor Owen's permission, which of course he could not with propriety have granted, had I asked it ; but I consider it so important that the public should be aware of the fact, that I do what seems to m? tight, though rude. 86 SESAME AND LILIES. military apparatus) is at least fifty millions. Now seven hundred pounds is to fifty million pounds, roughly, as sevenpence is to two thousand pounds. Suppose, then, a gentleman of unknown income, but whose wealth was to be conjectured from the fact that he spent two thousand a year on his park walls and footmen only, professes himself fond of science; and that one of his servants comes eagerly to tell him that an unique collection of fossils, giving clew to a new era of creation, is to be had for the sum of sevenpence sterling; and that the gentleman who is fond of science, and spends two thousand a year on his park, answers, after keeping his servant waiting several months, "Well, I'll give you fourpence for them, if you will be answerable for the extra threepence your- self till next year ! " 34. (c) I say you have despised art ! ." What ! " you again answer, " have we not art exhibitions, Hiiles long ; and do not we pay thousands of pounds for single pictures ; and have we not art schools and institutions, more than ever nation had before ? ' ' Yes, truly, but all that is for the sake of the shop. You would fain sell canvas as well as coals, and crockery as well as iron; you tvould take every other nation's bread out of its OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 87 mouth if you could. 1 Not being able to do that, your ideal of life is to stand in the thoroughfares of the world, like Ludgate apprentices, screaming to every passer-by, "What d' ye lack?" You know nothing of your own faculties or circum- stances. You fancy that among your damp, flat, fat fields of clay you can have as quick art fancy as the Frenchman among his bronzed vines, or the Italian under his volcanic cliffs ; that art may be learned as book-keeping is, and when learned, will give you more books to keep. You care for pictures absolutely no more than you do for the bills pasted on your dead walls. There is always room on the wall for the bills to be read, never for the pictures to be seen. You do not know what pictures you have (by repute) in the country, nor whether they are false or true, nor whether they are taken care of or not ; in foreign countries, you calmly see the noblest existing pictures in the world rotting in abandoned wreck (in Venice you saw the Austrian guns deliberately pointed at the palaces containing them), and if you heard that all the fine pictures in Europe were made into 1 That was our real idea of " Free Trade," " All the trade to myself." You find now that by " competition " other people can manage to sell something as well as you- and now we call for " Protection " again. Wretches ! 88 SESAME AND LILIES. sand bags to-morrow on the Austrian forts, it would not trouble you so much as the chance of a brace or two of game less in your own bags, in a day's shooting. That is your national love of art. 35. (d) You have despised Nature; that is to say, all the deep and sacred sensations of natural scenery. The French revolutionists made stables of the cathedrals of France ; you have made race- courses of the cathedrals of the earth. Your one conception of pleasure is to drive in railroad car- riages round their aisles, and eat off their altars. 1 You have put a railroad-bridge over the falls of Schaffhausen. You have tunnelled the cliffs of Lucerne by Tell's chapel ; you have destroyed the Clarens shore of the Lake of Geneva ; there is not a quiet valley in England that you have not filled with bellowing fire ; there is no particle left of English land which you have not trampled coal ashes into, 2 nor any foreign city in which the 1 1 meant that the beautiful places of the world, Switzerland, Italy, South Germany, and so on, are, indeed, the truest cathedrals places to be reverent in, and to wor- ship in ; and that we only care to drive through them ; and to eat and drink at their most sacred places. * I was singularly struck, some years ago, by finding all the river shore at Richmond, in Yorkshire, black in its earth from the mere drift of soot-laden air from pkces many miles away. OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 89 spread of your presence is not marked among its fair old streets and happy gardens by a consuming white leprosy of new hotels and perfumers' shops. The Alps themselves, which your own poets used to love so reverently, you look upon as soaped poles in a bear-garden, which you set yourselves to climb and slide down again, with " shrieks of de- light." When you are past shrieking, having no human articulate voice to say you are glad with, you fill the quietude of their valleys with gun- powder blasts, and rush home red with cutaneous eruption of conceits, and voluble with convulsive hiccough of self-satisfaction. I think nearly the two sorrowfullest spectacles I have ever seen in humanity, taking the deep inner significance cf them, are the English mobs in the valley of Chamouni, amusing themselves with firing rusty howitzers ; and the Swiss vintagers of Zurich, ex- pressing their Christian thanks for the gift of the vine by assembling in knots in the " towers of the vineyards," and slowly loading and firing horse- pistols from morning till evening. It is pitiful to have dim conceptions of duty ; more pitiful, it seems to me, to have conceptions like these of mirth. 36. Lastly, you despise compassion. There is no need of words of mine for proof of this. I will merely print one of the newspaper paragraphs 90 SESAME AND LILIES. which I am in the habit of cutting out and throwing into my store-drawer; here is one from a "Daily Telegraph " of an early date this year (1867) ; (date which, though by me carelessly left unmarked, is easily discoverable ; for on the back of the slip there is the announcement that "yes- terday the seventh of the special services of this year was performed by the Bishop of Ripon in St. Paul's"); it relates only one of such facts as happen now daily ; this by chance having taken a form in which it came before the coroner. I vill print the paragraph in red. Be sure, the facts themselves are written in that color, in a book \vhich we shall all of us, literate or illiterate, have f o read our page of, some day. 1 An inquiry was held on Friday by Mr. Richards, deputy coroner, at the White Horse tavern, Christ Church, Spitalfields, respecting the death of Michael Collins, aged 58 years. Mary Collins, a miserable-looking woman, said that she lived with the deceased and his son in a room at 2, Cobb'? Court, Christ Church. Deceased was a " trans- lator " of boots. Witness went out and bought old boots ; deceased and his son made them into good ones, and then witness sold them for what she could get at the shops, which was very little 1 In the English edition the following matter to $ 37 wa? printed in red ink. OF KLNGS' TREASURIES. 91 Indeed. Deceased and his son used to work night and day to try and get a little bread and tea, and pay for the room (zs. a week), so as to keep the home together. On Friday- night week, deceased got up from his bench and began to shiver. He threw down the boots, saying, ' ' Somebody else must finish them when I am gone, for I can do no more." There was no fire, and he said, "I would be better if I was warm." Witness therefore took two pairs of ' ' translated ' ' boots 1 to sell at the shop ; but she could only get 14^. for the two pairs, for the people at the shop said, " We must have our profit." Witness got i4.1bs. of coal, and a little tea and bread. Her son sat up the whole night to make the "translations," to get money, but deceased died on Saturday morning. The family never had enough to eat. Coroner : "It seems to me deplorable that you did not go into the workhouse." Witness: "We wanted the comforts of our little home." A juror asked what the comforts were, for he only saw a little straw in the corner of the room, the windows of which were broken. The witness began to cry, and said i One of the things which we must very resolutely en- force, for the good of all classes, in our future arrangements, must be that they wear no " translated " article of dress. See the preface. 92 SESAME AND LILIES. that they had a quilt and other little things. The deceased said he never would go into the work- house. In summer, when the season was good, t'ley sometimes made as much as los. profit in the week. They then always saved toward the next week, which was generally a bad one. In winter they made not half so much. For three years they had been getting from bad to worse. Cornelius Collins said that he had assisted his father since 1847. They used to work so far into the night that both nearly lost their eyesight. Witness now had a film over his eyes. Five years ago deceased applied to the parish for aid. The relieving offi- cer gave him a 4lb. loaf, and told him if he came again he should get the "stones." 1 That dis- 1 This abbreviation of the penalty of useless labor is Curiously coincident in verbal form with a certain passage which some of us may remember. It may perhaps be well to preserve beside this paragraph another cutting out of my store-drawer, from the " Morning Post," of about a parallel date, Friday, March 10, 1865 : " The satons of Mme. C , who did the honors with clever imitative grace and elegance, were crowded with princes, dukes, marquises, and counts in fact, with the same male com- pany as one meets at the parties of the Princess Metter- nich and Madame Drouyn de Lhuys. Some English peers and members of Parliament were present, and appeared to enjoy the animated and dazzling improper scene. On OF KINGS' TREASUKIEb. 93 gusted deceased, and he would have nothing to do with them since. They got worse and worse umil last Friday week, when they had not even a half- penny to buy a candle. Deceased then lay down on the straw, and said he could not live till morn ing. A juror: "You are dying of starvation yourself, and you ought to go into the house un-til the summer." Witness: "If we went in, we should die. When we came out in the summer, we should be like people dropped from the sky. No the secend flor the supper tables were leaded with every delicasy of the seasan. That your readers may form same idea of the dainty fare of the Parisian demi-monde, I copy the menu of the supper, which was srved to all the guests (about 200) seated at four o'clock. Choice Yquem, Johan- nisberg, Laffitte, Tokay, and champagne of the finest vint- ages were served most lavishly throughout the morning. After supper dancing was resumed with increased anima- tio, and the ball terminated with a chaine diabolique and a cancan (Fenfer at seven in the morning. (Moraing service ' Ere the fresh lawns appeared, under the open- ing eyelids of the Morn.') Here is the menu : ' Con- somme de volaille a la Bagration : 16 hors-d'oeuvres varies. Boackees a la Talleyrand. Saumens freids, sauce Ravigote. Filets de bceuf en Bellevue, timbales milanaises, chaudfroid de gibier. Dindes truffees. Pates de foies gras, buissons d'ecrevisses, salades venetiennes, gelees blanches aux fruits, gateaux mancini, parisiens et parisiennes. Fremages glaces. Ananas. Dessert.'" 94 SESAME AND L1LJ.E3. one would know us, and we would not have even a room. I could work now if I had food, for my sight would get better." Dr. G. P. Walker said deceased died from syncope, from exhaustion from want of food. The deceased had had no ber< clothes. For four months he had had nothing bi.; bread to eat. There was not a particle of fat li- the body. There was no disease, but if there had been medical attendance, he might have survived the syncope, or fainting. The coroner having re- marked upon the painful nature of the case, the jury returned the following verdict, "That de- ceased died from exhaustion from want of food and the common necessaries of life; also through want of medical aid." 37. "Why would witness not go into the work- house?" you ask. Well, the poor seem to have a prejudice against the workhouse which the rich have not ; for of course every one who takes a pension from Government goes into the workhouse on a grand scale ; 1 only the workhouses for the rich do not involve the idea of work, and should be called play-houses. But the poor like to die i Please observe this statement, and think of it, aH^ consider how it happens that a poor old woman will bg ashamed to take a shilling a week from the country, but no one is ashamed to take a pension of a thousand a year. OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 95 independently, it appears; perhaps if we made the play-houses for them pretty and pleasant enough, or gave them their pensions at home, and allowed them a little introductory speculation with the public money, their minds might be reconciled to the conditions. Meantime, here are the facts : we make our relief either so insulting to them, or so painful, that they rather die than take it at our hands ; or, for third alternative, we leave them so untaught and foolish that they starve like brute creatures, wild and dumb, not knowing what to do, or what to ask. I say, you despise compas- sion ; if you did not, such a newspaper paragraph would be as impossible in a Christian country as a deliberate assassination permitted in its public streets. 1 "Christian" did I say? Alas, if we 1 I am heartily glad to see such a paper as the " Pal) Mall Gazette " established ; for the power of the press in the hands of highly-educated men, in independent position, and of honest purpose, may, indeed, become all that it has been hitherto vainly vaunted to be. Its editor will there- fore, I doubt not, pardon me, in that, by very reason of my respect for the journal, I do not let pass unnoticed an article in its third number, page 5, which was wrong in every word of it, with the intense wrongness which only an honest man can achieve who has taken a false turn of thought in the outset, and is following it, regardless of consequences. It contained at the end this notable passage : 96 SESAME AND LILIES. were but wholesomely w-Christian, it would be impossible ; it is our imaginary Christianity that " The bread of affliction, and the water of affliction aye, and the bedstead and blankets ->f affliction, are the very ut- most that the law ought to give to outcasts merely as out- casts" I merely put beside this expression of the gentle- manly mind of England in 1865, a part of the message which Isaiah was ordered to "lift up his voice like a trumpet " in declaring to the gentlemen of his day : " Ye fast for strife, and to smite with the fist of wickedness. Is not this the fast that I have chosen, to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out [margin, " afflicted "J to thy house ? " The falsehood on which the writer had mentally founded himself, as pie- viously stated by him, was this : " To confound the func- tions of the dispensers of the poor-rates with those of the dispensers of a charitable institution is a great and perni- cious error." This sentence is so accurately and exqui- sitely wrong, that its substance must be thus revised in our minds before we can deal with any existing problem of na- tional distress. " To understand that the dispensers of the poor-rates are the almoners of the nation, and should dis- tribute its alms with a gentleness and freedom of hand as much greater and franker than that possible to individual charity 85 the collective national wisdom and power may be supposed greater than those of any single person, is the foundation of all law respecting pauperism." (Since this was written the " Pall Mall Gazette " has become a mere party-paper like the rest ; but it writes well, and does more good than mischief on the whole.) OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 97 helps us to commit these crimes, for we revel and luxuriate in our faith, for the lewd sensation of it ; dressing // up, like everything else, in fiction. The dramatic Christianity of the organ and aisle, of dawn-service and twilight-revival, the Chris- tianity which we do not fear to mix the mocker of, pictorially, with our play about the devil, in our Satanellas, Roberts, Fausts ; chanting hymns through tracer ied windows for background effect, and artistically modulating the "Dio" through variation on variation of mimicked prayer, while we distribute tracts next day, for the benefit of uncultivated swearers, upon what we suppose to be the signification of the Third Commandment. This gas-lighted and gas-inspired Christianity we are triumphant in, and draw back the hem of our robes from the touch of the heretics who dispute it. But to do a piece of common Christian righteousness in plain English word or deed, to make Christian law any rule of life and found one national act or hope thereon, we know too well what our faith comes to for that ! You might sooner get lightning out of incense smoke than true action or passion out of your modern English religion. You had better get rid of the smoke and the organ pipes, both. Leave them and the Gothic windows and the painted glass to 7 , SESAME AND LILIES. the property man ; give up your carburetted hy- drogen ghost in one healthy expiration, and look after Lazarus at the doorstep. For there is a true church wherever one hand meets another helpfully, and that is the only holy or Mother Church which ever was, or ever shall be. 38. All these pleasures then, and all these vir- tues, I repeat, you nationally despise. You have, indeed, men among you who do not ; by whose work, by whose strength, by whose life, by whose death, you live, and never thank them. Your wealth, your amusement, your pride, would all be alike impossible, but for those whom you scorn or forget. The policeman, who is walking up and down the back lane all night to watch the guilt you have created there, and may have his brains beaten out, and be maimed for life, at any mo- ment, and never be thanked ; the sailor wrestling with the sea's rage ; the quiet student poring over his book or his phial ; the common worker, with- out praise, and nearly without bread, fulfilling his task as your horses drag your carts, hopeless, and spurned of all : these are the men by whom Eng- land lives ; but they are not the nation ; they are only the body and nervous force of it, acting still from old habit in a convulsive perseverance, while the mind is gone. Our national wish and purpose OF KINGS' TREASURIES. 99 are only to be amused ; our national religion is the performance of church ceremonies, and preach- ; ng of soporific truths (or untruths; to keep the mob quietly at work, while we amuse ourselves ; and the necessity for this amusement is fastening on us, as a feverous disease of parched throat and vandering eyes senseless, dissolute, merciless, 'iow literally that word I wish there were a true order of chivalry instituted for our English youth of certain ranks, in which both boy and girl should receive, at a given age, their knighthood and ladyhood by true title ; attainable only by certain probation and trial both of character and accomplishment ; and to be forfeited on conviction by their peers of any dishonorable act. i-uch an institution would be entirely, and with all noble results, possible in a nation which loved honor. That '* would not be possible among us is not to the dis* credit of the scheme. OF QUEENS' GABDENS. 169 the law which is maintained in the house, nor to the bread which is given to the household, but to law maintained for the multitude, and to bread broken among the multitude. So that a Lord has legal claim only to his title in so far as he is the maintainer of the justice of the Lord of Lords; and a Lady has legal claim to her title only so far as she communicates that help to the poor repre- sentatives of her Master, which women once, min- istering to Him of their substance, were permitted to extend to that Master Himself; and wher she is known, as He Himself once was, in breaking of bread. 89. And this beneficent and legal dominion, this power of the dominus, or House-Lord, and of the domina, or House-Lady, is great and vener- able, not in the number of those through whom it has lineally descended, but in the number of those whom it grasps within its sway ; it is always re- garded with reverent worship wherever its dynasty is founded on its duty, and its ambition correlative with its beneficence. Your fancy is pleased with the thought of being noble ladies, with a train of vassals ? Be it so ; you cannot be too noble, and your train cannot be too great; but see to it that your train is of vassals whom you serve and feed, not merely of slaves who serve and feed you ; and 160 SESAME AND LILIES. that the multitude which obeys you is of those whom you have comforted, not oppressed, whom you have redeemed, and led into captivity. 90. And this, which is true of the lower or household dominion, is equally true of the queenly dominion ; that highest dignity is open to you if you will also accept that highest duty. Rex et rcgina rot et rdne " right-doers ; " they differ but from the Lady and Lord in that their power is supreme over the mind as over the person ; that they not only feed and clothe, but direct and teach. And whether consciously or not you must be in many a heart enthroned. There is no put- ting by that crown; queens you must always be, queens to your lovers ; queens to your husbands and your sens ; queens of higher mystery to the world beyond, which bows itself, and will forever bow, before the myrtle crown and the stainless sceptre of womanhood. But, alas ! you are too often idle and careless queens, grasping at majesty in the least things, while you abdicate it in the greatest ; and leaving misrule and violence to work their will among men, in defiance of the power which, holding straight in gift from the Prince of all Peace, the wicked among you betray and the good forget. 91. "Prince of Peace." Note that name Sesame and Lilies 4 HOMER OP QUEENS' GARDENS. 161 When kings rule in that name, and nobles, and the judges of the earth, they also in their narrow place and mortal measure receive the power of it. There are no other rulers than they; other rule than theirs is but misrule ; they who govern verily " Dei Gratia" are all princes, yes, or princesses, of peace. There is not a war in the world, no, nor an injustice, but you women are answerable for it; not in that you have provoked, but in that you have not hindered. Men by their nature are prone to fight; they will fight for any cause, or for none. It is for you to choose their cause for them, and to forbid them when there is no cause. There is no suffering, no injustice, no misery in the earth, but the guilt of it lies with you. Men can bear the sight of it, but you should not be able to bear it. Men may tread it down without sympathy, in their own struggle ; but men are feeble in sympa- thy and contracted in hope : it is you only who can feel the depths of pain, and conceive the way of its healing. Instead of trying to do this, you turn away from it; you shut yourselves within your park walls and garden gates ; and you are content to know that there is beyond them a whole world in wilderness a world of secrets which you dare not penetrate, and of suffering which you dare not conceive. 11 162 ESAME AND LILIES. 92. I tell you that this is to me quite the most amazing among the phenomena of humanity. I am surprised at no depths to which, when once warped from its honor, that humanity can be de- graded. I do not wonder at the miser's death, with his hands, as they relax, dropping gold. I do not wonder at the sensualist's life, with the shroud wrapped about his feet. I do not wonder at the single-handed murder of a single victim, done by the assassin in the darkness of the rail- way or reed-shadow of the marsh. I do not even wonder at the myriad-handed murder of multi- tudes, done boastfully in the daylight by the frenzy of nations, and the immeasurable, unimagin- able guilt, heaped up from hell to heaven, of their priests and kings. But this is wonderful to me oh, how wonderful ! to see the tender and deli- cate woman among you, with her child at her breast, and a power, if she would wield it, over it and over its father, purer than the air of heaven and stronger than the seas of earth, nay, a mag- nitude of blessing which her husband would not part with for all that earth itself, though it were made of one entire and perfect chrysolite, to see her abdicate this majesty to play at precedence with >or next-door neighbor ! This is wonderful oh. vonderful ! to see her, with every innocent feel- OF QUEENS' GAKDENS. 163 ing fresh within her, go out in the morning into her garden to play with the fringes of its guarded flowers, and lift their heads when they are droop- ing, with her happy smile upon her face and no cloud upon her brow, because there is a little wall around her place of peace ; and yet she knows in her heart, if she would only look for its knowl- edge, that outside of that little rose-covered wall, the wild grass, to the horizon, is torn up by the agony of men, and beat level by the drift of their life-blood. 93. Have you ever considered what a deep un- der-meaning there lies, or at least may be read, if we choose, in our custom of strewing flowers be- fore those whom we think most happy ? Do you suppose it is merely to deceive them into the hope that happiness is always to fall thus in showers at their feet ; that whenever they pass they will tread on herbs of sweet scent, and that the rough ground will be made smooth for them by depth of roses ? So surely as they believe that, they will have, in- stead, to \valk on bitter herbs and thorns; and the only softness to their feet will be of snow. But it is not thus intended they should believe ; there is a better meaning in that old custom. The path of a good woman is indeed strewn with flowers; but they rise behind her steps, not before them. " Her 164 SESAME AND LILIES. feet have touched the meadows, and left the dais- ies rosy." 94. You think that only a lover's fancy; false and vain ! How if it could be true? You think uiis also, perhaps, only a poet's fancy " Even the light harebell raised its head Elastic from her airy tread." But it is little to say of a woman, that she only does not destroy where she passes. She should re- vive; the harebells should bloom, not stoop, as she passes. You think I am rushing into wild hy- perbole ? Pardon me, not a whit ; I mean what I say in calm English, spoken in resolute truth. You have heard it said (and I believe there is more than fancy even in that saying, but let it pass for a fanciful one) that flowers only flourish rightly in ^he garden of some one who loves them. I know you would like that to be true ; you would think it a pleasant magic if you could flush your flowers into brighter bloom by a kind look upon them ; nay, more, if your look had the power, not only to cheer, but to guard ; if you could bid the black blight turn away, and the knotted caterpillar spare ; if you could bid the dew fall upon them in the drought, and say to the south wind, in frost, OP QUEENS' GAKDENS. 1C5 "Come, thou south, and breathe upon my garden, that the spices of it may flow out." This you would think a great thing. And do you think it not a greater thing that all this (and how m-.ich more than this !) you can do for fairer flowers than these; flowers that could bless you for having blessed them, and will love you for having loved them ; flowers that have thoughts like yours and lives like yours, and which, once saved, you save forever? Is this only a little power? Far among the moorlands and the rocks, far in the darkness of the terrible streets, these feeble florets are lying with all their fresh leaves torn and their stems brn ken. Will you never go down to them nor set them in order in their little fragrant beds, nor fence them, in their trembling, from the fierce wind? Shall morning follow morning for you, but not for them ; and the dawn rise to watch, far away, those frantic dances of death, 1 but no dawn rise to breathe upon these living banks of wild violet and woodbine and rose ; nor call to you through your casement, call (not giving you the name of the English poet's lady, but the name of Dante's great Matilda, who, on the edge of happy Lethe, stood, wreathing flowers with flowers), say- ing, i See note, p. 92. 166 SESAME A.ND LILIES. " Come into the garden, Maud, For the black bat night has flown, And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, And the musk of the roses blown " ? Will you not go down among them, among those sweet living things, whose new courage, sprung from the earth with the deep color of heaven upon it, is starting up in strength of goodly spire; and whose purity, washed from the dust, is opening, bud by bud, into the flower of promise? And still they turn to you, and for you ' ' The Larkspur listens I hear, I hear! And the Lily whispers I wait." 95 . Did you notice that I missed two lines when I read you that first stanza, and think thai I had for- gotten them? Hear them now: " Come into the garden, Maud, For the black bat night has flown. Come into the garden, Maud, I am here at the gate, alone." Who is it, think you, who stands at the gate of this sweeter garden alone, waiting for you ? Did you ever hear, not of a Maud, but a Madeleine, who went down to her garden in the dawn and found One wait- TST at the gate whom she supposed to be the gar- dener? Have you not sought Him often; sought OF QUEENS' GARDENS. 167 Him in vain all through the night; sought Him in vain at the gate of that old garden where the fiery sword is set ? He is never there j but at the gate of this garden He is waiting always waiting to take your hand ready to go down to see the fruits of the valley, to see whether the vine has flourished and the pomegranate budded. 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