OF 
 
 CALIFORNIA 
 SAN DIEGO
 
 HD 
 6330 
 
 v.Z
 
 THE COMPLETE WORKS 
 
 OF 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN, LL D. 
 
 IN TWENTY-SIX VOLUMES 
 
 Volume Eight
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA 
 
 LETTERS 
 
 TO THE WORKMEN AND LABOURERS OF 
 GREAT BRITAIN 
 
 VOLUME THE SECOND 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN RUSK1N 
 
 Ulitb Illustrations 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 REUWEE. WATTLEY & WALSH 
 1891
 
 &e Xuje. 
 
 Strictly limited to 550 copies, of which 
 this is No. JQZ 
 
 f^J-irf.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA 
 
 LETTERS 
 
 TO THE WORKMEN AND LABOURERS OF GREAT BRITAIN 
 
 VOLUME II.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 LETTER XXX. 
 
 BRANTWOOD, 
 
 April 19, 1873. 
 
 ON the thirteenth shelf of the south bookcase of my home- 
 library, stand, first, Kenelm Digby's Broad Stone of Hon- 
 our, then, in five volumes, bound in red, the " history of the 
 ingenious gentleman, Don Quixote of La Mancha ; " and 
 then, in one volume, bound in green, a story no less pathetic, 
 called the Mirror of Peasants. 
 
 Its author does not mean the word " mirror " to be under- 
 stood in the sense in which one would call Don Quixote the 
 "Mirror of Chivalry ; " but in that of a glass in which a man 
 beholding his natural heart, may know also the hearts of 
 other men, as, in a glass, face answers to face. 
 
 The author of this story was a clergyman ; but employed 
 the greater part of his day in writing novels, having a gift 
 for that species of composition as well as for sermons, and 
 observing, though he gave both excellent in their kind, that 
 his congregation liked their sermons to be short, and his 
 readers, their novels to be long. 
 
 Among them, however, were also many tiny novelettes, of 
 which, young ladies, I to-day begin translating for you one 
 of the shortest ; hoping that you will not think the worse of 
 it for being written by a clergyman. Of this author I will 
 only say, that, though I am not prejudiced in favour of per- 
 sons of his profession, I think him the wisest man, take him
 
 4 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 all in all, with whose writings I am acquainted ; chiefly be- 
 cause he showed his wisdom in pleasant and unappalling 
 ways ; as for instance, by keeping, for the chief ornament 
 of his study (not being able to afford expensive books), one 
 book beautifully bound, and shining with magnificence of 
 golden, embossing ; this book of books being his register, 
 out of which he read, from the height of his pulpit, the 
 promises of marriage. " Dans lequel il lisait, du haut de la 
 chaire, les promesses de mariage." 
 
 He rose always early ; breakfasted himself at six o'clock ; 
 and then got ready with his own hands the family breakfast, 
 liking his servants better to be at work out of doors : wrote 
 till eleven, dined at twelve, and spent the afternoon in his 
 parish work, or in his fields, being a farmer of shrewdest and 
 most practical skill ; and through the Sundays of fifteen 
 years, never once was absent from his pulpit. 
 
 And now, before I begin my little story, which is a trans- 
 lation of a translation, for the original is German, and I can 
 only read French, I must say a few serious words as to the 
 sense in which I wish you to receive what religious instruction 
 this romantic clergyman may sometimes mingle with his 
 romance. He is an Evangelical divine of the purest type. 
 It is therefore primarily for my Evangelical readers that I 
 translate this or others of his tales ; and if they have read 
 either former letters of Fors or any of my later books, 
 they must know that I do not myself believe in Evangelical 
 theology. But I shall with my best care, represent and 
 enforce this clergyman's teaching to my said Evangelical 
 readers, exactly as I should feel it my duty, if I were talk- 
 ing to a faithful Turk, to represent and enforce to him any 
 passage of the Koran which was beyond all question true, 
 in its reference to practical life ; and with the bearings of 
 which I was more familiar than he. For I think that our 
 common prayer that God " would take away all ignorance, 
 hardness of heart, and contempt of His word, from all Jews, 
 Turks, infidels, and heretics," is an entirely absurd one. I 
 do not think all Jews have hard hearts ; nor that all infidels 
 would despise God's word, if only they could hear it ; nor
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 5 
 
 do I in the least know whether it is my neighbour or myself 
 who is really the heretic. But I pray that prayer for myself 
 as well as others ; and in this form, that God would make 
 all Jews honest Jews, all Turks honest Turks, all infidels 
 honest infidels, and all Evangelicals and heretics honest 
 Evangelicals and heretics ; that so these Israelites in whom 
 there is no guile, Turks in whom there is no guile, and so on, 
 may in due time see the face, and know the power, of the 
 King alike of Israel and Esau. Now therefore, young ladies, 
 I beg you to understand that I entirely sympathize with this 
 Evangelical clergyman's feelings because I know him to be 
 honest : also, that I give you of his teaching what is univer- 
 sally true : and that you may get the more good from his 
 story, I will ask you first to consider with yourselves what 
 St. James means by saying in the eighth verse of his general 
 Epistle, " Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is 
 exalted, but the rich in that he is made low ; " and if you 
 find, as you generally will, if you think seriously over any 
 verse of your Bibles whatsoever, that you never have had, 
 and are never likely to have, the slightest idea what it means, 
 perhaps you will permit me to propose the following expla- 
 nation to you. That while both rich and poor are to be con- 
 tent to remain in their several states, gaining only by the 
 due and natural bettering of an honest man's settled life ; if, 
 nevertheless, any chance should occur to cause sudden differ- 
 ence in either of their positions, the poor man might wisely 
 desire that it should be some relief from the immediate press- 
 ure of poverty, while the rich should esteem it the surest 
 sign of God's favour, if, without fault of his own, he were 
 forced to know the pain of a lower condition. 
 
 I have noticed, in Sesame and Lilies, 2, the frantic fear 
 of the ordinary British public, lest they should fall below 
 their proper " station in life." It appears that almost the 
 only real sense of duty remaining now in the British con- 
 science is a passionate belief in the propriety of keeping 
 up an appearance ; no matter if on other people's money, 
 so only that there be no signs of their coming down in the 
 world.
 
 6 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 I should be very glad therefore if any of my young lady 
 readers who consider themselves religious persons, would in- 
 form me whether they are satisfied with my interpretation of 
 the text ; and if so, then how far they would consent, with- 
 out complaining, to let God humble them, if He wished to ? 
 If, for instance, they would, without pouting, allow Him to 
 have His way, even to the point of forcing them to gain 
 their bread by some menial service, as, suppose, a house- 
 maid's ; and whether they would feel aggrieved at being 
 made lower housemaid instead of upper. If they have read 
 their Bible to so good purpose as not to care which, I hope 
 the following story may not be thought wholly beneath their 
 attention ; concerning, as it does, the housemaid's principal 
 implement ; or what (supposing her a member of St. George's 
 company) we may properly call her spear, or weapon of 
 noble war. 
 
 THE BROOM MERCHANT. 
 
 Brooms are, as we know, among the imperious necessities 
 of the epoch ; and in every household, there are many needful 
 articles of the kind which must be provided from day to day, 
 or week to week ; and which one accordingly finds, every- 
 where, persons glad to supply. But we pay dailv less and 
 less attention to these kindly disposed persons, since we have 
 been able to get the articles at their lowest possible price. 
 
 Formerly it was not thus. The broom merchant, the egg 
 merchant, the sand and rottenstone merchant, were, so to 
 speak, part of the family ; one was connected with them by 
 very close links ; one knew the day on which each would 
 arrive ; and according to the degree of favour they were in, 
 one kept something nice for their dinner ; and if by any 
 chance, they did not come to their day, they excused them- 
 selves, next time, as for a very grave fault indeed. They 
 considered the houses which they supplied regularly, as the 
 stars of their heaven, took all the pains in the world to 
 serve them well, and, on quitting their trade for anything 
 more dignified, did all they could to be replaced either by 
 their children, or by some cousin, or cousine. There was thus
 
 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 7 
 
 a reciprocal bond of fidelity on one side, and of trust on the 
 other, which unhappily relaxes itself more and more every 
 day, in the measure that also family spirit disappears. 
 
 The broom merchant of Rychiswyl was a servant of this 
 sort ; he whom one regrets now, so often at Berne, whom 
 everybody was so fond of at Thun ! The Saturday might 
 sooner have been left out of the almanack, than the broom-man 
 not appear in Thun on the Saturday. He had not always been 
 the broom-man ; for a long time he had only been the broom- 
 boy; until, in the end, the boy had boys of his own, who put 
 themselves to push his cart for him. His father, who had 
 been a soldier, died early in life ; the lad was then very young, 
 and his mother ailing. His elder sister had started in life 
 many a day before, barefoot, and had found a place in help- 
 ing a woman who carried pine-cones and turpentine to Berne. 
 When she had won her spurs, that is to say, shoes and stock- 
 ings, she obtained advancement, and became a governess, of 
 poultry, in a large farm near the town. Her mother and 
 brother were greatly proud of her, and never spoke but with 
 respect of their pretty Babeli. Hansli could not leave his 
 mother, who had need of his help, to fetch her wood, and the 
 like. They lived on the love of God and good people ; but 
 badly enough. One day, the farmer they lodged with says 
 to Hansli : 
 
 " My lad, it seems to me you might try and earn something 
 now ; you are big enough, and sharp enough." 
 
 "I wish I could," said Hansli ; "but I don't know how." 
 
 " I know something you could do," said the farmer. " Set 
 to work to make brooms ; there are plenty of twigs on my wil- 
 lows. I only get them stolen as it is ; so they shall not cost 
 you much. You shall make me two brooms a year of them." * 
 
 " Yes, that would be very fine and good," said Hansli ; 
 " but where shall I learn to make brooms ?" 
 
 " Pardieu,f there's no such sorcery in the matter," said the 
 farmer. " I'll take on me the teaching of you ; many a year 
 
 * Far wiser than letting him gather them as valueless, 
 f Not translateable. In French, it has the form of a passionate oath, 
 but the spirit of a gentle one.
 
 8 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 now I've made all the brooms we use on the farm myself, 
 and I'll back myself to make as good as are made ; * you'll 
 want few tools, and may use mine at first." 
 
 All which was accordingly done ; and God's blessing came 
 on the doing of it. Hansli took a fancy to the work ; and 
 the farmer was enchanted with Hansli. 
 
 " Don't look so close ; f put all in that is needful, do the 
 thing well, so as to show people they may put confidence in 
 you. Once get their trust, and your business is done," said 
 always the farmer, J and Hansli obeyed him. 
 
 In the beginning, naturally, things did not go very fast ; 
 nevertheless he placed what he could make ; and as he be- 
 came quicker in the making, the sale increased in proportion. 
 Soon, everybody said that no one had such pretty brooms as 
 the little merchant of Rychiswyl ; and the better he succeeded, 
 the harder he worked. His mother visibly recovered liking for 
 life. " Now the battle's won," said she ; " as soon as one can 
 gain one's bread honourably, one has the right to enjoy one- 
 self, and what can one want more ?" Always, from that time, 
 she had, every day, as much as she liked to eat ; nay, even 
 every day there remained something over for the next : and 
 she could have as much bread as she liked. Indeed, Hansli 
 very often brought her even a little white bread back from 
 the town, whereupon || how happy did she not feel herself ! 
 and how she thanked God for having kept so many good 
 things for her old days. 
 
 On the contrary, now for a little while, Hansli was looking 
 cross and provoked. Soon he began actually to grumble. 
 " Things could not go on much longer that way ; he could 
 not put up with it." When the farmer at last set himself to 
 
 * Head of house doing all he can do well, himself. If he had not had 
 time to make the brooms well, he would have bought them. 
 
 f Do not calculate so closely how much you can afford to give for the 
 price. 
 
 JNot meaning " you can cheat them afterwards," but that the cus- 
 tomer would not leave him for another broom-maker. 
 
 Sold. 
 
 I " Aussi " also, how happy she felt. Aussi is untranslateable in this 
 pretty use; so hereafter I shall put it, as an English word, in its place.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 9 
 
 find out what that meant, Hansli declared to him that he had 
 too many brooms to carry ; and could not carry them, and 
 that even when the miller took them on his cart, it was very 
 inconvenient, and that he absolutely wanted a cart of his own, 
 but he hadn't any money to buy one, and didn't know any- 
 body who was likely to lend him any. " You are a gaby," * 
 said the peasant. " Look you, I won't have you become one 
 of those people who think a thing's done as soon as they've 
 dreamt it. That's the way one spends one's money to make 
 the fish go into other people's nets. You want to buy a cart, 
 do you ? why don't you make one yourself ? " 
 
 Hansli put himself, f to stare at the farmer with his mouth 
 open, and great eyes. 
 
 " Yes, make it yourself : you will manage it, if you make 
 up your mind," went on the farmer. "You can chip wood 
 well enough, and the wood won't cost you much what I 
 haven't, another peasant will have ; and there must be old 
 iron about, plenty, in the lumber-room. I believe there's 
 even an old cart somewhere, which you can have to look at 
 or to use, if you like. Winter will be here soon ; set your- 
 self to work, and by the spring all will be done, and you 
 won't have spent a threepenny piece,J for you may pay the 
 smith too, with brooms, or find a way of doing without him 
 who knows ? " 
 
 Hansli began to open his eyes again. " I make a cart ! 
 but how ever shall I ? I never made one." " Gaby," answered 
 the farmer, " one must make everything once the first time. 
 Take courage, and it's half done. If people took courage 
 solidly, there are many now carrying the beggar's wallet, who 
 would have money up to their ears, and good metal, too." 
 Hansli was on the point of asking if the peasant had lost his 
 
 * " Nigaud, " Good for nothing but trifles ; worthless, but without sense 
 of vice ; (vaut-rien, means viciously worthless). The real sense of this 
 word here would be " Handless fool," but said good-humouredly. 
 
 f Se mit a regarder. I shall always translate such passages with the 
 literal idiom put himself. 
 
 \ A single batz, about three halfpence in bad silver, flat struck : I 
 shall use the word without translating henceforward.
 
 10 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 head. Nevertheless, he finished by biting at the notion ; 
 and entering into it little by little, as a child into cold water. 
 The peasant came now and then to help him ; and in spring 
 the new cart was ready, in such sort that on Easter Tuesday 
 Hansli conducted it,* for the first time, to Berne, and the 
 following Saturday to Thun, also for the first time. The joy 
 and pride that this new cart gave him, it is difficult to form 
 anything like a notion of. If anybody had proposed to give 
 him the Easter ox for it, that they had promenaded at Berne 
 the evening before, and which weighed well its twenty-five 
 quintals, he wouldn't have heard of such a thing. It seemed 
 to him that everybody stopped as they passed, to look at his 
 cart ; and, whenever he got a chance, he put himself to ex- 
 plain at length what advantages that cart had over every 
 other cart that had yet been seen in the world. He asserted 
 very gravely that it went of itself, except only at the hills ; 
 where it was necessary to give it a touch of the hand.f A 
 cookmaid said to him that she would not have thought him 
 so clever ; and that if ever she wanted a cart, she would 
 give him her custom. That cookmaid, always, afterwards, 
 when she bought a fresh supply of brooms, had a present of 
 two little ones into the bargain, to sweep into the corners of 
 the hearth with ; things which are very convenient for maids 
 who like to have everything clean even into the corners ; and 
 who always wash their cheeks to behind their ears. It is 
 true that maids of this sort are thin-sprinkled enough. J 
 
 From this moment, Hansli began to take good heart to his 
 work : his cart was for him his farm ; he worked with real 
 joy ; and joy in getting anything done is, compared to ill- 
 
 * Pushed it. No horse wanted. 
 
 f Coup de main, a nice French idiom meaning the stroke of hand as 
 opposed by that of a senseless instrument. The phrase ' ' Taking a 
 place by a coup de main" regards essentially not so much the mere 
 difference between sudden and long- assault, as between assault with 
 flesh or cannon. 
 
 \ Assez clair semees. 
 
 He is now a capitalist, in the entirely wholesome and proper 
 sense of the word. See answer of Pall Mall Gazette, driven to have re- 
 course to the simple truth, to my third question in last Fors.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 11 
 
 humour, what a sharp hatchet is to a rusty one, in cutting 
 wood. The farmers of Rychiswyl were delighted with the 
 boy. There wasn't one of them who didn't say, " When you 
 want twigs, you've only to take them in my field ; but don't 
 damage the trees, and think of the wife sometimes ; women 
 use so many brooms in a year that the devil couldn't serve 
 them." Hansli did not fail ; also was he in great favour with 
 all the farm-mistresses. They never had been in the way of 
 setting any money aside for buying brooms ; they ordered 
 their husbands to provide them,* but one knows how things 
 go, that way. Men are often too lazy to make shavings, f 
 how much less brooms ! aussi the women were often in a 
 perfect famine of brooms, and the peace of the household 
 had greatly to suffer for it. But now, Hansli was there be- 
 fore one had time to think ; and it was very seldom a 
 paysanne J was obliged to say to him ! "Hansli, don't forget 
 us, we're at our last broom." Besides the convenience of 
 this, Hausli's brooms were superb very different from the 
 wretched things which one's grumbling husband tied up 
 loose, or as rough and ragged as if they had been made of oat 
 straw. Of course, in these houses, Hansli gave his brooms 
 for nothing ; yet they were not the worst placed pieces of 
 his stock ; for, not to speak of the twigs given him gratis, 
 all the year round he was continually getting little presents, 
 in bread and milk, and such kinds of things, which a paysanne 
 has always under her hand, and which she gives without 
 looking too close. Also, rarely one churned butter without 
 saying to him, " Hansli, we beat butter to-morrow ; if you 
 like to bring a pot, you shall have some of the beaten." 
 
 * See above, the first speech of the farmer to Hansli, " Many's the 
 year now," etc. It would be a shame for a well-to-do farmer to have 
 to buy brooms ; ic is only the wretched townspeople whom Haiisli 
 counts on for custom. 
 
 f Copeaux, I don't understand this. 
 
 J The mistress of a farm ; paysan, the master, I shall use paysanne, 
 after this, without translation, and peasant, for paysan ; rarely want- 
 ing the word in our general sense. 
 
 "Du battu," I don't know if it means the butter, or the butter- 
 milk.
 
 12 FOBS OLAVIGERA. 
 
 And as for fruit, he had more than he could eat of it ; so 
 that it could not fail, things going- on in this way, that Hans 
 should prosper ; being besides thoroughly economical. If he 
 spent as much as a batz on the day he went to the town, it 
 was the end of the world.* In the morning, his mother took 
 care he had a good breakfast, after which he took also some- 
 thing in his pocket, without counting that sometimes here, 
 and sometimes there, one gave him a morsel in the kitchens 
 where he was well known ; and finally he didn't imagine that 
 he ought always to have something to eat, the moment he 
 had a mind to it. 
 
 I am very sorry, but find there's no chance of my getting the 
 romantic part of my story rightly into this letter ; so I must 
 even leave it till August, for my sketch of Scott's early life is 
 promised for July, and I must keep my word to time more 
 accurately than hitherto, else, as the letters increase in num- 
 ber, it is too probable I may forget what I promised in them; 
 not that I lose sight even for a moment of my main purpose; 
 but the contents of the letters being absolutely as the third 
 "Fors" may order, she orders me here and there so fast 
 sometimes that I can't hold the pace. This unlucky index, 
 for example ! It is easy enough to make an index, as it is to 
 make a broom of odds and ends, as rough as oat straw ; but 
 to make an index tied up tight, and that will sweep well into 
 corners, isn't so easy. Ill-tied or well, it shall positively be 
 sent with the July number (if I keep my health), and will be 
 only six months late then ; so that it will have been finished 
 in about a fourth of the time a lawyer would have taken to 
 provide any document for which there was a pressing neces- 
 sity. 
 
 In the meantime, compare the picture of country life in 
 Switzerland, already beginning to show itself in outline in 
 our story of the broom-maker, with this following account of 
 the changes produced by recent trade in the country life of 
 the island of Jersey. It is given me by the correspondent 
 who directed me to Professor Kirk's book ; (see the notes in 
 
 * " Le bout du monde," meaning, he never thought of going any 
 farther.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 13 
 
 last letter,) and is in every point of view of the highest 
 value. Compare especially the operations of the great uni- 
 versal law of supply and demand in the article of fruit, as 
 they affect the broom-boy, and my correspondent ; and con- 
 sider for yourselves, how far that beautiful law may affect, 
 in time to come, not your pippins only, but also your cheese ; 
 and even at last your bread. 
 
 I give this letter large print ; it is quite as important as 
 anything I have myself to say. The italics are mine. 
 
 MONT A L'ABBE, JERSEY, 
 
 April 17, 1873. 
 
 DEAR MASTER, The lesson I have gathered here in Jersey 
 as to the practical working of bodies of small landowners, 
 is that they have three arch-enemys to their life and well- 
 being. First, the covetousness that, for the sake of money- 
 increase, permits and seeks that great cities should drain the 
 island of its life-blood their best men and their best food or 
 means of food ; secondly, love of strong drink and tobacco ; 
 and thirdly, (for these two last are closely connected,) want 
 of true recreation. 
 
 The island is cut up into small properties or holdings, a 
 very much larger proportion of these being occupied and cul- 
 tivated by the owners themselves than is the case in England. 
 Consequently, as I think, the poor do not suffer as much as in 
 England. Still the times have altered greatly for the worse 
 within the memory of every middle-aged resident, and the 
 change has been wrought chiefly by the regular and frequent 
 communication with London and Paris, but more especially 
 the first, which in the matter of luxuries of the table, has a 
 maw insatiable.* Thus the Jersey farmer finds that, by de- 
 voting his best labour and land to the raising of potatoes 
 sufficiently early to obtain a fancy price for them, very large 
 money-gains are sometimes obtained, subject also to large 
 risks ; for spring frosts on the one hand, and being out- 
 stripped by more venturous farmers on the other, are the 
 Jersey farmers' Scylla and Charybdis. 
 
 Now for the results. Land, especially that with southern 
 aspect, has increased marvellously in price. Wages have 
 also risen. In many employments nearly doubled. Twenty 
 
 * Compare if you can get at the book in any library, my article 
 on "Home and its Economies " in the Contemporary Review for May.
 
 14 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 
 
 years ago a carpenter obtained Is. 8d. per day. Now he gets 
 3s.; and field labourers' wages have risen nearly as much in 
 proportion. But food and lodging have much more than 
 doubled. Potatoes for ordinary consumption are now from 
 2s. 6d. to 3s. 6d. per cabot (40 lb.); here I put out of court 
 the early potatoes, which bring, to those who are fortunate 
 in the race, three times that price. Fifteen years ago the 
 regular price for the same quantity was from 5d. to 8d. 
 Butter is now Is. 4(7. per lb. Then it was 6d. ; and milk of 
 course has altered in the same proportion. Fruit, which 
 formerly could be had in lavish, nay, almost fabulous abun- 
 dance, is now dearer than in London. In fact I, who am es- 
 sentially a frugivorous animal, have found myself unable to 
 indulge in it, and it is only at very rare intervals to be 
 found in any shape at my table. All work harder, and all 
 fare worse ; but the poor specially so. The well-to-do pos- 
 sess a secret solace denied to them. It is found in the 
 " share market." I am told by one employed in a banking 
 house and " finance " business here, that it is quite wonderful 
 how fond the Jersey farmers are of Turkish bonds, Grecian 
 and Spanish coupons. Shares in mines seem also to find 
 favour here. My friend in the banking house tells me that 
 he was once induced to try his fortune in that way. To be 
 cautious, he invested in four different mines. It was perhaps 
 fortunate for him that he never received a penny of his 
 money back from any one of the four. 
 
 Another mode by which the earnings of the saving and in- 
 dustrious Jerseyman find their way back to London or Paris 
 is the uncalculated, but not unfrequent, advent of a spend- 
 thrift among the heirs of the family. I am told that the 
 landlord of the house I live in is of this stamp, and that two 
 years more of the same rate of expenditure at Paris that he 
 now uses, will bring him to the end of his patrimony. 
 
 But what of the stimulants, and the want of recreation ? 
 I have coupled these together because I think that drink- 
 ing is an attempt to find, by a short and easy way, the re- 
 ward of a true recreation ; to supply a coarse goad to the 
 wits, so that there may be forced or fancied increase of play 
 to the imagination, and to experience, with this, an agreeable 
 physical sensation. I think men will usually drink to get the 
 fascinating combination of the two. True recreation is the 
 cure, and this is not adequately supplied here, either in kind 
 or degree, by tea-meetings and the various religious " ser 
 vices," which are almost the only social recreations (no ir-
 
 FOR8 GLAVIGERA. 15 
 
 reverence intended by thus classing them) in use among the 
 country folk of Jersey. 
 
 But I had better keep to rny facts. The deductions I can 
 well leave to my master. 
 
 Here is a fact as to the working of the modern finance 
 system here. There is exceedingly little gold coin in the 
 island ; in place thereof we use one-pound notes issued by 
 the banks of the island. The principal bank issuing these, 
 and also possessing by far the largest list of depositors, has 
 just failed. Liabilities, as estimated by the accountants, not 
 less than 332,000 / assets calculated by the same authorities 
 not exceeding 34,000. The whole island is thrown into 
 the same sort of catastrophe as English merchants by the 
 Overend-Gurney failure. Business in the town nearly at 
 a stand-still, and failures of tradesmen taking place one 
 after another, with a large reserve of the same in prospect. 
 But as the country people are as hard at work as ever, and 
 the panic among the islanders has hindered in nowise the 
 shooting of the blades through the earth, and general 
 bursting forth of buds on the trees, I begin to think the 
 island may survive to find some other chasm for their accu- 
 mulations. Unless indeed the champion slays the dragon 
 first. [As far as one of the unlearned may have an opinion, 
 I strongly object both to "Rough skin," and "Red skin,'' 
 as name derivations. There have been useful words de- 
 rived from two sources, and I shall hold that the Latin 
 prefix to the Saxon Itin establishes a sort of relationship with 
 St. George.] 
 
 I am greatly flattered by my correspondent's philological 
 studies ; but alas, his pretty result is untenable : no deriva- 
 tion can stand astride on two languages ; also, neither he, 
 nor any of my readers, must think of me as setting myself 
 up either for a champion or a leader. If they will look 
 . back to the first letter of this book, they will find it is ex- 
 pressly written to quit myself of public responsibility in pur- 
 suing my private work. Its purpose is to state clearly what 
 must be done by all of us, as we can, in our place ; and to 
 fulfil what duty I personally acknowledge to the State ; also 
 I have promised, if I live, to show some example of what I 
 know to be necessary, if no more able person will show it 
 first
 
 16 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 That is a very different thing from pretending to lead- 
 ership in a movement which must one day be as wide as the 
 world. Nay, even my marching days may perhaps soon be 
 over, and the best that I can make of myself be a faithful 
 signpost. But what I am, or what I fail to be, is of no 
 moment to the cause. The two facts which I have to teach, 
 or sign, though alone, as it seems, at present, in the signa- 
 ture, that food can only be got out of the ground, and 
 happiness only out of honesty, are not altogether depend- 
 ent on any one's championship, for recognition among man- 
 kind. 
 
 For the present, nevertheless, these two important pieces 
 of information are never, so far as I am aware, presented in 
 any scheme of education either to the infantine or adult 
 mind. And, unluckily, no other information whatever, with- 
 out acquaintance with these facts, can produce either bread 
 and butter, or felicity. I take the following four questions, 
 for instance, as sufficiently characteristic, out of the seventy- 
 eight, proposed, on their Fifth subject of study, to the chil- 
 dren of St. Matthias' National School, Granby Street, Bethnal 
 Green, (school fees, twopence or threepence a week,) by way 
 of enabling them to pass their First of May pleasantly, in 
 this blessed year 1873. 
 
 1. Explain the distinction between an identity and an equa- 
 
 tion, and give an easy example of each. Show that if 
 a simple equation in x is satisfied by two different values 
 of x, it is an identity. 
 
 2. In what time will a sum of money double itself if in- 
 
 vested at 10 per cent, per annum, compound interest? 
 
 3. How many different permutations can be made of the 
 
 letters in the word Chlllianwallah f How many if 
 arranged in a circle, instead of a straight line ? And 
 how many different combinations of them, two and two, 
 can be made ?
 
 FORS GLAVIGERA. 17 
 
 4. Show that if a and ft be constant, and <j> and X variable 
 and if 
 
 cos 2 a cos 3 ft (tan a a cos 2 X + tan 2 (3 sin 2 X) 
 
 tan 2 a cos* ft cos 2 A + tan 2 ft cos 2 a sin 4 X 
 
 sin 2 a cos 2 <f> + sin 2 ft sin 8 
 
 tan 2 a cos 2 < + tan 2 ft sin 2 < 
 
 thencos* /3 tan < = cos 2 a. tan 2 X, unless a = ft -f n IT. 
 
 I am bound to state that I could not answer any one of 
 these interrogations myself, and that my readers must there- 
 fore allow for the bias of envy in the expression of my 
 belief that to have been able to answer the sort of questions 
 which the First of May once used to propose to English 
 children, whether they knew a cowslip from an oxlip, and 
 a blackthorn from a white, would have been incomparably 
 more to the purpose, both of getting their living, and liking it. 
 VOL. IL 2
 
 18 FOIiS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 THE following expression of the wounded feelings of the Daily News 
 is perhaps worth preserving : 
 
 ' ' Mr. Ruskin's Fors Clavigera has already become so notorious as a 
 curious magazine of the blunders of a man of genius who has travelled 
 out of his province, that it is perhaps hardly worth while to notice any 
 fresh blunder. No one who writes on financial subjects need be at all 
 surprised that Mr. Ruskin funnily misinterprets what he has said, and 
 we have ourselves just been the victim of a misinterpretation of the 
 sort. Mr. Ruskin quotes a single sentence from an article which ap- 
 peared in our impression of the 3d of March, and places on it the in- 
 terpretation that ' whenever you have reason to think that anybody has 
 charged you threepence for a twopenny article, remember that, accord- 
 ing to the Daily News, the real capital of the community is increased.' 
 We need hardly tell our readers that we wrote no nonsense of that kind. 
 Our object was to show that the most important effect of the high 
 price of coal was to alter the distribution of the proceeds of production 
 in the community, and not to diminish the amount of it ; that it was 
 quite possible for real production, which is always the most important 
 matter in a question of material wealth, to increase, even with coal at 
 a high price ; and that there was such an increase at the time we were 
 writing, although coal was dear. These are certainly very different 
 propositions from the curious deduction which Mr. Ruskin makes from 
 a single short sentence in a long article, the purport of which was clear 
 enough. There is certainly no cause for astonishment at the blunders 
 which Mr. Ruskin makes in political economy and finance, if his method 
 is to rush at conclusions without patiently studying the drift of what 
 he reads. Oddly enough, it may be added, there is one way in which 
 dear coal may increase the capital of a country like England, though 
 Mr. Ruskin seems to think the thing impossible. We are exporters of 
 coal, and of course the higher the price the more the foreigner has to 
 pay for it. So far, therefore, the increased price is advantageous, 
 although on balance, every one knows, it is better to have cheap coal 
 than dear." 
 
 Let me at once assure the editor of the Daily News that I meant him 
 no disrespect in choosing a 'long' article for animadversion. I had 
 imagined that the length of his articles was owing rather to his sense 
 of the importance of their subject than to the impulsiveness and rash 
 splendour of his writing. I feel, indeed, how much the consolation it 
 conveys is enhanced by this fervid eloquence ; and even when I had 
 my pocket picked the other day on Tower Hill, it might have soothed
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 19 
 
 my ruffled temper to reflect thafc, in the beautiful language of the 
 Daily News, the most important effect of that operation was " to alter 
 the distribution of the proceeds of production in the community, and 
 not to diminish the amount of it." But the Editor ought surely to be 
 grateful to me for pointing out that, in his present state of mind, he 
 may not only make one mistake in a long letter, but two in a short 
 one. Their object, declares the Daily New*, (if I would but have 
 taken the pains to appreciate their efforts,) " was to s>how that it was 
 quite possible for real production to increase, even with coal at a high 
 price." Ic is quite possible for the production of newspaper articles to 
 increase, and of many other more useful things. The speculative pub- 
 lic probably knew, without the help of the Daily News, that they might 
 still catch a herring, even if they could not broil it. But the rise of 
 price in coal itself was simply caused by the diminution of its produc- 
 tion, or by roguery. 
 
 Again, the intelligent journal observes that " dear coal may increase 
 the capital of a country like England, because we are exporters of coal, 
 and the higher the price, the more the foreigner has to pay for it." 
 We are exporters of many other articles besides coal, and foreigners 
 are beginning to be so foolish, finding the prices rise, as, instead of 
 " having more to pay for them," never to buy them. The Daily News, 
 however, is under the impression that over- instead of under-selling, is 
 the proper method of competition in foreign markets, which is not a 
 received view in economical circles. 
 
 I observe that the Daily News, referring with surprise to the conclu- 
 sions which unexpectedly, though incontrovertibly, resulted from their 
 enthusiastic statement, declare they need hardly tell their readers they 
 " wrote no nonsense of that kind " But I cannot but feel, after their 
 present better-considered effusion, that it would be perhaps well on 
 their part to warn their readers how many other kinds of nonsense they 
 will in future be justified in expecting.
 
 20 FOBS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 LETTER XXXI. 
 
 OF the four great English tale-tellers whose dynasties have 
 set or risen within my own memory Miss Edgeworth, Scott, 
 Dickens, and Thackeray I find myself greatly at pause in 
 conjecturing, however dimly, what essential good has been 
 effected by them, though they all had the best intentions. 
 Of the essential mischief done by them, there is, unhappily, 
 no doubt whatever. Miss Edgeworth made her morality so 
 impertinent that, since her time, it has only been with fear 
 and trembling that any good novelist has ventured to show 
 the slightest bias in favour of the Ten Commandments. 
 Scott made his romance so ridiculous, that, since his day, one 
 can't help fancying helmets were always pasteboard, and 
 horses were always hobby. Dickens made everybody laugh, 
 or cry, so that they could not go about their business till 
 they had got their faces in wrinkles ; and Thackeray settled 
 like a meatfly on whatever one had got for dinner, and made 
 one sick of it. 
 
 That, on the other hand, at least Miss Edgeworth and 
 Scott have indeed some inevitable influence for good, I am 
 the more disposed to think, because nobody now will read 
 them. Dickens is said to have made people good-natured. 
 If he did, I wonder what sort of natures they had before ! 
 Thackeray is similarly asserted to have chastised and re- 
 pressed flunkeydom which it greatly puzzles me to hear, 
 because, as far as I can see, there isn't a carriage now left in 
 all the Row with anybody sitting inside it : the people who 
 ought to have been in it are, every one, hanging on behind, 
 the carriage in front. 
 
 What good these writers have done, is therefore, to me, I 
 repeat, extremely doubtful. But what good Scott has in 
 him to do, I find no words full enough to tell. His ideal of 
 honour in men and women is inbred, indisputable ; fresh as 
 the air of his mountains ; firm as their rocks. His concep-
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 21 
 
 tion of purity in woman is even higher than Dante's ; his 
 reverence for the filial relation, as deep as Virgil's ; his sym- 
 pathy universal ; there is no rank or condition of men of 
 which he has not shown the loveliest aspect ; his code of moral 
 principle is entirely defined, yet taught with a reserved sub- 
 tlety like Nature's own, so that none but the most earnest 
 readers perceive the intention : and his opinions on all prac- 
 tical subjects are final ; the consummate decisions of accurate 
 and inevitable common sense, tempered by the most graceful 
 kindness. 
 
 That he had the one weakness I will not call it fault of 
 desiring to possess more and more of the actual soil of the 
 land which was so rich to his imagination, and so dear to 
 his pride ; and that by this postern-gate of idolatry, entered 
 other taints of folly and fault, punished by supreme misery, 
 and atoned for by a generosity and solemn courage more 
 admirable than the unsullied wisdom of his happier days, I 
 have ceased to lament : for all these things make him only 
 the more perfect to us as an example, because he is not ex- 
 empt from common failings, and has his appointed portion 
 in common pain. 
 
 I said we were to learn from him the true relations of 
 Master and Servant ; and learning these, there is little left 
 for us to learn ; but, on every subject of immediate and vital 
 interest to us, we shall find, as we study his life and words, 
 that both are as authoritative as they are clear. Of his im- 
 partiality of judgment, I think it is enough, once for all, to 
 bid you observe that, though himself, by all inherited disposi- 
 tion and accidental circumstances, prejudiced in favour of 
 the Stuart cause, the aristocratic character, and the Catholic 
 religion, the only perfectly noble character in his first novel 
 is that of a Hanoverian colonel,* and the most exquisitely 
 
 * Colonel Talbot, in Waverley ; I need not, surely, name the other : 
 note only that, in speaking of heroism, I never admit into the field of com- 
 parison the merely stage-ideals of impossible virtue and fortune (Ivan- 
 hoe, Sir Kenneth, and the like) but only persons whom Scott meant 
 to be real. Observe also that with Scott, as with Titian, you must 
 often expect the most tender pieces of completion in subordinate 
 characters.
 
 22 FORS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 finished and heroic character in all his novels, that of a Pres- 
 byterian milkmaid. 
 
 But before I press any of his opinions or I ought rather 
 to say, knowledges upon you, I must try to give you some 
 idea of his own temper and life. His temper, I say ; the 
 mixture of clay, and the fineness of it, out! of which the Pot- 
 ter made him ; and of his life, what the power of the third 
 Fors had been upon it, before his own hands could make or 
 mar his fortune, at the turn of tide. I shall do this merely 
 by abstracting and collating (with comment) some passages 
 out of Lockhart's life of him ; and adding any elucidatory 
 pieces which Lockhart refers to, or which I can find my- 
 self, in his own works, so that you may be able to read 
 them easily together. And observe, I am not writing, or at- 
 tempting to write, another life of Scott ; but only putting 
 together bits of Lockhart's life in the order which my side- 
 notes on the pages indicate for my own reading ; and I shall 
 use Lockhart's words, or my own, indifferently, and without 
 the plague of inverted commas. Therefore, if anything is 
 wrong in my statement, Lockhart is not answerable for it; but 
 my own work in the business will nevertheless be little more 
 than what the French call putting dots on the i's, and adding 
 such notes as may be needful for our present thought. 
 
 Sir Walter was born on the 15th August, 1771, in a house 
 belonging to his father, at the head of the College Wynd, Ed- 
 inburgh. The house was pulled down to make room for the 
 northern front of the New College ; and the wise people of 
 Edinburgh then built, for I don't know how many thousand 
 pounds, a small vulgar Gothic steeple on the ground, and 
 called it the " Scott Monument." There seems, however, to 
 have been more reason than usual for the destruction of the Col- 
 lege Wynd, for Scott was the first survivor of seven children 
 born in it to his father, and appears to have been saved only 
 by the removal to the house in George's Square,* which his 
 
 * I beg my readers to observe that I never flinch from stating a fact 
 that tells against me. This George's Square is in that New Town of 
 Edinburgh which I said, in the first of these letters, I should like to de- 
 stroy to the ground.
 
 FOES GLAVIOERA. 23 
 
 father always afterwards occupied ; and by being also sent 
 soon afterwards into the open country. He was of the pu- 
 rest Border race seventh in descent from Wat of Harden 
 and the Flower of Yarrow. Here are his six ancestors, from 
 the sixteenth century, in order : 
 
 1. Walter Scott (Auld Wat) of Harden. 
 
 2. Sir William Scott of Harden. 
 
 3. Walter Scott of Raeburn. 
 
 4. Walter Scott, Tutor of Raeburn. 
 
 5. Robert Scott of Sandy-Knowe. 
 
 6. Walter Scott, citizen of Edinburgh. 
 
 I will note briefly what is important respecting each of 
 these. 
 
 i. Wat of Harden. Harden means ' the ravine of hares.' 
 It is a glen down which a little brook flows to join the river 
 Borthwick, itself a tributary of the Teviot, six miles west 
 of Hawick, and just opposite Branxholm. So long as Sir 
 Walter retained his vigorous habits, he made a yearly pil- 
 grimage to it, with whatever friend happened to be his guest 
 at the time.* 
 
 Wat's wife, Mary, the Flower of Yarrow, is said to have 
 chiefly owed her celebrity to the love of an English captive 
 a beautiful child whom she had rescued from the tender 
 mercies f of Wat's moss-troopers, on their return from a 
 Cumberland foray. The youth grew up under her protec- 
 tion, and is believed to have written both the words and 
 music of many of the best songs of the Border. J 
 
 This story is evidently the germ of that of the Lay of 
 the Last Minstrel, only the captivity is there of a Scottish 
 
 * Lockhart's Life, 8vo. Edinburgh : Cadell, 1837. Vol. i. p. 65. In 
 my following foot-notes I shall only give volume and page the book 
 being understood. 
 
 f i. 67. What sort of tender mercies were to be expected ? 
 
 \ His name unknown, according to Leyden. is perhaps discoverable ; 
 but what songs ? Though composed by an Englishman, have they the 
 special character of Scottish music ?
 
 24 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 boy to the English. The lines describing Wat of Harden 
 are in the 4th canto, 
 
 " Marauding chief ; his sole delight 
 The moonlight raid, the morning fight. 
 Not even the Flower of Yarrow's charms, 
 In youth, might tame his rage for arms ; 
 And still in age he spurned at rest, 
 And still his brows the helmet pressed, 
 Albeit the blanched locks below 
 Were white as Dinlay's spotless snow." * 
 
 With these, read also the answer of the lady of Brank- 
 some, 23rd and 24th stanzas, 
 
 " ' Say to your lords of high emprize, 
 Who war on women and on boys, 
 For the young heir of Branksome's line, 
 God be his aid ; and God be mine : 
 Through me, no friend shall meet his doom : 
 Here, while I live, no foe finds room.' 
 
 ***** 
 Proud she looked round, applause to claim ; 
 Then lightened Thirlstane's eye of flame ; 
 
 His bugle Watt of Harden blew. 
 Pensils f and pennons wide were flung, 
 To heaven the Border slogan rung, 
 
 ' St. Mary for the young Buccleugh ! '" 
 
 Let us stop here to consider what good there may be in 
 all this for us. The last line, " St. Mary for the young Buc- 
 cleugh ! " probably sounds absurd enough to you. You have 
 nothing whatever to do, you think, with either of these per- 
 
 * Dinlay ; where ? 
 
 f Pensil, a flag hanging down 'pensile.' Pennon, a stiff flag sus- 
 tained by a cross arm, like the broad part of a weathercock. Properly, 
 it is the stiff-set feather of an arrow. 
 
 " Ny autres riens qui d'ore ne fust 
 Fors que les pennons, et le fust." 
 
 " Romance of the Rose," of Love's arrows : Chaucer translates, 
 
 " For all was gold, men might see, 
 Out-take the feathers and the tree."
 
 FORS CLAVIOERA. 25 
 
 sonages. You don't care for any St. Mary ; and still less 
 for any, either young or old, Buccleugh ? 
 
 Well, I'm sorry for you: but if you don't care for St. 
 Mary, the wife of Joseph, do you care at all for St. Mary- 
 Anne, the wife of Joe ? Have you any faith in the holiness 
 of your own wives, who are here, in flesh and blood ? or do 
 you verily wish them, as Mr. Mill * would have it sacrifice 
 all pretence to saintship, as to holy days to follow " some 
 more lucrative occupation than that of nursing the baby"? 
 And you don't care for the young Buccleugh ? Cut away 
 the cleugh, then, and read the Buc backwards. Do you care 
 for your own cub as much as Sir Walter would have cared 
 for his own beast ? (see, farther on, how he takes care of 
 his wire-haired terrier, Spice), or as any beast cares for its 
 cub ? Or do you send your poor little brat to make money 
 for you, like your wife ; as though a cock should send his 
 hen and chickens to pick up what they could for him and 
 it were the usual law of nature that nestlings should feed the 
 parent birds ? If that be your way of liberal modern life, 
 believe me, the border faith in its Mary and its master, how- 
 ever servile, was not benighted in comparison. 
 
 But the border morals ? " Marauding chief, whose sole 
 delight," etc. Just look for the passages indicated under 
 the word ' theft ' in my fine new index to the first two vol- 
 umes of Fors. I will come back to this point: for the pres- 
 ent, in order to get it more clearly into your minds, remem- 
 ber that the Flower of Yarrow was the chieftainess to whom 
 the invention of serving the empty dish with two spurs in it, 
 for hint to her husband that he must ride for his next dinner, 
 is first ascribed. Also, for comparison of the English cus- 
 toms of the same time, read this little bit of a letter of Lord 
 Northumberland's to Henry VIII. in 1533. f 
 
 * People would not have me speak any more harm of Mr. Mill, be- 
 cause he's dead, I suppose ? Dead or alive, all's one to me, with mis- 
 chievous persons ; but alas ! how very grievously all's two to me, when 
 they are helpful and noble ones. 
 
 f Out of the first of Scott's notes to the Lay, but the note is so long 
 that careless readers are sure to miss the points ; also I give modern 
 spelling for greater ease.
 
 26 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 " Please it your most gracious Highness to be advertised 
 that my comptroller, with Raynold Carnaby, desired licence 
 of me to invade the realm of Scotland, to the annoyance of 
 your High ness's enemies, and so they did meet upon Mon- 
 day before night, at Warhope, upon North Tyne water, to 
 the number of 1,500 men : and so invaded Scotland, at the 
 hour of eight of the clock at night, and actively did set upon 
 a town * called Branxholm, where the Lord of Buccleugh 
 dwelleth, albeit that knight he was not at home. And so 
 they burnt the said Branxholm, and other towns, and had 
 ordered themselves so that sundry of the said Lord Buc- 
 cleugh's servants, who did issue forth of his gates were taken 
 prisoners. They did not leave one house, one stack of 
 corn, nor one sheaf without the gate of the said Lord Buc- 
 cleugh unburnt ; and so in the breaking of the day receded 
 homeward. And thus, thanks be to God, your Highness's 
 subjects, about the hour of twelve of the clock the same day, 
 came into this, your Highness's realm, bringing with them 
 above forty Scotsmen prisoners, one of them named Scott, 
 of the surname and kin of the said Lord of Buccleugh. And 
 of his household they also brought three hundred nowte " 
 (cattle), "and above sixty horses and mares, keeping in safety 
 from loss or hurt all your said Highness's subjects." 
 
 They had met the evening before on the North Tyne 
 under Carter Fell ; (you will find the place partly marked 
 as " Plashett's coal-fields " in modern atlases ;) rode and 
 marched their twenty miles to Branxholm ; busied them- 
 selves there, as we hear, till dawn, and so back thirty miles 
 down Liddesdale, a fifty miles' ride and walk altogether, 
 all finished before twelve on Tuesday : besides what pillag- 
 ing and burning had to be done. 
 
 Now, but one more point is to be noticed, and we will get 
 on with our genealogy. 
 
 After this bit of the Earl's letter, you will better under- 
 stand the speech of the Lady of Buccleugh, defending her 
 castle in the absence of her lord, and with her boy taken 
 prisoner. And now look back to my 25th letter, for I want 
 you not to forget Alice of Salisbury. King Edward's first 
 sight of her was just after she had held her castle exactly in 
 
 * A walled group of houses : tynen, Saxon, to shut in (Johnson).
 
 FOBS CLAVIOERA. 27 
 
 this way, against a raid of the Scots in Lord Salisbury's ab- 
 sence. Edward rode night and day to help her ; and the 
 Scots besiegers, breaking up at his approach, this is what 
 follows, which you may receive on Froissart's telling as the 
 vital and effectual truth of the matter. A modern English 
 critic will indeed always and instantly extinguish this vital 
 truth ; there is in it something inherently detestable to 
 him ; thus the editor of Johnes' Froissart prefaces this very 
 story with " the romance for it is nothing more." Now 
 the labyrinth of Crete, and the labyrnith of Woodstock, are 
 indeed out of sight ; and of a real Ariadne or Rosamond, a 
 blockhead might be excused for doubting ; but St. George's 
 Chapel at Windsor (or Winde-Rose, as Froissart prettily 
 transposes it, like Adriane for Ariadne) is a very visible 
 piece of romance ; and the stones of it were laid, and the 
 blue riband which your queen wears on her breast is fast- 
 ened, to this day, by the hand of Alice of Salisbury. 
 
 " So the King came at noon ; and angry lie was to find 
 the Scots gone ; for he had come in such haste that all his 
 people and horses were dead-tired and toiled. So every one 
 went to rest ; and the King, as soon as he was disarmed, 
 took ten or twelve knights with him, and went towards the 
 castle to salute the Countess, and see how the defence had 
 been made. So soon as the Lady of Salisbury knew of the 
 King's coming, she made all the gates be opened," (inmost 
 and outmost at once,) " and came out, so richly dressed, that 
 every one was wonderstruck at her, and no one could cease 
 looking at her, nor from receiving, as if they had been her 
 mirrors, the reflection of her great nobleness, and her great 
 beauty, and her gracious speaking and bearing herself. 
 When she came to the King, she bowed down to the earth, 
 over against him, in thanking him for his help, and brought 
 him to the castle, to delight him and honor him as she 
 who well knew how to do it. Every one looked at her, even 
 to amazement, and the King himself could not stop looking 
 at her, for it seemed to him that in the world never was 
 lady who was so much to be loved as she. So they went 
 hand in hand into the castle, and the Lady led him first
 
 28 FOBS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 into the great hall, and then into her own chamber, (what 
 the French now call a pouting-room, but the ladies of that 
 day either smiled or frowned, but did not pout,) which was 
 nobly furnished, as befitted such lady. And always the 
 King looked at the gentle Lady, so hard that she became 
 all ashamed. When he had looked at her a long while, he 
 went away to a window, to lean upon it, and began to think 
 deeply. The Lady went to cheer the other knights and 
 squires ; then ordered the dinner to be got ready, and the 
 room to be dressed. When she had devised all, and com- 
 manded her people what seemed good to her, she returned 
 with a gladsome face before the King," in whose presence 
 we must leave her yet awhile, having other matters to attend 
 to. 
 
 So much for Wat of Harden's life then, and his wife's. 
 We shall get a little faster on with the genealogy after this 
 fair start. 
 
 ii. Sir William Scott of Harden. 
 
 Wat's eldest son ; distinguished by the early favor of 
 James VI. 
 
 In his youth, engaging in a foray on the lands of Sir 
 Gideon Murray of Elibank, and being taken prisoner, Mur- 
 ray offers him choice between being hanged, or marrying' the 
 plainest of his daughters. The contract of marriage, written 
 on the parchment of a drum, is still in possession of the 
 family of Harden.* 
 
 This is Lockhart's reading of the circumstances, and I 
 give his own statement of them in the note below. But his 
 assumption of the extreme plainness of the young lady, and 
 of the absolute worldly-mindedness of the mother, are both 
 examples of the modern manner of reading traditions, out 
 of which some amusement may be gathered by looking only 
 
 * i. 68. ' ' The indignant laird was on the point of desiring his prisoner 
 to say a last prayer, when his more considerate dame interposed milder 
 counsels, suggesting that the culprit was born to a good estate, and 
 that they had three unmarried daughters. Young Harden, it is said, 
 not without hesitation, agreed to save his life by taking the plainest of 
 the three off their hands."
 
 FORS CLAVIQERA. 29 
 
 at them on the grotesque side, and interpreting that gro- 
 tesqueness ungenerously. There may, indeed, be farther 
 ground than Lockhart has thought it worth while to state 
 for his color of the facts ; but all that can be justly gathered 
 from those he has told is that, Sir Gideon having determined 
 the death of his troublesome neighbor, Lady Murray inter- 
 fered to save his life ; and could not more forcibly touch her 
 husband's purpose than by reminding him that hostility 
 might be better ended in alliance than in death. 
 
 The sincere and careful affection which Sir William of 
 Harden afterwards shows to all his children by the Maid of 
 Elibank, and his naming one of them after her father, induce 
 me still farther to trust in the fairer reading of the tradition. 
 I should, indeed, have been disposed to attach some weight, 
 on the side of the vulgar story, to the curiously religious 
 tendencies in Sir William's children, which seem to point to 
 some condition of feeling in the mother, arising out of 
 despised life. Women are made nobly religious by the 
 possession of extreme beauty, and morbidly so by distressed 
 consciousness of the want of it ; but there is no reason for 
 insisting on this probability, since both the Christian and 
 surname of Sir Gideon Murray point to his connection with 
 the party in Scotland which was at this time made strong in 
 battle by religious faith, and melancholy in peace by religious 
 passion. 
 
 in. Walter Scott, first Laird of Raeburn ; third son of Sir 
 William and this enforced bride of Elibank. They had four 
 sons altogether ; the eldest, William, becomes the second 
 Sir William of Harden ; their father settled the lands of 
 Raeburn upon Walter ; and of Highchester on his second 
 son, Gideon, named after the rough father-in-law, of Elibank. 
 
 Now, about this time (1657), George Fox comes into 
 Scotland, boasting that " as he first set his feet upon Scot- 
 tish ground he felt the seed of grace to sparkle about him 
 like innumerable sparks of fire." And he forthwith succeeds 
 in making Quakers of Gideon, Walter, and Walter's wife. 
 This is too much for Sir William of Harden, the eldest broth- 
 er, who not only remains a staunch Jacobite, but obtains
 
 30 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 
 
 order from the Privy Council of Scotland to imprison his 
 brother and brother's wife ; that they may hold no further 
 converse with Quakers, and also to " separate and take away 
 their children, being two sons and a daughter, from their 
 family and education, and to breed them in some convenient 
 place." Which is accordingly done ; and poor Walter, who 
 had found pleasantly conversible Quakers in the Tolbooth of 
 Edinburgh, is sent to Jedburgh, with strict orders to the 
 Jedburgh magistrates to keep Quakers out of his way. The 
 children are sent to an orthodox school by Sir William ; and 
 of the daughter I find nothing further; but the two sons 
 both became good scholars, and were so effectually cured of 
 Quakerism, that the elder (I don't find his Christian name), 
 just as he came of age, was killed in a duel with Pringle of 
 Crichton, fought with swords in a field near Selkirk ever 
 since called, from the Raeburn's death, "the Raeburn mead- 
 ow-spot ; " and the younger, Walter, who then became 
 "Tutor of Raeburn," i.e., guardian to his infant nephew, 
 intrigued in the cause of the exiled Stuarts till he had lost 
 all he had in the world ran a narrow risk of being hanged 
 was saved by the interference of Anne, Duchess of Buc- 
 cleugh founded a Jacobite club in Edinburgh, in which the 
 conversation is said to have been maintained in Latin and 
 wore his beard undipped to his dying day, vowing no razor 
 should pass on it until the return of the Stuarts, whence he 
 held his border name of " Beardie." 
 
 It is only when we remember how often this history must 
 have dwelt on Sir Walter's mind that we can understand the 
 tender subtlety of design with which he has completed, even 
 in the weary time of his declining life, the almost eventless 
 story of Hedgauntlet, and given, as we shall presently see 
 in connection with it, the most complete, though disguised, 
 portion of his own biography. 
 
 iv. Beardie. I find no details of Beardie's life given by 
 Scott, but he was living at Leasudden when his landlord, 
 Scott of Harden,* living at Mertoun House, addressed to 
 
 * Eldest son, or grandson, of Sir William Scott of Harden, the 
 second in our genealogy.
 
 FOBS CLAVIOERA. 31 
 
 him the lines given in the note to the introduction to the 
 sixth canto of Marmion, in which Scott himself partly 
 adopts the verses, writing from Mertoun House to Richard 
 Heber. 
 
 " For course of blood our proverbs dream, 
 la warmer than the mountain stream. 
 And thus my Christmas still I hold 
 Where my great-grandsire came of old,* 
 * With amber beard and flaxen hair, 
 And reverend apostolic air, 
 The feast and holytide to share, 
 And mix sobriety with wine, 
 And honest mirth with thoughts divine.' 
 Small thought was his, in after-time, 
 E'er to be hitched into a rhyme. 
 The simple sire could only boast 
 That he was loyal to his cost, 
 The banished race of kings revered, 
 And lost his hand but kept his beard, " 
 
 " a mark of attachment," Scott adds in his note, " which I 
 suppose had been common during Cromwell's usurpation ; 
 for in Cowley's Cutter of Coleman Street one drunken cava- 
 lier upbraids another that when he was not able to pay a 
 barber, he affected to 'wear a beard for the King.' " 
 
 Observe, here, that you must always be on yqur guard, in 
 reading Scott's notes or private letters, against his way of 
 kindly laughing at what he honours more deeply than he 
 likes to confess. The house in which Beardie died was still 
 standing when Sir Walter wrote his autobiography, (1808), 
 at the north-east entrance of the churchyard of Kelso. 
 
 He left three sons. Any that remain of the familv of the 
 elder are long since settled in America (male heirs extinct). 
 James Scott, well known in India as one of the original set- 
 tlers of Prince of Wales Island , was a son of the youngest, 
 
 v O 
 
 who died at Lasswade, in Midlothian (first mention of Scott's 
 Lasswade). 
 
 But of the second son, Scott's grandfather, we have to 
 learn much. 
 
 * Came, by invitation from his landlord, Scott of Harden.
 
 32 FORS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 V. Robert Scott of Sandy-Knowe, second son of Beardie. 
 I cannot shorten Scott's own account of the circumstances 
 which determined his choice of life. 
 
 " My grandfather was originally bred to the sea, but being 
 shipwrecked near Dundee in his trial voyage, he took such a 
 sincere dislike to that element, that he could not be per- 
 suaded to a second attempt. This occasioned a quarrel be- 
 tween him and his father, who left him to shift for himself. 
 Robert was one of those active spirits to whom this was no 
 misfortune. He turned Whig upon the spot, and fairly ab- 
 jured his father's politics and his learned poverty. His 
 chief and relative, Mr. Scott of Harden, gave him a lease of 
 the farm of Sandy-Knowe, comprehending the rocks in the 
 centre of which Smailholm or Sandy-Knowe Tower is situ- 
 ated. He took for his shepherd an old man called Hogg, 
 who willingly lent him, out of respect to his family, his 
 whole savings, about 30, to stock the new farm. With 
 this sum, which it seems was at the time sufficient for the 
 purpose, the master and servant* set off to purchase a stock 
 of sheep at Whitsun-tryste, a fair held on a hill near Wooler, 
 in Northumberland. The old shepherd went carefully from 
 drove to drove, till he found a hirsel likely to answer their 
 purpose, and then returned to tell his master to come up and 
 conclude the bargain. But what was his surprise to see him 
 galloping a mettled hunter about the race-course, and to find 
 he had expended the whole stock in this extraordinary pur- 
 chase ! Moses' bargain of green spectacles did not strike 
 more dismay into the Vicar of Wakefield's family than my 
 grandfather's rashness into the poor old shepherd. The 
 thing, however, was irretrievable, and they returned without 
 the sheep. In the course of a few days, however, my grand- 
 father, who was one of the best horsemen of his time, at- 
 tended John Scott of Harden's hounds on this same horse, 
 and displayed him to such advantage that he sold him for 
 double the original price. The farm was now stocked in 
 earnest, and the rest of my grandfather's career was that of 
 successful industry. He was one of the first who were active 
 * Here, you see, our subject begins to purpose 1
 
 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 33 
 
 in the cattle trade, afterwards carried to such an extent be- 
 tween the Highlands of Scotland and the leading counties 
 in England, and by his droving transactions acquired a con- 
 siderable sum of money. He was a man of middle stature, 
 extremely active, quick, keen, and fiery in his temper, stub- 
 bornly honest, and so distinguished for his skill in country 
 matters that he was the general referee in all points of dis- 
 pute which occurred in the neighbourhood. His birth being 
 admitted as gentle, gave him access to the best society in 
 the county, and his dexterity in country sports, particularly 
 hunting, made him an acceptable companion in the field as 
 well as at the table." 
 
 Thus, then, between Auld Wat of Harden, and Scott's 
 grandfather, we have four generations, numbering approxi- 
 mately a hundred and fifty years, from 1580 to 1730,* and 
 in that time we have the great change in national manners 
 from stealing cattle to breeding and selling them, which 
 at first might seem a change in the way of gradually in- 
 creasing honesty. But observe that this first cattle-dealer 
 of our line is "stubbornly honest," a quality which it would 
 be unsafe to calculate upon in any dealer of our own days. 
 
 Do you suppose, then, that this honesty was a sudden and 
 momentary virtue a lightning flash of probity between the 
 two darknesses of Auld Wat's thieving and modern cozening? 
 
 Not so. That open thieving had ho dishonesty in it 
 whatsoever. Far the contrary. Of all conceivable ways of 
 getting a living, except by actual digging of the ground, 
 this is precisely the honestest. All other gentlemanly pro- 
 fessions but this have a taint of dishonesty in them. Even 
 the best the physician's involves temptation to many 
 forms of cozening. How many second-rate mediciners have 
 lived, think you, on prescriptions of bread pills and rose- 
 coloured water? how many, even of leading physicians, owe 
 all their success to skill unaided by pretence ? Of clergy- 
 men, how many preach wholly what they know to be true 
 
 * I give the round numbers for better remembering. Wat of Harden 
 married the Flower of Yarrow in 1567 ; Robert of Sandy-Knowe mar- 
 ried Barbara Haliburton in 1728. 
 VOL. II. 3
 
 34 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 without fear of their congregations ? Of lawyers, of authors, 
 of painters, what need we speak ? These all, so far as they 
 try to please the mob for their living, are true cozeners, 
 unsound in the very heart's core. But Wat of Harden, 
 setting my farm on fire, and driving off my cattle, is no 
 rogue. An enemy, yes, and a spoiler ; but no more a rogue 
 than the rock eagles. And Robert the first cattle-dealer's 
 honesty is directly inherited from his race, and notable as a 
 virtue, not in opposition to their character, but to ours. For 
 men become dishonest by occult trade, not by open rapine. 
 
 There are, nevertheless, some very definite faults in our 
 pastoral Robert of Sandy-Knovve, which Sir Walter himself 
 inherits and recognizes in his own temper, and which were 
 in him severely punished. Of the rash investment of the 
 poor shepherd's fortune we shall presently hear what Sir 
 Walter thought. Robert's graver fault, the turning Whig 
 to displease his father, is especially to be remembered in 
 connection with Sir Walter's frequent warnings against the 
 sacrifice to momentary passion of what ought to be the fixed 
 principles of youth. It has not been enough noticed that 
 the design of his first and greatest story is to exhibit and 
 reprehend, while it tenderly indicates the many grounds for 
 forgiving, the change of political temper under circumstances 
 of personal irritation. 
 
 But in the virtues of Robert Scott, far outnumbering his 
 failings, and above all in this absolute honesty and his con- 
 tentment in the joy of country life, all the noblest roots of 
 his grandson's character found their happy hold. 
 
 Note every syllable of the description of him given in the 
 introduction to the third canto of Marmion : 
 
 " Still, with vain fondness, could I trace 
 Anew each kind familiar face 
 That brightened at our evening fire ; 
 From the thatched mansion's grey-haired sire, 
 Wise without learning, plain, and good. 
 And sprung of Scotland's gentler blood ; 
 Whose eye in age, quick, clear, and keen, 
 Showed what in youth its glance had been:
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 35 
 
 Whose doom discording neighbours sought, 
 Content with equity unbought, 
 To him, the venerable priest. 
 Our frequent and familiar guest. " 
 
 Note, I say, every word of this. The faces " brightened 
 at the evening fire," not a patent stove; fancy the difference 
 in effect on the imagination, in the dark long nights of a Scot- 
 tish winter, between the flickering shadows of firelight, and 
 utter gloom of a room warmed by a close stove ! 
 
 "The thatched mansion's." The coolest roof in summer, 
 warmest in winter. Among the various mischievous things 
 done in France, apparently by the orders of Napoleon III., 
 but in reality by the foolish nation uttering itself through 
 his passive voice, (he being all his days only a feeble Pan's 
 pipe, or Charon's boatswain's whistle, instead of a true king,) 
 the substitution of tiles for thatch on the cottages of Picardy 
 was one of the most barbarous. It was to prevent fire, for- 
 sooth ! and all the while the poor peasants could not afford 
 candles, except to drip about over their church floors. See 
 above, 24, 31. 
 
 "Wise without learning." By no means able, this border 
 rider, to state how many different arrangements may be 
 made of the letters in the word Chillianwallah. He contrived 
 to exist, and educate his grandson to come to something, 
 without that information. 
 
 " Plain, and good." Consider the value there is in that 
 virtue of plainness legibility, shall we say ? in the letters 
 of character. A clear-printed man, readable at a glance. 
 There are such things as illuminated letters of character also, 
 beautifully unreadable ; but this legibility in the head of 
 a family is greatly precious. 
 
 " And sprung of Scotland's gentler blood." I am not sure 
 if this is merely an ordinary expression of family pride, or 
 whether, which I rather think, Scott means to mark distinctly 
 the literal gentleness and softening of character in his grand- 
 father, and in the Lowland Scottish shepherd of his day, as 
 opposed to the still fiery temper of the Highland clans the 
 blood being equally pure, but the race altogether softer and
 
 36 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 more Saxon. Even Auld Wat was fair-haired, and Beardie 
 has " amber beard and flaxen hair." 
 
 " Whose doom discording neighbours sought, 
 Content with equity unbought." 
 
 Here you have the exactly right and wise condition of the 
 legal profession. 
 
 All good judging, and all good preaching, must be given 
 gratis. Look back to what I have incidentally said of lawyers 
 and clergy, as professional that is to say, as living by their 
 judgment, and sermons. You will perhaps now be able to 
 receive my conclusive statement, that all such professional 
 sale of justice and mercy is a deadly sin. A man may sell 
 the work of his hands, but not his equity, nor his piety. Let 
 him live by his spade ; and if his neighbours find him wise 
 enough to decide a dispute between them, or if he is in 
 modesty and simplicity able to give them a piece of pious 
 advice, let him do so, in Heaven's name, but not take a fee 
 for it. 
 
 Finally, Robert Scott is a cattle-dealer, yet a gentleman, 
 giving us the exact balance of right between the pride which 
 refuses a simple employment, and the baseness which makes 
 that simple employment disgraceful, because dishonest. Being 
 wholly upright, he can sell cattle, yet not disgrace his lineage. 
 We shall return presently to his house ; but must first com- 
 plete, so as to get our range of view within due limits, the 
 sketch of the entire ancestral line. 
 
 vi. Walter Scott, of George's Square, Edinburgh, Scott's 
 father, born 1729. 
 
 He was the eldest son of Robert of Sandy-Knowe, and had 
 three brothers and a sister, namely, Captain Robert Scott, in 
 East India Service ; Thomas Scott, cattle-dealer, following 
 his father's business ; a younger brother who died early, 
 (also) in East India Service ; and the sister Janet, whose part 
 in Scott's education was no less constant, and perhaps more 
 influential, than even his mother's. Scott's regard for one of 
 his Indian uncles, and his regret for the other's death, are 
 both traceable in the development of the character of Colonel
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 37 
 
 Mannering ; but of his uncle Thomas, and his aunt Jessie, 
 there is much more to be learned and thought on. 
 
 The cattle-dealer followed his father's business prosper- 
 ously ; was twice married first to Miss Raeburn, and then 
 to Miss Rutherford of Knowsouth and retired, in his old 
 age, upon a handsome independence. Lockhart, visiting 
 him with Sir Walter, two years before the old man's death, 
 (he being then eighty-eight years old,) thus describes him : 
 
 " I thought him about the most venerable figure I had 
 ever set my eyes on, tall and erect, with long flowing tresses 
 of the most silvery whiteness, and stockings rolled up over 
 his knees, after the fashion of three generations back. He 
 sat reading his Bible without spectacles, and did not, for a 
 moment, perceive that any one had entered his room ; but on 
 recognizing his nephew he rose with cordial alacrity, kissing 
 him on both cheeks, and exclaiming, ' God bless thee, Walter, 
 my man ; thou hast risen to be great, but thou wast always 
 good.' His remarks were lively and sagacious, and delivered 
 with a touch of that humour which seems to have been shared 
 by most of the family. He had the air and manners of an 
 ancient gentleman, and must in his day have been eminently 
 handsome." 
 
 Next read Sir Walter Scott's entry made in his copy of 
 the Haliburton Memorials : 
 
 " The said Thomas Scott died at Monklaw, near Jedburgh, 
 at two of the clock, 27th January, 1823, in the 90th year of 
 his life, and fully possessed of all his faculties. He read till 
 nearly the year before his death ; and being a great musician 
 on the Scotch pipes, had, when on his deathbed, a favourite 
 tune played over to him by his son James, that he might be 
 sure he left him in full possession of it. After hearing it, he 
 hummed it over himself, and corrected it in several of the 
 notes. The air was that called ' Sour Plums in Galashiels.' 
 When barks and other tonics were given him during his last 
 illness, he privately spat them into his handkerchief, saying, 
 as he had lived all his life without taking doctors' drugs, he 
 wished to die without doing so." 
 
 No occasion whatever for deathbed repentances, you per-
 
 38 FOHS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 ceive, on the part of this old gentleman ; no particular care 
 even for the disposition of his handsome independence ; but 
 here is a bequest of which one must see one's son in full pos- 
 session here is a thing to be well looked after, before setting 
 out for heaven, that the tune of " Sour Plums in Galashiels" 
 may still be played on earth in an incorrupt manner, and no 
 damnable French or English variations intruded upon the 
 solemn and authentic melody thereof. His views on the sub 
 ject of Materia Medica are also greatly to be respected. 
 
 " I saw more than once," Lockhart goes on, " this respect- 
 able man's sister (Scott's aunt Janet), who had married her 
 cousin Walter, Laird of Raeburn, thus adding a new link to 
 the closeness of the family connection. She also must have 
 been, in her youth, remarkable for personal attractions ; as it 
 was, she dwells on my memory as the perfect picture of an 
 old Scotch lady, with a great deal of simple dignity in her 
 bearing, but with the softest eye and the sweetest voice, arid 
 a charm of meekness and gentleness about every look and 
 expression. She spoke her native language pure and undi- 
 luted, but without the slightest tincture of that vulgarity 
 which now seems almost unavoidable in the oral use of a dia- 
 lect so long banished from courts, and which has not been 
 avoided by any modern writer who has ventured to intro- 
 duce it, with the exception of Scott, and I may add, speaking 
 generally, of Burns. Lady Raeburn, as she was universally 
 styled, may be numbered with those friends of early days 
 whom her nephew has alluded to in one of his prefaces as 
 preserving what we may fancy to have been the old Scotch 
 of Holyrood." 
 
 To this aunt, to his grandmother, his mother, and to the 
 noble and most wise Rector of the High School of Edin- 
 burgh, Dr. Adam, Scott owed the essential part of his " edu- 
 cation," which began in this manner. At eighteen months 
 old his lameness came on, from sudden cold, bad air, and 
 other such causes. His mother's father, Dr. Rutherford, 
 advised sending him to the country; he is sent to his grand- 
 father's at Sandy-Knowe, where he first becomes conscious 
 of life, and where his grandmother and Aunt Janet beauti-
 
 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 39 
 
 fully instruct, but partly spoil him. When he is eight years 
 old, he returns to, and remains in, his father's house at 
 George's Square. And now note the following sentence; 
 
 " I felt the change from being a single indulged brat, to 
 becoming a member of a large family, very severely ; for 
 under the gentle government of my kind grandmother, who 
 was meekness itself, and of my aunt, who, though of a high- 
 er temper, was exceedingly attached to me, 1 had acquired a 
 degree of license which could not be permitted in a large 
 family. I had sense enough, however, to bend my temper 
 to my new circumstances ; but such was the agony which I 
 internally experienced, that I have guarded against nothing 
 more, in the education of my own family, than against their 
 acquiring habits of self-willed caprice and domination." 
 
 The indulgence, however, no less than the subsequent dis- 
 cipline, had been indeed altogether wholesome for the boy, 
 he being of the noble temper which is the better for hav- 
 ing its way. The essential virtue of the training he had in 
 his grandfather's and father's house, and his aunt Jessie's at 
 Kelso, I will trace further in next letter. 
 
 LETTER XXXII. 
 
 I DO not know how far I shall be able in this letter to carry 
 you forward in the story of Scott's life ; let me first, there- 
 fore, map its divisions clearly ; for then, wherever we have 
 to stop, we can return to our point in fit time. 
 
 First, note these three great divisions essentially those 
 of all men's lives, but singularly separate in his, the days 
 of youth, of labour, and of death. 
 
 Youth is properly the forming time that in which a man 
 makes himself, or is made, what he is for ever to be. Then 
 comes the time of labour, when, having become the best he 
 can be, he does the best he can do. Then the time of death, 
 which, in happy lives, is very short : but always a time. 
 The ceasing to breathe is only the end of death.
 
 40 FOItS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 Scott records the beginning of his own in the following 
 entry in his diary, which reviews the life then virtually 
 ended: 
 
 "December 18<A, 1825.* What a life mine has been ! 
 half educated, almost wholly neglected, or left to myself ; 
 stuffing my head with most nonsensical trash, and under- 
 valued by most of my companions for a time ; getting for- 
 ward, and held a bold, clever fellow, contrary to the opinion 
 of all who thought me a mere dreamer; broken-hearted for 
 two years ; my heart handsomely pieced again, but the crack 
 will remain till my dying day. Rich and poor four or five 
 times : once on the verge of ruin, yet opened a new source 
 of wealth almost overflowing. Now to be broken in my 
 pitch of pride, f . . . 
 
 " Nobody in the end can lose a penny by me ; that is one 
 comfort. Men will think pride has had a fall. Let them in- 
 dulge in their own pride in thinking that my fall will make 
 them higher, or seem so at least. 1 have the satisfaction to 
 recollect that my prosperity has been of advantage to many, 
 and to hope that some at least will forgive my transient 
 wealth on account of the innocence of my intentions, and 
 my real wish to do good to the poor. Sad hearts, too, at 
 Darnick, and in the cottages of Abbotsford. I have half 
 resolved never to see the place again. How could 1 tread 
 my hall with such a diminished crest ? how live a poor, in- 
 debted man, where I was once the wealthy, the honoured ? 
 I was to have gone there on Saturday, in joy and prosperity, 
 to receive my friends. My dogs will wait for me in vain. 
 It is foolish, but the thoughts of parting from these dumb 
 creatures have moved me more than any of the painful reflec- 
 tions I have put down. Poor things, I must get them kind 
 masters ! There may be yet those who, loving me, may love 
 my dog because it has been mine. I must end these gloomy 
 forebodings, or I shall lose the tone of mind with which men 
 should meet distress. I feel my dogs' feet on my knees ; I 
 hear them whining, and seeking me everywhere." 
 
 He was fifty-four on the loth August of that year, and 
 spoke his last words " God bless you all," on the 21st 
 September, 1832; so ending seven years of death. 
 
 * Vol. vi., p. 164. 
 
 f Portion omitted short, and of no moment just now. I shall refer 
 to it afterwards.
 
 FORS GLAVIGERA. 41 
 
 His youth, like the youth of all the greatest men, had been 
 long, and rich in peace, and altogether accumulative and 
 crescent. I count it to end with that pain which you see he 
 remembers to his dying day, given him by Lilias Red- 
 gauntlet, in October, 1796. Whereon he sets himself to his 
 work, which goes on nobly for thirty years, lapping over a 
 little into the death-time * ( Woodstock showing scarcely a 
 trace of diminution of power). 
 
 Count, therefore, thus: 
 
 Youth, twenty-five years . . 17711796. 
 Labour-time, thirty years . . 17961826. 
 Death-time, seven years . . 1825 1832. 
 
 The great period of mid-life is again divided exactly in 
 the midst by the change of temper which made him accurate 
 instead of fantastic in delineation, and therefore habitually 
 write in prose rather than verse. The Lady of the Lake is 
 his last poem, (1810). Rokeby, (1812) is a versified novel ; 
 the Lord of the Isles is not so much. The steady legal and 
 historical work of 1810 1814, issuing in the Essay on 
 Scottish Judicature, and the Life of Swift, with prepara- 
 tion for his long-cherished purpose of an edition and Life 
 of Pope, \ ("the true deacon of the craft," as Scott often 
 called him,) confirmed, while they restrained and chastised, 
 his imaginative power ; and Waverley, (begun in 1805) was 
 completed in 1814. The apparently unproductive year of 
 accurate study, 1811, divides the thirty years of mid-life in 
 the precise centre, giving fifteen to song, and fifteen to his- 
 tory. 
 
 You may be surprised at my speaking of the novels as 
 history. But Scott's final estimate of his own work, given 
 in 1830, is a perfectly sincere and perfectly just one ; (re- 
 ceived, of course, with the allowance I have warned you al- 
 
 * The actual toil gone through by him is far greater during the last 
 years than before in fact it is unceasing and mortal ; but I count only 
 as the true labour-time that which is healthy and fruitful. 
 
 f If my own life is spared a little longer, I can at least rescue Pope 
 from the hands of his present scavenger biographer; but alas, for 
 Scott's loving hand and noble thought, lost to him !
 
 4:2 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 ways to make for his manner of reserve in expressing deep 
 feelings). " He replied * that in what he had done for 
 Scotland as a writer, he was no more entitled to the merit 
 which had been ascribed to him than the servant who scours 
 the brasses to the credit of having made them ; that he had 
 perhaps been a good housemaid to Scotland, and given the 
 country a 'rubbing up;' and in so doing might have de- 
 served some praise for assiduity, and that was all." Dis- 
 tinguish, however, yourselves, and remember that Scott 
 always tacitly distinguishes, between the industry which 
 deserves praise, and the love which disdains it. You do not 
 praise Old Mortality for his love to his people ; you praise 
 him for his patience over a bit of moss in a troublesome 
 corner. Scott is the Old Mortality, not of tables of stone, 
 but of the fleshly tables of the heart. 
 
 We address ourselves to-day, then, to begin the analy- 
 sis of the influences upon him during the first period of 
 twenty-five years, during which he built and filled the treas- 
 ure-house of his own heart. But this time of youth I must 
 again map out in minor detail, that we may grasp it clearly. 
 
 1. From birth to three years old. In Edinburgh, a sickly 
 child; permanent lameness contracted, 1771 1774. 
 
 2. Three years old to four. Recovers health at Sandy- 
 Knowe. The dawn of conscious life, 1774 1775. 
 
 3. Four years old to five. At Bath, with his aunt, pass- 
 ing through London on the way to it. Learns to read, and 
 much besides, 17751776. 
 
 4. Five years old to eight. At Sandy-Knowe. Pastoral 
 life in its perfectness forming his character : (an important 
 though short interval at Prestonpans begins his interest in 
 seashore), 17761779. 
 
 5. Eight years old to twelve. School life, under the Rec- 
 tor Adams, at High School of Edinburgh, with his aunt Janet 
 to receive him at Kelso, 1779 1783. 
 
 6. Twelve years old to fifteen. College life, broken by ill- 
 ness, his uncle Robert taking good care of him at Rosebank, 
 17831786. 
 
 * To the speech of Mr. Baillie of Jerviswoode ; vol. vii., p. 221.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 43 
 
 7. Fifteen to twenty-five. Apprenticeship to his father, 
 and law practice entered on. Study of human life, and of 
 various literature in Edinburgh. His first fee of any im- 
 portance expended on a silver taper-stand for his mother. 
 17861796. 
 
 You have thus ' seven ages ' of his youth to examine, one 
 by one ; and this convenient number really comes out with- 
 out the least forcing ; for the virtual, though not formal, ap- 
 prenticeship to his father happiest of states for a good son 
 continues through all the time of his legal practice. I 
 only feel a little compunction at crowding the Prestonpans 
 time together with the second Sandy-Knowe time ; but the 
 former is too short to be made a period, though of infinite 
 importance to Scott's life. Hear how he writes of it,* re- 
 visiting the place fifty years afterwards : 
 
 " I knew the house of Mr. Warroch, where we lived," (see 
 where the name of the Point of Warroch in Guy Manner- 
 ing comes from !) "I recollected my juvenile ideas of dig- 
 nity attendant on the large gate, a black arch which lets out 
 upon the sea. I saw the Links where I arranged my shells 
 upon the turf, and swam my little skiff in the pools. Many 
 recollections of my kind aunt of old George Constable of 
 Dalgetty " (you know that name also, don't you ?), " a virt- 
 uous half-pay lieutenant, who swaggered his solitary walk 
 on the parade, as he called a little open space before the 
 same port." (Before the black arch, Scott means, not the 
 harbour.) And he falls in love also there, first "as chil- 
 dren love." 
 
 And now we can begin to count the rosary of his youth, 
 bead by bead. 
 
 1st period From birth to three years old. 
 
 I have hitherto said nothing to you of his father or mother, 
 nor shall I yet, except to bid you observe that they had been 
 thirteen years married when Scott was born ; and that his 
 mother was the daughter of a physician, Dr. Rutherford, 
 who had been educated under Boerhaave. This fact might 
 be carelessly passed by you in reading Lockhart ; but if you 
 * Vol. vii., p. 213.
 
 44 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 will take the pains to look through Johnson's life of Boer- 
 haave, you will see how perfectly pure and beautiful and 
 strong every influence was, which, from whatever distance, 
 touched the early life of Scott. I quote a sentence or two 
 from Johnson's closing account of Dr. Rutherford's master : 
 
 " There was in his air and motion something rough and 
 artless, but so majestic and great at the same time, that no 
 man ever looked upon him without veneration, and a kind of 
 tacit submission to the superiority of his genius. The vigour 
 and activity of his rnind sparkled visibly in his eyes, nor was 
 it ever observed that any change of his fortune, or altera- 
 tion in his affairs, whether happy or unfortunate, affected 
 his countenance. 
 
 " His greatest pleasure was to retire to his house in the 
 country, where he had a garden stored with all the herbs 
 and trees which the climate would bear ; here he used to 
 enjoy his hours unmolested, and prosecute his studies with- 
 out interruption." * 
 
 The school of medicine in Edinburgh owed its rise to this 
 man, and it was by his pupil Dr. Rutherford's advice, as we 
 saw, that the infant Walter's life was saved. His mother 
 could not nurse him, and his first nurse had consumption. 
 
 * Not to break away from my text too long, I add one or two far- 
 ther points worth notice, here : 
 
 "Boerhaave lost none of his hours, but when he had attained one 
 science attempted another. He added physick to divinity, chemistry 
 to the mathematicks, and anatomy to botany. 
 
 " He knew the importance of his own writings to mankind, and lest 
 he might, by a roughness and barbarity of style too frequent among 
 men of great learning, disappoint his own intentions, and make his 
 labours less useful, he did not neglect the politer arts of eloquence 
 and poetry. Thus was his learning at once various and exact, profound 
 and agreeable. 
 
 "But his knowledge, however uncommon, holds in his character but 
 the second place ; his virtue was yet much more uncommon than his 
 learning. 
 
 " Being once asked by a friend, who had often admired his patience 
 under great provocations, whether he knew what it was to be angry 
 and by what means he had so entirely suppressed that impetuous and 
 ungovernable passion, he answered, with the utmost frankness and sin- 
 cerity, that he was naturally quick of resentment, but that he had, by 
 daily prayer and meditation, at length attained to this mastery over 
 himself. "
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 45 
 
 To this, and the close air of the wynd, must be attributed 
 the strength of the childish fever which took away the use 
 of the right limb when he was eighteen months old. How 
 many of your own children die, think you, or are wasted 
 with sickness, from the same causes, in our increasing 
 cities ? Scott's lameness, however, we shall find, was, in the 
 end, like every other condition of his appointed existence, 
 helpful to him. 
 
 A letter from my dear friend, Dr. John Brown,* corrects 
 (to my great delight) a mistake about George's Square I 
 made in my last letter. It is not in the New Town, but in 
 what was then a meadow district, sloping to the south from 
 old Edinburgh ; and the air of it would be almost as healthy 
 for the child as that of the open country. But the change 
 to George's Square, though it checked the illness, did not 
 restore the use of the limb ; the boy wanted exercise as well 
 as air, and Dr. Rutherford sent him to his other grandfather's 
 farm. 
 
 II. 1774 1775. The first year at Sandy-Knowe. In this 
 year, note first his new nurse. The child had a maid sent 
 with him to prevent his being an inconvenience to the family. 
 This maid had left her heart behind her in Edinburgh (ill 
 trusted), j- and went mad in the solitude ; " tempted by the 
 devil," she told Alison Wilson, the housekeeper, " to kill the 
 child and bury it in the moss." 
 
 " Alison instantly took possession of my person," says 
 Scott. And there is no more said of Alison in the auto- 
 biography. 
 
 But what the old farm-housekeeper must have been to the 
 child, is told in the most finished piece of all the beautiful 
 story of Old Mortality. Among his many beautifully in- 
 vented names, here is one not invented very dear to him. 
 
 " ' I wish to speak an instant with one Alison Wilson, who 
 resides here,' said Henry. 
 
 " ' She's no at hame the day,' answered Mrs. Wilson in 
 propria persona the state of whose headdress perhaps in- 
 spired her with this direct mode of denying herself 'and 
 * See terminal notes. f Autobiography, p. 15.
 
 46 FOBS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 ye are but amislear'd person to speer for her in sic a manner. 
 Ye might have had an M under your belt for Mistress Wilson 
 of Milnwood.' " Read on, if you forget it, to the end, that 
 third chapter of the last volume of Old Mortality. The 
 story of such return to the home of childhood has been told 
 often; but never, so far as I have knowledge, so exquisitely. 
 I do not doubt that Elphin's name is from Sandy-Knowe 
 also; but cannot trace it. 
 
 Secondly, note his grandfathers' medical treatment of 
 him; for both his grandfathers were physicians, Dr. Ruth- 
 erford, as we have seen, so professed, by whose advice he is 
 sent to Sandy-Knowe. There, his cattle-dealing grandfather, 
 true physician by diploma of Nature, orders him, whenever 
 the day is fine, to be carried out and laid down beside the 
 old shepherd among the crags or rocks around which he fed 
 his sheep. " The impatience of a child soon inclined me to 
 struggle with my infirmity, and I began by degrees to stand, 
 to walk, and to run. Although the limb affected was much 
 shrunk and contracted, my general health, which was of 
 more importance, was much strengthened by being fre- 
 quently in the open air; and, in a word, I, who in a city had 
 probably been condemned to hopeless and helpless decrepitude, 
 (italics mine,) was now a healthy, high-spirited, and, my 
 lameness apart, a sturdy child, non sine dis animosus in- 
 fans." 
 
 This, then, is the beginning of Scott's conscious existence, 
 laid down beside the old shepherd, among the rocks, and 
 among the sheep. " He delighted to roll about in the grass 
 all day long in the midst of the flock, and the sort of fellow- 
 ship he formed with the sheep and lambs impressed his mind 
 with a degree of affectionate feeling towards them which 
 lasted throughout life." * 
 
 , Such cradle, and such companionship, Heaven gives its 
 favourite children. 
 
 In 1837, two of the then maid-servants of Sandy-Knowe 
 were still living in its neighbourhood ; one of them, " Tibby 
 
 * His own words to Mr. Skene of Rubislaw, vol. i. , p. 83, spoken while 
 Turner was sketching Smailholm Tower, vol. vii. , p. 302.
 
 FOltS CLAVIGERA. 47 
 
 Hunter, remembered the child Scott's coming, well. The 
 young ewe-milkers delighted, she says, to carry him about 
 on their backs among the crags ; and he was ' very gleg 
 (quick) at the uptak, and soon kenned every sheep and lamb 
 by head-mark as well as any of them.' His great pleasure, 
 however, was in the society of the ' aged hind ' recorded in 
 the epistle to Erskine. ' Auld Sandy Ormistoun,' called, 
 from the most dignified part of his function, 'the cow-bailie,' 
 had the chief superintendence of the flocks that browsed 
 upon 'the velvet tufts of loveliest green.' If the child saw 
 him in the morning, he could not be satisfied unless the old 
 man would set him astride on his shoulder, and take him to 
 keep him company, as he lay watching his charge. 
 
 " The cow-bailie blew a particular note on his whistle 
 which signified to the maid-servants in the house below 
 when the little boy wished to be carried home again." 
 
 " Every sheep and lamb by head-mark ; " that is our first 
 lesson; not an easy one, you will find it, if you try the flock 
 of such a farm. Only yesterday (12th July, 1873,) I saw the 
 dairy of one half filled with the ' berry-bread' (large flat-baked 
 cakes enclosing layers of gooseberries) prepared by its mis- 
 tress for her shearers ; the flock being some six or seven 
 hundred, on Coniston Fells. 
 
 That is our first lesson, then, very utterly learned ' by 
 heart.' This is our second, (marginal note on Sir Walter's 
 copy of Allan Ramsay's Tea-table Miscellany, ed. 1724 ) : 
 " This book belonged to my grandfather, Robert Scott, and 
 out of it I was taught ' Hardiknute ' by heart before I could 
 read the ballad myself. It was the first poem I ever learnt, 
 the last I shall ever forget." * He repeated a great part of 
 it, in the forests of La Cava, in the spring of the year in 
 
 * The Ballad of Hardiknute is only a fragment but one consisting 
 of forty-two stanzas of eight lines each. It is the only heroic poem in 
 the MisceUany of which and of the poem itself more hereafter. The 
 first four lines are ominous of Scott's own life : 
 
 " Stately stept he East the wa', 
 And stately stept he West ; 
 Full seventy years he now had seen, 
 With scarce seven years of rest."
 
 4:8 FORS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 which he died ; and above the lake Avernus, a piece of the 
 song of the ewe-milkers : 
 
 " Up the craggy mountain, and down the mossy glen, 
 We canna' go a-milking, for Charlie and his men." 
 
 These I say, then, are to be your first lessons. The love, 
 and care, of simplest living creatures ; and the remembrance 
 and honour of the dead, with the workmanship for them of 
 fair tombs of song. 
 
 The Border district of Scotland was at this time, of all 
 districts of the inhabited world, pre-eminently the singing 
 country, that which most naturally expressed its noble 
 thoughts and passions in song. 
 
 The easily traceable reasons for this character are, I think, 
 the following ; (many exist, of course, untraceably). 
 
 First, distinctly pastoral life, giving the kind of leisure 
 which, in all ages and countries, solaces itself with simple 
 rnusic, if other circumstances are favourable, that is to 
 say, if the summer air is mild enough to allow repose, 
 and the race has imagination enough to give motive to 
 verse. 
 
 The Scottish Lowland air is, in summer, of exquisite clear- 
 ness and softness, the heat never so great as to destroy 
 energy, and the shepherd's labour not severe enough to oc- 
 cupy wholly either mind or body. A Swiss herd may have 
 to climb a hot ravine for thousands of feet, or cross a diffi- 
 cult piece of ice, to rescue a lamb, or lead his flock to an iso- 
 lated pasture. But the borderer's sheep-path on the heath 
 is, to his strong frame, utterly without labour or danger ; 
 he is free-hearted and free-footed all the summer day long ; 
 in winter darkness and snow finding yet enough to make him 
 grave and stout of heart. 
 
 Secondly, the soldier's life, passing gradually, not in cow- 
 ardice or under foreign conquest, but by his own increasing 
 kindness and sense, into that of the shepherd ; thus, without 
 humiliation, leaving the war-wounded past to be recalled for 
 its sorrow and its fame.
 
 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 49 
 
 Thirdly, the extreme sadness of that past itself : giving 
 pathos and awe to all the imagery and power of Nature. 
 
 Fourthly, (this a merely physical cause, yet a very 
 notable one,) the beauty of the sound of Scottish streams. 
 
 I know no other waters to be compared with them ; such 
 streams can only exist under very subtle concurrence of rock 
 and climate. There must be much soft rain, not (habitually) 
 tearing the hills down with floods ; and the rocks must break 
 irregularly and jaggedly. Our English Yorkshire shales and 
 limestones merely form carpenter-like tables and shelves 
 for the rivers to drip and leap from ; while the Cumberland 
 and Welsh rocks break too boldly, and lose the multiplied 
 chords of musical sound. Farther, the loosely-breaking rock 
 must contain hard pebbles, to give the level shore of white 
 shingle, through which the brown water may stray wide, in 
 rippling threads. The fords even of English rivers have 
 given the names to half our prettiest towns and villages ; 
 (the difference between ford and bridge curiously if one 
 may let one's fancy loose for a moment characterizing the 
 difference between the baptism of literature, and the edifica- 
 tion of mathematics, in our two great universities) ; but 
 the pure crystal of the Scottish pebbles,* giving the stream 
 its gradations of amber to the edge, and the sound as of 
 "ravishing division to the lute," make the Scottish fords the 
 happiest pieces of all one's day walk. " The farm-house it- 
 self was small and poor, with a common kailyard on one flank, 
 and a staring barn of the doctor's (' Douglas ') erection on the 
 other ; while in front appeared a filthy pond, covered with 
 ducks and duckweed, f from which the whole tenement had 
 derived the unharmonious designation of ' Clarty Hole.' But 
 the Tweed was everything to him : a beautiful river, flowing 
 
 * Lockhart, in the extract just below, calls them " milk-white." This 
 is exactly right of the pale bluish translucent quartz, in which the 
 agatescent veins are just traceable, and no more, out of the trap rocks; 
 but the gneissitic hills give also exquisitely brilliant pure white and 
 cream-coloured qunrtz, rolled out of their vein stones. 
 
 f With your pardon, Mr. Lockhart, neither ducks nor duckweed are 
 in the least derogatory to the purity of a pool. 
 VOL. II. 4
 
 50 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 broad and bright over a bed of milk-white pebbles, unless 
 where, here and there, it darkened into a deep pool, over- 
 hung as yet only by the birches and alders which had sur- 
 vived the statelier growth of the primitive forest ; and the 
 first hour that he took possession he claimed for his farm the 
 name of the adjoining ford." * With the murmur, whisper, 
 and low fall of these streamlets, unmatched for mystery and 
 sweetness, we must remember also the variable, but seldom 
 wild, thrilling of the wind among the recesses of the glens ; 
 and, not least, the need of relief from the monotony of 
 occupations involving some rhythmic measure of the beat 
 of foot or hand, during the long evenings at the hearth- 
 side. 
 
 In the rude lines describing such passing of hours quoted 
 by Scott in his introduction to the Border Minstrelsy, j- you 
 find the grandmother spinning, with her stool next the 
 hearth, " for she was old, and saw right dimly " (fire-light, 
 observe, all that was needed even then ;) "she spins to make 
 a web of good Scots linen," (can you show such now, from 
 your Glasgow mills ?) The father is pulling hemp (or beat- 
 ing it). The only really beautiful piece of song which I 
 heard at Verona, during several months' stay there in 1869, 
 was the low chant of girls unwinding the cocoons of the 
 silkworm, in the cottages among the olive-clad hills on the 
 north of the city. Never any in the streets of it ; there, 
 only insane shrieks of Republican populace, or senseless 
 dance-music, played by operatic-military bands. 
 
 And one of the most curious points connected with the 
 study of Border-life is this connection of its power of song 
 either with its industry or human love, but never with the 
 religious passion of its " Independent " mind. The definite 
 subject of the piper or minstrel being always war or love, 
 (peasant love as much honoured as the proudest,) his feeling 
 is steadily antagonistic to Puritanism ; and the discordance 
 
 * Vol. ii. , p. 358; compare ii. , 70. "If it peetned possible to 
 scramble through, he scorned to go ten yards about, and in fact pre- 
 ferred the ford,'' etc. 
 
 f 8vo, 1806, p. 119.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 51 
 
 of Scottish modern psalmody is as unexampled among civil- 
 ized nations as the sweetness of their ballads shepherds' or 
 ploughmen's (the plough and pulpit coming into fatalest op- 
 position in Ayrshire) ; so that Wandering Willie must, as a 
 matter of course, head the troop of Redgauntlet's riotous 
 fishermen with " Merrily danced the Quaker's wife." And 
 see Wandering Willie's own description of his gudesire : 
 " A rambling, rattling chiel he had been, in his young days, 
 and could play weel on the pipes ; he was famous at 
 ' Hoopers and Girders ; ' a' Cumberland could not touch him 
 at ' Jockie Lattin ; ' and he had the finest finger for the back- 
 lilt between Berwick and Carlisle ; the like o' Steenie was 
 na the sort they made Whigs o'." And yet, to this Puritan 
 element, Scott owed quite one of the most noble conditions 
 of his mental life. 
 
 But it is of no use trying to get on to his aunt Janet in 
 this letter, for there is yet one thing I have to explain to you 
 before I can leave you to meditate, to purpose, over that 
 sorrowful piece of Scott's diary with which it began. 
 
 If you had before any thoughtful acquaintance with his 
 general character, or with his writings, but had not studied 
 this close of his life, you cannot but have read with surprise, 
 in the piece of the diary I quoted, the recurring sentences 
 showing the deep wounds of his pride. Your impression of 
 him was, if thoughtfully received, that of a man modest and 
 self-forgetful, even to error. Yet, very evidently, the bitterest 
 pain under his fallen fortune is felt by his pride. 
 
 Do you fancy the feeling is only by chance so strongly ex- 
 pressed in that passage ? 
 
 It is dated 18th December. Now read this : 
 
 "February oth, 1826. Missie was in the drawing-room, 
 and overheard William Clerk and me laughing excessively 
 at some foolery or other in the back room, to her no small 
 surprise, which she did not keep to herself. But do people 
 suppose that he was less sorry for his poor sister, or I for rny 
 lost fortune ? If I have a very strong passion in the world, 
 it is pride ; and that never hinged upon world's gear, which 
 was always, with me Light come, light go."
 
 52 FOES CLAVIGERA. 
 
 You will not at first understand the tone of this last piece, 
 in which two currents of thought run counter, or, at least, 
 one with a back eddy ; and you may think Scott did not 
 know himself, and that his strongest passion was not pride ; 
 and that he did care for world's gear. 
 
 Not so, good reader. Never allow your own conceit to 
 betray you into that extremest folly of thinking that you 
 can know a great man better than he knows himself. He 
 may not often wear his heart on his sleeve for you ; but 
 when he does, depend upon it, he lets you see deep, and see 
 true. 
 
 Scott's ruling passion was pride ; but it was nobly set 
 on his honour, and his courage, and his quite conscious in- 
 tellectual power. The apprehended loss of honour, the 
 shame of what he thinks in himself cowardice, or the fear 
 of failure in intellect, are at any time overwhelming to him. 
 But now, he felt that his honour was safe ; his courage was, 
 even to himself, satisfying ; his sense of intellectual power 
 undiminished ; and he had therefore recovered some peace 
 of mind, and power of endurance. The evils he could not 
 have borne, and lived, have not been inflicted on him, and 
 could not be. He can laugh again with his friend; "but 
 do people suppose that he was less sorry for his poor sister, 
 or I for my lost fortune ? " 
 
 What is this loss, then, which he is grieving for as for a 
 lost sister ? Not world's gear, " which was always, with me, 
 Light come, light go." 
 
 Something far other than that. 
 
 Read but these three short sentences more,* out of the 
 entries in December and January : 
 
 " My heart clings to the place I have created : there is 
 scarce a tree on it that does not owe its being to me." 
 
 " Poor Will Laidlaw poor Tom Purdie such news will 
 wring your hearts ; and many a poor fellow besides, to whom 
 my prosperity was daily bread." 
 
 " I have walked my last on the domains I have planted, 
 sate the last time in the halls I have built. But death would 
 
 * Vol. vii., pp. 164, 166, 196.
 
 FOUS CLAVIGERA. 53 
 
 have taken them from me if misfortune had spared them. 
 My poor people, whom I loved so well ! " 
 
 Nor did they love him less. You know that his house was 
 left to him, and that his " poor people " served him until his 
 death or theirs. Hear now how they served. 
 
 " The butler," says Lockhart, visiting Abbotsford in 1827, 
 " instead of being the easy chief of a large establishment, 
 was now doing half the work of the house, at probably half 
 his former wages. Old Peter, who had been for five-and- 
 twenty years a dignified coachman, was now ploughman-in- 
 ordinary, only putting his horses to the carriage upon high 
 and rare occasions ; and so on with all the rest that re- 
 mained of the ancient train. And all, to my view, seemed 
 happier than they had ever done before. Their good con- 
 duct had given every one of them a new elevation in his own 
 mind ; and yet their demeanour had gained, in place of 
 losing, in simple humility of observance. The great loss was 
 that of William Laidlaw, for whom (the estate being all but 
 a fragment in the hands of the trustees and their agent) there 
 was now no occupation here. The cottage which his taste 
 had converted into a loveable retreat had found a rent-pay- 
 ing tenant ; and he was living a dozen miles off, on the farm 
 of a relation in the Vale of Yarrow. Every week, however, 
 he came down to have a ramble with Sir Walter over their 
 old haunts, to hear how the pecuniary atmosphere was dark- 
 ening or brightening, and to read, in every face at Abbots- 
 ford, that it could never be itself again until circumstances 
 should permit his re-establishment at Kaeside. 
 
 " All this warm and respectful solicitude must have had 
 a preciously soothing influence on the mind of Scott, who 
 may be said to have lived upon love. No man cared less 
 about popular admiration and applause ; but for the least 
 chill on the affection of any near and dear to him, he had 
 the sensitiveness of a maiden. I cannot forget, in partic- 
 ular, how his eyes sparkled when he first pointed out to me 
 Peter Mathieson guiding the plough on the haugh. ' Egad,' 
 said he, ' auld Pepe ' (this was the children's name for their 
 good friend), 'auld Pepe's whistling at his darg. The hon- 
 est fellow said a yoking in a deep field would do baith him 
 and the blackies good. If things get round with me, easy 
 shall be Pepe's cushion.' " 
 
 You see there is not the least question about striking for
 
 54 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 wages on the part of Sir Walter's servants. The law of 
 supply and demand is not consulted, nor are their wages de- 
 termined by the great principle of competition so rustic and 
 absurd are they ; not but that they take it on them some- 
 times to be masters instead of servants : 
 
 ''March 21. Wrote till twelve, then out upon the 
 heights, and faced the gale bravely. Tom Purdie was not 
 with me ; he would have obliged me to keep the sheltered 
 ground" * 
 
 You are well past all that kind of thing, you think, and 
 know better how to settle the dispute between Capital and 
 Labour. 
 
 " What has that to do with domestic servants ? " do you 
 ask ? You think a house with a tall chimney, and two or 
 three hundred servants in it, is not properly a house at all ; 
 that the sacred words, Domus, Duomo, cannot be applied to 
 it ; and that Giotto would have refused to build a Buzzing 
 Tower, by way of belfry, in Lancashire ? 
 
 Well, perhaps you are right. If you are merely unlucky 
 Williams borrowing colossal planes instead of true ser- 
 vants, it may well be that Pepe's own whistling at his darg 
 must be very impossible for you, only manufactured whist- 
 ling any more possible. Which are you ? Which will you 
 be? 
 
 I am afraid there is little doubt which you are ; but there 
 is no doubt whatever which you would like to be, whether 
 you know your own minds or not. You will never whistle 
 at your dargs more, unless you are serving masters whom you 
 can love. You may shorten your hours of labour as much 
 as you please ; no minute of them will be merry, till you 
 are serving truly : that is to say, until the bond of constant 
 relationship service to death is again established between 
 your masters and you. It has been broken by their sin, but 
 may yet be recovered by your virtue. All the best of you 
 'cling to the least remnant or shadow of it. I heard but the 
 other day of a foreman, in a large house of business, dis- 
 
 * Vol. vii. p. 9.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 55 
 
 charged at a week's warning on account of depression in 
 trade, who thereupon went to one of the partners, and 
 showed him a letter which he had received a year before, 
 offering him a situation with an increase of his salary by 
 more than a third ; which offer he had refused without so 
 much as telling his masters of its being made to him, that he 
 might stay in the old house. He was a Scotchman and I 
 am glad to tell the story of his fidelity with that of Pepe 
 and Tom Purdie. I know not how it may be in the south ; 
 but I know that in Scotland, and the northern Border, there 
 still remains something of the feeling which fastened the 
 old French word ' loial ' among the dearest and sweetest of 
 their familiar speech ; and that there are some souls yet 
 among them, who, alike in labour or in rest, abide in, or will 
 depart to, the Land of the Leal. 
 
 " Sire, moult me plaist vostre escole 
 Et w noble conseil loial, 
 Ne du trespasser n'ay entente ; 
 Sans lui n'aray ne Hen ne mal. 
 Amours ce vouloir me presente, 
 
 Qui veult que tout mon appareil 
 Soit mis a sermr soir et main 
 Loiaute, et moult me merveil 
 Comment horns a le cuer si vain 
 Qu'il a dfausette redaim."
 
 56 FOES CLAVIGERA. 
 
 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 I HAVE been making not a few mistakes in Fors lately ; and, indeed) 
 am careless enough in it, not solicitous at all to avoid mistakes ; for be- 
 ing entirely sure of my main ground, and entirely honest in purpose, I 
 know that I cannot make any mistake which will invalidate my work, 
 and that any chance error which the third Fors may appoint for me, is 
 often likely to bring out, in its correction, more good than if I had 
 taken the pains to avoid it. Here, for instance, is Dr. Brown's letter, 
 which I should not have had, but for my having confused George's 
 Street with George's Square, and having too shortly generalised my 
 experience of modern novel readers ; and it tells me, and you, some- 
 thing about Scott and Dickens which is of the greatest use. 
 
 " My dear Friend, I am rejoiced to see you upon Scott. It will be 
 a permanent good, your having broken this ground. But you are wrong 
 in two things George's Square is not in the detestable New Town, it 
 is to the south of the very Old Town, and near the Meadows. 
 
 " Then you say 'nobody now will read them' (Miss Edgeworth and 
 Sir Walter). She is less read than I think she should be, but he is 
 enormously read here and in America. 
 
 " In the twelve months ending June, 1873, Adam Black and his sons 
 have sold over 250,000 Waverleys, and I know that when Dickens 
 that great master of fun and falsetto went last to America, and there 
 was a fury for him and his books, the sale of them only touched for a 
 short time the ordinary sale of the Scott Novels, and subsided im- 
 mensely, soon, the Scotts going steadily on increasing. Our young 
 ' genteel ' girls and boys, I fear, don't read them as the same class did 
 thirty years ago, but the readers of them, in the body of the people, 
 are immense, and you have only to look at the four or five copies of the 
 whole set in our public libraries to see how they are being read. That 
 is a beautiful drawing of Chantrey's, and new tome, very like, having 
 the simple, childlike look which he had. The skull is hardly high 
 enough." 
 
 A subsequent letter tells me that Dinlay is a big hill in Liddesdale , 
 and enclosed (search for it being made) the tune of " Sour Plums in 
 Galashiels," of which I will only at present bid you farther observe that 
 it is the first "touch of the auld breadwinner" that Wandering Willie 
 plays to Darsie. 
 
 Another valued correspondent reminds me that people might get hold
 
 FOES CLAVIGERA. 57 
 
 of my having spoken, a good many numbers back, of low sunshine " at 
 six o'clock on an October morning; " and truly enough it must have 
 been well on towards seven. 
 
 A more serious, but again more profitable, mistake, was made in the 
 June Foi'S, by the correspondent (a working man) who sent me the ex- 
 amination paper, arranged from a Kensington one, from which I 
 quoted the four questions, who either did not know, or did not 
 notice, the difference between St. Matthew and St. Matthias. The 
 paper had been set in the schools of St. Matthew, and the chairman 
 of the committee of the schools of St. Matthias wrote to me in violent 
 indignation little thinking how greatly pleased I should be to hear 
 of any school in which Kensington questions were not asked, or if 
 asked, were not likely to be answered. 
 
 I find even that the St. Matthias children could in all probability answer 
 the questions I proposed as alternative, for they have flower shows, 
 and prizes presented by Bishops, and appear to be quite in an exem- 
 plary phase of education : all of which it is very pleasant to me to 
 learn. (Apropos of the equivoque between St. Matthew and St. 
 Matthias, another correspondent puts me in mind of the promise I 
 made to find out for you who St. Pancras was. I did ; but did not 
 much care to tell you for I had put him with St. Paul only because 
 both their names began with P ; and found that he was an impertinent 
 youth of sixteen, who ought to have been learning to ride and swim, 
 and took to theology instead, and was made a martyr of, and had that 
 mock-Greek church built to his Christian honour in Mary-le-bone. I 
 have no respect whatever for boy or girl martyrs; we old men know 
 the value of the dregs of life : but young people will throw the whole 
 of it away for a freak, or in a pet at losing a toy.) 
 
 I suppose I shall next have a fiery letter abjuring Kensington from 
 the committee of the schools of St. Matthew : nothing could possibly 
 give me greater pleasure. I did not, indeed, intend for some time to 
 give you any serious talk about Kensington, and then I meant to give 
 it you in large print and at length ; but as this matter has been 
 ' forced ' upon me ^note the power of the word Fors in the first syllable 
 of that word) I will say a word or two now. 
 
 I have lying beside me on my table, in a bright orange cover, the 
 seventh edition of the ' Young Mechanic's Instructor ; or, Workman's 
 Guide to the various Arts connected with the Building Trades ; showing 
 how to strike out all kinds of Arches and Gothic Points, to set out and 
 construct Skew Bridges ; with numerous Illustrations of Foundations, 
 Sections, Elevations, etc. Receipts. Rules, and Instructions in the art 
 of Casting, Modelling, Carving, Gilding, Dyeing, Staining, Polishing, 
 Bronzing, Lacquering, Japanning, Enamelling, Gasfitting, Plumbing, 
 Glazing, Painting, etc. Jeweller's Secrets, Miscellaneous Receipts, 
 Useful Tables, etc., and a variety of useful information designed spe-
 
 58 FOBS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 cially for the Working Mechanic. London : Brodie and Middleton, 79, 
 Long Acre ; and all Booksellers in Town and Country. Price, 2s. 6d.' 
 From pages 11, 20, and 21 of the introduction to this work, I 
 quote the following observations on St. Paul's, the Nineveh sculptures, 
 and the Houses of Parliament. 
 
 i. OF ST. PAUL'S. 
 
 " Since London was first built, which we are led to believe was 
 about the year 50, by the Romans, there has not been a more magnifi- 
 cent building erected in it than St. Paul's this stupendous edifice 
 which absorbs the attention, and strikes with wonder all who behold 
 it, was founded by Ethelbert, the fifth King of Kent, in the year (304 
 A.D. And it is certain that since the completion of this building suc- 
 ceeding generations have made no progress in the construction of public 
 buildings." 
 
 II. OF THE NINEVEH SCULPTURES. 
 
 " There is one feature in the Nineveh sculptures which most beau- 
 tifully illustrates and corroborates the truth of the Scriptures ; any per- 
 son who has carefully read the Scriptures and has seen the Nineveh 
 sculptures, cannot fail to see the beautiful illustration ; it will be remem- 
 bered that the king is spoken of in many places as riding in his char- 
 iot, and of the king's armour-bearer following him to the battle. In 
 the Nineveh sculptures you will see the fact exemplified the king in 
 his chariot, and his armour-bearer defending him with his shield." 
 
 III. OF THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT. 
 
 " Of all the Gothic buildings that we have in our country, both of 
 ancient and modern date, the Houses of Parliament are the best and 
 most elaborate ; the first step of its grandeur is, that it stands parallel 
 to the majestic stream of the River Thames, and owing to its proximate 
 distance to the river, there is no thoroughfare between it and the 
 water ; its open situation gives it a sublime view from the opposite 
 side ; but especially from Westminster Bridge its aspect is grand and 
 magnificent in the extreme. Its superb tracery glitters in the distance, 
 in the sighc of the spectator, like the yellow autumnal foliage of some 
 picturesque grove, which beautifies the verdant valleys and bedecks 
 the silvery hills. The majestic figures in their stately order, encan- 
 opied in their Gothic palaces, bring to our remembrance the noble pa- 
 triarchs of old, or the patriots of recent days. Its numerous pinnacles, 
 turrets, and towers, rise up into the smoky and blue atmosphere like 
 forest trees, which will stand as an everlasting memento of the great 
 and noble-minded generation who raised this grand and magnificent 
 structure, so that after-generations may say, ' Surely our forefathers 
 were great and illustrious men, that they had reached the climax 
 of human skill, so that we cannot improve on their superb and princely 
 buildings. ' " 
 
 These three extracts, though in an extreme degree, are absolutely 
 and accurately characteristic of the sort of mind, unexampled in any
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 59 
 
 former ages for its conceit, its hypocrisy, and its sevenfold or rather 
 seventy times sevenfold ignorance, the dregs of corrupted knowl- 
 edge, which modern art-teaching, centralized by Kensington, produces 
 in our workmen and their practical ' guides.' How it is produced, and 
 how the torturing examinations as to the possible position of the let- 
 ters in the word Chillianwallah, and the collection of costly objects of 
 art from all quarters of the world, end in these conditions of [para- 
 lysed brain and corrupted heart, I will show you at length in a future 
 letter.
 
 60 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 LETTER XXXIII. 
 
 some of my readers are more interested in the last 
 two numbers of Fors than I want them to be. 
 
 " Give up your Fors altogether, and let us have a life of 
 Scott," they say. 
 
 They must please to remember that I am only examining 
 the conditions of the life of this wise man, that they may 
 learn how to rule their own lives, or their children's, or their 
 servants' ; and, for the present, with this particular object, 
 that they may be able to determine, for themselves, whether 
 ancient sentiment, or modern common sense, is to be the 
 rule of life, and of service. 
 
 I beg them, therefore, to refer constantly to that sum- 
 mary of modern common sense given by Mr. Applegarth, 
 and quoted with due commendation by the Pall Mall Ga- 
 zette (above, XXVIIL, 407) : 
 
 " One piece of vigorous good sense enlivened the discus- 
 sion. It was uttered by Mr. Applegarth, who observed that 
 ' no sentiment ought to be brought into the subject.' " 
 
 No sentiment, you observe, is to be brought into your do- 
 ing, or your whistling, according to Mr. Applegarth. 
 
 And the main purpose of Fors is to show you that there 
 is, sometimes, in weak natural whistling quite as much virtue 
 as in vigorous steam whistling. But it cannot show you 
 this without explaining what your darg, or 'doing,' is; 
 which cannot be shown merely by writing pleasant biogra- 
 phies. You are always willing enough to read lives, but 
 never willing to lead them. For instance, those few sen- 
 tences, almost casually given in last Fors, about the Scottish 
 rivers, have been copied, I see, into various journals, as if 
 they, at any rate, were worth extract from the much useless 
 matter of my books. Scotchmen like to hear their rivers
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 61 
 
 talked about, it appears ! But when last I was up Huntly 
 Burn way, there was no burn there. It had all been drawn 
 off to somebody's ' works ; ' and it is painful for me, as an 
 author, to reflect that, " of all polluting liquids belonging to 
 this category (liquid refuse from manufactories), the dis- 
 charges from paper works are the most difficult to deal 
 with." * 
 
 At Edinburgh there is a railroad station instead of the 
 North Locli ; the water of Leith is well, one cannot say in 
 civilised company what it is ; f and at Linlithgow, of all the 
 palaces so fair, built for a royal dwelling, etc., the oil, 
 (paraffin,) floating on the streams, can be ignited, burning 
 with a large flame. J 
 
 My good Scottish friends, had you not better leave off 
 pleasing yourselves with descriptions of your rivers as they 
 were, and consider what your rivers are to be ? For I cor- 
 rect my derivation of Clarty Hole too sorrowfully. It is 
 the Ford that is clarty now not the Hole. 
 
 To return to our sentimental work, however, for a while. 
 I left in my last letter one or two of the most interesting 
 points in the first year at Sandy-Knowe unnoticed, because 
 I thought it best to give you, by comparison with each 
 other, some idea of the three women who, as far as educa- 
 tion could do it, formed the mind of Scott. His masters 
 only polished and directed it. His mother, grandmother, 
 and aunt welded the steel. 
 
 Hear first this of his mother. (Lockhart, vol. i., p. 78.) 
 
 " She had received, as became the daughter of an emi- 
 nently learned physician, the best sort of education then 
 bestowed on young gentlewomen in Scotland. The poet, 
 speaking of Mrs. Euphemia Sinclair, the mistress of the 
 school at which his mother was reared, to the ingenious 
 local antiquary, Mr. Robert Chambers, said that " she must 
 
 * Fourth Report of Rivers Pollution Commission, p. 52. 
 f See Analysis of Water of Leith, the Foul Burn, and Pow Bum, 
 same Report, p. 21. 
 
 JSame Report; so also the River Almond, pp. 22-45. 
 See terminal Notes.
 
 62 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 have been possessed of uncommon talents for education, as 
 all her young ladies were, in after-life, fond of reading, wrote 
 and .spelled admirably, were well acquainted with history 
 and the belles lettres, without neglecting the more homely 
 duties of the needle and accompt-book, and perfectly well- 
 bred in society.' Mr. Chambers adds, 'Sir Walter further 
 communicated that his mother, and many others of Mrs. 
 Sinclair's pupils, were sent afterwards to be finished off by 
 the Honourable Mrs. Ogilvie, a lady who trained her young 
 friends to a style of manners which would now be consid- 
 ered intolerably stiff.' Such was the effect of this early 
 training upon the mind of Mrs. Scott, that even when she 
 approached her eightieth year, she took as much care to 
 avoid touching her chair with her back, as if she had still 
 been under the stern eye of Mrs. Ogilvie." 
 
 You are to note in this extract three things. First, the 
 singular influence of education, given by a master or mis- 
 tress of real power. " All her young ladies " (all, Sir Wal- 
 ter ! do you verily mean this ?) " fond of reading," and so 
 forth. 
 
 Well, I believe that, with slight exception, Sir Walter 
 did mean it. He seldom wrote, or spoke, in careless gener- 
 alisation. And I doubt not that it is truly possible, by first 
 insisting on a girl's really knowing how to read, and then 
 by allowing her very few books, and those absolutely whole- 
 some, and not amusing ! to give her a healthy appetite 
 for reading". Spelling, I had thought was impossible to 
 many girls ; but perhaps this is only because it is not early 
 enough made a point of : it cannot be learned late. 
 
 Secondly : I wish Mr. Chambers had given us Sir Walter's 
 words, instead of only the substance of what he " further 
 communicated." But you may safely gather what I want 
 you to notice, that Sir Walter attributes the essentials of 
 good breeding to the first careful and scholarly mistress j 
 and only the formality, which he somewhat hesitatingly ap- 
 proves, to the finishing hand of Mrs. Ogilvie. He would 
 have paid less regard to the opinion of modern society on 
 such matters, had he lived to see our languid Paradise of 
 sofas and rocking-chairs. The beginning, and very nearly
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 63 
 
 the end, of bodily education for a girl, is to make sure that 
 she can stand, and sit, upright ; the ankle vertical, and firm 
 as a marble shaft ; the waist elastic as a reed, and as unfa- 
 tiguable. I have seen my own mother travel from sunrise 
 to sunset, in a summer's day, without once leaning back in 
 the carriage. 
 
 Thirdly : The respectability belonging in those days to 
 the profession of a schoolmistress. In fact, I do not myself 
 think that any old lady can be respectable, unless she is one, 
 whether she be paid for her pupils or'not. And to deserve 
 to be one, makes her Honourable at once, titled or un- 
 titled. 
 
 This much comes, then, of the instructions of Mrs. Sinclair 
 and Mrs. Ogilvie, and why should not all your daughters be 
 educated by Honourable Mrs. Ogilvies, and learn to spell, 
 and to sit upright ? Then they will all have sons like Sir 
 Walter Scott, you think ? 
 
 Not so, good friends. Miss Rutherford had not wholly 
 learned to sit upright from Mrs. Ogilvie. She had some 
 disposition of her own in that kind, different from the other 
 pupils, and taught in older schools. Look at the lines in the 
 Lay, where Conrad of Wolfenstein, 
 
 " In humour highly crossed 
 About some steeds his band had lost, 
 High words to words succeeding still, 
 Smote with his gauntlet stout Hnnthill ; 
 A hot and hardy Rutherford, 
 Whom men call Dickon Draw-the-Sword. 
 Stern Rutherford right little said, 
 But bit his glove, and shook his head. 
 A fortnight thence, in Inglewood, 
 Stout Conrad, cold and drenched in blood, 
 His bosom gored with many a wound, 
 Was by a woodman's lyme-dog * found ; 
 Unknown the manner of his death, 
 Gone was his brand, both sword and sheath ; 
 But ever from that time, 'twas said 
 That Dickon wore a Cologne blade." 
 
 * Blood-hound, from ' lym,' Saxon for leash.
 
 64: FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 Such the race, such the school education, of Scott's 
 mother. Of her home education, you may judge by what 
 she herself said of her father to her son's tutor (whose ex- 
 quisitely grotesque letter, for the rest, vol. i., p. 108,) is 
 alone enough to explain Scott's inevitable future perception 
 of the weakness of religious egotism. 
 
 " Mrs. Scott told me that, when prescribing for his pa- 
 tients, it was Dr. Rutherford's custom to offer up, at the 
 same time, a prayer for the accompanying blessing of heav- 
 en, a laudable practice, in which, I fear, he has not been 
 generally imitated by those of his profession." 
 
 A very laudable practice indeed, good Mr. Mitchell ; per- 
 haps even a useful and practically efficacious one, on occa- 
 sion ; at all events one of the last remains of noble Puritan- 
 ism, in its sincerity, among men of sound learning. 
 
 For Dr. Rutherford was also an excellent linguist, and, 
 according to the custom of the times, delivered his prelec- 
 tions to the students in Latin, (like the conversation in 
 Beardie's Jacobite Club). Nowadays, you mean to have no 
 more Latin talked, as I understand : nor prayers said. Pills 
 Morison's and others can be made upon cheaper terms, 
 you think, and be equally salutary ? 
 
 Be it so. In these ancient manners, however, Scott's 
 mother is brought up, and consistently abides ; doubtless, 
 having some reverence for the Latin tongue, and much faith 
 in the medicine of prayer ; having had troubles about her 
 soul's safety also ; perhaps too solicitous, at one time, on 
 that point ; but being sure she has a soul to be solicitous 
 about, which is much ; obedient herself to the severest laws 
 of morality and life ; mildly and steadily enforcing them on 
 her children ; but naturally of light and happy temper, and 
 with a strong turn to study poetry and works of imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 I do not say anything of his father till we come to the ap- 
 prenticeship, except only that he was no less devout than his 
 mother, and more formal. Of training which could be known 
 or remembered, neither he nor the mother give any to their 
 boy until after the Sandy-Knowe time. But how of the un-
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 65 
 
 remembered training? When do you suppose the education 
 of a child begins ? At six months old it can answer smile 
 with smile, and impatience with impatience. It can observe, 
 enjoy, and suffer, acutely, and, in a measure, intelligently. 
 Do you suppose it makes no difference to it that the order 
 of the house is perfect and quiet, the faces of its father and 
 mother full of peace, their soft voices familiar to its ear, and 
 even those of strangers, loving ; or that it is tossed from 
 arm to arm, among hard, or reckless, or vain-minded persons, 
 in the gloom of a vicious household, or the confusion of a 
 gay one ? The moral disposition is, I doubt not, greatly 
 determined in those first speechless years. I believe espe- 
 cially that quiet, and the withdrawal of objects likely to dis- 
 tract, by amusing, the child, so as to let it fix its attention 
 undisturbed on every visible least thing in its domain, is 
 essential to the formation of some of the best powers of 
 thought. It is chiefly to this quietude of his own home that 
 I ascribe the intense perceptiveness and memory of the three- 
 years'-old child at Sandy-Knowe ; for, observe, it is in that 
 first year he learns his Hardiknute ; by his aunt's help he 
 learns to read at Bath, and can cater for himself on his re- 
 turn. Of this aunt, and her mother, we must now know 
 what we can. You notice the difference which Scott him- 
 self indicates between the two : " My grandmother, who 
 was meekness itself, and my aunt, who was of a higher tem- 
 per." Yet his grandmother, Barbara Haliburton, was de- 
 scended from the so-called, in speciality of honor, ' Standard- 
 bearer ' of the Douglases ; and Dryburgh Abbey was part 
 of her family's estate, they having been true servants to the 
 monks of it, once on a time. Here is a curious little piece 
 of lecture on the duties of master and servant, Royal 
 Proclamation on the 8th of May, 1535, by James the Fifth : * 
 " Whereas we, having been advised, and knowing the said 
 gentlemen, the Halliburtons, to be leal and true honest men, 
 long servants unto the saide abbeye, for the saide landis, 
 stout men at armes, and goode borderers against Ingland ; 
 and doe therefore decree and ordaine, that they shall be re- 
 
 * Introduction to Border Minstrelsy, p. 86. 
 VOL. II. 5
 
 66 FORS CLAVIQERA. 
 
 possess'd, and bruik and enjoy the landis and steedings they 
 had of the said abbeye, paying the use and wonte : and that 
 they sail be goode servants to the said venerabil father, like 
 as they and their predecessours were to the said venerabil 
 father, and his predecessours, and he a good master to 
 them." The Abbot of Dryburgh, however, and others in 
 such high places, having thus misread their orders, and taken 
 on themselves to be masters instead of ministers, the Ref- 
 ormation took its course ; and Dryburgh claims allegiance 
 no more but to its dead. 
 
 You notice the phrase, "good borderers against England." 
 Lest I should have to put it off too long, I may as well, in 
 this place, let you know the origin of the tune which Scott's 
 uncle was so fond of. From the letter of one of his friends 
 to Dr. Brown I gratefully take the following passage : 
 
 "In the fourteenth century some English riders were 
 slaking their thirst on the banks of the Tweed, nearly op- 
 posite Cartley Hole, now Abbotsford, where wild plums 
 grew. The borderers came down upon them unexpectedly, 
 and annihilated them, driving some into the Tweed, at a 
 place called the Englishman's Dyke. The borderers accord- 
 ingly thought their surprise sourer fruit to the invaders than 
 the plums they went to pluck, and christened themselves by 
 the soubriquet of * Sour Plums in Galashiels,' which gave a 
 text for the song and tune, and a motto for the arms of the 
 town of Galashiels." 
 
 There is something to think of for you, when next you 
 see the blackthorn blow, or the azure bloom spread on its 
 bossed clusters of fruit. I cannot find any of the words of 
 the song ; but one beautiful stanza of the ballad of Cos- 
 patrick may at least serve to remind you of the beauty of 
 the Border in its summer time : 
 
 " For to the greenwood I maun gae 
 To pu' the red rose and the slae, 
 To pu' the red rose and the thyme, 
 To deck my mother's bour and mine." 
 
 "Meekness itself," and yet possibly with some pride in 
 her also, this Barbara, with the ruins of her Dryburgh still
 
 FOR8 CLAVIOERA. 67 
 
 seen grey above the woods, from the tower at whose foot 
 her grandchild was playing. So short the space he had to 
 travel, when his lameness should be cured, the end of all 
 travel already in sight ! 
 
 Some pride in her, perhaps : you need not be surprised 
 her grandchild should have a little left. 
 
 " Many a tale" (she told him) "of Watt of Harden, Wight 
 Willie of Aikwood (Oakwood), Jamie Tellfer of the fair 
 Dodhead, and other heroes merry men, all of the persuasion 
 and calling of Robin Hood and Little John. A more recent 
 hero, but not of less note, was the celebrated De'il of Little 
 Dean, whom she well remembered, as he had married her 
 mother's sister. Of this extraordinary person I learned 
 many a story grave and gay, comic and warlike " (dearest, 
 meek, grandmamma !) 
 
 " Two or three old books which lay in the window-seat 
 were explored for my amusement in the tedious winter 
 days. Automathes* and Ramsay's Tea-table Miscellany 
 were my favourites, although, at a later period, an odd 
 volume of Josephus's Wars of the Jews divided my par- 
 tiality." 
 
 " Two or three old books in the window-seat," and "an odd 
 volume of Josephus.". How entertaining our farm library ! 
 (with the Bible, you observe ;) and think how much matters 
 have changed for the better : your package down from Mu- 
 die's monthly, with all the new magazines, and a dozen of 
 novels ; Good Words as many as you choose, and Pro- 
 fessor Tyndall's last views on the subject of the Regelation 
 of Ice. (Respecting which, for the sake of Scott's first love, 
 and for the sake also of my own first love which was of 
 snow, even more than water, I have a few words to say to 
 Professor Tyndall, but they must be for next month, as they 
 will bitterly interrupt our sentimental proceedings.) 
 
 * " The Capacity and Extent of the Human Understanding ; exempli- 
 fied in the extraordinary case of Automathes, a young nobleman who 
 was accidentally left in his infancy upon a desolate island, and con 
 tinued nineteen years in that solitary state, separate from all human 
 society." By John Kirkby. 1745. Small 8vo.
 
 68 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 
 
 Nay with your professional information that when ice 
 breaks you can stick it together again, you have also im- 
 aginative literature of the rarest. Here instead of Ram- 
 say's Tea-table Miscellany, with its Hardiknute and other 
 ballads of softer tendency, some of them not the best of 
 their kind, I admit, here you have Mr. Knatchbull-Hugues- 
 sen, M.P.'s, Tales at Tea-time,* dedicated to the schoolroom 
 teapot, in which the first story is of the " Pea Green Nose," 
 and in which (opening at random) I find it related of some 
 Mary of our modern St. Mary's Lochs, that " Mary stepped 
 forward hastily, when one of the lobsters sprang forward, 
 and seized her arm in his claw, saying, in a low, agitated 
 tone of voice," etc. etc. 
 
 You were better off, little as you think it, with that poor 
 library on the window-seat. Your own, at worst, though 
 much fingered and torn ; your own mentally, still more ut- 
 terly ; and though the volume be odd, do you think that, by 
 any quantity of reading, you can make your knowledge of 
 history, even ? 
 
 You are so proud of having learned to read too, and I 
 warrant you could not read so much as Barbara Haliburton's 
 
 * It is impossible to concentrate the vulgar modern vices of art and 
 literature more densely than has been done in this in such kind, docu- 
 mental book. Here is a description of the 'Queen of the Flowers' 
 out of it, which is so accurately characteristic of the ' imagination ' of 
 an age of demand and supply, that I must find space for it in small 
 print. She appears in a wood in which "here and there was a mul- 
 berry tree disporting itself among the rest. " (Has Mr. Huguessen, M. P., 
 ever seen a mulberry tree, or read as much of Pyramus and Thisbe as 
 Bottom ?) 
 
 " The face was the face of a lady, and of a pretty, exceedingly good- 
 humoured lady too ; but the hair which hung down around her head " 
 (the author had better have written hung up) " was nothing more 
 or less than festoons of roses, red, lovely, sweet-scented " (who would 
 have thought it !) "roses ; the arms were apparently entirely composed 
 of cloves and " (allspice? no) "carnations; the body was formed of a 
 multitude of various flowers the most beautiful you can imagine, and 
 a cloak of honeysuckle and sweetbriar was thrown carefully over the 
 shoulders." (Italics mine care being as characteristic of the growth 
 of the honeysuckle as disport is that of the mulberry.)
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 69 
 
 shield : Or, on a bend azure, three mascles of the first ; in 
 the second quarter a buckle of the second. I meant to have 
 engraved it, but shall never get on to aunt Jessie at this rate. 
 
 " My kind and affectionate aunt, Miss Janet Scott, whose 
 memory will ever be dear to me, used to read these works to 
 me, with admirable patience, until I could repeat long pas- 
 sages by heart." 
 
 Why admirable, Sir Walter? Surely she might have 
 spent her time more usefully lucratively at least than in 
 this manner of 'nursing the baby.' Might you not have 
 been safely left, to hunt up Hardiknute, in maturer years, for 
 yourself ? 
 
 By no manner of means, Sir Walter thinks ; and justly. 
 With all his gifts, but for this aunt Janet, for his mother, 
 and for Lilias Redgauntlet, he had assuredly been only a 
 hunting laird, and the best story-teller in the Lothians. 
 
 We scarcely ever, in our study of education, ask this most 
 essential of all questions about a man, What patience had 
 his mother or sister with him ? 
 
 And most men are apt to forget it themselves. Pardon 
 me for speaking of myself for a moment ; (if I did not know 
 things by my own part in them, I would not write of them at 
 all). You know that people sometimes call me a good writer : 
 others like to hear me speak. I seldom mis-spell or mis-pro- 
 nounce a word, grossly ; and can generally say what I want 
 to say. Well, my own impression about this power, such as 
 it may be, is that it was born with me, or gradually gained 
 by my own study. It is only by deliberate effort that I recall 
 the long morning hours of toil, as regular as sunrise, toil on 
 both sides equal, by which, year after year, my mother 
 forced me to learn all the Scotch paraphrases by heart, and 
 ever so many chapters of the Bible besides, (the eighth of 1st 
 Kings being one, try it, good reader, in a leisure hour ! ) 
 allowing not so much as a syllable to be missed or misplaced ; 
 while every sentence was required to be said over and over 
 again till she was satisfied with the accent of it. I recollect
 
 70 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 
 
 a struggle between us of about three weeks, concerning the 
 accent of the "of " in the lines 
 
 " Shall any following spring revive 
 The ashes of the urn ? " 
 
 I insisting, partly in childish obstinacy, and partly in true 
 instinct for rhythm (being wholly careless on the subject 
 both of urns and their contents), on reciting it, " The ashes 
 of the urn." It was not, I say, till after three weeks' la- 
 bour, that my mother got the accent laid upon the ashes, 
 to her mind. But had it taken three years, she would have 
 done it, having once undertaken to do it. And, assuredly, 
 had she not done it, I had been simply an avaricious picture 
 collector, or perhaps even a more avaricious money collector, 
 to this day ; and had she done it wrongly, no after-study 
 would ever have enabled me to read so much as a single line 
 of verse. 
 
 It is impossible, either in history or biography, to arrange 
 what one wants to insist upon wholly by time, or wholly by 
 rational connection. You must observe that the visit to 
 England, of which I am now going to speak, interrupts, with 
 a brilliant display of pyrotechnic light, the steady burning of 
 the stars above Scott's childhood. From the teaching of his 
 aunt, before he could read, I should like, for several reasons, 
 to go on at once to the teaching of his mother, after he 
 could read ; but I must content myself, for the moment, with 
 adding the catalogue of mamma's library to that of aunt 
 Jessie's. On the window-seat of Sandy-Knowe only to be 
 got at the pith of by help of auntie we had the odd volume 
 of Josephus, Automathes, and two or three old books not 
 named. A year later, mamma provides for us now scholars 
 ourselves Pope's Homer, Allan Ramsay's Evergreen, and, 
 for Sundays, Bunyan, Gesner's Death of Abel, and Rowe's 
 (Mrs.) Letters from the Other World. But we have made our 
 grand tour in the meantime, and have some new ideas of this 
 world in our head ; of which the reader must now consider. 
 
 " I was in my fourth year when my father was advised 
 that the Bath waters might be of some advantage to my
 
 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 71 
 
 lameness. My affectionate aunt although such a journey 
 promised to a person of her retired habits anything but 
 pleasure or amusement undertook as readily to accompany 
 me to the wells of Bladud, as if she had expected all the de- 
 light that ever the prospect of a watering-place held out to 
 its most impatient visitants." 
 
 And why should she not ? Does it not seem somewhat 
 strange to you, from what you know of young, or even 
 middle-aged, aunt Jessies of the present day, that Miss Scott 
 should look upon the journey to Bath as so severe a piece of 
 self-denial ; and that her nephew regards her doing so as 
 a matter of course ? 
 
 How old was aunt Jessie, think you ? Scott's father, the 
 eldest of a large family, was born in 1729, in this year, 
 therefore, was forty-six. If we uncharitably suppose Miss 
 Jessie the next oldest, she would be precisely of the age of 
 Mrs. Tabitha Bramble ; and one could fancy her, it seems to 
 me, on the occasion of this unforeseen trip to the most fashion- 
 able watering-place in England, putting up her " rose-collard 
 neglegay with green robins, and her bloo quilted petticot," 
 without feeling herself in the position of a martyr led to the 
 stake. But aunt Jessie must really have been much younger 
 than Mrs. Tabitha, and have had the advantage of her in 
 other particulars besides spelling. She was afterwards mar- 
 ried, and when Lockhart saw her (1820?) forty years or 
 so after this had still " the softest eye and the sweetest 
 voice." And from the thatched mansion of the moorland, 
 Miss Jessie feels it so irksome and solemn a duty does 
 she? to go to "the squares, the circus, and the parades, 
 which put you " (Miss Lydia Melford) " in mind of the 
 sumptuous palaces represented in prints and pictures ; 
 and the new buildings, such as Prince's Row, Harlequin's 
 Row, Bladud's Row, and twenty other rows besides," not 
 to speak of a real pump in a pump-room, with a handle to it, 
 and other machinery, instead of the unpumped Tweed ! 
 
 Her nephew, however, judges her rightly. Aunt Jessie 
 could give him no truer proof of faithful affection than in
 
 72 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 the serenity with which she resolves to take him to this 
 centre of gaiety. 
 
 Whereupon, you are to note this, that the end of all right 
 education for a woman is to make her love her home better 
 than any other place ; that she should as seldom leave it as 
 a queen her queendom ; nor ever feel entirely at rest but 
 within its threshold. 
 
 For her boy, however, there are things to be seen in Bath, 
 and to be learned. "I acquired the rudiments of reading 
 from an old dame near our lodgings, and I had never a more 
 regular teacher, though I think I did not attend her more 
 than a quarter of a year. An occasional lesson from my aunt 
 supplied the rest." Yes, little Walter. If we indeed have 
 a mind to our book, that is all the teaching we want ; we 
 shall perhaps get through a volume or two in time. 
 
 " The circumstances I recollect of my residence in Bath 
 are but trifling ; yet I never recall them without a feeling of 
 pleasure. The beauties of the Parade (which of them I 
 know not), with the river Avon winding around it, and the 
 lowing of the cattle from the opposite hills, are warm in my 
 recollection, and are only rivalled by the splendours of a toy- 
 shop somewhere near the Orange Grove. I had acquired, I 
 know not by what means, a kind of superstitious terror for 
 statuary of all kinds. No ancient Iconoclast or modern Cal- 
 vinist could have looked on the outside of the Abbey Church 
 (if I mistake not, the principal church at Bath is so called,) 
 with more horror than the image of Jacob's ladder, with all 
 its angels, presented to my infant eye. My uncle* effect- 
 ually combated my terrors, and formally introduced me to a 
 statue of Neptune, which perhaps still keeps guard at the 
 side of the Avon, where a pleasure-boat crosses to Spring 
 Gardens." 
 
 " A sweet retreat " Spring Gardens (again I quote Miss 
 Lydia) " laid out in walks, and ponds, and parterres of 
 flowers, and hard by the Pamprom is a coffee-house for the 
 ladies, but my aunt says young girls are not admitted, inas- 
 much as the conversation turns upon politics, scandal, phi- 
 
 * Robert, who comes to visit them in Bath, to little Walter's great joj.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA, 73 
 
 losophy, and other subjects above our capacity." Is aunt 
 Janet old enough and clever enough for the company, 1 
 wonder? And Walter what toys did he mostly covet in 
 the Orange Grove ? 
 
 The passage about the effect of sculpture upon him is in- 
 tensely interesting to me, partly as an indication of the state 
 of his own nascent imagination, partly as illustrative of the 
 power of religious sculpture, meant to terrify, on the minds 
 of peasant children of high faculty. But I cannot dwell on 
 this point here : I must get on to his first sight of a play. 
 The third Fors still favourable to him appoints it to be 
 "As you like it." 
 
 A never-to-be-forgotten delight, influencing him in his 
 whole nature thenceforward. It is uncle Robert's doing this, 
 aunt Jessie having been probably doubtful on the matter, 
 but irresistibly coaxed. Uncle Robert has much to answer 
 for ! How much, I can't tell you to-day ; nor for a while 
 now, for I have other matters on hand in the next Fors or 
 two Glacier theory, and on the road to it I must not let 
 you forget the broom-market between Berne and Thun ; and 
 I've got to finish my notes on Friedrich and his father, who 
 take more noticing than I expected ; besides that I've 
 Friedrich II. of Germany to give some account of ; and all 
 my Oxford work besides. I can only again and again beg the 
 many valued correspondents whose letters I must abruptly 
 answer, to remember that not one word on any of these sub- 
 jects can be set down without care ; and to consider what 
 the length of a day is, under existing solar arrangements. 
 
 Meantime, here is a point for you to think of. The boy 
 interrupts the first scene of the play by crying aloud, " An't 
 they brothers ?" (the third Fors had appointed for him that 
 one day he should refuse to speak to his own ;) and long 
 remembers the astonishment with which he " looked upon 
 the apathy of the elder part of our company, who, having 
 the means, did not spend every evening at the theatre." 
 
 How was it that he never could write a Play ?
 
 74: FORS CLAVIQERA. 
 
 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 I HAVE mislaid, just when I wanted it, a valuable letter, which gave 
 me the first name of Abbotsford accurately, Clarty Hole being only a 
 corruption of it, and the real name bearing no such sense. I shall come 
 upon it some time or other : meantime, my Scottish readers must not 
 suppose I mean that the treatment of rivers is worse in North than in 
 South Britain, only they have prettier streams in Scotland to float 
 their paraffin, or other beautiful productions of modern art, or nature, 
 on the top of. We had one or two clear streams in Surrey, indeed ; 
 but as I was investigating the source of one of them, only the other 
 day, I found a police office had been built over it, and that the authori- 
 ties had paid five hundred pounds to construct a cesspool, with a huge 
 iron cylinder conducting to it, through the spring. Excavating, I found 
 the fountain running abundantly, round the pipe. 
 
 The following paragraph, and the two subjoined letters, appeared in 
 the same impression of the Daily Telegraph, on the 12th January, 1871 . 
 I wish to preserve them in Pars ; and I print them in this number, be- 
 cause the succession of the first four names in the statement of the 
 journal, associated with that of the first magistrate of the City of Lon- 
 don, in connection with the business in hand that day, is to me the most 
 pleasant piece of reading and I think must be to all of us among the 
 most significant that has lately met our eyes in a public print ; and it 
 means such new solemn league and covenant as Scott had been fain to 
 see. My letter about the Italian streams may well follow what I have 
 said of Scottish ones. 
 
 THE FRENCH APPEAL TO ENGLAND. 
 
 " We are happy to announce further contributions to the fund which 
 is being raised in response to the appeal of the Bishop of Versailles and 
 the clergy of the Seine-et-Oise department ; and also to state that, in 
 addition to those influential persons whom we named yesterday as being 
 ready to serve on a committee, two other gentlemen of high official and 
 social position have consented to join the body. The list at present is 
 as follows : The Lord Bishop of London ; Dr. Manning. Roman Catholic 
 Archbishop of Westminster ; the Rev. Dr. Brock, the Baptist minister ; 
 Mr. Alfred de Rothschild ; and the Lord Mayor, who has courteously 
 placed the Mansion House at the service of the committee. Besides 
 these names, the members of the ' Paris Pood Fund,' as will be seen 
 from the subjoined letter, propose to join the more comprehensive or- 
 ganization.
 
 FOES CLAVIGERA. 75 
 
 To the Editor of the Daily Telegraph. 
 
 " Sir, Acting on your suggestion that the ' Paris Food Fund,' which 
 I yesterday described to you, might be advantageously united with that 
 which has been suggested by the Bishop of Versailles, I beg to say that 
 Archbishop Manning, Professor Huxley, Sir John Lubbock, and Mr. 
 Ruskin will with myself, have great pleasure in forming part of such a 
 public committee as you have advised, and in placing the subscriptions 
 already sent to us at its disposal. 
 
 " I am, sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 " Jan. 11." " JAMES T. KNOWLES." 
 
 Daily Telegraph, Jan. 12, 1871. 
 
 ROMAN INUNDATIONS. 
 To the Editor of the Daily Telegraph. 
 
 " Sir, May I ask you to add to your article on the inundation of the 
 Tiber some momentary invitation to your readers to think with Horace 
 rather than to smile with him V 
 
 ' ' In the briefest and proudest words he wrote of himself, he thought 
 of his native land chiefly as divided into the two districts of violent and 
 scanty waters : 
 
 Dicar, qua violens obstrepit Aufidus, 
 
 Et qua, pauper aquas, Daunus agrestium 
 
 Regnavit populorum. 
 
 " Now the anger and power of that tauriformis Aufidus is precisely 
 because regna Dauni pnefluit because it flows past the poor kingdoms 
 which it should enrich. Stay it there, and it is treasure instead of ruin. 
 And so also with Tiber and Eridanus. They are so much gold, at their 
 sources, they are so much death, if they once break down unbridled 
 into the plains. 
 
 u At the end of your report of the events of the inundation, it is said 
 that the King of Italy expressed ' an earnest desire to do something, as 
 far as science and industry could effect it, to prevent or mitigate inun- 
 dations for the future.' 
 
 " Now, science and industry can do, not ' something,' but everything; 
 and not merely to mitigate inundations and, deadliest of inundations, 
 because perpetual maremmas ; but to change them into national banks 
 instead of debts. 
 
 " The first thing the King of any country has to do is to manage the 
 streams of it. 
 
 "If he can manage the streams, he can also the people; for the 
 people also form alternately torrent and maremma. in pestilential fury 
 or pestilential idleness. They also will change into, living streams of 
 men, if their Kings literally ' lead them forth beside the waters of com- 
 fort.' Half the money lost by this inundation of Tiber, spent rightly on 
 the hill-sides last summer, would have changed every wave of it into so 
 much fruit and foliage in spring, where now they will be only burning 
 rock. And the men who have been killed within the 1-ist two months, 
 and whose work, and the money spent in doing it, have filled Europe 
 with misery which fifty years will not efface, had they been set at tho
 
 76 FORS CLAVIGERA 
 
 same cost to do good instead of evil, and to save life instead of destroy 
 it, might, by this 10th of January, 1871, have embanked every danger- 
 ous stream at the roots of the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Po, and left 
 to Germany, to France, and to Italy an inheritance of blessing for cen- 
 turies to come they and their families living all the while in brightest 
 happiness and peace. And now ! Let the Red Prince look to it ; red 
 inundation bears also its fruit in time. 
 
 ' ' I am, sir, your obedient servant, 
 " Jan. 10." " JOHN BUSKIN." 
 
 Daily Telegraph, Jan. 12, 187L
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 77 
 
 LETTER XXXIV. 
 
 LOVE, it is a wrathful peace, 
 A free acquittance, without release, 
 And truth with falsehood all a-fret, 
 And fear within secureness set ; 
 In heart it is despairing hope ; 
 And full of hope, it is vain hope. 
 Wise madness and wild reasonne, 
 And sweet danger, wherein to 
 
 droune. 
 
 A heavy burden, light to bear ; 
 A wicked way, away to wear. 
 It is discordance that can accord, 
 And accordance to discord ; 
 It is cunning without science, 
 Wisdom without sapience, 
 Wit without discretion, 
 Having, without possession, 
 And health full of malady, 
 And charity full of envy, 
 And restraint full of abundance, 
 
 And a greedy suffisaunce. 
 
 * * * * 
 
 Mesment de ceste amour 
 Li plus sages n'y sceunt tour 
 Maiz ou entent je te diray 
 Une aut (outre) amour te descriray 
 De celle veuil je que pour fame 
 Tu aimes la tres-doulce dame. 
 Si com dist la ste escripture 
 Amours est fors, amours est dure, 
 Amours soustient, amours endure, 
 Amours revient, et tousjours dure; 
 Amours met en amer sa cure ; 
 Amours loyal, amours seure 
 Sert, et de servise nacure. 
 Amours fait de propre commun, 
 Amours fait de deux cuers un ; 
 
 Delight right full of heaviness, 
 And drearihood, full of gladness ; 
 Bitter sweetness, and sweet error, 
 Right evil savoured good savour ; 
 Sin, that pardon hath within, 
 And pardon, spotted outside with 
 
 sin : 
 
 A pain also it is joyous, 
 And cruelty, right piteous ; 
 A strength weak to stand upright, 
 And feebleness full of might ; 
 Wit unadvised, sage follie, 
 And joy full of tormentry. 
 A laughter it is, weeping aye ; 
 Rest, that travaileth night and day; 
 Also a sweet Hell ic is, 
 And a sorrowful Paradise ;* 
 A pleasant gaol, and an easy prison, 
 And full of f roste, summer season ; 
 Prime-time, full of froste's white, 
 
 And May devoid of all delight. 
 * * * * 
 
 Amours enchace, ce me semble, 
 Amours rent cuers, amours les 
 
 enable, 
 
 Amours despiece, amours refait, 
 Amours fait paix, amours fait plait, 
 Amours fait bel, amours fait lait, 
 Toutes heures quant il lui plaist 
 Amours attrait, amours estrange 
 Amours fait de prive estrange ; 
 Amourss eurprent,amours emprent, 
 Amours reprent, amours esprent, 
 II n'est riens qu'amours ne face ; 
 Amours tolt cuer, amours tolt grace, 
 Amours delie, amours enlace, 
 Amours ocist, amours efface, 
 
 * See first terminal note.
 
 78 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 
 
 Amours ne craint ne pic ne mace: Amours le fist illec extendre, 
 
 Amours fist Dieu venir en place, Amours le fist le coste fendre, 
 
 Amours lui fist ure (notre) char Amours le fist les maulx reprendre, 
 
 prendre, Amours lui fist les bons aprendre, 
 
 Amours le fist devenir mendre, Amours le fist a nous venir, 
 
 Amours le fist en la croix pendre, Amours nous fait a lui tenir. 
 
 These descriptions of the two kinds of noble love are bott 
 given in the part of the Romance of the Hose which was 
 written by Jean de Meung.* Chaucer translated the first, 
 and I have partly again translated his translation into more 
 familiar English. I leave the original French of the other 
 for you to work at, if ever you care to learn French ; the 
 first is all that I want you to read just now ; but they should 
 not be separated, being among the most interesting expres- 
 sions extant of the sentiment of the dark ages, which Mr. 
 Applegarth is desirous of eliminating from modern business. 
 
 The two great loves, that of husband and wife, repre- 
 senting generally the family affections, and that of mankind, 
 to which, at need, the family affection must be sacrificed, 
 include, rightly understood, all the noble sentiments of hu- 
 manity. Modern philosophy supposes these conditions of 
 feeling to have been always absurd, and at present, happily, 
 nearly extinct; and that the only proper, or, in future, pos- 
 sible, motives of human action are the three wholly unsenti- 
 mental desires, the lust of the flesh, (hunger, thirst, and 
 sexual passion), the lust of the eyes, (covetousness), and the 
 pride of life, (personal vanity). 
 
 Thus, in a recent debate on the treatment of Canada,^ Sir 
 C. Adderley deprecates the continuance of a debate on a 
 question "purely sentimental." I doubt if Sir C. Adderley 
 knew in the least what was meant by a sentimental ques- 
 tion. It is a purely " sentimental question," for instance, 
 whether Sir C. Adderley shall, or shall not, eat his mother, 
 instead of burying her. Similarly, it is a purely sentimental 
 
 * Or Mohun, near Beaugency, Loire. 
 
 f On Mr. M'Fie's motion for a committee to consider the relations 
 that subsist between the United Kingdom and the Colonies. On the 
 varieties of filial sentiment, compare Herodotus, iii. 38 ; iv. 26.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 79 
 
 question, whether, in the siege of Samaria, the mother who 
 boiled her son and ate him, or the mother who hid her son, 
 was best fulfilling her duty to society. Similarly, the rela- 
 tions of a colony to its mother-country, in their truth and 
 depth, are founded on purely parental and filial instincts, 
 which may be either sentimental or bestial, but must be one 
 or the other. Sir Charles probably did not know that the 
 discussion of every such question must therefore be either 
 sentimental or bestial. 
 
 Into one or other, then, of these two forms of sentiment, 
 conjugal and family love, or compassion, all human happiness, 
 properly so called, resolves itself ; but the spurious or coun- 
 ter-happiness of lust, covetousness, and vanity being easily 
 obtained, and naturally grasped at, instead, may altogether 
 occupy the lives of men, without ever allowing them to know 
 what happiness means. 
 
 But in the use I have just made of the word ' compassion,' 
 I mean something very different from what is usually under- 
 stood by it. Compassion is the Latin form of the Greek 
 word 'sympathy' the English for both is 'fellow-feeling' ; 
 and the condition of delight in characters higher than our 
 own is more truly to be understood by the word ' compassion ' 
 than the pain of pity for those inferior to our own ; but in 
 either case, the imaginative understanding of the natures of 
 others, and the power of putting ourselves in their place, is 
 the faculty on which the virtue depends. So that an unim- 
 aginative person can neither be reverent nor kind. The main 
 use of works of fiction, and of the drama, is to supply, as far 
 as possible, the defect of this imagination in common minds. 
 But there is a curious difference in the nature of these works 
 themselves, dependent on the degree of imaginative power 
 of the writers, which I must at once explain, else T can 
 neither answer for you my own question put in last Fors, 
 why Scott could not write a play, nor show you, which is 
 my present object, the real nature of sentiment. 
 
 Do you know, in the first place, what a play is ? or what 
 a poem is ? or what a novel is ? That is to say, do you know 
 the perpetual and necessary distinctions in literary aim which
 
 80 FOR8 CLAVIQERA. 
 
 have brought these distinctive names into use ? You had 
 better first, for clearness' sake, call all the three ' poems,' for 
 all the three are so, when they are good, whether written 
 in verse or prose. All truly imaginative account of man is 
 poetic ; but there are three essential kinds of poetry, one 
 dramatic, one lyric, and one epic. 
 
 Dramatic poetry is the expression by the poet of other 
 people's feelings, his own not being told. 
 
 Lyric poetry is the expression by the poet of his own 
 feelings. 
 
 Epic poetry is account given by the poet of other people's 
 external circumstances, and of events happening to them, 
 with only such expression either of their feelings, or his own, 
 as he thinks may be conveniently added. 
 
 The business of Dramatic poetry is therefore with the heart 
 essentially ; it despises external circumstance. 
 
 Lyric poetry may speak of anything that excites emotion 
 in the speaker ; while Epic poetry insists on external circum- 
 stances, and no more exhibits the heart-feeling than as it 
 may be gathered from these. 
 
 For instance, the fight between the Prince of Wales and 
 Hotspur, in Henry the Fourth, corresponds closely, in the 
 character of the event itself, to the fight of Fitz-.Iames with 
 Roderick, in the Lady of the Lake. But Shakespeare's 
 treatment of his subject is strictly dramatic ; Scott's, strictly 
 epic. 
 
 Shakespeare gives you no account whatever of any blow 
 or wound : his stage direction is, briefly, " Hotspur is 
 wounded, and falls." Scott gives you accurate account of 
 every external circumstance, and the finishing touch of botan- 
 ical accuracy, 
 
 " Down came the blow ; but in the heath 
 The erring blade found bloodless sheath," 
 
 makes his work perfect, as epic poetry. And Scott's work 
 is always epic, and it is contrary to his very nature to treat 
 any subject dramatically. 
 
 That is the technical distinction, then, between the three
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 81 
 
 modes of work. But the gradation of power in all three de- 
 pends on the degree of imagination with which the writer 
 can enter into the feelings of other people. Whether in ex- 
 pressing theirs or his own, and whether in expressing their 
 feelings only, or also the circumstances surrounding them, 
 his power depends on his being able to feel as they do ; in 
 other words, on his being able to conceive character. And 
 the literature which is not poetry at all, which is essentially 
 unsentimental, or anti-poetic, is that which is produced by 
 persons who have no imagination ; and whose merit (for of 
 course I am not speaking of bad literature) is in their wit or 
 sense, instead of their imagination. 
 
 The most prosaic, in this sense, piece I have ever myself 
 examined, in the literature of any nation, is the Ilenriade 
 of Voltaire. You may take that as a work of a man whose 
 head was as destitute of imaginative power as it is possible 
 for the healthy cerebral organization of a highly developed 
 mammalian animal to be. The description of the storm which 
 carries Henry to Jersey, and of the hermit in Jersey " que 
 Dieu lui fit connaitre," and who, on that occasion, " au bord 
 d'une onde pure, offre un festin champetre," cannot be 
 rivalled, for stupor in conceptive power, among printed books 
 of reputation. On the other hand, Voltaire's wit, and reason- 
 ing faculties, are nearly as strong as his imagination is weak. 
 His natural disposition is kind ; his sympathy therefore is 
 sincere with any sorrow that he can conceive ; and his indig- 
 nation great against injustices of which he cannot compre- 
 hend the pathetic motives. Now notice further this, which 
 is very curious, and to me inexplicable, but not on that ac- 
 count less certain as a fact. 
 
 The imaginative power always purifies ; the want of it 
 therefore as essentially defiles ; and as the wit-power is apt 
 to develop itself through absence of imagination, it seems as 
 if wit itself had a defiling tendency. In Pindar, Homer, 
 Virgil, Dante, and Scott, the colossal powers of imagination 
 result in absolute virginal purity of thought. The defect of 
 imagination and the splendid rational power in Pope and 
 Horace associate themselves it is difficult to say in what 
 VOL. II. 6
 
 82 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 decided measures with foulness of thought. The Candide of 
 Voltaire, in its gratuitous filth, its acute reasoning, and its 
 entire vacuity of imagination, is a standard of what may 
 perhaps be generally and fitly termed ' fimetic literature,' 
 still capable, by its wit, and partial truth, of a certain 
 service in its way. But lower forms of modern literature 
 and art Gustave Dora's paintings, for instance, are the 
 corruption, in national decrepitude, of this pessimist method 
 of thought ; and of these, the final condemnation is true 
 they are neither fit for the land, nor yet for the dunghill. 
 
 It is one of the most curious problems respecting mental 
 government to determine how far this fimetic taint must 
 necessarily affect intellects in which the reasoning and im- 
 aginative powers are equally balanced, and both of them 
 at high level, as in Aristophanes, Shakespeare, Chaucer, 
 Moliere, Cervantes, and Fielding ; but it always indicates 
 the side of character which is unsympathetic, and therefore 
 unkind ; (thus Shakespeare makes lago the foulest in 
 thought, as cruelest in design, of all his villains,) but which, 
 in men of noble nature, is their safeguard against weak en- 
 thusiasms and ideals. It is impossible, however, that the 
 highest conditions of tenderness in affectionate conception 
 can be reached except by the absolutely virginal intellect. 
 Shakespeare and Chaucer throw off, at noble work, the 
 lower part of their natures as they would a rough dress ; 
 and you may also notice this, that the power of conceiving 
 personal, as opposed to general, character, depends on this 
 purity of heart and sentiment. The men who cannot quit 
 themselves of the impure taint, never invent character, 
 properly so called ; they only invent symbols of common 
 humanity. Even Fielding's Allworthy is not a character, 
 but a type of a simple English gentleman ; and Squire 
 Western is not a character, but a type of the rude English 
 squire. But Sir Roger de Coverley is a character, as well as 
 a type ; there is no one else like him ; and the masters of 
 Tullyveolan, Ellangowan, Monkbarns, and Osbaldistone Hall, 
 are all, whether slightly or completely drawn, portraits, not 
 mere symbols.
 
 FOItS CLAVIGERA. 83 
 
 The little piece which I shall to-day further translate for 
 you from my Swiss novel is interesting chiefly in showing 
 the power with which affectionate and sentimental imagina- 
 tion may attach itself even to inanimate objects, and give 
 them personality. But the works of its writer generally 
 show the most wholesome balance of the sentimental and 
 rational faculty I have ever met with in literature ; the part 
 of Gotthelf's nature which is in sympathy with Pope and 
 Fielding enables him to touch, to just the necessary point, 
 the lower grotesqueness of peasant nature, while his own 
 conception of ideal virtue is as pure as Wordsworth's. 
 
 But I have only room in this Fors for a very little bit 
 more of the broom-maker. I continue the last sentence of 
 it from page 12 of Letter XXX. : 
 
 " And then Hansli always knew that as soon as he got 
 home there would be enough to eat ; his mother saw faith- 
 fully to that. She knew the difference it makes whether a 
 man finds something ready to eat, when he comes in, or not. 
 He who knows there will be something at home, does not 
 stop in the taverns ; he arrives with an empty stomach, and 
 furnishes it, highly pleased with all about him ; but if he 
 usually finds nothing ready when at home, he stops on the 
 road, comes in when he has had enough or too much ; and 
 grumbles right and left. 
 
 " Hansli was not avaricious, but economical. For things 
 really useful and fit, he did not look at the money. In all 
 matters of food and clothes, he wished his mother to be 
 thoroughly at ease. He made a good bed for himself ; and 
 when he had saved enough to buy a knife or a good tool, he 
 was quite up in the air. He himself dressed well, not ex- 
 pensively, but solidly. Any one with a good eye knows 
 quickly enough, at the sight of houses or of people, whether 
 they are going up or down. As for Hansli, it was easy to 
 see he was on his way up not that he ever put on anything 
 fine, but by his cleanliness and the careful look of his things r 
 aussi, everybody liked to see him, and was very glad to 
 know that he prospered thus, not by fraud, but by work. 
 With all that, he never forgot his prayers. On Sunday he 
 made no brooms : in the morning he went to the sermon,* 
 
 * Much the most important part of the service in Protestant Switzer- 
 land, and a less formal one than in Scotland.
 
 84 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 and in the afternoon he read a chapter of the Bible to his 
 mother, whose sight was now failing. After that he o-ave 
 himself a personal treat. This treat consisted in bringing 
 out all his money, counting it, looking at it,* and calculat- 
 ing how much it had increased, and how much it would yet 
 increase, etc. etc. In that money there were some very 
 pretty pieces, above all, pretty white pieces " (silver among 
 the copper). " Hansli was very strong in exchanges ; he 
 took small money willingly enough, but never kept it long ; 
 it seemed always to him that the wind got into it and 
 carried it off too quickly. The new white pieces gave him 
 an extreme pleasure, above all, the fine dollars of Berne 
 with the bear, and the superb Swiss of old time. When he 
 had managed to catch one of these, it made him happy for 
 many days.f 
 
 " Nevertheless, he had also his bad days. It was always a 
 bad day for him when he lost a customer, or had counted on 
 placing a dozen of new brooms anywhere, and found himself 
 briskly sent from the door with ' We've got all we want.' 
 At first Hansli could not understand the cause of such re- 
 buffs, not knowing that there are people who change their 
 cook as often as their shirt sometimes oftener, and that he 
 couldn't expect new cooks to know him at first sight. He 
 asked himself then, with surprise, what he could have failed 
 in, whether his brooms had come undone, or whether any- 
 body had spoken ill of him. He took that much to heart, 
 and would plague himself all night to find out the real 
 cause. But soon he took the thing more coolly ; and even 
 when a cook who knew him very well sent him about his 
 business, he thought to himself, 'Bah! cooks are human 
 creatures, like other people; and when master or mistress 
 have been rough with them | because they've put too much 
 pepper in the soup, or too much salt in the sauce, or when 
 
 * Utmost wisdom is not in self-denial, but in learning to find extreme 
 pleasure in very little things. 
 
 f This pleasure is a perfectly natural and legitimate one, and all the 
 more beciuse it is possible only when the riches are very moderate. 
 After getting the first shilling of which I told you, I set my mind 
 greatly upon getting a pile of new ''lion shillings," as I called them 
 the lion standing on the top of the crown ; and my delight in the 
 bloomy surface of their dead silver is quite a memorable joy to me. I 
 have engraved, for the frontispiece, the two sides of one of Hansli's 
 Sunday playthings ; it is otherwise interesting as an example of the 
 comparatively vulgar coinage of a people uneducated in art. 
 
 \ Has quarrelled with them.
 
 FOItS CLAVIGERA. 85 
 
 their schatz " (lover, literally, treasure) " is gone off to Pep- 
 perland,* the poor girls have well the right to quarrel with 
 somebody else.' Nevertheless, the course of time needs 
 brought him some worse days still, which he never got him- 
 self to take coolly. He knew now, personally, very nearly 
 all his trees; he had indeed given, for himself alone, names 
 to his willows, and some other particular trees, as Lizzie, 
 Little Mary- Anne, Rosie, and so on. These trees kept him in 
 joy all the year round, and he divided very carefully the pleas- 
 ure of gathering their twigs. He treated the most beautiful 
 with great delicacy, and carried the brooms of them to his 
 best customers. It is true to say also that these were always 
 master-brooms. But when he arrived thus, all joyous, at his 
 willows, and found his Lizzie or his Rosie all cut and torn 
 from top to bottom, his heart was so strained that the tears 
 ran down his cheeks, and his blood became so hot that one 
 could have lighted matches at it. That made him unhappy 
 for a length of time; he could not swallow it, and all he 
 asked was that the thief might fall into his grip, not for 
 the value of the twigs, but because his trees had been hurt. 
 If Hansli was not tall, still he knew how to use his limbs and 
 his strength, and he felt his heart full of courage. On that 
 point he absolutely would not obey his mother, who begged 
 him for the love of God not to meddle with people who 
 might kill him, or do him some grievous harm. But Hansli 
 took no heed of all that. He lay in wait and spied until he 
 caught somebody. Then there were blows and formidable 
 battles in the midst of the solitary trees. Sometimes Hansli 
 got the better, sometimes he came home all in disorder. But 
 at the worst, he gained at least this, that thenceforward one 
 let his willows more and more alone, as happens always when 
 a thing is defended with valour and preseverance. What is 
 the use of putting oneself in the way of blows, when one 
 can get things somewhere else without danger ? Aussi, the 
 Rychiswyl farmers were enchanted with their courageous 
 little garde-champetre, and if one or the other saw him with 
 his hair pulled, they failed not to say, 'Never mind, Hansli; 
 he will have had his dance all the same. Tell me the next 
 time you see anything I'll go with you, and we'll cure him 
 of his taste for brooms.' Whereupon, Hansli would tell him 
 
 * " Les ont brusquoes. " I can't get the derivation beyond Johnson : 
 " Fr. brusque; Gothic, braska." But the Italian brusco is connected 
 with the Provencal brusca, thicket, and Fr. broussaille.
 
 86 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 when he saw anybody about that should not be; the peas- 
 ant * kept himself hid; Hansli began the attack; the ad- 
 versary, thinking himself strongest, waited for him; once 
 the thief seized, the peasant snowed himself, and all was 
 said. Then the marauder would have got away if he could, 
 but Hansli never let go till he had been beaten as was fit- 
 ting. 
 
 "This was a very efficacious remedy against the switch- 
 stealers, and Little Mary-Anne and Rosie remained in per- 
 fect security in the midst of the loneliest fields. Thus 
 Hansli passed some years without perceiving it, and with- 
 out imagining that things could ever change. A week 
 passed, as the hand went round the clock, he didn't know 
 how. Tuesday, market-day at Berne, was there before he 
 could think about it ; and Tuesday was no sooner past than 
 Saturday was there ; and he had to go to Thun, whether he 
 would or no, for how could the Thun people get on without 
 him ? Between times he had enough to do to prepare his 
 cartload, and to content his customers, that is to say, those 
 of them that pleased him. Our Hansli was a man ; and 
 every man, when his position permits it, has his caprices of 
 liking and disliking. Whenever one had trod on. his toes, 
 one must have been very clever afterwards to get the least 
 twig of a broom from him. The parson's wife, for instance, 
 couldn't have got one if she would have paid for it twice 
 over. It was no use sending to him ; every time she did, he 
 said he was very sorry, but he hadn't a broom left that would 
 suit her. 
 
 " That was because she had one day said to him that he 
 was just like other people, and contented himself with put- 
 ting a few long twigs all round, and then bad ones in the 
 middle. 
 
 " ' Then you may as well get your brooms from somebody 
 else,' said he ; and held to it too ; so well that the lady 
 died without ever having been able to get the shadow of a 
 broom from him. 
 
 " One Tuesday he was going to Berne with an enormous 
 cartful of his prettiest brooms, all gathered from his favour- 
 ite trees, that is to say, Rosie, Little Mary-Anne, and com- 
 pany. He was pulling with all his strength, and greatly 
 astonished to find that his cart didn't go of itself, as it did 
 at first ; that it really pulled too hard, and that something 
 
 * Paysan see above.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 87 
 
 must be wrong with it. At every moment he was obliged 
 to stop to take breath and wipe his forehead. ' If only I 
 was at the top of the hill of Stalden ! ' said he. He had 
 stopped thus in the little wood of Muri, close to the bench 
 that the women rest their baskets on. Upon the bench sat 
 a young girl, holding a little bundle beside her, and weeping- 
 hot tears. Hansli, who had a kind heart, asked her what 
 she was crying for. 
 
 " The young girl recounted to him that she was obliged 
 to go into the town, and that she was so frightened she 
 scarcely dared ; that her father was a shoemaker, and that 
 all his best customers were in the town ; that for a long 
 time she had carried her bundle of shoes in, on market days, 
 and that nothing had ever happened to her. But behold, 
 there had arrived in the town a new gendarme, very cross, 
 who had already tormented her every Tuesday she had 
 come, for some time back ; and threatened her, if she came 
 again, to take her shoes from her, and put her in prison. 
 She had begged her father not to send her any more, but 
 her father was as severe as a Prussian soldier, and had or- 
 dered her to 'go in, always ; and if anybody hurt her, it was 
 with him they would have affairs ; ' but what would that 
 help her? she was just as much afraid of the gendarme as 
 before. 
 
 " Hansli felt himself touched with compassion ; above all, 
 on account of the confidence the young girl had had in tell- 
 ing him all this ; that which certainly she would not have 
 done to everybody. ' But she has seen at once that I am 
 not a bad fellow, and that I have a kind heart,' thought he. 
 
 " Poor Hansli ! but after all, it is faith which saves, peo- 
 ple say." 
 
 My readers may at first be little interested by this une- 
 ventful narrative ; but they will find it eventually delightful, 
 if they accustom themselves to classic and sincere literature ; 
 and as an account of Swiss life now fast passing away, it is 
 invaluable. More than the life of Switzerland, its very 
 snows, eternal, as one foolishly called them, are passing 
 away, as if in omen of evil. One-third, at least, in the depth 
 of all the ice of the Alps, has been lost in the last twenty 
 years ; and the change of climate thus indicated is without 
 any parallel in authentic history. In its bearings on the
 
 88 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 water supply and atmospheric conditions of central Europe, 
 it is the most important phenomenon, by far, of all that 
 offer themselves to the study of living men of science : yet 
 in Professor Tyndall's recent work on the glaciers,* though 
 he notices the change as one which, " if continued, will re- 
 duce the Swiss glaciers to the mere spectres of their former 
 selves," he offers no evidence, nor even suggestion, as to the 
 causes of the change itself. 
 
 I have no space in this number of Fors to say what rea- 
 son there is for my taking notice of this book, or the glacier 
 theory, in connection with the life of Scott. In the inter- 
 ests of general literature, it is otherwise fitting that the 
 nature of the book itself should be pointed out. 
 
 Its nature, that is to say, so far as it has any. It seems 
 to be written for a singular order of young people, whom, 
 if they were older, Professor Tyridall assures them, it would 
 give hirn pleasure to take up Mont Blanc ; but whom he can 
 at present invite to walk with him along the moraine from 
 the Jardin, where " perfect steadiness of foot is necessary, 
 a slip would be death ; " and to whom, with Mr. Hirsch, he 
 can "confide confidently " the use of his surveying chain. 
 It is, at all events, written for entirely ignorant people and 
 entirely idle ones, who cannot be got to read without being 
 coaxed and flattered into the unusual exertion. " Here, my 
 friend," says the Professor, at the end of his benevolently 
 alluring pages, "our labours close! It has been a true 
 pleasure to me to have you at my side so long. You have 
 been steadfast and industrious throughout. . . . Stead- 
 fast, prudent, without terror, though not at all times without 
 awe, I have found you, on rock and ice. Give me your hand 
 Goodbye." Does the Professor count, then, upon no read- 
 ers but those whom he can gratify with polite expressions of 
 this kind ? Upon none who perhaps unsteadfast, imprudent, 
 and very much frightened upon rock and ice, have neverthe- 
 less done their own work there, and know good work of 
 other people's, from bad, anywhere ; and true praise from 
 false anywhere ; and can detect the dishonouring of name- 
 * The Forms of Water. King and Co., Cornhill. 1872.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 89 
 
 able and noble persons, couched under sycophancy of the 
 nameless ? He has at least had one reader whom I can an- 
 swer for, of this inconvenient sort. 
 
 It is, I am sorry to say, just forty years (some day last 
 month) since I first saw the Bernese Alps from above Schaff- 
 hausen. Since that evening I have never let slip a chance 
 of knowing anything definite about glaciers and their ways ; 
 and have watched the progress of knowledge, and the oscil- 
 lations of theory, on the subject, with an interest not less 
 deep, and certainly more sincere, than it would have been if 
 my own industry had been able to advance the one, or my 
 own ingenuity to complicate the other. But only one great 
 step in the knowledge of glaciers has been made in all that 
 period ; and it seems the principal object of Professor Tyn- 
 dall's book to conceal its having been taken, that he and his 
 friends may get the credit, some day, of having taken it 
 themselves. 
 
 I went to the University in 1836, and my best friend 
 there, among the older masters, Dr. Buckland, kept me not 
 ill-informed on my favourite subject, the geological, or crys- 
 tallogical, question. Nearly everything of which Professor 
 Tyndall informs his courageous readers was known then, 
 just as well as it is now. We all, that is to say, all geolo- 
 gists of any standing, and their pupils, knew that glaciers 
 moved ; that they were supplied by snow at the top of the 
 Alps, and consumed by heat at the bottom of them ; that 
 there were cracks all through them, and moraines all down 
 them ; that some of their ice was clear, and other ice 
 opaque ; that some of it was sound, and some rotten ; and 
 that streams fell into them at places called mills, and came 
 out of them at places called grottoes. We were, I am sorry 
 to say, somewhat languidly content with these articles of 
 information ; we never thought of wading " breast-deep 
 through snow" in search of more, and still less of "striking 
 our theodolites with the feelings of a general who had won 
 a small battle." * Things went on thus quietly enough. We 
 
 * When next the reader has an opportunity of repeating Professor 
 Tyndall's experiments (p. 92) in a wreath of dry snow, I recommend
 
 90 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 were all puzzled to account for glacier motion, but never 
 thought of ascertaining what the motion really was. We 
 knew that the ice slipped over the rocks at some places, 
 tumbled over them at others ; gaped, or as people who 
 wanted to write sublimely always said, yawned, when it 
 was steep, and shut up again when it was level. And Mr. 
 Charpentier wrote a thick volume to show that it moved by 
 expansion and contraction, which I read all through, and 
 thought extremely plausible. But none of us ever had the 
 slightest idea of the ice's being anything but an entirely 
 solid substance, which was to be reasoned about as capable 
 indeed of being broken, or crushed, or pushed, or pulled in 
 any direction, and of sliding or falling as gravity and smooth 
 surfaces might guide it, but was always entirely rigid and 
 brittle in its substance, like so much glass or stone. 
 
 This was the state of affairs in 1841. Professor Agassiz, 
 of Neuchatel, had then been some eight or ten years at work 
 on the glaciers : had built a cabin on one of them ; walked 
 a great many times over a great many of them ; described a 
 number of their phenomena quite correctly ; proposed, and 
 in some cases performed, many ingenious experiments upon 
 them ; and indeed done almost everything that was to be 
 done for them except find out the one thing that we wanted 
 to know. 
 
 As his malicious fortune would have it, he invited in that 
 year (1841) a man of acute brains to see what he was about. 
 The invitation was accepted. The visitor was a mathemati- 
 cian ; and after examining the question, for discussion of 
 which Agassiz was able to supply him with all the data ex- 
 cept those which were essential, resolved to find out the 
 essential ones himself. 
 
 Which in the next year (1842) he quietly did ; and in 1843 
 solved the problem of glacier motion for ever, announcing, 
 to everybody's astonishment, and to the extreme disgust and 
 mortification of all glacier students, including my poor self, 
 
 him first to try how much jumping is necessary in order to get into it 
 "breast-deep"; and secondly, how far he can " wade " in that dra- 
 matic position.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA, 91 
 
 (not the least envious, I fancy, though with as little right to 
 be envious as any one), that glaciers were not solid bodies 
 at all, but semi-liquid ones, and ran down in their beds like 
 so much treacle. 
 
 " Cela saute aux yeux," we all said, as soon as we were 
 told ; and I well remember the intense mortification of first 
 looking down on the dirt bands of the Mer-de-Glace, from 
 the foot of the Little Charmoz, after I had read Principal 
 Forbes' book. That we never should have seen them be- 
 fore ! so palpable, so inevitable now, with every inch of the 
 ice's motion kept record of, in them, for centuries, and every 
 curve pencilled in dark, so that no river eddies, no festooned 
 fall of sweeping cascade, could be more conclusive in proof 
 of the flowing current. And of course it flowed ; how else 
 could it have moved but by a series of catastrophes?* 
 Everything explained, now, by one shrewd and clear-sighted 
 man's work for a couple of summer months ; and what asses 
 we had all been ! 
 
 But fancy the feelings of poor Agassiz in his Hotel des 
 Neuchatelois ! To have had the thing under his nose for 
 ten years, and missed it ! There is nothing in the annals of 
 scientific mischance (perhaps the truer word would be sci- 
 entific dulness) to match it ; certainly it would be difficult 
 for provocation to be more bitter, at least, for a man who 
 thinks, as most of our foolish modern scientific men do think, 
 that there is no good in knowing anything for its own sake, 
 but only in being the first to find it out. 
 
 Nor am I prepared altogether to justify Forbes in his 
 method of proceeding, except on the terms of battle which 
 men of science have laid down for themselves. Here is a 
 man has been ten years at his diggings ; has trenched here, 
 and bored there, and been over all the ground again and 
 again, except just where the nugget is. He asks one to 
 dinner and one has an eye for the run of a stream ; one 
 does a little bit of pickaxing in the afternoon on one's own 
 account, and walks off with his nugget. It is hard. 
 
 Still, in strictness, it is perfectly fair. The new comer, 
 * See the last terminal note.
 
 92 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 spade on shoulder, does not understand, when he accepts the 
 invitation to dinner, that he must not dig, or must give all 
 he gets to his host. The luck is his, and the old pitsman 
 may very excusably growl and swear at him a little ; but has 
 no real right to quarrel with him, still less to say that his 
 nugget is copper, and try to make everybody else think so 
 too. 
 
 Alas, it was too clear that this Forbes' nugget was not 
 copper. The importance of the discovery was shown in 
 nothing so much as in the spite of Agassiz and his friends. 
 The really valuable work of Agassiz on the glaciers was 
 itself disgraced, and made a monument to the genius of 
 Forbes, by the irrelevant spite with which every page was 
 stained in which his name could be introduced. Mr. Desor 
 found consolation in describing the cowardice of the Ecos- 
 sais on the top of the Jungfrau ; and all the ingenuity and 
 plausibility of Professor Tyndall have been employed, since 
 the death of Forbes, to diminish the lustre of his discovery, 
 and divide the credit of it. 
 
 To diminish the lustre, observe, is the fatallest wrong ; by 
 diminishing its distinctness. At the end of this last book of 
 his, in the four hundred and tenth of the sapient sentences 
 which he numbers with paternal care, he still denies, as far 
 as he dares, the essential point of Forbes' discovery ; denies 
 it interrogatively, leaving the reader to consider the whole 
 subject as yet open to discussion, only to be conclusively de- 
 termined by Professor Tyndall and his friends. " Ice splits," 
 he says, "if you strike a pointed pricker into it ; fissures, 
 narrow and profound, may be traced for hundreds of yards 
 through the ice. Did the ice possess even a very small mod- 
 icum of that power of stretching which is characteristic of 
 a viscous substance, 'such crevasses could no{ be formed.'" 
 Professor Tyndall presumably never having seen a crack in 
 clay, nor in shoe-leather, nor in a dish of jelly set down with 
 a jerk ; nor, in the very wax he himself squeezed flat to show 
 the nature of cleavage, understood that the cleavage meant 
 the multiplication of fissure ! 
 
 And the book pretends to be so explanatory, too, to his
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 93 
 
 young friends ! explanatory of the use of the theodolite, of 
 the nature of presence of mind, of the dependence of enjoy- 
 ment of scenery upon honest labour, of the necessity that in 
 science, " thought, as far as possible, should be wedded to 
 fact," and of the propriety of their becoming older and 
 better informed before they unqualifiedly accept his opinion 
 of the labours of Rendu ! 
 
 But the one thing which, after following him through the 
 edification of his four hundred and ten sentences, they had a 
 right to have explained to them the one thing that will 
 puzzle them if ever they see a glacier, " how the centre flows 
 past the sides, and the top flows over the bottom," the Pro- 
 fessor does not explain ; but only assures them of the atten- 
 tion which the experiments of Mr. Mathews, Mr. Froude, and 
 above all Signor Bianconi, on that subject, " will doubtless 
 receive at a future time." 
 
 The readers of Fors may imagine they have nothing to do 
 with personal questions of this kind. But they have no con- 
 ception of the degree in which general science is corrupted 
 and retarded by these jealousies of the schools ; nor how 
 important it is to the cause of all true education, that the 
 criminal indulgence of them should be chastised. Criminal 
 is a strong word, but an entirely just one. I am not likely 
 to overrate the abilities of Professor Tyndall ; but he had at 
 least intelligence enough to know that his dispute of the 
 statements of Forbes by quibbling on the word " viscous " 
 was as uncandid as it was unscholarly ; and it retarded the 
 advance of glacier science for at least ten years. It was 
 unscholarly, because no other single word existed in the 
 English language which Forbes could have used instead ; 
 and uncandid, because Professor Tyndall knew perfectly well 
 that Forbes was aware of the difference between ice and 
 glue, without any need for experiments on them at the 
 Royal Institution. Forbes said that the mass of glacier ice 
 was viscous, though an inch of ice was not, just as it may be 
 said, with absolute truth, that a cartload of fresh-caught 
 herring is liquid, though a single herring is not. And the 
 absurdity as well as the iniquity of the Professor's wilful
 
 94 FORS CLAVIQERA. 
 
 avoidance of this gist of the whole debate is consummated in 
 this last book, in which, though its title is The Forms of Water, 
 he actually never traces the transformation of snow into 
 glacier ice at all (blundering by the way, in consequence, 
 as to the use of one of the commonest words in Savoyard 
 French, neve). For there are three great " forms of water " 
 by which the Alps are sheeted, one is snow ; another is 
 glacier ice ; the third is nev6, which is the transitional sub- 
 stance between one and the other. And there is not a syl- 
 lable, from the beginning of the book to the end, on the 
 subject of this change, the nature of which is quite the first 
 point to be determined in the analysis of glacier motion. 
 
 I have carried my letter to an unusual length, and must 
 end for the time ; and next month have to deal with some 
 other matters ; but as the Third Fors has dragged me into 
 this business, I will round it off as best I may ; and in the 
 next letter which I can devote to the subject, I hope to give 
 some available notes on the present state of glacier knowl- 
 edge, and of the points which men who really love the Alps 
 may now usefully work upon.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 95 
 
 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 I CUT out of the Morning Post of September 15th, 1873, the following 
 piece of fashionable intelligence, as a sufficiently interesting example 
 of the "Sorrowful Paradise" which marriage, and the domestic ar- 
 rangements connected with it, occasionally construct in the districts of 
 England where Mr. Applegarth's great principle, u No sentiment ought 
 to be brought into the subject," would be most consistently approved 
 in all the affairs of life. The inconvenience to his master of the inop- 
 portune expression of sentiment on the part of the dog, is a striking 
 corroboration of Mr. Applegarth's views: " Charles Dawson, an iron- 
 worker, who had left his wife and cohabited with a young woman 
 named Margaret Addison, attacked her in the house with a coal rake on 
 the head and body. He then, when his victim screamed, pressed her 
 neck down on the floor with one of his heavy boots, while with the 
 other he kicked her. He jumped upon her, and finally seized a large 
 earthern pan and dashed it upon her head, killing her on the spot. The 
 whole of the attack was witnessed by a man who was deterred from 
 interfering by a loaded revolver which Dawson held. Dawson decamped, 
 and strong bodies of police guarded the different roads from the town, 
 and searched several of his haunts. At three o'clock yesterday morning 
 a dog recognised to be Dawson's was followed, and Sergeant Cuthbert 
 broke open the door where the animal was scratching to obtain admis- 
 sion, and captured Dawson, who was sitting on a chair. Although 
 he was armed with a loaded revolver, he offered no resistance." 
 
 I ought to have noted in last Fors, respecting the difficulty of 
 spelling, some forms of bad spelling which result from the mere quan- 
 tity of modern literature, and the familiarity of phrases which are now 
 caught by the eye and ear, without being attentively looked at for 
 an instant, so that spelling and pronunciation go to ruin together. 
 
 On the other hand, I print the following portions of a very graceful 
 letter I received early this year, which indicates the diffusion of really 
 sound education. I wish its writer would tell me her employment. 
 
 " LONDON, S.E. 
 
 " March 9th, 1873. 
 
 "And you will not again call yourself our friend, because you are 
 disheartened by our regardlessness of your friendship, and still more, it
 
 96 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 may be, by the discouraging voice of some on whom you might perhaps 
 more reasonably have counted. 
 
 " You say we have never written you a word of encouragement. But 
 don't you think the fault-finders would be sure to speak first, and loud- 
 est ? / even, in my loneliness, am able to lend my copies to four, who 
 all look forward to their turn with pleasure. (They get their pleasure 
 for nothing, and I was not quite sure you would approve ! until I found 
 you would be willing to lend your Talmud ! ) 
 
 ' ' On one point / grumble and find fault. 
 
 ' ' Most of those works which you say you want us to read, I have 
 read ; but if I had had to pay the price at which you propose to publish 
 them, they would have cost me 3, and I could not have afforded it ; 
 because, much as I delighted in them, I longed for certain other books 
 as well. Many an intelligent working man with a family is poorer than 
 I am. 
 
 "I quite thoroughly and heartily sympathise with your contempt for 
 advertising (as it is abused at present, anyway). But I think all good 
 books should be cheap. I would make bad ones as dear as you like. 
 
 " Was it not Socrates alone of the great Greeks who would put no 
 price on his wisdom ? and Christ ' taught daily in their streets.' I do 
 assure you there are plenty of us teachable enough, if only any one capa- 
 ble of teaching could get near enough, who will never, in this world, 
 be able to afford 'a doctor's fee.' 
 
 " I wonder if it be wrong to take interest of what use my very 
 small savings could be to me in old age ? Would it be worth while for 
 working women to save at all ? 
 
 (Signed) " A WORKING WOMAN." 
 
 No, certainly not wrong. The wrong is in the poor wages 6f good 
 work, which make it impossible to buy books at a proper price, or 
 to save what would be enough for old age. Books should not be 
 cheaper, but work should be dearer. 
 
 A young lady writing to me the other day to ask what I really 
 wanted girls to do, I answered as follows, requesting her to copy 
 the answer, that it might serve once for all. I print it accordingly, as 
 perhaps a more simple statement than the one given in Sesame and 
 Lilies. 
 
 Women's work is, 
 
 I. To please people. 
 II. To feed them in dainty ways. 
 III. To clothe them. 
 IV. To keep them orderly. 
 V. To teach them. 
 
 I. To please. A woman must be a pleasant creature. Be sure that 
 people like the room better with you in it than out of it ; and take all 
 pains to get the power of sympathy, and the habit of it. 
 
 II. Can you cook plain meats and dishes economically and savourily ?
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 97 
 
 If not, make it yonr first business to learn, as you find opportunity. 
 When you can, advise, and personally help, any poor woman within 
 your reach who will be glad of help in that matter ; always avoiding im- 
 pertinence or discourtesy of interference. Acquaint yourself with 
 the poor, not as their patroness, but their friend : if then you can 
 modestly recommend a little more water in the pot, or half an hour's 
 more boiling, or a dainty bone they did not know of, you will have been 
 useful indeed. 
 
 III. To clothe. Set aside a quite fixed portion of your time for 
 making strong and pretty articles of dress of the best procurable 
 materials. You may use a sewing machine ; but what work is to be done 
 (in order that it may be entirely sound) with finger and thimble, is to 
 be your especial business. 
 
 First-rate material, however costly, sound work, and such prettiuess as 
 ingenious choice of colour and adaptation of simple form will admit, are 
 to be your aims. Head-dress may be fantastic, if it be stout, clean, and 
 consistently worn, as a Norman paysanne's cap. And you will be more 
 useful in getting up, ironing, etc. , a pretty cap for a poor girl who has 
 not taste or time to do it for herself, than in making flannel petticoats 
 or knitting stockings. But do both, and give (don't be afraid of giv- 
 ing; Dorcas wasn't raised from the dead that modern clergymen 
 might call her a fool) the things yov make to those who verily need 
 them. What sort of persons these are, you have to find out. It is a 
 most important part of your work. 
 
 IV. To keep them orderly, primarily clean, tidy, regular in habits. 
 Begin by keeping things in order ; soon you will be able to keep 
 people, also. 
 
 Early rising on all grounds, is for yourself indispensable. You must 
 be at work by latest at six in summer and seven in winter. (Of course 
 that puts an end to evening parties, and so it is a blessed condition in 
 two directions at once. ) Every day do a little bit of housemaid's work 
 in your own house, thoroughly, so as to be a pattern of perfection in 
 that kind. Your actual housemaid will then follow your lead, if there's 
 an atom of woman's spirit in her (if not, ask your mother to get an- 
 other). Take a step or two of stair, and a corner of the dining-room, 
 and keep them polished like bits of a Dutch picture. 
 
 If you have a garden, spend all spare minutes in it in actual garden- 
 ing. If not, get leave to take care of part of some friend's, a poor per- 
 son's, but always out of doors. Have nothing to do with greenhouses, 
 still less with hothouses. 
 
 When there are no flowers to be looked after, there are dead leaves 
 to be gathered, snow to be swept, or matting to be nailed, and the 
 like. 
 
 V. Teach yourself first to read with attention, and to remember 
 with affection, what deserves both, and nothing else. Never read bor- 
 
 VOL. II. 7
 
 98 
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 rowed books. To be without books of your own is the abyss of penury. 
 Don't endure it. And when you've to buy them, you'll think whether 
 they're worth reading ; which you had better, on all accounts. 
 
 (Glacier catastrophe, page 91.) 
 
 With the peculiar scientific sagacity on which Professor Tyndall 
 piques himself, he has entirely omitted to inquire what would be the 
 result on a really brittle body, say a sheet of glass, four miles long by 
 two hundred feet thick, (A to B, in this figure, greatly exaggerates the 
 proportion in depth,) of being pushed down over a bed of rocks of any 
 
 A Q 
 
 given probable outline say c to D. Does he suppose it would adhere 
 to them like a tapering leech, the line given between c and D ? The 
 third sketch shows the actual condition of a portion of a glacier flow- 
 ing from E to p over such a group of rocks as the lower bed of the 
 Glacier des Bois once presented. Professor Tyndall has not even 
 thought of explaining what course the lines of lower motion, or subsi- 
 dence, (in ice of the various depths roughly suggested by the dots) 
 would follow on any hypothesis ; for, admitting even Professor Ram- 
 say's theory, that the glacier cut its own bed (though it would be just 
 as rational to think that its own dish was made for itself by a custard 
 pudding) still the rocks must have had some irregularity in shape to 
 begin with, and are not cut, even now, as smooth as a silver spoon.
 
 FOMS CLAVIGEKA. 99 
 
 LETTER XXXV. 
 
 BRANTWOOD, 
 
 18th September, 1873. 
 
 LOOKING up from my paper, as I consider what I am to 
 say in this letter, and in what order to say it, I see out of my 
 window, on the other side of the lake, the ivied chimneys 
 (thick and strong-built, like castle towers, and not at all dis- 
 posed to drop themselves over people below,) of the farm- 
 house where, I told you the other day, I saw its mistress 
 preparing the feast of berry-bread for her sheep-shearers. 
 In that farmhouse, about two hundred and fifty years ago, 
 warmed himself at the hearth, ten feet across, of its hall, 
 the English squire who wrote the version of the Psalms from 
 which I chose for you the fourteenth and fifteenth, last No- 
 vember. Of the said squire I wish you, this November, to 
 know somewhat more ; here, to begin, is his general char- 
 acter, given by a biographer who may be trusted : 
 
 " He was a true model of worth ; a man fit for conquest, 
 plantation, reformation, or what action soever is greatest 
 and hardest among men ; withal such a lover of mankind 
 and goodness, that whosover had any real parts in him 
 found comfort, participation, and protection to the ut- 
 termost of his power. The universities abroad and at 
 home accounted him a general Maecenas of learning, dedi- 
 cated their books to him, and communicated every invention 
 or improvement of knowledge with him. Soldiers honoured 
 him, and were so honoured by him, as no man thought he 
 marched under the true banner of Mars, that had not ob- 
 tained his approbation. Men of affairs in most parts of 
 Christendom entertained correspondency with him. But 
 what speak I of these ? His heart and capacity were so 
 large, that there was not a cunning painter, a skilful en- 
 gineer, an excellent musician, orany other artificer of extraor 
 dinary fame, that made not himself known to this famous
 
 100 FORS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 spirit, and found him his true friend without hire, and the 
 common rendezvous of worth, in his time." 
 
 This being (and as I can assure you, by true report,) his 
 character, and manner of life, you are to observe these things, 
 farther, about his birth, fate, and death. 
 
 When he was born, his mother was in mourning for her 
 father, brother, and sister-in-law, who all had died on the 
 scaffold. Yet, very strangely, you will find that he takes 
 no measures, in his political life, for the abolition of capital 
 punishment. 
 
 Perhaps I had better at once explain to you the meaning 
 of his inactivity in that cause, although for my own part I 
 like best to put questions only, and leave you to work them 
 out for yourselves as you are able. But you could not 
 easily answer this one without help. This psalm-singing 
 squire has nothing to urge against capital punishment, be- 
 cause his grandfather, uncle, and aunt-in-law all died inno- 
 cent. It is only rogues who have a violent objection to being 
 hanged, and only abettors of rogues who would desire anything 
 else for them. Honest men don't in the least mind being 
 hanged occasionally by mistake, so only that the general prin- 
 ciple of the gallows be justly maintained ; and they have the 
 pleasure of knowing that the world they leave is positively 
 minded to cleanse itself of the human vermin with which 
 they have been classed by mistake. 
 
 The contrary movement so vigorously progressive in 
 modern days has its real root in a gradually increasing con- 
 viction on the part of the English nation that they are all 
 vermin. (' Worms ' is the orthodox Evangelical expression.) 
 Which indeed is becoming a fact, very fast indeed ; but was 
 by no means so in the time of this psalm-singing squire. In 
 his days, there was still a quite sharp separation between 
 honest men and rogues ; and the honest men were perfectly 
 clear about the duty of trying to find out which was which. 
 The confusion of the two characters is a result of the peculiar 
 forms of vice and ignorance, reacting on each other, which 
 belong to the modern Evangelical sect, as distinguished from
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 101 
 
 other bodies of Christian men ; and date therefore, neces- 
 sarily, from the Reformation. 
 
 They consist especially in three things. First, in declaring 
 a bad translation of a group of books of various qualities, 
 accidentally associated, to be the 'Word of God.' Secondly, 
 reading, of this singular ' Word of God,' only the bits they 
 like ; and never taking any pains to understand even those.* 
 Thirdly, resolutely refusing to practise even the very small 
 bits they do understand, if such practice happen to go against 
 their own worldly especially money interests. Of which 
 three errors, the climax is in their always delightedly read- 
 ing without in the slightest degree understanding the 
 fourteenth Psalm ; and never reading, nor apparently think- 
 ing it was ever intended they should read, the next one to 
 it the fifteenth. For which reason I gave you those two 
 together, from the squire's version, last November, and, this 
 November and December, will try to make you understand 
 both. For among those books accidentally brought together, 
 and recklessly called the ' Word of God,' the book of Psalms 
 is a very precious one. It is certainly not the ' Word of God' ; 
 but it is the collected words of very wise and good men, who 
 knew a great many important things which you don't know, 
 and had better make haste to know, and were ignorant of 
 some quite unimportant things, which Professor Huxley 
 knows, and thinks himself wiser on that account than any 
 quantity of Psalmists, or Canticle-singers either. The dis- 
 tinction between the two, indeed, is artificial, and worse than 
 that, non-natural. For it is just as proper and natural, some- 
 times, to write a psalm, or solemn song, to your mistress, and 
 a canticle, or joyful song, to God, as to write grave songs 
 
 * I have long since expressed these facts in my Ethics of the Dust, but 
 too metaphorically. " The way in which common people -read their 
 Bibles is just like the way that the old monks thought hedgehogs ate 
 grapes. They rolled themselves (ic was said) over and over, where the 
 grapes lay on the ground : what fruit stuck to their spines, they carried 
 off and ate. So your hedgehoggy readers roll themselves over and over 
 their Bibles, and declare that whatever sticks to their own spines is 
 Scripture, and that nothing else is."
 
 102 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 only to God, and canticles to your mistress. And there is, 
 observe, no proper distinction in the words at all. When 
 Jean de Meung continues the love-poem of William de Loris, 
 he says sorrowfully : 
 
 " Cys trespassa Guilleaume 
 De Loris, et ne fit plus pseaume." 
 
 " Here died William 
 Of Loris, and made psalm no more." 
 
 And the best word for " Canticles " in the Bible is " Asma," 
 or Song, which is just as grave a word as Psalmos, or Psalm. 
 
 And as it happens, this psalm-singing, or, at least, exqui- 
 sitely psalm-translating, squire, mine ancient neighbour, is 
 just as good a canticle-singer. I know no such lovely love 
 poems as his, since Dante's. 
 
 Here is a specimen for you, which I choose because of its 
 connection with the modern subject of railroads ; only note, 
 first, 
 
 The word Squire, I told you, meant primarily a "rider." 
 And it does not at all mean, and never can mean, a person 
 carried in an iron box by a kettle on wheels. Accordingly, 
 this squire, riding to visit his mistress along an old English 
 road, addresses the following sonnet to the ground of it, 
 gravel or turf, I know not which : 
 
 " Highway, since you my chief Parnassus be ; 
 And that my Muse, to some ears not unsweet, 
 Tempers her words to trampling horses' feet, 
 More oft than to a chamber melody ; 
 Now, blessed you, bear onward blessed me, 
 To her, where I my heart, safe left, shall meet ; 
 My Muse and I must you of duty greet 
 With thanks and wishes ; wishing thankfully 
 ' Be you still fair, honour'd by public heed ; 
 By no encroachment wrong' d, nor time forgot ; 
 Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed ; 
 And that you know, I envy you no lot 
 Of highest wish, I wish you so much bliss, 
 Hundreds of years you Stella's feet may kiss.' " 
 
 Hundreds of years ! You think that a mistake ? No, it is 
 the very rapture of love. A lover like this does not believe
 
 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 103 
 
 his mistress can grow old, or die. How do you think the 
 other verses read, apropos of railway signals and railway 
 scrip ? 
 
 " Be you still fair, honour' d by public heed, * 
 Nor blamed for blood, nor shamed for sinful deed." 
 
 But to keep our eyes and ears with our squire. Presently 
 he comes in sight of his mistress's house, and then sings this 
 sonnet : 
 
 4 ' I see the house ; my heart, thyself contain ! 
 Beware full sails drown not thy tott'ring barge ; 
 Lest joy, by nature apt spirits to enlarge, 
 Thee, to thy wreck, beyond thy limits strain. 
 Nor do like lords, whose weak, confused brain, 
 Not pointing to fit folks each undercharge, 
 While ev'ry office themselves will discharge, 
 With doing all, leave nothing done but pain. 
 But give apt servants their due place ; let eyes 
 See beauty's total sum, summ'd in her face ; 
 Let ears hear speech, which wit to wonder ties ; 
 Let breath suck up those sweets ; let arms embrace 
 The globe of weal; lips, Love's indentures make; 
 Thou, but of all the kingly tribute take ! " 
 
 And here is one more, written after a quarrel, which is 
 the prettiest of all as a song ; and interesting for you to 
 compare with the Baron of Bradwardine's song at Lucky 
 M'Leary's : 
 
 "All my sense thy sweetness gained ; 
 Thy fair hair my heart enchained ; 
 My poor reason thy words moved, 
 So that thee, like heav'n, I loved. 
 
 Fa, la, la, leridan, dan, dan, dan, deridan ; 
 Dan, dan, dan, deridan, dei ; 
 While to my mind the outside stood, 
 For messenger of inward good. 
 
 Now thy sweetness sour is deemed ; 
 Thy hair not worth a hair esteemed, 
 Reason hath thy words removed, 
 Finding that but words they proved. 
 
 * See terminal Notes, 1.
 
 104: FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 Fa, la, la, leridan, dan, dan, dan, deridan; 
 Dan, dan, dan, deridan, dei; 
 For no fair sign can credit win, 
 If that the substance fail within. 
 
 No more in thy sweetness glory, 
 For thy knitting hair be sorry ; 
 Use thy words but to bewail thee, 
 That no more thy beams avail thee ; 
 
 Dan, dan, 
 
 Dan, dan, 
 
 Lay not thy colours more to view- 
 Without the picture be found true. 
 
 Woe to me, alas ! she weepeth ! 
 Fool ! in me what folly creepeth ? 
 Was I to blaspheme enraged 
 Where my soul I have engaged ? 
 And wretched I must yield to this ? 
 The fault I blame, her chasteness is. 
 
 Sweetness ! sweetly pardon folly ; 
 Tie me, hair, your captive wholly ; 
 Words ! O words of heav'nly knowledge ! 
 Know, my words their faults acknowledge ; 
 And all my life I will confess, 
 The less I love, I live the less." 
 
 Now if you don't like these love-songs, you either have 
 never been in love, or you don't know good writing from 
 bad, (and likely enough both the negatives, I'm sorry to say, 
 in modern England). But perhaps if you are a very severe 
 Evangelical person, you may like them still less, when you 
 know something more about them. Excellent love-songs 
 seem always to be written under strange conditions. The 
 writer of that " Song of Songs " was himself, as you per- 
 haps remember, the child of her for whose sake the Psalmist 
 murdered his Hittite friend ; and besides, loved many strange 
 women himself, after that first bride. And these, sixty or 
 more, exquisite love-ditties, from which I choose, almost at 
 random, the above three, are all written by my psalm-singing 
 squire to somebody else's wife, he having besides a very nice 
 wife of his own.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 105 
 
 For this squire is the, so called, ' Divine' Astrophel, 
 ' Astrophilos,' or star lover, the un-to-be-imitated Astrophel, 
 the ' ravishing sweetness of whose poesy,' Sir Piercie Shaf. 
 ton, with his widowed voice, " widowed in that it is no 
 longer matched by my beloved viol-de-gambo," bestows on 
 the unwilling ears of the Maid of Avenel.* And the Stella, 
 or star, whom he loved was the Lady Penelope Devereux, 
 who was his first love, and to whom he was betrothed, and 
 remained faithful in heart all his life, though she was married 
 to Robert, Lord Rich, and he to the daughter of his old 
 friend, Sir Francis Walsingham. 
 
 How very wrong, you think ? 
 
 Well, perhaps so ; we will talk of the wrongs and the 
 rights of it presently. One of quite the most curious facts 
 bearing upon them is that the very strict queen (the mother 
 of Cceur-de-Lion) who poisoned the Rose of Woodstock and 
 the world for her improper conduct, had herself presided at 
 the great court of judgment held by the highest married 
 ladies of Christian Europe, which re-examined, and finally 
 re-affirmed, the decree of the Court of Love, held under the 
 presidency of Ermengarde, Countess of Narbonne ; de- 
 cree, namely, that " True love cannot exist between married 
 persons." f Meantime let me finish what I have mainly to 
 tell you of the divine Astrophel. You hear by the general 
 character first given of him that he was as good a soldier as 
 a lover, and being about to take part in a skirmish in the 
 Netherlands, in which, according to English history, five 
 hundred, or a few more, English, entirely routed three thou- 
 sand Dutchmen, as he was going into action, meeting the 
 marshal of the camp lightly armed, he must needs throw off 
 his own cuishes, or thigh armour, not to have an unfair ad- 
 vantage of him ; and after having so led three charges, and 
 had one horse killed under him and mounted another, " he 
 was struck by a musket shot a little above his left knee, 
 
 * If you don't know your Scott properly, it is of no use to give you 
 references. 
 
 f " Dicimus, et stabilito tenore firmamus, amorem non posse, inter 
 duas jugales, suas extendere vires."
 
 106 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 which brake and rifted the bone, and entered the thigh up- 
 ward ; whereupon he unwillingly left the field," (not with- 
 out an act of gentleness, afterwards much remembered, to a 
 poor soldier, wounded also ;) and, after lingering sixteen 
 days in severe and unceasing pain, " which he endured with 
 all the fortitude and resignation of a Christian, symptoms 
 of mortification, the certain forerunner of death, at length 
 appeared ; which he himself being the first to perceive, was 
 able nevertheless to amuse his sick-bed by composing an ode 
 on the nature of his wound, which he caused to be sung to 
 solemn music, as an entertainment that might soothe and 
 divert his mind from his torments ; and on the 16th October 
 breathed his last breath in the arms of his faithful secretary 
 and bosom companion, Mr. William Temple, after giving 
 this charge to his own brother : " Love my memory ; cherish 
 my friends. Their faith to me may assure you they are hon- 
 est. But above all govern your will and affections by the 
 will and word of your Creator,* in me beholding the end of 
 this world, with all its vanities." 
 
 Thus died, for England, and a point of personal honour, 
 in the thirty-second year of his age, Sir Philip Sidney, whose 
 name perhaps you have heard before, as well as that of his 
 aunt-in-law, Lady Jane Grey, for whose capital punishment, 
 as well as that of the Duke of Northumberland, (his grand- 
 father,) his mother, as above stated, was in mourning when 
 he was born. 
 
 And Spenser broke off his Faery Queen, for grief, when 
 he died; and all England went into mourning for him ; 
 which meant, at that time, that England was really sorry, 
 and not that an order had been received from Court. 
 
 16th October. (St. Michael's.) I haven't got my goose- 
 pie made, after all ; for my cook has been ill, and, unluckily, 
 I've had other things as much requiring the patronage of 
 St. Michael, to think of. You suppose, perhaps, (the Eng- 
 Hsn generally seem to have done so since the blessed Ref- 
 
 * He meant the Bible ; having learned Evangelical views at the mas- 
 sacre of St. Bartholomew.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 107 
 
 ormation,) that it is impious and Popish to think of St. 
 Michael with reference to any more serious affair than the 
 roasting of goose, or baking thereof ; and yet I have had 
 some amazed queries from my correspondents, touching the 
 importance I seem to attach to my pie ; and from others, 
 questioning the economy of its construction. I don't sup- 
 pose a more savoury, preservable, or nourishing dish could 
 be made, with Michael's help, to drive the devil of hunger 
 out of poor men's stomachs, on the occasions when Chris- 
 tians make a feast, and call to it the poor, the maimed, the 
 halt, and the blind. But, putting the point of economy 
 aside for the moment, I must now take leave to reply to 
 my said correspondents, that the importance and reality of 
 goose-pie, in the English imagination, as compared with the 
 unimportance and unreality of the archangel Michael, his 
 name, and his hierachy, are quite as serious subjects of 
 regret to me as to them ; and that I believe them to be 
 mainly traceable to the loss of the ideas, both of any 'arche,' 
 beginning, or princedom of things, and of any holy or hie- 
 ratic end of things ; so that, except in eggs of vermin, em- 
 bryos of apes, and other idols of genesis enthroned in Mr. 
 Darwin's and Mr. Huxley's shrines, or in such extinction as 
 may be proper for lice, or double-ends as may be discover- 
 able in amphisbaenas, there is henceforward, for man, neither 
 alpha nor omega, neither beginning nor end, neither nativ- 
 ity nor judgment ; no Christmas Day, except for pudding ; 
 no Michaelmas, except for goose ; no Dies Irse, or day of 
 final capital punishment, for anything ; and that, there- 
 fore, in the classical words of Ocellus Lucanus, quoted by 
 Mr. Ephraim Jenkinson, " Anarchon kai atelutaion to 
 pan." 
 
 There remains, however, among us, very strangely, some 
 instinct of general difference between the abstractedly 
 angelic, hieratic, or at least lord- and lady-like character ; 
 and the diabolic, non-hieratic, or slave- and (reverse-of-lady-) 
 like character. Instinct, which induces the London Journal, 
 and other such popular works of fiction, always to make 
 their heroine, whether saint or poisoner, a 'Lady' some-
 
 108 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 
 
 thing ; and which probably affects your minds not a little 
 in connection with the question of capital punishment ; so 
 that when I told you just now who Sir Philip's aunt was, 
 perhaps you felt as if I had cheated you by the words of my 
 first reference to her, and would say to yourselves, "Well, 
 but Lady Jane Grey wasn't hanged ! " 
 
 No ; she was not hanged ; nor crucified, which was the 
 most vulgar of capital punishments in Christ's time ; nor 
 kicked to death, which you at present consider the proper 
 form of capital punishment for your wives ; nor abused to 
 death, which the mob will consider the proper form of 
 capital punishment for your daughters,* when Mr. John 
 Stuart Mill's Essay on Liberty shall have become the Gospel 
 of England, and his statue be duly adored. 
 
 She was only decapitated, in the picturesque manner rep- 
 resented to you by Mr. Paul de la Roche in that charming 
 work of modern French art which properly companions the 
 series of Mr. Gerome's deaths of duellists and gladiators, and 
 Mr. Gustave Dore's pictures of lovers, halved, or quartered, 
 with their hearts jumping into their mistresses' laps. Of 
 all which pictures, the medical officer of the Bengalee-Life- 
 insurance Society would justly declare that "even in an an- 
 atomical point of view, they were per-fection." 
 
 She was only decapitated, by a man in a black mask, on a 
 butcher's block ; and her head rolled into sawdust, if that's 
 any satisfaction to you. But why on earth do you care more 
 about her than anybody else, in these days of liberty and 
 equality ? 
 
 I shall have something soon to tell you of Sir Philip 
 Sidney's Arcadia, no less than Sir Thomas More's Utopia. 
 The following letter, though only a girl's, contains so much 
 respecting the Arcadia of Modern England which I cannot 
 elsewhere find expressed in so true and direct a way, that 
 
 * For the present, the daughters seem to take the initiative. See 
 story from Halifax in the last terminal Note.
 
 FORS CLAVIOERA. 109 
 
 I print it without asking her permission, promising however, 
 hereby, not to do so naughty a thing again, to her, at 
 least ; new correspondents must risk it. 
 
 " I wish people would be good, and do as you wish, and 
 help you. Reading Fors last night made me determined 
 to try very hard to be good. I cannot do all the things 
 you said in the last letter you wanted us to do, but I will 
 try. 
 
 " Oh dear ! I wish you would emigrate, though I know 
 you won't. I wish we could all go somewhere fresh, and 
 begin anew : it would be so much easier. In fact it seems im- 
 possible to alter things here. You cannot think how it is, in 
 a place like this. The idea of there being any higher law to 
 rule all one's actions than self-interest, is treated as utter 
 folly ; really, people do not hesitate to say that in business 
 each one must do the best he can for himself, at any risk or 
 loss to others. You do know all this, perhaps, by hearsay, 
 but it is so sad to see in practice. They all grow alike by 
 constant contact I suppose ; and one has to hear one after 
 the other gradually learning and repeating the lesson they 
 learn in town to trust no one, believe in no one, admire no 
 one ; to act as if all the world was made of rogues and thieves, 
 as the only way to be safe, and not to be a rogue or thief 
 oneself if it's possible to make money without. And what 
 can one do ? They laugh at me. Being a woman, of course 
 I know nothing ; being, moreover, fond of reading, I imagine 
 I do know something, and so get filled with foolish notions, 
 which it is their duty to disabuse me of as soon as possible. 
 I should so like to drag them all away from this wretched 
 town, to some empty, new, beautiful, large country, and set 
 them all to dig, and plant, and build ; and we could, I am 
 sure, all be pure and honest once more. No, there is no 
 chance here. I am so sick of it all. 
 
 " I want to tell you one little fact that I heard the other 
 day that made me furious. It will make a long letter, but 
 
 please read it. You have heard of , the vilest spot in 
 
 all the earth, I am sure, and yet they are very proud of it. 
 It is all chemical works, and the country for miles round 
 looks as if under a curse. There are still some farms 
 struggling for existence, but the damage done to them is 
 very great, and to defend themselves, when called upon to 
 make reparation, the chemical manufacturers have formed 
 an association, so that if one should be brought to pay,
 
 110 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 the others should support him. Of course, generally, it is 
 almost impossible to say which of the hundreds of chimneys 
 may have caused any particular piece of mischief ; and 
 further frightened by this coalition, and by the expense of 
 law* the farmers have to submit. But one day, just before 
 harvest-time this year, a farmer was in his fields, and saw 
 a great stream, or whatever you would call it, of smoke come 
 over his land from one of these chimneys, and, as it passed, 
 destroy a large field of corn. It literally burns up vegetation, 
 as if it were a fire. The loss to this man, who is not well off, 
 is about 400. He went to the owners of the works and 
 asked for compensation. They did not deny that it might 
 have been their gas, but told him he could not prove it, and 
 they would pay nothing. I dare say they were no worse 
 than other people, and that they would be quite commended 
 by business men. But that is our honesty, and this is 
 a country where there is supposed to be justice. These 
 chemical people are very rich, and could consume all this 
 gas and smoke at a little more cost of working. I do believe 
 it is hopeless to attempt to alter these things, they are so 
 strong. Then the other evening I took up a Telegraph a 
 newspaper is hardly fit to touch nowadays but I happened 
 to look at this one, and read an account of some cellar 
 homes in St. Giles.' It sent me to bed miserable, and I am 
 sure that no one has a right to be anything but miserable 
 while such misery is in the world. What cruel wretches we 
 must all be, to suffer tamely such things to be, and sit by, 
 enjoying ourselves ! I must do something ; yet I am tied 
 hand and foot, and can do nothing but cry out. And mean- 
 while oh ! it makes me mad our clergymen, who are sup- 
 posed to do right, and teach others right, are squabbling 
 over their follies ; here they are threatening each other with 
 prosecutions, for exceeding the rubric, or not keeping the 
 rubric, and mercy and truth are forgotten. I wish I might 
 preach once, to them and to the rich ; no one ought to be 
 rich ; and if I were a clergyman I would not go to one of 
 their dinner-parties, unless I knew that they were moving 
 heaven and earth to do away with this poverty, which, what- 
 ever its cause, even though it be, as they say, the people's 
 own fault, is a disgrace to every one of us. And so it seems 
 to me hopeless, and I wish you would emigrate. 
 
 " It is no use to be more polite, if we are less honest. No 
 
 * Italics mine.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. Ill 
 
 use to treat women with more respect outwardly, and with 
 more shameless, brutal, systematic degradation secretly. 
 Worse than no use to build hospitals, and kill people to put 
 into them ; and churches, and insult God by pretending to 
 worship Him. Oh dear ! what is it all coming to ? Are 
 we going like Rome, like France, like Greece, or is 
 there time to stop ? Can St. George fight such a Dragon ? 
 You know I am a coward, and it does frighten me. Of 
 course I don't mean to run away, but is God on our side ? 
 Why does He not arise and scatter His enemies ? If 
 you could see what I see here ! This used to be quite a 
 peaceful little country village ; now the chemical manu- 
 facturers have built works, a crowd of them, along the 
 river, about two miles from here. The place where this hide- 
 ous colony has planted itself, is, I am sure, the ugliest, most 
 loathsome spot on the earth." (Arcadia, my dear, Arcadia.) 
 " It has been built just as any one wanted either works or 
 a row of cottages for the men, all huddled up, backs to 
 fronts, any way ; scrambling, crooked, dirty, squeezed up ; 
 the horrid little streets separated by pieces of waste clay, or 
 half-built-up land. The works themselves, with their chim- 
 neys and buildings, and discoloured ditches, and heaps of ref- 
 use chemical stuff lying about, make up the most horrible 
 picture of ' progress ' you can imagine. Because they are 
 all so proud of it. The land, now every blade of grass and 
 every tree is dead, is most valuable I mean, they get 
 enormous sums of money for it, and every year they build 
 
 new works, and say, ' What a wonderful place is ! ' It 
 
 is creeping nearer and nearer here. There is a forest of chim- 
 neys visible, to make up, I suppose, for the trees that are dying. 
 We can hardly ever now see the farther bank of our river, 
 that used to be so pretty, for the thick smoke that hangs 
 over it. And worse than all, the very air is poisoned with 
 their gases. Often the vilest smells fill the house, but they 
 say they are not unhealthy. I wish they were perhaps 
 then they would try to prevent them. It nearly maddens 
 me to see the trees, the poor trees, standing bare and naked, 
 or slowly dying, the top branches dead, the few leaves with- 
 ered and limp. The other evening 1 went to a farm that 
 used to be (how sad that ' used to be ' sounds) so pretty, sur- 
 rounded by woods. Now half the trees are dead, and they 
 are cutting down the rest as fast as possible, so that they 
 can at least make use of the wood. The gas makes them 
 useless. Yesterday I went to the house of the manager of
 
 112 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 some plate-glass works. He took me over them, and it was 
 very interesting, and some of it beautiful. You should see 
 the liquid fire streaming on to the iron sheets, and then the 
 sparkling lakes of gold, so intensely bright, like bits out of 
 a setting sun sometimes. When I was going away, the man- 
 ager pointed proudly to the mass of buildings we had been ' 
 through, and said, ' This was all corn-fields a few years ago ! ' 
 It sounded so cruel, and I could not help saying, ' Don't 
 you think it was better growing corn than making glass ? ' 
 He laughed, and seemed so amused ; but I came away won- 
 dering, if this goes on, what will become of England. The 
 tide is so strong they will try to make money, at any price. 
 And it is no use trying to remedy one evil, or another, un- 
 less the root is rooted out, is it ? the love of money." 
 
 It is of use to remedy any evil you can reach : and all this 
 will very soon now end in forms of mercantile catastrophe, 
 and political revolution, which will end the " amusement " of 
 managers, and leave the ground (too fatally) free, without 
 " emigration." 
 
 OXFORD, 24<A October. 
 
 The third Fors has just put into my hands, as I arrange 
 my books here, a paper read before a Philosophical Society 
 in the year 1870, (in mercy to the author, I forbear to give 
 his name ; and in respect to the Philosophical Society, I for- 
 bear to give its name,) which alleges as a discovery, by 
 'interesting experiment,' that a horizontal plank of ice laid 
 between two points of support, bends between them ; and 
 seriously discusses the share which the ' motive power of 
 heat ' has in that amazing result. I am glad, indeed, to see 
 that the author "cannot, without some qualifications agree" 
 in the lucid opinion of Canon Moseley, that since, in the 
 Canon's experiments, ice was crushed under a pressure of 
 308 Ib. on the square inch, a glacier over 710 feet thick would 
 crush itself to pieces at the bottom. (The Canon may still 
 further assist modern science by determining what weight is 
 necessary to crush an inch cube of water ; and favouring us 
 with his resulting opinion upon the probable depth of the 
 sea.) But I refer to this essay only to quote the following
 
 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 113 
 
 passages in it, to prove, for future reference, the degree of 
 ignorance to which the ingenuity of Professor Tyndall had 
 reduced the general scientific public, in the year 1870 : 
 
 " The generally accepted theory proved by the Rev. Canon 
 Moseley to be incorrect. Since the time that Professor 
 Tyndall had shown tha.t all the phenomena formerly attrib- 
 uted by Professor Forbes to plasticity could be explained 
 upon the principle of regelation, discovered by Faraday, the 
 viscous theory of glacier-motion has been pretty generally 
 given up. The ice of a glacier is now almost universally be- 
 lieved to be, not a soft plastic substance, but a substance 
 hard, brittle, and unyielding. The power that the glacier 
 has of accommodating itself to the inequalities of its bed with- 
 out losing its apparent continuity is referred to the property 
 of regelation possessed by ice. All this is now plain." 
 
 " The present state of the question. The condition which 
 the perplexing question of the cause of the descent of glaciers 
 has now reached seems to be something like the following. 
 The ice of a glacier is not in a soft and plastic state, but is 
 solid, hard, brittle, and unyielding." 
 
 I hope to give a supplementary number of Fors, this win- 
 ter, on glacier questions ; and will only, therefore, beg my 
 readers at present to observe that the opponents of Forbes 
 are simply in the position of persons who deny the flexibility 
 of chain-mail because ' steel is not flexible ; ' and, resolving 
 that steel is not flexible, account for the bending of an old 
 carving-knife by the theory of ' contraction and expansion.' 
 
 Observe, also, that 'regelation' is only scientific language 
 for ' freezing again ; ' and it is supposed to be more explan- 
 atory, as being Latin. 
 
 Similarly, if you ask any of these scientific gentlemen the 
 reason of the forms of hoar-frost on your window-pane, they 
 will tell you they may be all explained by the " theory of 
 congelation." 
 
 Finally ; here is the first part of the question, in brief 
 terms for you to think over. 
 
 A cubic foot of snow falls on the top of the Alps. It takes, 
 more or less, forty years (if it doesn't melt) to get to the 
 VOL. II. 8
 
 114 FOBS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 bottom of them. During that period it has been warmed by 
 forty summers, frozen by forty winters ; sunned and shaded, 
 sopped and dried, dropped and picked up again, wasted 
 and supplied, cracked and mended, squeezed together and 
 pulled asunder, by every possible variety of temperature and 
 force that wind, weather, and colossal forces of fall and 
 weight, can bring to bear upon it. 
 
 How much of it will get to the bottom ? With what ad- 
 ditions or substitutions of matter, and in what consistence ?
 
 FOES CLAVIQERA. 115 
 
 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 I find an excellent illustration of the state of modern roads, ' not 
 blamed for blood,' in the following "Month's List of Killed and 
 Wounded," from the Pall Mall Gazette : 
 
 " We have before us a task at once monotonous, painful, and revolt- 
 ing. It is to record, for the benefit of the public, the monthly list of 
 slaughter by rail, for the last four weeks unprecedented in degree and 
 variety. In August there were three ' accidents,' so called, for every 
 five days. In the thirty days of September there have been in all 
 thirty-six. We need not explain the dreary monotony of this work. 
 Every newspaper reader understands that for himself. It is also pain- 
 ful, because we are all more or less concerned, either as travellers, 
 shareholders, or workers on railways ; and it is grievous to behold enor- 
 mous sums of money thrown away at random in compensation for loss 
 of life and limb, in making good the damage done to plant and stock, 
 in costly law litigation, and all for the sake of what is called economy. 
 It is, moreover, a just source of indignation to the tax-payer to reflect 
 that he is compelled to contribute to maintain a costly staff of Govern 
 ment inspectors (let alone the salaries of the Board of Trade), and that 
 for any practical result of the investigations and reports of these gen- 
 tlemen, their scientific knowledge and 'urgent recommendations,' they 
 might as well be men living in the moon. It is revolting because it 
 discloses a miserable greed, and an entire callousness of conscience on 
 the part of railway directors, railway companies, and the railway in- 
 terest alike, and in the Government and Legislature a most unworthy 
 and unwise cowardice. It is true that the situation may be accounted 
 for by the circumstance that there are between one and two hundred 
 railway directors in the House of Commons who uniformly band to- 
 gether, but that explanation does not improve the fact. 
 
 Sept. 2. North-Eastern Railway, near Hartlepool. Passenger train 
 got off the line ; three men killed, several injured. Cause, a defective 
 wheel packed with sheet iron. The driver had been recently fined for 
 driving too slowly. 
 
 Sept. 5. Great Western. A goods train ran into a number of beasts, 
 and then came into collision with another goods train. 
 
 Sept. 0. Line from Helensburgh to Glasgow. A third class carriage 
 got on fire. No communication between passengers and guard. The 
 former got through the windows as best they could, and were found 
 lying about the line, six of them badly injured. 
 
 Sept. 8. A train appeared quite unexpectedly on the line between 
 Tamworth and Rugby. One woman run over and killed. 
 
 Sept. 9. Cannon Street. Two carriages jumped off the line ; traffic 
 much delayed.
 
 116 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 Sept. 9. Near Guildford. A bullock leaped over a low gate on to 
 the line ; seven carriages were turned over the embankment and shiv- 
 ered to splinters ; three passengers were killed on the spot, suffocated 
 or jammed to death; about fifteen were injured. 
 
 Sept. 10. London and North-Western, at Watford. Passenger train 
 left the rails where the points are placed, and one carriage was over- 
 turned ; several persons injured, and many severely shaken. 
 
 Sept. 10. G-reat Northern, at Ardsley. Some empty carriages were 
 put unsecured on an incline, and ran into the Scotch express : three 
 carriages smashed, several passengers injured, and driver, stoker, and 
 guard badly shaken. 
 
 Sept. 11. Great Eastern, near Sawbridgeworth. A goods train, to 
 which was attached a waggon inscribed as defective and marked for 
 repair, was proceeding on the up line ; the waggon broke down, and 
 caught a heavy passenger train on the down line : one side of this train 
 was battered to pieces ; many passengers severely shaken and cut with 
 broken glass. 
 
 Sept. 12. East Lancashire, near Bury. A collision between two 
 goods trains. Both lines blocked and waggons smashed. One driver 
 was very badly hurt. 
 
 Sept. 13. London, Chatham, and Dover, near Birchington station. 
 Passenger train drove over a number of oxen ; engine was thrown off 
 the line ; driver terribly bruised ; passengers severely shaken. Cause, 
 the animals got loose while being driven over a level crossing, and no 
 danger signals were hoisted. 
 
 Sept. 15. Caledonian line, near Glasgow. Passenger train ran into 
 a mineral train which had been left planted on the line ; one woman 
 not expected to survive, thirteen passengers severely injured. Cause, 
 gross negligence. 
 
 Same day, and same line. Caledonian goods train was run into 
 broadside by a North British train ; great damage done ; the guard 
 was seriously injured. Cause, defective signalling. 
 
 Sept. 16. Near Birmingham. A passenger train, while passing over 
 some points, got partly off the line ; no one severely hurt, but all shak- 
 en and frightened. Cause, defective working of points. 
 
 Sept. 17. Between Preston and Liverpool, near Houghton. The 
 express train from Blackburn ran into a luggage train which was in 
 course of being shunted, it being perfectly well known that the ex- 
 press was overdue. About twenty passengers were hurt, or severely 
 shaken and alarmed, but no one was actually killed. Cause, gross neg- 
 ligence, want of punctuality, and too much traffic. 
 
 Same day. Great Eastern. Points not being closed, a cattle train 
 left the metal and ploughed up the line, causing much damage and 
 delay in traffic. Cause, negligence. 
 
 Same day. Oxford and Bletchley Railway. Axle- wheel of waggon 
 broke, and with seven trucks left the line. A general smash ensued ; 
 broken carriages were strewed all over the line, and a telegraph post 
 was knocked down : blockage for four hours. Cause, defective axle. 
 
 Same day. A goods train from Bolton to Manchester started so laden 
 as to project over the other line for the down traffic. Encountering 
 the express from Manchester near Stone Clough, every passenger car- 
 riage was in succession struck and injured. Cause, gross negligence 
 of porters, station-master, and guard of goods train.
 
 FOliS CLAVIGERA. 117 
 
 "Here, it will be observed, we have already got eighteen catastrophes 
 within seventeen days. On September 18 and 19 there was a lull, fol- 
 lowed by an appalling outbreak. 
 
 Sept. 20. At the Bristol terminus, where the points of the Midland 
 and Great Western meet, a mail train of the former ran full into a pas- 
 senger train belonging to the latter. As they were not at full speed, no 
 one was killed, but much damage was done. Cause, want of punctu- 
 ality and gross negligence. Under a system where the trains of two 
 large companies have a junction in common and habitually cross each 
 other many times a day, the block system seems impossible in practice. 
 
 Same day. Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincoln line. A passenger 
 train was unhooked from the engine at Pennistone, and ran down the 
 incline at a fearful rate. A signalman, seeing something wrong, and 
 naturally confused, turned it on to the Sheffield line. At Wortley it 
 encountered a goods train laden with pig-iron. Smash in every direc- 
 tion, carriages and trucks mounting one on the top of the other. For- 
 tunately there were only three passengers ; but all were seriously in- 
 jured. Cause, gross negligence. 
 
 Sept. 22. Midland Railway, near Kettering. A train ran off the 
 line ; metals torn up ; traffic delayed for two hours. 
 
 Same day. Passenger train from Chester was descending the tunnel 
 under Birkenhead ; the engine ran off the line and dashed against the 
 tunnel wall. Passengers much shaken, but not seriously maimed. 
 Traffic stopped for several hours. 
 
 Sept. 23 A lull. 
 
 Sept. 24. North British Railway, at Reston Junction. The early ex' 
 press train which leaves Berwick for Edinburgh at 4.30 a.m. was going 
 at full speed, all signals being at safety, but struck a waggon which was 
 left standing a little on the main line over a siding; engine damaged, 
 and the panels and foot-boards of ten carriages knocked to bits ; no 
 loss of life. Cause, gross negligence. . 
 
 Sept. 25. A Midland excursion train from Leicester got off the line 
 near New Street station ; the van was thrown across both lines of rails ; 
 great damage and delay. Cause, over-used metal. 
 
 Same day. London and North- Western, between Greenfield and 
 Mossley. A bundle of cotton which had fallen from a train pulled one 
 waggon off the line ; twenty other waggons followed it, and the line 
 was ploughed up for two hundred yards ; great damage, delay, and 
 many waggons smashed : no loss of life. Cause, negligence. 
 
 Same day. Great Eastern, St. Ives. Through carelessness a points- 
 man ran a Midland passenger train into a siding on to some trucks ; 
 passengers badly shaken, and a good many had their teeth knocked 
 out. The account stated naively, " No passengers were seriously hurt, 
 but they were nevertheless very much alarmed, and fled the carriages 
 in the greatest state of excitement." Cause, gross negligence. 
 
 Same day. South Yorkshire, near Conisbro. A mineral train (sig- 
 nals being all right) dashed full into a heavy coal train. Much damage, 
 but no loss of life. Cause, gross negligence and over-traffic. 
 
 Sept. 26. This was a very fatal day. At Sykes Junction, near Ret- 
 ford, the Manchester, Sheffield, and Lincoln joins the Great Northern. 
 A coal train of the latter while passing the junction was run into at 
 full speed by a cattle train of the former. The engine and fifteen car-
 
 118 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 riages were thrown down the bank and smashed, and valuable cattle 
 killed. Meanwhile a goods train drew up, the signal being for once at 
 danger, and was immediately run into by a mineral train from behind, 
 which had not been warned. Drivers, guards, firemen injured. A fog 
 was on at the time, but no fog signals appear to have been used. 
 Cause, negligence and over-traffic. 
 
 Same day. North-Eastern passenger train from Stockton to Harro- 
 gate ran into a heavy goods train near Arthington. The crash was 
 fearful. About twenty passengers were injured ; half that number 
 very seriously. The signals contradicted each other. Cause, gross 
 negligence. 
 
 Same day. North-Eastern, Newcastle and Carlisle division. There 
 was a collision between a mineral and a cattle train on a bridge of the 
 river Eden more than 100 feet high. Part of the bridge was hurled 
 down below ; several waggons followed it, while others remained sus- 
 pended. Cattle were killed ; three men badly injured. Cause, gross 
 negligence. 
 
 Same day. Near Carnarvon. A passenger train ran over a porter's 
 lorry which had been left on the line ; no one was injured, but damage 
 ensued ; passengers had fortunately alighted. Cause, negligence. 
 
 Same day. Great Eastern. A train of empty carriages was turned 
 on to a siding at Fakenham, and came into collision with laden trucks, 
 which in their turn were driven into a platform wall ; much damage 
 done, but no personal injury. Cause, gross negligence. 
 
 Sept. 27. The Holyhead mail due at Crewe at 5.30 was half anliour 
 late ; left standing on a curve, it was run into by a goods train ; a 
 number of carriages were smashed, and though no one was killed, 
 nearly fifty persons were injured. The signals were against the goods 
 train, but the morning being hazy the driver did not see them. Cause, 
 negligence, unpunctuality, and want of fog signals. 
 
 Sept. 28. South Devon Line, near Plymouth. A luggage train was 
 set on fire, and a van laden with valuable furniture completely con- 
 sumed. 
 
 Sept. 80. The London and Glasgow express came up at full speed 
 near Motherwell Junction, and dashed into a van which was being 
 shunted on the main line ; the engine was thrown down an embank- 
 ment of thirty feet, and but for the accident of the coupling-iron 
 breaking the whole train would have followed it. The fireman was 
 crushed to death, the driver badly injured, and many passengers se- 
 verely shaken. Cause, criminal recklessness in shunting vans when an 
 express is due. 
 
 Sept. 30. Great Western. Collision at Uffington between a fish and 
 luggage train ; no loss of life, but engine shattered, traffic delayed, and 
 damage done. Cause, negligence. 
 
 "Besides the above, two express trains had a very narrow escape 
 from serious collision on September 13 and September 26, the one 
 being near Beverley station, and the other on the Great Western, be- 
 tween Oxford and Didcot. Both were within an ace of running into 
 luggage vans which had got off the lines. It will be observed that in 
 this dismal list there is hardly one which can properly be called an ac- 
 cident, i.e., non-essential to the existing condition of things, not to be 
 foreseen or prevented, occurring by chance, which means being caused
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 119 
 
 by our ignorance of laws which we have no means of ascertaining. The 
 reverse is the true state of the case : the real accidents would have 
 been if the catastrophes in question had not occurred." 
 
 A correspondent, who very properly asks, ' ' Should we not straight- 
 way send more missionaries to the Kaffirs ? " sends me the following 
 extracts from the papers of this month. I have no time to comment 
 on them. The only conclusion which Mr. Dickens would have drawn 
 from them, would have been that nobody should have been hanged at 
 Kirkdale ; the conclusion the public will draw from them will doubt- 
 less be, as suggested by my correspondent, the propriety of sending 
 more missionaries to the Kaffirs, with plenty of steam-eugines. 
 
 JUVENILE DEPRAVITY. 
 
 Yesterday, a lad named Joseph Frieman, eleven years of age, was 
 charged before the Liverpool magistrates with cutting and wounding 
 his brother, a child six years old. It appeared that on Saturday, dur- 
 ing the absence of their mother, the prisoner threw the little fellow 
 down and wounded him with a knife in a frightful manner, and on the 
 return of the mother she found the lad lying in great agony and bleed- 
 ing profusely. In reply to her questions the prisoner said that his 
 brother "had broken a plate, and the knife slipped." The woman 
 stated that the prisoner was an incorrigible boy at home, and stole 
 everything he could lay his hands on. A few weeks ago, about the 
 time of the recent execution at Kirkdale, he suspended his little sister 
 with a rope from the ceiling in one of the bedrooms, nearly causing 
 death. The prisoner was remanded for a week, as the injured boy lies 
 in a very dangerous state. 
 
 SHOCKING PARRICIDE IN HALIFAX. 
 
 A man, named Andrew Costello, 86, died in Halifax yesterday, from 
 injuries committed on him by his daughter, a mill hand. She struck 
 him on Monday with a rolling-pin, and on the following day tore his 
 tongue out at the root at one side. He died in the workhouse, of 
 lockjaw.
 
 120 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 LETTER XXXVI. 
 
 THREE years have passed since I began these letters. Of 
 the first, and another, I forget which, a few more than a 
 thousand have been sold ; and as the result of my begging 
 for money, I have got upwards of two hundred pounds. 
 The number of the simple persons who have thus trusted me 
 is stated at the end of this letter. Had I been a swindler, 
 the British public would delightedly have given me two hun- 
 dred thousand pounds instead of two hundred, of which I 
 might have returned them, by this time, say, the quarter, in 
 dividends ; spent a hundred and fifty thousand pleasantly, 
 myself, at the rate of fifty thousand a year ; and announced, 
 in this month's report, with regret, the failure of my project, 
 owing to the unprecedented state of commercial affairs in- 
 duced by strikes, unions, and other illegitimate combinations 
 among the workmen. 
 
 And the most curious part of the business is that I fancy 
 I should have been a much more happy and agreeable mem- 
 ber of society, spending my fifty thousand a year thus, in the 
 way of business, than I have been in giving away my own 
 seven thousand, and painfully adding to it this collection of 
 two hundred, for a piece of work which is to give me a great 
 deal of trouble, and be profitable only to other people. 
 
 Happy, or sulky, however, I have got this thing to do ; 
 and am only amused, instead of discouraged, by the beautiful 
 reluctance of the present English public to trust an honest 
 person, without being flattered ; or promote a useful work 
 without being bribed. 
 
 It may be true that 1 have not brought my plan rightly 
 before the public yet. " A bad thing will pay, if you put it 
 properly before the public," wrote a first-rate man of business 
 the other day, to one of my friends. But what the final re- 
 sults of putting bad things properly before the public, will
 
 FORS CLAVIOERA. ]21 
 
 be to the exhibitor of them, and the public also, no man of 
 business that I am acquainted with is yet aware. 
 
 I mean, therefore, to persist in my own method ; and to 
 allow the public to take their time. One of their most 
 curiously mistaken notions is that they can hurry the pace 
 of Time itself, or avert its power. As to these letters of 
 mine, for instance, which all my friends beg me not to write, 
 because no workman will understand them now ; what 
 would have been the use of writing letters only for the men 
 who have been produced by the instructions of Mr. John 
 Stuart Mill ? I write to the labourers of England ; but not 
 of England in 1870-73. A day will come when we shall have 
 men resolute to do good work, and capable of reading and 
 thinking while they rest ; who will not expect to build like 
 Athenians without knowing anything about the first king of 
 Athens, nor like Christians without knowing anything about 
 Christ : and then they will find my letters useful, and read 
 them. And to the few readers whom these letters now find, 
 they will become more useful as they go on, for they are a 
 mosiac-work into which I can put a piece here and there as 
 I find glass of the colour I want ; what is as yet done being 
 set, indeed in patches, but not without design. 
 
 One chasm I must try to fill to-day, by telling you why it 
 is so grave a heresy (or wilful source of division) to call any 
 book, or collection of books, the ' Word of God.' 
 
 By that Word, or Voice, or Breath, or Spirit, the heavens 
 and earth, and all the host of them, were made ; and in it 
 they exist. It is your life ; and speaks to you always, so 
 long as you live nobly ; dies out of you as you refuse to 
 obey it ; leaves you to hear, and be slain by, the word of an 
 evil spirit, instead of it. 
 
 It may come to you in books, come to you in clouds, 
 come to you in the voices of men, come to you in the still- 
 ness of deserts. You must be strong in evil, if you have 
 quenched it wholly ; very desolate in this Christian land, if 
 you have never heard it at all. Too certainly, in this Chris- 
 tian land you do hear, and loudly, the contrary of it, the 
 doctrine or word of devils, speaking lies in hypocrisy ; for-
 
 122 FOES CLAVIGERA. 
 
 bidding to marry, recommending women to find some more 
 lucrative occupation than that of nursing the baby ; and 
 commanding to abstain from meats, (and drinks,) which 
 God has appointed to be received with thanksgiving. For 
 " everything which God has made is good, and nothing to 
 be refused, if it be sanctified by the Word of God." And 
 by what else ? 
 
 If you have been accustomed to hear the clergyman's 
 letter from which I have just been quoting, as if it were 
 itself the word of God, you have been accustomed also to 
 hear our bad translation of it go on, saying, " If it be sancti- 
 fied by the Word of God, and prayer" But there is nothing 
 whatever about prayer in the clergyman's letter, nor does 
 he say, ff it be sanctified. He says, "For it is sanctified by 
 the Word of God, and the chance that brings it."* Which 
 means, that when meat comes in your way when you are 
 hungry, or drink when you are thirsty, and you know in 
 your own conscience that it is good for you to have it, the 
 meat and drink are holy to you. 
 
 But if the Word of God in your heart is against it, and 
 you know that you would be better without the extra glass 
 of beer you propose to take, and that your wife would be the 
 better for the price of it, then it is unholy to you : and you 
 can only have the sense of entire comfort and satisfaction, 
 either in having it, or going without it, if you are simply 
 obeying the Word of God about it in your mind, and accept- 
 ing contentedly the chances for or against it ; as probably 
 you have heard of Sir Philip Sidney's accepting the chance of 
 another soldier's needing his cup of water more than he, on 
 his last battle-field, and instantly obeying the Word of God 
 coming to him on that occasion. Not that it is intended 
 that the supply of these good creatures of God should be left 
 wholly to chance ; but that if we observe the proper laws of 
 God concerning them, and, for instance, instead of forbidding 
 marriage, duly and deeply reverence it, then, in proper time 
 
 * The complete idea I believe to be " the Divine Fors " or Providence, 
 accurately so called, of God. " For it is sanctified by the Word of God 
 and the granting."
 
 FOBS GLAVIGERA. 123 
 
 and place, there will be true Fors, or chancing on, or finding 
 of, the youth and maid by each other, such in character as 
 the Providence of Heaven appoints for each : and, similarly, 
 if we dulv recognize the laws of God about meats and drinks, 
 
 */ O 
 
 there will for every labourer and traveller be such chancing 
 upon meat and drink and other entertainment as shall be 
 sacredly pleasant to him. And there cannot indeed be at 
 present imagined a more sacred function for young Christian 
 men than that of hosts or hospitallers, supplying, to due 
 needs, and with proper maintenance of their own lives, 
 wholesome food and drink to all men : so that as, at least, 
 always at one end of a village there may be a holy church 
 and vicar, so at the other end of the village there may be 
 a holy tavern and tapster, ministering the good creatures of 
 God, so that they may be sanctified by the Word of God 
 and His Providence. 
 
 And as the providence of marriage, and the giving to each 
 man the help meet for his life, is now among us destroyed 
 by the wantonness of harlotry, so the providence of the 
 Father who would fill men's hearts with food and gladness 
 is destroyed among us by prostitution of joyless drink ; and 
 the never to be enough damned guilt of men, and govern- 
 ments, gathering pence at the corners of the streets, stand- 
 ing there, pot in hand, crying, ' Turn in hither ; come, eat of 
 my evil bread, and drink of my beer, which I have venom- 
 ously mingled.' 
 
 Against which temptations though never against the 
 tempters one sometimes hears one's foolish clergy timor- 
 ously inveighing ; and telling young idlers that it is wrong 
 to be lustful, and old labourers that it is wrong to be thirsty : 
 but I never heard a clergyman yet, (and during thirty 
 years of the prime of my life I heard one sermon at least 
 every Sunday, so that it is after experience of no fewer than 
 one thousand five hundred sermons, most of them by schol- 
 ars, and many of them by earnest men,) that I now solemnly 
 state I never heard one preacher deal faithfully with the 
 quarrel between God and Mammon, or explain the need of 
 choice between the service of those two masters. And all
 
 124 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 
 
 vices are indeed summed, and all their forces consummated, 
 in that simple acceptance of the authority of gold instead of 
 the authority of God ; and preference of gain, or the increase 
 of gold, to godliness, or the peace of God. 
 
 I take then, as I promised, the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 Psalms for examination with respect to this point. 
 
 The second verse of the fourteenth declares that of the 
 children of men, there are none that seek God. 
 
 The fifth verse of the same Psalm declares that God is in 
 the generation of the righteous. In them, observe ; not 
 needing to be sought by them. 
 
 From which statements, evangelical persons conclude that 
 there are no righteous persons at all. 
 
 Again, the fourth verse of the Psalm declares that all the 
 workers of iniquity eat up God's people as they eat bread. 
 
 Which appears to me a very serious state of things, and to 
 be put an end to, if possible ; but evangelical persons con- 
 clude thereupon that the workers of iniquity and the Lord's 
 people are one and the same. Nor have I ever heard in the 
 course of my life any single evangelical clergyman so much 
 as put the practical inquiry, Who is eating, and who is being- 
 eaten ? 
 
 Again, the first verse of the Psalm declares that the fool 
 hath said in his heart there is no God ; but the sixth verse 
 declares of the poor that he not only knows there is a God, 
 but finds Him to be a refuge. 
 
 Whereupon evangelical persons conclude that the fool and 
 the poor mean the same people ; and make all the haste 
 they can to be rich. 
 
 Putting them, and their interpretations, out of our way, 
 the Psalm becomes entirely explicit. There have been in all 
 ages children of God and of man : the one born of the Spirit 
 and obeying it ; the other born of the flesh, and obeying 
 it. I don't know how that entirely unintelligible sentence, 
 "There were they in great fear," got into our English 
 Psalm ; in both the Greek and Latin versions it is, " God 
 hath broken the bones of those that please men." 
 
 And it is here said of the entire body of the children of
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 125 
 
 men, at a particular time, that they had at that time all gone 
 astray beyond hope ; that none were left who so much as 
 sought God, much less who were likely to find Him ; and 
 that these wretches and vagabonds were eating up God's 
 own people as they ate bread. 
 
 Which has indeed been generally so in all ages ; but be- 
 yond all recorded history is so in ours. Just and godly peo- 
 ple can't live ; and every clever rogue and industrious fool 
 is making his fortune out of them, and producing abomina- 
 ble works of all sorts besides, material gasometers, fur- 
 naces, chemical works, and the like, with spiritual lies and 
 lasciviousnesses unheard of till now in Christendom. Which 
 plain and disagreeable meaning of this portion of Scripture 
 you will find pious people universally reject with abhorrence, 
 the direct word and open face of their Master being, in the 
 present day, always by them, far more than His other ene- 
 mies, " spitefully entreated, and spitted on." 
 
 Next for the loth Psalm. 
 
 It begins by asking God who shall abide in His taber- 
 nacle, or movable tavern ; and who shall dwell in His holy 
 hill. Note the difference of those two abidings. A tavern, 
 or taberna, is originally a hut made by a traveller, of sticks 
 cut on the spot ; then, if he so arrange it as to be portable, 
 it is a tabernacle ; so that, generally, a portable hut or 
 house, supported by rods or sticks when it is set up, is a 
 tabernacle ; on a large scale, having boards as well as cur- 
 tains, and capable of much stateliness, but nearly synony- 
 mous with a tent, in Latin. 
 
 Therefore, the first question is, Who among travelling men 
 will have God to set up his tavern for him when he wants rest ? 
 
 And the second question is, Who, of travelling men, shall 
 finally dwell, desiring to wander no more, in God's own 
 house, established above the hills, where all nations flow 
 to it? 
 
 You, perhaps, don't believe that either of these abodes 
 may, or do, exist in reality : nor that God would ever cut 
 down branches for you ; or, better still, bid them spring up 
 for a bower ; or that He would like to see you in His own
 
 126 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 house, if you would go there. You prefer the buildings 
 lately put up in rows for you " one brick thick in the 
 walls, " * in convenient neighbourhood to your pleasant 
 business ? Be it so ; then the fifteenth Psalm has nothing 
 to say to you. For those who care to lodge with God, these 
 following are the conditions of character. 
 
 They are to walk or deal uprightly with men. They are 
 to work or do justice ; or, in sum, do the best they can 
 with their hands. They are to speak the truth to their own 
 hearts, and see they do not persuade themselves they are 
 honest when they ought to know themselves to be knaves ; 
 nor persuade themselves they are charitable and kind, when 
 they ought to know themselves to be thieves and murderers. 
 They are not to bite people with their tongues behind their 
 backs, if they dare not rebuke them face to face. They are 
 not to take up, or catch at, subjects of blame ; but they are 
 utterly and absolutely to despise vile persons who fear no 
 God, and think the world was begot by mud, and is fed by 
 money ; and they are riot to defend a guilty man's cause 
 against an innocent one. Above all, this last verse is written 
 for lawyers, or professed interpreters of justice, who are 
 of all men most villainous, if, knowingly, they take reward 
 against an innocent or rightfully contending person. And 
 on these conditions the promise of God's presence and 
 strength is finally given. He that doeth thus shall not be 
 moved, or shaken : for him, tabernacle and rock are alike 
 safe : no wind shall overthrow them, nor earthquake rend. 
 
 That is the meaning of the fourteenth and fifteenth 
 Psalms ; and if you so believe them, and obey them, you 
 will find your account in it. And they are the Word of 
 God to you, so far as you have hearts capable of under- 
 standing them, or any other such message brought by His 
 servants. But if your heart is dishonest and rebellious, you 
 may read them for ever with lip-service, and all the while be 
 ' men-pleasers,' whose bones are to be broken at the pit's 
 mouth, and so left incapable of breath, brought by any winds 
 of Heaven. And that is all I have to say to you this year. 
 * See p. 128 in the Notes.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 127 
 
 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 As I send these last sheets to press, I get from the Cheap-Fuel Supply 
 Association, Limited, a letter advising me that the Right Hon. Lord 
 Claud Hamilton, M.P., and the late Director of Stores at the War 
 Office, and Michael Angelo, Esq., of St. James's Square, and the late 
 Controller of Military Finance in Calcutta, with other estimable per- 
 sons, are about to undertake the manufacture of peat into cheap fuel, 
 for the public benefit ; and promise a net profit on the operation, of six 
 shillings and sixpence a ton ; of which I am invited to secure my share. 
 The manufacture of peat into portable fuel may, or may not, be desir- 
 able ; that depends on what the British public means to do after they 
 have burnt away all their bituminous and boggy ground in driving 
 about at forty miles an hour, and making iron railings, and other such 
 valuable property, for the possession of their posterity. But granting 
 the manufacture desirable, and omitting all reference to itc effect on 
 the picturesque, why Lord Claud Hamilton and Michael Angelo, Esq. , 
 should offer me, a quiet Oxford student, any share of their six-and-six- 
 pences, I can't think. I could not cut a peat if they would give me 
 six-and-sixpence the dozen I know nothing about its manufacture. 
 What on earth do they propose to pay me for ? 
 
 The following letter from an old friend, whose manner of life like 
 my own, has been broken up, (when it was too late to mend it again,) 
 by modern improvements, will be useful to me for reference in what I 
 have to say in my January letter: 
 
 "About myself ere long I shall be driven out of my house, the 
 happiest refuge I ever nested in. It is again like most old rooms, very 
 lofty, is of wood and plaster, evidently of the Seventh Harry's time, 
 and most interesting in many ways. It belonged to the Radcliffe 
 family, some branch, as I understand, from the scanty information I 
 
 can scrape, of the Derwentwater family. Lord owns it now, or 
 
 did till lately ; for I am informed he had sold it and the lands about it 
 to an oil-cloth company, who will start building their factory behind it 
 shortly, and probably resell the land they do not use, with the hall, to 
 be demolished as an incumbrance that does not pay. Already the 
 ' Egyptian plague of bricks ' has alighted on its eastern side, devour- 
 ing every green blade. Where the sheep fed last year, five streets of
 
 128 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 cheap cottages one brick thick in the walls (for the factory opera- 
 tives belonging to two great cotton mills near) are in course of forma- 
 tion great cartloads of stinking oyster shells having been laid for 
 their foundations ; and the whole vicinity on the eastern side, in a 
 state of mire and debris of broken bricks and slates, is so painful to my 
 eyes that I scarce ever go out in daylight. 
 
 u Fifteen years ago a noble avenue of sycamores led to the hall, and 
 a large wood covered the surface of an extensive plateau of red sand- 
 stone, and a moat surrounded the walls of the hall. Not a tree stands 
 now, the moat is filled up, and the very rock itself is riddled into sand, 
 and is being now carted away."
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 129 
 
 LETTER XXXVII. 
 
 " Selon la loy, et ly prophetes, 
 Qui a charite parfaicte 
 II ayme Dieu sur toute rien, 
 De cueur, de force, et d'ame 
 
 nette ; 
 
 Celui devons-nous tons de debte 
 Comme soy-mesmes, son pro- 
 chain ; 
 Qu'on dit qui in ayme, ayme mon 
 
 chien. 
 
 De tel pierre, et de tel merrien 
 Est es cieulx nostre maison faicte 
 Car nulz ne peut dire, ' c'est 
 
 mien,' 
 
 Fors ce qu'il a mis en ce bien ; 
 Tout le remenant est retraicte." 
 
 1st January, 1874. 
 
 According to the Law and the 
 Prophets, 
 
 He who has perfect charity, 
 
 Loves God above everything, 
 
 With heart, with flesh, and with 
 spirit pure. 
 
 Him also, our neighbour, we are 
 all in debt 
 
 To love as ourselves. 
 
 For one says, Who loves me, loves 
 my dog. 
 
 Of such stone, and of such cross- 
 beam, 
 
 Is in the heavens our house made ; 
 
 For no one can say, ' It is mine,' 
 
 Beyond what he has put into that 
 good. 
 
 All the rest is taken away. 
 
 day last November, at Oxford, as I was going in at the 
 private door of the University galleries, to give a lecture on 
 the Fine Arts in Florence, I was hindered for a moment by a 
 nice little girl, whipping a top on the pavement. She was a" 
 very nice little girl ; and rejoiced wholly in her whip, and 
 top ; but could not inflict the reviving chastisement with all 
 the activity that was in her, because she had on a large and 
 dilapidated pair of woman's shoes, which projected the full 
 length of her own little foot behind it and before ; and being 
 securely fastened to her ankles in the manner of moccasins, 
 admitted, indeed, of dextrous glissades, and other modes of 
 progress quite sufficient for ordinary purposes ; but not con- 
 veniently of all the evolutions proper to the pursuit of a 
 whipping-top. 
 
 There were some worthy people at my lecture, and I think 
 VOL. II. 9
 
 130 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 the lecture was one of my best. It gave some really trust- 
 worthy information about art in Florence six hundred years 
 ago. But all the time I was speaking, I knew that nothing 
 spoken about art, either by myself or other people, could be 
 of the least use to anybody there. For their primary busi- 
 ness, and mine, was with art in Oxford, now ; not with art in 
 Florence, then ; and art in Oxford now was absolutely de- 
 pendent on our power of solving the question which I knew 
 that my audience would not even allow to be proposed for 
 solution "Why have our little girls large shoes?" 
 
 Indeed, my great difficulty, of late, whether in lecturing 
 or writing, is in the intensely practical and matter-of-fact 
 character of my own mind as opposed to the loquacious and 
 speculative disposition, not only of the British public, but of 
 all my quondam friends. I am left utterly stranded, and 
 alone, in life, and thought. Life and knowledge, I ought to 
 say ; for I have done what thinking was needful for me long 
 ago, and know enough to act upon, for the few days, or 
 years, I may have yet to live. I find some of my friends 
 greatly agitated in mind, for instance, about Responsibility, 
 Free-will, and the like. I settled all those matters for myself, 
 before I was ten years old, by jumping up and down an 
 awkward turn of four steps in my nursery-stairs, and con- 
 sidering whether it was likely that God knew whether I should 
 jump only three, or the whole four at a time. Having settled 
 it in my mind that He knew quite well, though I didn't, which 
 I should do ; and also whether I should fall or not in the 
 course of the performance, though I was altogether re- 
 sponsible for taking care not to, I never troubled my head 
 more on the matter, from that day to this. But my friends 
 keep buzzing and puzzling about it, as if they had to order 
 the course of the world themselves ; and won't attend to me 
 for an instant, if I ask why little girls have large shoes. 
 
 I don't suppose any man, with a tongue in his head, 
 and zeal to use it, was ever left so entirely unattended to, 
 as he grew old, by his early friends ; and it is doubly and 
 trebly strange to me, because I have lost none of my power 
 of sympathy with them. Some are chemists ; and I am al-
 
 FORS CLAVIOERA. 131 
 
 ways glad to hear of the last new thing in elements ; some are 
 palaeontologists, and I am no less happy to know of any lately 
 unburied beast peculiar in his bones ; the lawyers and cler- 
 gymen can always interest me with any story out of their 
 courts or parishes ; but not one of them ever asks what I am 
 about myself. If they chance to meet me in the streets 
 of Oxford, they ask whether I am staying there. When 
 I say, yes, they ask how I like it ; and when I tell them 
 T don't like it at all, and don't think little girls should have 
 large shoes, they tell me I ought to read the Cours de 
 Philosophic Positive. As if a man who had lived to be fifty- 
 four, content with what philosophy was needful to assure him 
 that salt was savoury, and pepper hot, could ever be made 
 positive in his old age, in the impertinent manner of these 
 youngsters. But positive in a pertinent and practical man- 
 ner, I have been, and shall be ; with such stern and steady 
 wedge of fact and act as time may let me drive into the 
 gnarled blockheadism of the British mob. 
 
 I am free to confess I did not quite know the sort of 
 creature I had to deal with, when I began, fifteen years ago, 
 nor the quantity of ingenious resistance to practical reform 
 which could be offered by theoretical reformers. Look, for 
 instance, at this report of a speech of Mr. Bright's in the 
 Times, on the subject of the adulteration of food.* 
 
 "The noble lord has taken great pains upon this question, 
 and has brought before the House a great amount of detail 
 in connection with it. As I listened to his observations I 
 hoped and believed that there was, though unintentional, no 
 little exaggeration in them. Although there may be partic- 
 ular cases in which great harm to health and great fraud may 
 possibly be shown, yet I think that general statements of 
 this kind, implicating to a large extent the traders of this 
 country, are dangerous, and are almost certain to be unjust. 
 Now, my hon. friend (Mr. Pochin) who has just addressed 
 the House in a speech showing his entire mastery of the 
 question, has confirmed my opinion, for he has shown and 
 I dare say he knows as much of the matter as any present 
 that there is a great deal of exaggeration in the opinions 
 
 * Of 6th March, not long ago, but I have lost note of the year.
 
 132 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 
 
 which have prevailed in many parts of the country, and 
 which have even been found to prevail upon the matter in 
 this House. . . . Now, I am prepared to show that the 
 exaggeration of the noble lord I do not say intentionally, 
 of course ; I am sure he is incapable of that is just as great 
 in the matter of weights and measures as in that of adultera- 
 tion. Probably he is not aware that in the list of persons 
 employing weights that are inaccurate I do not say fraudu- 
 lent no distinction is drawn between those who are inten- 
 tionally fraudulent and those who are accidentally inaccu- 
 rate, and that the penalty is precisely the same, and the 
 offence is just as eagerly detected, whether there be a fraud 
 or merely an accident. Now, the noble lord will probably 
 be surprised when I tell him that many persons are fined 
 annually, not because their weights are too small, but be- 
 cause they are too large. In fact, when the weights are 
 inaccurate, but are in favour of the customer, still the owner 
 and user of the weight is liable to the penalty, and is fined. 
 My own impression with regard to this adulteration 
 is that it arises from the very great, and perhaps inevitable, 
 competition in business ; and that to a great extent it is 
 promoted by the ignorance of customers. As the ignorance 
 of customers generally is diminishing, we may hope that 
 before long the adulteration of food may also diminish. The 
 noble lord appears to ask that something much more exten- 
 sive and stringent should be done by Parliament. The fact 
 is, it is vain to attempt by the power of Parliament to pene- 
 trate into and to track out evils such as those on which the 
 noble lord has dwelt at such length. It is quite impossible 
 that you should have the oversight of the shops of the coun- 
 try by inspectors, and that you should have persons going 
 into shops to buy sugar, pickles, and Cayenne pepper, to 
 get them analyzed, and then raise complaints against shop- 
 keepers, and bring them before the magistrates. If men in 
 their private businesses were to be tracked by Government 
 officers and inspectors every hour of the day, life would not 
 be worth having, and I recommend them to remove to an- 
 other country, where they would not be subject to such 
 annoyance." 
 
 Now, I neither know, nor does it matter to the public, 
 what Mr. Bright actually said ; but the report in the Times 
 is the permanent and universally influential form of his say-
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 133 
 
 ings ; and observe what the substance is, of these three or 
 four hundred Parliamentary words, so reported. 
 
 First. That an evil which has been exaggerated ought not 
 to be prevented. 
 
 Secondly. That at present we punish honest men as much 
 as rogues ; and must always continue to do so if we punish 
 anybody. 
 
 Thirdly. That life would not be worth having if one's 
 weights and measures were liable to inspection. 
 
 I can assure Mr. Bright that people who know what life 
 means, can sustain the calamity of the inspection of their 
 weights and measures with fortitude. I myself keep a tea- 
 and-sugar shop. I have had my scales and weights inspected 
 more than once or twice, and am not in the least disposed to 
 bid my native land good night on that account. That I 
 could bid it nothing but good night never good morning, 
 the smoke of it quenching the sun, and its parliamentary 
 talk, of such quality as the above, having become darkness 
 voluble, and some of it worse even than that, a mere watch- 
 man's rattle, sprung by alarmed constituencies of rascals 
 when an honest man comes in sight, these are things in- 
 deed which should make any man's life little worth having, 
 unless he separate himself from the scandalous crowd ; but 
 it must not be in exile from his country. 
 
 I have not hitherto stated, except in general terms, the 
 design to which these letters point, though it has been again 
 and again denned, and it seems to me explicitly enough 
 the highest possible education, namely, of English men and 
 women living by agriculture in their native land. Indeed, 
 during these three past years I have not hoped to do more 
 than make my readers feel what mischiefs they have to con- 
 quer. It is time now to say more clearly what I want them 
 to do. 
 
 The substantial wealth of man consists in the earth he 
 cultivates, with its pleasant or serviceable animals and plants, 
 and in the rightly produced work of his own hands. I mean 
 to buy, for the St. George's Company, the first pieces of 
 ground offered to me at fair price, (when the subscriptions
 
 134 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 enable me to give any price), to put them as rapidly as 
 possible into order, and to settle upon them as many fami- 
 lies as they can support, of young and healthy persons, on 
 the condition that they do the best they can for their liveli- 
 hood with their own hands, and submit themselves and their 
 children to the rules written for them. 
 
 I do not care where the land is, nor of what quality. I 
 would rather it should be poor, for I want space more than 
 food. I will make the best of it that I can, at once, by wage- 
 labour, under the best agricultural advice. It is easy now 
 to obtain good counsel, and many of our landlords would 
 willingly undertake such operations occasionally, but for the 
 fixed notion that every improvement of land should at once 
 pay, whereas the St. George's Company is to be consistently 
 monastic in its principles of labour, and to work for the re- 
 demption of any desert land, without other idea of gain than 
 the certainty of future good to others. I should best like a 
 bit of marsh land of small value, which I would trench into 
 alternate ridge and canal, changing it all into solid land, and 
 deep water, to be farmed in fish. If, instead, I get a rocky 
 piece, I shall first arrange reservoirs for rain, then put what 
 earth is sprinkled on it into workable masses ; and ascertain- 
 ing, in either case, how many mouths the gained spaces of 
 ground will easily feed, put upon them families chosen for 
 me by old landlords, who know their people, and can send 
 me cheerful and honest ones, accustomed to obey orders, and 
 live in the fear of God. Whether the fear be Catholic, or 
 Church-of-England, or Presbyterian, I do not in the least 
 care, so that the family be capable of any kind of sincere 
 devotion ; and conscious of the sacredness of order. If any 
 young couples of the higher classes choose to accept such 
 rough life, I would rather have them for tenants than any 
 others. 
 
 Tenants, I say, and at long lease, if they behave well : 
 with power eventually to purchase the piece of land they 
 live on for themselves, if they can save the price of it ; the 
 rent they pay, meanwhile, being the tithe of the annual 
 produce, to St. George's fund. The modes of the cultiva-
 
 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 135 
 
 tion of the land are to be under the control of the overseer 
 of the whole estate, appointed by the Trustees of the fund ; 
 but the tenants shall build their own houses to their own 
 minds, under certain conditions as to materials and strength ; 
 and have for themselves the entire produce of the land, ex- 
 cept the tithe aforesaid. 
 
 The children will be required to attend training schools 
 for bodily exercise, and music, with such other education as 
 I have already described. Every household will have its li- 
 brary, given it from the fund, and consisting of a fixed num- 
 ber of volumes, some constant, the others chosen by each 
 family out of a list of permitted books, from which they 
 afterwards may increase their library if they choose. The 
 formation of this library for choice, by a republication of 
 classical authors in standard forms, has long been a main 
 object with me. No newspapers, nor any books but those 
 named in the annually renewed lists, are to be allowed in 
 any household. In time I hope to get a journal published, 
 containing notice of any really important matters taking 
 place in this or other countries, in the closely sifted truth of 
 them. 
 
 The first essential point in the education given to the 
 children will be the habit of instant, finely accurate, and to- 
 tally unreasoning, obedience to their fathers, mothers, and 
 tutors ; the same precise and unquestioning submission be- 
 ing required from heads of families to the officers set over 
 them. The second essential will be the understanding of 
 the nature of honour, making the obedience solemn and con- 
 stant ; so that the slightest wilful violation of the laws of 
 the society may be regarded as a grave breach of trust, and 
 no less disgraceful than a soldier's recoiling from his place 
 in a battle. 
 
 In our present state of utter moral disorganization, it 
 might indeed seem as if it would be impossible either to se- 
 cure obedience, or explain the sensation of honour ; but the 
 instincts of both are native in man, and the roots of them 
 cannot wither, even under the dust-heap of modern liberal 
 opinions. My settlers, you observe, are to be young people,
 
 136 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 bred on old estates ; my commandants will be veteran 
 soldiers ; and it will be soon perceived that pride based on 
 servitude to the will of another is far loftier and happier 
 than pride based on servitude to humour of one's own. 
 
 Each family will at first be put on its trial for a year, 
 without any lease of the land : if they behave well, they 
 shall have a lease for three years ; if through that time 
 they satisfy their officers, a life-long lease, with power to 
 purchase. 
 
 I have already stated that no machines moved by artificial 
 power are to be used on the estates of the society ; wind, 
 water, and animal force are to be the only motive powers 
 employed, and there is to be as little trade or importation 
 as possible ; the utmost simplicity of life, and restriction of 
 possession, being combined with the highest attainable re- 
 finement of temper and thought. Everything that the mem- 
 bers of any household can sufficiently make for themselves, 
 they are so to make, however clumsily ; but the carpenter 
 and smith, trained to perfectest work in wood and iron, are 
 to be employed on the parts of houses and implements in 
 which finish is essential to strength. The ploughshare and 
 spade must be made by the smith, and the roof and floors 
 by a carpenter ; but the boys of the house must be able to 
 make either a horseshoe, or a table. 
 
 Simplicity of life without coarseness, and delight in life 
 without lasciviousness, are, under such conditions, not only 
 possible to human creatures, but natural to them. I do not 
 pretend to tell you straightforwardly all laws of nature re- 
 specting the conduct of men ; but some of those laws I 
 know, and will endeavour to get obeyed ; others, as they are 
 needful, will be in the sequel of such obedience ascertained. 
 What final relations may take place between masters and 
 servants, labourers and employers, old people and young, use- 
 ful people and useless, in such a society, only experience can 
 conclude ; nor is there any reason to anticipate the conclu- 
 sion. Some few things the most obstinate will admit, and 
 the least credulous believe : that washed faces are healthier 
 than dirty ones, whole clothes decenter than ragged ones,
 
 FOKS CLAVIOERA. 137 
 
 kind behaviour more serviceable than malicious, and pure air 
 pleasanter than foul. Upon that much of " philosophic posi- 
 tive " I mean to act ; and, little by little, to define in these 
 letters the processes of action. That it should be left to me 
 to begin such a work, with only one man in England 
 Thomas Carlyle to whom I can look for steady guidance, is 
 alike wonderful and sorrowful to me ; but as the thing is so, 
 I can only do what seems to me necessary, none else coming 
 forward to do it. For my own part, I entirely hate the whole 
 business : I dislike having either power or responsibility ; 
 am ashamed to ask for money, and plagued in spending it. 
 I don't want to talk, nor to write, nor to advise or direct 
 anybody. I am far more provoked at being thought foolish 
 by foolish people, than pleased at being thought sensible by 
 sensible people ; and the average proportion of the numbers 
 of each is not to my advantage. If I could find any one able 
 to carry on the plan instead of me, I never should trouble 
 myself about it more ; and even now, it is only with ex- 
 treme effort and chastisement of my indolence that I go 
 on : but, unless I am struck with palsy, I do not seriously 
 doubt my perseverance, until I find somebody able to 
 take up the matter in the same mind, and with a better 
 heart. 
 
 The laws required to be obeyed by the families living on 
 the land will be, with some relaxation and modification, so 
 as to fit them for English people, those of Florence in the 
 fourteenth century. In what additional rules may be adopted, 
 I shall follow, for the most part, Bacon, or Sir Thomas More, 
 under sanction always of the higher authority which of late 
 the English nation has wholly set its strength to defy that 
 of the Founder of its Religion ; nor without due acceptance 
 of what teaching was given to the children of God by their 
 Father, before the day of Christ, of which, for present end- 
 ing, read and attend to these following quiet words.* 
 
 * The close of the ninth book of Plato's Republic. I use for the most 
 part Mr. Jowett's translation, here and there modifying it iu my own 
 arbitrarily dogged or diffuse way of Englishing passages of complex 
 significance.
 
 138 FOES CLAVIGERA. 
 
 " ' In what point of view, then, and on what ground shall 
 a man be profited by injustice or intemperance or other base- 
 ness, even though he acquire money or power ?' 
 
 ' There is no ground on which this can be maintained.' 
 
 * What shall he profit if his injustice be undetected ? for 
 he who is undetected only gets worse, whereas he who is de- 
 tected and punished has the brutal part of his nature silenced 
 and humanized ; the greater element in him is liberated, and 
 his whole soul is perfected and ennobled by the acquirement 
 of justice and temperance and wisdom, more than the body 
 ever is by receiving gifts of beauty, strength, and health, in 
 proportion as the soul is more honourable than the body.' 
 
 ' Certainly,' he said. 
 
 I Will not, then, the man of understanding, gather all that 
 is in him, and stretch himself like a bent bow to this aim of 
 life ; and, in the first place, honour studies which thus chas- 
 tise and deliver his soul in perfection ; and despise others?' 
 
 ' Clearly,' he said. 
 
 ' In the next place, he will keep under his body, and so far 
 will he be from yielding to brutal and irrational pleasure,* 
 that he will not even first look to bodily health as his main 
 object, nor desire to be fair, or strong, or well, unless he is 
 likely thereby to gain temperance ; but he will be always 
 desirous of preserving the harmony of the body for the sake 
 of the concord of the soul ? ' 
 
 ' Certainly,' he replied, ' that he will, if he is indeed taught 
 by the Muses.' 
 
 ' And he will also observe the principle of classing and con- 
 cord in the acquisition of wealth ; and will not, because the 
 mob beatify him, increase his endless load of wealth to his 
 own infinite harm ? ' 
 
 I 1 think not,' he said: 
 
 ' He will look at the city which is within him, and take care 
 to avoid any change of his own institutions, such as might 
 arise either from abundance or from want ; and he will duly 
 regulate his acquisition and expense, in so far as he is able ?' 
 
 ' Very true.' 
 
 ' And, for the same reason, he will accept such honours as 
 he deems likely to make him a better man ; but those which 
 are likely to loosen his possessed habit, whether private or 
 public honours, he will avoid ? ' 
 
 * Plato does not mean here, merely dissipation of a destructive kind, 
 (as the next sentence shows,) but also healthy animal stupidities, as our 
 hunting, shooting, and the like.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 139 
 
 c Then, if this be his chief care, he will not be a politician ? ' 
 
 ' By the dog of Egypt, he will ! in the city which is his 
 own, though in his native country perhaps not, unless some 
 providential accident should occur.' 
 
 ' I understand ; you speak of that city of which we are the 
 founders, and which exists in idea only, for I do riot think 
 there is such an one anywhere on earth ? ' 
 
 ' In heaven,' I replied, ' there is laid up a pattern of such 
 a city ; and he who desires may behold this, and, beholding, 
 govern himself accordingly. But whether there really is, or 
 ever will be, such an one, is of no importance to him, for he 
 will act accordingly to the laws of that city and of no 
 other ? ' 
 
 ' True,' he said."
 
 140 FORS CLAVIGEEA. 
 
 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 IT is due to my readers to state my reasons for raising the price, and 
 withdrawing the frontispieces, of Fors. 
 
 The cessation of the latter has nothing to do with the price. At 
 least, for the raised price I could easily afford the plates, and they 
 would help the sale; but I cannot spare my good assistant's time in 
 their preparation, and find that, in the existing state of trade, I can- 
 not trust other people, without perpetual looking after them; for which 
 I have no time myself. Even last year the printing of my Fors frontis- 
 pieces prevented the publication of my Oxford lectures on engraving ; 
 and it is absolutely necessary that my Oxford work should be done 
 rightly, whatever else I leave undone. Secondly, for the rise in price. 
 I hold it my duty to give my advice for nothing ; but not to write it in 
 careful English, and correct press, for nothing. I like the feeling of 
 being paid for my true work as much as any other labourer ; and 
 though I write Fors, not for money, but because I know it to be 
 wanted, as I would build a wall against the advancing sea for nothing, 
 if I couldn't be paid for doing it ; yet I will have proper pay from the 
 harbour-master, if 1 can get it. As soon as the book gives me and the 
 publisher what is right, the surplus shall go to the St. George's fund. 
 The price will not signify ultimately ; sevenpence, or tenpence, or a 
 shilling, will be all the same to the public if the book is found useful ; 
 but I fix, and mean to keep to, tenpence, because I intend striking for 
 use on my farms the pure silver coin called in Florence the ' ' soldo," of 
 which the golden florin was worth twenty ; (the soldo itself being mis- 
 named from the Roman "solidus") and this soldo will represent the 
 Roman denarius, and be worth ten silver pence ; and this is to be the 
 price of Fors. 
 
 Then one further petty reason I have for raising the price. In all 
 my dealings with the public, I wish them to understand that my first 
 price is my lowest. They may have to pay more ; but never a farthing 
 less. And I am a little provoked at not having been helped in the 
 least by the Working Men's College, after I taught there for five years, 
 or by any of my old pupils there, whom I have lost sight of: (three 
 remain who would always help me in anything,) and I think they will 
 soon begin to want Fors, now, and they shall not have it for seven- 
 pence.
 
 FOItS CLAVIGERA. 141 
 
 The following three stray newspaper cuttings may ae well be printed 
 now ; they have lain sometime by me. The first two relate to economy. 
 The last is, I hope, an exaggerated report ; and 1 give it as an example 
 of the kind of news which my own journal will not give on hearsay. 
 But I know that things did take place in India which were not capable 
 of exaggeration in horror, and such are the results, remember, of our 
 past missionary work, as a whole, in India and China. 
 
 I point to them to-day, in order that I may express my entire con- 
 currence in all that I have seen reported of Professor Max Miiller's lec- 
 ture in Westminster Abbey, though there are one or two things I 
 should like to say in addition, if I can find time. 
 
 "Those who find fault with the present Government on account of 
 its rigid economy, and accuse it of shabbiness, have little idea of the 
 straits it is put to for money and the sacrifices it is obliged to make in 
 order to make both ends meet. The following melancholy facts will 
 serve to show how hardly pushed this great nation is to find sixpence 
 even for a good purpose. The Hakluyb Society was, as some of our 
 readers may know, formed in the year 1846 for the purpose of print- 
 ing in English for distribution among its members rare and valuable 
 voyages, travels, and geographical records, including the more impor- 
 tant early narratives of British enterprise. For many years the Home 
 Office, the Board of Trade, and the Admiralty have been in the habit 
 of subscribing for the publications of this society; and, considering that 
 an annual subscription of one guinea entitles each subscriber to receive 
 without further charge a copy of every work produced by the society 
 within the year subscribed for, it can hardly be said that the outlay 
 was ruinous to the exchequer. But we live in an exceptional period ; 
 and accordingly last year the society received a communication from 
 the Board of Trade to the effect that its publications were no longer 
 required. Then the Home Office wrote to say that its subscription 
 must be discontinued, and followed up the communication by another, 
 asking whether it might have a copy of the society's publication sup- 
 plied to it gratuitously. Lastly, the Admiralty felt itself constrained 
 by the urgency of the times to reduce its subscriptions and asked to 
 have only one instead of two copies annually. It seems rather hard on 
 the Hakluyt Society that the Home Office should beg to have its pub- 
 lications for nothing, and for the sake of appearance it seems advisable 
 that the Admiralty should continue its subscriptions for two copies, and 
 lend one set to its impoverished brother in Whitehall until the advent 
 of better times." Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
 " We make a present of a suggestion to Professor Beesly, Mr. Fred- 
 eric Harrison, and the artisans who are calling upon the country to 
 strike a blow for France. They must appoint a Select Committee to see 
 what war really means. Special commissioners will find out for them 
 how many pounds, on an average, have been lost by the families whose 
 breadwinners have gone to Paris with the King, or to Le Mans with 
 Chanzy. Those hunters of facts will also let the working men know 
 how many fields are unsown round Metz and on the Loire. Next, the 
 Select Committee will get an exact return of the killed and wounded
 
 142 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 from Count Bismarck and M. Gambetta. Some novelist or poet a 
 George Eliot or a Browning will then be asked to lavish all the knowl- 
 edge of human emotion in the painting of one family group out of the 
 half million which the returns of the stricken will show. That picture 
 will be distributed broadcast among the working men and their wives. 
 Then the Select Committee will call to its aid the statisticians and 
 the political economists the Leone Levis and the John Stuart Mills. 
 Those authorities will calculate what sum the war has taken from the 
 wages fund of France and Germany ; what number of working men it 
 will cast out of employment, or force to accept lower wages, or compel 
 to emigrate." (I do not often indulge myself in the study of the works 
 of Mr. Levi or Mr. Mill ; but have they really never done anything of 
 this kind hitherto?) " Thus the facts will be brought before the toil- 
 ing people, solidly, simply, truthfully. Finally, Professor Beesly and 
 Mr. Harrison will call another meeting, will state the results of the 
 investigation, will say, ' This is the meaning of war,' and will ask the 
 workmen whether they are prepared to pay the inevitable price of help- 
 ing Republican France. The answer, we imagine, would at once shock 
 and surprise the scholarly gentlemen to whom the Democrats are in- 
 debted for their logic and their rhetoric. Meanwhile Mr. Ruskin and 
 the Council of the Workmen's National Peace Society have been doing 
 some small measure of the task which we have mapped out. The 
 Council asks the bellicose section of the operative classes a number of 
 questions about the cost and the effect of battles. Some, it is true, are 
 not very cogent, and some are absurd ; but, taken together, they press 
 the inquiry whether war pays anybody, and in particular whether it 
 pays the working man. Mr. Ruskin sets forth the truth much more 
 vividly in the letter which appeared in our impression of Thursday. 
 ' Half the money lost by the inundation of the Tiber,' etc., (the Tele- 
 graph quotes the letter to the end). 
 
 ' ' Before stating what might have been done with the force which 
 has been spent in the work of mutual slaughter, Mr. Ruskin might 
 have explained what good it has undone, and how. Take, first, the 
 destruction of capital. Millions of pounds have been spent on gun- 
 powder, bombs, round shot, cannon, needle guns, chassepots, and mi- 
 trailleuses. But for the war a great part of the sum would have been 
 expended in the growing of wheat, the spinning of cloth, the building 
 of railway bridges, and the construction of ships. As the political 
 economists say, the amount would have been spent productively, or, to 
 use the plain words of common speech, would have been so used that, di- 
 rectly or indirectly, it woiild have added to the wealth of the country, and 
 increased the fund to be distributed among the working people. But 
 the wealth has been blown away from the muzzle of the cannon, or 
 scattered among the woods and forts of Paris in the shape of broken 
 shells and dismounted guns. Now, every shot which is fired is a direct 
 loss to the labouring classes of France and Germany. King William 
 on the one side, and General Trochu on the other, really load their yuns 
 with gold. They put the wages of the working people into every shell. 
 The splinters of iron that strew the fields represent the pay which 
 would have gone to the farm labourers of Alsace, the mechanics of 
 Paris and Berlin, and the silk weavers of Lyons. If the political econo- 
 mist were some magician, he would command the supernatural agent to 
 transform the broken gun-carriages, the fragments of bombs, and the 
 round shot into loaves of bread, bottles of wine, fields of corn, clothes,
 
 FOSS CLAVIGERA. 143 
 
 houses, cattle, furniture, books, the virtue of women, the health of 
 children, the years of the aged. The whole field would become alive 
 with the forms, the wealth, the beauty, the bustle of great cities. If 
 working men ever saw such a transformation, they would rise up from 
 end to end of Europe, and execrate the King or Emperor who should 
 let loose the dogs of war. And yet such a scene would represent only 
 a small part of the real havoc. For every man whom Germany takes 
 away from the field or the workshop to place in the barrack or the 
 camp, she must sustain as certain a loss as if she were to cast money into 
 the sea. The loss may be necessary as an insurance against still 
 greater injury ; but nevertheless the waste does take place, and on the 
 working people does it mainly fall. The young recruit may have been 
 earning thirty shillings a week or a day, and that sum is lost to him- 
 self or his friends. Hitherto he has supported himself ; now he must 
 be maintained by the State that is, by his fellow-subjects. Hitherto 
 he has added to the national wealth by ploughing the fields, building 
 houses, constructing railways. A skilful statistician could state, with 
 some approach to accuracy, the number of pounds by which the amount 
 of his yearly productive contribution could be estimated. It might be 
 thirty, or a hundred, or a thousand. Well, he ceases to produce the 
 moment that he becomes a soldier. He is then a drone. He is as un- 
 productive as a pauper. The millions of pounds spent in feeding and 
 drilling the army as clearly represent a dead loss as the millions spent 
 on workhouses. Nor are these the only ways in which war destroys 
 wealth. Hundreds of railway bridges have been broken down ; the 
 communications between different parts of the country have been 
 cue off ; hundreds of thousands have lost their means of livelihood ; 
 and great tracts of country are wasted like a desert. Thus the total 
 destruction of wealth has been appalling. A considerable time ago 
 Professor Leone Levi calculated that Germany alone had lost 
 more than 300,000,000; France must have lost much more; and, 
 even if we make a liberal discount from so tremendous a computation, 
 we may safely say that the war has cost both nations at least half as 
 much as the National Debt of England. 
 
 '' A large part of that amount, it is true, would have been spent 
 unproductively, even if the war had not taken place. A vast sum 
 would have been lavished on the luxuries of dress and the table, on the 
 beauties of art, and on the appliances of war. But it is safe to calcu- 
 late that at least half of the amount would have been so expended ae 
 to bring a productive return. Two or three hundred millions would have 
 been at the service of peace ; and Mr. Ruskin's letter points the ques- 
 tion, What could have been done with that enormous total ? If it were 
 at the disposal of an English statesman as farseeing in peace as Bis- 
 marck is in war, what might not be done for the England of the present 
 and the future ? The prospect is almost millennial. Harbours of ref- 
 uge might be built all round the coast ; the fever dens of London, 
 Manchester, and Liverpool might give place to abodes of health ; the 
 poor children of the United Kingdom might be taught to read and 
 write ; great universities might be endowed ; the waste lands might 
 be cultivated, and the Bog of Allen drained ; the National Debt could 
 be swiftly reduced ; and a hundred other great national enterprises 
 would sooner or later be fulfilled. But all this store of human good 
 has been blown away from the muzzles of the Krupps and the Chasse- 
 pots. It has literally been transformed into smoke. We do not deny
 
 144: FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 
 
 that such a waste may be necessary in order to guard against still further 
 destruction. Wars have often been imperative. It would frequently 
 be the height of national wickedness to choose an ignoble peace. 
 Nevertheless war is the most costly and most wasteful of human pur- 
 suits. When the working class followers of Professor Beesly ask them- 
 selves what is the price of battle, what it represents, and by whom the 
 chief part is paid, they will be better able to respond to the appeal for 
 armed intervention than they were on Tuesday night." Daily Tele- 
 graph, January 14t/i, 1871. 
 
 " The story of the massacre of Tientsin, on the 21st June last, is told 
 privately in a private letter dated Cheefoo, June 30th, published in 
 Thursday's Standard, but the signature of which is not given. The 
 horrors narrated are frightful, and remembering how frequently stories 
 of similar horrors in the Mutiny melted away on close investigation, 
 though but too many were true, we may hope that the writer, who does 
 not seem to have been in Tientsin at the time, has heard somewhat 
 exaggerated accounts. Yet making all allowances for this, there was 
 evidently horror enough. The first attack was on the French Consul, 
 who was murdered, the Chinese mandarins refusing aid. Then the 
 Consulate was broken open, and two Catholic priests murdered, 
 as well as M. and Madame Thomassin, an attache to the Legation at 
 Pekin nnd his bride. Then came the worst part. The mob, acting 
 with regular Chinese soldiers, it is said, whom their officers did not at- 
 tempt to restrain, attacked the hospital of the French Sisters of Charity, 
 stripped them, exposed them to the mob, plucked out their eyes, mu- 
 tilated them in other ways, and divided portions of their flesh among 
 the infuriated people, and then set fire to the hospital, in which 100 
 orphan children, who were the objects of the sisters' care, were burnt 
 to death." The Spectator, September 3, 1870.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 145 
 
 LETTER XXXVIII. 
 
 HEBNE HILL, 
 
 December, 1873. 
 
 THE laws of Florence in the fourteenth century, for us in 
 the nineteenth ! 
 
 Even so, good reader. You have, perhaps, long imagined 
 that the judges of Israel, and heroes of Greece, the consuls 
 of Rome, and the dukes of Venice, the powers of Florence, 
 and the kings of England, were all merely the dim foreshad- 
 owings and obscure prophecyings of the advent of the Jones 
 and Robinson of the future : demi-gods revealed in your 
 own day, whose demi-divine votes, if luckily coincident upon 
 any subject, become totally divine, and establish the ordi- 
 nances thereof, for ever. 
 
 You will find it entirely otherwise, gentlemen, whether of 
 the suburb, or centre. Laws small and great, for ever un- 
 changeable ; irresistible by all the force of Robinson, and 
 unimprovable by finest jurisprudence of Jones, have long 
 since been known, and, by wise nations, obeyed. Out of 
 the statute books of one of these I begin with an apparently 
 unimportant order, but the sway of it cuts deep. 
 
 " No person whatsoever shall buy fish, to sell it again, 
 either in the market of Florence, or in any markets in the 
 state of Florence." 
 
 It is one of many such laws, entirely abolishing the pro- 
 fession of middleman, or costermonger of perishable articles 
 of food, in the city of the Lily. 
 
 " Entirely abolishing ! nonsense ! " thinks your modern 
 commercial worship. " Who was to prevent private con- 
 tract ? " 
 
 Nobody, my good sir ; there is, as you very justly feel, 
 no power in law whatever to prevent private contract. No 
 quantity of laws, penalties, or constitutions, can be of the 
 VOL. II. 10
 
 14:6 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 slightest use to a public inherently licentious and deceitful. 
 There is no legislation for liars and traitors. They cannot 
 be prevented from the pit ; the earth finally swallows them. 
 They find their level against all embankment soak their way 
 down, irrestrainably, to the gutter grating ; happiest the 
 nation that most rapidly so gets rid of their stench. There 
 is no law, I repeat, for these, but gravitation. Organic laws 
 can only be serviceable to, and in general will only be written 
 by, a public of honourable citizens, loyal to their state, and 
 faithful to each other. 
 
 The profession of middleman was then, by civic con- 
 sent, and formal law, rendered impossible in Florence with 
 respect to fish. What advantage the modern blessed possi- 
 bility of such mediatorial function brings to our hungry mul- 
 titudes ; and how the miraculous draught of fishes, which 
 living St. Peter discerns, and often dextrously catches 
 " the shoals of them like shining continents," (said Carlyle 
 to me, only yesterday,) are by such apostolic succession 
 miraculously diminished, instead of multiplied ; and, instead 
 of baskets-full of fragments taken up from the ground, 
 baskets full of whole fish laid down on it, lest perchance any 
 hungry person should cheaply eat of the same, here is a 
 pleasant little account for you, by my good and simple cler- 
 gyman's wife. It would have been better still, if I had not 
 been forced to warn her that I wanted it for Fors, which of 
 course took the sparkle out of her directly. Here is one 
 little naughty bit of private preface, which really must go 
 with the rest. " I have written my little letter about the 
 fish trade, and L. says it is all right. I am afraid you won't 
 think there is anything in it worth putting in Fors, as I 
 really know very little about it, and absolutely nothing that 
 every one else does not know, except ladies, who generally 
 never trouble about anything, but scold their cooks, and 
 abuse the fishmongers when they cannot pay the weekly 
 bills easily." (After this we are quite proper.) 
 
 " The poor fishermen who toil all through these bitter 
 nights, and the retail dealer who carries heavy baskets, or
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 147 
 
 drags a truck so many weary miles along the roads, get but 
 a poor living out of their labour ; but what are called ' fish 
 salesmen,' who by reason of their command of capital 
 keep entire command of the London markets, are making 
 enormous fortunes. 
 
 "When you ask the fishermen why they do not manage 
 better for themselves at the present demand for fish, they 
 explain how helpless they are in the hands of what they call 
 1 the big men.' Some fishermen at Aldborough. who have a 
 boat of their own, told my brother that one season, when 
 the sea seemed full of herrings, they saw in the newspapers 
 how dear they were in London, and resolved to make a ven- 
 ture on their own account ; so they spent all their available 
 money in the purchase of a quantity of the right sort of 
 baskets, and, going out to sea, filled them all, putting the 
 usual five hundred lovely fresh fish in each, sent them 
 straight up to London by train, to the charge of a salesman 
 they knew of, begging him to send them into the market 
 and do the best he could for them. But he was very angry 
 with the fishermen ; and wrote them word that the market 
 was quite sufficiently stocked ; that if more fish were sent 
 in, the prices would go down / that he should not allow their 
 fish to be sold at all ; and, if they made a fuss about it, he 
 would not send their baskets back, and would make them 
 pay the carriage. As it was, he returned them, after a time ; 
 but the poor men never received one farthing for their thou- 
 sands of nice fish, and only got a scolding for having dared 
 to try and do without the agents, who buy the fish from the 
 boats at whatever price they choose to settle amongst them- 
 selves. 
 
 " When we were at Yarmouth this autumn, the enormous 
 abundance of herrings on the fish quay was perfectly won- 
 derful ; it must be, (I should think,) two hundred yards 
 long, and is capable of accommodating the unloading of a 
 perfect fleet of boats. The ' swills,' as they call the baskets, 
 each containing five hundred fish, were side by side, touch- 
 ing each other, all over this immense space, and men were 
 shovelling salt about, with spades, over heaps of fish, pre- 
 vious to packing at once in boxes. I said, ' How surprised 
 our poor people would be to see such a sight, after con- 
 stantly being obliged to pay three-halfpence for every her- 
 ring they buy.' An old fisherman answered me, saying, 
 * No one need pay that, ma'am, if we could get the fish to 
 them ; we could have plenty more boats, and plenty more
 
 148 FOR8 CLAVIOERA. 
 
 fish, if we could have them taken where the poor people 
 could get them.' We brought home a hundred dried her- 
 rings, for which we paid ten shillings ; when we asked if 
 we might buy some lovely mackerel on the Fish Quay, they 
 said, (the fishermen), that they were not allowed to sell them 
 there, except all at once. Since then, I have read an ac- 
 count of a Royal Commission having been investigating the 
 subject of the fishery for some time past, and the result of 
 its inquiries seems to prove that it is inexhaustible, and that 
 in the North Sea it is always harvest-time.* 
 
 " When I told our fishmonger all about it, he said I was 
 quite right about the ' big men ' in London, and added, 
 ' They will not let us have the fish under their own prices ; 
 and if it is so plentiful that they cannot sell it all at that, 
 they have it thrown away, or carted off for manure ; some- 
 times sunk in the river. If we could only get it here, my 
 trade would be twice what it is, for, except sprats, the poor 
 can seldom buy fish now.' 
 
 " I asked him if the new Columbia Market was of no use 
 in making things easier, but he said, 'No ;' that these sales- 
 men had got that into their hands also ; and were so rich 
 that they would keep any number of markets in their own 
 
 * Not quite so, gentlemen of the Royal Commission. Harvests, no 
 less than sales, and fishermen no less than salesmen, need regulation by 
 just human law. Here is a piece of news, for instance, from Glasgow, 
 concerning Loch Fyne : " Owing to the permission to fish for herring 
 by trawling, which not only scrapes up the spawn from the bottom, but 
 catches great quantities of the fry which are useless for market, and 
 only fit for manure, it is a fact that, whereas Loch Fyne used to be 
 celebrated for containing the finest herrings to be caught anywhere, 
 and thousands and tens of thousands of boxes used to be exported 
 from Inverary, there are not now enough caught there to enable them 
 to export a, single box, and the quantity caught lower down the loch, 
 near its mouth (and every year the herring are being driven farther 
 and farther down) is not a tithe of what it used to be. Such a thing 
 as a Loch Fyne herring (of the old size and quality,) cannot be had 
 now in Glasgow fur any money, and this is only a type of the destruc- 
 tion which trawling, and a too short close-time, are causing to all the 
 west-coast fishing. Whiting Bay, Arran, has been rid of its whiting by 
 trawling on the spawning coast opposite. The cupidity of careless 
 fishers, unchecked by beneficial law, is here also ' killing the goose that 
 lays the golden eggs,' and herring of any kind are very scarce and very 
 bad in Glasgow, at a penny and sometimes twopence each. Professor 
 Huxley gave his sanction to trawling, in a Government Commission, T 
 am told, some years ago, and it has been allowed ever since. I will 
 tell you something similar about the seal-nshing off Newfoundland, 
 another time."
 
 FORS CLAVIOERA. 149 
 
 bands. A few hundred pounds sacrificed any day to keep 
 up the prices they think well worth their while." 
 
 What do you think of that, by way of Free-trade ? my 
 British-never-never-never-will-be-slaves, hey ? Free-trade ; 
 and the Divine Law of Supply and Demand ; and the Sa- 
 cred Necessity of Competition, and what not ; and here's 
 a meek little English housewife who can't get leave, on her 
 bended knees, from Sultan Costermonger, to eat a fresh 
 herring at Yarmouth ! and must pay three-halfpence apiece, 
 for his leave to eat them anywhere ; and you, you simple- 
 tons Fishermen, indeed ! Cod's heads and shoulders, say 
 rather, meekly receiving back your empty baskets ; your 
 miracle of loaves and fishes executed for you by the Coster- 
 mongering Father of the Faithful, in that thimblerig man- 
 ner ! 
 
 " But havn't you yourself been hard against competi- 
 tion, till now ? and havn't you always wanted to regulate 
 prices ? " 
 
 Yes, my good SS. Peter and Andrew ! very certainly I 
 want to regulate prices ; and very certainly I will, as to 
 such things as I sell, or have the selling of. I should like 
 to hear of anybody's getting this letter for less than ten- 
 pence ! and if you will send me some fish to sell for you, 
 perhaps I may even resolve that they shall be sold at two- 
 pence each, or else made manure of, like these very coster- 
 mongers ; but the twopence shall go into your pockets not 
 mine ; which you will find a very pleasant and complete dif- 
 ference in principle between his Grace the Costermonger 
 and me ; and, secondly, if I raise the price of a herring to 
 twopence, it will be because I know that people have been 
 in some way misusing them, or wasting them ; and need to 
 get fewer for a time ; or will eat twopenny herrings at fash- 
 ionable tables, (when they wouldn't touch halfpenny ones,) 
 and so give the servants no reason to turn up their noses at 
 them.* I may have twenty such good reasons for fixing 
 
 * In my aunt's younger days, at Perth, the servants used regularly to 
 make bargain that they should not be forced to dine on salmon more 
 than so many times a week.
 
 150 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 the price of your fish ; but not one of them will be his Grace 
 the Costermonger's. All that I want you to see is, not only 
 the possibility of regulating prices, but the fact that they 
 are now regulated, and regulated by rascals, while all the 
 world is bleating out its folly about Supply and Demand. 
 
 " Still, even in your way, you would be breaking the laws 
 of Florence, anyhow, and buying to sell again?" Pardon 
 me : I should no more buy your fish than a butcher's boy 
 buys his master's mutton. I should simply carry your fish 
 for you where I knew it was wanted ; being as utterly your 
 servant in the matter as if I were one of your own lads sent 
 dripping up to the town with basket on back. And I should 
 be paid, as your servant, so much wages; (not commission, ob- 
 serve,) making bargains far away for you, and many another 
 Saunders Mucklebackit, just as your wife makes them, up 
 the hill at Monkbarns ; and no more buying the fish, to sell 
 again, than she. 
 
 " Well, but where could we get anybody to do this ? " 
 
 Have you no sons then ? or, among them, none whom you 
 can take from the mercy of the sea, and teach to serve you 
 mercifully on the land ? 
 
 It is not that way, however, that the thing will be done. 
 It must be done for you by gentlemen. They may stagger 
 on perhaps a year or two more in their vain ways ; but the 
 day must come when your poor little honest puppy, whom 
 his people have been wanting to dress up in a surplice, and 
 call " The to be Feared," that he might have pay enough, by 
 tithe or tax, to marry a pretty girl, and live in a parsonage, . 
 some poor little honest wretch of a puppy, I say, will eventu- 
 ally get it into his glossy head that he would be incomparably 
 more reverend to mortals, and acceptable to St. Peter and all 
 Saints, as a true monger of sweet fish, than a false fisher for 
 rotten souls ; and that his wife would be incomparably more 
 ' lady-like ' not to say Madonna-like marching beside him 
 in purple stockings and sabots or even frankly barefoot 
 with her creel full of caller herring on her back, than in ad- 
 ministering any quantity of Ecclesiastical scholarship to her 
 Sunday-schools.
 
 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 151 
 
 " How dreadful how atrocious ! " thinks the tender 
 clerical lover. " My wife walk with a fish-basket on her 
 back ! " 
 
 Yes, you young scamp, yours. You were going to lie to 
 the Holy Ghost, then, were you, only that she might wear 
 satin slippers, and be called a 'lady'? Suppose, instead of 
 fish, I were to ask her and you to carry coals. Have you ever 
 read your Bible carefully enough to wonder where Christ got 
 them from, to make His fire, (when he was so particular about 
 St. Peter's dinner, and St. John's) ? Or if I asked you to be 
 hewers of wood, and drawers of water ; would that also seem 
 intolerable to you ? My poor clerical friends, God was never 
 more in the burning bush of Sinai than He would be in every 
 crackling faggot (cut with your own hands) that you warmed 
 a poor hearth with : nor did that woman of Samaria ever give 
 Him to drink more surely than you may, from every stream 
 and well in this your land, that you can keep pure. 
 
 20th Dec. To hew wood to draw water ; you think 
 these base businesses, do you ? and that you are noble, as 
 well as sanctified, in binding faggot-burdens on poor men's 
 backs, which you will not touch with your own fingers ; 
 and in preaching the efficacy of baptism inside the church, by 
 yonder stream (under the first bridge of the Seven Bridge 
 Road here at Oxford,) while the sweet waters of it are choked 
 with dust and dung, within ten fathoms from your font ; 
 and in giving benediction with two fingers and your thumb, 
 of a superfine quality, to the Marquis of B. ? Honester ben- 
 ediction, and more efficacious, can be had cheaper, gentlemen, 
 in the existing market. Under my own system of regulating 
 prices, I gave an Irishwoman twopence yesterday for two 
 oranges, of which fruit under pressure of competition she 
 was ready to supply me with three for a penny. " The Lord 
 Almighty take you to eternal glory ! " said she. 
 
 You lawyers, also, distributors, by your own account, of 
 the quite supreme blessing o Justice, you are not so busily 
 eloquent in her cause but that some of your sweet voices 
 might be spared to Billingsgate, though the river air might 
 take the curl out of your wigs, and so diminish that aesthetic
 
 152 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 claim which, as aforesaid, you still hold on existence. But 
 you will bring yourselves to an end soon, wigs and all, 
 unless you think better of it. 
 
 I will dismiss at once, in this letter, the question of regu- 
 lation of prices, and return to it no more, except in setting 
 down detailed law. 
 
 Any rational group of persons, large or small, living in war 
 or peace, will have its commissariat ; its officers for provi- 
 sion of food. Famine in a fleet, or an army, may sometimes 
 be inevitable ; but in the event of national famine, the offi- 
 cers of the commissariat should be starved the first. God 
 has given to man corn, wine, cheese, and honey, all preserv- 
 able for a number of years ; filled his seas with inexhaustible 
 salt, and incalculable fish ; filled the woods with beasts, the 
 winds with birds, and the fields with fruit. Under these 
 circumstances, the stupid human brute stands talking meta- 
 physics, and expects to be fed by the law of Supply and 
 Demand. I do not say that I shall always succeed in regu- 
 lating prices, or quantities, absolutely to my mind ; but in 
 the event of any scarcity of provision, rich tables shall be 
 served like the poorest, and we will see. 
 
 The price of every other article will be founded on the price 
 of food. The price of what it takes a day to produce, will be 
 a day's maintenance ; of what it takes a week to produce, a 
 week's maintenance, such maintenance being calculated 
 according to the requirements of the occupation, and always 
 with a proportional surplus for saving. 
 
 " How am I to know exactly what a day's maintenance 
 is ? " I don't want to know exactly. I don't know exactly 
 how much dinner I ought to eat ; but, on the whole, I eat 
 enough, and not too much. And I shall not know 'exactly' 
 how much a painter ought to have for a picture. It may be 
 a pound or two under the mark a pound or two over. On 
 the average it will be right, that is to say, his decent keep * 
 
 * As for instance, and in farther illustration of the use of herrings, 
 here is some account of the maintenance of young painters and lawyers 
 in Edinburgh, sixty years since, sent me by the third Fors ; and good 
 Dr. Brown, in an admirable sketch of the life of an admirable Scottish
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 153 
 
 during the number of days' work that are properly accounted 
 for in the production. 
 
 " How am I to hinder people from giving more if they 
 like ? " 
 
 People whom I catch doing as they like will generally have 
 to leave the estate. 
 
 " But how is it to be decided to which of two purchasers, 
 each willing to give its price, and more, anything is to be- 
 long ? " 
 
 In various ways, according to the nature of the thing sold, 
 and circumstances of sale. Sometimes by priority ; some- 
 times by privilege ; sometimes by lot ; and sometimes by auc- 
 tion, at which whatever excess of price, above its recorded 
 value, the article brings, shall go to the national treasury. 
 So that nobody will ever buy anything to make a profit on it. 
 
 llth January, 1874. Thinking I should be the better of 
 a look at the sea, I have come down to an old watering- 
 place, where one used to be able to get into a decent little 
 inn, and possess one's self of a parlour with a bow window 
 looking out on the beach, a pretty carpet, and a print or two 
 of revenue cutters, and the Battle of the Nile. One could 
 have a chop and some good cheese for dinner ; fresh cream 
 and cresses for breakfast, and a plate of shrimps. 
 
 I find myself in the Umfraville Hotel, a quarter of a mile 
 long by a furlong deep ; in a ghastly room, five-and-twenty 
 feet square, and eighteen high, that is to say, just four 
 times as big as I want, and which I can no more light with 
 my candles in the evening than I could the Peak cavern. A 
 
 artist, says : " Raeburn (Sir Henry) was left an orphan at six, and was 
 educated in Heriot's Hospital. At fifteen he was apprenticed to a gold- 
 smith ; but after his time was out, set himself entirely to portrait paint- 
 ing. About this time he became acquainted with the famous cynic, 
 lawyer, and wit, John Clerk, afterwards Lord Eldon, then a young ad- 
 vocate. Both were poor. Young Clerk asked Raeburn to dine at his 
 lodgings. Coming in, he found the landlady laying the cloth, and set- 
 ting down two dishes, one containing three herrings, and the other three 
 potatoes. " Is this a' ? " said John. " Ay, it's a'." "AM didna I tell 
 ye, woman, that a gentleman is to dine wi' me, and that ye were to get 
 six herrin' and six potatoes ? "
 
 154: FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 gas apparatus in the middle of it serves me to knock my 
 head against, but I take good care not to light it, or I should 
 soon be stopped from my evening's work by a headache, and 
 be unfit for my morning's business besides. The carpet is 
 threadbare, and has the look of having been spat upon all 
 over. There is only one window, of four huge panes of 
 glass, through which one commands a view of a plaster 
 balcony, some ornamental iron railings, an esplanade, and, 
 well, I suppose, in the distance, that is really the sea, 
 where it used to be. I am ashamed to ask for shrimps, 
 not that I suppose I could get any if I did. There's no 
 cream, "because, except in the season, we could only take 
 so small a quantity, sir." The bread's stale, because it's 
 Sunday ; and the cheese, last night, was of the cheapest 
 tallow sort. The bill will be at least three times my old bill ; 
 I shall get no thanks from anybody for paying it ; and 
 this is what the modern British public thinks is " living in 
 style." But the most comic part of all the improved arrange- 
 ments is that I can only have codlings for dinner, because all 
 the cod goes to London, and none of the large fishing-boats 
 dare sell a fish, here. 
 
 And now but a word or two more, final, as to the fixed 
 price of this book. 
 
 A sensible and worthy tradesman writes to me in very 
 earnest terms of expostulation, blaming me for putting the 
 said book out of the reach of most of the persons it is meant 
 for, and asking me how I can expect, for instance, the work- 
 ing men round him (in Lancashire), who have been in the 
 habit of strictly ascertaining that they have value for their 
 money, to buy, for tenpence, what they know might be 
 given them for twopence-halfpenny. 
 
 Answer first : 
 
 My book is meant for no one who cannot reach it. If a 
 man with all the ingenuity of Lancashire in his brains, and 
 breed of Lancashire in his body; with all the steam and coal 
 power in Lancashire to back his ingenuity and muscle ; all 
 the press of literary England vomiting the most valuable in- 
 formation at his feet ; with all the tenderness of charitable
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 155 
 
 England aiding him in his efforts, and ministering to his 
 needs ; with all the liberality of republican Europe rejoicing 
 in his dignities as a man and a brother ; and with all the 
 science of enlightened Europe directing his opinions on the 
 subject of the materials of the Sun, and the origin of his 
 species ; if, I say, a man so circumstanced, assisted, and in- 
 formed, living besides in the richest country of the globe, 
 and, from his youth upwards, having been in the habit of 
 ( seeing that he had value for his money,' cannot, as the up- 
 shot and net result of all, now afford to pay me tenpence a 
 month or an annual half-sovereign, for my literary labour, 
 in Heaven's name, let him buy the best reading he can for 
 twopence-halfpenny. For that sum, I clearly perceive he 
 can at once provide himself with two penny illustrated news- 
 papers and one halfpenny one, full of art, sentiment, and 
 the Tichborne trial. He can buy a quarter of the dramatic 
 works of Shakespeare, or a whole novel of Sir Walter 
 Scott's. Good value for his money, he thinks ! reads one 
 of them through, and in all probability loses some five years 
 of the eyesight of his old age ; which he does not, with all 
 his Lancashire ingenuity, reckon as part of the price of his 
 cheap book. But how has he read ? There is an act of Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream printed in a page. Steadily and 
 dutifully, as a student should, he reads his page. The lines 
 slip past his eyes, and mind, like sand in an hour-glass ; he 
 has some dim idea at the end of the act that he has been 
 reading about Fairies, and Flowers, and Asses. Does he 
 know what a Fairy is ? Certainly not. Does he know what 
 a Flower is ? He has perhaps never seen one wild, or happy, 
 in his life. Does he even know quite distinctly, inside and 
 out what an Ass is? 
 
 But, answer second. Whether my Lancashire friends 
 need any aid to their discernment of what is good or bad in 
 literature, I do not know ; but I mean to give them the 
 best help I can ; and, therefore, not to allow them to have 
 for twopence what I know to be worth tenpence. For here 
 is another law of Florence, still concerning fish, which is 
 transferable at once to literature.
 
 156 FORS GLAVIGERA. 
 
 " Eel of the lake shall be sold for three soldi a pound ; and 
 eel of the common sort for a soldo and a half." 
 
 And eel of a bad sort was not allowed to be sold at all. 
 
 " Eel of the lake," I presume, was that of the Lake of 
 Bolsena ; Pope Martin IV. died of eating too many, in spite 
 of their high price. You observe I do not reckon my Fors 
 Eel to be of Bolsena ; I put it at the modest price of a 
 soldo a pound, or English tenpence. One cannot be precise 
 in such estimates ; one can only obtain rude approxima- 
 tions. Suppose, for instance, you read the Times newspaper 
 for a week, from end to end ; your aggregate of resultant 
 useful information will certainly not be more than you may 
 get out of a single number of Fors. But your Times for 
 the week will cost you eighteenpence. 
 
 You borrow the Times ? Borrow this then ; till the days 
 come when English people cease to think they can live by 
 lending, or learn by borrowing. 
 
 I finish with copy of a bit of private letter to the editor of 
 an honestly managed country newspaper, who asked me to 
 send him Fors. 
 
 " I find it on examining the subject for these last three 
 years very closely necessary to defy the entire principle of 
 advertisement ; and to make no concession of any kind 
 whatsoever to the public press even in the minutest partic- 
 ular. And this year I cease sending Fors to any paper 
 whatsoever. It must be bought by every one who has it, 
 editor or private person. 
 
 " If there are ten people in willing to subscribe a 
 
 penny each for it, you can see it in turn ; by no other means 
 can I let it be seen. From friend to friend, or foe to foe, it 
 must make its own way, or stand still, abiding its time."
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 157 
 
 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 THE following bit of a private letter to a good girl belonging to the 
 upper classes may be generally useful ; so I asked her to copy it for 
 Fors. 
 
 ''January, 1874. 
 
 ' ' Now mind you dress always charmingly ; it is the first duty of a 
 girl to be charming, and she cannot be charming if she is not charm- 
 ingly dressed. 
 
 " And it is quite the first of firsts in the duties of girls in high posi- 
 tion, nowadays, to set an example of beautiful dress without extrava- 
 gance, that is to say, without waste, or unnecessary splendour. 
 
 " On great occasions they may be a blaze of jewels, if they like, and 
 can ; but only when they are part of a great show or ceremony. In 
 their daily life, and ordinary social relations, they ought at present to 
 dress with marked simplicity, to put down the curses of luxury and 
 waste which are consuming England. 
 
 ' ' Women usually apologize to themselves for their pride and vanity, 
 by saying, ' It is good for trade. ' 
 
 "Now you may soon convince yourself, and everybody about you, of 
 the monstrous folly of this, by a very simple piece of definite action. 
 
 " Wear, yourself, becoming, pleasantly varied, but simple, dress ; of 
 the best possible material. 
 
 "What you think necessary to buy (beyond this) 'for the good of 
 trade, 1 buy, and immediately burn. 
 
 " Even your dullest friends will see the folly of that proceeding. You 
 can then explain to them that by wearing what they don't want (instead 
 of burning it) for the good of trade, they are merely adding insolence 
 and vulgarity to absurdity." 
 
 I am very grateful to the writer of the following letters for his per- 
 mission to print the portions of them bearing on our work. The first 
 was written several years ago. 
 
 "Now, my dear friend, I don't know why I should intrude what I 
 now want to say about my little farm, which you disloyally dare to call 
 a kingdom, but that I know you do feel an interest in such things ; 
 whereas I find not one in a hundred does care a jot for the moral influ- 
 ence and responsibilities of landowners, or for those who live out of it, 
 and by the sweat of the brow for them and their own luxuries which 
 pamper them, whilst too often their tenants starve, and the children 
 die of want and fever. 
 
 " One of the most awful things I almost ever heard was from the lips 
 of a clergyman, near B , when asked what became of the children,
 
 158 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 by day, of those mothers employed in mills. He said, 'Oh, /take care 
 of them ; they are brought to me, and 1 lay them in the churchyard.' 
 Poor lambs ! What a flock ! 
 
 ' But now for my little kingdom, the royalties of which, by the 
 way, still go to the Duke of Devonshire, as lord of the minerals under 
 the earth. 
 
 "It had for many years been a growing dream and desire of mine 
 (whether right or wrong I do not say) to possess a piece of God's earth, 
 be it only a rock or a few acres of land, with a few people to live out of 
 and upon it. Well, my good father had an estate about four miles 
 
 across, embracing the whole upper streams and head of dale, 
 
 some twelve hundred feet above the sea, and lifted thus far away above 
 the din and smoke of men, surrounded by higher hills, the grassy slopes 
 of Ingleborough and Carn Fell. It was a waste moorland, with a few 
 sheep farms on it, undivided, held in common, a few small enclosures 
 of grass and flowers, taken off at the time of the Danes, retaining 
 Danish names and farm usages, a few tenements, built by that great 
 and noble Lady Anne Clifford, two hundred years ago ; in which dwelt 
 honest, sturdy, great-hearted English men and women, as I think this 
 land knows. 
 
 " Well, this land my father made over by deed of gift to me, reserv- 
 ing to himself the rents for life, but granting to me full liberty to 'im- 
 prove ' and lay out what I pleased ; charged also with the maintenance 
 of a schoolmaster for the little school-house I built in memory of my 
 late wife, who loved the place and people With this arrangement I 
 was well pleased, and at once began to enclose and drain, and, on Adam 
 Smith principle, make two blades of grass grow where one grew before. 
 This has gone on for some years, affording labour to the few folks there, 
 and some of their neighbours. Of the prejudices of the old farmers, 
 the less said the better ; and as to the prospective increased value of 
 rental, I may look, at least, for my five per cent. , may I not ? 1 am 
 well repaid, at present, by the delight gained to me in wandering over 
 this little Arcady, where 1 fancy at times I still hear the strains of the 
 pipe of the shepherd Lord Clifford of Cumberland, blending with the 
 crow of the moor-fowl, the song of the lark, and cry of the curlew, the 
 bleating of sheep, and heaving and dying fall of the many waters. To 
 think of all this, and yet men prefer the din of war or commercial 
 strife ! It is so pleasant a thing to know all the inhabitants, and all 
 their little joys and woes, like one of your bishops ; and to be able to 
 apportion them their work. Labour, there, is not accounted degrading 
 work ; even stone -breaking for the roads is not pauper's work, and a 
 test of starvation, but taken gladly by tenant farmers to occupy spare 
 time ; for I at once set to work to make roads, rude bridges, planta- 
 tions of fir-trees, and of oak and birch, which once flourished there, as 
 the name signifies. 
 
 "lam now laying out some thousands of pounds in draining and 
 liming, and killing out the Alpine flowers, which you tell me * is not 
 wrong to do, as God has reserved other gardens for them, though I 
 must say not one dies without a pang to me ; yet I see there springs 
 up the fresh grass, the daisy, the primrose the life of growing men 
 and women, the source of labour and of happiness ; God be thanked if 
 
 * I don't remember telliug you anything of the sort. I should tell you another story 
 now, my dear friend.
 
 FOES CLAVIGERA. 159 
 
 one does even a little to attain that for one's fellows, either for this 
 world or the next ! 
 
 " How I wish you could see them on our one day's feast and holiday, 
 when all as many as will come from all the country round - are re- 
 galed with a hearty Yorkshire tea at the Hall, as they will call a rough 
 mullioned-wiudowed house I built upon a rock rising from the river's 
 edge. The children have their games, and then all joiu in a missionary 
 meeting, to hear something of their fellow-creatures who live in other 
 lands ; the little ones gather their pennies to support and educate a 
 little Indian school child; * this not only for sentiment, but to teach a 
 care for others near home and far off. 
 
 " The place is five miles from church, and, happily, as far from a 
 public-house, though still, I grieve to say, drink is the one failing of 
 these good people, mostly arising from the want of full occupation. 
 
 " You speak of mining as servile work : why so? Hugh Miller was 
 a quarryman, and I know an old man who has wrought coal for me in 
 a narrow seam, lying on his side to work, who has told me that in win- 
 ter time he had rather work thus than sit over his fireside ; f he is quiet 
 and undisturbed, earns his bread, and is a man not without reflection. 
 Then there is the smith, an artist in his way, and loves his work too ; 
 and as to the quarrymen and masons, they are some of the merriest 
 fellows I know ; they come five or six miles to work, knitting stockings 
 as they walk along. 
 
 " I must just allude to one social feature which is pleasant, that is, 
 the free intercourse, without familiarity, or loss of respect for master 
 and man. The farmer or small landowner sits at the same table at meals 
 with the servants, yet the class position of yeoman or labourer is fully 
 maintained, and due respect shown to the superior, and almost royal wor- 
 ship to the lord of the soil, if he is in anywise a good landlord. Now is 
 England quite beyond all hope, when such things exist here, in this nine- 
 teenth century of machine-made life ? I know not why, I say again, I 
 should inflict all this about self upon you, except that I have a hobby, 
 and I love it, and so fancy others must do so too. 
 
 " Forgive me this, and believe me always, 
 
 " Yours affectionately." 
 
 " 5th January, 1874. 
 
 " MY DEAR MR. RTISKIN, I have just come from an old Tudor house 
 in Leicestershire, which tells of happier days in some ways than our own. 
 It was once the Grange of St. Mary's Abbey, where rent and service were 
 paid and done in kind. When there, I wished I could have gone a 
 few miles with you to St. Bernard's Monastery in Charnwood Forest ; 
 there you would see what somewhat resembles your St. George's land, 
 only without the family and domestic features certainly most essential 
 to the happiness of a people.}: But there you may see rich well kept 
 
 * Very fine ; but have all the children in Sheffield and Leeds had their pennyworth of 
 gospel, first? 
 
 t All T can say is, tastes differ ; but I have not myself tried the degree of comfort 
 which may be attained in winter by lying on one's side in a coal-seam, and cannot there- 
 fore feel confidence in offering an opinion. 
 
 t Very much so indeed, my good friend ; and yet, the plague of it is. one never can pet 
 people to do anything that is wise or generous, unless they go and make monks of them- 
 selves. I believe this St. George's land of mine will really be the first place where it haa 
 been attempted to get married people to live in any charitable and human way, and graft 
 apples where they may eat them, without getting driven out of their Paradise.
 
 160 FOR8 CLAVIOERA. 
 
 fields and gardens, where thirty years ago was nothing but wild moor- 
 land and granite tors on the hill ridges. 
 
 " The Cross of Calvary rises now on the highest rock ; below are gar- 
 dens and fields, all under the care and labour (happy labour it seems) of 
 the Silent Brothers, * and a reformatory for boys. There is much still 
 waste land adjoining. The spot is central, healthy, and as yet unoc- 
 cupied : it really seems to offer itself to you. There, too. is space, 
 pure air and water, and quarries of slate and granite, etc., for the less 
 skilled labour. 
 
 li Well, you ask if the dalesmen of Yorkshire rise to a vivid state of 
 contented life and love of the pretty things of heaven and earth. They 
 have a rough outside, at times hard to penetrate ; but when you do, 
 there is a warm heart, but not much culture, although a keen value of 
 manly education, and their duty to God and man. Apart from the 
 vanities of the so-called 'higher education,' their calling is mostly out 
 of doors, in company with sheep and cattle ; the philosophy of their 
 minds often worthy of the Shepherd Lord, not much sight for the 
 beauties of Nature beyond its uses. I CAN say their tastes are not low 
 nor degraded by literature of the daily press, etc. I have known them for 
 twenty years, have stood for hours beside them at work, building or 
 draining, and I never heard one foul or coarse word. In sickness, both 
 man and woman are devoted. They have, too, a reverence for social 
 order and ' Divine Law,' familiar without familiarity. This even 
 pervades their own class or sub-classes; for instance, although farmers 
 and their families, and work-people and servants, all sit at the same 
 table, it is a rare thing for a labourer to presume to ask in marriage a 
 farmer's daughter. Their respect to landlords is equally shown. As a 
 specimen of their politics, I may instance this ; to a man at the 
 county election they voted for Stuart Wortley, ' because he bore a well- 
 known Yorkshire name, and had the blood of a gentleman. 
 
 "As to hardships, I see none beyond those incident to their 
 calling, in snow-storms, etc. You never see a child unshod or ill clad. 
 Very rarely do they allow a relative to receive aid from the parish. 
 
 ''I tried a reading club for winter evenings, but found they liked 
 their own fireside better. Happily, there is, in my part, no public-house 
 within six miles; still I must say drink is the vice of some. In winter 
 they have much leisure time, in which there is a good deal of card- 
 playing. Still some like reading ; and we have among them now a fair 
 lot of books, mostly from the Pure Literature Society. They are proud 
 and independent, and, as you say, must be dealt with cautiously. 
 Everywhere I see much might be done. Yet on the whole, when com- 
 pared with the town life of men, one sees little to amend. There is a 
 pleasant and curious combination of work. Mostly all workmen. 
 builders (i.e. wallers), carpenters, smiths, etc., work a little farm as 
 well as follow their own craft ; this gives wholesome occupation as well 
 as independence, and almost realizes Sir T. More's Utopian plan. 
 There is contented life of men, women, and children, happy in their 
 work and joyful in prospect : what could one desire further, if each be 
 full according to his capacity and refinement ? 
 
 "You ask what I purpose to do further, or leave untouched. I desire 
 
 * There, again ! why, in the name of all that's natural, can't decent men and women 
 \ise their tongues, on occasion, for what God made them for, talking in a civil way; but 
 must either go and make dumb beasts of themselves, or else (far worse) let out their 
 tongues for hire, and live by vomiting novels and reviews 1
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 161 
 
 to leave untouched some 3,000 acres of moor-land needed for their 
 sheep, serviceable for peat fuel, freedom of air and mind and body, and 
 the growth of all the lovely things of moss and heather. Wherever 
 land is capable of improvement, I hold it is a grave responsibility until 
 it is done. You must come and look for yourself some day. 
 
 ' I enclose a cheque for ten guineas for St. George's Fund, with my 
 best wishes for this new year. 
 
 "Ever yours affectionately." 
 
 I have questioned one or two minor points in my friend's letters ; but 
 on the whole, they simply describe a piece of St. George's old England, 
 still mercifully left, and such as I hope to make even a few pieces 
 more, again ; conquering them out of the Devil's new England. 
 VOL. II. 11
 
 162 FORS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 LETTER XXXIX. 
 
 ON a foggy forenoon, two or three days ago, I wanted to 
 make my way quickly from Hengler's Circus to Drury Lane 
 Theatre, without losing time which might be philosophically 
 employed ; and therefore afoot, for in a cab I never can think 
 of anything but how the driver is to get past whatever is in 
 front of him. 
 
 On foot, then, 1 proceeded, and accordingly by a somewhat 
 complex diagonal line, to be strack, as the stars might guide 
 me, between Regent Circus and Covent Garden. I have 
 never been able, by the way, to make any coachman under- 
 stand that such diagonals were not always profitable. 
 Coachmen, as far as I know them, always possess just enough 
 geometry to feel that the hypotenuse is shorter than the 
 two sides, but I never yet could get one to see that an 
 hypotenuse constructed of cross streets in the mariner of the 
 line A C, had no advantage, in the mat- 
 ter of distance to be traversed, over the 
 simple thoroughfares A B, B C, while it 
 involved the loss of the momentum of 
 the carriage, and a fresh start for the 
 cattle, at seventeen corners instead of 
 one, not to mention the probability of a 
 block at half a dozen of them, none the 
 less frequent since underground rail- 
 ways, and more difficult to get out of, in consequence of the 
 increasing discourtesy and diminishing patience of all hu- 
 man creatures. 
 
 Now here is just one of the pieces of practical geometry 
 and dynamics which a modern schoolmaster, exercising his 
 pupils on the positions of letters in the word Chillianwallah, 
 would wholly despise. Whereas, in St. George's schools, it 
 shall be very early learned, on a square and diagonal of
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 163 
 
 actual road, with actual loaded wheelbarrow first one- 
 wheeled, and pushed ; and secondly, two-wheeled, and pulled. 
 And similarly, every bit of science the children learn shall 
 be directly applied by them, and the use of it felt, which 
 involves the truth of it being known in the best possible 
 way, and without any debating thereof. And what they 
 cannot apply they shall not be troubled to know. I am not 
 the least desirous that they should know so much even of the 
 sun as that it stands still, (if it does). They may remain, 
 for anything I care, under the most simple conviction that it 
 gets up every morning and goes to bed every night ; but 
 they shall assuredly possess the applicable science of the 
 hour it gets up at, and goes to bed at, on any day of the 
 year, because they will have to regulate their own gettings 
 up and goings to bed upon those solar proceedings. 
 
 Well, to return to Regent Street. Being afoot, I took 
 the complex diagonal, because by wise regulation of one's 
 time and angle of crossing, one may indeed move on foot in 
 an economically drawn line, provided one does not miss its 
 main direction. As it chanced, I took my line correctly 
 enough ; but found so much to look at and think of on the 
 way, that I gained no material advantage. First, I could 
 not help stopping to consider the metaphysical reasons of 
 the extreme gravity and self-abstraction of Archer Street. 
 Then I was delayed a while in Prince's Street, Soho, won- 
 dering what Prince it had belonged to. Then I got through 
 Gerrard Street into Little Newport Street ; and came there 
 to a dead pause, to think why, in these days of division of 
 mechanical labour, there should be so little space for classi- 
 fication of commodities, as to require oranges, celery, butchers' 
 meat, cheap hosiery, soap, and salt fish, to be all sold in the 
 same alley. 
 
 Some clue to the business was afforded me by the sign of 
 the ' Hotel de 1'Union des Peuples ' at the corner, " bouillon 
 et bceuf a emporter ; " but I could not make out why, in spite 
 of the union of people, the provision merchant at the opposite 
 corner had given up business, and left his house with all its 
 upper windows broken, and its door nailed up. Finally, I
 
 164 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 was stopped at the corner of Cranbourne Street by a sign 
 over a large shop advising me to buy some " screwed boots 
 and shoes." I am too shy to go in and ask, on such occasions, 
 what screwed boots are, or at least too shy to come out again 
 without buying any, if the people tell me politely, and yet I 
 couldn't get the question what such things may be out of my 
 head, and nearly got run over in consequence, before attain- 
 ing the Arcadian shelter of Covent Garden. I was but just 
 in time to get my tickets for Jack in the 13ox, on the day I 
 wanted, and put them carefully in the envelope with those 
 1 had been just securing at Hengler's for my fifth visit to 
 Cinderella. For indeed, during the last three weeks, the 
 greater part of my available leisure has been spent between 
 Cinderella and Jack in the J3ox ; with this curious result 
 upon my mind, that the intermediate scenes of Archer Street 
 and Prince's Street, Soho, have become to me merely as one 
 part of the drama, or pantomime, which I happen to have 
 seen last ; or, so far as the difference in the appearance of 
 men and things may compel me to admit some kind of 
 specific distinction, I begin to ask myself, Which is the 
 reality, and which the pantomime? Nay, it appears to me 
 not of much moment which we choose to call Reality. Both 
 are equally real ; and the only question is whether the 
 cheerful state of things which the spectators, especially the 
 youngest and wisest, entirely applaud and approve at Hen- 
 gler's and Drury Lane, must necessarily be interrupted always 
 by the woful interlude of the outside world. 
 
 It is a bitter question to me, for I am myself now, hope- 
 lessly, a man of the world ! of that woful outside one I 
 mean. It is now Sunday ; half-past eleven in the morning. 
 Everybody about me is gone to church except the kind cook, 
 who is straining a point of conscience to provide me with 
 dinner. Everybody else is gone to church, to ask to be made 
 angels of, and profess that they despise the world and the 
 flesh, which I find myself always living in, (rather, perhaps, 
 living, or endeavouring to live, in too little of the last). And 
 I am left alone with the cat, in the world of sin. 
 
 But I scarcely feel less an outcast when I come out of the
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 165 
 
 Circus, on week days, into my own world of sorrow. Inside 
 the Circus, there have been wonderful Mr. Henry Cooke, and 
 pretty Mademoiselle Aguzzi, and the three brothers Leonard, 
 iike the three brothers in a German story, and grave little 
 Sandy, and bright and graceful Miss Hengler, all doing the 
 most splendid feats of strength, and patience, and skill. 
 There have been dear little Cinderella and her Prince, and 
 all the pretty children beautifully dressed, taught thoroughlv 
 how to behave, and how to dance, and how to sit still, and 
 giving everybody delight that looks at them ; whereas, the 
 instant I come outside the door, I find all the children about 
 the streets ill-dressed, and ill-taught, and ill-behaved, and 
 nobody cares to look at them. And then, at Drury Lane, 
 there's just everything I want people to have always, got for 
 them, for a little while ; and they seem to enjoy them just 
 as I should expect they would. Mushroom Common, with 
 its lovely mushrooms, white and gray, so finely set off by 
 the incognita fairy's scarlet cloak ; the golden land of plenty 
 with furrow and sheaf ; Buttercup Green, with its flock of 
 mechanical sheep, which the whole audience claps because 
 they are of pasteboard, as they do the sheep in Little Red 
 Riding Hood because they are alive ; but in either case, 
 must have them on the stage in order to be pleased with 
 them, and never clap when they see the creatures in a field 
 outside. They can't have enough, any more than I can, of 
 the loving duet between Tom Tucker and Little Bo Peep : 
 they would make the dark fairy dance all night long in her 
 amber light if they could ; and yet contentedly return to 
 what they call a necessary state of things outside, where 
 their corn is reaped by machinery, and the only duets are 
 between steam whistles. Why haven't they a steam whistle 
 to whistle to them on the stage, instead of Miss Violet 
 Cameron ? Why haven't they a steam Jack in the Box to 
 jump for them, instead of Mr. Evans ? or a steam doll to 
 dance for them, instead of Miss Kate Vaughan ? They still 
 seem to have human ears and eyes, in the Theatre ; to know 
 there, for an hour or two, that golden light, and song, and 
 human skill and grace, are better than smoke-blackness, and
 
 166 FORS CLAVIGEEA. 
 
 shrieks of iron and fire, and monstrous powers of con- 
 strained elements. And then they return to their under- 
 ground railroad, and say, ' This, behold, this is the right 
 way to move, and live in a real world.' 
 
 Very notable it is also that just as in these two theatrical 
 entertainments the Church and the Circus, the imagi- 
 native congregations still retain some true notions of the 
 value of human and beautiful things, and don't have steam- 
 preachers nor steam-dancers, so also they retain some just 
 notion of the truth, in moral things : Little Cinderella, for 
 instance, at Hengler's, never thinks of offering her poor fairy 
 Godmother a ticket from the Mendicity Society. She im- 
 mediately goes arid fetches her some dinner. And she makes 
 herself generally useful, and sweeps the doorstep, and dusts 
 the door ; and none of the audience think any the worse of 
 her on that account. They think the worse of her proud sisters 
 who make her do it. But when they leave the Circus, they 
 never think for a moment of making themselves useful, like 
 Cinderella. They forthwith play the proud sisters as much as 
 they can ; and try to make anybody else, who will, sweep 
 their doorsteps. Also, at Hengler's, nobody advises Cin- 
 derella to write novels, instead of doing her washing, by way 
 of bettering herself. The audience, gentle and simple, feel 
 that the only chance she has of pleasing her Godmother, or 
 marrying a prince, is in remaining patiently at her tub, as 
 long as the Fates will have it so, heavy though it be. Again, 
 in all dramatic presentation of Little Red Riding Hood, 
 everybody disapproves of the carnivorous propensities of the 
 Wolf. They clearly distinguish there as clearly as the 
 Fourteenth Psalm, itself between the class of animal which 
 eats, and the class of animals which is eaten. But once out- 
 side the theatre, they declare the whole human race to be 
 universally carnivorous and are ready themselves to eat up 
 any quantity of Red Riding Hoods, body and soul, if they 
 can make money by them. 
 
 And lastly, at Hengler's and Drury Lane, see how the 
 whole of the pleasure of life depends on the existence of 
 Princes, Princesses, and Fairies. One never hears of a Re-
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 167 
 
 publican pantomime ; one never thinks Cinderella would be 
 a bit better off if there were no princes. The audience un- 
 derstand that though it is not every good little house-maid 
 who can marry a prince, the world would not be the least 
 pleasanter, for the rest, if there were no princes to marry. 
 
 Nevertheless, it being too certain that the sweeping of 
 doorsteps diligently will not in all cases enable a pretty 
 maiden to drive away from said doorsteps, for evermore, in 
 a gilded coach, one has to consider what may be the next 
 best for her. And next best, or, in the greater number of 
 cases, best altogether, will be that Love, with his felicities, 
 should himself enter over the swept and garnished steps, and 
 abide with her in her own life, such as it is. And since St. 
 Valentine's grace is with us, at this season, I will finish my 
 Fors, for this time, by carrying on our little romance of the 
 Broom-maker, to the place in which he unexpectedly finds 
 it. In which romance, while we may perceive the principal 
 lesson intended by the author to be that the delights and 
 prides of affectionate married life are consistent with the 
 humblest station, (or may even be more easily found there 
 than in a higher one,) we may for ourselves draw some farther 
 conclusions which the good Swiss pastor only in part in- 
 tended. We may consider in what degree the lightening of 
 the wheels of Hansli's cart, when they drave heavily by the 
 wood of Muri, corresponds to the change of the English 
 highway into Mount Parnassus, for Sir Philip Sidney ; and 
 if the correspondence be not complete, and some deficiency 
 in the divinest power of Love be traceable in the mind of 
 the simple person as compared to that of the gentle one, we 
 may farther consider, in due time, how, without help from 
 any fairy Godmother, we may make Cinderella's life gentle 
 to her, as well as simple ; and, without taking the peasant's 
 hand from his labour, make his heart leap with joy as pure 
 as a king's.* 
 
 * If to any reader, looking back on the history of Europe for the last 
 four centuries, this sentence seems ironical, let him. be assured that for 
 the causes which make it seem so, during the last four centuries, the 
 end of kinghood has coine.
 
 168 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 "Well," said Hansli, "I'll help you ; give me your bag ; 
 I'll put it among my brooms, and nobody will see it. Every- 
 body knows me. Not a soul will think I've got your shoes 
 underneath there. You've only to tell me where to leave 
 them or indeed where to stop for you, if you like. You 
 can follow a little way off; nobody will think we have any- 
 thing to do with each other." 
 
 The young girl made no compliments.* 
 
 "You are really very good," f said she, with a more serene 
 face. She brought her packet, and Hans hid it so nicely 
 that a cat couldn't have seen it. 
 
 "Shall I push, or help you to pull?" asked the young 
 girl, as if it had been a matter of course that she should also 
 do her part in the work. 
 
 " As you like best, though you needn't mind ; it isn't a 
 pair or two of shoes that will make my cart much heavier." 
 The young girl began by pushing ; but that did not last long. 
 Presently she found herself J in front, pulling also by the pole. 
 
 " It seems to me that the cart goes better so," said she. 
 As one ought to suppose, she pulled with all her strength; 
 that which nevertheless did not put her out of breath, nor 
 hinder her from relating all she had in her head, or heart. 
 
 They got to the top of the hill of Stalden without Hansli's 
 knowing how that had happened: the long alley seemed to 
 have shortened itself by half. 
 
 There, one made one's dispositions ; the young girl stopped 
 behind, while Hansli, with her bag and his brooms, entered 
 
 * Untranslateable. It means, she made no false pretence of reluc- 
 tance, and neither politely nor feebly declined what she meant to ac- 
 cept. But the phrase might be used of a person accepting with un- 
 graceful eagerness, or want of sense of obligation. A slight sense of 
 this simplicity is meant by our author to be here included in the ex- 
 pression. 
 
 f " Trop bon." It is a little more than ' very good,' but not at all 
 equivalent to our English 'too good.' 
 
 \ " Se trouva." Untranslateable. It is very little more than ' was' 
 in front. But that little more, the sligJit sense of not knowing quite 
 how she got there, is necessary to mark the under-current of mean- 
 ing ; she goes behind the cart first, thinking it more modest ; but pres- 
 ently, nevertheless, 'finds herself in front ; " the cart goes better, BO." 
 
 There used to be an avenue of tall trees, about a quarter of a mile 
 long, on the Thun road, just at the brow of the descent to the bridge 
 of the Aar, at the lower end of the main street of Berne.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 169 
 
 the town without the least difficulty, where he remitted 
 her packet to the young girl, also without any accident ; 
 but they had scarcely time to say a word to each other be- 
 fore the press * of people, cattle, and vehicles separated 
 them. Hansli had to look after his cart, lest it should be 
 knocked to bits. And so ended the acquaintanceship for 
 that day. This vexed Hansli not a little; howbeit he didn't 
 think long about it. We cannot (more's the pity) affirm that 
 the young girl had made an ineffaceable impression upon 
 him, and all the less, that she was not altogether made for 
 producing ineffaceable impressions. She was u stunted little 
 girl, with a broad face. That which she had of best was 
 a good heart, and an indefatigable ardour for work; but 
 those are things which, externally, are not very remarkable, 
 and many people don't take much notice of them. 
 
 Nevertheless, the next Tuesday, when Hansli saw himself f 
 at his cart again, he found it extremely heavy. 
 
 "I wouldn't have believed," said he to himself, "what a 
 difference there is between two pulling, and one." 
 
 " Will she be there again, I wonder," thought he, as he 
 came near the little wood of Muri. " I would take her bag 
 very willingly if she would help me to pull. Also the road 
 is nowhere so ua^lv as between here and the town."' 
 
 o i/ *r 
 
 And behold that it precisely happened that the young 
 girl was sitting there upon the same bench, all the same as 
 eight days before ; only with the difference that she was not 
 crying. 
 
 * "Cohue." Confused and moving mass. We have no such useful 
 word. 
 
 f " Se revit." It would not be right to say here ' se trouva,' because 
 there is no surprise, or discovery, in the doing once again what is done 
 every week. But one may nevertheless contemplate oneself, and the 
 situation, from a new point of view. Hansli se ' revit ' reviewed 
 himself, literally ; & very proper operation, every now and then, for 
 everybody. 
 
 J A slight difference between the Swiss and English peasant is marked 
 here; to the advantage of the former. At least, I imagine an English 
 Hansli would not have known, even in love, whether the road was ugly 
 or pretty.
 
 170 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 " Have you got anything for me to carry to-day ? " asked 
 Hansli, who found his cart at once became a great deal light- 
 er at the sight of the young girl. 
 
 "It is not only for that that I have waited," answered she ; 
 " even if I had had nothing to carry to the town, I should 
 have come, all the same; for eight days ago I wasn't able to 
 thank you; nor to ask if that cost anything." 
 
 " A fine question ! " said Hansli. " Why, you served me 
 for a second donkey; and yet I never asked how much I 
 owed you for helping me to pull ! " So, as all that went of 
 itself, the young girl brought her bundle, and Hansli hid it, 
 and she went to put herself at the pole as if she had known 
 it all by heart. " I had got a little way from home," said 
 she, " before it came into my head that I ought to have 
 brought a cord to tie to the cart behind, and that would have 
 gone better ; but another time, if I return, I won't forget." 
 
 This association for mutual help found itself, then, estab- 
 lished, without any long diplomatic debates, and in the most 
 simple manner. And, that day, it chanced that they were 
 also able to come back together as far as the place where 
 their roads parted ; all the same, they were so prudent as 
 not to show themselves together before the gens-d'armes at the 
 town gates. 
 
 And now for some time Hansli's mother had been quite 
 enchanted witli her son. It seemed to her he was more gay, 
 she said. He whistled and sang, now, all the blessed day ; 
 and tricked himself up, so that he could never have done.* 
 Only just the other day he had bought a great-coat of 
 drugget, in which he had nearly the air of a real counsellor. 
 But she could not find any fault with him for all that ; he 
 was so good to her that certainly the good God must reward 
 him ; as for herself, she was in no way of doing it, but 
 could do nothing but pray for him. "Not that you are to 
 think," said she, " that he puts everything into his clothes ; 
 he has some money too. If God spares his life, I'll wager that 
 one day he'll come to have a cow : he has been talking of 
 a goat ever so long ; but it's not likely I shall be spared 
 to see it. And, after all, I don't pretend to be sure it will 
 ever be." 
 
 * " Se requinquait an'en plus finir." Entirely beyond English ren- 
 dering.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 171 
 
 " Mother," said Hans one day, " I don't know how it is ; 
 but either the cart gets heavier, or I'm not so strong as 1 
 was ; for some time I've scarcely been able to manage it. It 
 is getting really too much for me ; especially on the Berne 
 road, where there are so many hills." 
 
 " I dare say," said the mother ; " aussi, why do you go on 
 loading it more every day ? I've been fretting about you 
 many a time ; for one always suffers for over-work when one 
 gets old. But you must take care. Put a dozen or two of 
 brooms less on it, and it will roll again all right." 
 
 " That's impossible, mother ; I never have enough as it is, 
 and I haven't time to go to Berne twice a week." 
 
 " But, Hansli, suppose you got a donkey. I've heard say 
 they are the most convenient beasts in the world : they cost 
 almost nothing, eat almost nothing, and anything one likes 
 to give them ; and that's * as strong as a horse, without 
 counting that one can make something of the milk,- -not that 
 I want any, but one may speak of it." f 
 
 " No, mother," said Hansli, "they're as self-willed as dev- 
 ils : sometimes one can't get them to do anything at all ; 
 and then what I should do with a donkey the other five days 
 of the week ! No, mother ; I was thinking of a wife, 
 hey, what say you ? " 
 
 "But, Hansli, I think a goat or a donkey would be much 
 better. A wife ! What sort of idea is that that has come 
 into your head ? What would you do with a wife ? " 
 
 " Do ! " said Hansli ; " what other people do, I suppose ; 
 and then, I thought she would help me to draw the cart, which 
 goes ever so much better with another hand : without 
 counting that she could plant potatoes between times, and 
 help me to make my brooms, which I couldn't get a goat or 
 a donkey to do." 
 
 " But, Hansli, do you think to find one, then, who will help 
 you to draw the cart, and will be clever enough to do all 
 that ? " asked the mother, searchingly. 
 
 " Oh, mother, there's one who has helped me already often 
 with the cart," said Hansli, " and who would be good for a 
 great deal besides ; but as to whether she would marry me 
 
 * " Qa." Note the peculiar character and value, in modern French, 
 of this general and slightly depreciatory pronoun, essentially a repub- 
 lican word, hurried, inconsiderate, and insolent. The popular chant 
 ' ca ira ' gives the typical power. 
 
 f " C'est seulement pour dire." I've been at least ten minutes try- 
 ing to translate it, and can't.
 
 172 FOBS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 or not, I don't know, for I haven't asked her. I thought that 
 I would tell you first." 
 
 " You rogue of a boy, what's that you tell me there ? I 
 don't understand a word of it," cried the mother. " You 
 too ! are you also like that ? The good God Himself 
 might have told me, and I wouldn't have believed Him. 
 What's that you say ? you've got a girl to help you to pull 
 the cart ! A pretty business to engage her for ! Ah well, 
 trust men after this ! " 
 
 Thereupon Hansli put himself to recount the history ; and 
 how that had happened quite by chance ; and how that girl 
 was just expressly made for him : a girl as neat as a clock, 
 not showy, not extravagant, and who would draw the cart 
 better even than a cow could. 
 
 "But I haven't spoken to her of anything, however. All 
 the same, I think I'm not disagreeable to her. Indeed, she 
 has said to me once or twice that she wasn't in a hurry to 
 marry ; but if she could manage it, so as not to be worse off 
 than she was now, she wouldn't be long making up her mind. 
 She knows, for that matter, very well also why she is in the 
 world. Her little brothers and sisters are growing up after 
 her ; and she knows well how things go, and how the young- 
 est are always made the most of, for one never thinks of 
 thanking the elder ones for the trouble they've had in bring- 
 ing them up." 
 
 All that didn't much displease the mother ; and the more 
 she ruminated over these unexpected matters, the more it all 
 seemed to her very proper. Then she put herself to make 
 inquiries, and learned that nobody knew the least harm of 
 the girl. They told her she did all she could to help her 
 parents ; but that with the best they could do, there wouldn't 
 be much to fish for. 
 
 "Ah, well: it's all the better," thought she; "for then 
 neither of them can have much to say to the other." 
 
 The next Tuesday, while Hansli was getting his cart 
 ready, his mother said to him, 
 
 "Well, speak to that girl : if she consents, so will I ; but 
 I can't run after her. Tell her to come here on Sunday, 
 that I may see her, and at least we can talk a little. If she
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 173 
 
 is willing to be nice, it will all go very well. Aussi, it must 
 happen some time or other, I suppose." 
 
 " But, mother, it isn't written anywhere that it must hap- 
 pen, whether or no ; and if it doesn't suit you, nothing hin- 
 ders me from leaving it all alone." 
 
 " Nonsense, child ; don't be a goose. Hasten thee to set 
 out ; and say to that girl, that if she likes to be my daugh- 
 ter-in-law, I'll take her, and be very well pleased." 
 
 Hansli set out, and found the young girl. Once that they 
 were pulling together, he at his pole, and she at her cord, 
 Hansli put himself to say, 
 
 "That certainly goes as quick again when there are thus 
 two cattle at the same cart. Last Saturday I went to Thun 
 by myself, and dragged all the breath out of my body." 
 
 "Yes, I've often thought," said the young girl, "that it 
 was very foolish of you not to get somebody to help you ; 
 all the business would go twice as easily, and you would 
 gain twice as much." 
 
 " What would you have ? " said Hansli. " Sometimes 
 one thinks too soon of a thing, sometimes too late, one's 
 always mortal.* But now it really seems to me that I should 
 like to have somebody for a help ; if you were of the same 
 mind, you would be just the good thing for me. If that 
 suits you, I'll marry you." 
 
 " Well, why not, if you don't think me too ugly nor too 
 poor ? " answered the young girl. " Once you've got me, it 
 will be too late to despise me. As for me, I could scarcely 
 fall in with a better chance. One always gets a husband, 
 but, aussi, of what sort ! You are quite good enough f for 
 me : you take care of your affairs, and I don't think you'll 
 treat a wife like a dog." 
 
 " My faith, she will be as much master as I ; if she is not 
 pleased that way, I don't know what more to do," said 
 Hansli. " And for other matters, I don't think you'll be 
 worse off with me than you have been at home. If that 
 suits you, come to see us on Sunday. It's my mother who 
 told me to ask you, and to say that if you liked to be her 
 daughter-in-law, she would be very well pleased." 
 
 * " On est tou jours homme." The proverb is frequent among the 
 French and Germans. The modesty of it is not altogether eaay to an. 
 English mind, and would be totally incomprehensible to an ordinary 
 Scotch one. 
 
 f '* Assez brave." Untranslateable, except by the old English sense 
 of the word brave, and even that has more reference to outside show 
 than the French word.
 
 174 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 "Liked! But what could I want more? I am used to 
 submit myself, and take things as they come, worse to-day, 
 better to-morrow, sometimes more sour, sometimes less. I 
 never have thought that a hard word made a hole in me, 
 else by this time I shouldn't have had a bit of skin left as 
 big as a kreutzer. But, all the same, I must tell my people, 
 as the custom is. For the rest, they won't give themselves 
 any trouble about the matter. There are enough of us in 
 the house : if any one likes to go, nobody will stop them."* 
 
 And, aussi, that was what happened. On Sunday the 
 young girl really appeared at Rychiswyl. Hansli had given 
 her very clear directions ; nor had she to ask long before 
 she was told where the broom-seller lived. The mother 
 made her pass a good examination upon the garden and the 
 kitchen ; and would know what book of prayers she used, 
 and whether she could read in the New Testament, and also 
 in the Bible, f for it was very bad for the children, and it 
 was always they who suffered, if the mother didn't know 
 enough for that, said the old woman. The girl pleased her, 
 and the affair was concluded. 
 
 " You won't have a beauty there," said she to Hansli, be- 
 fore the young girl ; " nor much to crow about, in what she 
 has got. But all that is of no consequence. It isn't beauty 
 that makes the pot boil ; and as for money, there's many a 
 man who wouldn't marry a girl unless she was rich, who has 
 had to pay his father-in-law's debts in the end. When one 
 has health, and work, in one's arms, one gets along always. 
 I suppose" (turning to the girl) "you have got two good 
 chemises and two gowns, so that you won't be the same on 
 Sunday, and work-days?" 
 
 " Oh, yes," said the young girl ; " you needn't give your- 
 self any trouble about that. I've one chemise quite new, 
 and two good ones besides, and four others which, in truth, 
 
 * You are to note carefully the conditions of sentiment in family re- 
 lationships implied both here, and in the bride's reference, farther on, 
 to her godmother's children. Poverty, with St. Francis' pardon, is not 
 always holy in its influence : yet a richer girl might have felt exactly 
 the same, without being innocent enough to say so. 
 
 f I believe the reverend and excellent novelist would himself author- 
 ize the distinction ; but Hansli s mother must be answerable for it to 
 my Evangelical readers.
 
 FOBS CLAVIOERA. 175 
 
 are rather ragged. But my mother said I should have 
 another ; and my father, that he would make me my wed- 
 ing-shoes, and they should cost me nothing. And with that 
 I've a very nice godmother, who is sure to give me some- 
 thing fine ; perhaps a saucepan, or a frying-stove,* who 
 knows? without counting that perhaps I shall inherit some- 
 thing from her some day. She has some children, indeed, 
 but the}' may die." 
 
 Perfectly satisfied on both sides, but especially the girl, to 
 whom Hansli's house, so perfectly kept in order, appeared a 
 palace in comparison with her own home, full of children 
 and scraps of leather, they separated, soon to meet again 
 and quit each other no more. As no soul made the slightest 
 objection, and the preparations were easy, seeing that 
 new shoes and a new chemise are soon stitched together, 
 within a month, Hansli was no more alone on his wav to 
 Thun. And the old cart went again as well as ever. 
 
 And they lived happily ever after ? You shall hear. The 
 story is not at an end ; note only, in the present phase of 
 it, this most important point, that Hansli does not think of 
 his wife as an expensive luxury, to be refused to himself 
 unless under irresistible temptation. It is only the modern 
 Pall-Mall-pattern Englishman who must * abstain from the 
 luxury of marriage' if he be wise. Hansli thinks of his 
 wife, on the contrary, as a useful article, which he cannot 
 any longer get on without. He gives us, in fact, a final 
 definition of proper wifely quality, " She will draw the 
 cart better than a cow could." 
 
 LETTER XL. 
 
 I AM obliged to go to Italy this spring, and find, beside 
 me, a mass of Fors material in arrear, needing various ex- 
 planation and arrangement, for which I have no time. Fors 
 
 * " Poele a frire." I don't quite understand the nature of this 
 article.
 
 176 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 herself must look to it, and my readers use their own wits in 
 thinking over what she has looked to. I begin with a piece 
 of Marmontel, which was meant to follow, ' in due time,' the 
 twenty-first letter, of which, please glance at the last four 
 pages again. This following bit is from another story pro- 
 fessing to give some account of Moliere's Misanthrope, in his 
 country life, after his last quarrel with Celimene. He calls 
 on a country gentleman, M. de Laval, " and was received by 
 him with the simple and serious courtesy which announces 
 neither the need nor the vain desire of making new connec- 
 tions. ' Behold,' said he, ' a man who does not surrender him- 
 self at once. I esteem him the more.' He congratulated M. 
 de Laval on the agreeableness of his solitude. ' You come to 
 live here,' he said to him, ' far from men, and you are very 
 right to avoid them.' 
 
 "7^ Monsieur ! I do not avoid men ; I am neither so weak 
 as to fear them, so proud as to despise them, or so unhappy 
 as to hate them." 
 
 This answer struck so home that Alceste was disconcerted 
 by it ; but he wished to sustain his debut, and began to sat- 
 irize the world. 
 
 " I have lived in the world like another," said M. de Laval, 
 " and I have not seen that it was so wicked. There are vices 
 and virtues in it, good and evil mingled, I confess ; but 
 nature is so made, and one should know how to accommo- 
 date oneself to it." 
 
 " On my word," said Alceste," in that unison the evil governs 
 to such a point that it chokes the other." " Sir," replied the 
 Viscount, " if one were as eager to discover good as evil, and 
 had the same delight in spreading the report of it, if good 
 examples were made public as the bad ones almost always 
 are, do you not think that the good would weigh down the 
 balance? * But gratitude speaks so low, and indignation so 
 loudly, that you cannot hear but the last. Both friendship 
 and esteem are commonly moderate in their praises ; they 
 
 * Well said, the Viscount. People think me a grumbler; but I 
 wholly believe this, nay, know this. The world exists, indeed, only 
 by the strength of its silent virtue.
 
 FORS CLAVIOERA. 177 
 
 imitate the modesty of honour, in praise, while resentment 
 and mortification exaggerate everything they describe." 
 
 " Monsieur," said Alceste to the Viscount, "you make me 
 desire to think as you do ; and even if the sad truth were on 
 my side, your error would be preferable." "Ah, yes, without 
 doubt," replied M. de Laval, "ill-humour is good for nothing, 
 the fine part that it is, for a man to play, to fall into a fit of 
 spite like a child ! and why ? For the mistakes of the 
 circle in which one has lived, as if the whole of nature were 
 in the plot against us, and responsible for the hurt we have 
 received." 
 
 " You are right," replied Alceste, " it would be unjust to con- 
 sider all men as partners in fault ; yet how many complaints 
 may we not justly lodge against them, as a body ? Believe 
 me, sir, my judgment of them has serious and grave motives. 
 You will do me justice when you know me. Permit me to 
 see you often ! " " Often" said the Viscount, " will be diffi- 
 cult. I have much business, and my daughter and I have our 
 studies, which leave us little leisure ; but sometimes, if you 
 will, let us profit by our neighbourhood, at our ease, and 
 without formality, for the privilege of the country is to be 
 alone, when we like." 
 
 Some days afterwards Monsieur de Laval returned his 
 visit, and Alceste spoke to him of the pleasure that he doubt- 
 less felt in making so many people happy. " It is a beautiful 
 example," he said, " and, to the shame of men, a very rare one. 
 How many persons there are, more powerful and more rich 
 than you, who are nothing but a burden to their inferiors ! " 
 " I neither excuse nor blame them altogether," replied M. de 
 Laval. " In order to do good, one must know how to set 
 about it ; and do not think that it is so easy to effect our 
 purpose. It is not enough even to be sagacious ; it is needful 
 also to be fortunate ; it is necessary to find sensible and 
 docile persons to manage : * and one has constantly need of 
 
 * Well said, Viscount, again ! So few people know the power of 
 the third Fors. If I had not chanced to give lessons in drawing to 
 Octavia Hill, I could have done nothing in Marylebone, nor she either, 
 for a while yet, I fancy. 
 VOL. II. 12
 
 178 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 much address, and patience, to lead the people, naturally 
 suspicious and timid, to what is really for their advantage." 
 "Indeed," said Alceste," such excuses are continually made ; 
 but have you not conquered all these obstacles ? and why 
 should not others conquer them ? " " I," said M. de Laval, 
 "have been tempted by opportunity, and seconded by acci- 
 dent.* The people of this province, at the time that I came 
 into possession of my estate, were in a condition of extreme 
 distress. I did but stretch my arms to them ; they gave 
 themselves up to me in despair. An arbitrary tax had been 
 lately imposed upon them, which they regarded with so 
 much terror that they preferred sustaining hardships to 
 making any appearance of having wealth ; and I found, cur- 
 rent through the country, this desolating and destructive 
 maxim, 'The more we work, the more we shall be trodden 
 down.' " (It is precisely so in England to-day, also.) " The 
 men dared not be laborious / the women trembled to have 
 children. I went back to the source of the evil. I addressed 
 myself to the man appointed for the reception of the 
 tribute. ' Monsieur,' I said to him, ' my vassals groan under 
 the weight of the severe measures necessary to make them 
 pay the tax. I wish to hear no more of them ; tell me 
 what is wanting yet to make up the payment for the year, 
 and I will acquit the debt myself.' ' Monsieur,' replied the 
 receiver, ' that cannot be.' ' Why not ? ' said I. ' Because it is 
 not the rule.' 'What ! is it not the rule to pay the King 
 the tribute that he demands with the least expense and the 
 least delay possible?' 'Yes,' answered he, 'that would be 
 enough for the King, but it would not be enough for me. 
 Where should I be if they paid money down ? It is by the 
 expense of the compulsory measures that I live ; they are 
 the perquisites of my office.' To this excellent reason I had 
 nothing to reply, but I went to see the head of the depart- 
 ment, and obtained from him the place of receiver-general 
 for my peasants. 
 
 " 'My children,' I then said to them, (assembling them on 
 
 * A lovely, classic, unbetterable sentence of Marmontel's, perfect in 
 wisdom and modesty.
 
 FOES CLAVIOERA. 179 
 
 my return home), 'I have to announce to you that you are in 
 future to deposit in my hands the exact amount of the King's 
 tribute, and no more. There will be no more expenses, no 
 more bailiff's visits. Every Sunday, at the bank of the par- 
 ish, your wives shall bring me their savings, and insensibly 
 you shall find yourselves out of debt. Work now, and culti- 
 vate your land ; make the most of it you can ; no farther 
 tax shall be laid on you. Z answer for this to you I who 
 am your father. For those who are in arrear, I will take 
 some measures for support, or I will advance them the sum 
 necessary,* and a few days at the dead time of the year, em- 
 ployed in work for me, will reimburse me for my expenses.' 
 This plan was agreed upon, and we have followed it ever 
 since. The housewives of the village bring me their little 
 
 O O 
 
 offerings : I encourage them, and speak to them of our good 
 King ; and what was an act of distressing servitude, has 
 become an unoppressive act of love. 
 
 " Finally, as there was a good deal of superfluous time, I 
 established the workshop that you have seen ; it turns every- 
 thing to account, and brings into useful service time which 
 would be lost between the operations of agriculture : the 
 profits of it are applied to public works. A still more pre- 
 cious advantage of this establishment is its having greatly 
 increased the population more children are born, as there 
 is certainty of extended means for their support." 
 
 Now note, first, in this passage what material of loyalty 
 and affection there was still in the French heart before the 
 Revolution ; and, secondly, how useless it is to be a good 
 King, if the good King allows his officers to live upon the 
 cost of compulsory measures, f And remember that the 
 French Revolution was the revolt of absolute loyalty and 
 love against the senseless cruelty of a " good King." 
 
 Next, for a little specimen of the state of our own work- 
 ing population ; and the " compulsory not measures, but 
 
 * Not for a dividend upon it, I beg you to observe, and even the cap- 
 ital to be repaid in work. 
 
 f Or, worse still, as our public men do, upon the cost of n<w- compul- 
 sory measures !
 
 180 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 measureless license," under which their loyalty and love are 
 placed, here is a genuine working woman's letter ; and if 
 the reader thinks I have given it him in its own spelling that 
 he may laugh at it, the reader is wrong. 
 
 Dear _ " Ma V 13 ' 1873 - 
 
 " Wile Reading the herald to Day on the subject on 
 shortor houers of Labou r * I was Reminded of A cercom- 
 stanc 6 that came under my hone notis when the 10 hours 
 sistoin Began in the cotton mills in Lancashire I was Mind- 
 ing a mesheen with 30 treds in it I was then maid to mind 
 2 of 30 treds each with one shillng Advance of wages wich 
 was 5 s for one and 6 s for tow with an increes of speed and 
 with improved mecheens in A few years I was minding tow 
 mecheens with tow 100 trads Each and Dubel speed for 9 s 
 perweek so that in our improved condation we had to turn 
 out some 100 weght per day and we went as if the Devel 
 was After us for 10 houers per day and with that compare- 
 tive small Advance in money and the feemals have ofton 
 Been carred out fainting what with the heat and hard work 
 and those that could not keep up mst go and make room 
 for a nother and all this is Done in Christian England and 
 then we are tould to Be content in the station of Life in 
 wich the Lord as places us But I say the Lord never Did 
 place us there so we have no Right to Be content o that 
 Right and not might was the Law yours truely C. H. S." 
 
 Next to this account of Machine-labour, here is one of 
 Hand-labour, also in a genuine letter, this second being to 
 myself ; (I wish the other had been also, but it was to one 
 of my friends.) 
 
 " BECKENHAM, KENT, 
 
 "Sept. 24, 1873. 
 
 "That is a pleasant evening in our family when we read 
 and discuss the subjects of Fors Clamgera, and we fre- 
 quently reperuse them, as for instance, within a few days, 
 your August letter. In page 16 I was much struck by the 
 notice of the now exploded use of the spinning wheel. My 
 mother, a Cumberland woman, was a spinner, and the whole 
 
 * These small " powers" of terminal letters in some of the words 
 are very curious.
 
 FORS CLAVIOERA. 181 
 
 process, from the fine thread that passed through her notable 
 fingers, and the weaving into linen by an old cottager a 
 very ' Silas Marner,' to the bleaching on the orchard grass, 
 was well known to my sister* and myself, when children. 
 
 " When I married, part of the linen that I took to my new 
 home was my mother's spinning, and one fine table-cloth was 
 my grandmother's. What factory, with its thousand spindles, 
 and chemical bleaching powders, can send out such linen as 
 that, which lasted three generations ? \ 
 
 " I should not have troubled you with these remarks, had 
 I not at the moment when I read your paragraph on hand- 
 spinning, received a letter from my daughter, now for a time 
 resident in Coburg (a friend of Octavia Hill's), which bears 
 immediately on the subject. I have therefore ventured to 
 transcribe it for your perusal, believing that the picture she 
 draws from life, beautiful as it is for its simplicity, may 
 give you a moment's pleasure." 
 
 " COBURQ, Sept. 4, 1873. 
 
 "On Thursday I went to call on Frau L. ; she was not in ; 
 so I went to her mother's, Frau E., knowing that I should 
 find her there. They were all sitting down to afternoon 
 coffee, and asked me to join them, which I gladly did. I 
 had my work-basket with me, and as they were all at work, 
 it was pleasant to do the same thing. Hildigard was there ; 
 in fact she lives there, to take care of Frau E. since she had 
 her fall, and stiffened her ankle, a year ago. Hildigard took 
 her spinning, and tied on her white apron, filled the little 
 brass basin of the spinning-wheel with water, to wet her fin- 
 gers, and set the wheel a-purring. I had never seen the pro- 
 cess before, and it was very pretty to see her, with her white 
 fingers, and to hear the little low sound. It is quite a pity, 
 I think, ladies do not do it in England, it is so pretty, and 
 far nicer work than crotchet, and so on, when it is finished. 
 This soft linen made by hand is so superior to any that you 
 get now. Presently the four children came in, and the 
 great hunting dog, Feldman; and altogether I thought, as 
 dear little Frau E. sat sewing in her arm-chair, and her old 
 sister near her at her knitting, and Hildigard at her spin- 
 ning, while pretty Frau L. sewed at her little girl's stuff- 
 skirt, all in the old-fashioned room full of old furniture, 
 and hung round with miniatures of still older dames and 
 
 * A lady high in the ranks of kindly English literature 
 f Italics mine, as usual.
 
 182 FORS CLAV1GERA. 
 
 officers, In, to our eyes, strange stiff costumes, that it was a 
 most charming scene, and one I enjoyed as much as going 
 to the theatre, which I did in the evening." 
 
 A most charming scene, my dear lady, I have no doubt; 
 just what Hengler's Circus was, to me, this Christmas. Now 
 for a little more of the charming scenery outside, and far 
 away. 
 
 " 12, TUNSTALL TERRACE, SUNDERLAND, 
 " Utk Feb. , 1874. 
 
 " My dear Sir, The rice famine is down upon us in ear- 
 nest, and finds our wretched ' administration ' unprepared 
 a ministration unto death ! 
 
 "It can carry childish gossip 'by return of post' into 
 every village in India, but not food ; no, not food even for 
 mothers and babes. So far has our scientific and industrial 
 progress attained. 
 
 " To-night comes news that hundreds of deaths from star- 
 vation have already occurred, and that even high-caste 
 women are working on the roads ; no food from stores of 
 ours except at the price- of degrading, health-destroying, 
 and perfectly useless toil. God help the nation responsible 
 for this wickedness ! 
 
 " Dear Mr. Ruskin, you wield the most powerful pen in 
 England, can you not shame us into some sense of duty, 
 some semblance of human feeling ? [Certainly not. My 
 good sir, as far as I know, nobody ever minds a word I say, 
 except a few nice girls, who are a great comfort to me, but 
 can't do anything. They don't even know how to spin, poor 
 little lilies !] 
 
 " I observe that the Daily Neics of to-day is horrified at 
 the idea that Disraeli should dream of appropriating any 
 part of the surplus revenue to the help of India in this 
 calamity [of course], and even the Spectator calls that a 
 ' dangerous ' policy. So far is even ' the conscience of the 
 Press ' [What next V] corrupted by the dismal science. 
 
 " I am, yours truly." 
 
 So far the third Fors has arranged matters for me ; but I 
 must put a stitch or two into her work. 
 
 Look back to my third letter, for March, 1871, page 31. 
 You see it is said there that the French war and its issues 
 were none of Napoleon's doing, nor Count Bismarck's; that
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 183 
 
 the mischief in them was St. Louis's doing ; and the good, 
 such as it was, the rough father of Frederick the Great's 
 doing. 
 
 The father of Frederick the Great was an Evangelical 
 divine of the strictest orthodoxy, very fond of beer, bacon, 
 and tobacco, and entirely resolved to have his own way, 
 supposing, as pure Evangelical people always do, that his 
 own way was God's also. It happened, however, for the 
 good of Germany, that this King's own way, to a great 
 extent, was God's also, (we will look at Carlyle's state- 
 ment of that fact another day,) and accordingly he main- 
 tained, and the ghost of him, with the help of his son, 
 whom he had like to have shot as a disobedient and dis- 
 sipated character, maintains to this day in Germany, such 
 sacred domestic life as that of which you have an account in 
 the above letter. Which, in peace, is entirely happy, for its 
 own part ; and, in war, irresistible. 
 
 'Entirely blessed? I had written first, too carelessly; I 
 have had to scratch out the 'blessed' and put in 'happy.' 
 For blessing is only for the meek and merciful, and a 
 German cannot be either ; he does not understand even the 
 meaning of the words. In that is the intense, irreconcilable 
 difference between the French and German natures. A 
 Frenchman is selfish only when he is vile and lustful ; but 
 a German, selfish in the purest states of virtue and morality. 
 A Frenchman is arrogant only in ignorance ; but no 
 quantity of learning ever makes a German modest. " Sir," 
 says Albert Durer of his own work, (and he is the modestest 
 German I know,) "it cannot be better done." Luther se- 
 renely damns the entire gospel of St. James, because St. 
 James happens to be not precisely of his own opinions. ' 
 
 Accordingly, when the Germans get command of Lom- 
 bardy, they bombard Venice, steal her pictures, (which they 
 can't understand a single touch of,) and entirely ruin the 
 country, morally and physically, leaving behind them misery, 
 vice, and intense hatred of themselves, wherever their ac- 
 cursed feet have trodden. They do precisely the same thing 
 by France, crush her, rob her, leave her in misery of rage
 
 184: FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 and shame ; and return home, smacking their lips, and sing- 
 ing Te Deums. 
 
 But when the French conquer England, their action upon 
 it is entirely beneficent. Gradually, the country, from a nest 
 of restless savages, becomes strong and glorious ; and having 
 good material to work upon, they make of us at last a nation 
 stronger than themselves. 
 
 Then the strength of France perishes, virtually, through 
 the folly of St. Louis ; her piety evaporates, her lust gathers 
 infectious power, and the modern Cite rises round the Saints 
 Chapelle. 
 
 It is a woful history. But St. Louis does not perish self- 
 ishly ; and perhaps is not wholly dead yet, whatever Gari- 
 baldi and his red-jackets may think about him, and their 
 < Holy Republic.' 
 
 Meantime Germany, through Geneva, works quaintly 
 against France, in our British destiny, and makes an end of 
 many a Sainte Chapelle, in our own sweet river islands. Read 
 Froude's sketch of the Influence of the Reformation on Scot- 
 tish Character, in his Short Studies on Great Subjects. And 
 that would be enough for you to think of, this month ; but as 
 this letter is all made up of scraps, it may be as well to finish 
 with this little private note on Luther's people, made last week. 
 
 4th March, 1874. I have been horribly plagued and mis- 
 guided by evangelical people, all my life ; and most of all 
 lately ; but my mother was one, and my Scotch aunt ; and I 
 have yet so much of the superstition left in me, that I can't 
 help sometimes doing as evangelical people wish, for all I 
 know it comes to nothing. 
 
 One of them, for whom I still have some old liking left, 
 sent me one of their horrible sausage-books the other day, 
 made of chopped-up Bible ; but with such a solemn and 
 really pathetic adjuration to read a 'text' every morning, 
 that, merely for old acquaintance' sake, I couldn't refuse. It 
 is all one to me, now, whether I read my Bible, or my Homer, 
 at one leaf or another ; only I take the liberty, pace my 
 evangelical friend, of looking up the contexts if I happen not 
 to know them.
 
 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 185 
 
 Now I was very much beaten and overtired yesterday, 
 chiefly owing to a week of black fog, spent in looking over 
 the work of days and people long since dead ; and rny ' text ' 
 this morning was, " Deal courageously, and the Lord do that 
 which seemeth Him good." It sounds a very saintly, submis- 
 sive, and useful piece of advice ; but I was not quite sure 
 who gave it ; and it was evidently desirable to ascertain that. 
 
 For, indeed, it chances to be given, not by a saint at all, 
 but by quite one of the most self-willed people on record in 
 any history, about the last in the world to let the Lord do 
 that which seemed Him good, if he could help it, unless it 
 seemed just as good to himself also, Joab the son of Zeruiah. 
 The son, to wit, of David's eldest sister ; who, finding that it 
 seemed good to the Lord to advance the son of David's 
 younger sister to a place of equal power with himself, un- 
 hesitatingly smites his thriving young cousin under the fifth 
 rib, while pretending to kiss him, and leaves him wallowing 
 in blood in the midst of the highway. But we have no record 
 of the pious or resigned expressions, he made use of on that 
 occasion. We have no record, either, of several other matters 
 one would have liked to know about these people. How it is, 
 for instance, that David has to make a brother of Saul's 
 son ; getting, as it seems, no brotherly kindness nor, more 
 wonderful yet, sisterly kindness at his own fireside. It is 
 like a German story of the seventh son or the seventh 
 bullet as far as the brothers are concerned ; but these 
 sisters, had they also no love for their brave young shepherd 
 brother ? Did they receive no countenance from him when he 
 was king? Even for Zeruiah's sake, might he not on his 
 death-bed have at least allowed the Lord to do what seemed 
 Him good with Zeruiah's son, who had so well served him in 
 his battles, (and so quietly in the matter of Bathsheba,) in- 
 stead of charging the wisdom of Solomon to find some subtle 
 way of preventing his hoar head from going down to the 
 grave in peace ? My evangelical friend will of course desire 
 me not to wish to be wise above that which is written. I am 
 not to ask even who Zeruiah's husband was ? nor whether, 
 in the West-end sense, he was her husband at all? Well ;
 
 186 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 but if I only want to be wise up to the meaning of what is 
 written ? I find, indeed, nothing whatever said of David's 
 elder sister's lover ; but, of his younger sister's lover, I find 
 it written in this evangelical Book-Idol, in one place, that his 
 name was Ithra, an Israelite, and in another that it was 
 Jether, the Ishrnaelite. Ithra or Jether, is no matter ; Israelite 
 or Ishmaelite, perhaps matters not much ; but it matters a 
 great deal that you should know that this is an ill written, 
 and worse trans-written, human history, and not by any 
 means 'Word of God'; and that whatever issues of life, 
 divine or human, there may be in it, for you, can only be got 
 by searching it ; and not by chopping it up into small bits 
 and swallowing it like pills. What a trouble there is, for in- 
 stance, just now, in all manner of people's minds, about Sun- 
 day keeping, just because these evangelical people will swal- 
 low their bits of texts in an entirely indigestible manner, 
 without chewing them. Read your Bibles honestly and ut- 
 terly, my scrupulous friends, and stand by the consequences, 
 if you have what true men call ' faith.' In the first place, 
 determine clearly, if there is a clear place in your brains to do 
 it, whether you mean to observe the Sabbath as a Jew, or 
 the day of the Resurrection, as a Christian. Do either thor- 
 oughly ; you can't do both. If you choose to keep the ' Sab- 
 bath,' in defiance of your great prophet, St. Paul, keep the 
 new moons too, and the other fasts and feasts of the Jewish 
 law ; but even so, remember that the Son of Man is Lord of 
 the Sabbath also, and that not only it is lawful to do good 
 upon it, but unlawful, in the strength of what you call keep- 
 ing one day Holy, to do Evil on other six days, and make 
 those unholy ; and, finally, that neither new-moon keeping, 
 nor Sabbath keeping, nor fasting, nor praying, will in anywise 
 help an evangelical city like Edinburgh to stand in the judg- 
 ment higher than Gomorrah, while her week-day arrange- 
 ments for rent from her lower orders are as follows : * 
 
 * Notes on Old Edinburgh ; Edmonston and Douglas, 1869. Things 
 may possibly have mended in some respects in the last five years, but 
 they have assuredly, in the country villages, got tenfold worse.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 187 
 
 " We entered the first room by descending two steps. It 
 seemed to be an old coal-cellar, with an earthen floor, shining 
 in many places from damp, and from a greenish ooze which 
 drained through the wall from a noxious collection of garbage 
 outside, upon which a small window could have looked had 
 it not have been filled up with brown paper and rags. There 
 was no grate, but a small fire smouldered on the floor, sur- 
 rounded by heaps of ashes. The roof was unceiled, the walls 
 were rough and broken, the only light came in from the open 
 door, which let in unwholesome smells and sounds. No cow 
 or horse could thrive in such a hole. It was abominable. It 
 measured eleven feet by six feet, and the rent was Wd. per 
 week, paid in advance. It was nearly dark at noon, even 
 with the door open ; but as my eyes became accustomed to 
 the dimness, I saw that the plenishings consisted of an old 
 bed, a barrel with a flagstone on the top of it for a table, a 
 three-legged stool, and an iron pot. A very ragged girl, 
 sorely afflicted with ophthalmia, stood among the ashes doing 
 nothing. She had never been inside a school or church. 
 She did not know how to do anything, but ' did for her fa- 
 ther and brother.' On a heap of straw, partly covered with 
 sacking, which was the bed in which father, son, and daugh- 
 ter slept, the brother, ill with rheumatism and sore legs, was 
 lying moaning from under a heap of filthy rags. He had 
 been a baker ' over in the New Town,' but seemed not very 
 likely to recover. It looked as if the sick man had crept 
 into his dark, damp lair, just to die of hopelessness. The 
 father was past work, but 'sometimes got an odd job to do.' 
 The sick man had supported the three. It was hard to be 
 godly, impossible to be cleanly, impossible to be healthy in 
 such circumstances. 
 
 " The next room was entered by a low, dark, impeded 
 passage about twelve feet long, too filthy to be traversed 
 without a light. At the extremity of this was a dark wind- 
 ing stair which led up to four superincumbent stories of 
 crowded subdivided rooms ; and beyond this, to the right, a 
 pitch-dark passage with a ' room ' on either side. It was not 
 possible to believe that the most grinding greed could ex- 
 tort money from human beings for the tenancy of such dens 
 as those to which this passage led. They were lairs into 
 which a starving dog might creep to die, but nothing more. 
 Opening a dilapidated door, we found ourselves in a recess 
 nearly six feet high, and nine feet in length by five in breadth. 
 It was not absolutely dark, yet matches aided our investiga-
 
 188 FORS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 tions even at noonday. There was an earthen floor full of 
 holes, in some of which water had collected. The walls were 
 black and rotten, and alive with woodlice. There was no 
 grate. The rent paid for this evil den, which was only ven- 
 tilated by the chimney, is Is. per week, or 2 12s. annually! 
 The occupier was a mason's labourer, with a wife and three 
 children. He had come to Edinburgh in search of work, and 
 could not afford a ' higher rent.' The wife said that her 
 husband took the ' wee drap.' So would the President of 
 the Temperance League himself if he were hidden away in 
 such a hole. The contents of this lair on our first visit were 
 a great heap of ashes and other refuse in one corner, some 
 damp musty straw in another, a broken box in the third, with 
 a battered tin pannikin upon it, and nothing else of any kind, 
 saving two small children, nearly nude, covered with running 
 sores, and pitiable from some eye disease. Their hair was 
 not long, but felted into wisps, and alive with vermin. When 
 we went in they were sitting among the ashes of an extinct 
 fire, and blinked at the light from our matches. Here a 
 neighbour said they sat all day, unless their mother was 
 merciful enough to turn them into the gutter. We were 
 there at eleven the following night, and found the mother, a 
 decent, tidy body, at ' hame.' There was a small fire then, 
 but no other light. She complained of little besides the 
 darkness of the house, and said, in a tone of dull discontent, 
 she supposed it was 'as good as such as they could expect in. 
 Edinburgh.' "
 
 FORS GLAVIOEItA. 189 
 
 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 To MY great satisfaction, I am asked by a pleasant correspondent, 
 where and what the picture of the Princess's Dream is. High up, iii an 
 out-of-the-way corner of the Academy of Venice, seen by no man nor 
 woman neither, of all pictures in Europe the one I should choose for 
 a gift, if a fairy queen gave me choice, Victor Carpaccio's ''Vision of 
 St. Ursula." 
 
 The following letter, from the Standard, is worth preserving : 
 
 Sir. For some time past the destruction of tons of young fry viz., 
 salmon, turbot, trout, soles, cod, whiting, etc., in fact, every fish 
 that is to be found in the Thames, has been enormous I beg 
 leave to say that it is now worse than ever, inasmuch as larger nets, 
 and an increased number of them, are used, and the trade has com- 
 menced a month earlier than usual, from the peculiarity of the 
 season. 
 
 At this time there are, at one part of the river, four or five vessels at 
 work, which in one tide catch three tons of fry ; this is sifted and 
 picked over by hand, and about three per cent, of fry is all that can be 
 picked out small enough for the London market. The remainder of 
 course dies during the process, and is thrown overboard ! Does the 
 London consumer realize the fact that at least thirty tons a week of 
 young fry are thus sacrificed ? Do Londoners know that under the 
 name of " whitebait " they eat a mixture largely composed of sprat fry, 
 a fish which at Christmas cost 9rf. a bushel, but which now fetches 2s. a 
 quart, which is 3 4*. a bushel ? (Price regulated by Demand and 
 Supply, you observe! J. R. ) It is bad enough that so many young 
 salmon and trout are trapped and utterly wasted in these nets ; but is 
 it fair towards the public thus to diminish their supply of useful and 
 cheap food ? 
 
 Mr. Frank Buckland would faint, were he to see the wholesale de- 
 struction of young fry off Southend (on one fishing-ground only). I 
 may truly say that the fishermen themselves are ashamed of the havoc 
 they are making well they may be ; but who is to blame ? 
 
 I have the honour to be, etc., 
 
 Feb. 23. PISCICULTJS. 
 
 The following note, written long before the last Fors on fish, bears 
 on some of the same matters, and may as well find place now. Of the 
 Bishop to whom it alludes, I have also something to say in next, or 
 next, Fors. The note itself refers to what I said about the defence of
 
 190 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 Pope, who, like all' other gracious men, had grave faults ; and who, 
 like all other wise men, is intensely obnoxious to evangelical divines. 
 I don't know what school of divines Mr. Elwyn belongs to ; nor did I 
 know his name when I wrote the note : I have been surprised, since, 
 to see how good his work is ; he writes with the precise pomposity of 
 Macaulay, and in those worst and fatallest forms of fallacy which are 
 true as far as they reach. 
 
 " There is an unhappy wretch of a clergyman I read of in the papers 
 spending his life industriously in showing the meanness of Alexander 
 Pope and how Alexander Pope cringed, and lied. He cringed yes 
 to his friends ; nor is any man good for much who will not play 
 spaniel to his friend, or his mistress, on occasion ; to how many more 
 than their friends do average clergymen cringe ? I have had a Bishop 
 go round the Royal Academy even with me, pretending he liked paint- 
 ing, when he was eternally incapable of knowing anything whatever 
 about it. Pope lied also alas, yes, for his vanity's sake. Very woful. 
 But he did not pass the whole of his life in trying to anticipate, or ap- 
 propriate, or efface, other people's discoveries, as your modern men 
 of science do so often ; and for lying any average partizan of religious 
 dogma tells more lies in his pulpit in defence of what in his heart he 
 knows to be indefensible, on any given Sunday, than Pope did in his 
 whole life. Nay, how often is your clergyman himself nothing but a 
 lie rampant in the true old sense of the word, creeping up into his pul- 
 pit pretending that he is there as a messenger of God, when he really 
 took the place that he might be able to marry a pretty girl, and live 
 like a ' gentleman' as he thinks. Alas ! how infinitely more of a gen- 
 tleman if he would but hold his foolish tongue, and get a living hon- 
 estly by street-sweeping, or any other useful occupation instead of 
 sweeping the dust of his own thoughts into people's eyes as this 
 ' biographer. ' " 
 
 I shall have a good deal to say about human madness, in the course 
 of Fors ; the following letter, concerning the much less mischievous 
 rabies of Dogs, is, however, also valuable. Note especially its closing 
 paragraph. I omit a sentence here and there which seem to me 
 unnecessary. 
 
 " On the 7th June last there appeared in the Macclesfield Guardian 
 newspaper a letter on Rabies and the muzzling and confining of Dogs, 
 signed ' Beth-Gelert.' That communication contained several facts 
 and opinions relating to the disease ; the possible causes of the same ; 
 and the uselessness and cruelty of muzzling and confinement as a pre- 
 ventive to it. The first-named unnatural practice has been condemned 
 (as was there shown) by no less authority than the leading medical jour- 
 nal of England, which has termed muzzling ' a great practical mistake, 
 and one which cannot fail to have an injurious effect both upon the health 
 and temper of dogs ; for, although rabies is a dreadful thing, dogs ought 
 not, any more than men, to be constantly treated as creatures likely to go 
 mad. 1 
 
 " This information and judgment, however, seem insufficient to con-
 
 FOBS CLAVIOERA. 191 
 
 vince some minds, even although they have no observations or argu- 
 ments to urge in opposition. It may be useful to the public to bring 
 forward an opinion on the merits of that letter expressed by the late 
 Thomas Turner, of Manchester, who was not only a member of the 
 Council, but one of the ablest and most experienced surgeons in Eu- 
 rope. The words of so eminent a professional man cannot but be con- 
 sidered valuable, and must have weight with the sensible and sincere ; 
 though on men of an opposite character all evidence, all reason, is too 
 often utterly cast away. 
 
 " ' MOSLEY STREET, June 8, 1873. 
 
 "'Dear , Thanks for your sensible letter. It contains great 
 
 and kind truths, and such as humanity should applaud. On the subject 
 you write about there is a large amount of ignorance both in and out of 
 the profession. 
 
 " ' Ever yours, 
 
 " ' THOMAS TURNER.' 
 
 "In addition to the foregoing statement of the founder of the Man- 
 chester Royal School of Medicine and Surgery, the opinion shall now 
 be given of one of the best veterinarians in London, who, writing on the 
 above letter in the Macdesfield Guardian, observed, ' With regard to 
 your paper on muzzling dogs, 2 fed certain from observation that the re- 
 straint put upon them by the muzzle is productive of evil, and has a ten- 
 dency to cause fits, etc.'' 
 
 " Rabies, originally spontaneous, was probably created, like many 
 other evils which afflict humanity, by the viciousness, ignorance, and 
 selfishness of man himself. ' Man's inhumanity to man makes count- 
 less thousands mourn,' wrote the great peasant and national poet of 
 Scotland. He would have uttered even a wider and more embracing 
 truth had he said, man's inhumanity to his fellow-creatures makes 
 countless millions mourn. Rabies is most prevalent amongst the 
 breeds of dogs bred and maintained for the atrocious sports of ' the 
 pit ; ' they are likewise the most dangerous when victims to that dread- 
 ful malady. Moreover, dogs kept to worry other animals are also 
 among those most liable to the disease, and the most to be feared when 
 mad. But, on the other hand, dogs who live as the friends and com- 
 panions of men of true humanity, and never exposed to annoyance or 
 ill-treatment, remain gentle and affectionate even under the excruciat- 
 ing agonies of this dire disease. Delabere Elaine, first an army sur- 
 geon and subsequently the greatest veterinarian of this or probably of 
 any other nation, tells us in his Canine Pathology, 
 
 " ' It will sensibly affect any one to witness the earnest, imploring 
 look I have often seen from the unhappy sufferers under this dreadful 
 malady. The strongest attachment has been manifested to those around 
 during their utmost sufferings; and the parched tongue has been carried 
 over the hands and feet of those who noticed them, with more than 
 usual fondness. This disposition has continued to the last moment of 
 life, in many cases, without one manifestation of any inclination to 
 bite, or to do the smallest harm. ' 
 
 " Here is another instance of ' with whatsoever measure ye mete, it 
 shall be measured to you again.' The cruelty of man, as it ever does, 
 recoils, like a viper, ultimately on man. He who invests in the Bank
 
 192 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 
 
 of Vice receives back his capital with compound interest at a high rate 
 and to the uttermost farthing. 
 
 " When a mad dog bites many people, he sometimes quits scores for 
 a long, long arrear of brutalities, insults, and oppression inflicted upon 
 him by the baser portion of mankind : the hard blow, the savage kick, 
 the loud curse, the vile annoyance, the insulting word, the starving meal, 
 the carrion food, the shortened chain, the rotten straw, the dirty kennel 
 (appropriate name), the bitter winter's night, the parching heat of sum- 
 mer, the dull and dreary years of hopeless imprisonment, the thousand 
 aches which patient merit of the unworthy takes, are represented, cul- 
 minate there ; and the cup man has poisoned, man is forced to drink. 
 
 " All these miseries are often, too often, the lot of this most affec- 
 tionate creature, who has truly been called ' our faithful friend, gallant 
 protector, and useful servant.' 
 
 " No muzzling, murder, or incarceration tyrannically inflicted on this 
 much-enduring, much-insulted slave by his master, will ever extirpate 
 rabies. No abuse of the wondrous creature beneficently bestowed by 
 the Omniscient and Almighty on ungrateful man, to be the friend of the 
 poor and the guardian of the rich, will ever extirpate rabies. Mercy 
 and justice would help us much more. 
 
 " In many lands the disease is utterly unknown. In the land of 
 Egypt, for example, where dogs swarm in all the towns and villages. 
 Yet the follower of Mohammed, more humane than the follower of 
 Christ, to our shame be it spoken, neither imprisons, muzzles, nor 
 murders them. England, it is believed, never passed such an Act of 
 Parliament as this before the present century. There is, certainly, in 
 the laws of Canute a punishment awarded to the man whose dog went 
 mad, and by his negligence wandered up and down the country. A far 
 more sensible measure than our own. Canute punished the man, not 
 the dog. Also, in Edward the Third's reign, all owners of fighting dogs 
 whose dogs were found wandering about the streets of London were 
 fined. Very different species of legislation from the brainless or brutal 
 Dog's Act of 1871, passed by a number of men, not one of whom it is 
 probable either knew or cared to know anything of the nature of the 
 creature they legislated about ; not even that he perspires, not by means 
 of his skin, but performs this vital function by means of his tongue, and 
 that to muzzle him is tantamount to coating the skin of a man all over 
 with paint or gutta-percha. Such selfishness and cruelty in this age 
 appears to give evidence towards proof of the assertion made by our 
 greatest writer on Art, that ' we are now getting cruel in our avarice,' 
 ' our hearts, of iron and clay, have hurled the Bible in the face of our 
 God, and fallen down to grovel before Mammon. ' If not, how is it that 
 we can so abuse one of the Supreme 's most choicest works, a creature 
 sent to be man's friend, and whose devotion so often ' puts to shame all 
 human attachments ? ' 
 
 4 ' We are reaping what we have sown : Rabies certainly seems on the 
 increase in this district, in whose neighbourhood, it is stated, muzzling 
 was first practised. It may spread more widely if we force a crop. The 
 best way to check it, is to do our duty to the noble creature the Almighty 
 has entrusted to us, and treat him with the humanity and affection he 
 so eminently deserves. To deprive him of liberty and exercise ; to chain 
 him like a felon ; to debar him from access to his natural medicine ; to 
 prevent him from following the overpowering instincts of his being and 
 the laws of Nature, is conduct revolting to reason and religion.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 193 
 
 "The disease of Rabies comes on by degrees, not suddenly. Its 
 symptoms can easily be read. Were knowledge more diffused, people 
 would know the approach of the malady, and take timely precautions. 
 To do as we now do, namely, drive the unhappy creatures insane, into 
 an agonizing sickness by sheer ignorance or inhumanity, and then, be- 
 cause one is ill, tie up the mouths of the healthy, and unnaturally 
 restrain all the rest, is it not the conduct of idiots rather than of reason- 
 able beings ? 
 
 " Why all this hubbub about a disease which causes less loss of life 
 than almost any other complaint known, and whose fatal effects can, in 
 almost every case, be surely and certainly prevented by a surgeon ? If 
 our lawgivers and lawmakers (who, by the way, although the House of 
 Commons is crowded with lawyers, do not in these times draw Acts of 
 Parliament so that they can be comprehended, without the heavy cost 
 of going to a superior court,) wish to save human life, let them educate 
 the hearts as well as heads of Englishmen, and give more attention to 
 boiler and colliery explosions, railway smashes, and rotten ships ; to the 
 overcrowding and misery of the poor ; to the adulteration of food and 
 medicines. Also, to dirt, municipal stupidity, and neglect ; by which 
 one city alone, Manchester, loses annually above three thousand lives. 
 " I am, your humble servant, 
 
 " BETH-GELEHT." 
 
 VOL. 1113
 
 194 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 LETTER XLI. 
 
 PARIS, 1st April, 1874. 
 
 I FIND there are still primroses in Kent, and that it is pos- 
 sible still to see blue sky in London in the early morning. 
 It was entirely pure as 1 drove down past my old Denmark 
 Hill gate, bound for Cannon Street Station, on Monday 
 morning last ; gate, closed now on me for evermore, that 
 used to open gladly enough when I came back to it from 
 work in Italy. Now, father and mother and nurse all dead, 
 and the roses of the spring, prime or late what are they to 
 me? 
 
 But I want to know, rather, what they are to you? What 
 have you, workers in England, to do with April, or May, or 
 June either ; your mill-wheels go no faster for the sunshine, 
 do they? and you can't get more smoke up the chimneys 
 because more sap goes up the trunks. Do you so much as 
 know or care who May was, or her son, Shepherd of the 
 heathen souls, so despised of you Christians ? Nevertheless, 
 I have a word or two to say to you in the light of the haw- 
 thorn blossom, only you must read some rougher ones first. 
 I have printed the June Fors together with this, because I 
 want you to read the June one first, only the substance of it 
 is not good for the May-time ; but read it, and when you 
 get to near the end, where it speaks of the distinctions be- 
 tween the sins of the hot heart and the cold, come back to 
 this, for I want you to think in the flush of May what 
 strength is in the flush of the heart also. You will find that 
 in all my late books (during the last ten years) I have 
 summed the needful virtue of men under the terms of gen- 
 tleness and justice ; gentleness being the virtue which dis- 
 tinguishes gentlemen from churls, and justice that which 
 distinguishes honest men from rogues. Now gentleness 
 may be defined as the Habit or State of Love ; the Red
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 195 
 
 Carita of Giotto (see account of her in Letter VII) ; and 
 ungentleness or clovvnishness, the opposite State or Habit 
 of Lust. 
 
 Now there are three great loves that rule the souls of men : 
 the love of what is lovely in creatures, and of what is lovely 
 in things, and what is lovely in report. And these three 
 loves have each their relative corruption, a lust the lust of 
 the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. 
 
 And, as I have just said, a gentleman is distinguished 
 from a churl by the purity of sentiment he can reach in all 
 these three passions : by his imaginative love, as opposed to 
 lust ; his imaginative possession of wealth as opposed to 
 avarice ; his imaginative desire of honour as opposed to 
 pride. 
 
 And it is quite possible for the simplest workman or 
 labourer for whom I write to understand what the feeling's 
 
 O 
 
 of a gentleman are, and share them, if he will ; but the 
 crisis and horror of this present time are that its desire of 
 money, and the fulness of luxury dishonestly attainable by 
 common persons, are gradually making churls of all men ; 
 and the nobler passions are not merely disbelieved, but even 
 the conception of them seems ludicrous to the impotent churl 
 mind ; so that, to take only so poor an instance of them as 
 my own life because I have passed it in almsgiving, not in 
 fortune hunting ; because I have laboured always for the 
 honour of others, not my own, and have chosen rather to 
 make men look to Turner and Luini than to form or exhibit 
 the skill of my own hand ; because I have lowered my rents, 
 and assured the comfortable lives of my poor tenants, instead 
 of taking from them all I could force for the roofs they 
 needed ; because I love a wood-walk better than a London 
 street, and would rather watch a seagull fly than shoot it, 
 and rather hear a thrush sing than eat it ; finally, because I 
 never disobeyed my mother, because I have honoured all 
 women with solemn worship, and have been kind even to the 
 unthankful and the evil, therefore the hacks of English art 
 and literature wag their heads at me, and the poor wretch 
 who pawns the dirty linen of his soul daily for a bottle of
 
 196 FOES CLAVIGERA. 
 
 sour wine and a cigar, talks of the " effeminate sentimen- 
 tality of Ruskin." 
 
 Now of these despised sentiments, which in all ages have 
 distinguished the gentleman from the churl, the first is that 
 reverence for womanhood which, even through all the cruel- 
 ties of the Middle Ages, developed itself with increasing 
 power until the thirteenth century, and became consummated 
 in the imagination of the Madonna, which ruled over all the 
 highest arts and purest thoughts of that age. 
 
 To the common Protestant mind the dignities ascribed to 
 the Madonna have been always a violent offence ; they are 
 one of the parts of the Catholic faith which are openest to 
 reasonable dispute, and least comprehensible by the average 
 realistic and materialist temper of the Reformation. But 
 after the most careful examination, neither as adversary nor 
 as friend, of the influences of Catholicism for good and evil, 
 I am persuaded that the worship of the Madonna has been 
 one of its noblest and most vital graces, and has never been 
 otherwise than productive of true holiness of life and purity 
 of character. I do not enter into any question as to the 
 truth or fallacy of the idea ; I no more wish to defend the 
 historical or theological position of the Madonna than that 
 of St. Michael or St. Christopher ; but I am certain that to 
 the habit of reverent belief in, and contemplation of, the 
 characters ascribed to the heavenly hierarchies, we must 
 ascribe the highest results yet achieved in human nature and 
 that it is neither Madonna worship nor saint worship, but the 
 evangelical self-worship and hell-worship gloating, with an 
 imagination as unfounded as it is foul, over the torments of 
 the damned, instead of the glories of the blest, which have 
 in reality degraded the languid powers of Christianity to 
 their present state of shame and reproach. There has prob- 
 ably not been an innocent cottage home throughout the 
 length and breadth of Europe during the whole period of vital 
 Christianity, in which the imagined presence of the Madonna 
 has not given sanctity to the humblest duties, and comfort 
 to the sorest trials of the lives of women ; arid every bright- 
 est and loftiest achievement of the arts and strength of man-
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 197 
 
 hood has been the fulfilment of the assured prophecy of the 
 poor Israelite maiden, "He that is mighty hath magnified 
 me, and Holy is His name." What we are about to substi- 
 tute for such magnifying in our modern wisdom, let the 
 reader judge from two slight things that chanced to be no- 
 ticed by me in my walk round Paris. I generally go first to 
 Our Lady's Church, for though the towers and most part of 
 the walls are now merely the modern model of the original 
 building, much of the portal sculpture is still genuine, and 
 especially the greater part of the lower arcades of the north- 
 west door, where the common entrance is. I always held 
 these such valuable pieces of the thirteenth century work 
 that I had them cast, in mass, some years ago, brought away 
 casts, eight feet high by twelve wide, and gave them to the 
 Architectural Museum. So as I was examining these, and 
 laboriously gleaning what was left of the old work among M. 
 Violet le Due's fine fresh heads of animals and points of 
 leaves, I saw a brass plate in the back of one of the niches, 
 where the improperly magnified saints used to be. At first 
 I thought it was over one of the usual almsboxes which have 
 a right to be at church entrances (if anywhere) ; but catch- 
 ing sight of an English word or two on it, I stopped to read, 
 and read to the following effect : 
 
 " F. du Larin, 
 office 
 of the 
 
 Victoria Pleasure Trips 
 And Excursions to Versailles. 
 Excursions to the Battle-fields round Paris. 
 A four-horse coach with an English guide starts daily 
 from Notre Dame Cathedral, at 10 a m for Versailles, by 
 the Bois de Boulogne, St. Cloud, Montretout, and Ville 
 d'Avray. Back in Paris at 5^- p m. Fares must be secured 
 one day in advance at the entrance of Notre Dame. 
 
 The Manager, H. du Larin." 
 
 "Magnificat anima mea Dominum, quia respexit humili- 
 tatem ancillse Suae." Truly it seems to be time that God 
 should again regard the lowliness of His handmaiden, now
 
 198 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 that she has become keeper of the coach office for excur- 
 sions to Versailles. The arrangement becomes still more 
 perfect in the objects of this Christian joyful pilgrimage 
 (from Canterbury as it were, instead of to it), the " Battle- 
 fields round Paris ! " 
 
 From Notre Darne I walked back into the livelier parts of 
 the city, though in no very lively mood ; but recovered 
 some tranquillity in the Marche aux fleurs, which is a pleas- 
 ant spectacle in April, and then made some circuit of the 
 Boulevards, where, as the third Fors would have it, I 
 suddenly came in view of one of the temples of the modern 
 superstition, which is to replace Mariolatry. For it seems 
 that human creatures must imagine something or someone 
 in Apotheosis, and the Assumption of the Virgin, and 
 Titian's or Tintoret's views on that matter being held 
 reasonable no more, apotheosis of some other power follows 
 as a matter of course. Here accordingly is one of the 
 modern hymns on the Advent of Spring, which replace now 
 in France the sweet Cathedral services of the Mois de Marie. 
 It was printed in vast letters on a white sheet, dependent at 
 the side of the porch or main entrance to the fur shop of 
 the " Cornpagnie Anglo-Russe." 
 
 " Le printemps s'annonce avec son gracieux cortege de 
 rayons et de fleurs. Adieu, 1'hiver ! C'en est bien fini ! Et 
 cependant il faut que toutes ces fourrures soient enlevees, 
 vendues, donnees, dans ces 6 jours. C'est une aubaine in- 
 esperee, un placement fabuleux ; car, qu'on ne 1'oublie pas, 
 la fourrure vraie, la belle, la riche, a toujours sa valeur in- 
 trinsique. Et, comme couronnement de cette sorte d'Aro- 
 THEOSE la C ie> Anglo-Russe remet gratis a tout acheteur un 
 talisman merveilleux pour conserver la fourrure pendant 10 
 saisons." 
 
 " Unto Adam also, and to his wife, did the Lord God 
 make coats of skins and clothed them." 
 
 The Anglo-Russian company having now superseded 
 Divine labour in such matters, you have also, instead of the 
 grand old Dragon-Devil with his " Ye shall be as Gods, 
 knowing good and evil," only a little weasel of a devil with
 
 FOBS CLAVIOERA. 199 
 
 an ermine tip to his tail, advising you, " Ye shall be as 
 Gods, buying your skins cheap." 
 
 I am a simpleton, am I, to quote such an exploded book 
 as Genesis ? My good wiseacre readers, I know as many 
 flaws in the book of Genesis as the best of you, but I knew 
 the book before I knew its flaws, while you know the flaws, 
 and never have known the book, nor can know it. And it is 
 at present much the worse for you ; for indeed the stories of 
 this book of Genesis have been the nursery tales of men 
 mightiest whom the world has yet seen in art, and policy, 
 and virtue, and none of you will write better stories for your 
 children, yet awhile. And your little Cains will learn quickly 
 enough to ask if they are their brother's keepers, and your 
 little Fathers of Canaan merrily enough to show their own 
 father's nakedness without dread either of banishment or 
 malediction ; but many a day will pass, and their evil gen- 
 erations vanish with it, in that sudden nothingness of the 
 wicked, " He passed away, and lo, he was not," before one 
 will again rise, of whose death there may remain the Divine 
 tradition, " He walked with God, and was not, for God took 
 him." Apotheosis ! How the dim hope of it haunts even 
 the last degradation of men ; and through the six thousand 
 years from Enoch, and the vague Greek ages which dreamed 
 of their twin-hero stars, declines, in this final stage of civil- 
 ization, into dependence on the sweet promise of the Anglo- 
 Russian tempter, with his ermine tail, " Ye shall be as Gods, 
 and buy cat-skin cheap." 
 
 So it must be. I know it, my good wiseacres. You can 
 have no more Queens of Heaven, nor assumptions of tri- 
 umphing saints. Even your simple country Queen of May, 
 whom once you worshipped for a goddess has not little Mr. 
 Faraday analysed her, and proved her to consist of charcoal 
 and water, combined under what the Duke of Argyll calls 
 the "reign of law"? Your once fortune-guiding stars, 
 which used to twinkle in a mysterious manner, and to make 
 you wonder what they were, everybody knows what they 
 are now : only hydrogen gas, and they stink as they twinkle.
 
 200 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 My wiseacre acquaintances, it is very fine, doubtless, for you 
 to know all these things, who have plenty of money in your 
 pockets, and nothing particular to burden your chemical 
 minds ; but for the poor, who have nothing in their pockets, 
 and the wretched, who have much on their hearts, what in 
 the world is the good of knowing that the only heaven they 
 have to go to is a large gasometer? 
 
 " Poor and wretched ! " you answer. " But when once 
 everybody is convinced that heaven is a large gasometer, 
 and when we have turned all the world into a small gasome- 
 ter, and can drive round it by steam, and in forty minutes 
 be back again where we were, nobody will be poor or 
 wretched any more. Sixty pounds on the square inch, can 
 anybody be wretched under that general application of high 
 pressure ? " 
 
 (Assisi, 15 April.) 
 
 Good wiseacres, yes ; it seems to me, at least, more than 
 probable : but if not, and you all find yourselves rich and 
 merry, with steam legs and steel hearts, I am well assured 
 there will be found yet room, where your telescopes have 
 not reached, nor can, grind you their lenses ever so finely, 
 room for the quiet souls, who choose for their part, pov- 
 erty, with light and peace. 
 
 I am writing at a narrow window, which looks out on some 
 broken tiles and a dead wall. A wall dead in the profound- 
 est sense, you wiseacres would think it. Six hundred years 
 old, and as strong as when it was built, and paying nobody 
 any interest, and still less commission, on the cost of repair. 
 Both sides of the street, or pathway rather, it is not nine 
 feet wide, are similarly built with solid blocks of grey mar- 
 ble, arched rudely above the windows, with here and there 
 a cross on the keystones. 
 
 If I chose to rise from my work and walk a hundred yards 
 down this street (if one may so call the narrow path between 
 grey walls, as quiet and lonely as a sheep-walk on Shap 
 Fells,) I should come to a small prison-like door ; and over 
 the door is a tablet of white marble let into the grey, and. on
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 201 
 
 the tablet is written, in contracted Latin, what in English 
 
 * ' o 
 
 signifies : 
 
 " Here, Bernard the Happy * 
 Received St. Francis of Assisi, 
 And saw him, in ecstacy." 
 
 Good wiseacres, you believe nothing of the sort, do you ? 
 Nobody ever yet was in ecstacy, you think, till now, when 
 they may buy cat-skin cheap? 
 
 Do you believe in Blackfriars Bridge, then ; and admit 
 that some day or other there must have been reason to call 
 it "Black Friar's"? As surely as the bridge stands over 
 Thames, and St. Paul's above it, these two men, Paul and 
 Francis, had their ecstacies, in bygone days, concerning 
 other matters than ermine tails ; and still the same ecsta- 
 cies, or effeminate sentiments, are possible to human creat- 
 ures, believe it or not as you will. I am not now, what- 
 ever the Pall Mall Gazette may think, an ecstatic person 
 myself. But thirty years ago I knew once or twice what 
 joy meant, and have not forgotten the feeling ; nay, even 
 so little a while as two years ago, I had it back again 
 for a day. And I can assure you, good wiseacres, there 
 is such a thing to be had ; but not in cheap shops, nor, 
 I was going to say, for money ; yet in a certain sense it 
 is buyable by forsaking all that a man hath. Buyable 
 literally enough the freehold Elysian field at that price, 
 but not a doit cheaper ; and I believe at this moment the 
 reason my voice has an uncertain sound, the reason that 
 this design of mine stays unhelped, and that only a little 
 group of men and women, moved chiefly by personal regard, 
 stand with me in a course so plain and true, is that I have 
 not yet given myself to it wholly, but have halted between 
 
 *" Bernard the happy." The Beato of Mont Oliveto ; not Bernard 
 of Clairvaux. The entire inscription is, "received St. Francis of 
 Assisi to supper and bed " ; but if I had written it so, it would have 
 appeared that St. Francis's ecstacy was in consequence of his getting 
 his supper.
 
 202 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 good and evil, and sit still at the receipt of custom, and am 
 always looking back from the plough. 
 
 It is not wholly rny fault this. There seem to me good 
 reasons why I should go on with my work in Oxford ; good 
 reasons why I should have a house of my own with pictures 
 and library ; good reasons why I should still take interest 
 from the bank ; good reasons why I should make myself as 
 comfortable as I can, wherever I go ; travel with two ser- 
 vants, and have a dish of game at dinner. It is true, indeed, 
 that I have given the half of my goods and more to the poor ; 
 it is true also that the work in Oxford is riot a matter of 
 pride, but of duty with me ; it is true that I think it wiser 
 to live what seems to other people a rational and pleasant, 
 not an enthusiastic, life ; and that I serve my servants at 
 least as much as they serve me. But, all this being so, I 
 find there is yet something wrong ; I have no peace, still 
 less ecstacy. It seems to me as if one had indeed to wear 
 camel's hair instead of dress coats before one can get that ; 
 and I was looking at St. Francis's camel's-hair coat yesterday 
 (they have it still in the sacristy), and I don't like the look 
 of it at all ; the Anglo-Russian Company's wear is ever so 
 much nicer, let the devil at least have this due. 
 
 And he must have a little more due even than this. It is 
 net at all clear to me how far the Beggar and Pauper Saint, 
 whose marriage with the Lady Poverty I have come here to 
 paint from Giotto's dream of it, how far, I say, the mighty 
 work he did in the world was owing to his vow of poverty, 
 or diminished by it. If he had been content to preach love 
 alone, whether among poor or rich, and if he had understood 
 that love for all God's creatures was one and the same bless- 
 ing ; and that, if he was right to take the doves out of the 
 fowler's hand, that they might build their nests, he was him- 
 self wrong when he went out in the winter's night on the 
 hills, and made for himself dolls of snow, and said, "Francis, 
 these behold these are thy wife and thy children." If 
 instead of quitting his father's trade, that he might nurse 
 lepers, he had made his father's trade holy and pure, and 
 honourable more than beggary ; perhaps at this day the
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 203 
 
 Black Friars might yet have had an unruined house by 
 Thames shore, and the children of his native village not be 
 standing in the porches of the temple built over his tomb to 
 ask alms of the infidel. 
 
 LETTER XLII. 
 
 I MUST construct my letters still, for a while, of swept-up 
 fragments ; every day provokes me to write new matter ; 
 but I must not lose the fruit of the old days. Here is some 
 worth picking up, though ill-ripened for want of sunshine, 
 (the little we had spending itself on the rain,) last year. 
 
 1st August, 1873. 
 
 " Not being able to work steadily this morning, because 
 there was a rainbow half a mile broad, and violet-bright, on 
 the shoulders of the Old man of Coniston (by calling it half 
 a mile broad, I mean that half a mile's breadth of mountain 
 was coloured by it, and by calling it violet-bright, I mean 
 that the violet zone of it came pure against the grey rocks ; 
 and note, by the way, that essentially all the colours of the 
 rainbow are secondary ; yellow exists only as a line red as 
 a line blue as a line ; but the zone itself is of varied orange, 
 green, and violet,) not being able, I say, for steady work, I 
 opened an old diary of 1849, and as the third Fors would 
 have it, at this extract from the Letters of Lady Mary 
 Wortley Montagu. 
 
 (Venice.) 
 
 "The Prince of Saxony went to see the Arsenal three 
 days ago, waited on by a numerous nobility of both sexes ; 
 the Bucentaur was adorned and launched, a magnificent col- 
 lation given ; and we sailed a little in it. I was in company 
 with the Signora Justiniani Gradenigo and Signora Marina 
 Crizzo. There were two cannons founded in his (the Prince 
 of Saxony's) presence, and a galley built and launched in an 
 hour's time." (Well may Dante speak of that busy Arsenal !) 
 
 " Last night there was a concert of voices and instruments
 
 204 FOBS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 at the Hospital of the Incurabili, where there were two girls 
 that in the opinion of all people excel either Faustina or 
 Cuzzoni. 
 
 "I am invited to-morrow to the Foscarini to dinner, which 
 is to be followed by a concert and a ball." 
 
 The account of a regatta follows, in which the various 
 nobles had boats costing 1000 sterling each, none less than 
 500, and enough of them to look like a little fleet. The 
 Signora Pisani Mocenigo's represented the Chariot of the 
 Night, drawn by four sea-horses, and showing the rising of 
 the moon, accompanied with stars, the statues on each side 
 representing the Hours, to the number of twenty-four. 
 
 Pleasant times, these, for Venice ! one's Bucentaur 
 launched, wherein to eat, buoyantly, a magnificent collation 
 beautiful ladies driving their ocean steeds in the Chariot 
 of the Night beautiful songs, at the Hospital of the Incu- 
 rabili. Much bettered, these, from the rough days when one 
 had to row and fight for life, thought Venice ; better days 
 still, in the nineteenth century, being as she appears to 
 believe now in store for her. 
 
 You thought, I suppose, that in writing those numbers of 
 Fors last year from Venice and Verona, I was idling, or 
 digressing ? 
 
 Nothing of the kind. The business of Fors is to tell you 
 of Venice and Verona ; and many things of them. 
 
 You don't care about Venice and Verona ? Of course not. 
 Who does ? And I beg you to observe that the day is com- 
 ing when, exactly in the same sense, active working men 
 will say to any antiquarian who purposes to tell them some- 
 thing of England, "We don't care about England." And 
 the antiquarian will answer, just as I have answered you now, 
 " Of course not. Who does ? " 
 
 Nay, the saying has been already said to me, and by a 
 wise and good man. When I asked, at the end of my in- 
 augural lecture at Oxford, " Will you, youths of England, 
 make your country again a royal throne of kings, a sceptred 
 isle, for all the world a source of light a centre of peace ?" 
 my University friends came to me, with grave faces, to
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 205 
 
 remonstrate against irrelevant and Utopian topics of that 
 nature being introduced in lectures on art ; and a very dear 
 American friend wrote to me, when I sent the lecture to him, 
 in some sucli terms as these : "Why will you diminish your 
 real influence for good, by speaking as if England could now 
 take any dominant place in the world ? How many millions, 
 think you, are there here, of the activest spirits of their time, 
 who care nothing for England, and would read no farther, 
 after coming upon such a passage ? " 
 
 That England deserves little care from any man nowadays, 
 is fatally true ; that in a century more she will be where 
 Venice is among the dead of nations, is far more than prob- 
 able. And yet that you do not care for dead Venice, is 
 the sign of your own ruin ; and that the Americans do not 
 care for dying England, is only the sign of their inferiority 
 to her. 
 
 For this dead Venice once taught us to be merchants, 
 sailors, and gentlemen ; and this dying England taught the 
 Americans all they have of speech, or thought, hitherto. 
 What thoughts they have not learned from England are 
 foolish thoughts ; what words they have not learned from 
 England, unseemly words ; the vile among them not being 
 able even to be humorous parrots, but only obscene mocking 
 birds. An American republican woman, lately, describes a 
 child which "like cherubim and seraphim continually did 
 cry;"* such their feminine learning of the European fashions 
 of <Te Deum ' ! And, as I tell you, Venice in like manner 
 taught us, when she and we were honest, our marketing, and 
 our manners. Then she began trading in pleasure, and souls 
 of men, before us ; followed that Babylonish trade to her 
 death, we nothing loth to imitate, so plausible she was, in 
 her mythic gondola, and Chariot of the Night ! But where 
 her pilotage has for the present carried her, and is like to 
 carry its, it may be well to consider. And therefore I will 
 ask you to glance back to my twentieth letter, giving account 
 of the steam music the modern Tasso's echoes practised on 
 her principal lagoon. That is her present manner, you ob- 
 * PaUMatt Gazette, July 31st, 1873.
 
 206 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 serve, of "whistling at her darg." But for festivity after 
 work, or altogether superseding work launching one's 
 adorned Bucentaur for collation let us hear what she is 
 doing in that kind. 
 
 From the Rinnovamento (Renewal, or Revival,) " Gazette 
 of the people of Venice " of 2nd July, 1872, I print, in my 
 terminal notes, a portion of one of their daily correspond- 
 ent's letters, describing his pleasures on the previous day, of 
 which I here translate a few pregnant sentences. 
 
 "I embarked on a little steamboat. It was elegant it 
 was vast. But its contents were enormously greater than 
 its capacity. The little steamboat overflowed * with men, 
 women, and boys. The Commandant, a proud young 
 man, cried, ' Come in, come in ! ' and the crowd became 
 always more close, and one could scarcely breathe " (the 
 heroic exhortations of the proud youth leading his public 
 to this painful result). "All at once a delicate person^ of 
 the piazza, feeling herself unwell, cried, ' I suffocate.' The 
 Commandant perceived that suffocation did veritably prevail, 
 and gave the word of command, 'Enough.' 
 
 "In eighteen minutes I had the good fortune to land safe 
 at the establishment, 'The Favourite.' And here my eyes 
 opened for wonder. In truth, only a respectable force of 
 will could have succeeded in transforming this place, only a 
 few months ago still desert and uncultivated, into a site of 
 delights. Long alleys, grassy carpets, small mountains, 
 charming little banks, chulets, solitary and mysterious paths, 
 and then an interminable covered way which conducts to the 
 bathing establishment ; and in that, attendants dressed in 
 mariner's dresses, a most commodious basin, the finest linen, 
 and the most regular and solicitous service. 
 
 " Surprised, and satisfied, I plunged myself cheerfully into 
 the sea. After the bath, is prescribed a walk. Obedient to 
 the dictates of hygiene, I take my returning way along the 
 pleasant shore of the sea to the Favourite. A chalet, or 
 
 * " Rigurgitava " gushed or gorged up ; as a bottle which you have 
 filled too full and too fast. 
 
 f Sensale, an interesting Venetian word. The fair on the Feast of 
 the Ascension at Venice became, in mellifluous brevity, ' Sensa,' and 
 the most ornamental of the ware purchaseable at it, therefore. Sensale. 
 A " Holy-Thursday- Fairing," feeling herself unwell, would be the 
 properest translation.
 
 FOR8 CLAVIOERA. 207 
 
 rather an immense salon, is become a concert room. And, 
 in fact, an excellent orchestra is executing therein most 
 chosen pieces. The artists are all endued in dress coats, 
 and wear white cravats. I hear with delight a pot-pourri 
 from Faust. I then take a turn through the most vast park, 
 and visit the Restaurant. 
 
 "To conclude. The Lido has no more need to become a 
 place of delights. It is, in truth, already become so. 
 
 " All honour to the brave who have effected the marvel- 
 lous transformation." 
 
 Onori ai bravi ! Honour to the brave ! Yes ; in all times, 
 among all nations, that is entirely desirable. You know I 
 told you, in last Fors, that to honour the brave dead was to 
 be our second child's lesson. None the less expedient if the 
 brave we have to honour be alive, instead of long dead. Here 
 are our modern Venetian troubadours, in white cravats, cele- 
 brating the victories of their Harclicanutes with collection 
 of choicest melody pot-pourri hotch-potch, from Faust. 
 And, indeed, is not this a notable conquest which resus- 
 citated Venice has made of her Lido ? Where all was vague 
 sea-shore, now, behold, " little mountains, mysterious paths." 
 Those unmanufactured mountains Eugeneans and Alps 
 seen against the sunset, are not enough for the vast mind of 
 Venice born again ; nor the canals between her palaces mys- 
 terious enough paths. Here are mountains to our perfect 
 mind, and more solemn ways, a new kingdom for us, con- 
 quered by the brave. Conquest, you observe also, just of 
 the kind which in our Times newspaper is honoured always 
 in like manner, ' Private Enterprise.' The only question is, 
 whether the privacy of your enterprise is always as fearless 
 of exposure as it used to be, or even, the enterprise of it as 
 enterprising. Let me tell you a little of the private enter- 
 prise of dead Venice, that you may compare it with that of 
 the living. 
 
 You doubted me just now, probably, when I told you that 
 Venice taught you to be sailors. You thought your Drakes 
 and Grenvilles needed no such masters. No ! but a hun- 
 dred years before Sir Francis's time, the blind captain of a
 
 208 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 Venetian galley, of one of those things which the Lady 
 Mary saw built in an hour, won the empire of the East. 
 You did fine things in the Baltic, and before Sebastopol, with 
 your ironclads and your Woolwich infants, did you ? Here 
 was a piece of fighting done from the deck of a rowed boat, 
 which came to more good, it seems to me. 
 
 " The Duke of Venice had disposed his fleet in one line 
 along the sea-wall (of Constantinople), and had cleared the 
 battlements with his shot (of stones and arrows) ; but still the 
 galleys dared not take ground. But the Duke of Venice, 
 though he was old (ninety) and stone-blind, stood, all armed, 
 at the head of his galley, and had the gonfalon of St. Mark 
 before him ; and he called to his people to ground his ship, 
 or they should die for it. So they ran the ship aground, 
 and leaped out, and carried St. Mark's gonfalon to the shore 
 before the Duke. Then the Venetians, seeing their Duke's 
 galley ashore, followed him ; and they planted the flag of St. 
 Mark on the walls, and took twenty-five towers." 
 
 The good issue of which piece of pantaloon's play was that 
 the city itself, a little while after, with due help from the 
 French, was taken, and that the crusading army proceeded 
 thereon to elect a new Emperor of the Eastern Empire. 
 
 Which office six French Barons, and six Venetian, being 
 appointed to bestow, and one of the French naming first the 
 Duke of Venice, he had certainly been declared Emperor, but 
 one of the Venetians themselves, Pantaleone Barbo, declar- 
 ing that no man could be Duke of Venice, and Emperor too, 
 gave his word for Baldwin of Flanders, to whom accordingly 
 the throne was given ; while to the Venetian State was 
 offered, with the consent of all, if they chose to hold it 
 about a third of the whole Roman Empire ! 
 
 Venice thereupon deliberates with herself. Her own pres- 
 ent national territory the true ' State ' of Venice is a 
 marsh, which you can see from end to end of ; some wooden 
 houses, half afloat, and others wholly afloat, in the canals of 
 it ; and a total population, in round numbers, about as large 
 as that of our parish of Lambeth. Venice feels some doubt 
 whether, out of this wild duck's nest, and with that number
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 209 
 
 of men, she can at once safely, and in all the world's sight, 
 undertake to govern Lacedaemon, ^Egina, ^Egos Potamos, 
 Crete, and half the Greek islands ; nevertheless, she thinks 
 she will try a little ' private enterprise ' upon them. So in 
 1207 the Venetian Senate published an edict by which there 
 was granted to all Venetian citizens permission to arm, at 
 their own expense, war-galleys, and to subdue, if they could 
 manage it in that private manner, such islands and Greek 
 towns of the Archipelago as might seem to them what we 
 call " eligible residences," the Senate graciously giving them 
 leave to keep whatever they could get. Whereupon certain 
 Venetian merchants proud young men stood, as we see 
 them standing now on their decks on the Riva, crying to the 
 crowd, ' Montate ! Montate ! ' and without any help from 
 steam, or encumbrance from the markets of Ascension Day, 
 rowed and sailed somewhat outside the Lido. Mark Dan- 
 dolo took Gallipoli ; Mark Sanudo, Naxos, Paros, and Melos ; 
 (you have heard of marbles and Venuses coming from those 
 places, have not you ?) Marin Dandolo, Andros ; Andrea 
 Ghisi, Micone and Scyros ; Dominico Michieli, Ceos ; and 
 Philocola Navigieri, the island of Vulcan himself, Lemnos. 
 Took them, and kept them also ! (not a little to our present 
 sorrow ; for, being good Christians, these Venetian gentlemen 
 made wild work among the Parian and Melian gods). It was 
 not till 1570 that the twenty-first Venetian Duke of Melos 
 was driven out by the Turks, and the career of modern white- 
 cravated Venice virtually begun. 
 
 " Honour to the brave ! " Yes, in God's name, and by all 
 manner of means ! And dishonour to the cowards : but, my 
 good Italian and good English acquaintances, are you so 
 sure, then, you know which is which ? Nay, are you 
 honestly willing to acknowledge there is any difference ? 
 Heaven be praised if you are ! but I thought your modern 
 gospel was, that all were alike ? Here's the Punch of last 
 week lying beside me, for instance, with its normal piece of 
 pathos upon the advertisements of death. Dual deaths this 
 time ; and pathetic epitaphs on the Bishop of Winchester 
 and the Baron Bethell. The best it can honestly say, (and 
 VOL. II. 14
 
 210 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 Punch, as far as I know papers, is an honest one,) is that the 
 Bishop was a pleasant kind of person ; and the best it can 
 say for the Chancellor is, that he was witty ; but, fearing 
 that something more might be expected, it smooths all down 
 with a sop of popular varnish, " How good the worst of us ! 
 how bad the best ! " Alas, Mr. Punch, is it come to this ? 
 and is there to be no more knocking down, then ? and is your 
 last scene in future to be shaking hands with the devil ? 
 clerical pantaloon in white cravat asking a blessing on the 
 reconciliation, and the drum and pipe finishing with a pot- 
 pourri from Faust ? 
 
 A popular tune, truly, everywhere, nowadays " Devil's 
 hotch-potch," and listened to " avec delices ! " And, doubt- 
 less, pious Republicans on their death-beds will have a care 
 to bequeath it, rightly played to their children, before they go 
 to hear it, divinely executed, in their own blessed country. 
 
 " How good the worst of us ! how bad the best ! " Jeanie 
 Deans, and St. Agnes, and the Holy Thursday fairing, all the 
 same ! 
 
 My good working readers, I will try to-day to put you 
 more clearly in understanding of this modern gospel, of 
 what truth there is in it for some there is, and of what 
 pestilent evil. 
 
 I call it a modern gospel : in its deepest truth it is as old 
 as Christianity. " This man receiveth sinners, and eateth 
 with them." And it was the most distinctive character of 
 Christianity. Here was a new, astonishing religion in- 
 deed ; one had heard before of righteousness ; before of 
 resurrection ; never before of mercy to sin, or fellowship 
 with it. 
 
 But it is only hi strictly modern times (that is to say, 
 within the last hundred years) that this has been fixed on, 
 by a large sect of thick-headed persons, as the essence of 
 Christianity, nay, as so much its essence, that to be an ex- 
 tremely sinful sinner is deliberately announced by them as 
 the best of qualifications for becoming an extremely Chris- 
 tian Christian.
 
 FOES CLAVIGERA. 211 
 
 But all the teachings of Heaven are given by sad law 
 in so obscure, nay, often in so ironical manner, that a block- 
 head necessarily reads them wrong. Very marvellous it is 
 that Heaven, which really in one sense is merciful to sinners, 
 is in no sense merciful to fools, but even lays pitfalls for 
 them, and inevitable snares. 
 
 Again and again, in the New Testament, the publican 
 (supposed at once traitor to his country and thief) and the 
 harlot are made the companions of Christ. She out of whom 
 He had cast seven devils, loves Him best, sees Him first, 
 after His resurrection. The sting of that old verse, " When 
 thou sawest a thief, thou consentedst to him, and hast been 
 partaker with adulterers," seems done away with. Adultery 
 itself uncondemned, for, behold, in your hearts is not every 
 one of you alike? "He that is without sin among you, let 
 him first cast a stone at her." And so, and so, no more 
 stones shall be cast nowadays ; and here, on the top of our 
 epitaph on the Bishop, lies a notice of the questionable 
 sentence which hanged a man for beating his wife to death 
 with a stick. " The jury recommended him strongly to 
 mercy." 
 
 They did so, because they knew not, in their own hearts, 
 what mercy meant. They were afraid to do anything so ex- 
 tremely compromising and disagreeable as causing a man to 
 be hanged, had no 'pity' for any creatures beaten to 
 death wives, or beasts ; but only a cowardly fear of com- 
 manding death, where it was due. Your modern conscience 
 will not incur the responsibility of shortening the hourly 
 more guilty life of a single rogue ; but will contentedly fire 
 a salvo of mitrailleuses into a regiment of honest men 
 leaving Providence to guide the shot. But let us fasten on 
 the word they abused, and understand it. Mercy miseri- 
 cordia : it does not in the least mean forgiveness of sins, 
 it means pity of sorrows. In that very instance which the 
 Evangelicals are so fond of quoting the adultery of David 
 it is not the Passion for which he is to be judged, but the 
 want of Passion, the want of Pity. This he is to judge 
 himself for, by his own mouth : " As the Lord liveth, the
 
 212 FOR8 CLAVIOERA. 
 
 man that hath done this thing shall surely die, because he 
 hath done this thing, and because he had no pity." 
 
 And you will find, alike throughout the record of the Law 
 and the promises of the Gospel, that there is, indeed, for- 
 giveness with God, and Christ, for the passing sins of the 
 hot heart, but none for the eternal and inherent sin of the 
 cold. ' Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy ' ; 
 find it you written anywhere that the wwmerciful shall ? 
 ' Her sins, which are many, are forgiven, for she loved much.' 
 But have you record of any one's sins being forgiven who 
 loved not at all ? 
 
 I opened my oldest Bible just now, to look for the accu- 
 rate words of David about the killed lamb ; a small, closely, 
 and very neatly printed volume it is, printed in Edinburgh 
 by Sir D. Hunter Blair and J. Bruce, Printers to the King's 
 Most Excellent Majesty in 1816. Yellow, now, with age, 
 and flexible, but not unclean with much use, except that the 
 lower corners of the pages at 8th of 1st Kings, and 32nd 
 Deuteronomy are worn somewhat thin and dark, the learn- 
 ing of those two chapters having cost me much pains. My 
 mother's list of the chapters with which, learned every 
 syllable accurately, she established my soul in life, has just 
 fallen out of it. And as probably the sagacious reader has 
 already perceived that these letters are written in their 
 irregular way, among other reasons that they may contain, 
 as the relation may become apposite, so much of autobiog- 
 raphy as it seems to me desirable to write, I will take what 
 indulgence the sagacious reader will give me, for printing 
 the list thus accidentally occurrent : 
 
 Exodus, chapters 15th and 20th. 
 
 2 Samuel, chapter 1st, from 17th verse to the end. 
 
 1 Kings, " 8th. 
 
 Psalms, 23rd, 32nd, 90th, 91st, 103rd, 
 
 112th, 119th, 139th. 
 Proverbs, chapters 2nd, 3rd, 8th, 12th. 
 Isaiah, chapter 58th. 
 Matthew, chapters 5th, 6th, 7th.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 213 
 
 Acts, chapter 26th. 
 
 1 Corinthians, chapters 13th, 15th. 
 James, chapter 4th. 
 
 Revelations, chapters 5th, Gth. 
 
 And truly, though I have picked up the elements of a 
 little further knowledge, in mathematics, meteorology, and 
 the like, in after life, and owe not a little to the teaching 
 of many people, this maternal installation of my mind in 
 that property of chapters, I count very confidently the most 
 precious, and, on the whole, the one essential part of all my 
 education. 
 
 For the chapters became, indeed, strictly conclusive and 
 protective to me in all modes of thought ; and the body of 
 divinity they contain acceptable through all fear or doubt : 
 nor through any fear or doubt or fault have I ever lost my 
 loyalty to them, nor betrayed the first command in the one 
 I was made to repeat oftenest, " Let not Mercy and Truth 
 forsake Thee." 
 
 And at my present age of fifty-five, in spite of some en- 
 larged observations of what modern philosophers call the 
 Reign of Law, I perceive more distinctly than ever the 
 Reign of a Spirit of Mercy and Truth, infinite in pardon 
 and purification for its wandering and faultful children, who 
 have yet Love in their hearts ; and altogether adverse and 
 implacable to its perverse and lying enemies, who have 
 resolute hatred in their hearts, and resolute falsehood on 
 their lips. 
 
 This assertion of the existence of a Spirit of Mercy and 
 Truth, as the master first of the Law of Life, and then of 
 the methods of knowledge and labour by which it is sus- 
 tained, and which the Saturday Review calls the effeminate 
 sentimentality of Mr. Ruskin's political economy, is accu- 
 rately, you will observe, reversed by the assertion of the 
 Predatory and Carnivorous of, in plainer English, flesh- 
 eating spirit in Man himself, as the regulator of modern 
 civilization, in the paper read by the Secretary at the Social 
 Science meeting in Glasgow, 1860. Out of which the fol-
 
 214 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 lowing fundamental passage may stand for sufficient and 
 permanent example of the existent, practical, and unsenti- 
 mental English mind, being the most vile sentence which I 
 have ever seen in the literature of any country or time : 
 
 " As no one will deny that Man possesses carnivorous 
 teeth, or that all animals that possess them are more or less 
 predatory, it is unnecessary to argue, a priori, that a pred- 
 atory instinct naturally follows from such organization. It 
 is our intention here to show how this inevitable result oper- 
 ates on civilized existence by its being one of the conditions 
 of Man's nature, and, consequently, of all arrangements of 
 civilised society." 
 
 The paper proceeds, and is entirely constructed, on the 
 assumption that the predatory spirit is not only one of the 
 conditions of man's nature, but the particular condition on 
 which the arrangements of Society are to be founded. For 
 " Reason would immediately suggest to one of superior 
 strength, that however desirable it might be to take posses 
 sion by violence, of what another had laboured to produce, 
 he might be treated in the same way by one stronger than 
 himself, to which he, of course, would have great objection. 
 In order, therefore, to prevent or put a stop to a practice 
 which each would object to in his own case," etc., etc. And 
 so the Social Science interpreter proceeds to sing the pres- 
 ent non-sentimental Proverbs and Psalms of England, with 
 trumpets also and shawms and steam whistles. And there 
 is concert of voices and instruments at the Hospital of the 
 Incurabili, and Progress indubitably in Chariots of the 
 Night.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 215 
 
 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 COBRIERE DEI BAGNI. 
 
 M'iMBARCAl su di un vaporetto ; era elegante, era vasto, ma il suo 
 contenuto era enorraemente superiore al contenente ; il vaporetto 
 rigurgitava di uomini, di donne, e di ragazzi. 
 
 II comandante, un fiero giovanotto, gridava : Montate ! Montate ! 
 e la calca si faceva sempre piu fitta, ed appena si poteva espirare. 
 
 Tutto ad un tratto un sensale di piazza si senti venir male, e grido ; 
 io soffoco! II comandante si accorse che si soffocava davvero, ed 
 ordino ; basta ! 
 
 II vapore allora si aw o (sic) ed io rimasi stipato fra la folia per 
 diciotto minuti, in capo ai qnali ebbi la buona ventura di sbarcare 
 incolume sul pontile dello stabilimento la Favorita II pontile e 
 lunghissimo, ma elegante e coperto. II sole per conseguenza non da 
 nessuna noia. 
 
 Una strada che, fino a quando non sia migliorata, non consi glierei di 
 percorrere a chi non abbia i piedi in perfetto stato, conduce al parco 
 della Stabilimento Bagui del signer Delahant. E qui i miei occhi si 
 sprirono per la meraviglia. E diffati, solo una rispettibile forza di 
 volonta ed operosita pote riuscire a trasformare quel luogo, pochi mesi 
 fa ancora deserto ed incolto, in un sito di delisie. Lunghi viali, tappeti 
 erbosi, montagnole, banchine, chalet, strade solitarie e misteriose, lumi, 
 epalti, e poi un interminabile pergolato che conduce allo stabilimento 
 bagni, ed in questo inservienti vestiti attci marinara, comodissima vasca, 
 biancheria finissima, e servizio regolare e premuroso. 
 
 Sorpreso e contento, mi tuffo allegramente nel mare. 
 
 Dopo il bagno e prescritta una passeggiata. Ossequiente ai dettami 
 dell' igiene, riprendo la via e lungo la piacevole spiaggia del mare 
 ritorno alia Favorita. 
 
 Un chalet, o piuttosto una sala immensa, addobbata con originalita e 
 ricchezza, e divenuta una sala di concerto. Diffatti una eccellente or- 
 chestra sta esegueudo pezzi sceltissimi. 
 
 Oli artixti indossano tutti la marsina e In cravatta bianca. Ascolto con 
 delizia un potpourri del Fawt e poi torno a girare per il vastissimo parco 
 e visito il Restaurant 
 
 Concludendo, il Lido non ha piu bisogno di diventare un luogo di 
 delizie; esse Io e in verita diggia diventato, e fra breve i comodi bagni 
 del Lido di Venezia saranno fra i piu famosi d'ltalia. 
 
 Onore ai bravi che hanno operata la meravigliosa trasformazione ! 
 
 11 liinnoramento, Gazetta del Popolo di Venezia ; (2nd July, 1872). 
 
 This following part of a useful letter, dated 19th March, 1873, ought 
 to have been printed before now :
 
 216 FOR8 CLAVIOERA. 
 
 " Sir, Will you permit me to respectfully call your attention to a 
 certain circumstance which has, not unlikely, something to do with the 
 failure (if failure it is) of your appeal for the St. George's Fund? 
 
 "At page 71 of Fors Clamgera for May, 1871, your words were, ' Will 
 any such give a tenth of what they have and of what they earn ? ' But 
 in May of the following year, at page 228, the subject is referred to as the 
 giving of ' the tenth of what they have, or make.' The two passages 
 are open to widely differing interpretations. Moreover, none of the 
 sums received appear to have any relation to ' tenths ' either of earn- 
 ings or possessions. 
 
 " Is it not probable that the majority of your readers understood you 
 either to mean literally what you said, or to mean nothing but jest ? 
 They would naturally ask themselves, ' Must it be a tenth of both, or 
 nothing ? ' 'A tenth of either ? ' Or, ' After all, only what we feel 
 able to give ? ' Their perplexity would lead to the giving of nothing. 
 As nobody who has a pecuniary title to ask for an explanation appears 
 to have called your attention to the subject, I, who have no such title, 
 do so now, feeling impelled thereto by the hint in this month's Fors 
 of the possible ' non-continuance of the work. ' 
 
 "May I presume to add one word more? Last Monday's Times 
 (March 17th) gave a report of a Working Men's Meeting on the present 
 political crisis. One of the speakers said ' he wanted every working man 
 to be free.' And his idea of freedom he explained to be that all workmen 
 should be at liberty 'to leave their work at a moment's notice.' This, 
 as I have reason to know, is one of the things which working men 
 have got into their heads, and which the newspapers ' get their living 
 by asserting. ' " 
 
 Lastly, the present English notion of civilizing China by inches, may 
 be worth keeping record of. 
 
 " We have Philistines out here, and a Philistine in the East is a per- 
 fect Goliath. When he imagines that anything is wrong, he says let 
 it be a Coolie or an Emperor ' Give him a thrashing. ' The men of 
 this class here propose their usual remedy : ' Let us have a war, and 
 give the Chinese a good licking, and then we shall have the audience 
 question granted, and everything else will follow. 1 This includes open- 
 ing up the country for trade, and civilizing the people, which according 
 to their theories can be best done by ' thrashing them. ' The mission- 
 aries are working to civilize the people here in another way, that is by 
 the usual plan of tracts and preaching ; but their system is not much 
 in favour, for they make such very small progress among the 360,000,000, 
 the conversion of which is their problem. The man of business wants 
 the country opened up to trade, wants manufactures introduced, the 
 mineral wealth to be used, and generally speaking the resources of the 
 country to be developed, ' and that sort of thing you know that's the 
 real way to civilize them. ' This, of course, implies a multitudinous breed 
 of Mr. Ruskin's demons, or machinery, to accomplish all this. I am 
 here giving the tone of the ideas I hear expressed around me. It was 
 only the other day that I heard some of these various points talked 
 over. We were sailing on the river in a steam launch, which was mak- 
 ing the air impure with its smoke, snorting in a high-pressure way, and 
 whistling as steam launches are wout to do. The scene was appropriate
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 217 
 
 to the conversation, for we were among a forest of great junks most 
 quaint and picturesque they looked so old-fashioned they seemed, 
 that Noah's Ark, had it been there, would have had a much more mod- 
 ern look about it. My friend, to whom the launch belonged, and who 
 is in the machinery line himself, gave his opinion. He began by giving 
 a significant movement of his head in the direction of the uncouth- 
 looking junks, and then pointing to his own craft with its engine, said 
 ' he did not believe much in war, and the missionaries were not of much 
 account. This is the thing to do it,' he added, pointing to the launch ; 
 ' let us get at them with this sort of article, and steam at sixty pounds 
 on the square inch ; that would soon do it ; that's the thing to civilize 
 them sixty pounds on the square inch.' "
 
 218 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 LETTER XLIIL 
 
 ROME, Corpus- Domini, 1874. 
 
 I WROTE, for a preface to the index at the end of the sec- 
 ond volume of Fors, part of an abstract of what had been 
 then stated in the course of this work. Fate would not let 
 me finish it ; but what was done will be useful now, and 
 shall begin my letter for this month. Completing three and a 
 half volumes of Fors, it may contain a more definite statement 
 of its purpose than any given hitherto ; though I have no in- 
 tention of explaining that purpose entirely, until it is in suffi- 
 cient degree accomplished. I have a house to build ; but 
 none shall mock me by saying I was not able to finish it, nor 
 be vexed by not finding in it the rooms they expected. But 
 the current and continual purpose of Fors Clavigera is to 
 explain the powers of Chance, or Fortune, (Fors), as she 
 offers to men the conditions of prosperity ; and as these 
 conditions are accepted or refused, nails down and fastens 
 their fate for ever, being thus ' Clavigera,' ' nail-bearing.' 
 The image is one familiar in mythology : my own concep- 
 tion of it was first got from Horace, and developed by steady 
 effort to read history with impartiality, and to observe the 
 lives of men around me with charity. " How you may make 
 your fortune, or mar it," is the expansion of the title. 
 
 Certain authoritative conditions of life, of its happiness, and 
 its honour, are therefore stated, in this book, as far as they 
 may be, conclusively and indisputably, at present known. I 
 do not enter into any debates, nor advance any opinions. 
 With what is debatable I am unconcerned ; and when I only 
 have opinions about things, I do not talk about them. I at- 
 tack only what cannot on any possible ground be defended j 
 and state only what I know to be incontrovertibly true. 
 
 You will find, as you read Fors more, that it differs curi- 
 ously from most modern books in this. Modern fashion is,
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 219 
 
 that the moment a man strikes some little lucifer match, or 
 is hit by any form of fancy, he begins advertising his lucifer 
 match, and fighting for his fancy, totally ignoring the exist- 
 ing sunshine, and the existing substances of things. But I 
 have no matches to sell, no fancies to fight for. All that I 
 have to say is that the day is in heaven, and rock and wood 
 on earth, and that you must see by the one, and work with 
 the other. You have heard as much before, perhaps. I 
 hope you have ; I should be ashamed if there were anything 
 in Fors which had not been said before, and that a thou- 
 sand times, and a thousand times of times, there is nothing 
 in it, nor ever will be in it, but common truths, as clear to 
 honest mankind as their daily sunrise, as necessary as their 
 daily bread ; and which the fools who deny can only live, 
 themselves, because other men know and obey. 
 
 You will therefore find that whatever is set down in Fors 
 for you is assuredly true, inevitable, trustworthy to the 
 uttermost, however strange.* Not because I have any 
 power of knowing more than other people, but simply be- 
 cause I have taken the trouble to ascertain what they also 
 may ascertain if they choose. Compare on this point Letter 
 VI., page 74. 
 
 The following rough abstract of the contents of the first 
 seven letters may assist the reader in their use. 
 
 LETTER I. Men's prosperity is in their own hands ; and 
 no forms of government are, in themselves, of the least 
 use. The first beginnings of prosperity must be in 
 getting food, clothes, and fuel. These cannot be got 
 either by the fine arts, or the military arts. Neither 
 painting nor fighting feed men ; nor can capital, in 
 the form qf money or machinery, feed them. All 
 capital is imaginary or unimportant, except the quan- 
 
 * Observe, this is only asserted of its main principles ; not of minor 
 and accessory points. I may be entirely wrong in the explanation of a 
 text, or mistake the parish schools of St. Mathiaa for St. Matthew's ; 
 over and over again. I have so large a field to work in that this cannot 
 be helped. But none of these minor errors are of the least consequence 
 to the business in hand.
 
 220 FOR8 CLAVIOERA. 
 
 tity of food existing in the world at any given mo- 
 ment. Finally, men cannot live by lending money to 
 each other, and the conditions of such loan at present 
 are absurd and deadly.* 
 
 LETTER II. The nature of Rent. It is an exaction, by 
 force of hand, for the maintenance of Squires : but 
 had better at present be left to them. The nature of 
 useful and useless employment. When employment 
 is given by capitalists, it is sometimes useful, but 
 oftener useless ; sometimes moralizing, but oftener 
 demoralizing. And we had therefore better employ 
 ourselves, without any appeal to the capitalists (page 
 24) ; and to do this successfully, it must be with three 
 resolutions ; namely, to be personally honest, socially 
 helpful, and conditionally obedient (page 29) : ex- 
 plained in Letter VII., page 98 to end. 
 
 LETTER III. The power of Fate is independent of the 
 Moral Law, but never supersedes it. Virtue ceases 
 to be such, if expecting reward : it is therefore never 
 materially rewarded. (I ought to have said, ex- 
 cept as one of the appointed means of physical and 
 mental health.) The Fates of England, and proper 
 mode of studying them. Stories of Henry II. and 
 Richard I. 
 
 LETTER IV. The value and nature of Education. It may 
 be good, bad, or neither the one nor the other. 
 Knowledge is not education, and can neither make us 
 happy nor rich. Opening discussion of the nature 
 and use of riches. Gold and diamonds are not riches, 
 and the reader is challenged to specify their use. 
 Opening discussion of the origin of wealth. It does 
 not fall from heaven, (compare Letter VII., page 97,) 
 but is certainly obtainable, and has been generally ob- 
 tained, by pillage of the poor. Modes in which edu- 
 
 * See first article in the Notes and Correspondence to this number.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 221 
 
 cation in virtue has been made costly to them, and 
 education in vice cheap. (Page 56.) 
 
 LETTER V. The powers of Production. Extremity of 
 modern folly in supposing there can be over-produc- 
 tion. The power of machines. They cannot increase 
 the possibilities of life, but only the possibilities of 
 idleness. (Page 65.) The things which are essential 
 to life are mainly three material ones and three spirit- 
 ual ones. First sketch of the proposed action of 
 St. George's Company. 
 
 LETTER VI. The Elysium of modern days. This letter, 
 written under the excitement of continual news of the 
 revolution in Paris, is desultory, and limits itself to 
 noticing some of the causes of that revolution : chiefly 
 the idleness, disobedience, and covetousness of the 
 richer and middle classes. 
 
 LETTER VII. The Elysium of ancient days. The defini- 
 tions of true, and spurious, Communism. Explanation 
 of the design of true Communism, in Sir Thomas More's 
 
 O 
 
 Utopia. This letter, though treating of matters 
 necessary to the whole work, yet introduces them pre- 
 maturely, being written, incidentally, upon the ruin of 
 Paris. 
 
 Assrsi, 18th May, 1874. 
 
 So ended, as Fors would have it, my abstraction, which I 
 see Fors had her reasons for stopping me in ; else the ab- 
 straction would have needed farther abstracting. As it is, 
 the reader may find in it the real gist of the remaining letters, 
 and discern what a stiff business we have in hand, rent, 
 capital, and interest, all to be attacked at once ! and a method 
 of education shown to be possible in virtue, as cheaply as in 
 vice ! 
 
 I should have got my business, stiff though it may be, far- 
 ther forward by this time, but for that same revolution in 
 Paris, and burning of the Tuileries, which greatly confused 
 my plan by showing me how much baser the human material 
 I had to deal with, was, than I thought in beginning.
 
 222 FOBS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 That a Christian army (or, at least, one which Saracens 
 would have ranked with that they attacked, under the general 
 name of Franks,) should fiercely devastate and rob an entire 
 kingdom laid at their mercy by the worst distress ; that the 
 first use made by this distressed country of the defeat of its 
 armies would be to overthrow its government ; and that, 
 when its metropolis had all but perished in conflagration dur- 
 ing the contest between its army and mob, no warning should 
 be taken by other civilized societies, but all go trotting on 
 again, next week, in their own several roads to ruin, persist- 
 ently as they had trotted before, bells jingling, and whips 
 cracking, these things greatly appalled me, finding I had 
 only slime to build with instead of mortar ; and shook my 
 plan partly out of shape. 
 
 The frightfullest thing of all, to my mind, was the German 
 temper, in its naive selfishness ; on which point, having been 
 brought round again to it in my last letter, I have now 
 somewhat more to say. 
 
 In the Pall Mall Gazette of 7th March, this year, under 
 the head of ' This Evening's News,' appeared an article of 
 which I here reprint the opening portion. 
 
 The well-known Hungarian author, Maurus Jokai, is at 
 present a visitor in the German capital. As a man of note 
 he easily obtained access to Prince Bismarck's study, where 
 an interesting conversation took place, which M. Jokai re- 
 ports pretty fully to the Hungarian journal the lion: 
 
 " The Prince was, as usual, easy in his manner, and com- 
 municative, and put a stop at the very outset to the Hunga- 
 rian's attempt at ceremony. M. Jokai humorously remarked 
 upon the prevalence of ' iron ' in the surroundings of the 
 ' iron ' Prince. Among other things, there is an iron couch, 
 and an iron safe, in which the Chancellor appears to keep hig 
 cigars. Prince Bismarck was struck by the youthful appear- 
 ance of his guest, who is ten years his junior, but whose 
 writings he remembers to have seen reviewed long ago, in the 
 Augsburg Gazette (at that time still, the Chancellor said, a 
 clever paper) when he bore a lieutenant's commission. In 
 the ensuing conversation, Prince Bismarck pointed out the 
 paramount necessity to Europe of a consolidated state in the 
 position of Austro-IIungary. It was mainly on that account
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 223 
 
 that he concluded peace with so great despatch in 1806. Small 
 independent States in the East would be a misfortune to 
 Europe. Austria and Hungary must realize their mutual in- 
 terdependence, and the necessity of being one. However, 
 the dualist system of government must be preserved, because 
 the task of developing the State, which on this side of the 
 Leitha falls to the Germans, beyond that river naturally falls 
 to the Magyars. The notion that Germany has an inclination 
 to annex more land, Prince Bismarck designated as a myth. 
 God preserve the Germans from such a wish ! Whatever 
 more territory they might acquire would probably be under- 
 mined by Papal influence, and they have enough of that 
 already. Should the Germans of Austria want to be annexed 
 by Germany, the Chancellor would feel inclined to declare 
 war against them for that wish alone. A German Minister 
 who should conceive the desire to annex part of Austria 
 would deserve to be hanged a punishment the Prince indi- 
 cated by gesture. He does not wish to annex even a square 
 foot of fresh territory, not as much as two pencils he kept on 
 playing with during the conversation would cover. Those 
 pencils, however, M. Jokai remarks, were big enough to serve 
 as walking-sticks, and on the map they would have reached 
 quite from Berlin to Trieste. Prince Bismarck went on to 
 justify his annexation of Alsace-Lorraine by geographical 
 necessity. Otherwise he would rather not have grafted the 
 French twig upon the German tree. The French are enemies 
 never to be appeased. Take away from theut the cook, the 
 tailor, and the hairdresser, and what remains of them is a 
 copper-coloured Indian." 
 
 Now it does not matter whether Prince Bismarck ever said 
 this, or not. That the saying should be attributed to him in 
 a leading journal, without indication of doubt or surprise, is 
 enough to show what the German temper is publiclv recog- 
 nized to be. And observe what a sentence it is thus attrib- 
 uted to him. The French are only copper-coloured Indians, 
 finely dressed. This said, of the nation which gave us Charle- 
 magne, St. Louis, St. Bernard, and Joan of Arc ; which 
 founded the central type of chivalry in the myth of Roland ; 
 which showed the utmost height of valour yet recorded in 
 history, in the literal life of Guiscard ; and which built 
 Chartres Cathedral !
 
 224 FOBS OLAVIGERA. 
 
 But the French are not what they were ! No ; nor tho 
 English, for that matter ; probably we have fallen the 
 farther of the two : meantime the French still retain, at the 
 root, the qualities they always had ; and of one of these, a 
 highly curious and commendable one, I wish you to take 
 some note to-day. 
 
 Among the minor nursery tales with which my mother 
 allowed me to relieve the study of the great nursery tale of 
 Genesis, my favourite was Miss Edgeworth's Frank. The 
 authoress chose this for the boy's name, because she meant 
 him to be a type of Frankness, or openness of heart : truth 
 of heart, that is to say, liking to lay itself open. You are in 
 the habit, I believe, some of you, still, of speaking occasion- 
 ally of English Frankness ; not recognizing, through the 
 hard clink of the letter K, that you are only talking, all the 
 while, of English Frenchness. Still less when you count 
 your cargoes of gold from San Francisco, do you pause to 
 reflect what San means, or what Francis means, without 
 the Co ; or how it came to pass that the power of this 
 mountain town of Assisi, where not only no gold can be 
 dug, but where St. Francis forbade his Company to dig it 
 anywhere else came to give names to Devil's towns far 
 across the Atlantic (and by the way you may note how 
 clumsy the Devil is at christening ; for if by chance he gets 
 a fresh York all to himself, he never has any cleverer notion 
 than to call it ' New York' ; and in fact, having no mother- 
 wit from his darn, is obliged very often to put up with the old 
 names which were given by Christians, Nombre di Dios, 
 Trinidad, Vera Cruz, and the like, even when he has all his 
 own way with everything else in the places, but their 
 names). 
 
 But to return. You have lately had a fine notion, have 
 you not, of English Liberty as opposed to French Slavery ? 
 
 Well, whatever your English liberties may be, the French 
 knew what the word meant, before you. For France, if you 
 will consider of it, means nothing else than the Country of 
 Franks ; the country of a race so intensely Free that they 
 for evermore gave name to Freedom. The Greeks some-
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 225 
 
 times got their own way, as a mob ; but nobody, meaning to 
 talk of liberty, calls it 'Greekness.' The Romans knew 
 better what Libertas meant, and their word for it has 
 become common enough, in that straitened form, on your 
 English tongue ; but nobody calls it ' Romanness.' But at 
 last comes a nation called the Franks ; and they are so 
 inherently free and noble in their natures, that their name 
 becomes the word for the virtue ; and when you no\v want 
 to talk of freedom of heart, you say Frankness, and for the 
 last political privilege which you have it so much in your 
 English minds to get, you haven't so much as an English 
 word, but must call it by the French one, ' Franchise.'* 
 
 " Freedom of heart" you observe, I say. Not the English 
 freedom of Insolence, according to Mr. B., (see above, Let- 
 ter XXIX,) but pure French openness of heart, Fanchette's 
 and her husband's frankness, the source of joy, and courtesy 
 and civility, and passing softness of human meeting of kindly 
 glance with glance. Of which Franchise, in her own spirit 
 Person, here is the picture for you, from the French Ro- 
 mance of the Rose, a picture which English Chaucer was 
 thankful to copy. 
 
 " And after all those others came Franchise, 
 Who was not brown, nor grey, 
 But she was white as snow. 
 And she had not the nose of an Orleanois. 
 Aussi had she the nose long and straight. 
 Eyes green, and laughing vaulted eyebrows ; 
 She had her hair blonde and long, 
 And she was simple as a dove. 
 The body she had sweet, and brightly bred ; 
 And she dared not do, nor say 
 To any one, anything she ought not. 
 And if she knew of any man 
 Who was in sorrow for love of her, 
 So soon she had great pity for him, 
 For she had the heart so pitiful 
 And so sweet and so lovely, 
 That no one suffered pain about her, 
 But she would help him all she could. 
 
 * See second note at end of this letter. 
 VOL. II. 15
 
 226 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 And she wore a surquanye 
 
 Which was of no coarse cloth ; 
 
 There's none so rich as far as Arras. 
 
 And it was so gathered up, and so joined together, 
 
 That there was nob a single point of it 
 
 Which was not set in its exact place, rightly. 
 
 Much well was dressed Franchise, 
 
 For no robe is so pretty 
 
 As the surquanye for a demoiselle. 
 
 A girl is more gentle and more darling 
 
 In surquanye than in coat, 
 
 And the white surquanye 
 
 Signifies that sweet and frank 
 
 Is she who puts it on her." 
 
 May I ask you now to take to heart those two lines of this 
 French description of French ness : 
 
 " And she dared not do, nor say 
 
 To any one, anything she ought not." 
 
 That is not your modern notion of Frenchness, or fran- 
 chise, or libertas, or liberty for all these are synonyms for the 
 same virtue. And yet the strange thing is that the lowest 
 types of the modern French grisette are the precise corrup- 
 tion of this beautiful Franchise : and still retain, at their 
 worst, some of the grand old qualities ; the absolute sources 
 of corruption being the neglect of their childhood by the 
 upper classes, the abandonment to their own resources, and 
 the development therefore of "Liberty and Independence," 
 in your beautiful English, not French, sense. 
 
 " Livree a elle-meme depuis 1'iige de treize ans, habituee 
 a ne compter que sur elle seule, elle avait de la vie un expe- 
 rience dont j'etais confondue. De ce Paris oil elle etait nee, 
 elle savait tout, elle connaissait tout. 
 
 "Je n'avais pas idee d'une si complete absence de sens 
 moral, d'une si inconsciente depravation, d'une impudeur si 
 effrontement naive. 
 
 " La regie de sa conduite, c'etait sa fantaisie, son instinct, 
 le caprice du moment. 
 
 " Elle aimait les longues stations dans les cafes, les rnelo- 
 drames entremeles de chopes et d'oranges pendant les en-
 
 FOBS CLAVIOEKA. 227 
 
 tr'actes, les parties de canot a Asnieres, et surtout, et avant 
 tout, le bal. 
 
 " Elle etait comme chez elle a 1'Elysee Montmartre et au 
 Chateau-Rouge ; elle y connaissait tout le monde, le chef 
 d'orchestre la saluait, ce dont elle etait extraordinairement 
 fiere, et quantite de gens la tutoyaient. 
 
 " Je 1'accompagnais partout, dans les commencements, et 
 bien que je n'etais pas precisement naive, ni genee par les 
 scrupules de mon education, je fus tellement consternee de 
 1'incroyable desordre de sa vie, que je ne pus m'empecher de 
 lui en faire quelques representations. 
 
 " Elle se facha tout rouge. 
 
 " Tu fais ce qui te plait, me dit-elle, laisse-moi faire ce qui 
 me convient. 
 
 " C'est un justice que je lui dois : jamais elle n'essaya sur 
 moi son influence, jamais elle ne m'engagea a suivre son ex- 
 emple. Ivre de liberte, elle respectait la liberte des autres." 
 
 Such is the form which Franchise has taken under repub- 
 lican instruction. But of the true Franchise of Charlemagne 
 and Roland, there were, you must note also, two distinct 
 forms. In the last stanzas of the Chant de Roland, Nor- 
 mandy and France have two distinct epithets, " Normandie, 
 la franche ; France, la solue," (soluta). " Frank Norman- 
 dy ; Loose France." Solute ; we, adding the dis, use the 
 words loose and dissolute only in evil sense. But * France 
 la solue ' has an entirely lovely meaning. The frankness 
 of Normandy is the soldier's virtue ; but the unbinding, 
 so to speak, of France, is the peasant's. 
 
 " And having seen that lovely maid, 
 
 Why should I fear to say 
 That she is ruddy, fleet, and strong, 
 And down the rocks can leap along 
 Like rivulets in May ? " 
 
 It is curious that the most beautiful descriptive line in all 
 Horace, 
 
 "montibus altis 
 Levis crepante lympha desilit pede," 
 
 comes in the midst of the dream of the blessed islands which
 
 228 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 
 
 are to be won by following the founders of what city, think 
 you? The city that first sang the " Marseillaise." 
 
 ' ' Juppiter ilia piae secrevit litora genti. ' ' 
 
 Recollect that line, my French readers, if 1 chance to find 
 any, this month, nor less the description of those ' arva beata' 
 as if of your own South France ; and then consider also 
 those prophetic lines, true of Paris as of Rome, 
 
 "Nee fera coerulea domuit Germania pube. 
 Impia, perdemus devoti sanguinis aetas. " 
 
 Consider them, I say, and deeply, thinking over the full force 
 of those words, "devoti sanguinis," and of the ways in which 
 the pure blood of Normandie la franche, and France la solue, 
 has corrupted itself, and become accursed. Had I but time 
 to go into the history of that word ' devoveo,' what a piece 
 of philology it would lead us into ! But, for another kind 
 of opposition to the sweet Franchise of old time, take this 
 sentence of description of another French maiden, by the 
 same author from whom I have just quoted the sketch of the 
 grisette : 
 
 " C'etait une vielle fille d'une cinquantaine d'annees, seche 
 et jaune, avec un grand nez d'oiseau de proie, tres noble, 
 encore plus devote, joueuse comme la dame de pique en per- 
 sonne, et medisante a faire battre des montagnes." 
 
 You see what accurate opposition that gives you of an- 
 other kind, to Franchise. You even have the ' nez d'Or- 
 leanois ' specified, which the song of the Rose is so careful 
 to tell you Franchise had not. 
 
 Here is another illustrative sentence : 
 
 " La colere, a la fin, une de ces terribles coleres blanches 
 de devote, chassait des flots de bile au cerveau de Mademoi- 
 selle de la Rochecardeau, et blemissait ses levres." 
 
 These three sentences I have taken from two novels of 
 Emile Gaboriau, Uargent des autres, and La Degringolade. 
 They are average specimens of modern French light litera- 
 ture, with its characteristic qualities and defects, and are 
 both of them in many respects worth careful study ; but
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 229 
 
 chiefly in the representation they give, partly with conscious 
 blame, and partly in unconscious corruption, of the Devoti 
 sanguinis aetas ; with which, if you would compare old 
 France accurately, read first Froude's sketch of the life of 
 Bishop Hugo of Lincoln, and think over the scene between 
 him and Coeur de Lion. 
 
 You have there, as in life before you, two typical French- 
 men of the twelfth century a true king, and a true priest, 
 representing the powers which the France of that day con- 
 trived to get set over her, and did, on the whole, implicitly 
 and with her heart obey. 
 
 They are not altogether by taking the dancing-master 
 and the hairdresser away from them reduced to copper- 
 coloured Indians. 
 
 If, next, you will take the pains and it will need some 
 pains, for the book is long and occasionally tiresome to 
 read the Degringolade, you will find it nevertheless worth 
 your while ; for it gives you a modern Frenchman's account 
 of the powers which France in the nineteenth century con- 
 trived to get set over her ; and obeyed not with her heart, 
 but restively, like an ill-bred dog or mule, which have no 
 honour in their obedience, but bear the chain and bit all the 
 same. 
 
 But there is a farther and much more important reason 
 for my wish that you should read this novel. It gives you 
 types of existent Frenchmen and Frenchwomen of a very 
 different class. They are, indeed, only heroes and heroines 
 in a quite second-rate piece of literary work. But these 
 stereotypes, nevertheless, have living originals. There is to 
 be found in France, as truly the Commandant Delorge, as 
 the Comte de Combelaine. And as truly Mademoiselle de 
 Maillefert as the Duchesse de Maumussy. How is it, then, 
 that the Count and Duchess command everything in France, 
 and that the Commandant and Demoiselle command nothing? 
 that the best they can do is to get leave to live unknown, 
 and unthought-of ? The question, believe me, is for England 
 also ; and a very pressing one. 
 
 Of the frantic hatred of all religion developed in the French
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 republican mind, the sentences I have quoted are interesting 
 examples. I have not time to speak of them in this letter, 
 but they struck me sharply as I corrected the press to-day ; 
 for I had been standing most part of the morning by St. 
 Paul's grave, thinking over his work in the world. A be- 
 wildered peasant, from some green dingle of Campagna, who 
 had seen me kneel when the Host passed, and took me there- 
 fore to be a human creature and a friend, asked me ' where 
 St. Paul was ' ? 
 
 ' There, underneath,' I answered. 
 
 ' There ? ' he repeated, doubtfully, as dissatisfied. 
 
 ' Yes,' I answered ; ' his body at least ; his head is at the 
 Lateran.' 
 
 ' II suo corpo,' again he repeated, still as in discontent. 
 Then, after a pause, ' E la sua statua ? ' 
 
 Such a wicked thing to ask for that ! wasn't it, my Evan- 
 gelical friends ? You would so much rather have had him 
 ask for Hudson's !
 
 FOIiS CLAVIGERA. 231 
 
 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 I HAVE had by me, some time, three eager little fragments from one 
 of Mr. Sillar's letters : too eager, always, in thinking this one sin of re- 
 ceiving interest on money means every other. I know many excellent 
 people, happily, whose natures have not been spoiled by it : the more 
 as it has been done absolutely without knowledge of being wrong. I 
 did not find out the wrong of it myself, till Mr. Sillar showed me the 
 way to judge of it. 
 
 The passage which I have italicized, from Mr. Lecky, is a very pre- 
 cious statement of his sagacious creed. The chief jest of it is his having 
 imagined himself to be of Aristotle's ' species' ! 
 
 " To get profit without responsibility has been a fond scheme as im- 
 possible of honest attainment as the philosopher's stone or perpetual 
 motion. Visionaries have imagined such things to exist, but it has 
 been reserved for this mammon-worshipping generation to find it 
 in that arrangement by which a man, without labour, can secure a 
 permanent income with perfect security, and without diminution of the 
 capital. 
 
 " A view of it is evidently taken by Lord Bacon when he says that 
 usury bringeth the treasure of a realm into few hands ; for the usurer 
 trading on a certainty, and other men on uncertainties, at the end of 
 the game all the money will be in the box. 
 
 " We have had now an opportunity of practically testing this theory ; 
 not more than seventeen years have elapsed since all restraint was re- 
 moved from the growth of what Lord Coke calls this ' pestilent weed,' 
 and we see Bacon's words verified, the rich becoming richer, and the poor 
 poorer, is the cry throughout the whole civilized world. Rollin in his 
 Ancient History speaking of the Roman Empire, tells us that it has 
 been the ruin of every state where it was tolerated. It is in a fair way 
 to ruin this of ours, and ruin it it will, unless England's sons calmly and 
 candidly investigate the question for themselves, and resolutely act 
 upon the conclusions to which the investigation must lead them. 
 
 " There is such a thing as unlimited liability; of the justice of such 
 laws I do not now speak, but the law exists, and as it was made by 
 moneyed men in the interest of moneyed men they cannot refuse to be 
 judged by it. The admission, therefore, of the fact that interest is a 
 share of the profit, would throw upon the money-lender the burden of 
 unlimited liability ; this he certainly refuses to admit, consequently he 
 has no alternative but to confess that interest has nothing whatever to 
 do with profit, but that it is a certain inherent property of money, viz., 
 that of producing money, and that interest is as legitimately the offspring 
 of money as a Calf is that of a Cow. That this is really the stand now
 
 232 FORS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 taken, may be shown from the literature and practice of the present 
 day. Mr. Lecky, one of the latest champions of interest, boldly admits 
 it. In his history of the rise and influence of rationalism in Europe, 
 p. 284, after quoting Aribtotle's saying, that all money is sterile by na- 
 ture, he says, ' 27iis is an absurdity of Aristotle's, and the number of cen- 
 turies during which it was incessantly asserted without being (so far as we 
 know) once questioned, is a curious illustration of the longemty of a sophism 
 when expressed in a terse form, and sheltered by a, great name. It is 
 enough to make one ashamed of his specif s to think that Bentham ican the 
 first to bring into notice the simple considtration that if the borrower em- 
 ploys the borrowed money in buying bulls and cows, and if these produce 
 calves to ten times the value of the interest, the money borrowed can 
 scarcely be said to be sterile. ' 
 
 " And now to remedy all this. Were there no remedy, to parade it, 
 in our view, would be cruel ; but there is one, eo simple, that, like 
 those of divine making, it may be despised for its simplicity. It con- 
 sists iu the recognition of the supreme wisdom which forbade the tak- 
 ing of usury. We should not reimpose the usury laws, which were in 
 themselves a blunder and a snare, nor would we advocate the forcible 
 repression of the vice any more than we do that of other vices, such aa 
 gambling or prostitution, but we would put them on precisely the same 
 footing, and enact thus 
 
 Whereas, usury is a sin detestable and abominable, 
 the law will refuse to recognize any contract 
 in which it is an element. 
 
 The first effect of this would be, that all those who had lent, taking se- 
 curity into their hands, would have no power of oppression beyond 
 keeping the pledge, the balance of their debts being on a similar foot- 
 ing to those of the men who had lent without security. 
 
 " To these their chance of repayment would depend on their previous 
 conduct. If they had lent their money to honourable men, they would 
 surely be repaid ; if to rogues, they surely would not ; and serve them 
 right. Those, and those only, who have lent without interest would 
 have the power of an action at law to recover ; and as such men must 
 have possessed philanthropy, they could safely be trusted with that 
 power. 
 
 " Regarding the future employment of money, a usurer who intended 
 to continue his unholy trade, would lend only to such men as would 
 repay without legal pressure, and from such men trade would not have 
 to fear competition. But to disreputable characters the money-market 
 would be hermetically sealed ; and then as commerce, freed from the 
 competition of these scoundrels, began again to be remunerative, we 
 should find it more to our advantage to take an interest in commerce 
 than usury from it, and so gradually would equity supersede iniquity, 
 and peace and prosperity be found where now abound corruption, 
 riot, and rebellion, with all the host of evils inseparable from a con- 
 dition of plethoric wealth on one hand, and on the other hopeless and 
 despairing poverty. 
 
 II. I intended in this note to have given some references to the first 
 use of the word Franc, as an adjective. But the best dictionary-mak- 
 ers seein to have been foiled by it. "I recollect, (an Oxford friend
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 233 
 
 writes to me,) Clovis called his axe ' Francisca' when he threw it to 
 determine by its fall where he should build a church." and in Littre's 
 dictionary a root is suggested, in the Anglo-Saxon Franca, 'javelin.' 
 But I think these are all collateral, not original uses. I am not sure 
 even when the word came to be used for the current silver coin of 
 France: that, at least, must be ascertainable. It is curious that in no 
 fit of Liberty and Equality, the anti-Imperalists have thought of calling 
 their golden coins ' Citizens ' instead of ' Napoleons' ; nor even their 
 sous, Sansculottes. 
 
 III. Some of my correspondents ask me what has become of my 
 promised additional Fors on the glaciers. Well, it got crevassec?, and 
 split itself into three ; and then regelated itself into a somewhat com- 
 pact essay on glaciers ; and then got jammed up altogether, because I 
 found that the extremely scientific Professor Tyndall had never dis- 
 tinguished the quality of viscosity from plasticity, (or the consistence 
 of honey from that of butter, ) still less the gradations of character in the 
 approach of metals, glass, or stone, to their freezing-points ; and that I 
 wasn't as clear as could be wished on some of these matters myself ; 
 and, in fact, that I had better deal with the subject seriously in my 
 Oxford lectures than in Fors, which I hope to do this next autumn, 
 after looking again at the riband structure of the Brenva. Meantime, 
 here out of I don't know what paper, (I wish my correspondents 
 would always cross the slips they cut out with the paper's name and date,) 
 is a lively account of the present state of affairs, with a compliment to 
 Professor Tyndall on his style of debate, which I beg humbly to 
 endorse. 
 
 "An awful battle, we regret to say, is now raging between some of 
 the most distinguished men of Science, Literature, and Art. for all 
 those three fair sisters have hurtled into the Homeric fray. The com- 
 batants on one side are Professors G. Forbes, Tait, and Ruskin, with 
 Mr. Alfred Wills, and on the other alone, but fearless and undismayed 
 the great name of Tyndall. The causa teterrima beUi r is in itself a 
 cold and unlikely one namely, the glaciers of Switzerland ; but fiercer 
 the fight could not be, we grieve to state, if the question of eternal 
 punishment, with all its fiery accessory scenery, were under discussion. 
 We have no rash intention of venturing into that terrible battle-ground 
 where Professor Ruskin is laying about him with his Fors Clamgera^ 
 and where Professor Tait, like another Titan, hurls wildly into the 
 affrighted air such epithets as 'contemptible,' 'miserable,' 'disgusting,' 
 ' pernicious,' ' pestilent.' These adjectives, for anything that ignorant 
 journalists can know, may mean, in Scotch scientific parlance, everything 
 that is fair, chivalrous, becoming, and measured in argument. But, 
 merely from the British instinct of fair play which does not like to see 
 four against one, and without venturing a single word about the glaciers, 
 we cannot help remarking how much more consistent with the dignity 
 of science appears Professor Tyndall 's answer in the last number of the
 
 234: FOES CLAVIGERA. 
 
 Contemporary Review. If it be true that the man who keeps his tem- 
 per is generally in the right, we shall decidedly back Mr. Tyndall and 
 the late lamented Agassiz in the present dreadful conflict. Speaking, 
 for instance, of those same furious adjectives which we have culled 
 from the literary parterre of Professor Tait, Dr. Tyndall sweetly saya, 
 ' The spirit which prompts them may, after all, be but a local distortion 
 of that noble force of heart which answered the Cameron's Gathering 
 at Waterloo ; carried the Black Watch to Coomassie ; and which has 
 furnished Scotland with the materials of an immortal history. Still, 
 rudeness is not independence, bluster is not strength, nor is coarseness 
 courage. We have won the human understanding from the barbarism 
 of the past; but we have won along with it the dignity, courtesy, and 
 truth of civilized life. And the man who on the platform or in the 
 press does violence to this ethical side of human nature discharges but 
 an imperfect duty to the public, whatever the qualities of his under- 
 standing may be.' This, we humbly think, is how men of science ought 
 to talk when they quarrel if they quarrel at all." 
 
 I hope much to profit by this lesson. I have not my School for 
 Scandal by me but I know where to find it the minute I get home; 
 and I'll do my best. " The man who," etc. etc.; yes, I think I can 
 manage it.
 
 FOR8 GLAVIOERA. 235 
 
 LETTER XLIV. 
 
 ROME, Gth June, 1874. 
 
 THE poor Campagna herdsman, whose seeking for St. 
 Paul's statue the Professor of Fine Art in the University of 
 Oxford so disgracefully failed to assist him in, had been 
 kneeling nearer the line of procession of the Corpus Domini 
 than I ; in fact, quite among the rose-leaves which had 
 been strewed for a carpet round the aisles of the Basilica. 
 I grieve to say that I was shy of the rose-bestrewn path, 
 myself ; for the crowd waiting at the side of it had mixed 
 up the rose-leaves with spittle so richly as to make quite a 
 pink pomatum of them. And, indeed, the living temples of 
 the Holy Ghost which in any manner bestir themselves here 
 among the temples, whether of Roman gods or Christian 
 saints, have merely and simply the two great operations 
 upon them of filling their innermost adyta with dung, and 
 making their pavements slippery with spittle : the Pope's 
 new tobacco manufactory under the Palatine, an infinitely 
 more important object now, in all views of Rome from the 
 west, than either the Palatine or the Capitol, greatly aiding 
 and encouraging this especial form of lustration : while the 
 still more ancient documents of Egyptian religion the obe- 
 lisks of the Piazza del Popolo, and of the portico of St. 
 Peter's are entirely eclipsed by the obelisks of our English 
 religion, lately elevated, in full view from the Pincian and 
 the Montorio, with smoke coming out of the top of them. 
 And farther, the entire eastern district of Rome, between 
 the two Basilicas of the Lateran and St. Lorenzo, is now one 
 mass of volcanic ruin ; a desert of dust and ashes, the lust 
 of wealth exploding there, out of a crater deeper than Etna's, 
 and raging, as far as it can reach, in one frantic desolation 
 of whatever is lovely, or holy, or memorable, in the central 
 citv of the world.
 
 236 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 For there is one fixed idea in the mind of every European 
 progressive politician, at this time ; namely, that by a certain 
 application of Financial Art, and by the erection of a certain 
 quantity of new buildings on a colossal scale, it will be pos- 
 sible for society hereafter to pass its entire life in eating, 
 smoking, harlotry, and talk ; without doing anything what- 
 ever with its hands or feet of a laborious character. And as 
 these new buildings, whose edification is a main article of 
 this modern political faith and hope, (being required for 
 gambling and dining in on a large scale), cannot be raised 
 without severely increased taxation of the poorer classes, 
 (here in Italy direct, and in all countries consisting in the 
 rise of price in all articles of food wine alone in Italy cost- 
 ing just ten times what it did ten years ago,) and this in- 
 creased taxation and distress are beginning to be felt too 
 grievously to be denied ; nor only so, but which is still less 
 agreeable to modern politicians with slowly dawning per- 
 ception of their true causes, one finds also the popular 
 journalists, for some time back addressing themselves to the 
 defence of Taxation, and Theft in general, after this fashion. 
 
 " The wealth in the world may practically be regarded as 
 infinitely great. It is not true that what one man appro- 
 priates becomes thereupon useless to others, and it is also un- 
 true that force or fraud, direct or indirect, are the principal, 
 or, indeed, that they are at all common or important, modes 
 of acquiring wealth." Pall Mall Gazette, Jan. 14th, 18G9. * 
 
 * The passage continues thus, curiously enough, for the parallel of 
 the boat at sea is precisely that which I have given, in true explanation 
 of social phenomena : 
 
 " The notion that when one man becomes rich he makes others poor, 
 will be found upon examination to depend upon the assumption that 
 there is in the world a fixed quantity of wealth ; that when one man ap- 
 propriates to himself a large amount of it, he excludes all others from 
 any benefit arising from it, and that at the same time he forces some 
 one else to be content with less than he would otherwise have had. 
 Society, in short, must be compared to a boat at sea. in which there is 
 a certain quantity of fresh water, and a certain number of shipwrecked 
 passengers. In that case, no doubt, the water drunk by one is of no use 
 to the rest, and if one drinks more, others must drink less, as the water
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 237 
 
 The philosophical journalist, after some farther contemptu- 
 ous statement of the vulgar views on this subject, conven- 
 iently dispenses (as will be seen by reference to the end of 
 the clause in the note) with the defence of his own. I will 
 undertake the explanation of what was, perhaps, even to 
 himself, not altogether clear in his impressions. If a burglar 
 ever carries off the Editor's plate-basket, the bereaved Editor 
 will console himself by reflecting that "it is not true that 
 what one man appropriates becomes thereupon useless to 
 others : " for truly, (he will thus proceed to finer investi- 
 gations,) tliis plate of mine, melted down, after being tran- 
 sitionally serviceable to the burglar, will enter again into the 
 same functions among the silver of the world which it had in 
 my own possession : so that the intermediate benefit to the 
 burglar may be regarded as entirely a form of trade profit, 
 and a kind of turning over of capital. And " it is also untrue 
 that force or fraud, direct or indirect, are the principal, or in- 
 deed that they are at all common or important, modes of ac- 
 quiring wealth," for this poor thief, with his crow-bar and 
 jimmy, does but disfurnish my table for a day ; while I, with 
 my fluent pen, can replenish it any number of times over, by 
 the beautiful expression of my opinions for the public bene- 
 fit. But what manner of fraud, or force, there may be in 
 living by the sale of one's opinions, instead of knowledges ; 
 and what quantity of true knowledge on any subject whatso- 
 ever moral, political, scientific, or artistic forms at pres- 
 ent the total stock in trade of the Editors of the European 
 Press, our Pall Mall Editor has very certainly not considered. 
 
 "The wealth in the world practically infinite," is it ? 
 Then it seems to me, the poor may ask, with more reason than 
 ever before, Why have we not our share of infinity ? We 
 thought, poor ignorants, that we were only the last in the 
 scramble ; we submitted, believing that somebody must be 
 
 itself is a fixed quantity. Moreover, no one man would be able to get 
 more than a rateable share, except by superior force, or by some form 
 of deceit, because the others would prevent him. The mere statement 
 of this view ought to be a sufficient exposure of the fundamental er- 
 ror of the commonplaces which we are considering. "
 
 238 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 last, and somebody first. But if the mass of good things be 
 inexhaustible, and there are horses for everybody, why is 
 not every beggar on horseback ? And, for my own part, 
 why should the question be put to me so often, which I am 
 sick of answering and answering again, " How, with our 
 increasing population, are we to live without Machinery ? " 
 For if the wealth be already infinite, what need of machinery 
 to make more ? Alas ! if it could make more, what a differ- 
 ent world this might be. Arkwright and Stevenson would 
 deserve statues, indeed, as much as St. Paul. If all the 
 steam engines in England, and all the coal in it, with all 
 their horse and ass power put together, could produce so 
 much as one grain of corn ! The last time this perpetually 
 recurring question about machinery was asked me, it was 
 very earnestly and candidly pressed, by a master manu- 
 facturer, who honestly desired to do in his place what was 
 serviceable to England, and honourable to himself. I an- 
 swered at some length, in private letters, of which I asked 
 and obtained his leave to print some parts in Fors. They 
 may as well find their place in this number ; and for preface 
 to them, here is a piece, long kept by me, concerning rail- 
 roads, which may advisably now be read. 
 
 Of modern machinery for locomotion, my readers, I sup- 
 pose, thought me writing in ill-temper, when I said, in one 
 of the letters on the childhood of Scott, " infernal means of 
 locomotion " ? Indeed, I am always, compelled to write, as 
 always compelled to live, in ill-temper. But I never set down 
 a single word but with the serenest purpose. I meant " in- 
 fernal " in the most perfect sense the word will bear. 
 
 For instance. The town of Ulverstone is twelve miles from 
 me, by four miles of mountain road beside Coniston lake, 
 three through a pastoral valley, five by the seaside. A 
 healthier or lovelier walk would be difficult to find. 
 
 In old times, if a Coniston peasant had any business at 
 Ulverstone, he walked to Ulverstone ; spent nothing but 
 shoe-leather on the road, drank at the streams, and if he 
 spent a couple of batz when he got to Ulverstone, "it was the 
 end of the world." But now, he would never think of doing
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 239 
 
 such a thing ! He first walks three miles in a contrary direc- 
 tion, to a railroad station, and then travels by railroad twenty- 
 four miles to Ulverstone, paying two shillings fare. During 
 the twenty-four miles transit, he is idle, dusty, stupid ; and 
 either more hot or cold than is pleasant to him. In either 
 case he drinks beer at two or three of the stations, passes 
 his time, between them, with anybody he can find, in talking 
 without having anything to talk of ; and such talk always 
 becomes vicious. He arrives at Ulverstone, jaded, half drunk, 
 and otherwise demoralized, and three shillings, at least, 
 poorer than in the morning. Of that sum, a shilling has gone 
 for beer, threepence to a railway shareholder, threepence in 
 coals, and eighteenpence has been spent in employing strong 
 men in the vile mechanical work of making and driving a 
 machine, instead of his own legs, to carry the drunken lout. 
 The results, absolute loss and demoralization to the poor, on 
 all sides, and iniquitous gain to the rich. Fancy, if you saw 
 the railway officials actually employed in carrying the country- 
 man bodily on their backs to Ulverstone, what you would 
 think of the business ! And because they waste ever so 
 much iron and fuel besides to do it, you think it a profitable 
 
 one 
 
 And for comparison of the advantages of old times and 
 new, for travellers of higher order, hear how Scott's excur- 
 sions used to be made. 
 
 "Accordingly, during seven successive years, Scott made 
 a raid, as he called it, into Liddesdale, with Mr. Shortreed 
 for his guide, exploring every rivulet to its source, and every 
 ruined peel from foundation to battlement. At this time 
 no wheeled carriage had ever been seen in the district ; the 
 first, indeed, that ever appeared there was a gig, driven by 
 Scott himself for a part of his way, when on the last of these 
 seven excursions. There was no inn nor public-house of 
 any kind in the whole valley ; the travellers passed from the 
 shepherd's hut to the minister's manse, and again from 
 the cheerful hospitality of the manse to the rough and jolly 
 welcome of the homestead ; gathering, wherever they went, 
 songs and tunes, and occasionally more tangible relics of
 
 240 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 
 
 antiquity even such ' a rowth of auld nicknackets ' as Burns 
 ascribes to Captain Grose. To these rambles Scott owed 
 much of the materials of his Minstrelsy of the Scottish 
 Border / and not less of that intimate acquaintance with 
 the living manners of these unsophisticated regions, which 
 constitutes the chief charm of the most charming of his 
 prose works. But how soon he had any definite object be- 
 fore him in his researches seems very doubtful. 'He was 
 makin' himsel' a' the time,' said Mr. Shortreed ; ' but he didna 
 ken maybe what he was about, till years had passed. At 
 first he thought o' little, I dare say, but the queerness and 
 the fun.' 
 
 " ' It was that same season, I think,' says Mr. Shortreed, 
 'that Sir Walter got from Dr. Elliot the large old border 
 war horn, which ye may still see hanging in the armoury at 
 Abbotsford. How great he was when he was made master 
 o' that ! I believe it had been found in Hermitage Castle 
 and one of the doctor's servants had used it many a day as 
 a grease-horn for his scythe before they had discovered its 
 history. When cleaned out, it was never a hair the worse ; 
 the original chain, hoop, and mouthpiece of steel were all 
 entire, just as you now see them. Sir Walter carried it 
 home all the way from Liddesdale to Jedburgh slung about 
 his neck like Johnny Gilpin's bottle, while I was entrusted 
 with an ancient bridle-bit, which we had likewise picked up. 
 
 " The feint o' pride nae pride had he, . . . 
 A lang kail-gully hung down by his side, 
 And a great meikle nowt-horn to rout on had he. " 
 
 And meikle and sair we routed on't, and " notched and blew 
 wi' micht and main." O what pleasant days ! and then a' 
 the nonsense we had cost us nothing. We never put hand in 
 pocket for a week on end. Toll-bars there were none, and 
 indeed I think our haill charges were a feed o' corn to our 
 horses in the gangin' and comin' at Riccartoun mill.'" 
 
 This absolute economy, * of course, could only exist when 
 
 * The reader might at first fancy that the economy was not 'abso 
 lute,' but that the expenses of the traveller were simply borne by his
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 241 
 
 travelling was so rare that patriarchal hospitality could still 
 be trtisted for its lodging. But the hospitality of the inn 
 need not be less considerate or true because the inn's master 
 lives in his occupation. Even in these days, I have had no 
 more true or kind friend than the now dead Mrs. Eisenkrae- 
 mer of the old Union Inn at Chamouni ; and an innkeeper's 
 daughter in the Oberland taught me that it was still possible 
 for a Swiss girl to be refined, imaginative, and pure-hearted, 
 though she waited on her father's guests, and though these 
 guests were often vulgar and insolent English travellers. 
 For she had been bred in the rural districts of happy olden 
 days, to which, as it chances, my thoughts first turned, in 
 the following answer to my English manufacturing friend. 
 
 On any given farm in Switzerland or Bavaria, fifty years 
 ago, the master and his servants lived, in abundance, on the 
 produce of their ground, without machinery, and exchanged 
 some of its surplus produce for Lyons velvet and Hartz sil- 
 ver, (produced by the unhappy mechanists and miners of 
 those localities,) whereof the happy peasant made jackets 
 and bodices, and richly adorned the same with precious 
 chain-work. It is not more than ten years since I saw in 
 a farm-shed near Thun, three handsome youths and three 
 comely girls, all in well-fitting, pretty, and snow-white shirt 
 and chemisette, threshing corn with a steady shower of 
 timed blows, as skilful in their cadence, shall we, literally, 
 say ? as the most exquisitely performed music, and as 
 rapid as its swiftest notes. There was no question for any 
 of them, whether they should have their dinner when they 
 had earned it, nor the slightest chance of any of them going 
 in rags through the winter. 
 
 That is entirely healthy, happy, and wise human life. Not 
 a theoretical or Utopian state at all ; but one which over large 
 districts of the world has long existed, and must, thank God, 
 
 host. Not so ; the host only gave what he in his turn received, when 
 he also travelled. Every man thus carried his home with him, and to 
 travel, was merely to walk or ride from place to place, instead of round 
 one's own house. (See Saunders Fairford's expostulation with Alan 
 on the charges incurred at Noble House.) 
 VOL. II. 16
 
 24:2 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 in spite of British commerce and its consequences, for ever t 
 somewhere, exist. 
 
 But the farm, we will say, gets over-populous, (it always 
 does, of course, under ordinary circumstances ;) that is to say, 
 the ground no longer affords corn and milk enough for the 
 people on it. Do you suppose you will make more of the 
 corn, because you now thresh it with a machine ? So far 
 from needing to do so, you have more hands to employ than 
 you had can have twelve flails going instead of six. You 
 make your twelve human creatures stand aside, and thresh 
 your corn with a steam engine. You gain time, do you ? 
 What's the use of time to you ? did it not hang heavy 
 enough on your hands before ? You thresh your entire farm 
 produce, let us say, in twelve minutes. Will that make it 
 one grain more, to feed the twelve mouths ? Most assuredly, 
 the soot and stench of your steam engine will make your crop 
 less next year, but not one grain more can you have, to-day.* 
 But you don't mean to use your engines to thresh with or 
 plough with ? Well, that is one point of common sense 
 gained. What will you do with them, then ? spin and weave 
 cotton, sell the articles you manufacture, and buy food ? Very 
 good ; then somewhere there must be people still living as 
 you once did, that is to say, producing more corn and milk 
 than they want, and able to give it to you in exchange for 
 your cotton, or velvet, or what not, which you weave with 
 your steam. Well, those people, wherever they are, and who- 
 ever they may be, are your lords and masters thenceforth. 
 They are living happy and wise human lives, and are served 
 by you, their mechanics and slaves. Day after day your souls 
 will become more mechanical, more servile : also you will go 
 on multiplying, wanting more food, and more ; you will have 
 to sell cheaper and cheaper, work longer and longer, to buy 
 your food. At last, do what you can, you can make no more, 
 or the people who have the corn will not want any more ; and 
 
 * But what is to be done, then ? Emigrate, of course ; but under 
 different laws from those of modern emigration. Don't emigrate to 
 China, poison Chinamen, and teach them to make steam engines, and 
 then import Chinamen, to dig iron here. But see next Fors.
 
 FORS CLAVIGE11A. 243 
 
 your increasing population will necessarily come to a quite 
 imperative stop by starvation, preceded necessarily by revo- 
 lution and massacre. 
 
 And now examine the facts about England in this broad 
 light. 
 
 She has a vast quantity of ground still food-producing, in 
 corn, grass, cattle, or game. With that territory she educates 
 her squire, or typical gentleman, and his tenantry, to whom, 
 together, she owes all her power in the world. With another 
 large portion of territory, now continually on the increase, 
 she educates a mercenary population, ready to produce any 
 quantity of bad articles to anybody's order ; population which 
 every hour that passes over them makes acceleratingly ava- 
 ricious, immoral, and insane. In the increase of that kind of 
 territory and its people, her ruin is just as certain as if she 
 were deliberately exchanging her corn-growing land, and her 
 heaven above it, for a soil of arsenic, and rain of nitric acid. 
 
 " Have the Arkwrights and Stevensons, then, done nothing 
 but harm ? " Nothing ; but the root of all the mischief is not 
 in Arkwrights or Stevensons ; nor in rogues or mechanics. 
 The real root of it is the crime of the squire himself. And 
 the method of that crime is thus. A certain quantity of the 
 food produced by the country is paid annually by it into the 
 squire's hand, in the form of rent, privately, and taxes, pub- 
 licly. If he uses this food to support a food-producing popu- 
 lation, he increases daily the strength of the country and his 
 own ; but if he uses it to support an idle population, or one 
 producing merely trinkets in iron, or gold, or other rubbish, 
 he steadily weakens the country, and debases himself. 
 
 Now the action of the squire for the last fifty years has 
 been, broadly, to take the food from the ground of his estate, 
 and carry it to London, where he feeds with it * a vast num- 
 
 * The writings of our vulgar political economists, calling money only 
 a ' medium of exchange,' blind the foolish public conveniently to all the 
 practical actions of the machinery of the currency. Money is not a 
 medium of exchange, but a token of right. I have, suppose, at this 
 moment, ten, twenty, or thirty thousand pounds. That signifies that, 
 as compared with a man who has only ten pounds, I can claim posses-
 
 244. FORS OLAVIOERA. 
 
 her of builders, upholsterers, (one of them charged me five 
 pounds for a footstool the other day,) carriage and harness 
 makers, dress-makers, grooms, footmen, bad musicians, bad 
 painters, gamblers, and harlots, and in supply of the wants of 
 these main classes, a vast number of shopkeepers of minor 
 useless articles. The muscles and the time of this enormous 
 population being wholly unproductive (for of course time 
 spent in the mere process of sale is unproductive, and much 
 more that of the footman and groom, while that of the vulgar 
 upholsterer, jeweller, fiddler, and painter, etc., etc., is not 
 only unproductive, but mischievous,) the entire mass of this 
 London population do nothing whatever either to feed or 
 clothe themselves ; and their vile life preventing them from 
 all rational entertainment, they are compelled to seek some 
 pastime in a vile literature, the demand for which again oc- 
 cupies another enormous class, who do nothing to feed or 
 dress themselves ; finally, the vain disputes of this vicious 
 population give employment to the vast industry of the law- 
 yers and their clerks,* who similarly do nothing to feed or 
 dress themselves. 
 
 Now the peasants might still be able to supply this enor- 
 mous town population with food, (in the form of the squire's 
 rent,) but it cannot, without machinery, supply the flimsy 
 dresses, toys, metal work, and other rubbish belonging to their 
 accursed life. Hence over the whole country the sky is black- 
 ened and the air made pestilent, to supply London and other 
 such towns { with their iron railings, vulgar upholstery, 
 
 sion of, call for, and do what I like with a thousand, or two thousand, 
 or three thousand times as much of the valuable things existing in the 
 country. The peasant accordingly gives the squire a certain number of 
 these tokens or counters, which give the possessor a right to claim so 
 much corn or meat. The squire gives these tokens to the various per- 
 sons in town, enumerated in the text, who then claim the corn and meat 
 from the peasant, returning him the counters, which he calls ' price,' 
 and gives to the squire again next year. 
 
 * Of the industry of the Magistrate against crime, I say nothing ; for 
 it now scarcely exists, but to do evil. See first article in Correspond- 
 ence, at end of letter. 
 
 f Compare, especially, Letter XXIX., p. 418.
 
 FOES CLAVIGERA. 245 
 
 jewels, toys, liveries, lace, and other means of dissipation, 
 and dishonour of life. Gradually the country people cannot 
 even supply food to the voracity of the vicious centre ; and 
 it is necessary to import food from other countries, giv- 
 ing in exchange any kind of commodity we can attract their 
 itching desires for, and produce by machinery. The ten- 
 dency of the entire national energy is therefore to approxi- 
 mate more and more to the state of a squirrel in a cage, or 
 a turnspit in a wheel, fed by foreign masters with nuts and 
 dog's-meat. And indeed when we rightly conceive the re- 
 lation of London to the country, the sight of it becomes 
 more fantastic and wonderful than any dream. Hyde Park, 
 in the season, is the great rotatory form of the vast squirrel- 
 cage ; round and round it go the idle company, in their re- 
 versed streams, urging themselves to their necessary exer- 
 cise. They cannot with safety even eat their nuts, without 
 so much ' revolution ' as shall, in Venetian language, ' com- 
 ply with the demands of hygiene.' Then they retire into 
 their boxes, with due quantity of straw ; the Belgravian 
 and Piccadillian streets outside the railings being, when one 
 sees clearly, nothing but the squirrel's box at the side of 
 his wires. And then think of all the rest of the metropolis 
 as the creation and ordinance of these squirrels, that they 
 may squeak and whirl to their satisfaction, and yet be fed. 
 Measure the space of its entirely miserable life. Begin with 
 that diagonal which I struck from Regent Circus to Drury 
 Lane ; examine it, house by house ; then go up from Drury 
 Lane to St. Giles' Church, look into Church Lane there, and 
 explore your Seven Dials and Warwick Street ; and remem- 
 ber this is the very centre of the mother city, precisely 
 between its Parks, its great Library and Museum, its princi- 
 pal Theatres, and its Bank. Then conceive the East-end ; 
 and the melancholy Islington and Pentonville districts ; 
 then the ghastly spaces of southern suburb Vauxhall, 
 Lambeth, the Borough, Wapping, and Bermondsey. All 
 this is the nidification of those Park Squirrels. This is 
 the thing they have produced round themselves ; this their 
 work in the world. When they rest from their squirrellian
 
 246 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 revolutions, and die in the Lord, and their works do follow 
 them, these are what will follow them. Lugubrious march 
 of the Waterloo Road, and the Borough, and St. Giles's ; 
 the shadows of all the Seven Dials having fetched their last 
 compass. New Jerusalem, prepared as a bride, of course, 
 opening her gates to them ; but, pertinaciously attendant, 
 Old Jewry outside. " Their works do follow them." 
 
 For these streets are indeed what they have built ; 
 their inhabitants the people they have chosen to educate. 
 They took the bread and milk and meat from the people of 
 their fields ; they gave it to feed, and retain here in their 
 service, this fermenting mass of unhappy human beings, 
 news-mongers, novel-mongers, picture-mongers, poison- 
 drink-mongers, lust and death-mongers ; the whole smoking 
 mass of it one vast dead-marine storeshop, accumulation of 
 wreck of the Dead Sea, with every activity in it, a form of 
 putrefaction. 
 
 Some personal matters were touched upon in my friend's 
 reply to this letter, and I find nothing more printable of the 
 correspondence but this following fragment or two. 
 
 " But what are you to do, having got into this mechanical 
 line of life ? " 
 
 You must persevere in it, and do the best you can for the 
 present, but resolve to get out of it as soon as may be. The 
 one essential point is to know thoroughly that it is wrong ; 
 how to get out of it, you can decide afterwards, at your lei- 
 sure. 
 
 " But somebody must weave by machinery, and dig in 
 mines : else how could one have one's velvet and silver 
 chains?" 
 
 Whatever machinery is needful for human purposes can 
 be driven by wind or water ; the Thames alone could drive 
 mills enough to weave velvet and silk for all England. But 
 even mechanical occupation not involving pollution of the 
 atmosphere must be as limited as possible ; for it invariably 
 degrades. You may use your slave in your silver mine, or 
 at your loom, to avoid such labour yourself, if you honestly 
 believe you have brains to be better employed ; or you
 
 FOES CLAVIGERA. 247 
 
 may yourself, for the service of others, honourably become 
 their slave ; and, in benevolent degradation, dig silver or 
 weave silk, making yourself semi-spade, or semi-worm. But 
 you must eventually, for no purpose or motive whatsoever, 
 live amidst smoke and filth, nor allow others to do so ; you 
 must see that your slaves are as comfortable and safe as 
 their employment permits, and that they are paid wages 
 high enough to allow them to leave it often for redemption 
 and rest. 
 
 Eventually, I say ; how fast events may move, none of us 
 know ; in our compliance with them, let us at least be intel- 
 ligently patient if at all ; not blindly patient. 
 
 For instance, there is nothing really more monstrous in 
 any recorded savagery or absurdity of mankind, than that 
 governments should be able to get money for any folly they 
 choose to commit, by selling to capitalists the right of tax- 
 ing future generations to the end of time. All the cruellest 
 wars inflicted, all the basest luxuries grasped by the idle 
 classes, are thus paid for by the poor a hundred times over. 
 And yet I am obliged to keep my money in the funds or the 
 bank, because I know no other mode of keeping it safe ; 
 and if I refused to take the interest, I should only throw it 
 into the hands of the very people who would use it for these 
 evil purposes, or, at all events, for less good than I can. 
 Nevertheless it is daily becoming a more grave question 
 with me what it may presently be right to do. It may be 
 better to diminish private charities, and much more, my own 
 luxury of life, than to comply in any sort with a national sin. 
 But I am not agitated or anxious in the matter : content to 
 know my principle, and to work steadily towards better ful- 
 filment of it. 
 
 And this is all that I would ask of my correspondent, or 
 of any other man, that he should know what he is about, 
 and be steady in his line of advance or retreat. I know my- 
 self to be a usurer as long as I take interest on any money 
 whatsoever. I confess myself such, and abide whatever 
 shame or penalty may attach to usury, until I can withdraw 
 myself from the system. So my correspondent says he must
 
 248 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 abide by his post. I think so too. A naval captain, though 
 I should succeed in persuading him of the wickedness of 
 war, would in like manner, if he were wise, abide at his post ; 
 nay, would be entirely traitorous and criminal if he at once 
 deserted it. Only let us all be sure what our positions are ; 
 and if, as it is said, the not living by interest and the reso- 
 lutely making everything as good as can be, are incompatible 
 with the present state of society, let us, though compelled to 
 remain usurers and makers of bad things, at least not deceive 
 ourselves as to the nature of our acts and life. 
 
 Leaving thus the personal question, how the great courses 
 of life are to be checked or changed, to each man's conscience 
 and discretion, this following answer I would make in all 
 cases to the inquiry, 'What can I dof 
 
 If the present state of this so-called rich England is so 
 essentially miserable and poverty-stricken that honest men 
 must always live from hand to mouth, while speculators make 
 fortunes by cheating them out of their labour, and if, there- 
 fore, no sum can be set aside for chanty, the paralyzed 
 honest men can certainly do little for the present. But, 
 with what can be spared for charity, if anything, do this ; 
 buy ever so small a bit of ground, in the midst of the worst 
 back deserts of our manufacturing towns ; six feet square, 
 if no more can be had, nay, the size of a grave, if you will, 
 but buy it freehold, and make a garden of it, by hand-labour ; 
 a garden visible to all men, and cultivated for all men of 
 that place. If absolutely nothing will grow in it, then have 
 herbs carried there in pots. Force the bit of ground into 
 order, cleanliness, green or coloured aspect. What difficulties 
 you have in doing this are your best subjects of thought ; 
 the good you will do in doing this, the best in your present 
 power. 
 
 What the best in your ultimate power may be, will depend 
 on the action of the English landlord ; for observe, we have 
 only to separate the facts of the Swiss farm to ascertain what 
 they are with respect to any state. We have only to ask 
 what quantity of food it produces, how much it exports in 
 exchange for other articles, and how much it imports in ex
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 249 
 
 change for other articles. The food-producing countries 
 have the power of educating gentlemen and gentlewomen if 
 they please, they are the lordly and masterful countries. 
 Those which exchange mechanical or artistic productions for 
 food are servile, and necessarily in process of time will be 
 ruined. Next Fors, therefore, will be written for any Land- 
 lords who wish to be true Workmen in their vocation ; and, 
 according to the first law of the St. George's Company, * to 
 do good work, whether they die or live.'
 
 250 FOES CLAVIGERA. 
 
 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 I COMMEND the whole of the following letter to the reader's most 
 serious consideration : 
 
 BROXBOURN, HERTS, \\th June, 1874. 
 
 My dear Sir, You are so tolerant of correspondents with grievances, 
 that I venture to say a few more words, in reply to your note about Law 
 Reform. In November next the Judicature Bill will come into operation. 
 The preamble recites this incontestable fact, " that it is expedient to 
 make provision for the better administration of justice in England." 
 Now, the two salient features of the incessant clamour for Law Reform 
 are these 1st, an increased conviction of the sanctity of property ; 2nd, 
 a proportionate decrease in the estimate of human life. For years past 
 the English people have spent incalculable money and talk in trying to 
 induce Parliament to give them safe titles to their land, and sharp and 
 instant means of getting in their debts : the Land Transfer Bill is in 
 answer to this first demand, and the Judicature Bill to the second. 
 Meanwhile the Criminal Code may shift for itself ; and here we have, 
 as the outcome of centuries of vulgar national flourish about Magna 
 Charta, Habeas Corpus, and much else, the present infamous system of 
 punishing crime by pecuniary penalties. Now the spirit of this evil 
 system is simply this: " A crime is an offence against society. Making 
 the criminal suffer pain won't materially benefit society, but making 
 him suffer in his pocket will;' 11 and so society elects to be battered 
 about, and variously maltreated, on a sliding scale of charges, adjusted 
 more on medical than moral principles. No doubt it is very desirable 
 to have a title-deed to your thousand acres, no bigger than the palm of 
 your hand, to be able to put it in a box, and sit upon it, and defy all 
 the lawyers in the land to pick a flaw in your title ; quite a millenium- 
 like state of things, but liable to be somewhat marred if your next-door 
 neighbour may knock you off your box, stab you with a small pocket- 
 knife, and jump on your stomach, all with grievous damage to you, but 
 comparative immunity to himself. We are one day to have cheap law, 
 meanwhile we have such cheap crime that injuries to the person are 
 now within the reach of all. I may be a villain of the first water, if I 
 have a few spare pounds in my pocket. From a careful survey of lately 
 reported cases, I find I can run away with my neighbour's wife, seduce 
 his daughter, half poison his household with adulterated food, and 
 finally stab him with a pocket-knife for rather less than 1000. Stab- 
 bing is so ridiculously cheap that I can indulge in it for a trifling pen- 
 alty of 1. (See Southall's case.) But woe be to me if I dare to en- 
 croach on my neighbour's land, prejudice his trade, or touch his pocket ; 
 then the law has remedies, vast and many, and I shall not only incur 
 pecuniary penalties that are to all effects and purpose limitless, but I
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 251 
 
 shall be made to suffer in person also. These two things are exactly 
 indicative of the gradual decay of the national mind under the influ- 
 ence of two schools. The first teaches that man's primary object in life 
 is to ' ' get on in the world ; " hence we have this exaggerated estimate 
 of the value and sanctity of property. The second school teaches that 
 love can exist without reverence, mercy without justice, and liberty 
 without obedience ; and as the logical result of such teaching, we have 
 lost all clear and healthy knowledge of what justice really is, and in- 
 vent a system of punishments which is not even really punitive, and 
 without any element of retribution at all. Let us have instead a jus- 
 tice that not only condones the crime, but also makes a profit out of 
 the criminal. And we get her ; but note the irony of Fate : when our 
 modern goddess does pluck up heart to be angry, she seems doomed to 
 be angry in the wrong way, and with the wrong people. Here is a late 
 instance (the printed report of which I send you): 
 
 William Hawkes, a blind man and very infirm, was brought up, hav- 
 ing been committed from Marlborough Street, to be dealt with as a 
 rogue and vagabond. 
 
 On being placed in the dock, 
 
 Mr. Montagu Williams, as amicus curia, said he had known the pris 
 oner for years, from seeing him sitting on Waterloo Bridge tracing his 
 fingers over a book designed for the blind to read, and in no instance 
 had he seen him beg from those who passed by, so that he was practi- 
 cally doing no harm, and some time ago the late Sir William Bodkin 
 had dealt very mercifully with him. Something ought to be done for 
 him. 
 
 Mr. Harris said he could corroborate all that his learned friend had 
 stated. 
 
 The Assistant-Judge said he had been convicted by the magistrate, 
 and was sent here to be sentenced as a rogue and vagabond, but the 
 Court would not deal hardly with him. 
 
 Horsford, chief officer of the Mendicity Society, said the prisoner 
 had been frequently convicted for begging. 
 
 The Assistant-Judge sentenced him to be imprisoned for four months. 
 May, 1874. 
 
 The other day I was reading a beautiful Eastern story of a certain 
 blind man who sat by the wayside begging ; clearly a very importunate 
 and troublesome blind man, who would by no means hold his peace, 
 but who, nevertheless, had his heart's desire granted unto him at last. 
 And yesterday I was also reading a very unlovely Western story of an- 
 other blind man, who was ' very infirm," not at all importunate, did 
 not even beg ; only sat there by the roadside and read out of a certain 
 Book that has a great deal to say about justice and mercy. The sequel 
 of the two stories varies considerably : in this latter one our civilized 
 English Law clutches the old blind man by the throat, tells him he is 
 a rogue and a vagabond, and flings him into prison for four months ! 
 
 But our enlightened British Public is too busy clamouring for short 
 deeds and cheap means of litigation, ever to give thought or time to 
 mere " sentimental grievances." Have you seen the strange comment 
 on Carlyle's letter of some months ago, in which he prophesied evil 
 things to come, if England still persisted in doing her work "ill, swiftly,
 
 252 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 
 
 and mendaciously " ? Our export trade, for the first five months of 
 this year, shows a decrease of just eight millions ! The newspapers 
 note, with a horrified amazement, that the continental nations decline 
 dealing any longer at the " old shop," and fall back on home products, 
 and try to explain it by reference to the Capital and Labour question. 
 Carlyle foresaw Germany's future, and told us plainly of it ; he foresees 
 England's decadence, and warns us just as plainly of that ; and the 
 price we have already paid, in this year of grace 1874, for telling him 
 to hold his tongue, is just eight millions. 
 
 Yours sincerely. 
 
 Next, or next but one, to the Fors for the squires, will come that for 
 the lawyers. In the meantime, can any correspondent inform me, ap- 
 proximately, what the income and earnings of the legal profession are 
 annually in England, and what sum is spent in collateral expenses for 
 juries, witnesses, etc. ? The Times for May 18th of this year gives the 
 following estimate of the cost of the Tichborne trial, which seems to 
 me very moderate : 
 
 THE TRIAL OF THE TICHBORNE CLAIMANT. On Saturday a return 
 to the House of Commons, obtained by Mr. W. H. Smith, was printed, 
 showing the amount expended upon the prosecution in the case of " Re- 
 ginav. Castro, otherwise Orton, otherwise Tichborne," and the probable 
 amount still remaining to be paid out of the vote of Parliament for 
 " this service." The probable cost of the trial is stated at 55,315 17s. 
 Id., of which 49,815 17s. \d. had been paid up to the llth ult., and 
 on the llth of May inst. 5,500 remained unpaid. In 1872-3 counsels' 
 fees were 1,146 16s. 6d, and in 1873-4 counsels' fees were 22,495 
 18s. 4d. The jury were paid 3,780, and the shorthand writers 3,493 
 3s. The other expenses were witnesses, agents, etc., and law station- 
 ers and printing. Of the sum to be paid, 4.000 is for the Australian 
 and Chilian witnesses. Times, May 18, 1874. 
 
 II. I reprint the following letter as it was originally published. I 
 meant to have inquired into the facts a little farther, but have not had 
 time. 
 
 21, MINCING LANE, LONDON, E. C., 
 
 Wth March, 1874. 
 
 Dear Sirs, On the 27th March, 1872, we directed your attention to 
 the subject of Usury in a paper headed " CHOOSE YOU THIS DAY WHOM 
 YE WILL SERVE." We have since published our correspondence with 
 the Rev. Dr. Gumming, and we take his silence as an acknowledg- 
 ment of his inability to justify his teaching upon this subject. We 
 have also publicly protested against the apathy of the Bishops and 
 Clergy of the Established Church regarding this national sin. We now 
 append an extract from the Hampshire Independent of the llth instant, 
 which has been forwarded to us : 
 
 ' ' The Church of England in South Australia is in active competition 
 with the money changers and those who sell doves. The Church 
 Office, Leigh Street, Adelaide, advertises that ' it is prepared to lend
 
 FORS CLAVIOERA. 253 
 
 money at current rates no commission or brokerage charged,' which 
 is really liberal on the part of the Church of England , and may serve 
 to distinguish it as a lender from the frequenters of the synagogues.* 
 It has been suggested that the Church Office should hang out 
 the triple symbol of the Lombards, and that at the next examination 
 of candidates for holy orders a few apposite questions might be 
 asked, such as State concisely the best method of obtaining the 
 highest rate of interest for Church moneys. Demonstrate how a sys- 
 tem of Church money-lending was approved by the founder of 
 Christianity.' " 
 
 As such perverseness can only end in sudden and overwhelming 
 calamity, we make no apology for again urging you to assist us in our 
 endeavours to banish the accursed element at least from our own 
 trade. 
 
 Your obedient servants, 
 
 J. C. SlLLAR AND CO. 
 
 I put in large print it would be almost worth capital letters the 
 following statement of the principle of interest as ' ' necessary to the 
 existence of money." I suppose it is impossible to embody the modern 
 view more distinctly : 
 
 " Money, the representation and measure of value, has also 
 the power to accumulate value by interest (italics not mine). 
 This accumulative power is essential to the existence of 
 money, for no one will exchange productive property for 
 money that does not represent production. The laws making 
 gold and silver a public tender impart to dead masses of 
 metal, as it were, life and animation. They give them 
 powers which without legal enactment they could not possess, 
 and which enable their owner to obtain for their use what 
 other men must earn by their labour. One piece of gold 
 receives a legal capability to earn for its owner, in a given 
 time, another piece of gold as large as itself ; or, in other 
 words, the legal power of money to accumulate by interest 
 compel the borrower in a given period, according to the rate 
 of interest, to mine and coin, or to procure by the sale of his 
 labour or products, another lump of gold as large as the first, 
 and give it, together with the first, to the lender." Kellogg 
 on Labour and Capital, New York, 1849. 
 
 * It is possible that this lending office may have been organized as a method of charity, 
 corresponding to the original Monte di Pieta, the modern clergymen having imagined, 
 in consequence of the common error about interest, that they could improve the system 
 of Venice by ignoring its main condition the lending gratis, and benefit themselves at 
 the same time.
 
 254: FORS CLAVIGEMA. 
 
 LETTER XLV. 
 
 LUCCA, 2nd August, 1874. 
 
 THE other day, in the Sacristan's cell at Assist, I got into 
 a great argument with the Sacristan himself, about the 
 prophet Isaiah. It had struck me that I should like to 
 know what sort of a person his wife was : and I asked my 
 good host, over our morning's coffee, whether the Church 
 knew anything about her. Brother Antonio, however, in- 
 stantly and energetically denied that he ever had a wife. 
 He was a ' Castissimo profeta,' how could I fancy anything 
 so horrible of him ! Vainly I insisted that, since he had 
 children, he must either have been married, or been under 
 special orders, like the prophet Hosea. But my Protestant 
 Bible was good for nothing, said the Sacristan. Nay, I 
 answered, I never read, usually, in anything later than 
 a thirteenth century text ; let him produce me one out of 
 the convent library, and see if I couldn't find Shearjashub in 
 it. The discussion dropped upon this, because the library 
 was inaccessible at the moment ; and no printed Vulgate to 
 be found. But I think of it again to-day, because I have 
 just got into another puzzle about Isaiah, to wit, what he 
 means by calling himself a "man of unclean lips."* And 
 that is a vital question, surely, to all persons venturing to 
 rise up, as teachers ; vital, at all events, to me, here, and 
 now, for these following reasons. 
 
 Thirty years ago, I began my true study of Italian, and 
 all other art, here, beside the statue of Ilaria di Caretto, 
 recumbent on her tomb. It turned me from the study of 
 landscape to that of life, being then myself in the fullest 
 strength of labour, and joy of hope. 
 
 And I was thinking, last night, that the drawing which I 
 am now trying to make of it, in the weakness and despair of 
 
 * Read Isaiah vi. through, carefully.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 255 
 
 declining age, might possibly be the last I should make be- 
 fore quitting the study of Italian, and even all other, art, for 
 ever. 
 
 I have no intent of doing so : quite the reverse of that. 
 But I feel the separation between me and the people round 
 me, so bitterly, in the world of my own which they cannot 
 enter; and I see their entrance to it now barred so abso- 
 lutely by their own resolves, (they having deliberately and 
 self-congratulatingly chosen for themselves the Manchester 
 Cotton Mill instead of the Titian,) that it becomes every 
 hour more urged upon me that I shall have to leave, not 
 father and mother, for they have left me ; nor children, nor 
 lands, for I have none, but at least this spiritual land and 
 fair domain of human art and natural peace, because I am 
 a man of unclean lips, and dwell in the midst of a people of 
 unclean lips, and therefore am undone, because mine e\-es 
 have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts. 
 
 I say it, and boldly. Who else is there of you who can 
 stand with me, and say the same ? It is an age of progress, 
 you tell me. Is your progress chiefly in this, that you can- 
 not see the King, the Lord of Hosts, but only Baal, instead 
 of him ? 
 
 "The Sun is God," said Turner, a few weeks before he 
 died with the setting rays of it on his face. 
 
 He meant it, as Zoroaster meant it ; and was a Sun- 
 worshipper of the old breed. But the unheard-of foulness 
 of your modern faith in Baal is its being faith without 
 worship. The Sun is not God, you say. Not by any man- 
 ner of means. A gigantic railroad accident, perhaps, a cor- 
 uscant Sivos, put on the throne of God like a limelight ; and 
 able to serve you, eventually, much better than ever God did. 
 
 I repeat my challenge. You, Te-Deum-singing princes, 
 colonels, bishops, choristers, and what else, do any of you 
 know what Te means? or what Deum ? or what Laudamus ? 
 Have any of your eyes seen the King, or His Sabaoth ? Will 
 any of you say, with your hearts, ' Heaven and earth are 
 full of His glory ; and in His name we will set up our 
 banners, and do good work, whether we live or die '?
 
 250 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 
 
 You, in especial, Squires of England, whose fathers were 
 England's bravest and best, by how much better and 
 braver you are than your fathers, in this Age of Progress, I 
 challenge you : Have any of your eyes seen the King ? 
 Are any of your hands ready for His work, and for His 
 weapons, even though they should chance to be pruning- 
 hooks instead of spears ? 
 
 Who am I, that should challenge you do you ask? My 
 mother was a sailor's daughter, so please you ; one of my aunts 
 was a baker's wife the other, a tanner's ; and I don't know 
 much more about my family, except that there used to be a 
 greengrocer of the name in a small shop near the Crystal 
 Palace. Something of my early and vulgar life, if it in- 
 terests you, I will tell in next Fors : in this one, it is indeed 
 my business, poor gipsy herald as I am, to bring you such 
 challenge, though you should hunt and hang me for it. 
 
 Squires, are you, and not Workmen, nor Labourers, do 
 you answer next ? 
 
 Yet, I have certainly sometimes seen engraved over your 
 family vaults, and especially on the more modern tablets, 
 those comfortful words, " Blessed are the dead which die in 
 the Lord." But I observe that you are usually content, 
 with the help of the village stone-mason, to say only this 
 concerning your dead ; and that you but rarely venture to 
 add the "yea" of the Spirit, "that they may rest from their 
 Labours, and their Works do follow them." Nay, I am not 
 even sure that many of you clearly apprehend the meaning 
 of such followers and following ; nor, in the most pathetic 
 funeral sermons, have I heard the matter made strictly in- 
 telligible to your hope. For indeed, though you have always 
 graciously considered your church no less essential a part of 
 your establishment than your stable, you have only been 
 solicitous that there should be no broken-winded steeds in 
 the one, without collateral endeavour to find clerks for the 
 other in whom the breath of the Spirit should be unbroken 
 also. 
 
 And yet it is a text which, seeing how often we would 
 fain take the comfort of it, surely invites explanation. The
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 257 
 
 implied difference between those who die in the Lord, and 
 die otherwise ; the essential distinction between the labour 
 from which these blessed ones rest, and the work which in 
 some mysterious way follows them ; and the doubt which 
 must sometimes surely occur painfully to a sick or bereaved 
 squire whether the labours of his race are always severe 
 enough to make rest sweet, or the works of his race always 
 distinguished enough to make their following superb, ought, 
 it seems to me, to cause the verse to glow on your ( lately, I 
 observe, more artistic ) tombstones, like the letters on Bel- 
 shazzar's wall ; and with the more lurid and alarming light, 
 that this " following " of the works is distinctly connected, 
 in the parallel passage of Timothy, with " judgment " upon 
 the works ; and that the kinds of them which can securely 
 front such judgment, are there said to be, in some cases, 
 " manifest beforehand," and, in no case, ultimately obscure. 
 
 " It seems to me," I say, as if such questions should occur to 
 the squire during sickness, or funeral pomp. But the seem- 
 ing is far from the fact. For I suppose the last idea which is 
 likely ever to enter the mind of a representative squire, in any 
 vivid or tenable manner, would be that anything he had ever 
 done, or said, was liable to a judgment from superior pow- 
 ers ; or that any other law than his own will, or the fashion 
 of his society, stronger than his will, existed in relation 
 to the management of his estate. Whereas, according to 
 any rational interpretation of our Church's doctrine, as by 
 law established ; if there be one person in the world rather 
 than another to whom it makes a serious difference whether 
 he dies in the Lord or out of Him ; and if there be one rather 
 than another who will have strict scrutiny made into his uso 
 of every instant of his time, every syllable of his speech, and 
 every action of his hand and foot, on peril of having hand 
 and foot bound, and tongue scorched, in Tophet, that re- 
 sponsible person is the British Squire. 
 
 Very strange, the unconsciousness of this, in his own 
 mind, and in the minds of all belonging to him. Even the 
 greatest painter of him the Reynolds who has filled Eng- 
 land with the ghosts of her noble squires and dames, though 
 VOL. II. 17
 
 258 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 he ends his last lecture in the Academy with " the name of 
 Michael Angelo," never for an instant thought of following 
 out the purposes of Michael Angelo, and painting a Last 
 Judgment upon Squires, with the scene of it laid in Leicester- 
 shire. Appealing lords and ladies on either hand ; Behold, 
 Lord, here is Thy land ; which I have as far as my dis- 
 tressed circumstances would permit laid up in a napkin. 
 Perhaps there may be a cottage or so less upon it than when 
 I came into the estate, a tree cut down here and there im- 
 prudently ; but the grouse and foxes are unditninished. 
 Behold, there Thou hast that is Thine." And what capac- 
 ities of dramatic effect in the cases of less prudent owners, 
 those who had said in their hearts, " My Lord delayeth 
 His coming." Michael Angelo's St. Bartholomew, exhibit- 
 ing his oicn skin flayed off him, awakes but a minor interest 
 in that classic picture. How many an English squire might 
 not we, with more pictorial advantage, see represented as 
 adorned with the flayed skins of other people ? Micah the 
 Morasthite, throned above them on the rocks of the mountain 
 of the Lord, while his Master now takes up His parable, 
 "' Hear, I pray you, ye heads of Jacob, and ye princes of the 
 house of Israel ; Is it not for you to know judgment, who 
 also eat the flesh of my people, and flay their skin from off 
 them, and they break their bones, and chop them in pieces as 
 for the pot." 
 
 And how of the appeals on the other side? "Lord, Thou 
 gavest me one land ; behold, I have gained beside it ten lands 
 more." You think that an exceptionally economical landlord 
 might indeed be able to say so much for himself; and that 
 the increasing of their estates has at least been held a de- 
 sirable thing by all of them, however Fortune, and the sweet 
 thyme-scented Turf of England, might thwart their best in- 
 tentions. Indeed it is well to have coveted much more to 
 have gained increase of estate, in a certain manner. But 
 neither the Morasthite nor his Master have any word of praise 
 for you in appropriating surreptitiously, portions, say, of 
 Hampstead Heath, or Hayes Common, or even any bit of 
 gipsy-pot-boiling land at the roadside. Far the contrary :
 
 FOES CLAVIGERA. 259 
 
 In that day of successful appropriation, there is one that shall 
 take up a parable against you, and say, " We be utterly 
 spoiled. He hath changed the portion of my people ; turning 
 away, he hath divided our fields. Therefore thou shalt have 
 none that shall cast a cord by lot in the congregation of the 
 Lord." In modern words, you shall have quite unexpected 
 difficulties in getting your legal documents drawn up to your 
 satisfaction ; and truly, as you have divided the fields of the 
 poor, the poor, in their time, shall divide yours. 
 
 Nevertheless, in their deepest sense, those triumphant 
 words, " Behold, I have gained Reside it ten lands more," 
 must be on the lips of every landlord who honourably enters 
 into his rest ; whereas there will soon be considerable diffi- 
 culty, as I think you are beginning to perceive, not only 
 in gaining more, but even in keeping what you have got. 
 
 For the gipsy hunt is up also, as well as Harry our King's ; 
 and the hue and cry loud against your land and you ; your 
 tenure of it is in dispute before a multiplying mob, deaf and 
 blind as you, frantic for the spoiling of you. The British 
 Constitution is breaking fast. It never was, in its best days, 
 entirely what its stout owner flattered himself. Neither 
 British Constitution, nor British law, though it blanch every 
 acre with an acre of parchment, sealed with as many seals as 
 the meadow had buttercups, can keep your landlordships 
 safe, henceforward, for an hour. You will have to fight 
 for them, as your fathers did, if you mean to keep them. 
 
 That is your only sound and divine right to them ; and of 
 late you seem doubtful of appeal to it. You think political 
 economy and peace societies will contrive some arithmetical 
 evangel of possession. You will not find it so. If a man is 
 not ready to fight for his land, and for his wife, no legal 
 forms can secure them to him. They can affirm his posses- 
 sion ; but neither grant, sanction, nor protect it. To his own 
 love, to his own resolution, the lordship is granted ; and to 
 those only. 
 
 That is the first 'labour' of landlords, then. Fierce exer- 
 cise of body and mind, in so much pugnacity as shall super- 
 sede all office of legal documents. Whatever labour you
 
 260 FOES CLAVIGERA. 
 
 mean to put on your land, your first entirely Divine labour 
 is to keep hold of it. And are you ready for that toil to-day ? 
 It will soon be called for. Sooner or later, within the next 
 few years, you will find yourselves in Parliament in front of 
 a majority resolved on the establishment of a Republic, and 
 the division of lands. Vainly the landed millowners will 
 shriek for the " operation of natural laws of political econ- 
 omy." The vast natural law of carnivorous rapine which 
 they have declared their Baal-God, in so many words, will be 
 in equitable operation then ; and not, as they fondly hoped 
 to keep it, all on their own side. Vain, then, your arith- 
 metical or sophistical defence. You may pathetically plead 
 to the people's majority, that the divided lands will not give 
 much more than the length and breadth of his grave to each 
 mob-proprietor. They will answer, " We will have what we 
 can get ; at all events, you shall keep it no longer." And 
 what will you do? Send for the Life Guards and clear the 
 House, and then, with all the respectable members of society 
 as special constables, guard the streets ? That answered well 
 against the Chartist meeting on Kennington Common in 
 1848. Yes ; but in 1880 it will not be a Chartist meeting 
 at Kennington, but a magna-and-maxima-Chartist Ecclesia 
 at Westminster, that you must deal with. You will find a 
 difference, and to purpose. Are you prepared to clear the 
 streets with the Woolwich infant, thinking that out of the 
 mouth of that suckling, God will perfect your praise, and 
 ordain your strength ? Be it so ; but every grocer's and 
 chandler's shop in the thoroughfares of London is a maga- 
 zine of petroleum and percussion powder ; and there are 
 those who will use both, among the Republicans. And you 
 will see your father the Devil's will done on earth, as it is in 
 hell. 
 
 I call him your father, for you have denied your mor- 
 tal fathers, and their Heavenly One. You have declared, 
 in act and thought, the ways and laws of your sires 
 obsolete, and of your God ridiculous ; above all, the habits 
 of obedience, and the elements of justice. You were made 
 lords over God's heritage. You thought to make it your
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 261 
 
 own heritage ; to be lords of your own land, not of God's 
 land. And to this issue of ownership you are come. 
 
 And what a heritage it was, you had the lordship over ! 
 A land of fruitful vales and pastoral mountains ; and a 
 heaven of pleasant sunshine and kindly rain ; and times of 
 sweet prolonged summer, and cheerful transient winter ; and 
 a race of pure heart, iron sinew, splendid fame, and constant 
 faith. 
 
 All this was yours ! the earth with its fair fruits and inno- 
 cent creatures ; the firmament with its eternal lights and 
 dutiful seasons ; the men, souls and bodies, your fathers' 
 true servants for a thousand years, their lives, and their 
 children's children's lives given into your hands, to save or 
 to destroy ; their food yours, as the grazing of the sheep 
 is the shepherd's ; their thoughts yours, priest and tutor 
 chosen for them by you ; their hearts yours, if you would 
 but so much as know them by sight and name, and give them 
 the passing grace of your own glance, as you dwelt among 
 them, their king. And all this monarchy and glory, all this 
 power and love, all this land and its people, you pitifullest, 
 foulest of Iscariots, sopped to choking with the best of 
 the feast from Christ's own fingers, vou have deliberately 
 sold to the highest bidder ; Christ, and His Poor, and His 
 Paradise together ; and instead of sinning only, like poor 
 natural Adam, gathering of the fruit of the Tree of Knowl- 
 edge, you, who don't want to gather it, touch it with a 
 vengeance, cut it down, and sell the timber. 
 
 Judases with the big bag game-bag to wit ! to think 
 how many of your dull Sunday mornings have been spent, 
 for propriety's sake, looking chiefly at those carved angels 
 blowing trumpets above your family vaults ; and never one 
 of you has had Christianity enough in him to think that he 
 might as easily have his moors full of angels as of grouse. 
 And now, if ever you did see a real angel before the Day 
 of Judgment, your first thought would be, to shoot it. 
 
 And for your 'family' vaults, what will be the use of 
 them to you '? Does not Mr. Darwin show you that you 
 can't wash the slugs out of a lettuce without disrespect to
 
 262 irons CLAVIQERA. 
 
 your ancestors ? Nay, the ancestors of the modern political 
 economist cannot have been so pure ; they were not he 
 tells you himself vegetarian slugs, but carnivorous ones 
 those, to wit, that you see also carved on your tombstones 
 going in and out at the eyes of skulls. And truly, I don't 
 know what else the holes in the heads of modern political 
 economists were made for. 
 
 If there are any brighter windows in yours, if any 
 audience chambers if any council chambers if any crown 
 of walls that the pin of Death has not yet pierced, it is 
 time for you to rise to your work, whether you live or die. 
 
 What are you to do, then ? First, the act which will be 
 the foundation of all bettering and strength in your own 
 lives, as in that of your tenants, fix their rent ; under legal 
 assurance that it shall not be raised ; and under moral assur- 
 ance that, if you see they treat your land well, and are likely 
 to leave it to you, if they die, raised in value, the said rent 
 shall be diminished in proportion to the improvement ; that 
 is to say t providing they pay you the fixed rent during the 
 time of lease, you are to leave to them the entire benefit of 
 whatever increase they can give to the value of the land. 
 Put the bargain in a simple instance. You lease them an 
 orchard of crab-trees for so much a year ; they leave you at 
 the end of the lease, an orchard of golden pippins. Suppos- 
 ing they have paid you their rent regularly, you have no 
 right to anything more than what you lent them crab-trees, 
 to wit. You must pay them for the better trees which by 
 their good industry they give you back, or, which is the 
 same thing, previously reduce their rent in proportion to the 
 improvement in apples. "The exact contrary, "you observe, 
 " of your present modes of proceeding." Just so, gentlemen ; 
 and it is not improbable that the exact contrary in many 
 other cases of your present modes of proceeding will be 
 found by you, eventually, the proper one, and more than 
 that, the necessary one. Then the second thing you have to 
 do is to determine the income necessary for your own noble 
 and peaceful country life ; and setting that aside out of the 
 rents, for a constant sum, to be habitually lived well withii;
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 263 
 
 limits of, put your heart and strength into the right employ- 
 ment of the rest for the bettering of your estates, in ways 
 which the farmers for their own advantage could not or 
 would not ; for the growth of more various plants ; the 
 cherishing, not killing, of beautiful living creatures birds, 
 beast, and fish ; and the establishment of such schools of 
 History, Natural History, and Art, as may enable your farm- 
 ers' children, with your own, to know the meaning of the 
 words Beauty, Courtesy, Compassion, Gladness, and Religion. 
 Which last word, primarily, (you have not always forgotten 
 to teach this one truth, because it chanced to suit your ends, 
 and even the teaching of this one truth has been beneficent ;) 
 Religion, primarily, means 'Obedience' binding to some- 
 thing, or some one. To be bound, or in bonds, as apprentice ; 
 to be bound, or in bonds, by military oath ; to be bound, or 
 in bonds, as a servant to man ; to be bound, or in bonds, 
 under the yoke of God. These are all divinely instituted, 
 eternally necessary, conditions of Religion ; beautiful, in- 
 violable, captivity and submission of soul in life and death. 
 This essential meaning of Religion it was your office mainly 
 to teach, each of you captain and king, leader and lawgiver, 
 to his people ; vicegerents of your Captain, Christ. And 
 now you miserable jockeys and gamesters you can't get 
 a seat in Parliament for those all but worn-out buckskin 
 breeches of yours, but by taking off your hats to the potboy. 
 Pretty classical statues you will make, Coriolanuses of the 
 nineteenth century, humbly promising, not to your people 
 gifts of corn, but to your potboys, stealthy sale of adulterated 
 beer ! 
 
 Obedience ! you dare not so much as utter the word, 
 whether to potboy, or any other sort of boy, it seems, lately ; 
 and the half of you still calling themselves Lords, Marquises, 
 Sirs, and other such ancient names, which though omniscient 
 Mr. Buckle says they and their heraldry are nought some 
 little prestige lingers about still. You yourselves, what do 
 you yet mean by them Lords of what ? Herrs, Signers, 
 Dukes of what ? of whom ? Do you mean merely, when 
 you go to the root of the matter, that you sponge on the
 
 264: FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 British farmer for your living, and are strong-bodied paupers 
 compelling your dole ? 
 
 To that extent, there is still, it seems, some force in you. 
 Heaven keep it in you ; for, as I have said, it will be tried, 
 and soon ; and you would even yourselves see what was 
 coming, but that in your hearts not from cowardice, but 
 from shame, you are not sure whether you will be ready to 
 fight for your dole ; and would fain persuade yourselves it 
 will still be given you for form's sake, or pity's. 
 
 No, my lords and gentlemen, you won it at the lance's 
 point, and must so hold it, against the clubs of Sempach, if 
 still you may. No otherwise. You won ' it? I say, your 
 dole, as matters now stand. But perhaps, as matters used 
 to stand, something else. As receivers of alms, you will find 
 there is no fight in you. No beggar, nor herd of beggars, 
 can fortify so very wide circumference of dish. And the 
 real secret of those strange breakings of the lance by the 
 clubs of Sempach, is " that villanous saltpetre " you 
 think? No, Shakespearian lord; nor even the sheaf -binding 
 of Arnold, which so stopped the shaking of the fruitless 
 spiculse. The utter and inmost secret is, that you have been 
 fighting these three hundred years for what you could get, 
 instead of what you could give. You were ravenous enough 
 in rapine in the olden times ; * but you lived fearlessly and 
 innocently by it, because, essentially, you wanted money and 
 food to give, not to consume ; to maintain your followers 
 with, not to swallow yourselves. Your chivalry was founded, 
 invariably, by knights who were content all their lives with 
 their horse and armour, and daily bread. Your kings, of 
 true power, never desired for themselves more, down to the 
 last of them, Friedrich. What they did desire was strengtli 
 of manhood round them, and, in their own hands, the power 
 of largesse. 
 
 ' Largesse.' The French word is obsolete ; one Latin 
 equivalent, Liberalitas, is fast receiving another, and not 
 
 * The reader will perhaps now begin to see the true bearing of the 
 earlier letters in Fora. Re-read, with this letter, that on the campaign 
 of Crecy.
 
 FORS CLAVIOERA. 265 
 
 altogether similar significance, among English Liberals. 
 The other Latin equivalent, Generosity, has become doubly 
 meaningless, since modern political economy and politics 
 neither require virtue, nor breeding. The Greek, or Greek- 
 descended, equivalents Charity, Grace, and the like, your 
 Grace the Duke of can perhaps tell me what has be- 
 come of them. Meantime, of all the words, ' Largesse,' the 
 entirely obsolete one, is the perfectly chivalric one ; and 
 therefore, next to the French description of Franchise, we 
 will now read the French description of Largesse, putting 
 first, for comparison with it, a few more sentences * from 
 the secretary's speech at the meeting of Social Science in 
 Glasgow ; and remembering also the Pull Mall Gazette's 
 exposition of the perfection of Lord Derby's idea of agricul- 
 ture, in the hands of the landowner "Cultivating" (by 
 machinery) " large farms for himself" 
 
 " Exchange is the result, put into action, of the desire to 
 possess that which belongs to another, controlled by reason 
 and conscientiousness. It is difficult to conceive of any 
 human transaction that cannot be resolved, in some form or 
 other, into the idea of an exchange. All that is essential in 
 production are," (sic, only italics mine,) " directly evolved 
 from this source." 
 
 " Man has therefore been defined to be an animal that 
 exchanges. It will be seen, however, that he not only ex- 
 changes, but from the fact of his belonging, in part, to the 
 order carnivora, that he also inherits, to a considerable de- 
 gree, the desire to possess without exchanging ; or, in other 
 words, by fraud and violence, when such can be used for his 
 own advantage, without danger to himself." 
 
 ***** 
 
 "Reason would immediately suggest to one of superior 
 strength, that, however desirable it might be to take posses- 
 sion, by violence, of what another had laboured to produce, 
 
 * I wish I could find room also for the short passages I omit ; but one 
 I quoted before, " As no one will deny that man possesses carnivorous 
 teeth," etc., and the others introduce collateral statements equally 
 absurd, but with which at present we are not concerned.
 
 266 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 he might be treated in the same way by one stronger than 
 
 himself ; to which he, of course, would hare great objec- 
 tion." 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 " In order, therefore, to prevent, or put a stop to, a prac- 
 tice which each would object to in his own case, and which, 
 besides, would put a stop to production altogether, both 
 reason and a sense of justice would suggest the act of ex- 
 change, as the only proper mode of obtaining things from 
 one another." 
 
 ***** 
 
 To anybody who had either reason or a sense of justice, 
 it might possibly have suggested itself that, except for the 
 novelty of the thing, mere exchange profits nobody, and 
 presupposes a coincidence, or rather a harmonious dissent, 
 of opinion not always attainable. 
 
 Mr. K. has a kettle, and Mr. P. has a pot. Mr. P. says to 
 Mr. K., ' I would rather have your kettle than my pot ; ' and 
 if, coincidently, Mr. K. is also in a discontented humour, and 
 can say to Mr. P., 'I would rather have your pot than my 
 kettle,' why both Hanses are in luck, and all is well ; but 
 is their carnivorous instinct thus to be satisfied? Carnivo- 
 rous instinct says, in both cases, ' I want both pot and kettle 
 myself, and you to have neither,' and is entirely unsatisfi- 
 able on the principle of exchange. The ineffable blockhead 
 who wrote the paper forgot that the principle of division of 
 labour underlies that of exchange, and does not arise out of 
 it, but is the only reason for it. If Mr. P. can make two 
 pots, and Mr. K. two kettles, and so, by exchange, both be- 
 come possessed of a pot and a kettle, all is well. But the 
 profit of the business is in the additional production, and 
 only the convenience in the subsequent exchange. For, in- 
 deed, there are in the main two great fallacies which the 
 rascals of the world rejoice in making its fools proclaim : 
 the first, that by continually exchanging, and cheating each 
 other on exchange, two exchanging persons, out of one pot, 
 alternating with one kettle, can make their two fortunes. 
 That is the principle of Trade. The second, that Judas' 
 bag has become a juggler's, in which, if Mr. P. deposits his
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 267 
 
 pot, and waits awhile, there will come out two pots, both 
 full of broth ; and if Mr. K. deposits his kettle, and waits 
 awhile, there will come out two kettles, both full of fish ! 
 That is the principle of Interest. 
 
 However, for the present, observe simply the conclusion 
 of our social science expositor, that " the art of exchange is 
 the only proper mode of obtaining things from one another ;" 
 and now compare with this theory that of old chivalry, name- 
 ly, that gift was also a good way, both of losing and gaining. 
 
 " And after, in the dance, went 
 Largesse, that set all her intent 
 For to be honourable and free. 
 Of Alexander's kin was she ; 
 Her moste joy was, I wis, 
 When that she gave, and said, ' Have this.'* 
 Not Avarice, the foul caitiff, f 
 Was half, to gripe, so ententive, 
 As Largesse is to give, and spend. 
 And God always enough her send, (sent) 
 So that the more she gave away, 
 The more, I wis, she had alway. 
 * * * * 
 
 Largesse had on a robe fresh 
 Of rich purpure, sarlinish ; \ 
 
 * I must warn you against the false reading of the original, in many 
 editions. Fournier's five volume one is altogether a later text, in some 
 cases with interesting intentional modifications, probably of the fif- 
 teenth century ; but oftener with destruction of the older meaning. It 
 gives this couplet, for instance, 
 
 " Si n'avoit el plaisir de rien 
 Que quant elle donnoit du sien." 
 
 The old reading is, 
 
 Si n'avoit elle joie de rien 
 
 Fors quant elle povoit dire, ' tien.' 
 
 Didot's edition, Paris, 1814, is founded on very early and valuable 
 texts ; but it is difficult to read. Chaucer has translated a text some 
 twenty or thirty years later in style ; and his English is quite trust- 
 worthy as far as it is carried. For the rest of the Romance, Fournier's 
 text is practically good enough, and easily readable. 
 
 f Fr. 'chetive," rhyming accurately to 'ententive.' 
 
 \ Fr. Sarrasinesse.
 
 268 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 Well formed was her face, and clear, 
 
 And open had she her colere, (collar) 
 
 For she right then had in present 
 
 Unto a lady made present 
 
 Of a gold brooch, full well wrought ; 
 
 And certes it mis-set her nought. 
 
 For through her smocke, wrought with silk, 
 
 The flesh was seen as white as milke." 
 
 Think over that, ladies, and gentlemen who love them, for 
 a pretty way of being decolletee. Even though the flesh 
 should be a little sunburnt sometimes, so that it be the Sun 
 of Righteousness, and not Baal, who shines on it -though it 
 darken from the milk-like flesh to the colour of the Madonna 
 of Chartres, in this world you shall be able to say, I am 
 black, but comely ; and, dying, shine as the brightness of the 
 firmament as the stars for ever and ever. They do not re- 
 ceive their glories, however one differeth in glory from an- 
 other, either by, or on, Exchange. 
 
 LUCCA. (Assumption of the Virgin.} 
 
 'As the stars, for ever." 1 Perhaps we had better not say 
 that, modern science looking pleasantly forward to the ex- 
 tinction of a good many of them. But it will be well to 
 shine like them, if but for a little while. 
 
 You probably did not understand why, in a former letter, 
 the Squire's special duty towards the peasant was said to be 
 "presenting a celestial appearance to him." 
 
 That is, indeed, his appointed missionary work ; and still 
 more definitely, his wife's. 
 
 The giving of loaves is indeed the lady's first duty ; the 
 first, but the least. 
 
 Next, comes the giving of brooches ; seeing that her peo- 
 ple are dressed charmingly and neatly, as well as herself, and 
 have pretty furniture, like herself.* 
 
 * Even after eighteen hundred years of sermons, the Christian 
 public do not clearly understand that ' two coats,' in the brief sermon 
 of the Baptist to repentance, mean also, two petticoats, and the like. 
 
 I am glad that Fors obliges me to finish this letter at Lucca, under 
 the special protection of St. Martin.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 269 
 
 But her chief duty of all is to be, Herself, lovely. 
 
 4 ' That through her smocke, wrought with silk, 
 The flesh be seen as white as milke." * 
 
 Flesh, ladies mine, you observe ; and not any merely illumi- 
 nated resemblance of it, after the fashion of the daughter of 
 Ethbaal. It is your duty to be lovely, not by candlelight, 
 but sunshine ; not out of a window or opera-box, but on the 
 bare ground. 
 
 Which that you may be, if through the smocke the flesh, 
 then, much more, through the flesh, the spirit, must be seen 
 " as white as milke." 
 
 I have just been drawing, or trying to draw, Giotto's 
 ' Poverty ' (Sancta Paupertas) at Assisi. You may very 
 likely know the chief symbolism of the picture : that Poverty is 
 being married to St. Francis, and that Christ marries them, 
 while her bare feet are entangled in thorns, but behind her 
 head is a thicket of rose and lily. It is less likely you should 
 be acquainted with the farther details of the group. 
 
 The thorns are of the acacia, which, according to tradition, 
 was used to weave Christ's crown. The roses are in two 
 clusters, palest red,"j- and deep crimson ; the one on her 
 right, the other on her left ; above her head, pure 
 white on the golden ground, rise the Annunciation Lilies. 
 She is not crowned with them, observe ; they are be- 
 hind her : she is crowned only with her own hair, wreathed 
 in a tress with which she has bound her short bridal 
 veil. For dress, she has her smocke, only ; and that 
 torn, and torn again, and patched, diligently ; except just at 
 the shoulders, and a little below the throat, where Giotto has 
 torn it, too late for her to mend ; and the fair flesh is seen 
 through, so white that one cannot tell where the rents are, 
 except when quite close. 
 
 * Fr. , " Si que par oula la chemise 
 
 Lui blancheoit la char alise." 
 
 Look out ' Alice ' in Miss Yonge's Dictionary of Christian Names ; and 
 remember Alice of Salisbury. 
 
 f I believe the pale roses are meant to be white, but are tinged with 
 red that they may not contend with the symbolic brightness of the 
 lilies.
 
 270 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 For girdle, she has the Franciscan's cord ; but that also is 
 white, as if spun of silk ; her whole figure, like a statue of 
 snow, seen against the shade of her purple wings : for she is 
 already one of the angels. A crowd of them, on each side, 
 attend her ; two, her sisters, are her bridesmaids also. 
 Giotto has written their names above them SPES ; KAEITAS ; 
 their sister's Christian name he has written in the lilies, 
 for those of us who have truly learned to read. Charity is 
 crowned with white roses, which burst, as they open, into 
 flames ; and she gives the bride a marriage gift. 
 
 " An apple," say the interpreters. 
 
 Not so. It was some one else than Charity who gave the 
 first bride that gift. It is a heart. 
 
 Hope only points upwards ; and while Charity has the 
 golden nimbus round her head circular (infinite), like that of 
 Christ and the eternal angels, she has her glory set within 
 the lines that limit the cell of the bee, hexagonal. 
 
 And the bride has hers, also, so restricted : nor, though she 
 and her bridesmaids are sisters, are they dressed alike ; but 
 one in red ; and one in green ; and one, robe, flesh and 
 spirit, a statue of Snow. 
 
 " La terza parea neve, teste mossa." 
 
 Do you know now, any of you, ladies mine, what Giotto's 
 lilies mean between the roses ? or how they may also grow 
 among the Sesame of knightly spears ? 
 
 Not one of you, maid or mother, though I have besought 
 you these four years, (except only one or two of my personal 
 friends,) has joined St. George's Company. You probably 
 think St. George may advise some different arrangements in 
 Hanover Square ? It is possible ; for his own knight's cloak 
 is white, and he may wish you to bear such celestial appear- 
 ance constantly. You talk often of bearing Christ's cross ; 
 do you never think of putting on Christ's robes, those that 
 He wore on Tabor? nor know what lamps they were which 
 the wise virgins trimmed for the marriage feast ? You think, 
 perhaps, you can go in to that feast in gowns made half of 
 silk, and half of cotton, spun in your Lancashire cotton-
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 271 
 
 mills ; and that the Americans have struck oil enough 
 (lately, I observe also, native gas,) to supply any number 
 of belated virgins? 
 
 It is not by any means so, fair ladies. It is only your 
 newly adopted Father who tells you so. Suppose, learning 
 what it is to be generous, you recover your descent from 
 God, and then weave your household dresses white with 
 your own fingers? For as no fuller on earth can white 
 them, but the light of a living faith, so no demon under 
 the earth can darken them like the shadow of a dead one. 
 And your modern English ' faith without works ' is dead ; 
 and would to God she were buried too, for the stench of 
 her goes up to His throne from a thousand fields of blood. 
 Weave, I say, you have trusted far too much lately to the 
 washing your household raiment white ; go out in the 
 morning to Ruth's field, to sow as well as to glean ; sing 
 your Te Deum, at evening, thankfully, as God's daughters, 
 and there shall be no night there, for your light shall so 
 shine before men that they may see your good works, and 
 glorify not Baal the railroad accident but 
 
 " L'Amor che muove il Sole, e 1'altre stelle."
 
 272 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 I HAVE had by me for some time a small pamphlet, The Agricultural 
 Labourer, by a Farmer's Son,* kindly sent me by the author. The 
 matter of it is excellent as far as it reaches ; but the writer speaks as 
 if the existing, arrangements between landlord, farmer, and labourer 
 must last for ever. If he will look at the article on " Peasant Farm- 
 ing " in the Spectator of July 4th of this year, he may see grounds for 
 a better hope. That article is a review of Mr. W. T. Thornton's Plea 
 for Peasant Proprietors; and the following paragraph from it may 
 interest, and perhaps surprise, other readers besides my correspondent. 
 Its first sentence considerably surprises me, to begin with ; so I have 
 italicized it : 
 
 " This country is only just beginning to be seriously roused to the fact 
 that it has an agricultural question at all ; and some of those most 
 directly interested therein are, in their pain and surprise at the dis- 
 covery, hurrying so fast the wrong way, that it will probably take a 
 long time to bring them round again to sensible thoughts, after most 
 of the rest of the community are ready with an answer. 
 
 '' The primary object of this book is to combat the pernicious error 
 of a large schooL of English economists with reference to the hurtful 
 
 character of small farms and small landed properties One 
 
 would think that the evidence daily before a rural economist, in the 
 marvellous extra production of a market garden, or even a peasant's 
 allotment, over an ordinary farm, might suffice to raise doubts whether 
 vast fields tilled by steam, weeded by patent grubbers, and left other- 
 wise to produce in rather a happy-go-lucky fashion, were likely to be 
 the most advanced and profitable of all cultivated lands. On this 
 single point of production, Mr. Thornton conclusively proves the small 
 farmer to have the advantage. 
 
 " The extreme yields of the very highest English farming are even 
 exceeded in Guernsey, and in that respect the evidence of the greater 
 productiveness of small farming over large is overwhelming. The 
 Channel Islands not only feed their own population, but are large ex- 
 porters of provisions as well. 
 
 14 Small farms being thus found to be more advantageous, it is but 
 an easy step to peasant proprietors." 
 
 Stop a moment, Mr. Spectator. The step is easy, indeed ; so is a 
 step into a well, or out of a window. There is no question whatever, in 
 
 * Macintosh, 24, Paternoster Row.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 273 
 
 any country, or at any time, respecting the expediency of small farm- 
 ing ; but whether the small farmer should be the proprietor of his land, 
 is a very awkward question indeed in some countries. Are you aware, 
 Mr. Spectator, that your ' easy step,' taken in two lines and a breath, 
 means what I, with all my Utopian zeal, have been fourteen years writ- 
 ing on Political Economy, without venturing to hint at, except under 
 my breath; some considerable modification, namely, in the position 
 of the existing British landlord ? nothing less, indeed, if your ' step ' 
 were to be completely taken, than the reduction of him to a ' small 
 peasant proprietor ' ? And unless he can show some reason against it, 
 the ' easy step ' will most assuredly be taken with him. 
 
 Yet I have assumed, in this Fws, that it is not to be taken. That 
 under certain modifications of his system of Rent, he may still remain 
 lord of his land, may, and ought, provided always he knows what it 
 is to be lord of anything. Of which I hope to reason farther in the 
 Fors for November of this year. 
 
 VOL. IL 18
 
 274 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 
 
 LETTER XLVI. . 
 
 FLORENCE, 28th August, 1874. 
 
 I INTENDED this letter to have been published on my 
 mother's birthday, the second of next month. Fors, how- 
 ever, has entirely declared herself against that arrangement, 
 having given me a most unexpected piece of work here, in 
 drawing the Emperor, King, and Baron, who, throned by 
 Simone Memrni beneath the Duomo of Florence, beside a 
 Pope, Cardinal, and Bishop, represented, to the Florentine 
 mind of the fourteenth century, the sacred powers of the 
 State in their fixed relation to those of the Church. The 
 Pope lifts his right hand to bless, and holds the crosier in his 
 left ; having no powers but of benediction and protection. 
 The Emperor holds his sword upright in his right hand, and 
 a skull in his left, having alone the power of death. Both 
 have triple crowns ; but the Emperor alone has a nimbus. 
 The King has the diadem of fleur-de-lys, and the ball and 
 globe ; the Cardinal, a book. The Baron has his warrior's 
 sword ; the Bishop, a pastoral staff. And the whole scene 
 is very beautifully expressive of what have been by learned 
 authors supposed the Republican or Liberal opinions of Flor- 
 ence, in her day of pride. 
 
 The picture (fresco), in which this scene occurs, is the most 
 complete piece of theological and political teaching given to 
 us by the elder arts of Italy ; and this particular portion of 
 it is of especial interest to me, not only as exponent of the 
 truly liberal and communist principles which I am endeavour- 
 ing to enforce in these letters for the future laws of the St. 
 George's Company ; but also because my maternal grand- 
 mother was the landlady of the Old King's Head in Market 
 Street, Croydon ; and I wish she were alive again, and I could 
 paint her Simone Memmi's King's head, for a sign. 
 
 My maternal grandfather was, as I have said, a sailor, who
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 275 
 
 used to embark, like Robinson Crusoe, at Yarmouth, and 
 come back at rare intervals, making himself very delightful 
 at home. I have an idea he had something to do with the 
 herring business, but am not clear on that point ; my mother 
 never being much communicative concerning it. He spoiled 
 her, and her (younger) sister, with all his heart, when he was 
 at home ; unless there appeared any tendency to equivoca- 
 tion, or imaginative statements, on the part of the children, 
 which were always nnforjjiveable. My mother being once 
 
 v ~ / O 
 
 perceived by him to have distinctly told him a lie, he sent the 
 servant put forthwith to buy an entire bundle of new broom 
 twigs to whip her with. " They did not hurt me so much as 
 one would have done," said my mother, " but I thought a good 
 deal of it." 
 
 My grandfather was killed at two-and-thirty, by trying to 
 ride, instead of walk, into Croydon ; he got his leg crushed 
 by his horse against the wall ; and died of the hurt's morti- 
 fying. My mother was then seven or eight years old, and, 
 with her sister, was sent to quite a fashionable (for Croydon) 
 day-school, (Mrs. Rice's), where my mother was taught evan- 
 gelical principles, and became the pattern girl and best sewer 
 in the school ; and where my aunt absolutely refused evan- 
 gelical principles, and became the plague and pet of it. 
 
 My mother, being a girl of great power, with not a little 
 pride, grew more and more exemplary in her entirely consci- 
 entious career, much laughed at, though much beloved, by 
 her sister ; who had more wit, less pride, and no conscience. 
 At last my mother, being a consummate housewife, was sent 
 for to Scotland to take care of my paternal grandfather's 
 house ; who was gradually ruining himself ; and who at last 
 effectually ruined, and killed, himself. My father came up to 
 London ; was a clerk in a merchant's house for nine years, with- 
 out a holiday ; then began business on his own account ; paid 
 his father's debts ; and married his exemplary Croydon cousin. 
 
 Meantime my aunt had remained in Croydon, and married 
 a baker. By the time I was four years old, and beginning 
 to recollect things, my father rapidly taking higher com- 
 mercial position in London, there was traceable though to
 
 276 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 me, as a child, wholly incomprehensible just the least pos- 
 sible shade of shyness on the part of Hunter Street, Brunswick 
 Square, towards Market Street, Croydon. But whenever my 
 father was ill, and hard work and sorrow had already set 
 their mark on him, we all went down to Croydon to be 
 petted by my homely aunt ; and walk on Duppas Hill, and 
 on the heather of Addington. 
 
 (And now I go on with the piece of this letter written last 
 month at Assisi.) 
 
 My aunt lived in the little house still standing or which 
 was so four months ago the fashionablest in Market Street, 
 having actually two windows over the shop, in the second 
 story ; but I never troubled myself about that superior part 
 of the mansion, unless my father happened to be making 
 drawings in Indian ink, when I would sit reverently by and 
 watch ; my chosen domains being, at all other times, the 
 shop, the bake-house, and the stones round the spring of 
 crystal water at the back door (long since let down into the 
 modern sewer) ; and my chief companion, my aunt's dog, 
 Towzer, whom she had taken pity on when he was a snappish, 
 starved vagrant ; and made a brave and affectionate dog of : 
 which was the kind of thing she did for every living creature 
 that came in her way, all her life long. 
 
 I am sitting now in the Sacristan's cell at Assisi. Its roof 
 is supported by three massive beams, not squared beams, 
 but tree trunks barked, with the grand knots left in them, 
 answering all the purpose of sculpture. The walls are of 
 rude white plaster, though there is a Crucifixion by Giottino 
 on the back of one, outside the door ; the floor, brick ; the 
 table, olive wood ; the windows two, and only about four 
 feet by two in the opening, (but giving plenty of light in 
 the sunny morning, aided by the white walls,) looking out 
 on the valley of the Tescio. Under one of them, a small 
 arched stove for cooking ; in a square niche beside the other, 
 an iron wash-hand stand, that is to say, a tripod of good 
 fourteenth-century work, carrying a grand brown porringer, 
 two feet across, and half a foot deep. Between the windows 
 is the fireplace, the wall above it rich brown with the smoke.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 277 
 
 Hung against the wall behind me are a saucepan, gridiron, 
 and toasting-fork ; and in the wall a little door, closed only 
 by a brown canvas curtain, opening to an inner cell nearly 
 filled by the bedstead ; and at the side of the room a dresser, 
 with cupboard below, and two wine flasks, and three pots of 
 Raphael ware on the top of it, together with the first volume 
 of the ' Maraviglie, di Dio neW anime del Purgatorio, del 
 padre Carlo Gregorio Rosignoli, della Compagnia de Gesu,' 
 (Roma, 1841). There is a bird singing outside ; a constant 
 low hum of flies, making the ear sure it is summer ; a dove 
 cooing, very low ; and absolutely nothing else to be heard, 
 I find, after listening with great care. And I feel entirely 
 at home, because the room except in the one point of being 
 extremely dirty is just the kind of thing I used to see in 
 my aunt's bake-house ; and the country and the sweet valley 
 outside still rest in peace, such as used to be on the Surrey 
 hills in olden days. 
 
 And now I am really going to begin my steady explana- 
 tion of what the St. George's Company have to do. 
 
 1. You are to do good work, whether you live or die. 
 'What is good work?' you ask. \Vell you may ! For your 
 wise pastors and teachers, though they have been very care- 
 ful to assure you that good works are the fruits of faith, and 
 follow after justification, have been so certain of that fact 
 that they never have been the least solicitous to explain to 
 you, and still less to discover for themselves, what good 
 works were ; content if they perceived a general impression 
 on the minds of their congregations that good works meant 
 going to church and admiring the sermon on Sundays, and 
 making as much money as possible in the rest of the week. 
 
 It is true, one used to hear almsgiving and prayer some- 
 times recommended by old-fashioned country ministers. But 
 "the poor are now to be raised without gifts," says my very 
 hard-and-well-working friend Miss Octavia Hill ; and prayer 
 is entirely inconsistent with the laws of hydro (and other) 
 statics, says the Duke of Argyll. 
 
 It may be so, for aught I care, just now. Largesse and 
 supplication may or may not be still necessary in the world's
 
 278 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 
 
 economy. They are not, and never were, part of the world's 
 work. For no man can give till he has been paid his own 
 wages ; and still less can he ask his Father for the said wages 
 till he has done his day's duty for them. 
 
 Neither almsgiving nor praying, therefore, nor psalm-sing- 
 ing, nor even as poor Livingstone thought, to his own 
 death, and our bitter loss, discovering the mountains of the 
 Moon, have anything to do with " good work," or God's 
 work. But it is not so very difficult to discover what that 
 work is. You keep the Sabbath, in imitation of God's rest. 
 Do, by all manner of means, if you like ; and keep also the 
 rest of the week in imitation of God's work. 
 
 It is true that, according to tradition, that work was done 
 a long time ago, " before the chimneys in Zion were hot, 
 and ere the present years were sought out, and or ever the 
 inventions of them that now sin, were turned ; and before 
 they were sealed that have gathered faith for a treasure." * 
 But the established processes of it continue, as his Grace of 
 Argyll has argutely observed ; and your own work will be 
 good, if it is in harmony with them, and duly sequent of 
 them. Nor are even the first main facts or operations by 
 any means inimitable, on a duly subordinate scale, for if Man 
 be made in God's image, much more is Man's work made to 
 be the image of God's work. So therefore look to your model, 
 very simply stated for you in the nursery tale of Genesis. 
 
 Day First. The Making, or letting in, of Light. 
 
 Day Second. The Discipline and Firmament of Waters. 
 
 Day Third. The Separation of earth from water, and 
 planting the secure earth with trees. 
 
 Day Fourth. The Establishment of times and seasons, 
 and of the authority of the stars. 
 
 Day Fifth. Filling the water and air with fish and birds. 
 
 Day Sixth. Filling the land with beasts ; and putting 
 divine life into the clay of one of these, 
 that it may have authority over the others, 
 and over the rest of the Creation. 
 
 * 2 Esdras iv. 4.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 279 
 
 Here is your nursery story, very brief, and in some sort 
 unsatisfactory ; not altogether intelligible, (I don't know 
 anything very good that is,) nor wholly indisputable, (I don't 
 know anything ever spoken usefully on so wide a subject 
 that is) ; but substantially vital and sufficient. So the good 
 human work may properly divide itself into the same six 
 branches ; and will be a perfectly literal and practical fol- 
 lowing out of the Divine ; and will have opposed to it a cor- 
 respondent Diabolic force of eternally bad work as much 
 worse than idleness or death, as good work is better than 
 idleness or death. 
 
 Good work, then, will be, 
 
 A. Letting in light where there was darkness ; as especially 
 into poor rooms and back streets ; and generally guiding and 
 administering the sunshine wherever we can, by all the means 
 in our power. 
 
 And the correspondent Diabolic work is putting a tax on 
 windows, and blocking out the sun's light with smoke. 
 
 B. Disciplining the falling waters. In the Divine work, 
 this is the ordinance of clouds ; * in the human, it is prop- 
 erly putting the clouds to service ; and first stopping the rain 
 where they carry it from the sea, and then keeping it pure 
 as it goes back to the sea again. 
 
 And the correspondent Diabolic work is the arrangement 
 of land so as to throw all the water back to the sea as fast 
 as we can ; f and putting every sort of filth into the stream 
 as it runs. 
 
 c. The separation of earth from water, and planting it with 
 trees. The correspondent human work is especially clearing 
 morasses, and planting desert ground. 
 
 The Dutch, in a small way, in their own country, have done 
 a good deal with sand and tulips ; also the North Germans. 
 But the most beautiful type of the literal ordinance of dry 
 land in water is the State of Venice, with her sea-canals, re- 
 strained, traversed by their bridges, and especially bridges 
 of the Rivo Alto, or High Bank, which are, or were till a few 
 
 * See Modern Painters, vol. iii., "The Firmament." 
 f Compare Dante, Purg., end of Canto V.
 
 280 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 years since, symbols of the work of a true Pontifex, the 
 Pontine Marshes being the opposite symbol. 
 
 The correspondent Diabolic work is turning good land and 
 water into mud ; and cutting down trees that we may drive 
 steam ploughs, etc., etc. 
 
 D. The establishment of times and seasons. The corre- 
 spondent human work is a due watching of the rise and set 
 of stars, and course of the sun ; and due administration and 
 forethought of our own annual labours, preparing for them 
 in hope, and concluding them in joyfulness, according to the 
 laws and gifts of Heaven. Which beautiful order is set forth 
 in symbols on all lordly human buildings round the semi- 
 circular arches which are types of the rise and fall of days 
 and years. 
 
 And the correspondent Diabolic work is turning night 
 into day with candles, so that we never see the stars ; and 
 mixing the seasons up one with another, and having early 
 strawberries, and green pease and the like. 
 
 E. Filling the waters with fish, and air with birds. The 
 correspondent human work is Mr. Frank Buckland's, and the 
 like, of which 'like' I am thankful to have been permitted 
 to do a small piece near Oroydon, in the streams to which 
 my mother took me, when a child, to play beside. There 
 were more than a dozen of the fattest, shiniest, spottiest, 
 and tamest trout I ever saw in my life, in the pond at 
 Carshalton, the last time I saw it this spring. 
 
 The correspondent Diabolic work is poisoning fish, as is 
 done at Coniston, with copper-mining ; and catching them 
 for Ministerial and other fashionable dinners when they 
 ought not to be caught ; and treating birds as birds are 
 treated, Ministerially and otherwise. 
 
 F. Polling the earth with beasts, properly known and cared 
 for by their master, Man ; but chiefly, breathing into the 
 clayey and brutal nature of Man himself, the Soul, or Love, 
 of God. 
 
 The correspondent Diabolic work is shooting and torment- 
 ing beasts ; and grinding out the soul of man from his flesh, 
 with machine labour ; and then grinding down the flesh of
 
 FORS CLAVIOERA. 281 
 
 him, when nothing else is left, into clay, with machines for 
 that purpose, mitrailleuses, Woolwich infants, and the like. 
 
 These are the six main heads of God's and the Devil's 
 work. 
 
 And as Wisdom, or Prudentia, is with God, and with His 
 children in the doing, " There I was by Him, as one brought 
 up with Him, and I was daily His delight/' so Folly, or 
 Stultitia, saying, There is No God, is with the Devil and his 
 children, in the undoing. "There she is with them as one 
 brought up with them, and she is daily their delight." 
 
 And so comes the great reverse of Creation, and wrath of 
 God, accomplished on the earth by the fiends, and by men 
 their ministers, seen by Jeremy the Prophet : " For my 
 people is foolish, they have not known me ; they are sottish 
 children, and they have none understanding : they are wise 
 to do evil, but to do good they have no knowledge. [Now 
 note the reversed creation.] I beheld the Earth, and, lo, it 
 was without form, and void ; and the Heavens, and they had 
 no light. I beheld the mountains, and, lo, they trembled, and 
 all the hills moved lightly. I beheld, and, lo, there was no 
 man, and all the birds of the heavens were fled. I beheld, 
 and, lo, the fruitful place was a wilderness, and all the cities 
 thereof were broken down at the presence of the Lord, and 
 by his fierce anger." 
 
 And so, finally, as the joy and honour of the ancient and 
 divine Man and Woman were in their children, so the grief 
 and dishonour of the modern and diabolic Man and Woman 
 are in their children ; and as the Rachel of Bethlehem weeps 
 for her children, and will not be comforted, because they are 
 not, the Rachel of England weeps for her children, and will 
 not be comforted because they are. 
 
 Now, whoever you maybe, and how little your power may 
 be, and whatever sort of creature you may be, man, woman, 
 or child, you can, according to what discretion of years you 
 may have reached, do something of this Divine work, or undo 
 something of this Devil's work, every day. Even if you are 
 a slave, forced to labour at some abominable and murderous 
 trade for bread, as iron-forging, for instance, or gunpowder-
 
 282 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 making you can resolve to deliver yourself, and your children 
 after you, from the chains of that hell, and from the dominion 
 of its slave-masters, or to die. That is Patriotism ; and true 
 desire of Freedom, or Franchise. What Egyptian bondage, do 
 you suppose (painted by Mr. Poynter as if it were a tiling of 
 the past !) was ever so cruel as a modern English iron forge, 
 with its steam hammers ? What Egyptian worship of garlic 
 or crocodile ever so damnable as modern English worship of 
 money ? Israel even by the fleshpots was sorry to have 
 to cast out her children, would fain stealthily keep her little 
 Moses, if Nile were propitious ; and roasted her passover 
 anxiously. But English Mr. P., satisfied with his fleshpot, 
 and the broth of it, will not be over-hasty about his roast. If 
 the Angel, perchance, should not pass by, it would be no 
 such matter, thinks Mr. P. 
 
 Or, again, if you are a slave to Society, and must do what 
 the people next door bid you, you can resolve, with any 
 vestige of human energy left in you, that you will indeed 
 put a few things into God's fashion, instead of the fashion of 
 next door. Merely fix that on your mind as a thing to be 
 done ; to have things dress, for instance, according to 
 God's taste, (and I can tell you He is likely to have some, as 
 good as any modiste you know of) ; or dinner, according to 
 God's taste instead of the Russians' ; or supper, or picnic, 
 with guests of God's inviting, occasionally, mixed among the 
 more respectable company. 
 
 By the way, I wrote a letter to one of my lady friends, 
 who gives rather frequent dinners, the other day, which may 
 perhaps be useful to others : it was to this effect mainly, 
 though I add and alter a little to make it more general : 
 
 " You probably will be having a dinner-party to-day ; now, 
 please do this, and remember I am quite serious in what 
 I ask you. We all of us, who have any belief in Christianity 
 at all, wish that Christ were alive now. Suppose, then, that 
 He is. I think it very likely that if He were in London you 
 would be one of the people whom He would take some notice 
 of. Now, suppose He has sent you word that He is coming 
 to dine with you to-day ; but that you are not to make any
 
 FOMS CLAVIGERA. 283 
 
 change in your guests on His account ; that He wants to meet 
 exactly the party you have ; and no other. Suppose you 
 have just received this message, and that St. John has also 
 left word, in passing, with the butler, that his master will 
 come alone ; so that you won't have any trouble with the 
 Apostles. Now, this is what I want you to do. First, deter- 
 mine what you will have for dinner. You are not ordered, 
 observe, to make no changes in your bill of fare. Take a 
 piece of paper, and absolutely write fresh orders to your 
 cook, you can't realize the thing enough without writing. 
 That done, consider how you will arrange your guests who 
 is to sit next Christ on the other side who opposite, and so 
 on ; finally, consider a little what you will talk about, suppos- 
 ing, which is just possible, that Christ should tell you to go 
 on talking as if He were not there, and never to mind Him. 
 You couldn't, you will tell me ? Then, my dear lady, how 
 can you in general ? Don't you profess nay, don't you 
 much more than profess to believe that Christ is always 
 there, whether you see Him or not ? Why should the seeing 
 make such a difference ? " 
 
 But you are no master nor mistress of household ? You are 
 only a boy, or a girl. What can you do ? 
 
 We will take the work of the third day, for its range is at 
 once lower and wider than that of the others : Can you do 
 nothing in that kind ? Is there no garden near you where you 
 can get from some generous person leave to weed the beds, 
 or sweep up the dead leaves ? (I once allowed an eager little 
 girl of ten years old to weed my garden ; and now, though 
 it is long ago, she always speaks as if the favour had been 
 done to her, and not to the garden and me.) Is there no dusty 
 place that you can water ? if it be only the road before your 
 door, the traveller will thank you. No roadside ditch that 
 you can clean of its clogged rubbish, to let the water run 
 clear ? No scattered heap of brickbats that you can make 
 an orderly pile of? You are ashamed? Yes; that false 
 shame is the Devil's pet weapon. He does more work with it 
 even than with false pride. For with false pride, he only 
 goads evil ; but with false shame, paralyzes good.
 
 284 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 But you have no ground of your own ; you are a girl, and 
 can't work on other people's ? At least you have a window 
 of your own, or one in which you have a part interest. With 
 very little help from the carpenter, you can arrange a safe 
 box outside of it, that will hold earth enough to root some- 
 thing in. If you have any favour from Fortune at all, you can 
 train a rose, or a honeysuckle, or a convolvulus, or a nastur- 
 tium, round your window a quiet branch of ivy or if for 
 the sake of its leaves only, a tendril or two of vine. Only, be 
 sure all your plant-pets are kept well outside of the window. 
 Don't come to having pots in the room, unless you are sick. 
 
 I got a nice letter from a young girl, not long since, asking 
 why I had said in my answers to former questions, that 
 young ladies were "to have nothing to do with greenhouses, 
 still less with hothouses." The new inquirer has been sent 
 me by Fors, just when it was time to explain what I 
 meant. 
 
 First, then The primal object of your gardening, for 
 yourself, is to keep you at work in the open air, whenever it 
 is possible. The greenhouse will always be a refuge to you 
 from the wind ; which, on the contrary, you ought to be able 
 to bear ; and will tempt you into clippings and pottings 
 and pettings, and mere standing dilettantism in a damp and 
 over-scented room, instead of true labour in fresh air. 
 
 Secondly. It will not only itself involve unnecessary ex- 
 pense (for the greenhouse is sure to turn into a hothouse 
 in the end ; and even if not, is always having its panes 
 broken, or its blinds going wrong, or its stands getting 
 rickety); but it will tempt you into buying nursery plants, 
 and waste your time in anxiety about them. 
 
 Thirdly. The use of your garden to the household ought 
 to be mainly in the vegetables you can raise in it. And, for 
 these, your proper observance of season, and of the authority 
 of the stars, is a vital duty. Every climate gives its vege- 
 table food to its living creatures at the right time ; your 
 business is to know that time, and be prepared for it, and 
 to take the healthy luxury which nature appoints you, in the 
 rare annual taste of the thing given in those its due days.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 285 
 
 The vile and gluttonous modern habit of forcing never allows 
 people properly to taste anything. 
 
 Lastly, and chiefly. Your garden is to enable you to ob- 
 tain such knowledge of plants as you may best use in the 
 country in which you live, by communicating it to others ; 
 and teaching them to take pleasure in the green herb, given 
 for meat, and the coloured flower, given for jov. And your 
 business is not to make the greenhouse or hothouse rejoice 
 and blossom like the rose, but the wilderness and solitary 
 place. And it is, therefore, (look back to Letter XXVI, p. 
 375,) not at all of camellias and air-plants that the devil is 
 afraid ; on the contrary, the Dame aux Camellias is a very 
 especial servant of his ; and the Fly-God of Ekron himself 
 superintends as you may gather from Mr. Darwin's recent 
 investigations the birth and parentage of the orchidaceae. 
 But he is mortally afraid of roses and crocuses. 
 
 Of roses, that is to say, growing wild ; (what lovely 
 hedges of them there were, in the lane leading from Dulwich 
 College up to Windmill (or Gipsy) Hill, in my aunt's time !) 
 but of the massy horticultural-prize rose, fifty pounds 
 weight of it on a propped bush he stands in no awe what- 
 ever ; not even when they are cut afterwards and made 
 familiar to the poor in the form of bouquets, so that poor 
 Peggy may hawk them from street to street and hate the 
 smell of them, as his own imps do. For Mephistopheles 
 knows there are poorer Margarets yet than Peggy. 
 
 Hear this, you fine ladies of the houses of York and Lan- 
 caster, and you, new-gilded Miss Kilmanseggs, with your 
 gardens of Gul. you, also, evangelical expounders of the 
 beauty of the Rose of Sharon ; it is a bit of a letter just 
 come to me from a girl of good position in the manufacturing 
 districts : 
 
 " The other day I was coming through a nasty part of the 
 road, carrying a big bunch of flowers, and met two dirty, 
 ragged girls, who looked eagerly at my flowers. Then one 
 of them said, ' Give us a flower ! ' I hesitated, for she looked 
 and spoke rudely ; but when she ran after me, I stopped ; 
 and pulled out a large rose, and asked the other girl which
 
 286 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 she would like. 'A red one, the same as hers,' she answered. 
 They actually did not know its name. Poor girls ! they 
 promised to take care of them, and went away looking 
 rather softened and pleased, I thought ; but perhaps they 
 would pull them to pieces, and laugh at the success of their 
 boldness. At all events, they made me very sad and thought- 
 ful for the rest of my walk." 
 
 Arid, I hope, a little so, even when you got home again, 
 young lady. Meantime, are you quite sure of your fact ; 
 and that there was no white rose in your bouquet, from 
 which the " red one " might be distinguished, without 
 naming? In any case, my readers have enough to think of, 
 for this time, I believe.
 
 FOR8 CLAVIOERA. 287 
 
 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 I. Together with the Spectator's telescopic and daring views of the 
 Land question, given in last Fors, I may as well preserve its imme- 
 diate and microscopic approval of our poor little practice upon it at 
 Hincksey : 
 
 "ADAM AND JEHU. It is very vexatious, but one never gets fairly 
 the better of Mr. Ruskin. Sometimes he lets his intellect work, and 
 fires off pamphlet after pamphlet on political economy, each new one 
 more ridiculous than the last, till it ceases to be possible even to read 
 his brochures without condemning them as the utterances of a man who 
 cannot lose a certain eloquence of expression, BUT WHO CANNOT THINK 
 AT ALL ; and then, again, he lets his genius work, and produces some- 
 thing which raises the admiration of the reader till every folly which 
 preceded it is forgotten. There never was a more absurd paper pub- 
 lished than his on the duty of the State towards unmarried couples, and 
 never perhaps one wiser than his lecture on ' Ambition,' reviewed in our 
 columns on the 18th of October, 1873. Just recently he has been push- 
 ing some plans for an agricultural Utopia, free of steam-engines and 
 noises and everything modern, in which the inconsequence of his mind 
 is as evident as its radical benevolence ; and now ha has, we believe, 
 done the whole youth of Oxford a substantial service. He has turned, 
 or rather tried to turn, the rage for athletics into a worthy channel. "- 
 Spectator, May 30, 1874. 
 
 The above paragraph may, I think, also be, some day, interesting as 
 a summary of the opinions of the British press on Fors Clamgera ; and 
 if my last month's letter should have the fortune to displease, or dis 
 comfort, any British landlord, my alarmed or offended reader may be 
 relieved and pacified by receiving the Spectatorial warrant at once for 
 the inconsequence of my mind, and for its radical benevolence. 
 
 II. The following paragraphs from a leading journal in our greatest 
 commercial city, surpass, in folly and impudence, anything I have yet 
 seen of the kind, and are well worth preserving : 
 
 " The material prosperity of the country has, notwithstanding, in- 
 creased, and the revenue returns, comparing as they do against an ex- 
 ceptionally high rate of production and consumption, show that we are 
 fairly holding our own." Production and consumption of irliat, Mr. 
 Editor, is the question, as I have told you many a time. A high reve- 
 nue, raised on the large production and consumption of weak cloth and 
 strong liquor, does not show the material prosperity of the country
 
 288 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 Suppose you were to tax the production of good pictures, good books, 
 good houses, or honest men, where would your revenue be ? " Amongst 
 the middle classes, exceptionally large fortunes have been rapidly real- 
 ized here and there, chiefly in the misty regions of 'finance,' [What 
 do you mean by misty, Mr. Editor ? It is a Turnerian and Titianesque 
 quality, not in the least properly applicable to any cotton-mill busi- 
 ness.] and instances occur from day to day of almost prodigal expen- 
 diture in objects of art [Photographs of bawds, do you mean, Mr. 
 Editor ? I know no other objects of art that are multiplying, cer- 
 tainly not Titians, by your Sjwctator' a decision.] and luxury, the dis- 
 play of wealth in the metropolis being more striking year by year. 
 
 " Turning from these dazzling exhibitions, the real source of congrat- 
 ulation must be found in the existence of a broad and solid foundation 
 for our apparent prosperity ; and this, happily, is represented in the 
 amelioration of the condition of the lower orders of society." Indeed ! 
 
 " The adjustment of an increasing scale of wages has not been re- 
 duced to scientific principles, and has consequently been more or less 
 arbitrary and capricious. From time to time it has interfered with the 
 even current of affairs, and been resented as an unfair and unwarranted 
 interception of profits in their way to the manufacturer's pockets. 
 
 ' ' Whilst ' financial ' talent has reaped liberal results from its exercise, 
 the steady productions of manufacturers have left only moderate re- 
 turns to their producers, and importers of raw material have, as a rule, 
 had a trying time. The difficulties of steamship owners have been tol- 
 erably notorious, and the enhancement of sailing vessels is an instance 
 of the adage that * It is an ill wind that blows no one any good.' 
 
 " For our railways, the effects of a most critical half-year can scarcely 
 be forecast. Increased expenses have not, it is to be feared, been met 
 by increased rates and traffics, and the public mny not have fully pre- 
 pared themselves for diminished dividends. With the Erie and the 
 Great Western of Canada undergoing the ordeal of investigation, and 
 the Atlantic and Great Western on the verge of insolvency, it is not 
 surprising that American and colonial railways are at the moment out 
 of favour. If, however, they have not made satisfactory returns to 
 their shareholders, they have been the media of great profit to operators 
 on the stock exchanges ; and some day we shall, perhaps, learn the 
 connection existing between the well or ill doing of a railway per se, 
 and the facility for speculation in its stock." Liverpool Commercial 
 News, of this year. I have not kept the date. 
 
 III. A young lady's letter about flowers and books, I gratefully ac- 
 knowledge, and have partly answered in the text of this Fors : the rest 
 she will find answered up and down afterwards, as I can ; also a letter 
 from a youth at New Haven in Connecticut has given me much pleas- 
 ure. I am sorry not to be able to answer it more specially, but have 
 now absolutely no time for any private correspondence, except with 
 personal friends, and I should like even those to show themselves 
 friendly rather by setting themselves to understand my meaning in 
 Fors, and by helping me in my purposes, than by merely expressing 
 anxiety for my welfare, not satisfiable but by letters which do not pro- 
 mote it.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 289 
 
 IV. Publishing the subjoined letter from Mr. Sillar, I must now wish 
 him good success in his battle, and terminate my extracts from his let- 
 ters, there being always some grave points in which I find myself at 
 issue with him, but which I have not at present any wish farther to 
 discuss : 
 
 " I am right glad to see you quote in your July Fors, from the pa- 
 pers which the Record newspaper refused to insert, on the plea of their 
 ' confusing two things so essentially different as usury and interest of 
 money.' 
 
 " I printed them, and have sold two, following your advice, and not 
 advertising them. 
 
 ' ' You wrong me greatly in saying that I think the sin of usury means 
 every other. What I say is that it is the only sin I know which is never 
 denounced from the pulpit ; and therefore /have to do that part of the 
 parson's work. I would much rather be following the business to 
 which I was educated ; but so long as usury is prevalent, honourable 
 and profitable employments in that business are impossible. It may be 
 conducted honourably, but at an annual loss ; or it may be conducted 
 profitably at the expense of honour. I can no longer afford the former, 
 still less can I afford the latter ; and as I cannot be idle, I occupy my 
 leisure, at least part of it, in a war to the knife with that great dragon 
 'Debt.' I war not with flesh and blood, but with principalities and 
 powers of darkness in high places." 
 
 V. To finish, here is one of the pleasantest paragraphs I ever saw in 
 print : 
 
 "ROPE CORDAGE. On Saturday laet a very interesting experiment 
 was made at Kirkaldy's Testing Works, Southwark Street, as to the 
 relative strength of hand-spun yarn rope, machine yarn rope, and Rus- 
 sian yarn rope. Mr. Plimsoll, M.P., Captain Bedford Pirn, M.P., and 
 others attended the test, which lasted over three hours. There were 
 nine pieces of rope, each 10 ft. long, being three of each of the above 
 classes. The ultimate stress or breaking strain of the Russian rope 
 was 11,099 lb., or 1,934 Ib. strength per fathom ; machine rope, 11.527 
 lb., or 2,155 lb. per fathom ; hand-spun rope, 18,279 lb., or 3,026 lb. 
 per fathom. The ropes were all of 5 in. circumference, and every 
 piece broke clear of the fastenings. The prices paid per cwt. were: 
 Russian rope, 47s./ machine yarn rope, 47s. ; hand-spun yarn rope, 44s. 
 all described as best cordage and London manufacture. It will thus 
 be seen that the hand-made was cheaper by 3s. per cwt. , and broke at 
 a testing strength of 7,180 lb. over Russian, and 6,752 lb. over machine- 
 made." Times, July 20, 1874. 
 VOL. II. 19
 
 290 FOliS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 LETTER XL VII. 
 
 HOTEL DU MONT BLANC, ST. MARTIN'S, 
 12th October, 1874. 
 
 WE have now briefly glanced at the nature of the squire's 
 work in relation to the peasant ; namely, making a celestial 
 or worshipful appearance to him ; and the methods of opera- 
 tion, no less than of appearance, which are generally to be 
 defined as celestial, or worshipful. 
 
 We have next to examine by what rules the action of the 
 squire towards the peasant is to be either restrained or as- 
 sisted ; and the function, therefore, of the lawyer, or definer 
 of limits and modes, which was above generally expressed, 
 in its relation to the peasant, as "telling him, in black letter, 
 that his house is his own." It will be necessary, how- 
 ever, evidently, that his house should be his own, before any 
 lawyer can divinely assert the same to him. 
 
 Waiving, for the moment, examination of this primal 
 necessity, let us consider a little how that divine function of 
 asserting, in perfectly intelligible and indelible letters, the 
 absolute claim of a man to his own house, or castle, and all 
 that it properly includes, is actually discharged by the pow- 
 ers of British law now in operation. 
 
 We will take, if you please, in the outset, a few wise men's 
 opinions on this matter, though we shall thus be obliged 
 somewhat to generalize the inquiry, by admitting into it 
 some notice of criminal as well as civil law. 
 
 My readers have probably thought me forgetful of Sir 
 Walter all this time. No ; but all writing about him is im- 
 possible to me in the impure gloom of modern Italy. I have 
 had to rest a while here, where human life is still sacred, be- 
 fore I could recover the tone of heart fit to say what I want 
 to say in this Fors. 
 
 He was the son, you remember, of a writer to the signet,
 
 FOES CLAVIGERA. 291 
 
 and practised for some time at the bar himself. Have you 
 ever chanced to ask yourself what was his innermost opinion 
 of the legal profession ? 
 
 Or, have you even endeavoured to generalize that ex- 
 pressed with so much greater violence by Dickens ? The 
 latter wrote with a definitely reforming purpose, seemingly ; 
 and, I have heard, had real effects on Chancery practice. 
 
 But are the Judges of England at present I suppose the 
 highest types of intellectual and moral power that Christen- 
 dom possesses content to have reform forced on them by 
 the teazing of a caricaturist, instead of the pleading of their 
 own consciences ? 
 
 Even if so, is there no farther reform indicated as neces- 
 sary, in a lower field, by the same teazing personage ? The 
 Court of Chancery and Mr. Vholes were not his only legal 
 sketches. Dodson and Fogg ; Sampson Brass ; Serjeant 
 Buzfuz ; and, most of all, the examiner, for the Crown, of 
 Mr. Svviveller in the trial of Kit,* are these deserving of no 
 repentant attention ? You, good reader, probably have read 
 the trial in Pickwick, and the trial of Kit, merely to amuse 
 yourself ; and perhaps Dickens himself meant little more 
 than to amuse you. But did it never strike you as quite 
 other than a matter of amusement, that in both cases, the 
 force of the law of England is represented as employed 
 zealously to prove a crime against a person known by the 
 accusing counsel to be innocent ; and, in both cases, as ob- 
 taining a conviction ? 
 
 You might perhaps think that these were only examples 
 of the ludicrous, and sometimes tragic, accidents which must 
 sometimes happen in the working of any complex system, 
 however excellent. They are by no means so. Ludicrous, 
 and tragic, mischance must indeed take place in all human 
 affairs of importance, however honestly conducted. But 
 here you have deliberate, artistic, energetic, dishonesty ; 
 skilfullest and resolutest endeavour to prove a crime against 
 an innocent person, a crime of which, in the case of the boy, 
 
 * See the part of examination respecting communication held with 
 the brother of the prisoner.
 
 292 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 the reputed commission will cost him at least the prosperity 
 and honour of his life, more to him than life itself. And 
 this you forgive, or admire, because it is not done in malice, 
 but for money, and in pride of art. Because the assassin is 
 paid, makes his living in that line of business, and deliv- 
 ers his thrust with a bravo's artistic finesse you think him a 
 respectable person ; so much better in style than a passion- 
 ate one who does his murder gratis, vulgarly, with a club, 
 Bill Sykes, for instance ? It is all balanced fairly, as the 
 system goes, you think. ' It works round, arid two and two 
 make four. He accused an innocent person to-day : to- 
 morrow he will defend a rascal.' 
 
 And you truly hold this a business to which your youth 
 should be bred gentlemen of England ? 
 
 1 But how is it to be ordered otherwise ? Every supposed 
 criminal ought surely to have an advocate, to say what can 
 be said in his favour ; and an accuser, to insist on the evi- 
 dence against him. Both do their best, and can anything be 
 fairer ? ' 
 
 Yes ; something else could be much fairer ; but we will 
 find out what Sir Walter thinks, if we can, before going 
 farther ; though it will not be easy for you don't at once 
 get at the thoughts of a great man, upon a great matter. 
 
 The first difference, however, which, if you know your 
 Scott well, strikes you, between him and Dickens, is that 
 your task of investigation is chiefly pleasant, though serious ; 
 not a painful one and still less a jesting or mocking one. 
 The first figure that rises before you is Pleydell ; the second, 
 Scott's own father, Saunders Fairford, with his son. And 
 you think for an instant or two, perhaps, " The question is 
 settled, as far as Scott is concerned, at once. What a beau- 
 tiful thing is Law ! " 
 
 For you forget, by the sweet emphasis of the divine art 
 on what is good, that there ever was such a person in the 
 world as Mr. Glossin. And you are left, by the grave cun- 
 ning of the divine art, which reveals to you no secret with- 
 out your own labour, to discern and unveil for yourself the 
 meaning of the plot of Itedyauntlet.
 
 FOES CLAVIOERA. 293 
 
 You perhaps were dissatisfied enough with the plot, when 
 you read it for amusement. Such a childish fuss about 
 nothing ! Solway sands, forsooth, the only scenery ; and 
 your young hero of the story frightened to wet his feet ; 
 and your old hero doing nothing but ride a black horse, and 
 make himself disagreeable ; and all that about the house in 
 Edinburgh so dull ; and no love-making, to speak of, any- 
 where ! 
 
 Well, it doesn't come in exactly with my subject, to-day ; 
 but, by the way, I beg you to observe that there is a bit 
 of love in Redgauntlet which is worth any quantity of mod- 
 ern French or English amatory novels in a heap. Alan 
 Fairford has been bred, and willingly bred, in the strictest 
 discipline of mind and conduct ; he is an entirely strong, 
 entirely prudent, entirely pure young Scotchman, and a 
 lawyer. Scott, when he wrote the book, was an old Scotch- 
 man ; and had seen a good deal of the world. And he is 
 going to tell you how Love ought first to come to an en- 
 tirely strong, entirely prudent, entirely pure youth, of his 
 own grave profession. 
 
 How love ought to come, mind you. Alan Fairford is the 
 real hero (next to Nanty Ewart) of the novel ; and he is the 
 exemplary and happy hero Xanty being the suffering one, 
 under hand of Fate. 
 
 Of course, you would say, if you didn't know the book, 
 and were asked what should happen (and with Miss Edge- 
 worth to manage matters instead of Scott, or Shakespeare, 
 nothing else would have happened,) of course, the entirely 
 prudent young lawyer will consider what an important step 
 in life marriage is ; and will look out for a young person of 
 good connections, whose qualities of mind and moral dispo- 
 sition he will examine strictly before allowing his affections 
 to be engaged ; he will then consider what income is neces- 
 sary for a person in a high legal position, etc., etc., etc. 
 
 Well, this is what does happen, according to Scott, you 
 know ; (or more likely, I'm afraid, know nothing about it). 
 The old servant of the family announces, with some dryness 
 of manner, one day, that a Meddy' wants to see Maister
 
 294 FORS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 Alan Fairford, for legal consultation. The prudent young 
 gentleman, upon this, puts his room into the most impressive 
 order, intending to make a first appearance reading a legal 
 volume in an abstracted state of mind. But, on a knock 
 coming at the street door, he can't resist going to look out 
 at the window ; and the servant maliciously showing in 
 the client without announcement is discovered peeping out 
 of it. The client is closely veiled little more than the tip 
 of her nose discernible. She is, fortunately, a little em- 
 barrassed herself ; for she did not want Mr. Alan Fairford 
 at all, but Mr. Alan Fairford's father. They sit looking at 
 each other at least, he looking at the veil and a green silk 
 cloak for half a minute. The young lady (for she is 
 young ; he has made out that, he admits ; and something 
 more perhaps,) is the first to recover her presence of mind ; 
 makes him a pretty little apology for having mistaken him 
 for his father ; says that, now she has done it, he will answer 
 her purpose, perhaps, even better ; but she thinks it best to 
 communicate the points on which she requires his assistance, 
 in writing, curtsies him, on his endeavour to remonstrate, 
 gravely and inexorably into silence, disappears, " And 
 put the sun in her pocket, I believe," as she turned the cor- 
 ner, says prudent Mr. Alan. And keeps it in her pocket for 
 him, evermore. That is the way one's Love is sent, when 
 she is sent from Heaven, says the aged Scott. 
 
 'But how ridiculous, how entirely unreasonable, how 
 unjustifiable, on any grounds of propriety or common sense ! ' 
 
 Certainly, my good sir, certainly : Shakespeare and Scott 
 can't help that ; all they know is, that is the way God 
 and Nature manage it. Of course, Rosalind ought to have 
 been much more particular in her inquiries about Orlando ; 
 Juliet about the person masqued as a pilgrim ; and there 
 is really no excuse whatever for Desdemona's conduct ; and 
 we all know what came of it ; but, again I say, Shakespeare 
 and Scott can't help that. 
 
 Nevertheless, Love is not the subject of this novel of Red- 
 yauntlet ; but Law : on which matter we will endeavour 
 now to gather its evidence.
 
 FORS CLAVIGEHA. 295 
 
 Two youths are brought up together one, the son of a 
 Cavalier, or Ghibelline, of the old school, whose Law is in 
 the sword, and the heart ; and the other of a Roundhead, or 
 Guelph, or the modern school, whose Law is in form and 
 precept. Scott's own prejudices lean to the Cavalier ; but 
 his domestic affections, personal experience, and sense of 
 equity, lead him to give utmost finish to the adverse charac- 
 ter. The son of the Cavalier in moral courage, in nervous 
 power, in general sense and self-command, is entirely in- 
 ferior to the son of the Puritan ; nay, in many respects 
 quite weak and effeminate ; one slight and scarcely notice- 
 able touch, (about the unproved pistol,) gives the true rela- 
 tion of the characters, and makes their portraiture complete, 
 as by Velasquez. 
 
 The Cavalier's father is dead ; his uncle asserts the Cav- 
 alier's law of the Sword over him : its effects upon him are 
 the first clause of the book. 
 
 The Puritan's father living asserts the law of Precept 
 over him : its effects upon him are the second clause of the 
 book. 
 
 Together with these studies of the two laws in their influ- 
 ence on the relation of guardian and ward or of father and 
 child, their influence on society is examined in the opposi- 
 tion of the soldier and hunter to the friend of man and ani- 
 mals, Scott putting his whole power into the working out 
 of this third clause of the book. 
 
 Having given his verdict, in these three clauses, wholly in 
 favour of the law of precept, he has to mark the effects of 
 its misapplication, first moral, then civil. 
 
 The story of Nanty Ewart, the fourth clause, is the most 
 instructive and pathetic piece of Scott's judgment on the 
 abuse of the moral law, by pride, in Scotland, which you 
 can find in all his works. 
 
 Finally, the effects of the abuse of the civil law by sale, or 
 simony, have to be examined ; which is done in the story of 
 Peter Peebles. 
 
 The involution of this fifth clause with that of Nanty 
 Ewart is one of the subtlest pieces of heraldic quartering
 
 296 FORS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 which you can find in all the Waverley novels ; and no oth- 
 ers have any pretence to range with them in this point of 
 art at all. The best, by other masters, are a mere play of 
 kaleidoscope colour compared to the severe heraldic delinea- 
 tion of the Waverieys. 
 
 We will first examine the statement of the abuse of Civil 
 Law. 
 
 There is not, if you have any true sympathy with human- 
 ity, extant for you a more exquisite study of the relations 
 which must exist, even under circumstances of great diffi- 
 culty and misunderstanding, between a good father and 
 good son, than the scenes of Medgaunllet laid in Edinburgh. 
 The father's intense devotion, pride, and joy, mingled with 
 fear, in the son ; the son's direct, unflinching, unaffected 
 obedience, hallowed by pure affection, tempered by youth- 
 ful sense, guided by high personal power. And all this 
 force of noble passion and effort, in both, is directed to a 
 single object the son's success at the bar. That success, as 
 usually in the legal profession, must," if it be not wholly in- 
 volved, at least give security for itself, in the impression 
 made by the young counsel's opening speech. All the in- 
 terests of the reader (if he has any interest in him) are 
 concentrated upon this crisis in the story ; and the chapter 
 which gives account of the fluctuating event is one of the 
 supreme masterpieces of European literature. 
 
 The interests of the reader, I say, are concentrated on the 
 success of the young counsel : that of his client is of no 
 importance whatever to any one. You perhaps forget even 
 who the client is or recollect him only as a poor drunkard, 
 who must be kept out of the way for fear he should inter- 
 rupt his own counsel, or make the jury laugh at him. His 
 cause has been no one knows how long in the courts ; it 
 is good for practising on, by any young hand. 
 
 You forget Peter Peebles, perhaps : you don't forget 
 Miss Flite, in the Dickens' court ? Better done, therefore, 
 Miss Flite, think you ? 
 
 No ; not so well done ; or anything like so well done. 
 The very primal condition in Scott's type of the ruined creat-
 
 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 297 
 
 are is, that he should be forgotten ! Worse ; that he 
 should deserve to be forgotten. Miss Flite interests you 
 takes your affections deserves them. Is mad, indeed, but 
 not a destroyed creature, morally, at all. A very sweet, 
 kind creature, not even altogether unhappy, enjoying her 
 lawsuit, and her bag, and her papers. She is a picturesque, 
 quite unnatural and unlikely figure, therefore wholly inef- 
 fective except for story-telling purposes. 
 
 But Peter Peebles is a natural ruin, and a total one. An 
 accurate type of what is to be seen every day, and carried 
 to the last stage of its misery. He is degraded alike in 
 body and heart ; mad, but with every vile sagacity un- 
 quenched, while every hope in earth and heaven is taken 
 away. And in this desolation, you can only hate, not pity 
 him. 
 
 That, says Scott, is the beautiful operation of the Civil 
 Law of Great Britain, on a man whose affairs it has spent 
 its best intelligence on, for an unknown number of years. 
 His affairs being very obscure, and his cause doubtful, you 
 suppose ? No. His affairs being so simple that the young 
 honest counsel can explain them entirely in an hour ; and 
 his cause absolutely and unquestionably just. 
 
 What is Dickens' entire Court of Chancery to that ? 
 With all its dusty delay, with all its diabolical ensnaring ; 
 its pathetic death of Richard widowhood of Ada, etc., 
 etc. ? All mere blue fire of the stage, and dropped foot- 
 lights ; no real tragedy. A villain cheats a foolish youth, 
 who would be wiser than his elders, who dies repentant, and 
 immediately begins a new life, so says, at least, (not the 
 least believing,) the pious Mr. Dickens. All that might 
 happen among the knaves of any profession. 
 
 But with Scott, the best honour soul intellect in Scot- 
 land take in hand the cause of a man who comes to them 
 justly, necessarily, for plain, instantly possible, absolutely 
 deserved, decision of a manifest cause. 
 
 They are endless years talking of it, to amuse, and pay, 
 themselves. 
 
 And they drive him into the foulest death eternal if
 
 298 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 there be, for such souls, any Eternity. On which Scott does 
 not feel it his duty, as Dickens does, to offer you an opinion. 
 He tells you, as Shakespeare, the facts he knows, no more. 
 
 There, then, you have Sir Walter's opinion of the existing 
 method and function of British Civil Law. 
 
 What the difference may be, and what the consequences of 
 such difference, between this lucrative function, and the true 
 duty of Civil Law, namely, to fulfil and continue in all the 
 world the first mission of the mightiest Lawgiver, and declare 
 that on such and such conditions, written in eternal letters 
 by the finger of God, every man's house, or piece of Holy 
 land, is his own, there does not, it appears, exist at present 
 wit enough under all the weight of curled and powdered 
 horsehair in England, either to reflect, or to define. 
 
 In the meantime, we have to note another question beyond, 
 and greater than this, answered by Scott in his story. 
 
 So far as human laws have dealt with the man, this their 
 ruined client has been destroyed in his innocence. But there 
 is yet a Divine Law, controlling the injustice of men. 
 
 And the historian revealing to us the full relation of pri- 
 vate and public act shows us that the wretch's destruction 
 was in his refusal of the laws of God, while he trusted in the 
 laws of man. 
 
 Such is the entire plan of the story of Redgauntlet, only 
 in part conscious, partly guided by the Fors which has rule 
 over the heart of the noble king in his word, and of the noble 
 scribe in his scripture, as over the rivers of water. We will 
 trace the detail of this story farther in next Fors / meantime, 
 here is your own immediate lesson, reader, whoever you may 
 be, from our to-day's work. 
 
 The first not the chief, but the first piece of good work 
 a man has to do is to find rest for himself, a place for the 
 sole of his foot ; his house, or piece of Holy land ; and to 
 make it so holy and happy, that if by any chance he receive 
 order to leave it, there may be bitter pain in obedience ; and 
 also that to his daughter there may yet one sorrowful sen- 
 tence be spoken in her day of mirth, " Forget also thy people, 
 and thy father's house."
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 299 
 
 ' But I mean to make money, and have a better and better 
 house, every ten years.' 
 
 Yes, I know you do. 
 
 If you intend to keep that notion, I have no word more to 
 say to you. Fare you not well, for you cannot ; but as you 
 may. 
 
 But if you have sense, and feeling, determine what sort of 
 a house will be fit for you ; -determine to work for it to 
 get it and to die in it, if the Lord will. 
 
 ' What sort of house will be fit for me ? but of course the 
 biggest and finest I can get will be fittest ! ' 
 
 Again, so says the Devil to you ; and if you believe him, 
 he will find you fine lodgings enough, for rent. But if you 
 don't believe him, consider, I repeat, what sort of house will 
 be fit for you ? 
 
 * Fit ! but what do you mean by fit ? ' 
 
 I mean, one that you can entirely enjoy and manage ; but 
 which you will not be proud of, except as you make it charm- 
 ing in its modesty. If you are proud of it, it is zmfit for 
 you, better than a man in your station of life can by simple 
 and sustained exertion obtain ; and it should be rather under 
 such quiet level than above. Ashesteil was entirely fit for 
 Walter Scott, and Walter Scott was entirely happy there. 
 Abbotsford was fit also for Sir Walter Scott ; and had he 
 been content with it, his had been a model life. But he 
 would fain still add field to field, and died homeless. Per- 
 haps Gadshill was fit for Dickens ; I do not know enough of 
 him to judge ; and he knew scarcely anything of himself. 
 But the story of the boy on Rochester Hill is lovely. 
 
 And assuredly, my aunt's house at Croydon was fit for her ; 
 and my father's at Herne Hill, in which I correct the press 
 of this Fors, sitting in what was once my nursery, was 
 exactly fit for him, and me. He left it for the larger one 
 Denmark Hill ; and never had a quite happy day afterwards. 
 It was not his fault, the house at Herne Hill was built on 
 clay, and the doctors said he was not well there ; also, I was 
 his pride, and he wanted to leave me in a better house, a 
 good father's cruellest, subtlest temptation.
 
 300 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 But you are a poor man, you say, and have no hope of a 
 grand home ? 
 
 Well, here is the simplest ideal of operation, then. You 
 dig a hole, like Robinson Crusoe ; you gather sticks for fire, 
 and bake the earth you get out of your hole, partly into 
 bricks, partly into tiles, partly into pots. If there are any 
 stones in the neighbourhood, you drag them together, and 
 build a defensive dyke round your hole or cave. If there are 
 no stones, but only timber, you drive in a palisade. And you 
 are already exercising the arts of the Greeks, Etruscans, 
 Normans, and Lombards, in their purest form, on the whole- 
 some and true threshold of all their art ; and on your own 
 wholesome threshold. 
 
 You don't know, you answer, how to make a brick, a tile, 
 or a pot ; or how to build a dyke, or drive a stake that will 
 stand. No more do I. Our education has to begin ; mine 
 as much as yours. I have indeed, the newspapers say, a 
 power of expression ; but as they also say I cannot think at 
 all, you see I have nothing to express ; so that peculiar power, 
 according to them, is of no use to me whatever. 
 
 But you don't want to make your bricks yourself ; you 
 want to have them made for you by the United Grand Junc- 
 tion Limited Liability Brick-without-Straw Company, paying 
 twenty-five per cent, to its idle shareholders ? Well, what 
 will you do, yourself, then? Nothing ? Or do you mean to 
 play on the fiddle to the Company making your bricks ? 
 What will you do of this first work necessary for your life ? 
 There's nothing but digging and cooking now remains to be 
 done. Will you dig, or cook ? Dig, by all means ; but your 
 house should be ready for you first. 
 
 Your wife should cook. What else can you do ? Preach ? 
 and give us your precious opinions of God and His ways ! 
 Yes, and in the meanwhile ./am to build your house, am I? 
 and find you a barrel-organ, or a harmonium, to twangle 
 psalm-tunes on, I suppose ? Fight will you ? and pull 
 other people's houses down ; while I am to be set to build 
 your barracks, that you may go smoking and spitting about 
 all day, with a cockscomb on your head, and spurs to your
 
 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 301 
 
 heels ? (I observe, by the way, the Italian soldiers have 
 now got cocks' tails on their heads, instead of cocks' combs.) 
 Lay down the law to me in a wig, will you ? and tell me 
 the house I have built is NOT mine ? and take my dinner 
 from me, as a fee for that opinion ? Build, my man, 
 build, or dig, one of the two ; and then eat your honestly 
 earned meat, thankfully, and let other people alone, if you 
 can't help them.
 
 302 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 THE points suggested by the letter printed in the Fors of September, 
 respecting the minor action of English Magistracy, must still be kept 
 for subsequent consideration, our to-day's work having been too gen- 
 eral to reach them. 
 
 I have an interesting letter from a man of business, remonstrating 
 with me on my declaration that railroads should no more pay dividends 
 than carriage roads, or field footpaths. 
 
 He is a gentleman of business, and meshed, as moderately well- 
 meaning people, nowadays, always are, in a web of equivocation be- 
 tween what is profitable and benevolent. 
 
 He says that people who make railroads should be rewarded by divi- 
 dends for having acted so benevolently towards the public, and provided 
 it with these beautiful and easy means of locomotion. But my corre- 
 spondent is too good a man of business to remain in this entanglement of 
 brains unless by his own fault. He knows perfectly well, in his 
 heart, that the ' benevolence ' involved in the construction of railways 
 amounts exactly to this much, and no more, that if the British public 
 were informed that engineers were now confident, after their practice 
 in the Cenis and St. Gothard tunnels, that they could make a railway 
 to Hell, the British public would instantly invest in the concern to 
 any amount ; and stop church-building all over the country, for fear of 
 diminishing the dividends.
 
 FOBS CLAV1GERA. 303 
 
 LETTER XLVIII. 
 
 THE accounts of the state of St. George's Fund, given 
 without any inconvenience in crowding type, on the last 
 leaf of this number of Fors, will, I hope, be as satisfactory 
 to my subscribers as they are to me. In these days of 
 financial operation, the subscribers to anything may surely 
 be content when they find that all their talents have been 
 laid up in the softest of napkins ; and even farther, that, 
 though they are getting no interest themselves, that lichen- 
 ous growth of vegetable gold, or mould, is duly developing 
 itself on their capital. 
 
 The amount of subscriptions received, during the four 
 years of my mendicancy, might have disappointed me, if, in 
 my own mind, I had made any appointments on the subject, 
 or had benevolence pungent enough to make me fret at the 
 delay in the commencement of the national felicity which I 
 propose to bestow. On the contrary, I am only too happy 
 to continue amusing myself in my study, with stones and 
 pictures ; and find, as I grow old, that I remain resigned to 
 the consciousness of any quantity of surrounding vice, dis- 
 tress, and disease, provided only the sun shine in at my 
 window over Corpus Garden, and there are no whistles from 
 the luggage trains passing the Waterworks. 
 
 I understand this state of even temper to be what most 
 people call ' rational ; ' and, indeed, it has been the result 
 of very steady effort on my own part to keep myself, if it 
 might be, out of Han well, or that other Hospital which 
 makes the name of Christ's native village dreadful in the ear 
 of London. For, having long observed that the most peril- 
 ous beginning of trustworthy qualification for either of those 
 establishments consisted in an exaggerated sense of self- 
 importance ; and being daily compelled, of late, to value my 
 own person and opinions at a higher and higher rate, in pro-
 
 304 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 portion to my extending experience of the rarity of any simi- 
 lar creatures or ideas among mankind, it seemed to me ex- 
 pedient to correct this increasing conviction of my superior 
 "wisdom, by companionship with pictures I could not copy, and 
 stones I could not understand : while, that this wholesome 
 seclusion may remain only self-imposed, I think it not a little 
 fortunate for me that the few relations I have left are gen- 
 erally rather fond of me ; don't know clearly which is the 
 next of kin, and perceive that the administration of my 
 inconsiderable effects * would be rather troublesome than 
 profitable to them. Not in the least, therefore, wondering 
 at the shyness of my readers to trust me with money of 
 theirs, I have made, during these four years past, some few 
 experiments with money of my own, in hopes of being able 
 to give such account of them as might justify a more ex- 
 tended confidence. I am bound to state that the results, 
 for the present, are not altogether encouraging. On my 
 own little piece of mountain ground at Coniston, I grow a 
 large quantity of wood-hyacinths and heather, without any 
 expense worth mentioning ; but my only industrious agri- 
 cultural operations have been the getting three pounds 
 ten worth of hay, off a field for which I pay six pounds 
 rent ; and the surrounding, with a costly wall six feet high, 
 to keep out rabbits, a kitchen garden, which, being terraced 
 and trim, my neighbours say is pretty ; and which will 
 probably, every third year, when the weather is not wet, 
 supply me with a dish of strawberries. 
 
 At Carshalton, in Surrey, I have indeed had the satisfac- 
 tion of cleaning out one of the springs of the Wandel, and 
 making it pleasantly habitable by trout ; but find that the 
 fountain, instead of taking care of itself when once pure, as 
 I expected it to do, requires continual looking after, like a 
 child getting into a mess ; and involves me besides in con- 
 tinual debate with the surveyors of the parish, who insist on 
 letting all the roadwashings run into it. For the present, 
 however, I persevere, at Carshalton, against the wilfulness 
 of the spring and the carelessness of the parish ; and hope 
 * See statement at close of accounts.
 
 FORS CLAVIOERA. 305 
 
 to conquer both : but I have been obliged entirely to 
 abandon a notion I had of exhibiting ideally clean street 
 pavement in the centre of London, in the pleasant en- 
 virons of Church Lane, St. Giles's. There I had every help 
 and encouragement from the authorities ; and hoped, with 
 the staff of two men and a young rogue of a crossing- 
 sweeper, added to the regular force of the parish, to keep a 
 quarter of a mile square of the narrow streets without leaving 
 so much as a bit of orange-peel on the footway, or an egg- 
 shell in the gutters. I failed, partly because I chose too 
 difficult a district to begin with, (the contributions of trans- 
 itional mud being constant, and the inhabitants passive,) 
 but chiefly because I could no more be on the spot myself, 
 to give spirit to the men, when I left Denmark Hill for 
 Coniston. 
 
 I next set up a tea-shop at 29, Paddington Street, W., (an 
 establishment which my Fors readers may as well know of,) 
 to supply the poor in that neighbourhood with pure tea, in 
 packets as small as they chose to buy, without making a 
 profit on the subdivision, larger orders being of course 
 equally acceptable from anybody who cares to promote 
 honest dealing. The result of this experiment has been my 
 ascertaining that the poor only like to buy their tea where 
 it is brilliantly lighted and eloquently ticketed ; and as I 
 resolutely refuse to compete with my neighbouring trades- 
 men either in gas or rhetoric, the patient subdivision of my 
 parcels by the two old servants of my mother's, who manage 
 the business for me, hitherto passes little recognized as an 
 advantage by my uncalculating public. Also, steady in- 
 crease in the consumption of spirits throughout the neigh- 
 bourhood faster and faster slackens the demand for tea ; but 
 I believe none of these circumstances have checked my trade 
 so much as my own procrastination in painting my sign. 
 Owing to that total want of imagination and invention 
 which makes me so impartial and so accurate a writer on 
 subjects of political economy, I could not for months deter- 
 mine whether the said sign should be of a Chinese character, 
 black upon gold ; or of a Japanese, blue upon white ; or of 
 VOL. II. 20
 
 306 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 pleasant English, rose-colour on green ; and still less how 
 far legible scale of letters could be compatible, on a board 
 only a foot broad, with lengthy enough elucidation of the 
 peculiar offices of 'Mr. Ruskin's tea-shop.' Meanwhile the 
 business languishes, and the rent and taxes absorb the 
 profits, and something more, after the salary of my good 
 servants has been paid. 
 
 In all these cases, however, I can see that I am defeated 
 only because I have too many things on hand : and that 
 neither rabbits at Coniston, road-surveyors at Croydon, or 
 mud in St. Giles's would get the better of me, if I could 
 give exclusive attention to any one business : meantime, I 
 learn the difficulties which are to be met, and shall make 
 the fewer mistakes when I venture on any work with other 
 people's money. 
 
 I may as well, together with these confessions, print a 
 piece written for the end of a Fors letter at Assisi, a month 
 or two back, but for which I had then no room, referring to 
 the increase of commercial, religious, and egotistic insanity,* 
 in modern society, and delicacy of the distinction implied by 
 that long wall at Hanwell, between the persons inside it, and 
 out. 
 
 'Does it never occur to me,' (thus the letter went on) 
 ' that I may be mad myself ? ' 
 
 Well, I am so alone now in my thoughts and ways, that 
 if I am not mad, I should soon become so, from mere soli- 
 tude, but for my work. But it must be manual work. 
 Whenever I succeed in a drawing, I am happy, in spite of 
 all that surrounds rne of sorrow. It is a strange feeling ; 
 not gratified vanity : I can have any quantity of praise I 
 like from some sorts of people ; but that does me no vital 
 good, (though dispraise does me mortal harm) ; whereas to 
 succeed to my own satisfaction in a manual piece of work, 
 is life, to me, as to all men ; and it is only the peace which 
 comes necessarily from manual labour which in all time has 
 kept the honest country people patient in their task of main- 
 taining the rascals who live in towns. But we are in hard 
 * See second letter in Notes and Correspondence.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 307 
 
 times, now, for all men's wits ; for men who know the truth 
 are like to go mad from isolation ; and the fools are all 
 going mad in ' Schwarmerei,' only that is much the pleas- 
 anter way. Mr. Lecky, for instance, quoted in last Fors ; 
 how pleasant for him to thitik he is ever so much wiser 
 than Aristotle ; and that, as a body, the men of his genera- 
 tion are the wisest that ever were born giants of intel- 
 lect, according to Lord Maca.ulay, compared to the pigmies 
 of Bacon's time, and the minor pigmies of Christ's time, and 
 the minutest of all, the microscopic pigmies of Solomon's 
 time, and, finally, the vermicular and infusorial pigmies 
 twenty-three millions to the cubic inch of Mr. Darwin's 
 time, whatever that may be. How pleasant for Mr. Lecky 
 to live in these days of the Anakim, " his spear, to equal 
 which, the tallest pine," etc., etc., which no man Stratford- 
 born could have lifted, much less shaken. 
 
 But for us of the old race few of us now left, children 
 who reverence our fathers, and are ashamed of ourselves ; 
 comfortless enough in that shame, and yearning for one word 
 or glance from the graves of old, yet knowing ourselves to 
 be of the same blood, and recognizing in our hearts the same 
 passions, with the ancient masters of humanity ; we, who 
 feel as men, and not as carnivorous worms ; we, who are 
 every day recognizing some inaccessible height of thought 
 and power, and are miserable in our shortcomings, the few 
 of us now standing here and there, alone, in the midst of 
 this yelping, carnivorous crowd, mad for money and lust, 
 tearing each other to pieces, and starving each other to death, 
 and leaving heaps of their dung and ponds of their spittle 
 on every palace floor and altar stone, it is impossible for 
 us, except in the labour of our hands, not to go mad. 
 
 And the danger is tenfold greater for a man in my own 
 position, concerned with the arts which develope the more 
 subtle brain sensations ; and, through them, tormented all 
 day long. Mr. Leslie Stephen rightly says how much bet- 
 ter it is to have a thick skin and a good digestion. Yes, as- 
 suredly ; but what is the use of knowing that, if one hasn't ? 
 In one of my saddest moods, only a week or two ago, be-
 
 308 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 cause I had failed twice over in drawing the lifted hand of 
 Giotto's ' Poverty ; ' utterly beaten and comfortless, at As- 
 sisi, I got some wholesome peace and refreshment by mere 
 sympathy with a Bewickian little pig in the roundest and 
 conceitedest burst of pig-blossorn. His servant, a grave 
 old woman, with much sorrow and toil in the wrinkles of her 
 skin, while his was only dimpled in its divine thickness, = 
 was leading him, with magnanimous length of rope, down a 
 grassy path behind the convent ; stopping, of course, where 
 he chose. Stray stalks and leaves of eatable things, in va- 
 rious stages of ambrosial rottenness, lay here and there ; the 
 convent walls made more savoury by their fumigation, as 
 Mr. Leslie Stephen says the Alpine pines are by his cigar. 
 And the little joyful darling of Demeter shook his curly 
 tail, and munched ; and grunted the goodnaturedest of 
 grunts, and snuffled the approvingest of snuffles, and was a 
 balm and beatification to behold ; and I would fain have 
 changed places with him for a little while, or with Mr. Les- 
 lie Stephen for a little while, at luncheon, suppose, any- 
 where but among the Alps. But it can't be. 
 
 HOTEL MEURICE, PARTS, 
 
 20th October, 1874. 
 
 I interrupt myself, for an instant or two, to take notice of 
 two little things that happen to me here arriving to break- 
 fast by night train from Geneva. 
 
 Expecting to be cold, I had ordered fire, and sat down by 
 it to read my letters as soon as I arrived, not noticing that 
 the little parlour was getting much too hot. Presently, in 
 comes the chambermaid, to put the bedroom in order, which 
 one enters through the parlour. Perceiving that I am mis- 
 managing myself, in the way of fresh air, as she passes 
 through, "II fait bien chaud, monsieur, ici," says she reprov- 
 ingly, and with entire self-possession. Now that is French 
 servant-character of the right old school. She knows her 
 own position perfectly, and means to stay in it, and wear her 
 little white radiant frill of a cap all her days. She knows 
 my position also ; and has not the least fear of my thinking
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 309 
 
 her impertinent because she tells me what it is right that I 
 should know. Presently afterwards, an evidently German- 
 importation of waiter brings me up my breakfast, which has 
 been longer in appearing than it would have been in old 
 times. It looks all right at first, the napkin, china, and 
 solid silver sugar basin, all of the old regime. Bread, butter, 
 yes, of the best still. Coffee, milk, all right too. But, 
 at last, here is a bit of the new regime. There are no sugar- 
 tongs ; and the sugar is of beetroot, and in methodically 
 similar cakes, which I must break with mv finger and thumb 
 
 / O 
 
 if I want a small piece, and put back what I don't want for 
 my neighbour, to-morrow. 
 
 'Civilization,' this, you observe, according to Professor 
 Liebig and Mr. John Stuart Mill. Not according to old 
 French manners, however. 
 
 Now, my readers are continually complaining that I don't 
 go on telling them my plan of life, under the rule of St. 
 George's Company. 
 
 I have told it them, again and again, in broad terms : 
 agricultural life, with as much refinement as I can enforce in 
 it. But it is impossible to describe what I mean by ' refine- 
 ment,' except in details which can onlv be suggested by 
 practical need ; and which cannot at all be set down at once. 
 
 Here, however, to-day, is one instance. At the best hotel 
 in what has been supposed the most luxurious city of modern 
 Europe, because people are now always in a hurry to catch 
 the train, they haven't time to use the sugar-tongs, or look 
 for a little piece among differently sized lumps, and therefore 
 they use their fingers ; have bad sugar instead of good, and 
 waste the ground that would grow blessed cherry trees, currant 
 bushes, or wheat, in growing a miserable root as a substitute 
 for the sugar-cane, which God has appointed to grow where 
 cherries and wheat won't, and to give juice which will freeze 
 into sweet snow as pure as hoar-frost. 
 
 Now, on the poorest farm of the St. George's Company, 
 the servants shall have white and brown sugar of the best 
 or none. If we are too poor to buy sugar, we will drink 
 our tea without ; and have suet-dumpling instead of pudding.
 
 310 FORS CLAVIQERA. 
 
 But among the earliest school lessons, and home lessons, 
 decent behaviour at table will be primarily essential ; and of 
 such decency, one little exact point will be the neat, patient, 
 and scrupulous use of sugar-tongs instead of fingers. If we 
 are too poor to have silver basins, we will have delf ones ; if 
 not silver tongs, we will have wooden ones ; and the boys of 
 the house shall be challenged to cut, and fit together, the 
 prettiest and handiest machines of the sort they can contrive. 
 In six months you would find more real art fancy brought 
 out in the wooden handles and claws, than there is now in 
 all the plate in London. 
 
 Now, there's the cuckoo-clock striking seven, just as I sit 
 down to correct the press of this sheet, in mv nurserv at 
 Herrie Hill ; and though I don't remember, as the murderer 
 does in Mr. Crummies' play, having heard a cuckoo-clock 
 strike seven in my infancy, I do remember, in my favourite 
 Frank, much talk of the housekeeper's cuckoo-clock, and 
 of the boy's ingenuity in mending it. Yet to this hour of 
 seven in the morning, ninth December of my fifty-fifth year, 
 I haven't the least notion how any such clock says ' Cuckoo,' 
 nor a clear one even of the making of the commonest barking 
 toy of a child's Noah's ark. I don't know how a barrel 
 organ produces music by being ground ; nor what real func- 
 tion the pea has in a whistle. Physical science all this of 
 a kind which would have been boundlessly interesting to me, 
 as to all boys of mellifluous disposition, if only I had been 
 taught it with due immediate practice, and enforcement of 
 true manufacture, or, in pleasant Saxon, ' handiwork.' But 
 there shall not be on St. George's estate a single thing in the 
 house which the boys don't know how to make, nor a single 
 dish on the table which the girls will not know how to cook. 
 
 By the way, I have been greatly surprised by receiving 
 some letters of puzzled inquiry as to the meaning of my 
 recipe, given last year, for Yorkshire Pie. Do not my 
 readers yet at all understand that the whole gist of this 
 book is to make people build their own houses, provide and 
 cook their own dinners, and enjoy both ? Something else
 
 FOBS CLAVIOERA. 311 
 
 besides, perhaps ; but at least, and at first, those. St. 
 Michael's mass, and Christ's mass, may eventually be asso- 
 ciated in your minds with other things than goose and 
 pudding ; but Fors demands at first no more chivalry nor 
 Christianity from you than that you build your houses 
 bravely, and earn your dinners honestly, and enjoy them 
 both, and be content with them both. The contentment 
 is the main matter ; you may enjoy to any extent, but 
 if you are discontented, your life will be poisoned. The 
 little pig was so comforting to me because he was wholly 
 content to be a little pig ; and Mr. Leslie Stephen is in a 
 certain degree exemplary and comforting to me, because he 
 is wholly content to be Mr. Leslie Stephen ; while I am 
 miserable because I am always wanting to be something else 
 than I am. I want to be Turner ; I want to be Gains- 
 borough ; I want to be Samuel Prout ; I want to be 
 Doge of Venice ; I want to be Pope ; I want to be Lord of 
 the Sun and Moon. The other day, when I read that story 
 in the papers about the dog-fight,* I wanted to be able to 
 fight a bulldog. 
 
 Truly, that was the only effect of the story upon me, 
 though I heard everybody else screaming out how horrible 
 it was. What's horrible in it ? Of course it is in bad taste, 
 and the sign of a declining era of national honour as all bru- 
 tal gladiatorial exhibitions are ; and the stakes and rings of 
 the tethered combat meant precisely, for England, what the 
 stakes and rings of the Theatre of Taormina, where I saw 
 the holes left for them among the turf, blue with Sicilian 
 lilies, in this last April, meant, for Greece, and Rome. 
 There might be something loathsome, or something ominous, 
 in such a story, to the old Greeks of the school of Heracles ; 
 who used to fight with the Nemean lion, or with Cerberus, 
 when it was needful only, and not for money ; and whom 
 their Argus remembered through all Trojan exile. There 
 might be something loathsome in it, or ominous, to an Eng- 
 
 * I don't know how far it turned out to be true, a fight between a 
 dwarf and a bulldog (both chained to stakes as in Koman days), de- 
 scribed at length in some journals.
 
 312 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 lishman of the school of Shakespeare or Scott ; who would 
 fight with men only, and loved his hound. But for you 
 you carnivorous cheats what, in dog's or devil's name, is 
 there horrible in it for you? Do you suppose it isn't more 
 manly and virtuous to fight a bulldog, than to poison a 
 child, or cheat a fellow who trusts you, or leave a girl to go 
 wild in the streets? And don't you live, and profess to live 
 and even insolently proclaim that there's no other way of 
 living than by poisoning and cheating ? And isn't every 
 woman of fashion's dress, in Europe, now set the pattern of 
 to her by its prostitutes ? 
 
 What's horrible in it ? I ask you, the third time. I hate, 
 myself, seeing a bulldog ill-treated ; for they are the gentlest 
 and faithfullest of living creatures if you use them well. 
 And the best dog I ever had was a bull-terrier, whose whole 
 object in life was to please me, and nothing else ; though, if 
 he found he could please me by holding on with his teeth to 
 an inch-thick stick, and being swung round in the air as fast 
 as I could turn, that was his own idea of entirely felicitous 
 existence. I don't like, therefore, hearing of a bulldog's 
 being ill-treated ; but I can tell you a little thing that 
 chanced to me at Coniston the other day, more horrible, in 
 the deep elements of it, than all the dog, bulldog, or bull 
 fights, or baitings, of England, Spain, and California. A 
 fine boy, the son of an amiable English clergyman, had come 
 on the coach-box round the Water-head to see me, and was 
 telling me of the delightful drive he had had. " Oh," he said, 
 in the triumph of his enthusiasm, "and just at the corner of 
 the wood, there was such a big squirrel ! and the coachman 
 threw a stone at it, and nearly hit it ! " 
 
 'Thoughtlessness only thoughtlessness' say you 
 proud father ? Well, perhaps not much worse than that. 
 But how could it be much worse ? Thoughtlessness is pre- 
 cisely the chief public calamity of our day ; and when it 
 comes to the pitch, in a clergyman's child, of not thinking 
 that a stone hurts what it hits of living things, and not 
 caring for the daintiest, dextrousest, innocentest living thing 
 in the northern forests of God's earth, except as a brown ex-
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 313 
 
 ci'escence to be knocked off their branches, nay, good pas- 
 tor of Christ's lambs, believe me, your boy had better have 
 been employed in thoughtfully and resolutely stoning St. 
 Stephen if any St. Stephen is to be found in these days, 
 when men not only can't see heaven opened, but don't so 
 much as care to see it, shut. 
 
 For they, at least, meant neither to give pain nor death 
 without cause, that unanimous company who stopped their 
 ears, they, and the consenting bystander who afterwards 
 was sorry for his mistake. 
 
 But, on the whole, the time has now come when we must 
 cease throwing of stones either at saints or squirrels ; and, 
 as I say, build our own houses with them, honestly set : and 
 similarly content ourselves in peaceable use of iron and lead, 
 and other such things which we have been in the habit of 
 throwing at each other dangerously, in thoughtlessness ; 
 and defending ourselves against as thoughtlessly, though 
 in what we suppose to be an ingenious manner. Ingen- 
 ious or not, will the fabric of our new ship of the Line, 
 ' Devastation,' think you, follow its fabricator in heavenly 
 places, when he dies in the Lord ? In such representations 
 as I have chanced to see of probable Paradise, Noah is never 
 without his ark ; holding that up for judgment as the main 
 work of his life. Shall we hope at the Advent to see the 
 builder of the ' Devastation ' invite St. Michael's judgment 
 on his better style of naval architecture, and four-foot-six- 
 thick 'armour of light'? 
 
 It is to-day the second Sunday in Advent, and all over 
 England, about the time that I write these words, full con- 
 gregations will be for the second time saying Amen to the 
 opening collect of the Christian year. 
 
 I wonder how many individuals of the enlightened public 
 understand a single word of its first clause : 
 
 " Almighty God, give us grace that we may cast away 
 the works of darkness, and put upon us the armour 
 of light, now in the time of this mortal life." 
 
 How many of them, may it be supposed, have any clear
 
 314 FORS CLAVIQERA. 
 
 knowledge of what grace is, or of what the works of darkness 
 are which they hope to have grace to cast away ; or will 
 feel themselves, in the coming year, armed with any more 
 luminous mail than their customary coats and gowns, hosen 
 and hats? Or again, when they are told to "have no fellow- 
 ship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather re- 
 prove them," what fellowship do they recognize themselves 
 to have guiltily formed ; and whom, or what, will they feel 
 now called upon to reprove ? 
 
 In last Fors, I showed you how the works of darkness 
 were unfruitful ; the precise reverse of the fruitful, or 
 creative, works of Light ; but why in this collect, which 
 you pray over and over again all Advent, do you ask for 
 'armour' instead of industry? You take your coat off to 
 work in your own gardens ; why must you put a coat of 
 mail on, when you are to work in the Garden of God ? 
 
 Well ; because the earthworms in it are big and have 
 teeth and claws, and venomous tongues. So that the first 
 question for you is indeed, not whether you have a mind to 
 work in it many a coward has that but whether you have 
 courage to stand in it, and armour proved enough to stand 
 in. 
 
 Suppose you let the consenting bystander who took care 
 of the coats taken off to do that piece of work on St. 
 Stephen, explain to you the pieces out of St. Michael's 
 armoury needful to the husbandman, or Georgos, of God's 
 garden. 
 
 " Stand therefore ; having your loins girt about with 
 Truth." 
 
 That means, that the strength of your backbone depends 
 on your meaning to do true battle. 
 
 "And having on the breastplate of Justice." 
 
 That means, there are to be no partialities in your heart, 
 of anger or pity ; but you must only in justice kill, and 
 only in justice keep alive.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 315 
 
 " And your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel 
 of Peace." 
 
 That means that where your foot pauses, moves, or enters, 
 there shall be peace ; and where you can only shake the 
 dust of it on the threshold, mourning. 
 
 "Above all, take the shield of Faith." 
 
 Of fidelity or obedience to your captain, showing his bear- 
 ings, argent, a cross gules ; your safety, and all the army's, 
 being first in the obedience of faith : and all casting of 
 spears vain against such guarded phalanx. 
 
 " And take the helmet of Salvation." 
 
 Elsewhere, the hope of salvation, that being the defence 
 of your intellect against base and sad thoughts, as the shield 
 of fidelity is the defence of your heart against burning and 
 consuming passions. 
 
 " And the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of 
 God." 
 
 That being your weapon of war, your power of action, 
 whether with sword or ploughshare ; according to the 
 saying of St. John of the young soldiers of Christ, " I have 
 written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the 
 Word of God abideth in you." The Word by which the 
 heavens were of old ; and which, being once only Breath, 
 became in man Flesh, 'quickening it by the spirit' into the 
 life which is, and is to come ; and enabling it for all the 
 works nobly done by the quick, and following the dead. 
 
 And now, finish your Advent collect, and eat your 
 Christmas fare, and drink your Christinas wine, thankfully ; 
 and with understanding that if the supper is holy which 
 shows your Lord's death till He come, the dinner is also holy 
 which shows His life ; and if you would think it wrong at 
 any time to go to your own baby's cradle side, drunk, do not 
 show your gladness by Christ's cradle in that manner ; but 
 eat your meat, and carol your carol in pure gladness and
 
 316 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 singleness of heart ; and so gird up your loins with truth, 
 that, in the year to come, you may do such work as Christ 
 can praise, whether He call you to judgment from the quick 
 or dead ; so that among your Christinas carols there may 
 never any more be wanting the joyfullest 
 
 O sing unto the Lord a new song : 
 
 Sing unto the Lord, all the earth. 
 
 Say among the heathen that the Lord is King : 
 
 The world also shall be stablished that it shall not be moved. 
 
 Let the heavens rejoice, 
 
 And let the earth be glad ; 
 
 Let the sea shout, and the fulness thereof. 
 
 Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein : 
 
 Then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice 
 
 Before the Lord : 
 
 For He cometh, for He cometh to JUDGE THE EARTH : 
 
 HE SHALL JUDGE THE WORLD WITH RIGHTEOUSNESS, 
 AND THE PEOPLE WITH HIS TRUTH.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 317 
 
 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 I. I have kept the following kind and helpful letter for the close of 
 the year : 
 
 ''Januarys, 1874. 
 
 " Sir, I have been much moved by a passage in No. 37 of Fors 
 Clavigera, in which you express yourself in somewhat desponding 
 terms as to your loneliness in ' life and thought, ' now you have 
 grown old. You complain that many of your early friends have for- 
 gotten or disregarded you, and that you are almost left alone. I can- 
 not certainly be called an early friend, or, in the common meaning of 
 the word, a friend of any time. But I cannot refrain from telling you 
 that there are 'more than 7,000' in this very 'Christ-defying' Eng- 
 land whom you have made your friends by your wise sympathy and 
 faithful teaching. I, for my own part, owe you a debt of thankful- 
 ness not only for the pleasant hours I have spent with you in your 
 books, but also for the clearer views of many of the ills which at pres- 
 ent press upon us, and for the methods of cure upon which you so 
 urgently and earnestly insist. I would especially mention Unto this 
 Last as having afforded me the highest satisfaction. It has ever since 
 I first read it been my text-book of political economy. I think it is 
 one of the needfulest lessons for a selfish, recklessly competitive, 
 cheapest -buy ing and dearest-selling age, that it should be told there 
 are principles deeper, higher, and even more prudent than those by 
 which it is just now governed. It is particularly refreshing to find 
 Christ's truths applied to modern commercial immorality in the trench- 
 ant and convincing style which characterizes your much maligned but 
 most valuable book. It has been, let me assure you, appreciated in 
 very unexpected quarters ; and one humble person to whom I lent my 
 copy, being too poor to buy one for himself, actually wrote it out word 
 for word that he might always have it by him." 
 
 (" What a shame ! " thinks the enlightened Mudie-subscriber. " See 
 what comes of his refusing to sell his books cheap." 
 
 Yes, see what comes of it. The dreadful calamity, to another per- 
 son, of doing once, what I did myself twice and, in great part of the 
 book, three times. A vain author, indeed, thinks nothing of the 
 trouble of writing his own books. But I had infinitely rather write 
 somebody else's. My good poor disciple, at the most, had not half the 
 pain his master had ; learnt his book rightly, and gave me more help, 
 by this best kind of laborious sympathy, than twenty score of flatter- 
 ing friends who tell me what a fine word-painter I am, and don't take 
 the pains to understand so much as half a sentence in a volume.)
 
 318 FOR8 CLAVIOERA. 
 
 "You have done, and are doing, a good work for England, and I 
 pray you not to be discouraged. Continue as you have been doing, 
 convincing us by your ' sweet reasonableness ' of our errors and mis- 
 eries, and the time will doubtless come when, your work now being 
 done in Jeremiah-like sadness and hopelessness, will bear gracious and 
 abundant fruit. 
 
 ' Will you pardon my troubling you with this note; but, indeed, I 
 could not be happy after reading your gloomy experience, until I had 
 done my little best to send one poor ray of comfort into your seem- 
 ingly almost weary heart. 
 
 ' ' I remain, 
 
 " Yours very sincerely." 
 
 II. Next to this delightful testimony to my ' sweet reasonableness,' 
 here is some discussion of evidence on the other side : 
 
 November 12, 1872. 
 "To JOHN RUSKIN, LL.D., greeting, these. 
 
 ' ' Enclosed is a slip cut from the Liverpool Mercury of last Friday, 
 November 8. I don't send it to you because I think it matters any- 
 thing what the Mercury thinks about any one's qualification for either 
 the inside or outside of any asylum ; but that I may suggest to you, as 
 a working-man reader of your letters, the desirability of your printing 
 any letters of importance you may send to any of the London papers, 
 over again in, say, the space of Fors Glavigera that you have set apart 
 for correspondence. It is most tantalizing to see a bit printed like the 
 enclosed, and not know either what is before or after. I felt similar 
 feelings some time ago over a little bit of a letter about the subscrip- 
 tion to Warwick Castle. 
 
 "We cannot always see the London papers, especially us provincials; 
 and we would like to see what goes on between you and the newspaper 
 world. 
 
 " Trusting that you will give this suggestion some consideration, and 
 at any rate take it as given in good faith from a disciple following afar 
 off, 
 
 ' ' I remain, sincerely yours. ' ' 
 
 The enclosed slip was as follows : 
 
 "Mn. RUSKIN'S TENDER POINT. Mr. John Ruskin has written a 
 letter to a contemporary on madness and crime, which goes far to clear 
 up the mystery which has surrounded some of his writings of late. 
 The following passage amply qualifies the distinguished art critic for 
 admission into any asylum in the country : ' I assure you, sir, insanity 
 is a tender point with me.'" The writer then quotes to the end the 
 last paragraph of the letter, which, in compliance with my correspond- 
 ent's wish, I am happy here to reprint in its entirety. 
 
 MADNESS AND CRIME. 
 
 TO TTIE EDITOH OF THE " PALL MALL GAZETTE." 
 
 Sir, Towards the close of the excellent article on the Taylor trial in 
 your issue for October 31, you say that people never will be, nor ought
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 319 
 
 to be, persuaded "to treat criminals simply as vermin which they de- 
 stroy, and not as men who are to be punished." Certainly not, sir! 
 Who ever talked, or thought, of regarding criminals " simply" as any- 
 thing ; (or innocent people either, if there be any; ? But regarding 
 criminals complexly and accurately, they are partly men, partly vermin ; 
 what is human in them you must punish what is vermicular, abolish. 
 Anything between if you can find it I wish you joy of, and hope you 
 may be able to preserve it to society. Insane persons, horses, dogs, or 
 cats, become vermin when they become dangerous. I am sorry for dar- 
 ling Fido, but there is no question about what is to be done with him. 
 
 Yet, I assure you, sir, insanity is a tender point with me. One of 
 my best friends has just gone mad ; and all the rest say I am mad my- 
 self. But, if ever I murder anybody and, indeed, there are numbers 
 of people I should like to murder I won't say that I ought to be hanged ; 
 for I tbink nobody but a bishop or a bank-director can ever be rogue 
 enough to deserve hanging ; but I particularly, and with all that is left 
 me of what I imagine to be sound mind, request that I may be imme- 
 diately shot. 
 
 I am, Sir, your obedient servant, 
 
 J. RUSKIN. 
 
 Corpus Christi College, Oxford, November 2, (1872). 
 
 III. I am very grateful to the friend who sends me the following 
 note on my criticism of Dickens in last letter : 
 
 " It does not in the least detract from the force of Fors, p. 297, line 
 6 (November), that there was a real 'Miss Flite,' whom I have seen, 
 and my father well remembers ; and who used to haunt the Courts in 
 general, and sometimes to address them. She had been ruined, it was 
 believed ; and Dickens must have seen her, for her picture is like the 
 original. But he knew nothing about her, and only constructed her 
 after his fashion. She cannot have been any prototype of the character 
 of Miss Flite. I never heard her real name. Poor thing ! she did not 
 look sweet or kind, but crazed and spiteful ; and unless looks deceived 
 Dickens, he just gave careless, false witness about her. Her condition 
 seemed to strengthen your statement in its very gist, as Law had 
 made her look like Peter Peebles. 
 
 " My father remembers little Miss F. , of whom nothing was known. 
 She always carried papers and a bag. and received occasional charity 
 from lawyers. 
 
 "Gridley's real name was Ikey; he haunted Chancery. Another, 
 named Pitt, in the Exchequer ; broken attorneys, both. ' 
 
 IV. I have long kept by me an official statement of the condition of 
 England when I began Fors, and together with it an illustrative column, 
 printed, without alteration, from the Pali Matt Gazette of the previous 
 year. They may now fitly close my four years' work, of which I have 
 good hope next year to see some fruit. 
 
 MR. GOSCHEN ON THE CONDITION OP ENGLAND. "The nation is 
 again making money at an enormous rate, and driving every kind of 
 decently secure investment up to unprecedented figures. Foreign 
 Stocks, Indian Stocks, Home Railway Shares, all securities which are
 
 320 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 beyond the control of mere speculators and offer above four per cent, 
 were never BO dear; risky loans for millions, like that for Peru, are 
 taken with avidity ; the cup is getting full, and in all human probabil- 
 ity some new burst of speculation is at hand, which may take a benefi- 
 cial form for instance, we could get rid of a hundred millions in mak- 
 ing cheap country railways with immense advantage but will more 
 probably turn out to be a mere method of depletion. However it goes, 
 the country is once more getting rich, and the money is filtering down- 
 wards to the actual workers. The people, as Mr. Goschen showed by un- 
 impugnable figures, are consuming more sugar, more lea, more beer, 
 spirits, and tobacco, more, in fact, of every kind of popular luxury, than 
 ever. Their savings have also increased, while the exports of cotton, of 
 wool, of linen, of iron, of machinery, have reached a figure wholly beyond 
 precedent. By the testimony of all manner of men factory inspectors, 
 poor-law inspectors, members for great cities the Lancashire trade, 
 the silk trade, the flax-spinning trade, the lace trade, and, above all, the 
 iron trade, are all so flourishing, that the want is not of work to be 
 done, but of hands to do it. Even the iron shipbuilding trade, which 
 was at so low a point, is reviving, and the only one believed to be still 
 under serious depression is the building trade of London, which has, it 
 is believed, been considerably overdone. So great is the demand for 
 hands in some parts of the country, that Mr. Goschen believes that in- 
 ternal emigration would do more to help the people than emigration to 
 America, while it is certain that no relief which can be afforded by the 
 departure of a few workpeople is equal to the relief caused by the 
 revival of any one great trade relief, we must add, which would be 
 more rapid and diffused if the trades' unions, in this one respect at least 
 false to their central idea of the brotherhood of labour, were not so 
 jealous of the intrusion of outsiders. There is hardly a trade into 
 which a countryman of thirty, however clever, can enter at his own 
 discretion one of the many social disqualifications which press upon 
 the agricultural labourer. 
 
 ' ' The picture thus drawn by Mr. Goschen, and truly drawn for the 
 President of the Poor-Law Board is a man who doea not manipulate 
 figures, but treats them with the reverence of the born statist is a very 
 pleasant one, especially to those who believe that wealth is the founda- 
 tion of civilization ; but yet what a weary load it is that, according to 
 the same speech, this country is carrying, and must carry ! There are 
 1,100,000 paupers on the books, and not a tenth of them will be taken 
 off by any revival whatever, for not a tenth of them are workers. The 
 rest are children 350,000 of them alone widows, people past work, 
 cripples, lunatics, incapables, human drift of one sort or another, the 
 detritus of commerce and labour, a compost of suffering, helplessness, 
 and disease. In addition to the burden of the State, in addition to the 
 burden of the Debt, which we talk of as nothing, but without which 
 England would be the least-taxed country in the world, this country has 
 to maintain an army of incapables twice as numerous as the army of 
 France, to feed, and clothe, and lodge and teach them, an army which 
 she cannot disband, and which she seems incompetent even to diminish. 
 To talk of emigration, of enterprise, even of education, as reducing this 
 burden, is almost waste of breath ; for cripples do not emigrate, the 
 aged do not benefit by trade, when education is universal children must 
 still be kept alive." The Spectator, June 25, 1870.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 321 
 
 V. The following single column of the Putt Mall Gazette has been oc- 
 casionally referred to in past letters : 
 
 " It is proposed to erect a memorial church at Oxford to the late 
 Archbishop Longley. The cost is estimated at from 15,000 to 20,000. 
 The subscriptions promised already amount to upwards of 2,000, and 
 in the list are the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Bishops of Oxford, 
 St. Asaph, and Chester." 
 
 " An inquest was held in the Isle of Dogs by Mr. Humphreys, the 
 coroner, respecting the death of a woman named Catherine Spence, aged 
 thirty-four, and her infant. She was the wife of a labourer, who had 
 been almost without employment for two years and a half. They had 
 pledged all their clothes to buy food, and some time since part of the 
 furniture had been seized by the brokers for rent. The house in which 
 they lived was occupied by six families, who paid the landlord 5*. Qd. for 
 rent. One of the witnesses stated that * all the persons in the house 
 were ill off for food, and the deceased never wanted it more than they 
 did.' The jury on going to view the bodies found that the bed on which 
 the woman and child had died was composed of rags, and there were no 
 bed-clothes upon it. A small box placed upon a broken chair had served 
 as a table. Upon it lay a tract entitled ' The Goodness of God.' The 
 windows were broken, and an old iron tray had been fastened up against 
 one and a board up against another. Two days after his wife's death 
 the poor man went mad, and he was taken to the workhouse. He was 
 not taken to the asylum, for there was no room for him in it it was 
 crowded with mad people. Another juror said it was of no use to return 
 a verdict of death from starvation. It would only cause the distress in 
 the island to be talked about in newspapers. The jury returned a ver- 
 dict that the deceased woman died from exhaustion, privation, and want 
 of food." 
 
 " The Rev. James Nugent, the Roman Catholic chaplain of the Liver- 
 pool borough gaol, reported to the magistrates that crime is increasing 
 among young women in Liverpool ; and he despairs of amendment until 
 effective steps are taken to check the open display of vice which may 
 now be witnessed nightly, and even daily, in the thoroughfares of the 
 town. Mr. Raffles, the stipendiary magistrate, confesses that he is at 
 a loss what to do in order to deter women of the class referred to from 
 offending against the law, as even committal to the sessions and a long 
 term of imprisonment fail to produce beneficial effects. Father Nugent 
 also despairs of doing much good with this class ; but he thinks that if 
 they were subjected to stricter control, and prevented from parading in 
 our thoroughfares, many girls would be deterred from falling into evil 
 ways." 
 
 " At the Liverpool borough gaol sessions Mr. Robertson Gladstone 
 closely interrogated the chaplain (the Rev. Thomas Carter) respecting 
 his visitation of the prisoners. Mr. Gladstone is of opinion that suffi- 
 cient means to make the prisoners impressionable to religious teaching 
 are not used ; whilst the chaplain asserts that the system which he pur- 
 sues is based upon a long experience, extending over twenty-eight years, 
 at the gaol. Mr. Gladstone, who does not share the chaplain's belief 
 VOL. II. 21
 
 322 FOfiS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 that the prisoners are ' generally unimpressionable,' hinted that some 
 active steps in the matter would probably be taken." 
 
 " Mr. Fowler, the stipendiary magistrate of Manchester, referring to 
 Mr. Ernest Jones' death yesterday, in the course of the proceedings at 
 the city police-court, said : ' I wish to say one word, which I intended 
 to have said yesterday morning, in reference to the taking from amongst 
 us of a face which has been so familiar in this court ; but I wished to 
 have some other magistrates present in order that I might, on the part 
 of the bench, and not only as an individual, express our regret at the 
 unexpected removal from our midst of a man whose life has been a very 
 remarkable one, whose name will always be associated in this country 
 in connection with the half-century he lived in it, and who, whatever 
 his faults and who amongst us is free ? possessed the great virtues of 
 undoubted integrity and honour, and of being thoroughly consistent, 
 never flinching from that course which he believed to be right, though 
 at times at the cost of fortune and of freedom. ' " 
 
 " A Chester tradesman named Meacock, an ex-town councillor, lias 
 been arrested in that city on a charge of forging conveyances of property 
 upon which he subsequently obtained a mortgage of 2,200. The lady 
 who owns the property appeared before the magistrates, and declared 
 that her signature to the conveyance was a forgery. The prisoner was 
 remanded, and was sent to prison in default of obtaining the bail which 
 was required." 
 
 " Mr. Hughes, a Liverpool merchant, was summoned before the local 
 bench for having sent to the London Dock a case, containing hydro- 
 chloric acid, without a distinct label or mark denoting that the goods 
 were dangerous. A penalty of 10 was imposed." 
 
 " A woman, named Daley, came before the Leeds magistrates, with 
 her son, a boy six years old, whom she wished to be sent to a reforma- 
 tory, as she was unable to control him. She said that one evening last 
 week he went home, carrying a piece of rope, and said that he was going 
 to hang himself with it. He added that he had already attempted to 
 hang himself ' in the Crown Court, but a little lass loosed the rope for 
 him, and he fell into a tub of water. ' It turned out that the mother 
 was living with a man by whom she had two children, and it was thought 
 by some in court that her object was merely to relieve herself of the cost 
 and care of the boy ; but the magistrates, thinking that the boy would 
 be better away from the contaminating influences of the street and of 
 his home, committed him to the Certified Industrial Schools until he 
 arrives at sixteen years of age, and ordered his mother to contribute 
 one shilling per week towards his maintenance." Pall Malt Qazette, 
 January 29, 1869.
 
 GLAVIGERA. 323 
 
 LETTER XLIX. 
 
 I WONDER if Fors will let me say any small proportion, this 
 year, of what I intend. I wish she would, for my readers 
 have every right to be doubtful of my plan till they see it 
 more defined ; and yet to define it severally would be to 
 falsify it, for all that is best in it depends on my adopting 
 whatever good I can find, in men and things, that will work 
 to my purpose ; which of course means action in myriads of 
 ways that I neither wish to define, nor attempt to antici- 
 pate. Nay, I am wrong, even in speaking of it as a plan or 
 scheme at all. It is only a method of uniting the force of 
 all good plans and wise schemes ; it is a principle and ten- 
 dency, like the law of form in a crystal ; not a plan. If I live, 
 as I said at first, I will endeavour to show some small part 
 of it in action ; but it would be a poor design indeed, for the 
 bettering of the world, which any man could see either quite 
 round the outside, or quite into the inside of. 
 
 But I hope in the letters of this next year to spend less 
 time in argument or attack ; what I wish the reader to know, 
 of principle, is already enough proved, if only he take the 
 pains to read the preceding letters thoroughly ; and I shall 
 now, as far as Fors will let me, carry out my purpose of 
 choosing and annotating passages of confirmatory classical 
 literature ; and answering, as they occur, the questions of 
 my earnest correspondents, as to what each of them, in their 
 place of life, may immediately do with advantage for St. 
 George's help. 
 
 If those of my readers who have been under the impres- 
 sion that I wanted them to join me in establishing some 
 model institution or colony, will look to the fourth page of 
 Letter I., they will see that, so far from intending or un- 
 dertaking any such thing, I meant to put my whole strength 
 into my Oxford teaching ; and, for rny own part, to get rid 
 of begging letters and live in peace.
 
 324 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 Of course, when I have given fourteen thousand pounds 
 away in a year,* everybody who wants some money thinks 1 
 have plenty for them. But my having given fourteen thou- 
 sand pounds is just the reason I have not plenty for them ; 
 and, moreover, have no time to attend to them, (and generally, 
 henceforward, my friends will please to note that I have 
 spent my life in helping other people, and am quite tired of 
 it ; and if they can now help me in my work, or praise me for 
 it, I shall be much obliged to them ; but I can't help them 
 at theirs). 
 
 But this impression of my wanting to found a colony was 
 founded on page 72 of Letter V., and page 109 of Letter 
 VIII. Read them over again now, altogether. 
 
 If the help I plead for come, we will indeed try to make 
 some small piece of English ground beautiful ; and if suffi- 
 cient help come, many such pieces of ground ; and on those 
 we will put cottage dwellings, and educate the labourers' 
 children in a certain manner. But that is not founding a 
 colony. It is only agreeing to work on a given system. 
 Any English gentleman who chooses to forbid the use of 
 steam machinery be it but over a few acres, and to make 
 the best of them he can by human labour, or who will secure 
 a piece of his mountain ground from dog, gun, and excursion 
 party, and let the wild flowers and wild birds live there in 
 peace ; any English gentleman, I say, who will so command 
 either of these things, is doing the utmost I would ask of 
 him ; if, seeing the result of doing so much, he felt in- 
 clined to do more, field may add itself to field, cottage rise 
 after cottage, here and there the sky begin to open again 
 above us, and the rivers to run pure. In a very little while, 
 also, the general interest in education will assuredly discover 
 that healthy habits, and not mechanical drawing nor church 
 catechism, are the staple of it ; and then, not in my model 
 colony only, but as best it can be managed in any un- 
 modelled place or way girls will be taught to cook, boys to 
 
 * Seven thousand to St. George's Company ; five, for establishment 
 of Mastership in Drawing in the Oxford schools ; two, and more, in tho 
 series of drawings placed in those schools to secure their efficiency.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 325 
 
 plough, and both to behave ; and that with the heart, 
 which is the first piece of all the body that has to be 
 instructed. 
 
 A village clergyman, (an excellent farmer, and verv kind 
 friend of my earliest college days,) sent me last January a 
 slip out of the Daily Telegraph, written across in his own 
 hand with the words " Advantage of Education." The slip 
 described the eloquence and dexterity in falsehood of the 
 Parisian Communist prisoners on their trial for the murder 
 of the hostages. But I would fain ask my old friend to tell 
 me himself whether he thinks instruction in the art of false 
 eloquence should indeed receive from any minister of Christ the 
 title of ' education ' at all ; and how far display of eloquence, 
 instead of instruction in behaviour, has become the function, 
 too commonly, of these ministers themselves. 
 
 I was asked by one of my Oxford pupils the other day why 
 I had never said any serious word of what it might seem 
 best for clergymen to do in a time of so great doubt and 
 division. 
 
 I have not, because any man's becoming a clergyman in 
 these days must imply one of two things either that he has 
 something to do and say for men which he honestly believes 
 himself impelled to do and say by the Holy Ghost, and in 
 that case he is likely to see his way without being shown it, 
 or else he is one of the group of so-called Christians who, 
 except with the outward ear " have not so much as heard 
 whether there be any Holy Ghost," and are practically lying, 
 both to men and to God ; persons to whom, whether they 
 be foolish or wicked in their ignorance, no honest way can 
 possibly be shown. 
 
 The particular kinds of folly also which lead youths to 
 become clergymen, uncalled, are especially intractable. That 
 a lad just out of his teens, and not under the influence of 
 any deep religious enthusiasm, should ever contemplate the 
 possibility of his being set up in the middle of a mixed com- 
 pany of men and women of the world, to instruct the aged, 
 encourage the valiant, support the weak, reprove the guilty, 
 and set an example to all ; and not feel what a ridiculous
 
 326 FOKS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 and blasphemous business it would be, if he only pretended 
 to do it for hire ; and what a ghastly and murderous busi- 
 ness it would be, if he did it strenuously wrong- ; and what 
 a marvellous and all but incredible thing the Church and its 
 power must be, if it were possible for him, with all the good 
 meaning in the world, to do it rightly ; that any youth, I 
 say, should ever have got himself into the state of reckless- 
 ness, or conceit, required to become a clergyman at all, 
 under these existing circumstances, must put him quite out 
 of the pale of those whom one appeals to on any reasonable 
 or moral question, in serious writing. I went into a ritual- 
 istic church, the other day, for instance, in the West End. 
 It was built of bad Gothic, lighted with bad painted glass, 
 and had its Litany intoned, and its sermon delivered on the 
 subject of wheat and chaff- -by a young man of, as far as I 
 could judge, very sincere religious sentiments, but very cer- 
 tainly the kind of person whom one might have brayed in a 
 mortar among the very best of the wheat with a pestle, with- 
 out making his foolishness depart from him. And, in gen- 
 eral, any man's becoming a clergyman in these days implies 
 that, at best, his sentiment has overpowered his intellect ; 
 and that, whatever the feebleness of the latter, the victory 
 of his impertinent piety has been probably owing to its alli- 
 ance with his conceit, and its promise to him of the gratifi- 
 cation of being regarded as an oracle, without the trouble of 
 becoming wise, or the grief of being so. 
 
 It is not, however, by men of this stamp that the principal 
 mischief is done to the Church of Christ. Their foolish con- 
 gregations are not enough in earnest even to be misled ; and 
 the increasing London or Liverpool respectable suburb is 
 simply provided with its baker's and butcher's shop, its ale- 
 house, its itinerant organ-grinders for the week, and station- 
 ary organ-grinder for Sunday, himself his monkey, in obedi- 
 ence to the commonest condition of demand and supply, and 
 without much more danger in their Sunday's entertainment 
 than in their Saturday's. But the importunate and zealous 
 ministrations of the men who have been strong enough to 
 deceive themselves before they deceive others ; who give
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 327 
 
 the grace and glow of vital sincerity to falsehood, and lie 
 for God from the ground of their heart, produce forms of 
 moral corruption in their congregations as much more 
 deadly than the consequences of recognizedly vicious con- 
 duct, as the hectic of consumption is more deadly than the 
 flush of temporary fever. And it is entirely unperceived 
 by the members of existing churches that the words, 
 ' speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared 
 with a hot iron,' do not in the least apply to wilful and 
 self-conscious hypocrites, but only to those who do not 
 recognize themselves for such. Of wilful assumption of the 
 appearance of piety, for promotion of their own interests, 
 few, even of the basest men, are frankly capable ; and to the 
 average English gentleman, deliberate hypocrisy is impossi- 
 ble. And, therefore, all the fierce invectives of Christ, and 
 of the prophets and apostles, against hypocrisy, thunder 
 above their heads unregarded ; while all the while Annas 
 and Caiaphas are sitting in Moses' seat for ever ; and the 
 anger of God is accomplished against the daughter of His 
 people, "for the sins of her prophets, and the iniquities of 
 her priests, that have shed the blood of the just in the midst 
 of her. They have wandered blind in the streets ; they 
 have polluted themselves with blood, so that men could not 
 touch their garments.'' * 
 
 Take, for example, the conduct of the heads of the exist- 
 ing Church respecting the two powers attributed to them in 
 this very verse. There is certainly no Bishop now in the 
 Church of England who would either dare in a full drawing- 
 room to attribute to himself the gift of prophecy, in so many 
 words ; or to write at the head of any of his sermons, " On 
 such and such a day, of such and such a month, in sucli and 
 such a place, the Word of the Lord came unto me, saying." 
 Nevertheless, he claims to have received the Holy Ghost 
 himself by laying on of hands ; and to be able to communi- 
 cate the Holy Ghost to other men in the same manner. 
 And he knows that the office of the prophet is as simply 
 recognized in the enumeration of the powers of the ancient 
 * Lamentations v. 13.
 
 328 FOJtS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 Church, as that of the apostle, or evangelist, or doctor. 
 And yet he can neither point out in the Church the true 
 prophets, to whose number he dares not say he himself be- 
 longs, nor the false prophets, who are casting out devils in 
 the name of Christ, without being known by Him ; and he 
 contentedly suffers his flock to remain under the impression 
 that the Christ who led captivity captive, and received gifts 
 for men, left the gift of prophecy out of the group, as one 
 needed no longer. 
 
 But the second word, ' priest,' is one which he finds it 
 convenient to assume himself, and to give to his fellow- 
 clergymen. He knows, just as well as he knows prophecy 
 to be a gift attributed to the Christian minister, that priest- 
 hood is a function expressly taken away from the Christian 
 minister.* He dares not say in the open drawing-room that 
 he offers sacrifice for any soul there ; and he knows that he 
 cannot give authority for calling himself a priest from any 
 canonical book of the New Testament. So he equivocates 
 on the sound of the word 'presbyter,' and apologizes to his 
 conscience and his flock by declaring, "The priest I say, 
 the presbyter I mean," without even requiring so much poor 
 respect for his quibble as would be implied by insistance that 
 a so-called priest should at least be an Elder. And securing, 
 as far as he can, the reverence of his flock, while he secretly 
 abjures the responsibility of the office he takes the title of, 
 again he lets the rebuke of his God fall upon a deafened 
 ear, and reads that " from the Prophet unto the Priest, every 
 one dealeth falselv," without the slightest sensation that his 
 
 v ' O 
 
 own character is so much as alluded to. 
 
 Thus, not daring to call themselves prophets, which they 
 know they ought to be ; but daring, under the shelter of 
 equivocation, to call themselves priests, which they know 
 
 * As distinguished, that is to say, from other members of the Chnrch. 
 All are priests, as all are kings; but the kingly function exists apart ; 
 the priestly, not so. The subject is examined at some length, and 
 with a clearness which I cannot mend, in my old pamphlet on the Con- 
 struction of Sheep/olds, which I will presently reprint. See also Letter 
 XIII. , in Time and Tide.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 329 
 
 they are not, and are forbidden to be ; thus admittedly, 
 without power of prophecy, and only in stammering pre- 
 tence to priesthood, they yet claim the power to forgive and 
 retain sins. Whereupon, it is to be strictly asked of them, 
 whose sins they remit ; and whose sins they retain. For 
 truly, if they have a right to claim any authority or function 
 whatever this is it. Prophesy, they cannot ; sacrifice, they 
 cannot ; in their hearts there is no vision in their hands no 
 victim. The work of the Evangelist was done before they 
 could be made Bishops ; that of the Apostle cannot be done 
 on a Bishop's throne : there remains to them, of all possible 
 office of organization in the Church, only that of the pastor, 
 verily and intensely their own ; received by them in definite 
 charge when they received what they call the Holy Ghost ; 
 "Be to the flock of Christ, a shepherd, not a wolf ; feed 
 them, devour them not." 
 
 Does any man, of all the men who have received this 
 charge in England, know what it is to be a wolf ? recognize 
 in himself the wolfish instinct, and the thirst for the blood 
 of God's flock ? For if he does not know what is the nature 
 of a wolf, how should he know what it is to be a shepherd ? 
 If he never felt like a wolf himself, does he know the people 
 who do ? He does not expect them to lick their lips and 
 bare their teeth at him, I suppose, as they do in a panto- 
 mime ? Did he ever in his life see a wolf coming, and de- 
 bate with himself whether he should fight or fly ? or is not 
 rather his whole life one headlong hireling's flight, without 
 so much as turning his head to see what manner of beasts 
 they are that follow ? nay, are not his very hireling's wages 
 paid him for flying instead of fighting? 
 
 Dares any one of them answer me here from my college 
 of the Body of Christ I challenge every mitre of them : defi- 
 nitely, the Lord of St. Peter's borough, whom I note as a 
 pugnacious and accurately worded person, and hear of as an 
 outspoken one, able and ready to answer for his fulfilment 
 of the charge to Peter : How many wolves does he know in 
 Peterborough how many sheep ? what battle has he done 
 what bites can he show the scars of ? whose sins has he
 
 330 FORS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 remitted in Peterborough whose retained ? has he not 
 remitted, like his brother Bishops, all the sins of the rich, 
 and retained all those of the poor ? does he know, in Peter- 
 borough, who are fornicators, who thieves, who liars, who 
 murderers ? and has he ever dared to tell any one of them 
 to his face that he was so if the man had over a hundred a 
 year ? 
 
 " Have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics, 
 and so fetch them home, blessed Lord, to Thy flock, that they 
 may be saved among the remnant of the true Israelites." 
 Who are the true Israelites, my lord of Peterborough, whom 
 you can definitely announce for such, in your diocese. Or, 
 perhaps, the Bishop of Manchester will take up the chal- 
 lenge, having lately spoken wisely in generalities con- 
 cerning Fraud. Who are the true Israelites, my lord of 
 Manchester, on your Exchange ? Do they stretch their cloth, 
 like other people ? have they any underhand dealings with 
 the liable-to-be-danmed false Israelites Rothschilds and the 
 like ? or are they duly solicitous about those wanderers' 
 souls ? and how often, on the average, do your Manchester 
 clergy preach from the delicious parable, savouriest of all 
 Scripture to rogues, at least since the eleventh century, when 
 I find it to have been specially headed with golden title in 
 my best Greek MS. " of the Pharisee and Publican " and 
 how often, on the average, from those objectionable First and 
 Fifteenth Psalms? 
 
 For the last character in St. Paul's enumeration, which 
 Bishops can claim, and the first which they are bound to 
 claim, for the perfecting of the saints, and the work of the 
 ministry, is that of the Doctor or Teacher. 
 
 In which character, to what work of their own, frank and 
 faithful, can they appeal in the last fifty years of especial 
 danger to the Church from false teaching? On this matter, 
 my challenge will be most fittingly made to my own Bishop, 
 of the University of Oxford. He inhibited, on the second 
 Sunday of Advent of last year, another Bishop of the Eng- 
 lish Church from preaching at Carfax. By what right ? 
 Which of the two Bishops am I, their innocent lamb, to
 
 FOBS GLAVIGERA. 331 
 
 listen to ? It is true that the insulted Bishop was only a 
 colonial one ; am I to understand, therefore, that the 
 Church sends her heretical Bishops out as Apostles, while 
 she keeps her orthodox ones at home ? and that, accordingly, 
 a stay-at-home Bishop may always silence a returned Apos- 
 tle ? And, touching the questions which are at issue, is 
 there a single statement of the Bishop of Natal's, respecting 
 the Bible text, which the Bishop of Oxford dares to contradict 
 before Professor Max Muller, or any other leading scholar of 
 Europe ? Does the Bishop of Oxford himself believe every 
 statement in the Bible ? If not, which does he disbelieve, 
 and why ? He suffers the whole collection of books to be 
 spoken of certainly by many clergymen in his diocese as 
 the Word of God. If he disbelieves any portion of it, that 
 portion he is bound at once to inhibit them from so calling, 
 till inquiry has been made concerning it ; but if he and the 
 other orthodox home-Bishops, who would very joyfully, I 
 perceive, burn the Bishop of Natal at Paul's, and make Lud- 
 gate Hill safer for the omnibuses with the cinders of him, 
 if they verily believe all, or even, with a living faith, ant/, 
 vital part of the Bible, how is it that we, the incredulous 
 sheep, see no signs following them that believe ; that 
 though they can communicate the Holy Spirit, they cannot 
 excommunicate the unholy one, and apologetically leave the 
 healing of sick to the physician, the taking up of serpents 
 to the juggler, and the moving of mountains to the railway- 
 navvy ? 
 
 " It was never meant that any one should do such things 
 literally, after St. Paul's time." 
 
 Then what was meant, and what is, doctors mine ? 
 
 Challenge enough, for this time, it seems to me ; the rather 
 that just as I finish writing it, I receive a challenge myself, 
 requiring attentive answer. Fors could not have brought it 
 me at better time. The reader will find it the first in the 
 Notes and Correspondence of this year ; and my answer may 
 both meet the doubts of many readers who would not so 
 frankly have expressed them ; and contain some definitions 
 of principle which are necessary for our future work.
 
 332 FORS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 My correspondent, referring to my complaint that no ma- 
 tron nor maid of England had yet joined the St. George's 
 Company, answers, for her own part, first, that her husband 
 and family prevent her from doing it ; secondly, that she 
 has done it already ; thirdly, that she will do it when I do it 
 myself. It is only to the third of these pleas that I at 
 present reply. 
 
 She tells me, first, that I have not joined the St. George's 
 Company because I have no home. It is too true. But that 
 is because my father, and mother, and nurse, are dead ; be- 
 cause the woman I hoped would have been my wife is dying; 
 and because the place where I would fain have stayed to 
 remember all of them, was rendered physically uninhabitable 
 to me by the violence of my neighbours ; that is to say, by 
 their destroying the fields I needed to think in, and the light 
 I needed to work by. Nevertheless, I have, under these 
 conditions, done the best thing possible to me bought a 
 piece of land on which I could live in peace ; and on that 
 land, wild when I bought it, have already made, not only one 
 garden, but two, to match against my correspondent's ; nor 
 that without help from children who, though not mine, have 
 been cared for as if they were. 
 
 Secondly ; my correspondent tells me that my duty is to 
 stay at home, instead of dating from places which are a 
 dream of delight to her, and which, therefore, she concludes, 
 must be a reality of delight to me. 
 
 She will know better after reading this extract from my 
 last year's diary ; (worth copying, at any rate, for other 
 persons interested in republican Italy). " Florence, 20th 
 September, 1874. Tour virtually ended for this year. I 
 leave Florence to-day, thankfully, it being now a place of 
 torment day and night for all loving, decent, or industrious 
 people ; for every face one meets is full of hatred and cruelty ; 
 and the corner of every house is foul ; and no thoughts can 
 be thought in it, peacefully, in street, or cloister, or house, 
 any more. And the last verses I read, of my morning's 
 readings, are Esdras II., xv. 16, 17: 'For there shall be 
 sedition among men, and invading one another ; they shall
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 333 
 
 not regard their kings nor princes, and the course of their 
 actions shall stand in their power. A man shall desire to go 
 into a city, and shall not be able.' ' 
 
 What is said here of Florence is now equally true of every 
 great city of France or Italy ; and my correspondent will be 
 perhaps contented with me when she knows that only last 
 Sunday I was debating with a very dear friend whether I 
 might now be justified in indulging my indolence and cow- 
 ardice by staying at home among my plants and minerals, 
 and forsaking the study of Italian art for ever. My friend 
 would fain have it so ; and my correspondent shall tell me 
 her opinion, after she knows and I will see that she has an 
 opportunity of knowing what work I have done in Florence, 
 and propose to do, if I can be brave enough. 
 
 Thirdly ; my correspondent doubts the sincerity of my 
 abuse of railroads because she suspects I use them. I do so 
 constantly, my dear lady ; few men more. I use everything 
 that comes within reach of me. If the devil were standing 
 at my side at this moment, I should endeavour to make some 
 use of him as a local black. The wisdom of life is in pre- 
 venting all the evil we can ; and using what is inevitable, to 
 the best purpose. I use my sicknesses, for the work I de- 
 spise in health ; my enemies, for study of the philosophy 
 of benediction and malediction ; and railroads, for whatever 
 I find of help in them looking always hopefully forward to 
 the day when their embankments will be ploughed down 
 again, like the camps of Rome, into our English fields. But 
 I am perfectly ready even to construct a railroad, when I 
 think one necessary ; and in the opening chapter of Munera 
 JPulveris my correspondent will find many proper uses for 
 eteam-machinery specified. What is required of the mem- 
 bers of St. George's Company is, not that they should never 
 travel by railroads, nor that they should abjure machinery ; 
 but that they should never travel unnecessarily, or in wanton 
 haste ; and that they should never do with a machine what 
 can be done with hands and arms, while hands and arms are 
 idle. 
 
 Lastly, my correspondent feels it unjust to be required to
 
 334: FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 make clothes, while she is occupied in the rearing of those 
 who will require them. 
 
 Admitting (though the admission is one for which I do 
 not say that I am prepared) that it is the patriotic duty of 
 every married couple to have as large a family as possible, it 
 is not from the happy Penelopes of such households that I 
 ask or should think of asking the labour of the loom. I 
 simply require that when women belong to the St. George's 
 Company they should do a certain portion of useful work 
 with their hands, if otherwise their said fair hands would be 
 idle ; and if on those terms I find sufficient clothing cannot 
 be produced, I will use factories for them, only moved by 
 water, not steam. 
 
 My answer, as thus given, is, it seems to me, sufficient ; and 
 I can farther add to its force by assuring my correspondent 
 that I shall never ask any member of St. George's Company 
 to do more, in relation to his fortune and condition, than I 
 have already done myself. Nevertheless, it will be found 
 by any reader who will take the trouble of reference, that 
 in recent letters I have again and again intimated the prob- 
 able necessity, before the movement could be fairly set on 
 foot, of more energetic action and example, towards which 
 both my thoughts and circumstances seem gradually leading 
 me ; and, in that case, I shall trustfully look to the friends 
 who accuse me of cowardice in doing too little, for defence 
 against the, I believe, too probable imputations impending 
 from others, of folly in doing too much.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 335 
 
 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 I. I hope my kind correspondent will pardon my publication of the 
 following letter, which gives account of an exemplary life, and puts 
 questions which many desire to have answered. 
 
 " My dear Mr. Ruskin, I do not know if you have forgotten me, 
 for it is a long time since I wrote to you ; but you wrote so kindly to 
 me before, that I venture to bring myself before you again, more es- 
 pecially as you write to me (among others) every month, and I want to 
 answer something in these letters. 
 
 " I do answer your letters (somewhat combatively) every month in 
 my mind, but all these months I have been waiting for an hour of suf- 
 ficient strength and leisure, and have found it now for the first time. 
 A family of eleven children, through a year of much illness, and the 
 birth of another child in May, have not left me much strength for 
 pleasure, such as this is. 
 
 "Now a little while ago, you asked reproachfully of Englishwomen 
 in general, why none of them had joined St. George's Company. I can 
 only answer for myself, and I have these reasons. 
 
 " First. Being situated as I am, and as doubtless many others are 
 more or less, I cannot join it. In my actions I am subject first to my 
 husband, and then to my family. Any one who is entirely free cannot 
 judge how impossible it is to make inelastic and remote rules apply to 
 all the ever-varying and incalculable changes and accidents and person- 
 alities of life. They are a disturbing element to us visionaries, which I 
 have been forced to acknowledge and submit to, but which you have 
 not. Having so many to consider and consult, it is all I can do to get 
 through the day's work ; I am obliged to take things as I find them, 
 and to do the best I can, in haste ; and I might constantly be breaking 
 rules, and not able to help it, and indeed I should not have time to 
 think about it. I do not want to be hampered more than I am. I am 
 not straitened for money ; but most people with families are so more 
 or less, and this is another element of difficulty. 
 
 "Secondly. Although I do not want to be further bound by rules, 
 I believe that as regards principles I am a member of St. George's Com- 
 pany already ; and I do not like to make any further profession which 
 would seem to imply a renunciation of the former errors of my way, 
 and the beginning of a new life. I have never been conscious of any 
 other motives or course of life than those which you advocate; and my 
 children and all around me do not know me in any other light ; and I 
 find a gradual and unconscious conformation to them growing up round 
 me, though I have no sort of teaching faculty. I cannot tell how much 
 of them I owe to you, for some of your writings which fell in my way 
 when I was very young made a deep impression on me, and I grew up
 
 336 FOBS CLA7IGERA. 
 
 embued with their spirit ; but certainly I cannot now profess it for the 
 first time. 
 
 "Thirdly (and this is wherein I fear to offend you), 1 will join Si. 
 Georges Company whenever you join it yourself. Please pardon me for 
 saying that I appear to be more a member of it than you are. My life 
 is strictly bound and ruled, and within those lines I live. Above all 
 things, you urge our duties to the land, the common earth of our 
 country. It seems to me that the first duty any one owes to his coun- 
 try is to live in it. I go further, and maintain that every one is bound 
 to have a home, and live in that. You speak of the duty of acquiring, 
 if possible, and cultivating, the smallest piece of ground. But, (for- 
 give the question,) where is your house and your garden ? I know you 
 have got places, but you do not stay there. Almost every month you 
 date from some new place, a dream of delight to me; and all the time 
 I am stopping at home, labouring to improve the place I live at, to 
 keep the lives entrusted to me, and to bring forth other lives in the 
 agony and peril of my own. And when I read your reproaches, and 
 see where they date from, I feel as a soldier freezing in the trenches 
 before Sebastopol might feel at receiving orders from a General who 
 was dining at his club in London. If you would come and see me in 
 May, I could show you as pretty a little garden of the spade as any you 
 ever saw, made on the site of an old rubbish heap, where seven tiny 
 pair of hands and feec have worked like fairies. Have you got a bet- 
 ter one to show me ? For the rest of my garden I cannot boast ; be- 
 cause out-of-door work or pleasure is entirely forbidden me by the 
 state of my health. 
 
 " Again, I agree with you in your dislike of railroads, but I suspect 
 you use them, and sometimes go on them. / never do. I obey these 
 laws and others, with whatever inconvenience or privation they may in- 
 volve ; bub you do not ; and that makes me revolt when you scold us. 
 
 "Again, I cannot, as you suggest, grow, spin, and weave the linen 
 for myself and family. I have enough to do to get the clothes made. 
 If you would establish factories where we could get pure woven cotton, 
 linen, and woolen, I would gladly buy them there ; and that would be 
 a fair division of labour. It is not fair that the more one does, the 
 more should be required of one. 
 
 " You see you are like a clergyman in the pulpit in your books : you 
 can scold the congregation, and they cannot answer ; behold the con- 
 gregation begins to reply ; and I only hope you will forgive me. 
 
 ' ' Believe me, 
 
 I ' ' Yours very truly. " 
 
 II. It chances, I see, while I print my challenge to the Bishop of my 
 University, that its neighbouring clergymen are busy in expressing to 
 him their thanks and compliments. The following address is worth 
 preserving. I take it from the Morning Post of December 16, and be- 
 neath it have placed an article from the Telegraph of the following day, 
 describing the results of clerical and episcopal teaching of an orthodox 
 nature in Liverpool, as distinguished from ' Doctor ' Colenso's teaching 1 
 in Africa. 
 
 "THE INHIBITION OF BISHOP COLENSO. The clergy of the rural 
 deanery of Whitney, Oxford, numbering thirty-four, together with the
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 337 
 
 rural dean (the Rev. F. M. Cunningham), have subscribed their names 
 to the following circular, which has been forwarded to the Bishop of 
 Oxford : ' To the Right Rev. Father in God, John Fielder, by Divine 
 permission Lord Bishop of Oxford. We, the undersigned clergy of the 
 rural deanery of Whitney, in your Lordship's diocese, beg respectfully 
 to offer to your Lordship our cordial sympathy under the painful 
 circumstances in which you have been placed by the invitation to the 
 Right Rev. Dr. Colenso to preach in one of the churches in your 
 diocese. Your firm and spontaneous refusal to permit Dr. Colenso to 
 preach will be thankfully accepted by all consistent members of our 
 Church as a protest much needed in these times against the teaching of 
 one who has grievously offended many consciences, and has attempted 
 as far as in him lay to injure the ' faith which was delivered to the 
 saints.' " That your Lordship may long be spared to defend the truth, 
 is the prayer of your Lordship's obedient and attached clergy.' " 
 
 III. " Something startling in the way of wickedness is needed to 
 astonish men who, like our Judges, see and hear the periodical crop of 
 crime gathered in at Assizes ; yet in two great cities of England, on 
 Tuesday, expressions of amazement, shame, and disgust fell from the 
 seat of Justice. At York, Mr. Justice Denman was driven to utter a 
 burst of just indignation at the conduct of certain people in his court, 
 who grinned and tittered while a witness in a disgraceful case was re- 
 luctantly repeating some indelicate language. ' Good God ! ' exclaimed 
 his Lordship, ' is this a Christian country ? Let us at least have 
 decency in courts of justice. One does not come to be amused by filth 
 which one is obliged to extract in cases that defame the land.' At 
 Liverpool a sterner declaration of judicial anger was made, with even 
 stronger cause. Two cases of revolting barbarism were tried by Mr. 
 Justice Mellor one of savage violence towards a man, ending in 
 murder ; the other of outrage upon a woman, so unspeakably shameful 
 and horrible that the difficulty is how to convey the facts without 
 offending public decency. In the first, a gang of men at Liverpool set 
 upon a porter named Richard Morgan, who was in the company of his 
 wife and brother, and because he did not instantly give them sixpence 
 to buy beer they kicked him completely across the street, a distance of 
 thirty feet, with such ferocity, in spite of all the efforts made to save 
 him by the wife and brother, that the poor man was dead when he was 
 taken up. And during this cruel and cowardly scene the crowd of by- 
 standers not only dtd not attempt to rescue the victim, but hounded on 
 his murderers, and actually held back the agonized wife and the brave 
 brother from pursuing the homicidal wretches. Three of them were 
 placed at the bar on trial for their lives, and convicted ; nor would we 
 intervene with one word in their favour, though that word might save 
 their vile necks. This case might appear bad enough to call forth the 
 utmost wrath of Justice ; but the second, heard at the same time and 
 place, was yet more hideous. A tramp-woman, drunk, and wet to the 
 skin with rain, was going along a road near Burnley, in company with 
 a navvy, who by-and-by left her helpless at agate. Two out of a party 
 of young colliers coming from work found her lying there, and they led 
 her into a field. They then sent a boy named Slater to fetch the re- 
 
 ( I append a specimen of the conduct of the Saints to whom our English clergymen 
 have delivered the Faith.) 
 
 VOL. II. 22
 
 338 FORK CLAVIGERA. 
 
 maining eight of their band, and, having thus gathered many specta- 
 tors, two of them certainly, and others of the number in all probability, 
 outraged the hapless creature, leaving her after this infernal treatment 
 in such a plight that next day she was found lying dead in the field. 
 The two in question Durham, aged twenty, and Shepherd, aged six- 
 teenwere arraigned for murder ; but that charge was found difficult 
 to make good, and the minor indictment for rape was alone pressed 
 against them. Of the facts there was little or no doubt ; and it may 
 well be thought that in stating them we have accomplished the saddest 
 portion of our duty to the public. 
 
 " But no ! to those who have learned how to measure human nature, 
 we think what followed will appear the more horrible portion of the 
 trial if more horrible could be. With a strange want of insight, the 
 advocate for these yourig men called up the companions of their atroc- 
 ity to swear what does the public expect ? to swear that they did not 
 think the tramp woman was ill-used, nor that what was done was wrong. 
 Witness after witness, present at the time, calmly deposed to his per- 
 sonal view of the transaction in words like those of William Bracewell, 
 a collier, aged nineteen. Between this precious specimen of our young 
 British working man and the Bench, the following interchange of ques- 
 tions and answers passed. ' You did not think there was anything wrong 
 in it ? ' ' No.' ' Do you mean to tell me you did not think there was 
 anything wrong in outraging a drunken woman ? ' ' She never said 
 nothing. ' ' You repeat you think there was nothing wrong that there 
 was no harm in a lot of fellows outraging a drunken woman: is that 
 your view of the thing?' 'Yes.' And, in reply to further questions 
 by Mr. Cottingham, this fellow Bracewell said he only ' thought the 
 matter a bit of fun. None of them interfered to protect the woman.' 
 Then the boy Slater, who was sent to bring up the laggards, was asked 
 what he thought of his errand. Like the others, ' he hadn't seen any- 
 thing very wrong in it.' At this point the Judge broke forth, in accents 
 which may well ring through England. His Lordship indignantly ex- 
 claimed : ' I want to know how it is possible in a Christian country 
 like this that there should be such a state of feeling, even among boys 
 of thirteen, sixteen, and eighteen years of age. It is outrageous. If 
 there are missionaries wanted to the heathen, there are heathens in 
 England who require teaching a great deal more than those abroad.' 
 (Murmurs of 'Hear, hear,' from the jury-box, and applause in court.) 
 His Lordship continued : ' Silence ! It is quite shocking to hear boys 
 of this age come up and say these things.' How, indeed, is it possible? 
 that is the question which staggers one. Murder there will be man- 
 slaughter, rape, burglary, theft, are all unfortunately recurring and 
 common crimes in every community. Nothing in the supposed nature 
 of ' Englishmen ' can be expected to make our assizes maiden, and out 
 gaol deliveries blank. But there was thought to be something in the 
 blood of the race which would somehow serve to keep us from seeing a 
 Liverpool crowd side with a horde of murderers against their victim, or 
 a gang of Lancashire lads making a ring to see a woman outraged to 
 death. A hundred cases nowadays tell us to discard that idle belief; 
 if it ever was true, it is true no longer. The most brutal, the most 
 cowardly, the most pitiless, the rnoso barbarous deeds done in the 
 world, are being perpetrated by the lower classes of the English people 
 once held to be by their birth, however lowly, generous, brave,
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 339 
 
 merciful, and civilized. In all the pages of Dr. Livingstone's experi- 
 ence among the negroes of Africa, there is no single instance approach- 
 ing this Liverpool story, in savagery of mind and body, in bestiality ot 
 heart and act. Nay, we wrong the lower animals by using that last 
 word : the foulest among the beasts which perish is clean, the most 
 ferocious gentle, matched with these Lancashire pitmen, who make 
 sport of the shame and slaying of a woman, and blaspheme nature in 
 their deeds, without even any plea whatever to excuse their cruelty." 
 
 The clergy may vainly exclaim against being made responsible for 
 this state of things. They, and chiefly their Bishops, are wholly re- 
 sponsible for it ; nay, are efficiently the causes of it, preaching a false 
 gospel for hire. But, putting all questions of false or true gospels 
 aside, suppose that they only obeyed St. Paul's plain order in 1st Corin- 
 thians v. 11. Let them determine as distinctly what covetousness and 
 extortion are in the rich, as what drunkenness is, in the poor. Let them 
 refuse, themselves, and order their clergy to refuse, to go out to dine 
 with such persons ; and still more positively to allow such persons to 
 sup at God's table. And they would soon know what fighting wolves 
 meant ; and something more of their own pastoral duty than they 
 learned in that Consecration Service, where they proceeded to follow 
 the example of the Apostles in Prayer, but carefully left out the Fast- 
 ing.
 
 340 POMS GLAVIQERA. 
 
 LETTER L. 
 
 A FKIEND, in whose judgment I greatly trust, remon- 
 strated sorrowfully with me, the other day, on the desultory 
 character of Fors j and pleaded with me for the writing of 
 an arranged book instead. 
 
 But he might as well plead with a birch-tree growing 
 out of a crag, to arrange its boughs beforehand. The winds 
 and floods will arrange them according to their wild liking ; 
 all that the tree has to do, or can do, is to grow gaily, if it 
 may be ; sadly, if gaiety be impossible ; and let the black 
 jags and scars rend the rose-white of its trunk wher6 Fors 
 shall choose. 
 
 But I can well conceive how irritating it must be to any 
 one chancing to take special interest in any one part of my 
 subject the life of Scott for instance, to find me, or lose 
 me, wandering away from it fora year or two ; and sending 
 roots into new ground in every direction : or (for my friend 
 taxed me with this graver error also) needlessly re-rooting 
 myself in the old. 
 
 And, all the while, some kindly expectant people are 
 waiting for ' details of my plan.' In the presentment of 
 which, this main difficulty still lets me ; that, if I told them, 
 or tried to help them definitely to conceive, the ultimate 
 things I aim at, they would at once throw the book down 
 as hopelessly Utopian ; but if I tell them the immediate 
 things I aim at, they will refuse to do those instantly pos- 
 sible things, because inconsistent with the present vile gen- 
 eral system. For instance I take (see Letter V.) Words- 
 worth's single line, 
 
 " We live by admiration, hope, and love," 
 
 for my literal guide, in all education. My final object with 
 every child born on St. George's estates, will be to teach it
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 341 
 
 what to admire, what to hope for, and what to love : but 
 how far do you suppose the steps necessary to such an ulti- 
 mate aim are immediately consistent with what Messrs. 
 Huxley and Co. call 'Secular education'? Or with what 
 either the Bishop of Oxford, or Mr. Spurgeon, would call 
 1 Religious education ' ? 
 
 What to admire, or wonder at ! Do you expect a child 
 to wonder at being taught that two and two make four 
 (though if only its masters had the sense to teach that, hon- 
 estly, it would be something) or at the number of copies 
 of nasty novels and false news a steam-engine can print for 
 its reading ? 
 
 What to hope ? Yes, my secular friends W r hat ? That 
 it shall be the richest shopman in the street ; and be buried 
 with black feathers enough over its coffin ? 
 
 What to love Yes, my ecclesiastical friends, and who is 
 its neighbour, think you ? Will you meet these three de- 
 mands of mine with your three Rs, or your catechism? 
 
 And how would I meet them myself ? Simply by never, 
 so far as I could help it, letting a child read what is not 
 worth reading, or see what is not worth seeing ; and by 
 making it live a life which, whether it will or no, shall en- 
 force honourable hope of continuing long in the land 
 whether of men or God. 
 
 And who is to say what is worth reading, or worth see- 
 ing? sneer the Republican mob. Yes, gentlemen, you who 
 never knew a good thing from a bad, in all your lives, may 
 well ask that ! 
 
 Let us try, however, in such a simple thing as a child's 
 book. Yesterday, in the course of my walk, I went into a 
 shepherd-farmer's cottage, to wish whoever might be in the 
 house a happy new year. His wife was at home, of course ; 
 and his little daughter, Agnes, nine years old ; both as good 
 as gold, in their way. 
 
 The cottage is nearly a model of those which I shall 
 expect the tenants of St. George's Company, and its active 
 members, to live in ; the entire building, parlour, and 
 kitchen, (in this case one, but not necessarily so,) bed- rooms
 
 342 FORS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 and all, about the size of an average dining-room in Gros- 
 venor Place or Park Lane. The conversation naturally 
 turning to Christmas doings and havings, and I, as an 
 author, of course inquiring whether Agnes had any new 
 books, Agnes brought me her library consisting chiefly in 
 a good pound's weight of the literature which cheap print- 
 ing enables the pious to make Christmas presents of for a 
 penny. A full pound, or, it might be, a pound and a half, of 
 this instruction, full of beautiful sentiments, woodcuts, and 
 music. More woodcuts in the first two ounces of it I took 
 up, than I ever had to study in the first twelve years of my 
 life. Splendid woodcuts, too, in the best Kensington style, 
 and rigidly on the principles of high, and commercially 
 remunerative, art, taught by Messrs. Redgrave, Cole, and 
 Company. 
 
 Somehow, none of these seem to have interested little 
 Agnes, or been of the least good to her. Her pound and a 
 half of the best of the modern pious and picturesque is 
 (being of course originally boardless) now a crumpled and 
 variously doubled-up heap, brought down in a handful, or 
 lapful, rather ; most of the former insides of the pamphlets 
 being now the outsides ; and every form of dog's ear, pup- 
 py's ear, cat's ear, kitten's ear, rat's ear, and mouse's ear, 
 developed by the contortions of weary fingers at the corners 
 of their didactic and evangelically sibylline leaves. I ask 
 if I may borrow one to take home and read. Agnes is de- 
 lighted ; but undergoes no such pang of care as a like re- 
 quest would have inflicted on my boyish mind, and needed 
 generous stifling of ; nay, had I asked to borrow the whole 
 heap, I am not sure whether Anges's first tacit sensation 
 would not have been one of deliverance. 
 
 Being very fond of pretty little girls, (not, by any means, 
 excluding pretty tall ones,) I choose, for my own reading, 
 a pamphlet * which has a picture of a beautiful little girl 
 with long hair, lying very ill in bed, with her mother put- 
 ting up her forefinger at her brother, who is crying, with a 
 large tear on the side of his nose ; and a legend beneath : 
 
 * The Children's Prize. No. XII. December, 1873. Price one penny.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 343 
 
 ' Harry told his mother the whole story.' The pamphlet has 
 been doubled up by Agnes right through the middle of the 
 beautiful little girl's face, and no less remorselessly through 
 the very middle of the body of the ' Duckling Astray,' 
 charmingly drawn by Mr. Harrison Weir on the opposite leaf. 
 But my little Agnes knows so much more about real duck- 
 lings than the artist does, that her severity in this case is 
 not to be wondered at. 
 
 I carry my Children's Prize penny's-worth home to Brant- 
 wood, full of curiosity to know "the whole story." I find 
 that this religious work is edited by a Master of Arts no 
 less and that two more woodcuts of the most finished order 
 are given to Harry's story, representing Harry and the 
 pretty little girl, (I suppose so, at least ; but, alas, now with 
 her back turned to me, the cuts came cheaper so,) dressed 
 in the extreme of fashion, down to her boots, first running 
 with Harry, in snow, after a carriage, and then reclining 
 against Harry's shoulder in a snowstorm. 
 
 I arrange my candles for small print, and proceed to read 
 this richly illustrated story. 
 
 Harry and his sister were at school together, it appears, at 
 Salisbury ; and their father's carriage was sent, in a snowy 
 day, to bring them home for the holidays. They are to be 
 at home by five ; and their mother has invited a children's 
 party at seven. Harry is enjoined by his father, in the letter 
 which conveys this information, to remain inside the carriage, 
 and not to go on the box. 
 
 Harry is a good boy, and does as he is bid ; but nothing 
 whatever is said in the letter about not getting out of the 
 carriage to walk up hills. And at ' two-mile hill ' Harry 
 thinks it will be clever to get out and walk up it, without 
 calling to, or stopping, John on the box. Once out himself, he 
 gets Mary out ; the children begin snowballing each other ; 
 the carriage leaves them so far behind that they can't 
 catch it; a snowstorm comes on, etc., etc.; they are 
 pathetically frozen within a breath of their lives ; found 
 by a benevolent carter, just in time ; warmed by a benevo- 
 lent farmer, the carter's friend ; restored to their alarmed
 
 344 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 
 
 father and mother ; and Mary has a rheumatic fever, " and 
 for a whole week it was not known whether she would live 
 or die," which is the Providential punishment of Harry's sin 
 in getting out of the carriage. 
 
 Admitting the perfect appositeness and justice of this 
 Providential punishment ; I am, parenthetically, desirous to 
 know of my Evangelical friends, first, whether from the cor- 
 ruption of Harry's nature they could have expected any- 
 thing better than his stealthily getting out of the carriage to 
 walk up the hill ? and, secondly, whether the merits of 
 Christ, which are enough to save any murderer or swindler 
 from all the disagreeable consequences of murder and swin- 
 dling, in the next world, are not enough in this world, if 
 properly relied upon, to save a wicked little boy's sister from 
 rheumatic fever ? This, I say, I only ask parenthetically, 
 for my own information ; my immediate business being to 
 ask what effect this story is intended to produce on my shep- 
 herd's little daughter Agnes ? 
 
 Intended to produce, I say : what effect it does produce, I 
 can easily ascertain ; but what do the writer and the learned 
 editor expect of it ? Or rather, to touch the very beginning 
 of the inquiry, for what class of child do they intend it ? 
 ' For all classes,' the enlightened editor and liberal publisher 
 doubtless reply. ' Classes, indeed ! In the glorious liberty 
 of the Future, there shall be none ! ' 
 
 Well, be it so ; but in the inglorious slavery of the Past, 
 it has happened that my little Agnes's father has not kept a 
 carriage ; that Agnes herself has not often seen one, is not 
 likely often to be in one, and has seen a great deal too much 
 snow, and had a great deal too much walking in it, to be tempted 
 out, if she ever has a chance of being driven in a carriage 
 to a children's party at seven, to walk up a hill on the road. 
 Such is our benighted life in Westmoreland. In the future, 
 do my pious and liberal friends suppose that all little Ag- 
 neses are to drive in carriages ? That is their Utopia. 
 Mine, so much abused for its impossibility, is only that a 
 good many little Agneses who at present drive in carriages, 
 shall have none.
 
 FOBS GLAVIGERA. 345 
 
 Nay, but, perhaps, the learned editor did not intend the 
 story for children ' quite in Agnes's position.' For what sort 
 did he intend it, then ? For the class of children whose 
 fathers keep carriages, and whose mothers dress their girls 
 by the Paris modes, at three years old ? Very good ; then, 
 in families which keep carriages and footmen, the children 
 are supposed to think a book is a prize which costs a penny ? 
 Be that also so, in the Republican cheap world ; but might 
 not the cheapeners print, when they are about it, prize 
 poetry for their penny ? Here is the ' Christmas Carol,' set 
 to music, accompanying this moral story of the Snow. 
 
 " Hark, hark, the merry pealing, 
 
 List to the Christmas chime, 
 Every breath and every feeling 
 
 Hails the good old time ; 
 Brothers, sisters, homeward speed, 
 
 All is mirth and play ; 
 Hark, hark, the merry pealing, 
 
 Welcome, Christmas Day. 
 
 Sing, sing, around we gather 
 
 Each with something new, 
 Cheering mother, cheering father, 
 
 From the Bible true ; 
 Bring the holly, spread the feast, 
 
 Every heart to cheer, 
 Sing, sing, a merry Christmas, 
 
 A happy, bright New Year." 
 
 Now, putting aside for the moment all questions touching 
 the grounds of the conviction of the young people for whom 
 these verses are intended of the truth of the Bible ; or 
 touching the propriety of their cheering their fathers and 
 mothers by quotations from it ; or touching the difficultly rec- 
 oncileable merits of old times and new things ; I call these 
 verses bad, primarily, because they are not rhythmical. I 
 consider good rhythm a moral quality. I consider the 
 rhythm in these stanzas demoralized, and demoralizing. 
 I quote, in opposition to them, one of the rhymes by 
 which my own ear and mind were educated in early youth,
 
 346 FOBS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 as being more distinctly, and literally ' moral,' than that 
 Christmas carol. 
 
 " Dame Wiggins of Lee 
 Was a worthy old soul, 
 As e'er threaded a nee- 
 Die, or washed in a bowl. 
 She held mice and rats 
 In such antipa-thy, 
 That Seven good Cats 
 Kept Dame Wiggins of Lee." 
 
 Putting aside also, in our criticism of these verses, the very 
 debateable question, whether Dame Wiggins kept the Seven 
 Cats, or the Seven Cats Dame Wiggins ; and giving no 
 judgment as to the propriety of the license taken in pronun- 
 ciation, by the accent on the last syllable of ' antipathy,' or 
 as to the evident plagiarism of the first couplet from the 
 classical ballad of King Cole, I aver these rhymes to possess 
 the primary virtue of rhyme, that is to say, to be rhythmical, 
 in a pleasant and exemplary degree. And I believe, and 
 will venture also to assert my belief, that the matter con- 
 tained in them, though of an imaginative character, is better 
 food for a child's mind than either the subject or sentiment 
 of the above quoted Christmas carol. 
 
 The mind of little Agnes, at all events, receives from story, 
 pictures, and carol, altogether, no very traceable impression ; 
 but, I am happy to say, certainly no harm. She lives fif- 
 teen miles from the nearest manufacturing district, sees no 
 vice, except perhaps sometimes in the village on Sunday af- 
 ternoons ; hears, from week's end to week's end, the sheep 
 bleat, and the wind whistle, but neither human blasphemv, 
 nor human cruelty of command. Her shepherd father, out 
 on the hills all day, is thankful at evening to return to 
 his fireside, and to have his little daughter to look at, instead 
 of a lamb. She suffers no more from schooling than serves 
 to make her enjoy her home ; knows already the mysteries 
 of butter-making and poultry-keeping ; curtsies to me with- 
 out alarm when I pass her door, if she is outside of it ; and, 
 on the whole, sees no enemy but winter and rough weather.
 
 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 347 
 
 But what effect this modern Christmas carol would have 
 had on her mind, if she had had the full advantage of mod- 
 ern education in an advanced and prosperous town, the fol- 
 lowing well written letter, happily sent me by Fors at the 
 necessary moment, enables me at once to exhibit : 
 
 " Wtk January, 1874. 
 Dear Mr. Ruskin, 
 
 Your appendix to the Fors this month contains a chap- 
 ter on what some will assert is very exceptional shire 
 
 brutality. After nine years' residence in a shire village, 
 
 I am compelled to believe that the vileness which horrified 
 Judge Mellor is everywhere ingrained where factory and col- 
 liery rule prevails. 
 
 Could you but hear the blasphemous and filthy language 
 our rosy village bairns use as soon as thev are out of the par- 
 son's earshot, even when leaving the Sabbath School ! 
 
 Yet we have a rural dean as incumbent, an excellent 
 schoolmaster, and model school. The Government Inspector 
 is highly satisfied, and there are the usual edifying tea par- 
 ties, prize-givings, and newspaper puffs, yearly. 
 
 I know that the children are well taught six days a week, 
 yet there is little fruit of good behaviour among them, and 
 an indecency of speech which is amazing in rural children. 
 On Christmas morn a party of these children, boys and girls, 
 singing carols, encountered my young daughter going alone 
 to the church service. The opportunity was tempting, and 
 as if moved by one vile spirit, they screamed at her a blast 
 of the most obscene and profane epithets that vicious malice 
 could devise. She knew none of them ; had never harmed 
 them in her life. She came home with her kind, tender heart 
 all aghast. ' Why do they hate me so ? ' she asked. 
 
 Yet a short time after the same children came into the 
 yard, and began, with the full shrill powers of their young 
 lungs, 
 
 4 Why do I love Jesus ?' 
 the refrain, 
 
 ' Because He died for me,' 
 
 with especial gusto. My husband, ignorant of their previous 
 conduct, gave them a bright shilling, which evoked three 
 more hymns of similar character. What does all this mean ? 
 Our Bishop says that we have a model parish, a model 
 school, and a model parson yet we have children like this.
 
 348 FOBS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 Our parson knows it, and says to me that he can do nothing 1 
 to prevent it. 
 
 More than this. It is almost incredible ; but my own 
 horrified ears have borne witness of it. Young boys will 
 threaten girls of their own age, in the vilest terms, with out- 
 rage like that at Burnley. I have heard it again and again. 
 
 Had Judge Mellor had nine years' experience of shire 
 
 life, he would not have been surprised at the utter brutality 
 of mind exhibited. 
 
 Yet we are not criminal compared with other districts. 
 Bastardy and drunkenness are at present the darkest shades 
 we can show ; but there is perhaps some better influence at 
 work from the vicinage of two great squires, which secures 
 us pure air and wide fields. 
 
 I am glad to read that you purpose vexing yourself less 
 with the sins of the times during the coming summer. It is 
 too great a burthen for a human mind to bear the world's 
 sins in spirit, as you do. If you mean to preserve yourself 
 for the many thousands whose inner heart's bitterness your 
 voice has relieved, you must vex yourself less about this 
 age's madness. 
 
 The sure retribution is at hand already." * 
 
 ' What does all this mean ?' my correspondent asks, in wise 
 anxiety. 
 
 National prosperity, my dear Madam, according to Mr. 
 Goschen, the Times, and Morning Post / national prosperity 
 carried to the point of not knowing what to do with our 
 monev. Enlightenment, and Freedom, and orthodox Re- 
 ligion, and Science of the superbest and trustworthiest char- 
 acter, and generally the Reign of Law, answer the Duke of 
 Argyll and Professor Huxley. Ruin inevitable and terri- 
 ble, such as no nation has yet suffered, answer God and the 
 Fates. 
 
 Yes inevitable. England has to drink a cup which can- 
 not pass from her at the hands of the Lord, the cup of His 
 fury ; surely the dregs of it, the wicked of the earth shall 
 wring them and drink them out. 
 
 For let none of my readers think me mad enough or wild 
 enough to hope that any effort, or repentance, or change of 
 
 * Yes, I know that ; but am I to be cheerfuller therefore 9
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 349 
 
 conduct could now save the country from the consequences 
 of her follies, or the Church from the punishment of her 
 crimes. This St. George's Company of ours is mere raft- 
 making amidst irrevocable wreck the best we can do, to be 
 done bravely and cheerfully, come of it what may. 
 
 Let me keep, therefore, to-day wholly to definite matters, 
 and to little ones. A^ ^ hat the education we now give our 
 children leads to, my correspondent's letter shows. What 
 education they should have, instead, I may suggest perhaps 
 in some particulars. 
 
 What should be done, for instance, in the way of gift- 
 giving, or instruction-giving, for our little Agnes of the hill- 
 side ? Would the St. George's Company, if she were their 
 tenant, only leave her alone, teach her nothing? 
 
 Not so ; very much otherwise than so. This is some part 
 of what should be done for her, were she indeed under St. 
 George's rule. 
 
 Instead of the " something new," which our learned Mas- 
 ter of Arts edits for her in carolling, she should learn, by 
 heart, words which her fathers had known, many and many 
 a year ago. As, for instance, these two little carols of grace 
 before meat : 
 
 What God gives, and what we take, 
 "Tis a gift for Christ His sake ; 
 Be the meale of Beanes and Pease, 
 God be thanked for those and these. 
 Have we flesh, or have we fish, 
 All are Fragments from His dish : 
 He His Church save ; and the King 
 And our Peace here, like a Spring, 
 Make it ever flourishing. 
 
 Here, a little child, I stand 
 Heaving up my either hand ; 
 Cold as Paddocks though they be, 
 Here I lift them up to Thee. 
 For a Benizon to fall, 
 On our meat, and on us all. 
 
 These verses, or such as these, Agnes should be able to say, 
 and sing ; and if on any state occasion it were desired of
 
 350 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 her to say grace, should be so mannered as to say obedient- 
 ly, without either vanity or shame. Also, she should know 
 other rhymes for her own contentment, such as she liked 
 best, out of narrow store offered to her, if she chose to learn 
 to read. Reading by no means being enforced upon her 
 still less, writing ; nothing enforced on her but household 
 help to her mother ; instant obedience to her father's or 
 mother's word ; order and cleanliness in her own depart- 
 ments and person ; and gentleness to all inoffensive creat- 
 ures paddocks as well as lambs and chickens. 
 
 Further, instead of eighteen distinct penny Children's 
 Prizes, containing seventy-two elaborate woodcuts of 
 * Ducklings astray,' and the like, (which I should especially 
 object to, in the case of Agnes, as too personal, she herself 
 being little more at present than a duckling astray,) the St. 
 George's Company would invest for her, at once, the ' ridic- 
 ulously small sum of eighteen-pence,' in one coloured print 
 coloured by hand, for the especial decoration of her own 
 chamber. This colouring by hand is one of the occupations 
 which young women of the upper classes, in St. George's 
 Company, will undertake as a business of pure duty ; it was 
 once a very wholesome means of livelihood to poorer art stu- 
 dents. The plates of Sibthorpe's Flora Grceca, for instance, 
 cost, I am informed, on their first publication, precisely the 
 sum in question, eighteen-pence each, for their colouring 
 by hand : the enterprising publisher who issued the more 
 recent editions, reducing, in conformity with modern views 
 on the subject of economy, the colourist's remuneration to 
 thirty shillings per hundred. But in the St. George's Com- 
 pany, young ladies who have the gift of colouring will be 
 taught to colour engravings simply as well as they can do 
 it, without any reference whatever to pecuniary compensa- 
 tion ; and such practice I consider to be the very best pos- 
 sible elementary instruction for themselves, in the art of 
 watercolour painting. 
 
 And the print which should be provided and thus coloured 
 for little Agnes's room should be no less than the best en- 
 graving I could get made of Simon Memtni's ' St. Agnes in
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 351 
 
 Paradise ' ; of which (according to the probable notions of 
 many of my readers, absurd and idolatrous) image, little 
 Agnes should know the legend as soon as she was able to 
 understand it ; though, if the St. George's Company could 
 manage it for her, she should be protected from too early 
 instruction in the meaning of that legend, by such threats 
 from her English playfellows as are noticed in my corre- 
 spondent's letter. 
 
 Such should be some small part of her religious education. 
 For beginning of secular education, the St. George's Com- 
 pany would provide for her, above and before all things, a 
 yard or two square of St. George's ground, which should be 
 wholly her own ; together with instruments suited to her 
 strength, for the culture, and seeds for the sowing, thereof. 
 On which plot of ground, or near it, in a convenient place, 
 there should be a bee-hive, out of which it should be con- 
 sidered a crowning achievement of Agnes's secular virtues if 
 she could produce, in its season, a piece of snowy and well- 
 filled comb. And, (always if she chose to learn to read), 
 books should be given her containing such information re- 
 specting bees, and other living creatures as it appeared to 
 the St. George's Company desirable she should possess. But 
 touching the character of this desirable information, what I 
 have to say being somewhat lengthy, must be deferred to 
 my March letter. 
 
 CASTLETON, PEAK OP DERBYSHIRE. 
 27 1 h January. 
 
 Since finishing this letter, I have driven leisurely through 
 the midland manufacturing districts, which I have not trav- 
 ersed, except by rail, for the last ten years. The two most 
 frightful things I have ever yet seen in my life are the 
 south-eastern suburb of Bradford, (six miles long,) and the 
 scene from Wakefield bridge, by the chapel ; yet I cannot 
 but more and more reverence the fierce courage and indus- 
 try, the gloomy endurance, and the infinite mechanical 
 ingenuity of the great centres, as one reverences the fervid 
 labours of a wasp's nest, though the end of all is only a nox- 
 ious lump of clay.
 
 J52 POMS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 IK my last December's letter, I promised, for January, some state- 
 ment of real beginning of operations by our Company ; but, as usual, 
 was hindered from fulfilling my promise at the time I intended. And 
 the hindrance lay, as in all useful business it is pretty sure in some 
 measure to lie, in the state of British law. An acre of ground, with 
 some cottages on it, has been given me for our company ; but it is not 
 easy to find out how the company is to lay hold of it. I suppose the 
 conveyancing will cost us, in the end, half a dozen times the value of 
 the land ; and in the meantime I don't care to announce our posses- 
 sion of it, or say what I mean to do with it. I content myself for the 
 present with reprinting, and very heartily, as far as my experience 
 holds, ratifying, the subjoined portions of a letter, sent me the other 
 day out of a country paper. The writer is speaking, at the point 
 where my quotation begins, of the difficulty of getting a good bank- 
 ruptcy act passed : 
 
 ' ' The reason alleged is that almost any lawyer is ready to help any 
 lying and false-trading person to drive his coach and four through any 
 Act, however good in intention it may be. This is a sad state of 
 things, and is wasteful of more things than money or good temper. 
 It is, however, on the matter of conveyancing that we wish to say a 
 few words 
 
 "We are accustomed to look at the matter as a very simple one. 
 We have before us the deeds of our dwelling-house. The real point is, 
 why can we not sell these papers to, say John Smith, for 1,000, if 
 John is satisfied that our little cottage, with all its admirable rooms so 
 well arranged, is worth that amount? Why can't we sell him this 
 matter in a simple and clear way ? Or, for a case the least bit compli- 
 cated, take our six shops in the chief street. Why can't we sell one 
 each to Brown, Jones, Robinson, Thompson, Atkinson, or Williams, 
 their respective and respectable tenants, in an equally simple way ? 
 The English law steps in and says that we must have a cumbrous deed 
 prepared for each case, and the total cost to all of us, without stamps, 
 would be about one hundred pounds, at a reasonable computation. 
 What do we get for this large sum ? Absolutely nothing but jargon on 
 parchment, instead of plain and simple English, which all the Smiths 
 and Browns might understand, and get for a tenth of the cost. This 
 is all the more irritating, because sensible people are agreed that our 
 present plan is a cumbrous farce, and, moreover, nobody laughs at it 
 but the lawyers who get the picking. Any six honest, clear-headed, 
 educated men could devise a system in a month which would put an
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 353 
 
 end to the needless and costly worry entailed by the existing legal par- 
 aphernalia. We have never yet seen any tangible objections to the 
 simple system, nor any salient and satisfactory reasons for retaining 
 the present circumlocutory, wasteful, and foolish one. 
 
 ' ' Another monstrous anomaly is that we might sell each of our be- 
 fore-mentioned shops in our chief street, and yet retain the original 
 deed untouched ; so that after drawing cash from each of our present 
 tenants, we could mortgage the whole block again, and clear off with 
 the double cash. * 
 
 " But even the present system might be made endurable, and herein 
 lies its greatest blame, namely that you never know what you are go- 
 ing to pay for the foolish and needless work you are having done. 
 You are entirely at the mercy of the lawyer. When we consider that 
 this so-called difficult and skilful work is always managed in the best 
 offices by a mere clerk, and seldom, if ever, by the principal, we have 
 a reasonable ground of complaint against the enormous and unfair 
 charges usually made for work so done by wholesale. 
 
 "We will conclude with a practical suggestion or two. Building 
 clubs have been a great boon to the saving element in our community. 
 It is the wish of most people to have a house of their own, and these 
 clubs find, for hundreds, the readiest means to that end. They have 
 made easy the borrowing and the paying back of money, and they have 
 been the means of simplifying mortgage deeds which, for clubs, are 
 only 2 5s., and if got up simpler, and printed, instead of being 
 written, might easily and profitably be done for a guinea. Could not 
 they confer a still greater boon on the community by combining, and 
 compelling by a strong voice, the lawyers to systematize and cheapen 
 the present mode of conveyancing ? This would be a great work, and 
 might be done. Still better would it be to combine to send up sugges- 
 tions to Parliament for a simpler and better plan, such as would lead 
 to the passing of an Act for the embodiment of this great and much- 
 needed reform." 
 
 * I don't vouch for the particular statements in this letter. It seems to me incredible 
 that any practical absurdity so great as this should exist in tenure of property. 
 
 VOL. II. 23
 
 354 FOBS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 LETTER LI. 
 
 HERNE HILL, Qth Feb. , 1875. 
 
 I HAVE been so much angered, distressed and defeated, by 
 many things, during these last autumn and winter months, 
 that I can only keep steadily to my business by insisting to 
 myself on my own extreme value and importance to the 
 world ; and quoting, in self-application, the most flattering 
 texts I can find, such as, " Simon, Simon, Satan hath desired 
 to have you," and so on ; hoping that at least a little more 
 of my foolishness is being pounded out of me at every blow ; 
 and that the dough I knead for Fors may be daily of purer 
 wheat. 
 
 I wish I could raise it with less leaven of malice ; but I 
 dislike some things and some people so much, that, having 
 been always an impetuous, inconsiderate, and weakly com- 
 municative person, I find it impossible to hold my tongue in 
 this time of advanced years and petulance. I am thankful, 
 to-day, to have one most pleasant thing first to refer to ; 
 the notable speech, namely, of Mr. Johnson, the President of 
 the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, on the immorality of 
 cheapness : the first living words respecting commerce which 
 I have ever known to be spoken in England, in my time ; 
 on which, nevertheless, I can in no wise dilate to-day, but 
 most thankfully treasure them for study in a future letter ; 
 having already prepared for this one, during my course of 
 self-applause taken medicinally, another passage or two of 
 my own biography, putting some of the reasons for my care- 
 lessness about Agnes's proficiency in reading or writing, more 
 definitely before the reader. 
 
 Until I was more than four years old, we lived in Hunter 
 Street, Brunswick Square, the greater part of the year ; for 
 a few weeks in the summer breathing country air by taking 
 lodgings in small cottages (real cottages, not villas, so-called)
 
 FORS CLAVIOERA. 355 
 
 either about Hampstead, or at Dulwich, at 'Mrs. Ridley's,' 
 the last of a row in a lane which led out into the Dulwich 
 fields on one side, and was itself full of buttercups in spring, 
 and blackberries in autumn. But my chief remaining im- 
 pressions of those days are attached to Hunter Street. My 
 mother's general principles of first treatment were, to guard 
 me with steady watchfulness from all avoidable pain or 
 danger ; and, for the rest, to let me amuse myself as I liked, 
 provided I was neither fretful nor troublesome. But the law 
 was, that I should find my own amusement. No toys of any 
 kind were at first allowed ; and the pity of my Croydon 
 aunt for my monastic poverty in this respect was boundless. 
 On one of my birthdays, thinking to overcome my mother's 
 resolution by splendour of temptation, she bought the most 
 radiant Punch and Judy she could find in all the Soho bazaar 
 as big as a real Punch and Judy, all dressed in scarlet and 
 gold, and that would dance, tied to the leg of a chair. I 
 must have been greatly impressed, for I remember well the 
 look of the two figures, as my aunt herself exhibited their 
 virtues. My mother was obliged to accept them ; but after- 
 wards quietly told me it was not right that I should have 
 them ; and I never saw them again. 
 
 Nor did I painfully wish, what I was never permitted for 
 an instant to hope, or even imagine, the possession of such 
 things as one saw in toyshops. I had a bunch of keys to 
 play with, as long as I was capable only of pleasure in what 
 glittered and jingled ; as I grew older, I had a cart, and a 
 ball ; and when I was five or six years old, two boxes of well- 
 cut wooden bricks. With these modest, but T still think 
 entirely sufficient possessions, and being always summarily 
 whipped if I cried, did not do as I was bid, or tumbled on 
 the stairs, I soon attained serene and secure methods of life 
 and motion ; and could pass my days contentedly in tracing 
 the squares and comparing the colours of my carpet ; ex- 
 amining the knots in the wood of the floor, or counting the 
 bricks in the opposite houses ; with rapturous intervals of 
 excitement during the filling of the water-cart, through its 
 leathern pipe, from the dripping iron post at the pavement
 
 356 FOBS GLAVIGERA. 
 
 edge ; or the still more admirable proceedings of the turn- 
 cock, when he turned and turned till a fountain sprang up in 
 the middle of the street. But the carpet, and what patterns 
 I could find in bed-covers, dresses, or wall-papers to be 
 examined, were my chief resources, and my attention to the 
 particulars in these was soon so accurate, that when at three 
 and a half I was taken to have my portrait painted by Mr. 
 Northcote, I had not been ten minutes alone with him before 
 I asked him why there were holes in his carpet. The por- 
 trait in question represents a very pretty child with yellow 
 hair, dressed in a white frock like a girl, with a broad light- 
 blue sash and blue shoes to match ; the feet of the child 
 wholesomely large in proportion to its body ; and the shoes 
 still more wholesomely large in proportion to the feet. 
 
 These articles of my daily dress were all sent to the old 
 painter for perfect realization ; but they appear in the 
 picture more remarkable than they were in my nursery, 
 because I am represented as running in a field at the edge 
 of a wood with the trunks of its trees striped across in the 
 manner of Sir Joshua Reynolds ; while two rounded hills, 
 as blue as my shoes, appear in the distance, which were put 
 in by the painter at my own request ; for I had already been 
 once, if not twice, taken to Scotland ; and my Scottish nurse 
 having always sung to me as we approached the Tweed or 
 Esk, 
 
 " For Scotland, my darling, lies full in my view, 
 With her barefooted lassies, and mountains so blue," 
 
 I had already generally connected the idea of distant hills 
 with approach to the extreme felicities of life, in my (Scot- 
 tish) aunt's garden of gooseberry bushes, sloping to the Tay. 
 But that, when old Mr. Northcote asked me (little think- 
 ing, I fancy, to get any answer so explicit) what I would like 
 to have in the distance of my picture, I should have said 
 " blue hills " instead of " gooseberry bushes," appears to me 
 and I think without any morbid tendency to think over- 
 much of myself a fact sufficiently curious, and not without 
 promise, in a child of that age.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 357 
 
 I think it should be related also that having, as aforesaid, 
 been steadily whipped if I was troublesome, my formed habit 
 of serenity was greatly pleasing to the old painter ; for I sat 
 contentedly motionless, counting the holes in his carpet, or 
 watching him squeeze his paint out of its bladders, a beau- 
 tiful operation, indeed, it seemed to me ; but I do not re- 
 member taking any interest in Mr. Northcote's applications 
 of the pigments to the canvas ; my ideas of delightful art, in 
 that respect, involving indispensably the possession of a large 
 pot, filled with paint of the brightest green, and of a brush 
 which would come out of it soppy. But my quietude was so 
 pleasing to the old man that he begged my father and mother 
 to let me sit to him for the face of a child which he was 
 painting in a classical subject ; where I was accordingly rep- 
 resented as reclining on a leopard skin, and having a thorn 
 taken out of my foot by a wild man of the woods. 
 
 In all these particulars, I think the treatment, or accidental 
 conditions, of my childhood, entirely right, for a child of my 
 temperament ; but the mode of my introduction to literature 
 appears to me questionable, and I am not prepared to carry 
 it out in St. George's schools, without much modification. I 
 absolutely declined to learn to read by syllables ; but would 
 get an entire sentence by heart with great facility, and point 
 with accuracy to every word in the page as I repeated it. As, 
 however, when the words were once displaced, I had no more 
 to say, my mother gave up, for the time, the endeavour to 
 teach me to read, hoping only that I might consent, in process 
 of years, to adopt the popular system of syllabic study. But 
 I went on, to amuse myself, in my own way, learnt whole 
 words at a time, as I did patterns ; and at five years old was 
 sending for my ' second volumes ' to the circulating library. 
 
 This effort to learn the words in their collective aspect was 
 assisted by my real admiration of the look of printed type, 
 which I began to copy for my pleasure, as other children draw 
 dogs and horses. The following inscription, facsimile'd from 
 the fly-leaf of my Seven Champions of Christendom, I believe, 
 (judging from the independent views taken in it of the char- 
 acter of the letter L, and the relative elevation of G,) to be
 
 358 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 an extremely early art study of this class ; and as, by the will 
 of Fors, the first lines of the note written the other day un- 
 derneath my copy of it, in direction to Mr. Burgess, presented 
 some notable points of correspondence with it, I thought it 
 well he should engrave them together, as they stood. 
 
 Pfc, 
 
 It would be difficult to give more distinct evidence than is 
 furnished by these pieces of manuscript, of the incurably 
 desultory character which has brought on me the curse of 
 Reuben, " Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel." But I 
 reflect, hereupon, with resolute self-complacency, that water, 
 when good, is a good thing, though it be not stable ; and 
 that it may be better sometimes to irrigate than excel. And 
 of the advantage, in many respects, of learning to write and 
 read, if at all, in the above pictorial manner, I have much to 
 say on some other occasion ; but, having to-day discoursed 
 enough about myself, will assume that Agnes, wholly at her 
 own sweet will, has made shift to attain the skill and temper 
 necessary for the use of any kind of good book, or bible. It 
 is, then, for the St. George's Company to see that all the 
 bibles she has, whether for delight or instruction, shall be 
 indeed holy bibles ; written by persons, that is to say, in 
 whom the word of God dwelt, and who spoke or wrote ac-
 
 FOBS CLAVIOEBA. 359 
 
 cording to the will of God ; and, therefore, with faithful 
 purpose 01 speaking the truth touching what they had to tell, 
 or of singing, rhyming, or what not else, for the amusement 
 whether of children or grown-up persons, in a natural, modest, 
 and honest manner, doing their best for the love of God and 
 men, or children, or of the natural world ; and not for money, 
 (though for the time necessary to learn the arts of singing or 
 writing, such honest minstrels and authors, manifestly pos- 
 sessing talent for their business, should be allowed to claim 
 daily moderate maintenance, and for their actual toil, in per- 
 formance of their arts, modest reward, and daily bread). 
 
 And, passing by for the present the extremely difficult and 
 debateable question, by what kind of entertaining and simple 
 bibles Agnes shall first be encouraged in the pursuits of liter- 
 ature, I wish to describe to-day more particularly the kind of 
 book I want to be able to give her about her bees, Avhen she 
 is old enough to take real charge of them. For I don't 
 in the least want a book to tell her how many species of 
 bees there are ; nor what grounds there may be for suspect- 
 ing that one species is another species ; nor why Mr. B 
 
 is convinced that what Mr. A considered two species are 
 
 indeed one species ; nor how conclusively Mr. C has 
 
 proved that what Mr. B described as a new species is an 
 
 old species. Neither do I want a book to tell her what a 
 bee's inside is like, nor whether it has its brains in the small 
 of its back, or nowhere in particular, like a modern political 
 economist ; nor whether the morphological nature of the 
 sternal portion of the thorax should induce us, strictly, to 
 call it the prosternum, or may ultimately be found to present 
 no serious inducement of that nature. But I want a book to 
 tell her, for instance, how a bee buzzes ; and how, and by 
 what instrumental touch, its angry buzz differs from its 
 pleased or simply busy buzz. * Nor have I any objection 
 
 * I am not sure, after all, that I should like her to know even so 
 much as this. For on enquiring, myself, into the matter, I find (Or- 
 merod, quoting Dr. H. Landois) that a humble bee has drum in its 
 stomach, and that one half of this drum can be loosened and then 
 drawn tight again, and that the bee breathes through the slit between
 
 360 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 to the child's learning, for good and all, such a dreadful 
 word as ' proboscis,' though I don't, myself, understand why 
 in the case of a big animal, like an elephant, one should be al- 
 lowed, in short English, to say that it takes a bun with its 
 trunk ; and yet be required to state always, with severe ac- 
 curacy, that a bee gathers honey with its proboscis. What- 
 ever we were allowed to call it, however, our bee-book must 
 assuredly tell Agnes and me, what at present I believe neither 
 of us know, certainly I don't, myself, how the bee's feed- 
 ing instrument differs from its building one, and what either 
 may be like. 
 
 I pause, here, to think over and put together the little I do 
 know ; and consider how it should be told Agnes. For to 
 my own mind, it occurs in a somewhat grotesque series of 
 imagery, with which I would not, if possible, infect hers. 
 The difference, for instance, in the way of proboscis, between 
 the eminent nose of an elephant, and the not easily treaceable 
 nose of a bird : the humorous, and, it seems to me, even 
 slightly mocking and cruel contrivance of the Forming Spirit, 
 that we shall always, unless we very carefully mind what we 
 are about, think that a bird's beak is its nose : the, to me, 
 as an epicure, greatly disturbing, question, how much, when 
 I see that a bird likes anything, it likes it at the tip of its bill, 
 or somewhere inside. Then I wonder why elephants don't 
 build houses with their noses, as birds build nests with their 
 faces ; then, I wonder what elephants' and mares' nests are 
 like, when they haven't got stables, or dens in menageries : 
 finally, I think I had better stop thinking, and find out a fact 
 or two, if I can, from any books in my possession, about the 
 working tools of the bee. 
 
 And I will look first whether there is any available account 
 
 the loose half and tight half ; and that in this slit there is a little comb, 
 and on this comb the humble bee plays while it breathes, as on a Jew's- 
 harp, and can't help it. But a honey bee hums with its "thoracic spir- 
 acles," not with its stomach. On the whole I don't think I shall tell 
 Agnes anything about all this. She may get through her own life, pei- 
 haps, just as well without ever knowing that there's any such thing as a 
 thorax, or a spiracle.
 
 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 361 
 
 of these matters in a hook which I once all but knew by heart, 
 BingleifR Animal Biography, which, though it taught me 
 little, made me desire to know more, and neither fatigued my 
 mind nor polluted it, whereas most modern books on natural 
 history only cease to be tiresome by becoming loathsome. 
 
 Yes, I thought I had read it, and known it, once. " They " 
 (the worker bees) " are so eager to afford mutual assistance " 
 (bestial, as distinct from human competition, you observe), 
 "and for this purpose so many of them crowd together, that 
 their individual operations can scarcely be distinctly ob- 
 served." (If I re-write this for Agnes, that last sentence 
 shall stand thus : ' that it is difficult to see what any one is 
 doing.') " It has, however, been discovered that their two 
 jaws are the only instruments they employ in modelling and 
 polishing the wax. With a little patience we perceive cells 
 just begun, we likewise remark the quickness with which a 
 bee moves its teeth against a small portion of the cell ; this 
 portion the animal, by repeated strokes on each side, smooths, 
 renders compact, and reduces to a proper thinness." 
 
 Here I pause again, ever so many questions occurring to 
 me at once, and of which, if Agnes is a thoughtful child, 
 and not frightened from asking what she wants to know, by 
 teachers who have been afraid they wouldn't be able to an- 
 swer, she may, it is probable, put one or two herself. What 
 are a bee's teeth like ? are they white, or black ? do they ever 
 ache? can it bite hard with them? has it got anything to 
 bite ? Not only do I find no satisfaction in Mr. Binglev 
 as to these matters ; but in a grand, close-printed epitome 
 of entomology* lately published simultaneously in London, 
 Paris, and New York, and which has made me sick with dis- 
 gust by its descriptions, at every other leaf I opened, of all 
 that is horrible in insect life, I find, out of five hundred and 
 seventy-nine figures, not one of a bee's teeth, the chief archi- 
 tectural instrument of the insect world. And I am the more 
 provoked and plagued by this, because, my brains being, as 
 all the rest of me, desultory and ill under control, I get into 
 another fit of thinking what a bee's lips can be like, and of 
 * 27te Insect World. Cassell & Galpin.
 
 362 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 
 
 wondering why whole meadows-full of flowers are called 
 "cows' lips" and none called "bees' lips." And finding 
 presently, in Cassell and Galpin, something really interesting 
 about bees' tongues, and that they don't suck, but lick up, 
 honey, I go on wondering how soon we shall have a scientific 
 Shakespeare printed for the use of schools, with Ariel's song 
 altered into 
 
 ' Where the bee licks, there lurk I,' 
 
 and " the singing masons building roofs of gold," explained 
 to be merely automatic arrangements of lively viscera. 
 
 Shaking myself at last together again, I refer to a really 
 valuable book Dr. Latham Ormerod's History of Wasps: 
 of which, if I could cancel all the parts that interest the 
 Doctor himself, and keep only those which interest Agnes 
 and me, and the pictures of wasps at the end, I would 
 make it a standard book in St. George's library, even placing 
 it in some proper subordinate relation to the Fourth Georgic : 
 but as it is, I open in every other page on something about 
 ' organs,' a word with which I do not care for Agnes's associ- 
 ating any ideas, at present, but those of a Savoyard and his 
 monkey. 
 
 However, I find here, indeed, a diagram of a wasp's mouth ; 
 but as it only looks like what remains of a spider after being 
 trodden on, and, as I find that this " mandibulate form of 
 mouth " consists of 
 
 " a, the labium, with the two labial palpi ; 
 
 b, the maxilla, whose basilar portions bear at one end 
 the cardo, at the other the hairy galea and the max- 
 illary palpus ; 
 
 c, the labrum, and d, the mandible," 
 
 Agnes and I perceive that for the present there is an end of 
 the matter for us ; and retreat to our Bingley, there to con- 
 sole ourselves with hearing how Mr. Wildman, whose re- 
 marks on the management of bees are well known, possessed 
 a secret by which " he could at any time cause a hive of 
 bees to swarm upon his head, shoulders, or body, in a most 
 surprising manner. He has been seen to drink a glass of
 
 FORS CLAVIOERA. 363 
 
 wine, having at the same time the bees all over his head and 
 face more than an inch deep : several fell into the glass, but 
 they did not sting him. He could even act the part of a 
 general with them, by marshalling them in battle array upon 
 a large table. There he divided them into regiments, battal- 
 ions, and companies, according to military discipline, waiting 
 only for his word of command. The moment he uttered the 
 word ' march ! ' they began to march in a regular manner, 
 like soldiers. To these insects he also taught so much polite- 
 ness, that they never attempted to sting any of the numer- 
 ous company." 
 
 Agnes, on reading this, is sure to ask me ' how he taught 
 them ? ' Which is just what, as a student of new methods of 
 education, I should like to know myself ; and not a word is 
 said on the matter : and we are presently pushed on into the 
 history of the larger animal which I call a humble, but 
 Agnes, a bumble, bee. Not, however, clearly knowing my- 
 self either what the ways of this kind are, or why they should 
 be called humble, when I always find them at the top of a 
 thistle rather than the bottom, I spend half my morning in 
 hunting through my scientific books for information on this 
 matter, and find whole pages of discussion whether the 
 orange-tailed bee is the same as the white-tailed bee, but 
 nothing about why either should be called humble or bum- 
 ble : at last I bethink me of the great despiser of natural 
 history ; and find that stout Samuel, with his good editor 
 Mr. Todd, have given me all I want ; but there is far more 
 and better authority for ' bumble ' than I thought. How- 
 ever ; this first guess of Johnson's own assuredly touches 
 one popular, though it appears mistaken reason for the 
 Shakespearian form. " The humble bee is known to have no 
 sting. The Scotch call a cow without horns a ' humble cow.' " 
 But truly, I have never myself yet had clear faith enough in 
 that absence of sting to catch a humble bee in my fingers ; * 
 
 * Alas, that incredulity, the least amiable of the virtues, should often 
 be the most serviceable ! Here is a pleasant little passage to fall in 
 with, after Dr. Johnson's "it is well known" ! I find it in Ormerod, 
 discussing the relative tenability of insects between the fingers, for
 
 364 FORS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 only I suppose Bottom would have warned Cobweb against 
 that danger, if there had been such, as well as against being 
 overflown with the honey bag.* Red-hipped, Bottom calls 
 them ; and yet I find nothing about their red hips anywhere 
 in my books. 
 
 We have not done with the name yet, however. It is 
 from the Teutonic ' hommolen,' bombum edere : (in good 
 time, some years hence, Agnes shall know what Teutons are, 
 what bombs are, shall read my great passage in Unto 
 t/iis .Last about bombshells and peaches ; and shall know 
 how distinct the Latin root of Edition and Editor is from 
 that of Edification). 
 
 Next, Chaucer, however, uses ' humbling ' in the sense 
 of humming or muttering : " like to the humblinge after the 
 clap of a thunderinge." So that one might classically say 
 a busy bee hums and a lazy bee humbles ; only we can't 
 quite rest even in this ; for under Bumble-bee, in Johnson, 
 I find a quantity of other quotations and branched words, 
 going off into silk and bombazine ; of which I shall only 
 ask Agnes to remember 
 
 The Bittern, with his bump, 
 The crane, with his trump, 
 
 and Chaucer's single line 
 
 And as a bytorne bumblith in the myre. 
 
 This, however, she should write out carefully, letter by 
 letter, as soon as she had learned to write ; and know, at 
 least, that the image was used of a wife telling her husband's 
 faults and, in good time, the whole story of Midas. Mean- 
 while, we remain satisfied to teach her to call her large brown 
 friends, humble bees, because Shakespeare does, which is 
 reason enough : and then the next thing I want to know, 
 and tell her, is why they are so fond of thistles. Before she 
 
 the study of their voices. "Wasps are obviously ill fitted for this pur- 
 pose, and humble bees are no better ; they are so strong and so slip- 
 pery that they need all our attention to prevent their putting their 
 long stings through our gloves while we are examining them." 
 * Foolish of me ; a cobweb may be overflown, but cannot be stung.
 
 FOBS CLAVIQERA. 365 
 
 can know this, I must be able to draw a thistle-blossom 
 rightly for her ; and as my botany has stood fast for some 
 years at the point where I broke down in trying to draw 
 the separate tubes of thistle-blossom, I can't say any more 
 on that point to-day : but, going on with my Bingley, I find 
 four more species of bees named, which I should like to tell 
 Agnes all I could about : namely, the Mason Bee ; the 
 Wood-piercing Bee ; and the one which Bingley calls the 
 Garden Bee ; but which, as most bees are to be found in 
 gardens, I shall myself call the Wool-gathering Bee ; the 
 Leaf-cutting Bee. 
 
 1. The mason bee, it appears, builds her nest of sand, 
 which she chooses carefully grain by grain ; then sticks, with 
 bee-glue, as many grains together as she can carry, (like the 
 blocks of brick we see our builders prepare for circular 
 drains) and builds her nest like a swallow's, in any angle 
 on the south side of a wall ; only with a number of cells 
 inside, like a monastery, shall we say, each cell being 
 about the size of a thimble. But these cells are not, like 
 hive bees', regularly placed, but anyhow the holes between 
 filled up with solid block building ; and this disorder in the 
 architecture of mason bees seems to be connected with moral 
 disorder in their life ; for, instead of being ' so eager to afford 
 mutual assistance ' that one can't see what each is doing, 
 these mason bees, if they can, steal each other's nests, just 
 like human beings, and fight, positively like Christians. 
 " Sometimes the two bees fly with such rapidity and force 
 against each other that both fall to the ground " ; and the 
 way their cells are built back of one to side of the other, 
 and so on, is just like what a friend was telling me only the 
 day before yesterday of the new cottages built by a specu- 
 lative builder, who failed just afterwards, on some lots of 
 land which a Lord of the Manor, near my friend, had just 
 stolen from the public common and sold. 
 
 2. The wood-piercing bee cuts out her nest in decayed 
 wood ; the nest being a hollow pipe like a chimney, or a 
 group of such pipes, each divided by regular floors, into cells 
 for the children ; one egg is put in each cell, and the cell
 
 366 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 filled with a paste made of the farina of flowers mixed with 
 honey, for the young bee to eat when it is hatched. Now 
 this carpentering work, I find, is done wholly by the wood- 
 piercing bees' strong jaws ; but here again is no picture of 
 her jaws, or the teeth in them ; though the little heaps of 
 sawdust outside where she is working " are of grains nearly 
 as large as those produced by a handsaw " ; and she has to 
 make her floors of these grains, by gluing them in successive 
 rings, from the outside of her cell to the centre. Yes ; that's 
 all very well ; but then I want to know if she cuts the bits 
 of any particular shape, as, suppose, in flattish pieces like 
 tiles, and if then she glues these sideways or edgeways in 
 their successive rings. 
 
 But here is the prettiest thing of all in her work. It takes, 
 of course, a certain time to collect the farina with which 
 each cell is filled, and to build the floor between it and the 
 nest ; so that the baby in the room at the bottom of the pipe 
 will be born a day or two before the baby next above, and 
 be ready to come out first ; and if it made its way upwards, 
 would disturb the next baby too soon. So the mother puts 
 them all upside down, with their feet their tails, I should 
 say uppermost ; and then when she has finished her whole 
 nest, to the last cell at the top, she goes and cuts a way at 
 the bottom of it, for the oldest of the family to make her 
 way out, as she naturally will, head-foremost, and so cause 
 the others no discomfort by right of primogeniture. 
 
 3. The wool-gathering bee is described by White of Sel- 
 borne, as " frequenting the Garden Campion, for the sake 
 of its Tomentum." I lose half an hour in trying to find out 
 the Garden Campion among the thirty-two volumes of old 
 Sowerby : I find nothing but the sort of white catchfly things 
 that grow out of hollow globes, (which Mary of the Gies- 
 bach, by the way, spoken of in a former letter, first taught 
 me to make pops with). I vainly try to find out what "Cam- 
 pion means." Johnson fails me this time. " Campion, the 
 name of a plant." I conjecture it must be simple for cham- 
 pion, "keeper of the field," and let that pass ; but lose 
 myself again presently in the derivation of Tomentum, and
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 367 
 
 its relation to Tom, in the sense of a volume. Getting back 
 out of all that, rather tired, 1 find at last in Bingley that the 
 Garden Campion is Agrostemma Coronaria of Linnaeus ; and 
 I look in my Linnaeus, and find it described as tomentosum ; 
 and then I try my two Sowerbys, ancient and modern, 
 where I find nothing under Agrostemma but the corn-cockle^ 
 and so have to give in at last ; but I can tell Agnes, at least, 
 that there's some sort of pink which has a downy stem, and 
 there's some sort of bee which strips off the down from the 
 stalk of this pink, " running from the top to the bottom of a 
 branch, and shaving it bare with all the dexterity of a hoop- 
 shaver." 
 
 Hoop-shaver ? but I never saw so much as a hoop-shaver ! 
 Must see one on the first chance, only I suppose they make 
 hoops by steam now. 
 
 " When it has got a bundle almost as large as itself it flies 
 awav, holding it secure between its chin and forelegs." 
 
 Chin ? what is a bee's chin like ? 
 
 Then comes a story about a knight's finding the key 
 wouldn't turn in the lock of his garden gate ; and there 
 being a wool-gathering bee's nest inside : and it seems she 
 makes her cells or thimbles of this wool, but does not fill 
 them with honey inside ; so that I am in doubt whether the 
 early life of the young bees who live in wood, and have 
 plenty to eat, be not more enviable than the lot of those who 
 live in wool and have no larders. I can't find any more about 
 the wool-gatherer ; and the fourth kind of bee, most inter- 
 esting of all, must wait till next Fors 1 time, for there's a 
 great deal to be learnt about her. 
 
 'And what of the St. George's Company meanwhile ' ? 
 
 Well, if I cannot show it some better method of teaching 
 natural history than has been fallen upon by our recent Doc- 
 tors, we need not begin our work at all. We cannot live in 
 the country without hunting animals, or shooting them, un- 
 less we learn how to look at them.
 
 368 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 
 
 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 "THE PARSONAGE, WERRINGTON, PETERBOROUGH, Feb. 12th, 1875. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, In your Fora published last month you have 
 charged the Pastors, and especially the Chief Pastors of our Church, 
 with ' preaching a false gospel for hire,' and thus becoming responsible 
 for the hideous immorality which prevails. 
 
 It is very painful to be told this by you, of whom some of us have 
 learned so much. 
 
 I have been reading your words to my conscience, but is it my un- 
 conscious hypocrisy, my self-conceit, or my sentiment overpowering in- 
 tellect which hinders me from hearing the word ' Guilty ' V 
 
 The gospel I endeavour with all my might to preach and embody is 
 this Believe on, be persuaded by, the Lord Jesus Christ; let His 
 life rule your lives, and you shall be ' safe and sound ' now and 
 everlastingly. 
 
 Is this ' a false gospel preached for hire ' ? If not, what other gospel 
 do you refer to ? 
 
 " I am very faithfully yours, 
 
 " JOHN RUSKIN, Esq. EDWARD Z. LYTTEL." 
 
 The gospel which my correspondent preaches (or, at the least, desires 
 to preach) namely, "Let His life rule your lives," is eternally true 
 and salutary. The "other gospel which I refer to " is the far more 
 widely preached one, "Let His life be in the stead of your lives,' 
 which is eternally false and damnatory. 
 
 The rest of my correspondent's letter needs, I think, no other reply 
 than the expression of my regret that a man of his amiable character 
 should be entangled in a profession, respecting which the subtle ques- 
 tions of conscience which he proposes can be answered by none but 
 himself ; nor by himself with security. 
 
 I do not know if, in modern schools of literature, the name of Henry 
 Fielding is ever mentioned ; but it was of repute in my early days, and 
 I think it right, during the discussion of the subjects to which Fors is now 
 approaching, to refer my readers to a work of his which gives one of the 
 most beautiful types I know of the character of English clergymen, 
 (the Vicar of Wnkefleld not excepted). His hero is thus introduced : 
 " He was a perfect master of the Greek and Latin languages, to which 
 he added a great share of knowledge in the Oriental tongues, and could 
 read and translate French, Italian, and Spanish. He had applied
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 369 
 
 many years to the most severe study, and had treasured up a fund of 
 learning rarely to be met with in a university. * He was besides a man 
 of good sense, good parts, and good-nature ; his virtue, aiid his other 
 qualifications, as they rendered him equal to his office, so they made 
 him an agreeable and valuable companion, and had so much endeared 
 and well recommended him to a Bishop, that, at the age of fifty, he was 
 provided with a handsome income of twenty-three pounds a year, 
 which, however, he could not make any great figure with ; because he 
 lived in a dear country, and was a little encumbered with a wife and 
 six children." 
 
 Of course, in our present estimate of the good Bishop's benevolence, 
 we must allow for the greater value of money in those times ; never- 
 theless, it was even then to be obtained in considerable sums, as it is 
 now, by persons who knew the right channels and proper methods of 
 its accumulation, as our author immediately afterwards shows us by 
 the following account of part of the economy of an English gentleman's 
 estate : 
 
 " Joseph had not quite finished his letter when he was summoned 
 downstairs by Mr. Peter Pounce to receive his wages ; for, besides that 
 out of eight pounds a year, he allowed his father and mother four, he 
 had been obliged, in order to furnish himself with musical instruments," 
 (Mr. Fielding countenances my own romantic views respecting the 
 propriety of the study of music even by the lower classes, and entirely 
 approves of these apparently extravagant purchases,) "to apply to the 
 generosity of the aforesaid Peter, who on urgent occasions used to ad- 
 vance the servants their wages, not before they were due, but before they 
 were payable, that is, perhaps half a year after they were due; and 
 this at the moderate premium of fifty per cent., or a little more; by 
 which charitable methods, together with lending money to other peo- 
 ple, and even to his own master and mistress, the honest man had, 
 from nothing, in a few years amassed a small sum of twenty thousand 
 pounds or thereabouts." 
 
 Of the character of the modern English country clergyman, from my 
 own personal knowledge, I could give some examples quite deserving- 
 place with the Fielding and Goldsmith type ; but these have influence 
 only in their own villages, and are daily diminishing in number ; while 
 another type, entirely modern, is taking their place, of which some 
 curious illustration has been furnished me by the third Fors as I was 
 looking over the Christmas books of last year to see if I could find a 
 prize or two for Agnes and some other of my younger cottage friends. 
 Among them, I get two books on natural history, by a country clergy- 
 man, who takes his children out on beach and moorland expeditions, 
 and puts a charming portrait of himself, in his best coat, and most ele- 
 
 * His debate with Barnabas, on the occasion of the latter's visit to the wounded Joseph^ 
 throws some clear light on the questions opened in Mr. Lyttel's letter. 
 
 VOL. II. 24
 
 370 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 gant attitude of instruction, for the frontispiece. His little daughter 
 has been taught to express herself in such terms as the following : 
 
 (Of a jelly-fist].) " Let me look. If you hold it up to the light, you 
 see it is nearly transparent, and the surface is marked with numerous 
 angular spaces." 
 
 ^Of a sand-worm.) " Oh in this respect the little Pectinaria resem- 
 bles the fresh-water Melicerta we find abundantly on the weeds in the 
 canal at home." 
 
 (Of a sea-mouse.) "Oh, papa, I do think here is a pea-mouse lying 
 on the shore. Bah ! I don't much like to touch it." 
 
 The childish simplicity and ladylike grace of these expressions need 
 no comment ; but the clergyman's education of his children in gentleness 
 is the point peculiarly striking to me in the books ; collated with my own 
 experience in the case of the boy and the squirrel. The following two 
 extracts are sufficiently illustrative : 
 
 " ' Well, papa,' said Jack, ' I am tired of sitting here ; let us now go 
 and hunt for peewit's eggs.' ' All right, Jack, and if you find any you 
 shall each have one for your breakfast in the morning. When hard- 
 boiled and cold, a peewit's egg is a very delicious thing, though I think 
 the peewits are such valuable birds, and do so much good, that I should 
 not like to take many of their eggs. We had better separate from each 
 other, so as to have a better chance of finding a nest.' Soon we hear 
 a shout from Willy, whose sharp eyes had discovered a nest with four 
 eggs in it; so off we all scamper to him. See how the old bird 
 screams and flaps, aud how near she comes to us ; she knows we have 
 found her eggs, and wishes to lure us away from the spot; so she pre- 
 tends she has been wounded, and tries to make us follow after her. 
 ' Now, Jack, run and catch her. Hah ! hah ! There they go. I will 
 back the peewit against the boy. So you have given up the chase, have 
 you? Well, rest again, and take breath.' " 
 
 " ' Well, Mr. Parry Evans, how many salmon have you counted in 
 the pool ? ' ' There are seven or eight good fish in, sir, this time ; and 
 one or two will be ten or eleven pounds each.' Look at the dog 
 4 Jack ; he is evidently getting a little impatient, as he sees in the re- 
 tiring water of the pool every now and then a salmon darting along. 
 And now Mr. Evans takes the silver collar off, and sets ' Jack ' free ; 
 and in a second he is in the middle of the pool. Now for the fun ! 
 Willy and Jack * tuck up their trousers, take off their shoes and stock- 
 ings, and with nets in their hands enter the water. Bah ! it is rather 
 cold at first, but the excitement soon warms them. There goes a 
 salmon, full tilt, and ' Jack ' after him. What a splashing in the 
 water, to be sure ! There is another dog learning the trade, and 
 'Jack' is his tutor in the art; he is a brown retriever, and dashes 
 about the water after the salmon as if he enjoyed the fun immensely, 
 but he has not yet learned how to catch a slippery fish. There ! 
 there ! see ! see ! good dog ; now you have him ! No ! off again ; 
 well done, salmon ! Now dog ! have at him! 
 
 * Some ambiguity is causer! in this passage by the chance of both dog and boy having 
 the same name, as well as the same instincts.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 371 
 
 ''How immensely rapid is the motion of a frightened salmon! 
 ' Quick as an arrow ' is hardly a figure of speech. Bravo, * Jack,' 
 bravo ! Do you see V He has caught the salmon firmly by the head. 
 Good dog ! Mr. Parry Evans is immediately ou the spot, and takes 
 the fish from old 'Jack,' whom he kindly pats on the back, holds the 
 salmon aloft for us all to see, and consigns him to the basket which his 
 man is guarding on the shore. See, see, again ! off they go, dogs and 
 men, and soon another salmon is captured ; and there is lots of fun, 
 meanwhile, in catching the mackerel and garfish. Well, the sport of 
 catching the various fish in the pool there were nine salmon, averag- 
 ing about five pounds each lasted about half an hour. ' Jack ' be- 
 haved admirably ; it was wonderful to see his skill in the pursuit ; he 
 generally caught hold of the salmon by the head, on which he gave one 
 strong bite, and the fish was rendered helpless almost instantaneously. 
 Sometimes he would catch hold of the back fin. When the sport was 
 finished, we went to survey the spoils ; and a nice ' kettle of fish ' 
 there was. I bought one salmon and the gurnard ; the rest were soon 
 disposed of by Mr. Evans to his numerous visitors, all of whom were 
 much pleased with the sport. But wait a little ; some of the fish lie 
 on the sand. I will look for parasites. Here, on this salmon, is a curi- 
 ous parasite, with a body an inch long, and with two long tail-like pro- 
 jections three times the length of the creature itself. It is a crustacean, 
 and related to the Aryulus foliaGeus." 
 
 The reverend and learned author will perhaps be surprised to hear 
 that the principal effect of these lively passages on me has been slightly 
 to diminish my appetite for salmon, no less than for sea-side recrea- 
 tions. I think I would rather attend my pious instructor, in discourse 
 on the natural history of the Land I get his Country Walks of a 
 Naturalist, therefore, in which I find a graceful preface, thanking Mr. 
 Gould for permission to copy his Birds of England ; and two very 
 gummy and shiny copies (so-called) adorning the volume. 
 
 Now there was boundless choice for the pleasing of children in 
 Gould's marvellous plates. To begin with, the common sparrow's 
 nest, in the ivy, with the hen sitting: 
 
 The sparrow's dwelling, which, hard by. 
 
 My sister Emmeline and I 
 
 Together visited. 
 
 She looked at it as if she feared it, 
 
 Still wishing, dreading to be near it, 
 
 Such heart was in her. 
 
 But the reverend naturalist will none of this. Sparrows indeed ! are 
 not five sold for two farthings ? Shall any note be taken of them in 
 our modern enlightened science ? No ; nor yet of the dainty little 
 Bramble Pinch, couched in her knotty hollow of birch trunk; though 
 England, and mainland Europe, and Asia Minor, Persia, China, and 
 Japan, all know the little Brambling ; and though in the desolate re-
 
 372 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 
 
 gion of the Dovrefeldt,* too high for the Chaffinch, she decorates the 
 outer walls of her nest with flat pieces of lichen and other materials, 
 though she is attractive in her winter dress ; and in her summer cos- 
 tame, "no pencil can do her justice," clerical taste and propriety will 
 none of her ; no, nor even of the dear little fellow who looks so much 
 like the properest of clergymen himself, in the sprucest of white ties 
 the Stone-Chat, preaching, or chattering, or chatting, from the 
 highest twig of his furze-bush ; no, nor of the Fire-crested Wren, 
 poised on long spray of larch with purple buds ; nor even, though she. 
 at least might, one would have thought, have provided some ' fun ' for 
 the ecclesiastical family, the long-tailed Tit, or Bottle -tit, with her own 
 impatient family of six Bottle-tits, every one with a black eye, as if to 
 illustrate the sympathy of their nature with bottle-tits of the human 
 species, and every one with its mouth open ; and the nest, of their 
 mother's exquisite building, with the pale sides of the lichens always 
 turned to the light, and 2,000 feathers used in its lining, and these, 
 nothing to the amount of "invisible cobwebs*' taken to attach the 
 decorative pieces of lichen to the outside. All this is contemptible to 
 my religious author; but he hunts Mr. Gould's whole book through, to 
 find the horriblest creature in it the Butcher-bird ! transfixing mice 
 on the spines of the blackthorn, and tearing their flesh from them as 
 they hang, 'invariably breaking the skull,' with farther parental direc- 
 tion of the youthful mind. " Do you see that great tit on a branch of 
 this poplar ! He is actually at work doing a bit of butchering on a 
 small warbler. See how he is beating the poor little fellow about the 
 head ; he wants to get at his brains." This for one of his two plates, 
 besides the frontispiece, of the back of his own head and its hat ; with 
 his two children ' wanting to get at' something in his hand and his 
 only remaining plate is of the heron, merely because it is big ; for his 
 miserable copyist has taken care to change every curve of the bird's 
 neck and body, so as to destroy every gracious character it has in Mr. 
 Gould's plate, to an extent so wonderful that I mean to impale the two 
 together on the stem of a blackthorn in my Oxford schools. 
 
 I have much to say, eventually, about this extraordinary instinct for 
 the horrible, developing itself at present in the English mind. The 
 deep root of it is cruelty, indulged habitually by the upper classes in 
 their sports, till it has got into the blood of the whole nation ; then, 
 the destruction of beautiful things, taking place ever since the six- 
 teenth century, and of late ending in utter blackness of catastrophe, 
 and ruin of all grace a,nd glory in the land ; so that sensation must be 
 got out of death, or darkness, or f rightfulness ; else it cannot be had 
 
 * I don't put inverted commas to all Mr. Gould's words, having necessarily to mix up 
 mine with them in a patchwork manner ; but I don't know anything worth telling, what- 
 ever, about so much as a sparrow, but what he tells me.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 373 
 
 at all while it is daily more and more demanded by the impatient 
 cretinism of national dotage. 
 
 And the culmination of the black business is, that the visible misery 
 drags and beguiles, to its help, all the enthusiastic simplicity of the 
 religious young, and the honest strength of the really noble type of 
 English clergymen ; and swallows them as Charybdis would lifeboats. 
 Courageous and impulsive men, with just sense enough to make them 
 soundly practical, and therefore complacent, in immediate business ; 
 but not enough to enable them to see what the whole business comes 
 to, when done, are sure to throw themselves desperately into the dirty 
 work, and die like lively moths in candle-grease. Here is one of them 
 at this instant "dangerously ill of scarlet fever," alas! his whole 
 generous life having been but one fit of scarlet fever ; and all aglow in 
 vain. 
 
 The London correspondent of the Brighton Daily News writes : 
 ' ' On Sunday morning Mr. Moncure Conway, preaching his usual ser- 
 mon in his chapel in Finsbury, made a strong attack upon the National 
 Church, but subsequently modified it so far as to admit that it was 
 possible for some clergymen of the Church to be of use in their day and 
 generation ; and he referred especially to the rector of a neighbouring 
 parish, whom he did not name, but who was evidently Mr. Septimus 
 Hansard, rector of Bethnal-green, who is now lying dangerously ill of 
 scarlet fever. This is the third perilous illness he has had since he has 
 been in this parish ; each time it was caught while visiting the sick 
 poor. On one occasion he fell down suddenly ill in his pulpit. It was 
 found that he was suffering from small-pox, and he at once said that 
 he would go to a hospital. A cab was brought to take him there, but 
 he refused to enter it, lest he should be the means of infecting other 
 persons ; and, a hearse happening to pass, he declared that he would 
 go in that, and in it he went to the hospital a rare instance this of 
 pluck and self-devotion. His next illness was typhus fever ; and now, 
 as I have said, he is suffering from a disease more terrible still. Five 
 hundred a year (and two curates to pay out of it) is scarcely excessive 
 payment for such a life as that. " 
 
 For such a life perhaps not. But such a death, or even perpetual 
 risk of it, it appears to me, is dear at the money. 
 
 " But have I counted the value of the poor souls he has saved in 
 Bethnal ? " 
 
 No but I am very sure that while he was saving one poor soul in 
 Bethnal, he was leaving ten rich souls to be damned, at Tyburn, each 
 of which would damn a thousand or two more by their example or 
 neglect. 
 
 The above paragraph was sent me by a friend, of whose accom- 
 panying letter I venture to print a part together with it. 
 
 " I send you a cutting from a recent Times, to show you there are 
 some faithful men left. I have heard of this Mr. Hansard before, and
 
 374 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 how well he works. I want to tell you, too, that I am afraid the 
 coarseness and shamelessness you write about, in Fors, is not wholly 
 caused by the neighbourhood of large manufacturing towns, for iu the 
 lonely villages I used to know loug ago, it was exactly the same. I 
 don't mean that brutal crimes, such as you speak of, were heard of or 
 even possible ; but the conversation of men and women, working in the 
 fields together, was frequently such that no young girl working with 
 them could keep moiesty. Nor if a girl had what they termed a 
 ' misfortune,' was she one bit worse off for it. She was just as cer- 
 tain to be married as before. Reform in all these things i.e., im 
 modest conversation ought to begin with women. If women in cot- 
 tages, and indeed elsewhere, were what they ought to be, and kept up 
 a high tone in their households, their sons would not dare to speak in 
 their presence as I know they often do, and their daughters would feel 
 they fell away from much more than they do now, when they go 
 wrong. Men are, I fancy, very much what women make them, and 
 seem to like them to be ; and if women withdrew from those who hurt 
 their sense of what is right, I do believe they would try to be differ- 
 ent ; but it seems very difficult to preserve a high tone of maidenly 
 dignity in poor girls, who, from youth up, hear every possible thing 
 usually left unspoken or freely discussed by fathers and mothers and 
 brothers, and sometimes very evil deeds treated as jests. This is the 
 case painfully often." 
 
 Though my notes, for this month, far exceed their usual limits, I 
 cannot close them without asking my readers to look back, for some 
 relief of heart, to happier times. The following piece of biography, 
 printed only for private circulation, is so instructive that I trust the 
 friend who sent it me will forgive my placing it in broader view ; 
 and the more because in the last section of the Queen of the Air, my 
 readers will find notice of this neglected power of the tide. I had 
 imagined this an idea of my own, and did not press it, being content 
 to press what is already known and practically proved to be useful ; 
 but the following portion of a very interesting letter, and the piece of 
 biography it introduces, show the tide-mill to be in this category : 
 
 'My father, who began life humbly, dates the prosperity of his 
 family to the time when being the tenant of a small lide-mitt he 
 laboured with spade and barrow (by consent of the Earl of Sheffield) to 
 enclose an increased area overflowed by the tide in order to lay 
 under contribution as motive power this wasted energy of rising and 
 falling waters. He thereby nearly quadrupled the power of the mill, 
 and finally became its possessor." 
 
 "William Catt was the son of Mr. John Catt, a Sussex farmer, who 
 married the daughter of a yeoman named Willett, living on a small 
 estate at Buxted. He was born in the year 1780, and soon after that 
 date his parents removed to the Abbey Farm at Robertsbridge. There 
 he passed his early years, and there obtained such education as a 
 dame's school could afford. This of course was limited to very rudi- 
 mentary English. He was not a particularly apt scholar : he hated his 
 books but liked cricket.
 
 FOKS CLAVIGERA. 375 
 
 " When little more than nineteen, he married a daughter of Mr. Dawes, 
 of Ewhurst. Farming in the Weald of Sussex was then, as now, a 
 laborious and unremunerative occupation ; and as an interesting record 
 of the habits of his class at that period, it may be stated, that * on the 
 morning of his wedding-day he went into a wood with his father 1 8 team for 
 a load of hop-poles, was afterwards married in a white ' round-frock,'' 
 and returned to his usual icork tJie next morning. He commenced busi- 
 ness pis Stonehouse, in Buxted, a farm of between 100 and 200 acres. 
 Banking was in those days in its infancy, and travelling notoriously 
 unsafe ; f so his good and prudent mother sewed up beneath the lining 
 of his waistcoat the one-pound note which he carried from Roberts- 
 bridge to Buxted to meet the valuation of his farm. When settled 
 in his little homestead, his household arrangements were of the sim- 
 plest kind. One boy, one girl, and one horse, formed his staff ; yet he 
 throve and prospered. And no wonder : for both himself and his 
 young wife often rose at three in the morning ; he to t7irash by candle- 
 light in his barn, she to feed or prepare her poultry for the market. His 
 principle was ' earn a shilling, and spend elevenpence;' and hence, 
 no doubt, his subsequent success. 
 
 " After two years' farming he took a small mill at Lamberhurst, 
 where a journeymau miller, Saunders Ditton, gave him all the instruc- 
 tion that he ever received in the manufacture and business in which he 
 was afterwards so extensively engaged. Hard work was still a neces- 
 sity ; the mill by night, the market and his customers by day, de- 
 manded all his time ; and on one occasion, overcome by cold and fa- 
 tigue, he crept for warmth into his meal-bin, where he fell asleep, and 
 would certainly have been suffocated but for the timely arrival of Dit- 
 ton. This worthy man afterwards followed his master to Bishopston, 
 and survived him a pensioner in his old age. 
 
 "At this time the Bishopston Tide-mills were in the occupation of 
 Messrs. Barton and Catt. The former exchanged with Mr. Catt, of 
 Lamberhurst, who went into partnership with his cousin Edmund. 
 The power of the mill was then only five pair of stones, though he 
 ultimately increased it to sixteen.:): In this much more important 
 sphere the same habits of industry still marked his character, amidst 
 all disadvantages. It was war-time ; corn was of inferior quality and 
 high price ; and privateering prevented trading by water. His cousin 
 and he were not suited to each other, and dissolved partnership ; but, 
 by the aid of a loan from bis worthy friends and neighbours, Mr. 
 Cooper, of Norton, and Mr. Farncombe, of Bishopston, he was enabled 
 to secure the whole of the business to himself. Subsequently Mr. 
 Edmund Cooper, the son of his friend, became his partner in the mills. 
 and the business was for many years carried on under the title of Catt 
 and Cooper. 
 
 " During this partnership a Tease was obtained, from the Earl of Shef- 
 field, of the waste lands between the Mills and Newhaven harbour. This 
 was embanked and reclaimed as arable land at first, and subsequently 
 partly used as a reservoir of additional water power. Mr. Catt took 
 
 * Italics mine throughout. 
 
 t Now-a-days the travelling is of course ' notoriously safe ' ! but what shall we say of 
 the banking ? 
 
 t The oldest windmill on record in this country (I speak under correction) stood in this 
 parish, and was given by Bishop Seffrid to the see of Chichester about the year 1199, 
 The largest watermill ever constructed in Sussex was that of Mr. Catt.
 
 376 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 great interest in the work ; laboured at it himself witli spade and bar- 
 row ; and to it he always referred as the main cause of his success in 
 life. In the third year a crop of oats was grown on the arable portion, 
 which repaid the expenses of reclamation and induced him to increase 
 the power of the mill as mentioned above. Mr. Cooper retired from 
 the concern by agreement, and afterwards, under the firm of William 
 Catt and Sons, in conjunction with his children, Mr. Catt completed 
 fifty years of business at Bishopston. During a considerable portion of 
 those years he had also a large stake with other sons in West Street 
 Brewery, Brighton. 
 
 " His faithful wife died in 1823, leaving him the responsible legacy 
 of eleven children the youngest being not an hour old. This bereave 
 ment seemed to stimulate him to renewed exertion and to extraordinary 
 regard for little savings. He would always stop to pick up a nail or any 
 scrap of old iron that lay in the road, and in the repeated enlargements 
 and construction of his mills he was his own arcJiitect and surveyor ; he 
 was always pleased with the acquisition of a bit of wreck timber, any 
 old materials from Blatchington barracks, or from the dismantled man- 
 sion of Bishopston Place, formerly the seat of the Duke of Newcastle. 
 Yet he was ever bountiful as a host, liberal to his neighbours, and 
 charitable to his dependants and the deserving poor. 
 
 " To a man of Mr. Catt's experience in life, ordinary amusements 
 would have few charms. His business was his pleasure, yet he 
 delighted in his garden, and the culture of pears afforded him much 
 recreation. A more bleak and unpromising place for horticulture than 
 the Bishopston Mills could hardly exist ; but by the aid of good walls, 
 and the observation of wind effects, he was eminently successful, and 
 no garden in Sussex produced a greater variety, or finer specimens, of 
 that pleasant fruit. His maxim on this subject was, 'Aim to yet a good 
 <pear all the year round.' 1 
 
 *' In the latter years of his life, Mr. Catt retired from active business 
 and resided at Newhaven, where he died in 1853, in the seventy-third 
 year of his age, leaving behind him not only the good name which an 
 honourable life deserves, but a substantial fortune for his somewhat 
 numerous descendants."
 
 JTOliS CLAVIOERA. 377 
 
 LETTER LIT. 
 
 I MUST steadily do a little bit more autobiography in every 
 Fors, now, or I shall never bring myself to be of age before 
 I die or have to stop writing, for which last turn of 
 temper or fortune my friends, without exception, (and I 
 hope one or two of my enemies,) are, I find, praying with 
 what devotion is in them. 
 
 My mother had, as she afterwards told me, solemnly 
 devoted me to God before I was born ; in imitation of 
 Hannah. 
 
 Verv good women are remarkably apt to make away with 
 their children prematurely, in this manner : the real mean- 
 ing of the pious act being, that, as the sons of Zebedee are 
 not, (or at least they hope not), to sit on the right and left 
 of Christ, in His kingdom, their own sons may perhaps, they 
 think, in time be advanced to that respectable position in 
 eternal life ; especially if they ask Christ very humbly for it 
 every day ; and they always forget in the most na'ive way 
 that the position is not His to give ! 
 
 ' Devoting' me to God,' meant, as far as my mother knew 
 herself what she meant, that she would try to send rne to 
 college, and make a clergyman of me : and I was accord- 
 ingly bred for 'the Church.' My father, who rest be to 
 his soul had the exceedingly bad habit of yielding to my 
 mother in large things and taking his own way in little ones, 
 allowed me, without saying a word, to be thus withdrawn 
 from the sherry trade as an unclean thing ; not without 
 some pardonable participation in my mother's ultimate views 
 for me. For, many and many a year afterwards, I remember, 
 while he was speaking to one of our artist friends, who 
 admired Raphael, and greatly regretted my endeavours to 
 interfere with that popular taste, while my father and he 
 were condoling with each other on my having been im- 
 pudent enough to think I could tell the public about Turner 
 and Raphael, instead of contenting myself, as I ought, with
 
 378 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 explaining the way of their souls' salvation to them and 
 what an amiable clergyman was lost in me, Yes, said my 
 father, with tears in his eyes (true and tender tears as 
 ever father shed,) " He would have been a Bishop." 
 
 Luckily for me, my mother, under these distinct impres- 
 sions of her own duty, and with such latent hopes of my 
 future eminence, took me very early to church ; where, in 
 spite of my quiet habits, and my mother's golden vinaigrette, 
 always indulged to rne there, and there only, with its lid un- 
 clasped that I might see the wreathed open pattern above 
 the sponge, I found the bottom of the pew so extremely dull 
 a place to keep quiet in, (my best story-books being also 
 taken away from me in the morning,) that as I have some- 
 where said before the horror of Sunday used even to cast 
 its prescient gloom as far back in the week as Friday and 
 all the glory of Monday, with church seven days' removed 
 again, was no equivalent for it. 
 
 Notwithstanding, T arrived at some abstract in my own 
 mind of the Rev. Mr. Howell's sermons ; and occasionally 
 in imitation of him, preached a sermon at home over the red 
 sofa cushions ; this performance being always called for by 
 my mother's dearest friends, as the great accomplishment of 
 my childhood. The sermon was I believe some eleven 
 words long ; very exemplary, it seems to me, in that re- 
 spect and I still think must have been the purest gospel, 
 for I know it began with 'People, be good.' 
 
 We seldom had company, even on week days ; and I was 
 never allowed to come down to dessert, until much later in 
 life when I was able to crack nuts neatly. I was then per- 
 mitted to come down to crack other people's nuts for them : 
 (I hope they liked the ministration) but never to have any 
 myself ; nor anything else of dainty kind, either then or at 
 other times. Once, at Hunter Street, I recollect my mother's 
 giving me three raisins, in the forenoon out of the store 
 cabinet ; and I remember perfectly the first time I tasted 
 custard, in our lodgings in Norfolk Street where we had 
 gone while the house was being painted, or cleaned, or some- 
 thing. My father was dining in the front room, and did not
 
 FOBS CLAVIGEItA. 379 
 
 finish his custard ; and rny mother brought me the bottom of 
 it into the back room. 
 
 I've no more space for garrulity in this letter, having 
 several past bits of note to bring together. 
 
 BOLTON BRIDGE, 24th January, 1875. 
 
 I have been driving by the old road* from Coniston here, 
 through Kirby Lonsdale, and have seen more ghastly signs of 
 modern temper than I yet had believed possible. 
 
 The valley of the Lune at Kirby is one of the loveliest scenes 
 in England therefore, in the world. Whatever moorland 
 hill and sweet river, and English forest foliage can be at 
 their best, is gathered there ; and chiefly seen from the steep 
 bank which falls to the stream side from the upper part 
 of the town itself. There, a path leads from the churchyard, 
 out of which Turner made his drawing of the valley, along 
 the brow of the wooded bank, to open downs beyond ; a 
 little bye footpath on the right descending steeply through 
 the woods to a spring among the rocks of the shore. I do 
 not know in all my own country, still less in France or Italy, 
 a place more naturally divine, or a more priceless possession 
 of true " Holy Land." 
 
 Well, the population of Kirby cannot it appears, in conse- 
 quence of their recent civilization, any more walk, in summer 
 afternoons, along the brow of this bank, without a fence. I 
 at first fancied this was because they were usually unable to 
 take care of themselves at that period of the day : but saw 
 presently I must be mistaken in that conjecture, because the 
 fence they have put up requires far more sober minds for 
 
 * Frightened, (I hear it was guessed in a gossiping newspaper,) by 
 the Shipton accident, and disgusted afterwards by unexpected expenses. 
 The ingenious British public cannot conceive of anybody's estimating 
 danger before accidents as well as after them, or amusing himself 
 by driving from one place to another, instead of round the Park. 
 There was some grain of truth in the important rumour, however. I 
 have posted, in early days, up and down England (and some other 
 countries) not once nor twice ; and I grumbled, in Yorkshire, at being 
 charged twenty-pence instead of eighteen-pence a mile. But the pace 
 was good, where any trace of roads remained under casual outcasting of 
 cinders and brickbats.
 
 380 FOfiS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 safe dealing 1 with it than ever the bank did ; being of thin, 
 strong-, and finely sharpened skewers, on which if a drunken 
 man rolled heavily, he would assuredly be impaled at the 
 armpit. They have carried this lovely decoration down on 
 both sides of the woodpath to the spring, with warning 
 notice on ticket, " This path leads only to the Ladies' * well 
 all trespassers will be prosecuted " and the iron rails leave 
 so narrow footing that I myself scarcely ventured to go down, 
 the morning being frosty, and the path slippery, lest I 
 should fall on the spikes. The well at the bottom was choked 
 up and defaced, though ironed all round, so as to look like the 
 ' pound ' of old days for strayed cattle : they had been felling 
 the trees too; and the old wood had protested against the fence 
 in its own way, with its last root and branch, for the falling 
 trunks had crashed through the iron grating in all directions, 
 and left it in already rusty and unseemly rags, like the last ref- 
 use of a railroad accident, beaten down among the dead leaves. 
 Just at the dividing of the two paths, the improving mobf 
 of Kirby had got two seats put for themselves to admire the 
 prospect from, forsooth. And these seats were to be artistic, 
 if Minerva were propitious, 
 in the style of Kensing- 
 ton. So they are support- 
 ed on iron legs, thus : 
 representing each, as far 
 as any rational conjecture 
 can extend the Devil's 
 tail pulled off, with a 
 goose's head stuck on the 
 wrong end of it. And 
 what is more two of the 
 geese-heads are without 
 eyes (I stooped down un- 
 der the seat and rubbed the frost off them to make sure), 
 
 * "Our Lady's," doubtless, once. 
 
 f I include in my general term 'mob,' lords, squires, clergy, parish 
 beadles, and all other states and conditions of men concerned in the 
 proceedings described.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 381 
 
 and the whole symbol is perfect, therefore, as typical of 
 our English populace, fashionable and other, which seats 
 itself to admire prospects, in the present day. 
 
 Now, not a hundred paces from these seats, there is a fine 
 old church, with Norman door, and lancet east windows, and 
 so on ; and this, of course, has been duly patched, botched, 
 plastered, and primmed up ; and is kept as tidy as a new pin. 
 For your English clergyman keeps his own stage properties, 
 now-a-days, as carefully as a poor actress her silk stockings. 
 "Well, all that, of course, is very fine ; but, actually, the peo- 
 ple go through the churchyard to the path on the hill-brow, 
 making the new iron railing an excuse to pitch their dust- 
 heaps, and whatever of worse they have to get rid of, crock- 
 ery and the rest, down over the fence among the primroses 
 and violets to the river, and the whole blessed shore un- 
 derneath, rough sandstone rock throwing the deep water off 
 into eddies among shingle, is one waste of filth, town- 
 drainage, broken saucepans, tannin, and mill-refuse. 
 
 The same morning I had to water my horses at the little 
 village of Clapham, between Kirby and Settle. There is an- 
 other exquisite rocky brook there ; and an old bridge over 
 it. I went down to the brook-side to see the bridge ; and 
 found myself instantly, of course, stopped by a dunghill ; 
 and that of the vilest human sort ; while, just on the other 
 side of the road, not twenty yards off, were the new 
 schools, with their orthodox Gothic belfry all spick and 
 span and the children playing fashionably at hoop, round 
 them, in a narrow paved yard like debtor children in the 
 Fleet, in imitation of the manners and customs of the West 
 End. High over all, the Squire's house, resplendent on the 
 hillside, within sound alike of belfry, and brook. 
 
 I got on here, to Bolton Bridge, the same day ; and walked 
 down to the Abbey in the evening, to look again at Turn- 
 er's subject of the Wharfe shore. If there is one spot in 
 England, where human creatures pass or live, which one 
 would expect to find, in spite of their foul existence, still 
 clean it is Bolton Park. But to my final and utter amaze- 
 ment, I had not taken two steps by the waterside at the
 
 382 FOES CLAVIOERA. 
 
 loveliest bend of the river below the stepping-stones, before 
 I found myself again among broken crockery, cinders, 
 cockle-shells, and tinkers' refuse ; a large old gridiron 
 forming the principal point of effect and interest among the 
 pebbles. The filth must be regularly carried past the 
 Abbey, and across the Park, to the place. 
 
 But doubtless, in Bolton Priory, amiable school teachers 
 tell their little Agneses the story of the white doe ; and 
 duly make them sing in psalm tune, " As the hart panteth 
 after the waterbrooks." 
 
 Very certainly, nevertheless, the young ladies of Luneside 
 and Wharfedale don't pant in the least after their water- 
 brooks ; and this is the saddest part of the business to me. 
 Pollution of rivers ! yes, that is to be considered also ; but 
 pollution of young ladies' minds to the point of never caring 
 to scramble by a riverside, so long as they can have their 
 church-curate and his altar-cloths to their fancy, this is the 
 horrible thing, in my own wild way of thinking. That 
 shingle of the Lune, under Kirby, reminded me, as if it had 
 been yesterday, of a summer evening by a sweeter shore 
 still : the edge of the North Inch of Perth, where the Tay is 
 wide, just below Scone ; and the snowy quartz pebbles 
 decline in long banks under the ripples of the dark-clear 
 stream. 
 
 My Scotch cousin Jessie, eight years old, and I, ten years 
 old, and my Croydon cousin, Bridget, a slim girl of fourteen, 
 were all wading together, here and there ; and of course get- 
 ting into deep water as far as we could, my father and 
 mother and aunt watching us till at last, Bridget, having 
 the longest legs, and, taking after her mother, the shortest 
 conscience, got in so far, and with her petticoats so high, 
 that the old people were obliged to call to her, though 
 hardly able to call, for laughing : and I recollect staring at 
 them, and wondering what they were laughing at. But 
 alas, by Lune shore, now, there are no pretty girls to be 
 seen holding their petticoats up. Nothing but old sauce- 
 pans and tannin or worse as signs of modern civilization. 
 
 ' But how fine it is to have iron skewers for our fences :
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 383 
 
 and no trespassing, (except by lords of the manor on poor 
 men's ground), and pretty legs exhibited where they can be 
 so without impropriety, and with due advertisement to the 
 public beforehand ; and iron legs to our chairs, also, in the 
 style of Kensington ! ' Doubtless ; but considering that 
 Kensington is a school of natural Science as well as art, it 
 seems to me that these Kirby representations of the Ophidia 
 are slightly vague. Perhaps, however, in conveying that 
 tenderly sagacious expression into his serpent's head, and 
 burnishing so acutely the brandished sting in his tail, the 
 Kirby artist has been under the theological instructions of 
 the careful Minister who has had his church restored so 
 prettily ; only then the Minister himself must have been, 
 without knowing it, under the directions of another person, 
 who had an intimate interest in the matter. For there is 
 more than failure of natural history in this clumsy hardware. 
 It is indeed a matter of course that it should be clumsy, for 
 the English have always been a dull nation in decorative 
 art ; and I find, on looking at things here afresh after long 
 work in Italy, that our most elaborate English sepulchral 
 work, as the Cockayne tombs at Ashbourne and the Dudley 
 tombs at Warwick, (not to speak of Queen Elizabeth's in 
 Westminster !) are yet, compared to Italian sculpture of the 
 same date, no less barbarous than these goose heads of Kirby 
 would appear beside an asp head of Milan. But the tombs 
 of Ashbourne or Warwick are honest, though blundering, ef- 
 forts to imitate what was really felt to be beautiful ; whereas 
 the serpents of Kirby are ordered and shaped by the " least 
 erected spirit that fell," in the very likeness of himself ! 
 
 For observe the method and circumstance of their manu- 
 facture. You dig a pit for ironstone, and heap a mass of 
 refuse on fruitful land ; you blacken your God-given sky, 
 and consume your God-given fuel, to melt the iron ; you 
 bind your labourer to the Egyptian toil of its castings and 
 forgings ; then, to refine his mind, you send him to study 
 Raphael at Kensington ; and with all this cost, filth, time, 
 and misery, you at last produce the devil's tail for your 
 sustenance, instead of an honest three-legged stool.
 
 384: FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 You do all this that men may live think you ? Alas 
 no ; the real motive of it all is that the fashionable manu- 
 facturer may live in a palace, getting his fifty per cent, coin- 
 mission on the work which he has taken out of the hands of 
 the old village carpenter, who would have cut two stumps 
 of oak in two minutes out of the copse, which would have 
 carried your bench and you triumphantly, to the end of 
 both your times. 
 
 However, I must get back to my bees' heads and tails, to- 
 day ; what a serpent's are like in their true type of Earthly 
 Injustice, it may be worth our while to see also, if we can 
 understand the " sad-eyed justice " first. 
 
 Sad-eyed ! Little did Shakespeare think, I fancy, how 
 many eyes the sad-eyed Justice had ! or how ill she- saw with 
 them. I continually notice the bees at Brantwood flying 
 rapturously up to the flowers on my wall paper, and knock- 
 ing themselves against them, again and again, unconvince- 
 able of their fallacy ; and it is no compliment to the wall 
 paper or its artist, neither for the flowers are only conven- 
 tional ones, copied from a radiant Bishop's cloak of the fif- 
 teenth century. 
 
 It is curious too, that although before coming to the leaf- 
 cutting bee, Bingley expatiates on the Poppy bees' luxurious 
 tapestry, cut from the scarlet poppy, he never considers 
 whether she could see it, or not, underground (unless by 
 help of the fiery glow-worms' eyes) and still less, how long 
 the cut leaves would remain scarlet. Then I am told won- 
 derful things of the clasping of the curtains of her little 
 tabernacle ; but when the curtains dry, and shrink, what 
 then? 
 
 Let us hear what he tells us of the Rose bee, however in 
 full. 
 
 " These bees construct cylindrical nests of the leaves of 
 the rose and other trees. These nests are sometimes of the 
 depth of six inches, and generally consist of six or seven 
 cells, each shaped like a thimble. * They are formed with 
 
 * They are round at the end, but do not taper.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 385 
 
 the convex end of one fitting into the open end of another. 
 The portions of the leaf of which they are made are not 
 glued together, * nor are they any otherwise fastened, than 
 in the nicety of their adjustment to each other ; and yet they 
 do not admit the liquid honey to drain through them. The 
 interior surface of each cell consists of three pieces of leaf, 
 of equal size, narrow at one end, but gradually widening to 
 the other, where the width equals half the length. One side 
 of each of these pieces, is the serrated margin of the leaf. 
 In forming the cell, the pieces of leaf are made to lap one 
 over the other, (the serrated side always outermost,) till a 
 tube is thus formed, coated with three or four, or more lay- 
 ers. In coating these tubes, the provident little animal is 
 careful to lay the middle of each piece of leaf over the mar- 
 gins of others, so as, by this means, both to cover and 
 strengthen the junctions. At the closed or narrow end of 
 the cell, the leaves are bent down so as to form a convex ter- 
 mination. When a cell is formed, the next care of the Bee 
 is to fill it with honey and pollen, which, being collected 
 chiefly from the thistles, form a rose-coloured paste. With 
 these the cell is filled to within about half a line of its orifice ; 
 and the female then deposits in it an egg, and closes it with 
 three perfectly circular pieces of leaf, which coincide so ex- 
 actly with the walls of the cylindrical cell, as to be retained 
 in their situation without any gluten. f After this covering 
 is fitted in, there still remains a hollow, which receives the 
 convex end of the succeeding cell. In this manner the 
 patient and indefatigable animal proceeds, till her whole 
 cylinder of six or seven cells is completed. 
 
 " This is generally formed under the surface of the ground, J 
 in a tubular passage, which it entirely fills, except at the en- 
 trance. If the labour of these insects be interrupted, or the 
 edifice be deranged, they exhibit astonishing perseverance in 
 setting it again to rights. 
 
 " Their mode of cutting pieces out of the leaves for their 
 work, deserves particular notice. When one of these Bees 
 selects a rose-bush with this view, she flies round or hovers 
 
 * An Indian one, patiently investigated for me by Mr. Burgess, was 
 fastened with glue which entirely defied cold water, and yielded only 
 to the kettle. 
 
 f She bites them round the edge roughly enough ; but pushes them 
 down with a tucked up rim, quite tight, like the first covering of a pot 
 of preserve. 
 
 \ Or in old wood. 
 
 VOL. II. 25
 
 386 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 over it for some seconds, as if examining for the leaves best 
 suited to her purpose. When she has chosen one, she alights 
 upon it, sometimes on the upper, and sometimes on the under 
 surface, or not unfrequently on its edge, so that the margin 
 passes between her legs. Her first attack, which is generally 
 made the moment she alights, is usually near the footstalk, 
 with her head turned towards the point. As soon as she be- 
 gins to cut, she is wholly intent on her labour ; nor does she 
 cease until her work is completed. The operation is per- 
 formed by means of her jaws, with as much expedition as we 
 could exert with a pair of scissors. As she proceeds, she 
 holds the margin of the detatched part between her legs in 
 such a manner, that the section keeps giving way to her, 
 and does not interrupt her progress. She makes her incision 
 in a curved line, approaching the midrib of the leaf at first ; 
 but when she has reached a certain point, she recedes from 
 this towards the margin, still cutting in a curve. When she 
 has nearly detatched from the leaf the portion she has been 
 employed upon, she balances her little wings for flight, lest 
 its weight should carry her to the ground ; and the very 
 moment it parts, she flies off in triumph, carrying it in a 
 bent position between her legs, and perpendicularly to her 
 body." 
 
 Now in this account, the first thing I catch at is the clue 
 to the love of bees for thistles. " Their pollen makes a rose- 
 coloured paste with their honey ; " (I think some of my 
 Scottish friends might really take measures to get some pure 
 thistle honey made by their bees. I once worked all the 
 working hours I had to spare for a fortnight, to clear a field 
 of thistles by the side of the Turnmel under Schehallien : 
 perhaps Nature meant, all the while, its master and me to 
 let it alone, and put a hive or two upon it.) 
 
 Secondly. The description of the bee's tubular house, 
 though sufficiently clear, is only intelligible to me, though I 
 know something of geometry, after some effort ; it would 
 be wholly useless to Agnes, unless she were shown how to 
 be a leaf-cutting bee herself, and invited to construct, or en- 
 deavour to construct, the likeness of a bee's nest with paper 
 and scissors. 
 
 What in school-hours ?
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 387 
 
 Yes, certainly, in the very best of school-hours : this 
 would be one of her advanced lessons in Geometry. 
 
 For little Agnes should assuredly learn the elements of 
 Geometry, but she should at first call it ' Earth measuring ' ; 
 and have her early lessons in it, in laying out her own garden. 
 
 Her older companions, at any rate, must be far enough 
 advanced in the science to attempt this bee problem ; of 
 which you will find the terms have to be carefully examined, 
 and somewhat completed. So much, indeed, do they stand 
 in need of farther definition that I should have supposed the 
 problem inaccurately given, unless I had seen the bee cut a 
 leaf myself. But I have seen her do it, and can answer for 
 the absolute accuracy of the passage describing her in that 
 operation. 
 
 The pieces of leaf, you read, are to be narrow at one end, 
 but gradually widen to the other, where the width equals 
 half the length. 
 
 And we have to cut these pieces with curved sides ; for 
 one side of them is to be the serrated edge of a rose leaf, and 
 the other side is to be cut in a curved line beginning near the 
 root of the leaf. I especially noticed this curved line as the 
 bee cut it ; but like an ass, as often I have been on such 
 occasions, I followed the bee instead of gathering the rem- 
 nant leaf, so that I can't draw the curve with certainty. 
 
 Now each of my four volumes of Bingley has five or more 
 plates in it. These plates are finished line engravings, with, 
 in most cases, elaborate landscape backgrounds ; reeds for 
 the hippopotamus, trees for the monkeys, conical mountains 
 for the chamois, and a magnificent den with plenty of straw, 
 for the lioness and cubs, in frontispiece. 
 
 Any one of these landscape backgrounds required the 
 severe labour of the engraver's assistant for at least three 
 days to produce it, or say two months' hard work, for the 
 whole twenty and odd plates. And all the result of two 
 months' elaborate work put together, was not worth to me, 
 nor would be to any man, woman, or child, worth what an 
 accurate outline of a leaf-cutting bee's segment of leaf would 
 have been, drawn with truth and precision. And ten minutes
 
 388 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 would have been enough to draw it ; and half an hour to 
 cut it. 
 
 But not only I cannot find it in my old book, but I know 
 it is not in the grand modern Cuvier, and I don't believe it 
 is findable anywhere. I won't go on with Agnes's lessons at 
 guess, however, till I get some help from kind Dr. Gray, at 
 the British Museum. To-day, I must content myself with a 
 closing word or two about zoological moralities. 
 
 After having, to my best ability, thus busied and in- 
 formed little Agnes concerning her bees and their opera- 
 tions, am I farther to expatiate on the exemplary character 
 of the bee? Is she to learn "How doth," etc. (and indeed 
 there never was a country in which more than in her own, it 
 was desirable that shining hours should be taken advantage 
 of when they come) ? But, above all, am I to tell her of the 
 Goodness and Wisdom of God in making such amiable and 
 useful insects? 
 
 Well, before I proceed to ask her to form her very im- 
 portant opinions upon the moral character of God, I shall ask 
 her to observe that all insects are not equally moral, or useful. 
 
 It is possible she may have noticed beforehand some, of 
 whose dispositions she may be doubtful ; something, here- 
 after, I shall have to tell her of locust and hornet, no less 
 than of bee ; and although in general I shall especially avoid 
 putting disagreeable or ugly things before her eyes, or into 
 her mind, I should certainly require her positively, once for 
 all, to know the sort of life led by creatures of at least 
 alloyed moral nature, such, for instance, as the ' Turner 
 Savage ' which, indeed, " lives in the haunts of men, whom 
 it never willingly offends ; but is the terror of all smaller 
 insects. It inhabits holes in the earth on the side of hills 
 and cliffs ; and recesses that it forms for itself in the mud- 
 walls of cottages and outhouses. The mud-wall of a cottage 
 at Peterborough, in Northamptonshire, was observed to be 
 frequented by these creatures, and on examination it was 
 found to be wrought, by their operations, into the appear- 
 ance of Honeycomb." 
 
 The Appearance only, alas ! for although these creatures
 
 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 389 
 
 thus like to live in the neighbourhood of a Bishop, and 
 though " there are none which display more affection for 
 their offspring," they by no means live by collection of 
 treasures of sweet dew. " They are excessively fierce, and, 
 without hesitation, attack insects much larger than them- 
 selves. Their strength is very great, their jaws are hard 
 and sharp, and their stings are armed with poison, which 
 suddenly proves fatal to most of the creatures with which 
 they engage. The * Sphex ' (generic name of the family) 
 seizes, with the greatest boldness, on the creature it attacks, 
 giving a stroke with amazing force, then falling off, to rest 
 from the fatigue of the exertion, and to enjoy the victorVi 
 It keeps, however, a steady eye on the object it has struck, 
 until it dies, and then drags it to its nest for the use of its 
 young. The number of insects which this creature destroys, is 
 almost beyond conception, fifty scarcely serving it for a meal. 
 The mangled remains of its prey, scattered round the mouth 
 of its retreat, sufficiently betray the sanguinary inhabitant. 
 The eyes, the filament that serves as a brain, and a small part 
 of the contents of the body, are all that the Sphex devours." 
 I cannot, therefore, insist, for the present, upon either 
 pointing a moral, or adorning a tale, for Agnes, with ento- 
 mological instances ; but the name of the insect, at which 
 the (insect) world might grow pale, if it were capable of pal- 
 lor, might be made, at least, memorable, and not uninstruc- 
 tive, to the boys in the Latin class ; by making them first 
 understand the power of the preposition ' ex,' in the two 
 pleasant senses of examen, and the one unpleasant sense of 
 ' examiner ' and then observe, (carefully first distinguishing 
 between play with letters and real derivation,) that if you put 
 R for Right, before ex, you have ' Rex ' ; if you put L, for 
 Love, before ex, you have ' lex' ; if you put G, for George, 
 and R, for Rural, before ex, you have ' grex ' ; and then if 
 you put S, for Speculation, P, for Peculation, and H, the 
 immortal possessor of Pie, before ex, you have ' Sphex ' ; 
 pleasing and accurate type of the modern carnivorous Econ- 
 omist, who especially discerns of his British public, ' the eyes 
 and small filament that serves as a brain.'
 
 390 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 " THE PARSONAGE, WERRINGTON, PETERBOROUGH, 
 
 " March 4, 1875. 
 
 " MY DEAR SIR, I have no doubt you know better than I do what 
 Gospel is the more widely preached, for while you have been wandering, 
 freer than a bee, from place to place, and from church to church, I have 
 been ' entangled ' from day to day in stuffy rooms among ignorant and 
 immoral people, in crowded parishes in London and elsewhere ; and on 
 Sundays have listened chiefly to the gathered voices of the same ignor- 
 ant people, led by my own. 
 
 " But, not to move from the ground of ascertained fact, I have a 
 right to say that I know that the morality of the parishes best known 
 to me has been made better, and not worse, by the shepherding of the 
 Pastors. 
 
 " I have heard and read a good deal, in clerical circles, and clerical 
 books, of doctrines of ' substitution ' and ' vicarious righteousness,' such 
 as you rightly condemn as immoral ; but if all the sermons preached in 
 the English Church on any given Sunday were fully and fairly reported, 
 I question if a dozen would contain the least trace of these doctrines 
 
 " Amidst all the isms and dogmas by which Clerics are entangled, I 
 find the deep and general conviction getting clearer and clearer utter- 
 ance, that the one supremely lovely, admirable and adorable thing, 
 the one thing to redeem and regenerate human life, the one true Gos- 
 pel for mankind, is the Spirit and Life of Jesus Christ. 
 
 " As to your terrible charge against the Pastors, that they preach for 
 hire, I need only quote your own opinion in this month's Fors, that all 
 honest minstrels and authors, manifestly possessing talent for their 
 business, should be allowed to claim ' for their actual toil, in perform- 
 ance of their arts, modest reward, and daily bread.' 
 
 " Surely the labourer who spends his life in speaking salutary truth is 
 not less worthy of his hire than he who sings or writes it ? 
 
 " The reward offered to most Pastors is ' modest' enough. 
 " I am very faithfully yours, 
 
 " EDWARD Z. LYTTEL. 
 " JOHN EUSKIN, Esq." 
 
 I willingly insert my correspondent's second letter, but will not at 
 present answer it, except privately. I wonder, in the meantime, whether 
 he will think the effect of the ministry of Felix Neff on the mind of 
 the sweet English lady whose letter next follows, moral, or immoral ? 
 A portion of whose letter, I should have said ; its opening touches on 
 household matters little to her mind, to which her first exclamation 
 refers.
 
 FOES CLAVIGERA. 391 
 
 ' ' How sorrowful it all is ! Yet, I don't feel so naughty about it as I 
 did on Saturday, because yesterday I read the life of Felix Neff, who 
 went to live by his own wish at that dismal Dormilleuse in the high 
 Alps, amongst the wretched people who were like very unclean animals, 
 and for whom he felt such sublime pity that he sacrificed himself to im- 
 prove them ; and as I read of that terrible Alpine desert, with eight 
 months' hopeless dreariness, and of the wretched food, and filthy hovels 
 in which the miserable people lived, I looked up at my good fire and 
 clean room, with dear white Lily lying so soft on my lap, and the snow- 
 drops outside the window, and I really did feel ashamed of having felt 
 so grumbly and discontented as I did on Saturday. So good Felix 
 Netf 's good work is not done yet, and he will doubtless help others as 
 long as the world lasts." 
 
 The following letter is an interesting and somewhat pathetic example 
 of religious madness ; not a little, however, connected with mismanage- 
 ment of money. The writer has passed great part of his life in a con- 
 scientious endeavour to teach what my correspondent Mr. Lyttel would 
 I think consider ' ' salutary truth " ; but his intense egotism and absence 
 of imaginative power hindered him from perceiving that many other 
 people were doing the same, and meeting with the same disappointments. 
 Gradually he himself occupied the entire centre of his horizon ; and he 
 appoints himself to " judge the United States in particular, and the 
 world in general.'' 
 
 The introductory clause of the letter refers somewhat indignantly to 
 a representation I had irreverently made to him that a prophet should 
 rather manifest his divine mission by providing himself miraculously 
 with meat and drink, than by lodging in widows' houses without in any- 
 wise multiplying their meal for them ; and then leaving other people to 
 pay his bill. 
 
 " So long as you deliberately refuse to help in any way a man who 
 (you have every reason to know) possesses more of the righteousness of 
 God than yourself, (when you have ample means to do so,) how can you 
 be said to ' do the will of your Father which is in Heaven ' ? or how can 
 you expect to receive understanding to ' know of the doctrine ' of the 
 Saviour, (or of my doctrine,) ' whether it be of God, or whether I speak 
 of myself? If you possessed a genuine 'faith,' you would exercise 
 humanity towards such a man as myself, and leave the result with God ; 
 and not presumptuously decide that it was ' wrong' to relieve % a right- 
 eous man ' in distress, lest you should encourage him in delusions which 
 you choose to suppose him to be labouring under. 
 
 ' People seem to suppose that it is the Saviour who will judge the 
 world, if any one does. He distinctly declares that He will not. ' If 
 any one hear my words, and believe not, I judge Mm not ; for 1 came 
 not to judge the world, but to save tlie world. He that rejecteth me, and 
 receiveth not my words, Tiath one that judgeth Jtirn : the word that 1 
 have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.' 1 John xii. 47, 48. 
 1 represent that ' WORD ' which the Saviour spoke, and I have already 
 judged, and condemned, this country, and the United States, in par- 
 ticular and Christendom, and the World in general. I have for twenty
 
 392 FOItS CLAVIQERA. 
 
 years been a preacher of ' the Righteousness of God ' to this generation 
 (as Noah was for a hundred years to his generation), and 1 have proved 
 by actual experiment that none among the men of this generation can 
 be induced to ' enter the kingdom of heaven ' until the predicted ' time 
 of trouble, such as was not since there was a nation,' comes suddenly, 
 and compels those who are ready to enter the kingdom of God, to do so 
 at once ; and I know not how soon after I leave this country the 
 ' trouble ' will come ; perhaps immediately, perhaps in about a year's 
 time ; but come it must ; and the sooner it comes, the sooner it will be 
 over, I suppose. 
 
 " Yours faithfully." 
 
 The following specimen of the kind of letters which the " judge of 
 the United States in particular, and the World in general," leaves the 
 people favoured by his judgment to send to his friends, may as well 
 supplement his own letter : 
 
 " Mr. (J. of U.S. in p. and the W. in g.)'s name will, I trust, excuse 
 me to you for writing; but my house entirely failed me, and I, with my 
 child, are now really in great want. I write trusting that, after your 
 former kindness to me, you will feel disposed to send me a little assist- 
 ance. 
 
 ' I would not have written, but I am seriously in need. 
 
 " Please address to me," etc. 
 
 Whether, however, the judge of the world in general errs most in 
 expecting me to pay the necessary twopences to his hosts, or the world 
 in general itself, in expecting me to pay necessary twopences to its old 
 servants when it has no more need of them, may be perhaps questiona- 
 ble. Here is a paragraph cut out of an application for an hospital vote, 
 which I received the other day. 
 
 Mr. A. , aged seventy-one, has been a subscriber to the Pension Fund 
 forty-five years, the Almshouse Fund eighteen years, and the Orphan 
 Fund four years. He is now. in consequence of his advanced age, and 
 the infirmities attendant on a dislocated shoulder, asthma, and failing 
 sight, incapable of earning sufficient for a subsistence for himself and 
 wife, who is afflicted with chronic rheumatic gout. He was appren- 
 ticed to Mr. B. , and bus worked for Mr. C. D. forty years, and his 
 earnings at present are very small. 
 
 Next, here is a piece of a letter disclosing another curious form of 
 modern distress, in which the masters and mistresses become depend- 
 ent for timely aid on their servants. This is at least as old, however, 
 as Miss Edgeworth's time ; I think the custom is referred to at tho 
 toilette of Miss Georgiana Falconer in Patronage. 
 
 "Every day makes me bitterly believe more and more what you say 
 about the wickedness of working by fire and steam, and the harm and
 
 FOES CLAVIOERA. 393 
 
 insidious sapping of true life that oomes from large mills and all that 
 is connected with them. One of my servants told my sister to-day 
 (with an apology) that her mother had told her in her letter to ask me 
 if I would sell her my children's old clothes, etc. that indeed many 
 ladies did her mother had often bought things. Oh ! it made me 
 feel horrible. We try to buy strong clothes, and mend them to the 
 last, and then sometimes give them away ; but selling clothes to poor 
 people seems to me dreadful. I never thought ladies and gentlemen 
 would sell their clothes even to shops till we came to live here, and 
 happened to know of its being done. It surely must be wrong and 
 bad, or I should not feel something in me speaking so strongly against 
 it, as mean and unholy '' 
 
 A piece of country gossip on bees and birds, with, a humiliating pas- 
 sage about my own Coniston country, may refresh us a little after 
 dwelling on these serious topics. 
 
 "A humble cow is I fancy more properly a humbled cow it is so 
 called in Durham a cow whose horn is no longer set up on high. A 
 humble or bumble bee is there called a ' humbler.' To bumble in Dur- 
 ham means to go buzzing about ; a fussy man would be called a great 
 bumbler. But don't believe it has no sting : it can sting worse than a 
 honey bee, and all but as badly as a wasp. They used to tell us as 
 children that ' bumblers ' did not sting, but I know from experience 
 that they do. We used as children to feel that we knew that the little 
 yellow mason bee (?) did not sting, but I have no true knowledge on 
 that point. Do you care to have the common village names of birds ? 
 I am afraid I can only remember one or two, but they are universally 
 used in the north. 
 
 "The wren which makes the hanging nest lined with feathers is 
 called the feather poke ; yellow-hammer, yellow-yowley ; golden- 
 crested wren, Christian wren ; white-throat, Nanny white-throat ; 
 hedge-sparrow. Dicky Diky. I could find more if you cared for them. 
 To wind up, I will send you an anecdote I find among father's writ- 
 ings, and which refers to your country. He is speaking of some time 
 early in 1800. ' Cock-fighting was then in all its glory. When I was 
 in the neighbourhood of Ulverston, in 18 ,* I was told that about the 
 time of which I am writing, a grave ecclesiastical question had been 
 settled by an appeal to a battle with cocks. The chapelry of Penning- 
 ton was vacant, but there was a dispute who should present a clerk to 
 the vacant benefice, the vicar of Ulverston, the mother-church, the 
 churchwardens, the four-aud-twenty, or the parishioners at large, 
 and recourse was had to a Welch Main.' " 
 
 Finally, the following letter is worth preserving. It succinctly 
 states the impression on the minds of the majority of booksellers that 
 they ought to be able to oblige their customers at my expense. Per- 
 haps in time, the customers may oblige the booksellers by paying them 
 something for their trouble, openly, instead of insisting on not paying 
 them anything unless they don't know how much it is. 
 
 * He does not give the date.
 
 394 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 " MR. GEORGE ALLEN. 
 
 SIR, We will thank you to send us Ruskin's 
 
 Aratra Pentelici 19 
 
 The Eagle's Nest 9 6 
 
 Relations between Angela and Tintoret 10 
 
 196 
 
 And continue Account next year Fors Cla- 
 nigera 7 
 
 Cheque enclosed. 1 16 6 
 
 "It cannot be too frequently referred to by the trade, the unjusti- 
 fiable mode Ruskin has adopted in the sale of his books. It may be 
 profitable to you (as we hope it is), but to the general trade it is noth- 
 ing but a swindle. Our customer, for instance (whom we cannot afford 
 to disoblige), pays us for this order just 1 16s. Gd. ; and we must 
 come back on him for expense of remitting, else we shall lose by the 
 transaction. 
 
 11 Your obedient Servant."
 
 FORS CLAVIQERA. 395 
 
 LETTER LIH. 
 
 BKANTWOOD, Good Friday, 1875. 
 
 I AM ashamed to go on with my own history to-day ; for 
 though, as already seen, I was not wholly unacquainted with 
 the practice of fasting, at times of the year when it was not 
 customary with Papists, our Lent became to us a kind of 
 moonlight Christmas, and season of reflected and soft fes- 
 tivity. For our strictly Protestant habits of mind rendering 
 us independent of absolution, on Shrove Tuesday we were 
 chiefly occupied in the preparation of pancakes, my nurse 
 being dominant on that day over the cook in all things, her 
 especially nutritive art of browning, and fine legerdemain in 
 turning, pancakes, being recognized as inimitable. The 
 interest of Ash-Wednesday was mainly whether the bits of 
 egg should be large or small in the egg-sauce ; nor do I 
 recollect having any ideas connected with the day's name, 
 until I was puzzled by the French of it when I fell in love 
 with a Roman Catholic French girl, as hereafter to be re- 
 lated : only, by the way, let me note, as I chance now to 
 remember, two others of my main occupations of an exciting 
 character in Hunter Street : watching, namely, the dustmen 
 clear out the ash-hole, and the coalmen fill the coal-cellar 
 through the hole in the pavement, which soon became to me, 
 when surrounded by its cone of debris, a sublime representa- 
 tion of the crater of a volcanic mountain. Of these imagi- 
 native delights I have no room to speak in this Fors ; nor of 
 the debates which used to be held for the two or three days 
 preceding Good Friday, whether the hot-cross-buns should 
 be plain, or have carraway seeds in them. For, my nurse 
 not being here to provide any such dainties for me, and the 
 black-plague wind which has now darkened the spring for
 
 396 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 five years,* veiling all the hills with sullen cloud, I am 
 neither in a cheerful nor a religious state of mind ; and am 
 too much in the temper of the disciples who forsook Him, 
 and fled, to be able to do justice to the childish innocence of 
 belief, which, in my mother, was too constant to need resus- 
 citation, or take new colour, from fast or festival. 
 
 Yet it is only by her help, to-day, that I am able to do a 
 piece of work required of me by the letter printed in the 
 second article of this month's correspondence. It is from a 
 man of great worth, conscientiousness, and kindliness ; but 
 is yet so perfectly expressive of the irreverence, and inca- 
 pacity of admiration, which maintain and, in great part, 
 constitute, the modern liberal temper, that it makes me feel, 
 more than anything I ever yet met with in human words, how 
 much I owe to my mother for having so exercised me in the 
 Scriptures as to make me grasp them in what my correspond- 
 ent would call their ' concrete whole ' ; and above all, 
 taught me to reverence them, as transcending all thought, 
 and ordaining all conduct. 
 
 This she effected, not by her own sayings or personal 
 authority ; but simply by compelling me to read the book 
 thoroughly, for myself. As soon as I was able to read with 
 fluency, she began a course of Bible work with me, which 
 never ceased till I went to Oxford. She read alternate verses 
 with me, watching, at first, every intonation of my voice, 
 and correcting the false ones, till she made me understand 
 the verse, if within my reach, rightly, and energetically. It 
 might be beyond me altogether ; that she did not care about; 
 but she made sure that as soon as I got hold of it at all, I 
 should get hold of it by the right end. 
 
 In this way she began with the first verse of Genesis, and 
 went straight through to the last verse of the Apocalypse 5 
 hard names, numbers, Levitical law, and all ; and began again 
 at Genesis the next day ; if a name was hard, the better the 
 
 * See my first notice of it in the beginning of the Fors of August 
 1871 ; and further account of it in appendix to my Lecture on Glaciers, 
 given at the London Institution this year.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 397 
 
 exercise in pronunciation, if a chapter was tiresome, the 
 better lesson in patience, if loathsome, the better lesson in 
 faith that there was some use in its being so outspoken. 
 After our chapters, (from two to three a day, according to 
 their length, the first thing after breakfast, and no interrup- 
 tion from servants allowed, none from visitors, who either 
 joined in the reading or had to stay upstairs, and none 
 from any visitings or excursions, except real travelling), I 
 had to learn a few verses by heart, or repeat, to make sure I 
 had not lost, something of what was already known ; and, 
 with the chapters above enumerated, (Letter XLII.*), I had 
 to learn the whole body of the fine old Scottish paraphrases, 
 which are good, melodious, and forceful verse ; and to which, 
 together with the Bible itself, I owe the first cultivation of 
 my ear in sound. 
 
 It is strange that of all the pieces of the Bible which my 
 mother thus taught me, that which cost me most to learn, 
 and which was, to my child's mind, chiefly repulsive the 
 1.19th Psalm has now become of all the most precious to 
 me, in its overflowing and glorious passion of love for the 
 Law of God : " Oh, how love I Thy law ! it is my meditation 
 all the day ; I have refrained my feet from every evil way, 
 that I might keep Thy word"; as opposed to the ever- 
 echoing words of the modern money-loving fool : " Oh, how 
 hate I Thy law ! it is my abomination all the day ; my 
 feet are swift in running to mischief, and I have done 
 all the things I ought not to have done and left un- 
 done all I ought to have done ; have mercy upon me, 
 miserable sinner, and grant that I, worthily lamenting my 
 sins and acknowledging my wretchedness, may obtain of 
 Thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgive- 
 ness, and give me my long purse here and my eternal 
 Paradise there, all together, for Christ's sake, to whom, with 
 
 * Will the reader be kind enough, in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 lines of page 212. to put, with his pen, a semicolon after 'age,' a com- 
 ma after 'unclean', and a semicolon after 'use'? He will find the 
 sentence thus take a different meaning.
 
 398 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 Thee and the Holy Ghost, be all honour and glory," eto. 
 And the letter of my liberal correspondent, pointing out, in 
 the defence of usury (of which he imagines himself acquainted 
 with the history !) how the Son of David hit his father in the 
 exactly weak place, puts it in my mind at once to state some 
 principles respecting the use of the Bible as a code of law, 
 which are vital to the action of the St. George's Company 
 in obedience to it. 
 
 All the teaching of God, and of the nature He formed 
 round Man, is not only mysterious, but, if received with any 
 warp of mind, deceptive, and intentionally deceptive. The 
 distinct and repeated assertions of this in the conduct 
 and words of Christ are the most wonderful things, it seems 
 to me, and the most terrible, in all the recorded action of 
 the wisdom of Heaven. "To you," (His disciples) "it is 
 given to know the mysteries of the kingdom, but to others, 
 in parables, that, hearing, they might not understand." Now 
 this is written not for the twelve only, but for all disciples of 
 Christ in all ages, of whom the sign is one and unmistake- 
 able : "They have forsaken a^that they have " ; while those 
 who " say they are Jews and are not, but do lie," or who say 
 they are Christians and are not, but do lie, try to compromise 
 with Christ, to give Him a part, and keep back a part ; 
 this being the Lie of lies, the Ananias lie, visited always 
 with spiritual death.* 
 
 There is a curious chapter on almsgiving, by Miss Yonge, 
 in one of the late numbers of the Monthly Packet, (a good 
 magazine, though, on the whole, and full of nice writing), 
 which announces to her disciples, that " at least the tenth of 
 their income is God's part." Now, in the name of the Devil, 
 and of Baal to back him, are nine parts, then, of all we 
 have our own? or theirs? The tithe may, indeed, be set 
 aside for some special purpose for the maintenance of a 
 priesthood or as by the St. George's Company, for distant 
 labour, or any other purpose out of their own immediate 
 
 * Isaiah xxviii. 17 and 18.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 399 
 
 range of action. But to the Charity or Alms of men to 
 Love, and to the God of Love, all their substance is due 
 and all their strength and all their time. That is the first 
 commandment : Thou shalt love the Lord with all thy 
 strength and soul. Yea, says the false disciple but not 
 with all my money. And of these it is written, after that 
 thirty -third verse of Luke xiv. : " Salt is good ; but if the 
 salt have lost his savour, it is neither fit for the land nor the 
 dunghill. He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." 
 
 Now, in Holbein's great sermon against wealth, the en- 
 graving, in the Dance of Death, of the miser and beggar, 
 he chose for his text the verse : " He that stoppeth his ears 
 at the cry of the poor, he also shall cry himself, and shall not 
 be heard." And he shows that the ear is thus deafened by 
 being filled with a murmuring of its own : and how the ear 
 thus becomes only as a twisted shell, with the sound of the 
 far-away ocean of Hell in it for ever, he teaches us, in the 
 figure of the fiend which I engraved for you in the seventh 
 of these letters,* abortive, fingerless, contemptible, mechani- 
 cal, incapable ; blowing the winds of death out of its small 
 machine : Behold, this is your God, you modern Israel, 
 which has brought you up out of the land of Egypt in which 
 your fathers toiled for bread with their not abortive hands ; 
 and set your feet in the large room, of Usury, and in the 
 broad road to Death ! 
 
 Now the moment that the Mammon devil gets his bellows 
 put in men's ears however innocent they may be, however 
 free from actual stain of avarice, they become literally deaf 
 to the teaching of true and noble men. My correspondent 
 imagines himself to have read Shakespeare and Goethe ; 
 he cannot understand a sentence of them, or he would have 
 known the meaning of the Merchant of Venice,^ and of the 
 vision of Plutus, and speech of Mephistopheles on the Empe- 
 
 * The whole woodcut is given in facsimile in the fifth part of Ariadne 
 Florentine 
 
 f See Munera Pulveris, pp. 99 to 103 ; and Ariadne Florentine, Lect- 
 ure VI.
 
 400 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 ror's paper-money * in the second part of fhust, and of the 
 continual under-current of similar teaching in it, from its 
 opening in the mountain sunrise, presently commented on 
 by the Astrologer, under the prompting of Mephistopheles, 
 "the Sun itself is pure Gold," to the ditch-and-grave- 
 digging scene of its close. He cannot read Xenophon, nor 
 Lucian, nor Plato, nor Horace, nor Pope, nor Homer, nor 
 Chaucer nor Moses, nor David. All these are mere voices 
 of the Night to him ; the bought bellows-blower of the 
 Times is the only piper who is in tune to his ear. 
 
 And the woe of it is that all the curse comes on him 
 merely as one of the unhappy modern mob, infected by the 
 rest ; for he is himself thoroughly honest, simple-hearted, 
 and upright : only mischance made him take up literature as 
 a means of life ; and so brought him necessarily into all the 
 elements of modern insolent thought : and now, though 
 
 * "NARK. 
 Fiinftausend Kronen waren mir zu Handen. 
 
 MEPII. 
 Zweibeiniger SchlaucJi, bist wieder auf erstanden ? 
 
 NAim. 
 Da seht nur her, 1st das wohl Geldes werth ? 
 
 MEPH. 
 Du hast, dafiir was Schlund und Bauch begehrt. 
 
 NARK. 
 Und kauf en kann ich Acker, Haus, und Vieh ? 
 
 MEPII. 
 Versteht sich ! biete nur, das fehlt dir nie 1 
 
 NARR. 
 Und Schloss mit Wald und Jagd, und Fischbach ? 
 
 MEPII. 
 
 Traun ! 
 Ich mochte dich gestrengen Herru wohl schaun. 
 
 NARR. 
 Heute Abend wieg' ich mich im Grundbesitz. (ab.) 
 
 MEPII. (solus.) 
 Wer zweifelt noch an unfres Narren Witz ! "
 
 FOES CLAVIGERA. 401 
 
 David and Solomon, Noah, Daniel, and Job, altogether say 
 one thing, and the correspondent of the Times another, it is 
 David, Solomon, and Daniel who are Narrs to him. 
 
 Now the Parables of the New Testament are so constructed 
 that to men in this insolent temper, they are necessarily mis- 
 leading. It is very awful that it should be so ; but that is 
 the fact. Why prayer should be taught by the story of the 
 unjust judge ; use of present opportunity by that of the 
 unjust steward ; and use of the gifts of God by that of the 
 hard man who reaped where he had not sown, there is no 
 human creature wise enough to know ; but there are the 
 traps set ; and every slack judge, cheating servant, and 
 gnawing usurer may, if he will, approve himself in these. 
 
 "Thou knewest that I was a hard man." Yes and if 
 God were also a hard God, and reaped where He had not 
 sown the conclusion would be true that earthly usury 
 was right. But which of God's gifts to us are not His own ? 
 
 The meaning of the parable, heard with ears unbesotted, 
 is this : " You, among hard and unjust men, yet suffer 
 their claim to the return of what they never gave ; you suffer 
 them to reap where they have not strewed. But to me, 
 the Just Lord of your life whose is the breath in your nos- 
 trils, whose the fire in your blood, who gave you light 
 and thought, and the fruit of earth and the dew of 
 heaven, to me, of all this gift, will you return no fruit 
 but only the dust of your bodies, and the wreck of your 
 souls ? " 
 
 Nevertheless, the Parables have still their living use, as 
 well as their danger ; but the Psalter has become practically 
 dead ; and the form of repeating it in the daily service only 
 deadens the phrases of it by familiarity. I have occasion to- 
 day, before going on with any work for Agnes, to dwell on 
 another piece of this writing of the father of Christ, which, 
 read in its full meaning, will be as new to us as the first- 
 heard song of a foreign land. 
 
 I will print it first in the Latin, and in the letters and form 
 in which it was read by our Christian sires. 
 VOL. II. 26
 
 402 FOBS GLAVIGERA. 
 
 THE EIGHTH PSALM. THIRTEENTH CENTURY TEXT.* 
 
 tommras Matin qm 
 shttirsbile .est nomm tmm 
 in iwti&ma ten*. Qiumx&m tit 
 frata *st ntapifittttlia tua sug^r 
 rclos. * xrw infaniium t larttw 
 riutn pfcrisii hx&tm yytti ini 
 mir0j$ tn08 ut bfsfnras inimiriif 
 i Mltffm, %tjcrm!im bibtbo ttlo$ 
 tu0s xrfrtra Mflttar. t0r, lunam J 
 tint in fun&asti Quibr ^st F 
 m^racr fs r|us, au iilius bow 
 X{ia frisitas jtm. ^jtinuist 
 pI0mtnu ab angflis, gI0ria t 
 rarmwsii tmn i 3jstitrii 
 
 mauuum hiar, miac. 
 jfrisii sub jrrbilis fjus, 06^3 f &0 
 Ires imi&sas, insnpcr t yuan, ram 
 ji. 00Turrca ttli I pisrw niaris ij[ 
 pawbnlant smtitas maris. 0mi 
 )W ir0miitus n0st^r quam ,B0ini 
 raiiU rsl n0m.cu tmuu in uniusa 
 terra, 
 
 * I have written it out from a perfect English psalter of early thir- 
 teenth-century work, with St. Edward, St. Edmund, and St. Cuthbert 
 in its calendar ; it probably having belonged to the cathedral of York. 
 The writing is very full, but quick ; meant for service more than 
 beauty ; illuminated sparingly, but with extreme care. Its contractions 
 are curiously varied and capricious : thus, here in the fifth verse, c in 
 constituisti stands for ' con ' merely by being turned the wrong way. I 
 prefer its text, nevertheless, to that of more elaborate MSS. , for when 
 very great attention is paid to the writing, there are apt to be mistakes 
 in the words In the best thirteenth-century service-book I have, 
 ' tuos ' in the third verse is written ' meos.'
 
 FORS CLAVIGEBA. 403 
 
 I translate literally ; the Septuagint confirming the Vul- 
 gate in the differences from our common rendering, several 
 of which are important. 
 
 " 1. Oh Lord, our own Lord, how admirable is thy Name 
 in all the earth ! 
 
 2. Because thy magnificence is set above the heavens. 
 
 3. Out of the mouth of children and sucklings thou hast 
 
 perfected praise, because of thine enemies, that thou 
 mightest scatter the enemy and avenger. 
 
 4. Since I see thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the 
 
 moon and the stars which thou hast founded, 
 
 5. What is man that thou rememberest him, or the son of 
 
 man, that thou lookest on him ? 
 
 6. Thou hast lessened him a little from the angels ; thou 
 
 hast crowned him with glory and honour, and hast set 
 him over all the works of thy hands. 
 
 7. Thou hast put all things under his feet ; sheep, and all 
 
 oxen and the flocks of the plain. 
 
 8. The birds of the heaven and the fish of the sea, and all 
 
 that walk in the paths of the sea. 
 
 9. Oh Lord, our own Lord, how admirable is thy Name in 
 
 all the earth ! " 
 
 Note in Verses 1 and 9. Domine, Dominus noster ; our 
 own Lord ; Kupic, 6 Kupios ^/AUJV ; claiming thus the Father- 
 hood. The ' Lord our Governour ' of the Prayer Book en- 
 tirely loses the meaning. How admirable is Thy Name ! 
 6avfj.aa-Tov, ' wonderful,' as in Isaiah, " His name shall be 
 called Wonderful, the Counsellor." Again our translation 
 ' excellent ' loses the meaning. 
 
 Verse 2. Thy magnificence. Literally, ' thy greatness in 
 working ' (Gk. /xeyaXoTrpeVtia splendour in aspect), distin- 
 guished from mere ' glory ' or greatness in fame.
 
 404 FORS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 Verse 3. Sidney has it : 
 
 " From sucklings hath thy honour sprung, 
 Thy force hath flowed from babies' tongue." 
 
 The meaning of this difficult verse is given by implication in 
 Matt. xxi. 16. And again, that verse, like all the other great 
 teachings of Christ, is open to a terrific misinterpretation ; 
 namely, the popular evangelical one, that children should be 
 teachers and preachers, (" cheering mother, cheering father, 
 from the Bible true "). The lovely meaning of the words of 
 Christ, which this vile error hides, is that children, remaining 
 children, and uttering, out of their own hearts, such things 
 as their Maker puts there, are pure in sight, and perfect in 
 praise.* 
 
 Verse 4. The moon and the stars which thou hast founded 
 ' fundasti ' e$e/AeA.uoo-as. It is much more than 'ordained' ; 
 the idea of stable placing in space being the main one in 
 David's mind. And it remains to this day the wonder of 
 wonders in all wise men's minds. The earth swings round 
 the sun, yes, but what holds the sun ? The sun swings 
 round something else. Be it so, then, what else ? 
 
 Sidney : 
 
 " When I upon the heavens do look, 
 Which all from thee their essence took, 
 When moon and stars my thought beholdeth, 
 Whose life no life but of thee holdeth." 
 
 Verse 5. That thou lookest on him ; eTrto-KeVr^ avrov, ' art 
 a bishop to him.' The Greek word is the same in the verse 
 "I was sick and ye visited me. " 
 
 Verse 6. Thou hast lessened him ; perhaps better, thou 
 hast made him but by a little, less, than the angels ; ^A.ar- 
 Tojo-as avrov /Spa^u rt. The inferiority is not of present posi- 
 tion merely, but of scale in being. 
 
 Verse 7. Sheep, and all oxen, and the flocks of the plain: 
 TOV TreoYou. Beasts for service in the plain, traversing 
 
 * Compare the Crown of Wild Olive, p. 57 ; and put in the fifth line 
 of that page, a comma after ' heaven,' and in the eighth line a semico- 
 lon after ' blessing.'
 
 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 405 
 
 great spaces, camel and horse. ' Pecora,' in Vulgate, in- 
 cludes all ' pecunia,' or property in animals. 
 
 Verse 8. In the Greek, " that walk the paths of the seas " 
 is only an added description of fish, but the meaning of it is 
 without doubt to give an expanded sense a generalization 
 of fish, so as to include the whale, seal, tortoise, and their 
 like. Neither whales nor seals, however, from what I hear of 
 modern fishing, are likely to walk the paths of the sea much 
 longer ; and Sidney's verse becomes mere satire : 
 
 " The bird, free burgesse of the aire, 
 The fish, of sea the native heire, 
 And what things els of waters traceth 
 The unworn pathes, his rule embraceth. 
 Oh Lord, that rul'st our mortal lyne, 
 How through the world thy name doth shine ! " 
 
 These being, as far as I can trace them, the literal meanings 
 of each verse, the entire purport of the psalm is that the 
 Name, or knowledge of God was admirable to David, and the 
 power and kingship of God recognizable to him, through 
 the power and kingship of man, His vicegerent on the earth, 
 as the angels are in heavenly places. And that final purport 
 of the psalm is evermore infallibly true, namely, that when 
 men rule the earth rightly, and feel the power of their own 
 souls over it, and its creatures, as a beneficent and authorita- 
 tive one, they recognize the power of higher spirits also ; 
 and the Name of God becomes ' hallowed ' to them, admi- 
 rable and wonderful ; but if they abuse the earth and its 
 creatures, and become mere contentious brutes upon it, in- 
 stead of order-commanding kings, the Name of God ceases 
 to be admirable to them, and His power to be felt ; and 
 gradually, license and ignorance prevailing together, even 
 what memories of law or Deity remain to them become in- 
 tolerable ; and in the exact contrary to David's " My soul 
 thirsteth for God, for the Living God ; when shall I come 
 and appear before God ? " you have the consummated desire 
 and conclusive utterance of the modern republican : 
 
 " S'il y avait un Dieu, i) faudrait le fusilier."
 
 406 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 
 
 Now, whatever chemical or anatomical facts may appear to 
 our present scientific intelligences, inconsistent with the Life 
 of God, the historical fact is that no happiness nor power has 
 ever been attained by human creatures unless in that thirst 
 for the presence of a Divine King ; and that nothing but 
 weakness, misery, and death have ever resulted from the de- 
 sire to destroy their King, and to have thieves and murderers 
 released to them instead. Also this fact is historically cer- 
 tain, that the Life of God is not to be discovered by reason' 
 ing, but by obeying ; that on doing what is plainly ordered, 
 the wisdom and presence of the Orderer become manifest ; 
 that only so His way can be known on earth, and His saving 
 health among all nations ; and that on disobedience always 
 follows darkness, the forerunner of death. 
 
 And now for corollary on the eighth Psalm, read the first 
 and second of Hebrews, and to the twelfth verse of the third, 
 slowly; fitting the verse of the psalm " lunam et Stellas 
 quas tu fundasti," with "Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast 
 laid the foundations of the earth " ; and then noting how the 
 subjection which is merely of the lower creatures, in the 
 psalm, becomes the subjection of all things, and at last of 
 death itself, in the victory foretold to those who are faithful 
 to their Captain, made perfect through sufferings ; their Faith, 
 observe, consisting primarily in closer and more constant obe- 
 dience than the Mosaic law required, " For if the word 
 spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and 
 disobedience received its just recompence of reward, how shall 
 we escape, if we neglect so great salvation ! " The full argu- 
 ment is : "Moses, with but a little salvation, saved you from 
 earthly bondage, and brought you to an earthly land of life ; 
 Christ, with a great salvation, saves you from soul bondage, 
 and brino-s vou to an eternal land of life ; but, if he who de- 
 
 ~ / * 
 
 spised the little salvation, and its lax law, (left lax because of 
 the hardness of your hearts), died without mercy, how shall 
 we escape, if now, with hearts of flesh, we despise so great 
 salvation, refuse the Eternal Land of Promise, and break the 
 stricter and relaxless law of Christian desert-pilgrimage ? " 
 And if these threatenings and promises still remain obscure
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 407 
 
 to us, it is only because we have resolutely refused to obey 
 the orders which were not obscure, and quenched the Spirit 
 which was already given. How far the world around us 
 may be yet beyond our control, only because a curse has 
 been brought upon it by our sloth and infidelity, none of us 
 can tell ; still less may we dare either to praise or accuse our 
 Master, for the state of the creation over which He appointed 
 us kings, and in which we have chosen to live as swine. One 
 thing we know, or may know, if we will, that the heart 
 and conscience of man are divine ; that in his perception of 
 evil, in his recognition of good, he is himself a God manifest 
 in the flesh ; that his joy in love, his agony in anger, his 
 indignation at injustice, his glory in self-sacrifice, are all 
 eternal, indisputable proofs of his unity with a great Spiritual 
 Head ; that in these, and not merely in his more availing 
 form, or manifold instinct, he is king over the lower animate 
 world ; that, so far as he denies or forfeits these, he dis- 
 honours the Name of his Father, and makes it unholy and un- 
 admirable in the earth ; that so far as he confesses, and rules 
 by, these, he hallows and makes admirable the Name of his 
 Father, and receives, in his sonship, fulness of power with 
 Him, whose are the kingdom, the power, and the glory, 
 world without end. 
 
 And now we may go back to our bees' nests, and to our 
 school-benches, in peace ; able to assure our little Agnes, 
 and the like of her, that, whatever hornets and locusts and 
 serpents may have been made for, this at least is true, that 
 we may set, and are commanded to set, an eternal difference 
 between ourselves and them, by neither carrying daggers at 
 our sides, nor poison in our mouths : and that the choice for 
 us is stern, between being kings over all these creatures, by 
 innocence to which they cannot be exalted, or more weak, 
 miserable and detestable than they, in resolute guilt to which 
 they cannot fall. 
 
 Of their instincts, I believe we have rather held too high 
 than too low estimate, because we have not enough re- 
 cognized or respected our own. We do not differ from the 
 lower creatures by not possessing instinct, but by possessing
 
 408 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 
 
 will and conscience, to order our innate impulses to the best 
 ends. 
 
 The great lines of Pope on this matter, however often 
 quoted fragmentarily, are I think scarcely ever understood 
 in their conclusion.* Let us, for once, read them to their 
 end : 
 
 " See him, from Nature, rising slow to Art, 
 To copy instinct then was reason's part. 
 Thus then to man the voice of Nature spake : 
 Go, from the creatures thy instructions take, 
 Learn from the birds what food the thickets yield, 
 Learn from the beasts the physic of the field, 
 Thy arts of building from the bee receive, 
 Learn of the mole to plough, the worm to weave. 
 Here too all forms of social union find, 
 And hence let reason, late, instruct mankind. 
 Here subterranean works and cities see, 
 There, towns aerial on the waving tree ; 
 Learn each small people's genius, policies, 
 The ants' republic, and the realm of bees : 
 How those in common all their wealth bestow, 
 And anarchy without confusion know ; 
 And these for ever, though a monarch reign, 
 Their separate cells and properties maintain. 
 Mark what unvaried laws preserve each state 
 Laws wise as nature, and as fixed as fate ; 
 In vain thy reason finer webs shall draw, 
 Entangle justice in her net of law, 
 And right, too rigid, harden into wrong 
 Still for the strong too weak, the weak, too strong. 
 Yet go, and thus o'er all the creatures sway, 
 Thus let the wiser make the rest obey, 
 And for those arts mere instinct could afford 
 Be crowned as monarchs, or as gods ador' d. " 
 
 There is a trace, in this last couplet, of the irony, 
 and chastising enforcement of humiliation, which generally 
 characterize the Essay on Man ; but, though it takes this 
 colour, the command thus supposed to be uttered by the 
 
 * I am sensitive for other writers in this point, my own readers being 
 in the almost universal practice of choosing any bit they may happen to 
 fancy in what I say, without ever considering what it was said for.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 409 
 
 voice of Nature, is intended to be wholly earnest. "In the 
 arts of which I set you example in the unassisted instinct of 
 lower animals, I assist you by the added gifts of will and 
 reason : be therefore, knowingly, in the deeds of Justice, 
 kings under the Lord of Justice, while in the works of your 
 hands, you remain happy labourers under his guidance 
 
 Who taught the nations of the field and wood 
 To shun their poison, and to choose their food, 
 Prescient, the tides or tempests to withstand, 
 Build on the wave, or arch beneath the sand." 
 
 Nor has ever any great work been accomplished by human 
 creatures, in which instinct was not the principal mental 
 agent, or in which the methods of design could be defined by 
 rule, or apprehended by reason. It is therefore that agency 
 through mechanism destroys the powers of art, and senti- 
 ments of religion, together. 
 
 And it will be found ultimately by all nations, as it was 
 found long ago by those who have been leaders in human 
 force and intellect, that the initial virtue of the race consists 
 in the acknowledgment of their own lowly nature, and sub- 
 mission to the laws of higher being. " Dust thou art, and 
 unto dust shalt thou return," is the first truth we have to 
 learn of ourselves ; and to till the earth out of which we were 
 taken, our first duty : in that labour, and in the relations 
 which it establishes between us and the lower animals, are 
 founded the conditions of our highest faculties and felicities : 
 and without that labour, neither reason, art, nor peace, are 
 possible to man. 
 
 But in that labour, accepting bodily death, appointed to us 
 in common with the lower creatures, in noble humility ; and 
 kindling day by day the spiritual life, granted to us beyond 
 that of the lower creatures, in noble pride, all wisdom, peace, 
 and unselfish hope and love, may be reached, on earth, as in 
 heaven, and our lives indeed be but a little lessened from 
 those of the angels. 
 
 As I am finishing this Fors, I note in the journals accounts 
 of new insect-plague on the vine ; and the sunshine on my
 
 410 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 own hills this morning (7th April), still impure, is yet the 
 first which I have seen spread from the daybreak upon them 
 through all the spring ; so dark it has been with blight of 
 storm, so redolent of disease and distress ; of which, and 
 its possible causes, my friends seek as the only wise judg- 
 ment, that of the journals aforesaid. Here, on the other 
 hand, are a few verses * of the traditional wisdom of that 
 king whose political institutions were so total a failure, (ac- 
 cording to my supremely sagacious correspondent), which 
 nevertheless appear to me to reach the roots of these, and 
 of many other hitherto hidden things. 
 
 " His heart is ashes, his hope is more vile than earth, and 
 his life of less value than clay. 
 
 Forasmuch as he knew not his Maker, and him that in- 
 spired into him an active soul, and breathed in him a living 
 spirit. 
 
 But they counted our life a pastime, and our time here a 
 market for gain ; for, say they, we must be getting every 
 way, though it be by evil means.f Yea, they worshipped 
 those beasts also that are most hateful ; (for being compared 
 together, some are worse than others,J neither are they 
 beautiful in respect of beasts,) but they went without the 
 praise of God, and his blessing. 
 
 Therefore by the like were they punished worthily, and by 
 the multitude of beasts tormented. 
 
 And in this thou madest thine enemies confess, that it is 
 thou who deliverest them from all evil. 
 
 But thy sons not the very teeth of venomous dragons over- 
 came : for thy mercy was ever by them, and healed them. 
 
 * Collated out of Sapientia xv. and xvi. 
 
 f Compare Jeremiah ix. 6 ; in the Septuagint, V&KOS ivl r6itcf^ ttal S6\os 
 tnl S6\cp : " usury on usury, and trick upon trick." 
 
 ^ The instinct for the study of parasites, modes of disease, the lowei 
 forms of undeveloped creatures, and the instinctive processes of diges- 
 tion and generation, rather than the varied and noble habit of life, 
 which shows itself so grotesquely in modern science, is the precise 
 counterpart of the forms of idolatry (as of beetle and serpent, rather 
 than of clean or innocent creatures,) which were in great part the 
 cause of final corruption in ancient mythology and morals.
 
 FOBS CLAVIOERA. 411 
 
 For them hast power of life and death : thou leadest to the 
 gates of hell, and bringest up again. 
 
 For the ungodly, that denied to know thee, were scourged 
 by the strength of thine arm : with strange rains, hails, and 
 showers, were they persecuted, that they could not avoid, 
 for through fire were they consumed. 
 
 Instead whereof thou feddest thine own people with angels' 
 food, and didst send them, from heaven, bread prepared with- 
 out their labour, able to content every man's delight, and 
 agreeing to every taste. 
 
 For thy sustenance declared thy sweetness unto thy chil- 
 dren, and serving to the appetite of the eater, tempered it- 
 self to every man's liking. 
 
 For the creature that serveth thee, who art the Maker, 
 increaseth his strength against the unrighteous for their 
 punishment, and abateth his strength for the benefit of such 
 as put their trust in thee. 
 
 Therefore even then was it altered into all fashions, and 
 was obedient to thy grace, that nourisheth all things, ac- 
 cording to the desire of them that had need : 
 
 That thy children, O Lord, whom thou lovest, might know 
 that it is not the growing of fruits that nourisheth man : 
 but that it is thy word, which preserveth them that'put their 
 trust in thee. 
 
 For that which was not destroyed of the fire, being warmed 
 with a little sunbeam, soon melted away. 
 
 That it might be known, that we must prevent the sun 
 to give thee thanks, and at the dayspring pray unto thee."
 
 4:12 FOR8 OLAVIGERA. 
 
 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 " THE PARSONAGE, WERRINGTON, PETERBOROUGH, April 7, 1875. 
 
 MY DEAR SIR, Your lady correspondent brings out in her own ex- 
 perience that sound Christian truth, of which the condemnable doc- 
 trines of ' substitution ' and ' vicarious righteousness ' are but the 
 perversions. Her experience shows how true it is that one man may so 
 live and suffer that others shall be morally the better for his life and 
 suffering. 
 
 Such a man' s righteousness is ' imputed ' because really imparted * 
 to those who have faith in him. 
 
 Of Felix Neff I know less than I ought, but if his ministry tended to 
 bring more sweetness and light into your correspondent' s life, surely his 
 influence in her mind is moral and healthful. 
 
 " I am very faithfully yours, 
 
 " EDWARD Z. LYTTEL. 
 
 "JOHN RUSKIN, Esq." 
 
 I transgress the laws of courtesy, in printing, without asking the 
 writer's permission, part of a letter which follows : but my correspond- 
 ent is not, as far as I know him, a man who shrinks from publicity, or 
 who would write in a private letter anything on general subjects which 
 he would be unwilling openly to maintain ; while the letter itself is so 
 monumental as a type of the condition to which the modern average 
 literary mind has been reduced, in its reading of authoritative classical 
 authors, and touches so precisely on points which it happens to be my 
 immediate business to set at rest in the minds of many of my readers, 
 that I cannot but attribute to the third Fors the direct inspiration of 
 the epistle and must leave on her hands what blame may be attached 
 to its publication. I had been expressing some surprise to my corre- 
 spondent (an acquaintance of long standing) at his usually bright and 
 complacent temper ; and making some enquiry about his views re- 
 specting modern usury, knowing him to have read, at least for literary 
 purposes, large portions of the Old Testament. He replies, 
 
 " I am sure I would not be wiser if I were ' more uncomfortable' in 
 my mind ; I am perfectly sure, if I can ever do good to any mortal, it 
 will be by calm working, patient thinking, not by running, or raging, 
 or weeping, or wailing. But for this humour, which I fancy I caught 
 
 * If my good correspondent will try practically the difference in the effect on the 
 minds of the next two beggars he meets, between imputing a penny to the one, and im- 
 parting it to the other, he will receive a profitable lesson both in religion and English. 
 
 Of Felix NefFs influence, past and present, I will take other occasion to speak.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 413 
 
 from Shakespeare and Goethe, the sorrow of the world would drive 
 me mad. 
 
 ' ' You ask what I think ' the Psalmist ' means by ' usury. ' I find 
 from Cruden that usury is mentioned only in the fifteenth Psalm. 
 That is a notable and most beautiful lyric ; quite sufficient to demon- 
 strate the superiority, in spirituality and morality, of the Hebrew 
 religion to anything Greek. But the bit about usury is pure nonsense 
 the only bit of nonsense in the piece. Nonsense, because the singer 
 has no notion whatever of the employment of money for the common 
 benefit of lender and borrower. As the Hebrew monarchy was politi- 
 cally a total and disastrous failure, I should not expect any opinion 
 worth listening to from a psalmist, touching directly or indirectly on 
 the organisation of industry. Jesus Christ and Matthew the publican 
 lived in a time of extended intercourse and some commerce ; accord- 
 ingly, in Matthew xxv. , verse 27, you have a perfect statement of the 
 truth about usury: ' Thou oughtest to have put my money to the ex- 
 changers, and at my coming I should have received mine own with usury.' 
 Ricardo with all Lombard Street to help him, could not improve upon 
 that. A legitimate, useful, profitable use of money is to accommodate 
 strangers who come with money that will not circulate in the country. 
 The exchanger gives them current money ; they pay a consideration 
 for the convenience ; and out of this comes the legitimate profit to be 
 divided between lender and borrower. The rule which applies to one 
 fruitful use of money will apply to a thousand, and, between wise 
 lending and honest borrowing, swamp and forest become field and 
 garden, and mountains wave with corn. Some professor or other had 
 written what seemed outrageous rubbish ; you confuted or thrust 
 aside, in an early Fors, that rubbish ; but against legitimate interest, 
 usury, call it what you like, I have never heard any argument. Mr. 
 Sillar's tracts I have never seen, he does not advertise, and I have 
 not the second sight. 
 
 ' My view of the grievous abuses in the publishing and bookselling 
 trades has not altered. But, since writing you first on the subject, I 
 have had careful conversations with publishers, and have constantly 
 pondered the matter ; and though I do not see my way to any com- 
 plete reform, I cannot entertain hope from your methods. 
 
 " I am tired, being still very weak. It would only bother you if I 
 went on. Nothing you have ever written has, I think, enabled me to 
 get so near comprehending you as your picture of yourself learning to 
 read and write in last Fors. You can see an individual concrete fact 
 better than any man of the generation ; but an invisible fact, an ab- 
 straction, an average, you have, I fancy, been as incapable of seeing as 
 of seeing through a stone wall. Political Economy is the science of 
 social averages. 
 
 " Ever affectionately and faithfully yours. 
 
 "P. S. (Sunday morning). Some fancy has been haunting me in 
 the night of its being presumptuous, or your thinking it presumptii- 
 ous, in me to say that David, or whoever wrote the fifteenth Psalm, 
 spoke, on the subject of interest, pure nonsense. After carefully going 
 over the matter again, I believe that I am accurately correct. Not 
 knowing what lending and borrowing, as a normal industrial transac- 
 tion, or trading transaction, was, the Psalmist spoke in vague ethical
 
 414 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 terms, meaning ' you should be friendly to your neighbour ' ; just as a 
 lady economist of to-day might shriek against the pawn-shop, which, 
 with all its defects, had, in capacity of Poor Man's Bank, saved many 
 a child, or woman, or man, from sheer starvation. Not understanding 
 the matter, the Psalmist could not distinguish between use and abuse, 
 and so talked nonsense. It is exquisitely interesting to me to observe 
 that Christ hits the Psalmist exactly on the point where he goes 
 wrong. Tb apyvptov avrov OVK ttiwKev tiri r6if>, says the Psalmist ; Hovrjpe 
 Sav\e .... fStt (re o&v I3a\eiv rb apyvpi6v yitou TO?S T^aire^iTais, Kal 
 t\dhv iyw eKo/j.i<ra.nrii> &i/ rb tybv aw r6Ky, says Christ. The use of the 
 same word in the Septuagint (the only Old Testament circulating in 
 Palestine in Christ's time) and in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, to 
 denote in the one case what no good man would take, in the other, 
 what it was a flagrant dereliction of duty not to secure, is most pre- 
 cious as illustrating the simple common sense with which Christ used 
 the old Scriptures, and the infinite falsity of the modern doctrine of 
 infallibility, whether of church, book, or man. One of those tran- 
 scendencies of Tightness which I find in Fors (amid things about Mar- 
 montel and Drury Lane, and Darwin and Huxley, worthy only of a 
 Psalmist or pretty economist of fifteen) was your idea of policemen- 
 bishops. I always agree also with what you say about the entirely ob- 
 solete and useless bishops at 5000 a-year But what I 
 
 was going to say is, that you ought to ask your bishop, or the whole 
 bench of them, to find a place, in their cart-loads of sermons, for one 
 on ' usury,' * as condemned by the Psalmist and enjoined by Christ. 
 Compare Luke xix., ver. 23. The only sound basis of banking is the 
 fruitful, industrial use of money. I by no means maintain that the 
 present banking system of Europe is safe and sound." 
 
 I submitted the proof of this Fors to my correspondent, and think 
 it due to him and to my readers to print, with the above letter, 
 also the following portions of that which he sent in gentle reply. So 
 far as I have misconceived or misrepresented him, he knows me to be 
 sorry. For the rest, our misconceptions of each other are of no moment : 
 the misconception, by either, of the nature of profit by the loan of 
 money, or tools, is of moment to every one over whom we have in- 
 fluence ; we neither of us have any business to be wrong in that matter ; 
 and there are few on which it is more immediately every man's business 
 to be right. 
 
 "Remonstrance were absurd, where misconception is so total as 
 yours. My infidelity is simply that I worship Christ, thanking every 
 one who gives me any glimpse that enables me to get nearer Christ s 
 meaning. Jn this light, what you say of a hidden sense or drift 
 in the parables interests me profoundly ; but the more I think of 
 the question of interest, the more I feel persuaded that Christ distin- 
 guished the use from the abuse. Tradition, almost certainly authentic, 
 imputes to Him the saying yivtaBe rpairf&rai SOKI/JLOI (see M. Arnold's 
 article in March Contemporary), and I don't see how there can be 
 honourable bankers, men living honourably by banking, if all taking 
 
 * See the note at p. 417.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 415 
 
 of interest is wrong. You speak of my ' supreme confidence ' in my own 
 opinions. I absolutely have confidence only in the resolution to keep 
 my eyes open for light and, if I can help it, not to be to-day exactly 
 where I was yesterday. 1 have not only read, but lived in, (as a very 
 atmosphere) the works of men whom you say I went to because some- 
 body said it was fine to do so. They have taught me some compre- 
 hensiveness, some tolerance, some moderation in judging even the mob. 
 They have taught me to consume my own smoke, and it is this con- 
 sumption of my own smoke which you seem to have mistaken for con- 
 fidence in my opinions. Which prophet, from Moses to Carlyle, would 
 not you confess to have been sometimes in the wrong? I said that I 
 worship Christ. In Him I realize, so far as I can realize, God. There- 
 fore I speak not of Him. But the very key-stone of any arch of notions 
 in my mind is that inspiration is one of the mightiest and most blessed 
 of forces, one of the most real of facts, but that infallibility is the error 
 of errors. From no prophet, from no book, do I take what I please 
 and leave what I please ; but, applying all the lights I have, I learn 
 from each as wisely as, with my powers and my lights, is possible for me. 
 
 "Affectionately yours." 
 
 I have received, "with the respects of the author," a pamphlet on 
 the Crystal Palace; which tells me, in its first sentence, that the 
 Crystal Palace is a subject which every cultivated Englishman has at 
 heart ; in its second, that the Crystal Palace is a household word, and 
 is the loftiest moral triumph of the world ; and in its third, that the 
 Palace is declining, it is said, verging towards decay. I have not 
 heard anything for a long time which has more pleased me ; and beg 
 to assure the author of the pamphlet in question that I never get up at 
 Herne Hill after a windy night without looking anxiously towards Nor- 
 wood in the hope that ' the loftiest moral triumph of the world ' may 
 have been blown away. 
 
 I find the following lovely little scene translated into French from 
 the Dutch, (M. J. Rigeveld, Amsterdam, C. L. Brinkman, 1875,) in a 
 valuable little periodical for ladies, V Esperance, of Geneva, in which 
 the entirely good purpose of the editor will, I doubt not, do wide ser- 
 vice, in spite of her adoption of the popular error of the desirability of 
 feminine independence. 
 
 "A PKOPOS D'UNE PAIRE DE GANTS. 
 
 '"Qu'y a-t-il Elise?' dit Madame, en se tournant du cote d'une 
 fenetre ouverte, ou elle entend quelque bruit. ' Oh ! moins que rien, 
 maman ! ' repond sa fille ainee, en train de f aire la toilette des cadets, 
 pour la promenade et le concert. ' Ce que c'est, maman ? ' crie un des 
 petits gar^ons, ' c'est que Lolotte ne veut pas mettre des gants.' ' Elle 
 dit qu'elle a assez chaud sans cela, reprend un autre, et qu'elle ne 
 trouve pas meme joli d' avoir des gants.' Et chacun de rire. Un des 
 rapporteurs continue : ' Elise veut qu'elle le fasse par convenance ; mais 
 Lolotte pretend que la peau humaine est plus convenable qu'une peau 
 de rat.' Cette boutade excite de nouveau 1'hilarite de la compagnie.
 
 416 FORS CLAVIGERA, 
 
 ' Quelle idee, Lolotte,' dit son pore d'un ton enjoue : ' montre-toi 
 done ! ' 
 
 " Apparemment Lolotfce n'est pas d'humeur a obeir ; mais les ga^ons 
 ne lui laissent pas le choix et le poussent en avant. La voila done, notre 
 heroine. C'est une fillette d 'environ quatorze ans, dont les yeux petil- 
 lent d'esprit et de vie ; on voit qu'elle aitne a user largement de la lib- 
 erte que lui laisse encore son age, pour dire son opinion sur tout ce qui 
 lui passe par la tete sans consequence aucune. Mais bien qu'elle soib 
 forte dans son opinion anti-ganliere, lenfant est tant soit peu confuse, 
 et ne parait pas portee a defendre sa cause en presence d'un ctranger. 
 ' Quoi done,' lui dit son pore, en la prenant par la taille, ' tu ne veux 
 pas porter des gants, parce qu'ils sont f aits de peaux de rats ! Je ne te 
 croyais pas si folle. Le rat est mort et oublie depuis longtemps, et sa 
 peau est glacee.' ' Non, papa, ce n'est pas $a.' ' Qu'est-ce done, mon 
 enfant ? Tu est trop grande fille pour ces manieres sans facon. Ne 
 veux-tu pas etre une demoiselle comme il faut. ' ' Et ces petites mains 
 qui touchent si bien du piano,' reprend le visiteur, desireux de faire 
 oublier la g6ne que cause sa presence, par un mot gracieux. 'Ne 
 veux-tu pas plutot renoncer a la musique, et devenir sarcleuse '? ' lui 
 demande son pere. ' Non, papa, point du tout. Je ne puis pas dire au 
 juste ma pensee . . . .' Et elle se degagea doucement de ses bras ; et 
 en se sauvant, grommela : ' Mort aux gants, et vive la civilisation ! ' 
 On rit encore un peu de 1'enfant bizarre ; puis on parle d'autres choses, 
 et Ton se prepare pour la promenade. Lolotte a mis les gants en ques- 
 tion, ' pour plaire a maman,' et personne ne s en occupe plus. 
 
 " Mais 1'etranger avait saisi au passage sa derniere phrase, qui sans 
 cesse, lui revenait a 1'esprit. Se reprochait-il devant cette enfant 
 naive sa complicite a 1' interpretation futile que son note avait donnce 
 de fa civilisation ? Tant est, que pendant le cours de la soiree, se trou- 
 vant un moment en tcte-a-tcte avec Lolotte, il revint a 1'histoire des 
 gants. II tacha de reparer sa gaucherie et fit si bien, qu'il gagna la 
 confiance de la petite. ' Sans doute, j'en conviens, dit-il, il faut plus 
 pour ftre civilise que de porter des gants, mais il faut se soumettre a 
 certflines convenances que les gens comme il faut. ..." ' C'est 9a, 
 Monsieur, dit-elle, en lui coupant la parole, quelle est done la chance 
 des gens qui voudraient se civiliser, mais qui n'ont pas d argent pour 
 acheter des gants? ' C'etait-la sa peine. ' Chere enfant ! ' dit-il tout 
 bas. Et 1'homme, si eloquent d'ordinaire, pressa la petite main sous 
 le gant obligatoire, parce que pour le moment les paroles lui manqua 
 ient pour repondre. . . . Est-ce etonnant que, malgre lui, plus 
 tard en s' occupant de la question sociale, il pensa souvent a cette jeune 
 fille? 
 
 " Et vous, lecteurs, que pensez-vous d'elle et de sa question gan- 
 tiere ? Vous parait-elle un enf antillage, ou bien la considerez-vous tout 
 bonnement comme une exageration ? Vous attachez-vous a la surface, 
 on bien y cherchez-vous un sens plus profond, comme 1'ami visiteur ? 
 Ne croyez-vous pas aussi que dans ce temps de ' besoins multiplies,' un 
 des plus grands services que les classes superieures puissent rendre au 
 peuple, serait de faire distinction entre tous ces besoins et de precher 
 d'exemple ? " 
 
 This bit of letter must find room bearing as it does on last POTS' 
 subject:
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 417 
 
 " I was asking a girl this morning if she still took her long walks ; 
 and she said she was as fond of them as ever, but that they could only 
 walk in the town now the field or country walks were not safe for 
 ladies alone. Indeed, I fancy the girls lose all care for, or knowledge of 
 the spring or summer except as they bring new fashions into the shop 
 windows, not fresh flowers any more here into the fields. It is pitiable 
 
 to live in a place like this even worse than in . For here the 
 
 process of spoiling country is going on under one's eyes ; in it 
 
 was done long ago. And just now, when the feeling of spring is upon 
 one, it is hard to have the sky darkened, and the air poisoned. But I 
 am wasting time in useless grumbling. Only listen to this : after all 
 
 our sacrifices, and with all our money and civilization 1 can't tell 
 
 you now ; it must wait." [Very well; but don't keep it waiting longer 
 than you need.] 
 
 I have had some good help about bees' tongues from a young corre- 
 spondent at Merrow Grange, Guildford, and a very clear drawing, to 
 which the subjoined piece of his last letter refers ; but I must not lose 
 myself in microscopic questions just now : 
 
 " The author of The Microscope keeps to the old idea of bees sucking 
 honey and not * licking it up,' for he says, ' The proboscis, being cylin- 
 drical, extracts the juice of the flower in a somewhat similar way to 
 that of the butterfly.' And of the tongue he says, ' If a bee is atten- 
 tively observed as it settles upon a flower, the activity and promptitude 
 with which it uses the apparatus is truly surprising ; it lengthens the 
 tongue, "applies it to the bottom of the petals, then shortens it, bending 
 and turning it in all directions, for the purpose of exploring the interior 
 and removing the pollen, which it packs in the pockets in its hind legs, 
 (by, he supposes, the two shorter feelers,) and forms the chief food for 
 the working-bees.' He says that when the waxen walls of the cells are 
 completed they are strengthened by a varnish collected from the buds 
 of the poplar and other trees, which they smear over the cells by the 
 aid of the wonderful apparatus. That part of the proboscis that looks 
 something like a human head, he says, ' can be considerably enlarged 
 . . . and thus made to contain a larger quantity of the collected juice 
 of the flowers ; at the same time it is in this cavity that the nectar is 
 transformed into pure honey by some peculiar chemical process.' " 
 
 * Note on page 414. My correspondent need not be at a loss for 
 sermons on usury. When the Christian Church was living, there was 
 no lack of such. Here are two specimens of their tenor, furnished me 
 by one of Mr. Sillar's pamphlets : 
 
 EXTRACT FROM THE EXPOSITION UPON THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE 
 THESSALONIANS, CH. IV. VER. 6. BY BISHOP JEWELL. 
 
 " Usury is a kind of lending of money, or corn, or oil, or wine, or of 
 any other thing, wherein, upon covenant and bargain, we receive again 
 the whole principal which we delivered, and somewhat more for the use 
 and occupying of the same : as, if I lend one hundred pounds, and for 
 it covenant to receive one hundred and five pounds, or any other sum 
 greater than was the sum which I did lend. This is that that we call 
 
 VOL. II. 27
 
 418 FOBS OLAVIGERA. 
 
 usury ; such a kind of bargaining as no good man, or godly man, ever 
 used ; such a kind of bargaining as all men that ever feared God's 
 judgment have always abhorred and condemned. It is filthy gains, 
 and a work, of darkness : it is a monster in nature ; the overthrow of 
 mighty kingdoms; the destruction of flourishing states; the decay of 
 wealthy cities ; the plagues of the world, and the misery of the people. It 
 is theft ; it is the murdering of our brethren ; it is the curse of God, and 
 the curse of the people. This is usury : by these signs and tokens you 
 may know it : for wheresoever it reigneth, all those mischiefs ensue. 
 But how, and how many ways, it may be wrought, I will not declare : 
 it were horrible to hear; and I come now to reprove usury, and not to 
 teach it. 
 
 " Tell me, thou wretched wight of the world, thou unkind creature, 
 which art past all sense and feeling of God ; which knowest the will of 
 God, and doest the contrary : how darest thou come into the church ? 
 It is the church of that God which hath said, ' Thou shalt take no 
 usury ' ; and thou knowest He hath so said. How darest thou read 
 or hear the word of God ? It is the word of that God which con- 
 demneth usury ; and thou knowest He doth condemn it. How darest 
 thou come into the company of thy brethren? Usury is the plague, 
 and destruction, and undoing of thy brethren ; and this thou knowest. 
 How darest thou look upon thy children? thou makest the wrath of 
 God fall down from heaven upon them ; thy iniquity shall be punished 
 in them to the third and fourth generation : this thou knowest. How 
 darest thou look up into heaven ? thou hast no dwelling there ; thou 
 shalt have no place in the tabernacle of the Highest : this thou knowest. 
 Because thou robbest the poor, deceivest the simple, and eatest up the 
 widows' houses : therefore shall thy children be naked, and beg their 
 bread ; therefore shalt thou and thy riches perish together." 
 
 EXTRACT FROM THE FAREWELL SERMON PREACHED IN THE CHURCH 
 OP ST. MARY WOOLNOTH, LOMBARD STREET, BY THE REV. 
 DAVID JONES, WHEN THE PRESENT SYSTEM WAS IN ITS INFANCY. 
 
 "And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things, and they derided 
 him." LUKE xvi. 14. 
 
 "I do openly declare that every minister and every church- warden 
 throughout all England are actually perjured and foresworn by the 
 109th canon of our church, if they suffer any usurer to come to the 
 sacrament till he be reformed, and there is no reformation without 
 restitution. 
 
 ***** 
 
 ''And that you may know what usury is forbid by the word of God, 
 turn to Ezekiel xviii. 8, 13, and you will find that, whoever giveth upon 
 usury or taketh any increase, Mark it, he that taketh any increase 
 above the principal, not six in the hundred, but let it be never so 
 little, and never so moderate, he that taketh any increase, is a usurer, 
 and such a one as shall surely die for his usury, and his blood shall be 
 upon his own head. This is that word of God by which you shall all 
 be saved or damned at the last day, and all those trifling and shuffling 
 distinctions that covetous usurers ever invented shall never be able to 
 excuse your damnation. 
 
 " Heretofore all usurious clergymen were degraded from Holy Orders,
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 419 
 
 and all usurious laymen were excommunicated in their lifetime, and 
 hindered Christian burial after death, till their heirs had made restitu- 
 tion for all they had gotten by usury." 
 
 As this sheet is going to press I receive a very interesting letter from 
 *' a poor mother." That no wholesome occupation is at present offered 
 in England to youths of the temper she describes, is precisely the 
 calamity which urged my endeavour to found the St. George's Com- 
 pany. But if she will kindly tell me the boy's age, and whether the 
 want of perseverance she regrets in him has ever been tested by giving 
 him sufficient motive for consistent exertion, I will answer what I can, 
 in next Fora,
 
 420 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 LETTER LIV. 
 
 BEFORE going on "with my own story to-day, I must fasten 
 down a main principle about doing good work, not yet enough 
 made clear. 
 
 It has been a prevalent notion in the minds of well-disposed 
 persons, that if they acted according to their own conscience, 
 they must, therefore, be doing right. 
 
 But they assume, in feeling or asserting this, either that 
 there is no Law of God, or that it cannot be known ; but 
 only felt, or conjectured. 
 
 "I must do what I think right." How often is this sen- 
 tence uttered and acted on bravely nobly innocently ; 
 but always because of its egotism erringly. You must 
 not do what YOU think right, but, whether you or anybody 
 think, or don't think it, what is right. 
 
 " I must act according to the dictates of my conscience." 
 
 By no means, my conscientious friend, unless you are 
 quite sure that yours is not the conscience of an ass. 
 
 " I am doing my best what can man do more ? " 
 
 You might be doing much less, and yet much better : 
 perhaps you are doing your best in producing, or doing, an 
 eternally bad thing. 
 
 All these three sayings, and the convictions they express, 
 are wise only in the mouths and minds of wise men ; they 
 are deadly, and all the deadlier because bearing an image and 
 superscription of virtue, in the mouths and minds of fools. 
 
 " But there is every gradation, surely, between wisdom 
 and folly ? " 
 
 No. The fool, whatever his wit, is the man who doesn't 
 know his master who has said in his heart there is no 
 God no Law. 
 
 The wise man knows his master. Less or more wise, he 
 perceives lower or higher masters ; but always some creature
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 421 
 
 larger than himself some law holier than his own. A law 
 to be sought learned, loved obeyed ; but in order to its 
 discovery, the obedience must be begun first, to the best one 
 knows. Obey something; and you will have a chance some 
 day of finding out what is best to obey. But if you begin 
 by obeying nothing, you will end by obeying Beelzebub and 
 all his seven invited friends. 
 
 Which being premised, I venture to continue the history 
 of my own early submissions to external Force. 
 
 The Bible readings, described in my last letter, took place 
 always in the front parlour of the house, which, when I was 
 about five years old, my father found himself able to buy the 
 lease of, at Herne Hill. The piece of road between the Fox 
 tavern and the Herne Hill station, remains, in all essential 
 points of character, unchanged to this day : certain Gothic 
 splendours, lately indulged in by our wealthier neighbours, 
 being the only serious innovations ; and these are so gra- 
 ciously concealed by the fine trees of their grounds, that the 
 passing viator remains unappalled by them ; and I can still 
 walk up and down the piece of road aforesaid, imagining 
 myself seven years old. 
 
 Our house was the fourth part of a group which stand 
 accurately on the top or dome of the hill, where the ground 
 is for a small space level, as the snows are (I understand) on 
 the dome of Mont Blanc ; presently falling, however, in what 
 may be, in the London clay formation, considered a precipi- 
 tous slope, to our valley of Chamouni (or of Dulwich) on the 
 east ; and with a softer descent into Cold Arbour, (nautically 
 aspirated into Harbour)-lane on the west : on the south, no 
 less beautifully declining to the dale of the Effra, (doubtless 
 shortened from Effrena, signifying the " Unbridled " river ; 
 recently, I regret to say, bricked over for the convenience 
 of Mr. Biffin, the chemist, and others), while on the north, 
 prolonged indeed with slight depression some half mile or 
 so, and receiving, in the parish of Lambeth, the chivalric 
 title of ' Champion Hill,' it plunges down at last to efface 
 itself in the plains of Peckham, and the rustic solitudes of 
 Goose Green.
 
 422 FOBS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 The group, of which our house was the quarter, consisted 
 of two precisely similar partner-couples of houses, gardens 
 and all to match ; still the two highest blocks of building 
 seen from Norwood on the crest of the ridge ; which, even 
 within the time I remember, rose with no stinted beauty of 
 wood and lawn above the Dulwich fields. 
 
 The house itself, three-storied, with garrets above, com- 
 manded, in those comparatively smokeless days, a very 
 notable view from its upper windows, of the Norwood hills 
 on one side, and the winter sunrise over them ; and of the 
 valley of the Thames, with Windsor in the distance, on the 
 other, and the summer sunset over these. It had front and 
 back garden in sufficient proportion to its size ; the front, 
 richly set with old evergreens, and well grown lilac and 
 laburnum ; the back, seventy yards long by twenty wide, 
 renowned over all the hill for its pears and apples, which had 
 been chosen with extreme care by our predecessor, (shame 
 on me to forget the name of a man to whom I owe so much !) 
 and possessing also a strong old mulberry tree, a tall 
 white-heart cherry tree, a black Kentish one, and an almost 
 unbroken hedge, all round, of alternate gooseberry and cur- 
 rant bush ; decked, in due season, (for the ground was wholly 
 beneficent,) with magical splendour of abundant fruit : fresh 
 green, soft amber, and rough-bristled crimson bending the 
 spinous branches ; clustered pearl and pendant ruby joyfully 
 discoverable under the large leaves that looked like vine. 
 
 The differences of primal importance which I observed be- 
 tween the nature of this garden, and that of Eden, as I had 
 imagined it, were, that, in this one, all the fruit was for- 
 bidden ; and there were no companionable beasts : in other 
 respects the little domain answered every purpose of Para- 
 dise to me ; and the climate, in that cycle of our years, al- 
 lowed me to pass most of my life in it. My mother never 
 gave me more to learn than she knew I could easily get 
 learnt, if I set myself honestly to work, by twelve o'clock. 
 She never allowed anything to disturb me when my task 
 was set ; if it was not said rightly by twelve o'clock, I was 
 kept in till I knew it, and in general, even when Latin
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 423 
 
 Grammar came to supplement the Psalms, I was my own 
 master for at least an hour before dinner at half-past one, 
 and for the rest of the afternoon. My mother, herself find- 
 ing her chief personal pleasure in her flowers, was often 
 planting or pruning beside me, at least if I chose to stay 
 beside her. I never thought of doing anything behind her 
 back which I would not have done before her face ; and her 
 presence was therefore no restraint to me ; but, also, no par- 
 ticular pleasure ; for, from having always been left so much 
 alone, I had generally my own little affairs to see after ; and 
 on the whole, by the time I was seven years old, was already 
 getting too independent, mentally, even of my father and 
 mother ; and having nobody else to be dependent upon, be- 
 gan to lead a very small, perky, contented, conceited, Cock- 
 Robinson-Crusoe sort of life, in the central point which it 
 appeared to me, (as it must naturally appear to geometrical 
 animals) that I occupied in the universe. 
 
 This was partly the fault of my father's modesty ; and 
 partly of his pride. He had so much more confidence in my 
 mother's judgment as to such matters than in his own, that 
 he never ventured even to help, much less to cross her, in the 
 conduct of my education ; on the other hand, in the fixed 
 purpose of making an ecclesiastical gentleman of me, with 
 the superfinest of manners, and access to the highest circles 
 of fleshly and spiritual society, the visits to Croydon, where 
 I entirely loved my aunt, and young baker-cousins, became 
 rarer and more rare : the society of our neighbours on the 
 hill could not be had without breaking up our regular and 
 sweetly selfish manner of living ; and on the whole, I had 
 nothing animate to care for, in a childish way, but myself, 
 some nests of ants, which the gardener would never leave 
 undisturbed for me, and a sociable bird or two ; though I 
 never had the sense or perseverance to make one really tame. 
 But that was partly because, if ever I managed to bring one 
 to be the least trustful of me, the cats got it. 
 
 Under these favourable circumstances, what powers of im- 
 agination I possessed, either fastened themselves on inani- 
 mate things the sky, the leaves, and pebbles, observable
 
 424: FOR8 OLAVIGERA. 
 
 within the walls of Eden, or caught at any opportunity of 
 flight into regions of romance, compatible with the objec- 
 tive realities of existence in the nineteenth century, within a 
 mile and a quarter of Camberwell Green. 
 
 Herein my father, happily, though with no definite inten- 
 tion other than of pleasing me, when he found he could do 
 so without infringing any of my mother's rules, became my 
 guide. I was particularly fond of watching him shave ; and 
 was always allowed to come into his room in the morning 
 (under the one in which I am now writing), to be the mo- 
 tionless witness of that operation. Over his dressing-table 
 hung one of his own water-colour drawings, made under the 
 teaching of the elder Nasmyth. (I believe, at the High 
 School of Edinburgh.) It was done in the early manner of 
 tinting, which, just about the time when my father was at the 
 High School, Dr. Munro was teaching Turner ; namely, in 
 grey under-tints of Prussian blue and British ink, washed 
 with warm colour afterwards on the lights. It represented 
 Conway Castle, with its Frith, and, in the foreground, a cot- 
 tage, a fisherman, and a boat at the water's edge. 
 
 When my father had finished shaving, he always told me 
 a story about this picture. The custom began without any 
 initial purpose of his, in consequence of my troublesome curi- 
 osity whether the fisherman lived in the cottage, and where he 
 was going to in the boat. It being settled, for peace' sake, that 
 he did live in the cottage, and was going in the boat to fish 
 near the castle, the plot of the drama afterwards gradually 
 thickened ; and became, I believe, involved with that of the 
 tragedy of Douglas, and of the Castle Spectre, in both of 
 which pieces my father had performed in private theatricals, 
 before my mother, and a select Edinburgh audience, when he 
 was a boy of sixteen, and she, at grave twenty, a model house- 
 keeper, and very scornful and religiously suspicious of theat- 
 ricals. But she was never weary of telling me, in later 
 years, how beautiful my father looked in his Highland dress, 
 with the high black feathers. 
 
 I remember nothing of the story he used to tell me, now ; 
 but I have the picture still, and hope to leave it finally in
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 425 
 
 the Oxford schools, where, if I can complete my series of 
 illustrative work for general reference, it will be of some 
 little use as an example of an old-fashioned method of 
 water-colour drawing not without its advantages ; and, at 
 the same time, of the dangers incidental in it to young stu- 
 dents, of making their castles too yellow, and their fisher- 
 men too blue. 
 
 In the afternoons, when my father returned, (always punc- 
 tually) from his business, he dined, at half-past four, in the 
 front parlour, my mother sitting beside him to hear the events 
 of the day, and give counsel and encouragement with re- 
 spect to the same ; chiefly the last, for my father was apt 
 to be vexed if orders for sherry fell the least short of their due 
 standard, even for a day or two. I was never present at this 
 time, however, and only avouch what I relate by hearsay 
 and probable conjecture ; for between four and six it would 
 have been a grave misdemeanour in me if I so much as ap- 
 proached the parlour door. After that, in summer time, we 
 were all in the garden as long as the day lasted ; tea under 
 the white-heart cherry tree ; or in winter and rough weather, 
 at six o'clock in the drawing-room, I having my cup of 
 milk, and slice of bread-and-butter, in a little recess, with a 
 table in front of it, wholly sacred to me ; and in which I re- 
 mained in the evenings as an Idol in a niche, while my mother 
 knitted, and my father read to her, and to me, so far as I 
 chose to listen. 
 
 The series of the Waverley novels, then drawing towards 
 its close, was still the chief source of delight in all households 
 caring for literature ; and I can no more recollect the time 
 when I did not know them than when I did not know the 
 Bible ; but I have still a vivid remembrance of my father's 
 intense expression of sorrow mixed with scorn, as he threw 
 down Count Robert of Paris, after reading three or four 
 pages ; and knew that the life of Scott was ended : the scorn 
 being a very complex and bitter feeling in him, partly, in- 
 deed, of the book itself, but chiefly of the wretches who 
 were tormenting and selling the wrecked intellect, and not a 
 little, deep down, of the subtle dishonesty which had essen-
 
 426 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 tially caused the ruin. My father never could forgive Scott 
 his concealment of the Ballantyne partnership. 
 
 I permit myself, without check, to enlarge on these trivial 
 circumstances of my early days, partly because I know that 
 there are one or two people in the world who will like to hear 
 of them ; but chiefly because I can better assure the general 
 reader of some results of education on after life, by one ex- 
 ample in which I know all my facts, than by many, in which 
 every here and there a link might be wanting. 
 
 And it is perhaps already time to mark what advantage and 
 mischief, by the chances of life up to seven years old, had 
 been irrevocably determined for me. 
 
 I will first count my blessings (as a not unwise friend once 
 recommended me to do, continually ; whereas I have a bad 
 trick of always numbering the thorns in my fingers, and not 
 the bones in them). 
 
 And for best and truest beginning of all blessings, I had been 
 taught the perfect meaning of Peace, in thought, act, and word. 
 
 I never had heard my father's or mother's voice once raised 
 in any question with each other ; nor seen an angry, or even 
 slightly hurt or offended glance in the eyes of either. I had 
 never heard a servant scolded, nor even suddenly, passion- 
 ately, or in any severe manner, blamed. I had never seen a 
 moment's trouble or disorder in any household matter ; nor 
 anything whatever either done in a hurry, or undone in due 
 time. I had no conception of such a feeling as anxiety ; my 
 father's occasional vexation in the afternoons, when he had 
 only got an order for twelve butts after expecting one for 
 fifteen, as I have just stated, was never manifested to m,e ; 
 and itself related only to the question whether his name 
 would be a step higher or lower in the year's list of sherry 
 exporters ; for he never spent more than half his income, and 
 therefore found himself little incommoded by occasional va- 
 riations in the total of it. I had never done any wrong that 
 I knew of beyond occasionally delaying the commitment to 
 heart of some improving sentence, that I might watch a wasp 
 on the window pane, or a bird in the cherry tree ; and I had 
 never seen any grief.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 427 
 
 Next to this quite priceless gift of Peace, I had received 
 the perfect understanding of the natures of Obedience and 
 Faith. I obeyed word, or lifted finger, of father or mother, 
 simply as a ship her helm ; not only without idea of resist- 
 ance, but receiving the direction as a part of my own life and 
 force, a helpful law, as necessary to me in every moral action 
 as the law of gravity in leaping. And my practice in Faith 
 was soon complete : nothing was ever promised me that 
 was not given ; nothing ever threatened me that was not in- 
 flicted, and nothing ever told me that was not true. 
 
 Peace, obedience, faith ; these three for chief good ; next 
 to these, the habit of fixed attention with both eyes and mind 
 on which I will not farther enlarge at this moment, this 
 being the main practical faculty of my life, causing Mazzini 
 to say of me, in conversation authentically reported, a year 
 or two before his death, that I had " the most analytic mind 
 in Europe." An opinion in which, so far as I am acquainted 
 with Europe, I am myself entirely disposed to concur. 
 
 Lastly, an extreme perfection in palate and all other bodily 
 senses, given by the utter prohibition of cake, wine, comfits, 
 or, except in carefullest restriction, fruit ; and by fine prep- 
 aration of what food was given me. Such I esteem the 
 main blessings of my childhood ; next, let me count the 
 equally dominant calamities. 
 
 First, that I had nothing to love. 
 
 My parents were in a sort visible powers of nature to 
 me, no more loved than the sun and the moon : only I should 
 have been annoyed and puzzled if either of them had gone 
 out ; (how much, now, when both are darkened !) still less 
 did I love God ; not that I had any quarrel with Him, or fear 
 of Him ; but simply found what people told me was His ser- 
 vice, disagreeable ; and what people told me was His book, 
 not entertaining. I had no companions to quarrel with, 
 neither ; nobody to assist, and nobody to thank. Not a ser- 
 vant was ever allowed to do anything for me, but what it 
 was their duty to do ; and why should I have been grateful 
 to the cook for cooking, or the gardener for gardening, 
 when the one dared not give me a baked potatoe without
 
 428 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 asking leave, and the other would not let my ants' nests 
 alone, because they made the walks untidy ? The evil con- 
 sequence of all this was not, however, what might perhaps 
 have been expected, that I grew up selfish or unaffectionate ; 
 but that, when affection did come, it carne with violence ut- 
 terly rampant and unmanageable, at least by me, who never 
 before had anything to manage. 
 
 For (second of chief calamities) I had nothing to endure. 
 Danger or pain of any kind I knew not : my strength was 
 never exercised, my patience never tried, and my courage 
 never fortified. Not that I was ever afraid of anything, 
 either ghosts, thunder, or beasts ; and one of the nearest 
 approaches to insubordination which I was ever tempted into 
 as a child, was in passionate effort to get leave to play with 
 the lion's cubs in Wombwell's menagerie. 
 
 Thirdly. I was taught no precision nor etiquette of man- 
 ners ; it was enough if, in the little society we saw, I re- 
 mained unobtrusive, and replied to a question without shy- 
 ness : but the shyness came later, and increased as I grew 
 conscious of the rudeness arising from the want of social dis- 
 cipline, and found it impossible to acquire, in advanced life, 
 dexterity in any bodily exercise, skill in any pleasing accom- 
 plishment, or ease and tact in ordinary behaviour. 
 
 Lastly, and chief of evils. My judgment of right and 
 wrong, and powers of independent action,* were left entirely 
 undeveloped ; because the bridle and blinkers were never 
 taken off me. Children should have their times of being off 
 duty, like soldiers ; and when once the obedience, if required, 
 is certain, the little creature should be very early put for 
 periods of practice in complete command of itself ; set on 
 the barebacked horse of its own will, and left to break it by 
 its own strength. But the ceaseless authority exercised over 
 my youth left me, when cast out at last into the world, un- 
 able for some time to do more than drift with its elements. 
 My present courses of life are indeed not altogether of that 
 compliant nature ; but are, perhaps, more unaccommodating 
 
 * Action, observe, I say here ; in thought I was too independent, as 
 I said above.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 429 
 
 than they need be in the insolence of reaction ; and the result 
 upon me, of the elements and the courses together, is, in 
 sum, that at my present age of fifty-six, while I have indeed 
 the sincerest admiration for the characters of Phocion, Cin- 
 cinnatus, and Caractacus, and am minded, so far as I may, 
 to follow the example of those worthy personages, my own 
 private little fancy, in which, for never having indulged me, 
 I am always quarrelling with my Fortune, is still, as it 
 always was, to find Prince Ahmed's arrow, and marry the 
 Fairy Paribanou. 
 
 My present verdict, therefore, on the general tenour of my 
 education at that time, must be, that it was at once too 
 formal and too luxurious ; leaving my character, at the most 
 important moment for its construction, cramped indeed, but 
 not disciplined ; and only by protection innocent, instead of 
 by practice virtuous. My mother saw this herself, and but 
 too clearly, in later years ; and whenever I did anything 
 wrong, stupid, or hard-hearted, (and I have done many 
 things that were all three), always said, 'It is because you 
 were too much indulged.' 
 
 So strongly do I feel this, as I sip my coffee this morning, 
 {May 24th), after being made profoundly miserable last 
 night, because I did not think it likely I should be accepted 
 if I made an offer to any one of three beautiful young ladies 
 who were crushing and rending my heart into a mere sham- 
 rock leaf, the whole afternoon ; nor had any power to do, 
 what I should have liked better still, send Giafar (without 
 Zobeide's knowing anything about it) to superintend the 
 immediate transport to my palace of all three ; that I am 
 afraid, if it were left to me at present to institute, without 
 help from kinder counsellors, the education of the younger 
 children on St. George's estate, the methods of the old woman 
 who lived in a shoe would be the first that occurred to me as 
 likely to conduce most directly to their future worth and felicity. 
 
 And I chanced, as Fors would have it, to fall, but last 
 week, as I was arranging some books bought two years ago, 
 and forgotten ever since, on an instance of the use of ex- 
 treme severitv in education, which cannot but commend itself
 
 430 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 to the acceptance of every well informed English gentle- 
 woman. For all well informed English gentlewomen, and 
 gentle-maidens, have faithful respect for the memory of Lady 
 Jane Grey. 
 
 But I never myself, until the minute when I opened that 
 book, could at all understand Lady Jane Grey. I have seen 
 a great deal, thank Heaven, of good, and prudent, and clever 
 girls ; but not among the very best and wisest of them did 
 I ever find the slightest inclination to stop indoors to read 
 Plato, when all their people were in the Park. On the con- 
 trary, if any approach to such disposition manifested itself, 
 I found it was always, either because the scholastic young 
 person thought that somebody might possibly call, suppose 
 myself, the Roger Ascham of her time, or suppose some- 
 bod}'- else who would prevent her, that day, from reading 
 " piu avanti," or because the author who engaged her atten- 
 tion, so far from being Plato himself, was, in many essential 
 particulars, anti-Platonic. And the more I thought of Lady 
 Jane Grey, the more she puzzled me. 
 
 Wherefore, opening, among my unexamined books, Roger 
 Ascham's Sc/wlemaster, printed by John Daye, dwelling over 
 Aldersgate, An. 1571, just at the page where he gives the 
 original account of the thing as it happened, I stopped in 
 my unpacking to decipher the black letter of it with atten- 
 tion ; which, by your leave, good reader, you shall also take 
 the trouble to do yourself, from this, as far as I can manage 
 to give it you, accurate facsimile of the old page. And trust 
 me that I have a reason for practising you in these old 
 letters, though I have no time to tell it you just now. 
 
 0*w mnqrle, Ss^tOga lobt 0r fear* iwfy tootlt 
 man in a rfcilfce for btttvit anir learning, |f frill 0IaMg - 
 #0ri : fo&irfc mag Itt fcm& Mifc wmt plmuw, t follototb 
 tottlg man profit*, gjefort | totat mta Germanie $ t&mt 
 10 gr00*0at* m 'gtimttnlgm, to lake wg It afce 0f tyat no- 
 Hit $airg Jane Grey, lor tolgam g toas jexmJbittg amr^ fo-
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 431 
 
 all ilgt &0im0I0*, dfonilemm anfr fttttftttotmty, torn 
 Bunting in tyt $arlu : $ f0nnfr tyi in fyer rframfoer, wa- 
 ging Phaedon Platonis in fttteke, I IJjai Mt& as nrarfc toe- 
 
 litr , as s0nu gnttlnnan JbmiRr a0 a merit tale in Bocase. 
 8alniati0tt, an0 hwiie 00n*, forty torn ailgti; hlk, K 
 |*er, foBg afytt fo0uI0 I^jtt suc^ |raatim in t^ f arke? 
 rtnstocrrir m^ : $ foisss*, all i^ir sj-0rt in i\t 
 , ia frui a a^airoto t0 t^at nlfasww $ |f finfft in. Plato : 
 gJas, 0000 foIKc, i^cjj it&fr ft It fo^at true nl^asww m^ttt," 
 
 Thus far, except in the trouble of reading black letters, I 
 have given you nothing new, or even freshly old. All this 
 we have heard of the young lady a hundred times over. But 
 next to this, comes something which I fancy will be unex- 
 pected by most of my readers. For the fashion of all liter- 
 ary students, catering for the public, has hitherto been to 
 pick out of their author whatever bits they thought likely to 
 be acceptable to Demos, and to keep everything of suspicious 
 taste out of his dish of hashed hare. Nay, ' he pares his 
 apple that will cleanly eat,' says honest George Herbert. I 
 am not wholly sure, however, even of that ; if the apple it- 
 self be clean off the bough, and the teeth of little Eve and 
 Adam, what teeth should be, it is quite questionable whether 
 the good old fashion of alternate bite be not the method of 
 finest enjoyment of flavour. But the modern frugivorous 
 public will soon have a steam-machine in Covent Garden, 
 to pick the straw out of their strawberries. 
 
 In accordance with which popular principle of natural se- 
 lection, the historians of Lady Jane's life, finding this first 
 opening of the scene at Brodegate so entirely charming and 
 graceful, and virtuous, and moral, and ducal, and large- 
 landed-estate-ish without there being the slightest sugges- 
 tion in it of any principle, to which any body could possibly 
 object, pounce upon it as a flawless gem ; and clearing from 
 it all the objectionable matrix, with delicate skill, set it forth 
 
 changed about from one to another of the finest cases of 
 velvet eloquence to be got up for money in the corner shop 
 
 London and Ryder's, of the Bond Street of Vanity Fair.
 
 432 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 
 
 But I, as an old mineralogist, like to see my gems in the 
 rock ; and always bring away the biggest piece I can break 
 with the heaviest hammer I can carry. Accordingly, I vent- 
 ure to beg of you also, good reader, to decipher farther this 
 piece of kindly Ascham's following narration : 
 
 ranw #011, $$a0am.e, qu0t|r $, ia t|ris }jtt$t fcnofo- 
 Ittyt 0f pleasure, * fc&trt bib r|rfflg n gon unto it, u- 
 in0 jr0t mang fr0m,en, tort farg fefae m.en Irafce attagn.e0 
 ijrmunio. foill 1*11 gou, ipi0t|jr s|r,e.e, an0 MI gon a trotfr, 
 to^w^ pr4an gt Jfoill mar&fl at. 0f i^ 0watf8i fc^- 
 iwfitrs t|>ai tbtx ^00 galr^ me, is, i^at ^ t m^ 80 
 anir sfinsrc pawnt^s, a0 80 g^nlli a 8r|00I^ma8tir. $ 
 g am iu grmfltt fit^r 0f fat^r 0r m0't^r, fu^t 
 tiltntt, sit, stim0, 0r gcr, Me, Irriit^, &e 
 
 laging, 0:trin0, 0r fc0in0 aniri^in0 fls, ^ 
 must 00* it, a it fom, in snr^ torijg^t, m^asttrf, i numfar, 
 80 "prfrrtlg, as 600 main t^ fo0rI0, 0r t\h & am 80 
 tauntr0, 80 jcrufllg I^atjt0, %tx jrsttljj 
 t^ $mtfytt t nigyw, a0 0000^8, an0 0i^r 
 Jb^ir^ ^ foill not name far t^ ^0n0.r $ fceare t^l, 80 
 xrut mrasirrf mis0r0un:0, t^at ^ t|mtKc mj| s^Ife in ^11, till 
 iinu r0mr t^at 3 mttK * 8* * M - Elmer jfo0 ttatfyttfj mtt 
 so Sfntlij, so jjlmsanilrr, foit^ snr^ fatw aIlMmlt8 to I^ar- 
 jtinjgf tftat <2f i^inht all i^f tim^ nothing, foBil^a $ am fott^ 
 Bim, gino fo^rn ^ am rallf0 fro Jrim, ^ fall 0n foxing, he- 
 ram, fo^atsof&fr ^ b0t t\% 0t Ifarnin0, is full 0f gmft, 
 trou&k, fea, anir fojrole mislifeing nt0 mw. ^no t]ws mjr 
 booluc ^at^ bwn 80 mr^ mjr plrasuw, i brittjgrt^ irailj to m* 
 mo pleasure t m0, ^ in respxri 0f it, all 0t&^r jrkasures, 
 in iriirg 0w0t, &w but trifles i troirbljes Mni0 mte. 
 
 Lady Jane ceases, Ascham speaks : $ remf 
 
 lotr t^is talif fllairlg, t0t^ irrausf it is 80 Jtoort^g 0f ttumo- 
 t$ i taausr also it teas tfct last tali i^at iC0r ^a0, an0 
 tyt last timr, t^at je0jer $ safo l^at nobJ^ t
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 433 
 
 Now, for the clear understanding of this passage, I ad- 
 jure you, gentle reader, (if you are such, and therefore capa- 
 ble of receiving adjuration) in the name of St. George and 
 all saints, of Edward III. and all knights, of Alice of 
 Salisbury and all stainless wives, and of Jeanne of France 
 and all stainless maids, that you put at once out of your 
 mind, under penalty of sharpest Honte Ban, all such thought 
 as would first suggest itself to the modern novel writer, and 
 novel reader, concerning this matter, namely, that the 
 young girl is in love with her tutor. She loves him rightly, 
 as all good and noble boys and girls necessarily love good 
 masters, and no otherwise ; is grateful to him rightly, and 
 no otherwise ; happy with him and her book rightly, and 
 no otherwise. 
 
 And that her father and mother, with whatever leaven of 
 human selfishness, or impetuous disgrace in the manner and 
 violence of their dealing with her, did, nevertheless, compel 
 their child to do all things that she did, rightly, and no 
 otherwise, was, verily, though at that age she knew it but in 
 part, the literally crowning and guiding Mercy of her life, 
 the plaited thorn upon the brow, and rooted thorn around 
 the feet, which are the tribute of Earth to the Princesses of 
 Heaven. 
 
 VOL. II. 28
 
 434 FORS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 THE minds of many of the friends of Mr. Septimus Hansard appear to 
 have been greatly exercised by my insertion of, and comments on, the 
 newspaper paragraph respecting that gentleman's ministrations to the 
 poor of London. 
 
 I thought it unnecessary to take notice of the first communication 
 which I received on the subject, from a fashionable lady, informing me, 
 with much indignation, that Mr. Hansard had caught his fever in the 
 West-End, not in the East ; and had been sick in the best society. The 
 following letter is of more importance, and its writer having accepted 
 what he calls ' ' my kind offer " to print it, I have no alternative, though 
 he mistook, or rather misplaced, the real kindness of my private note, 
 which lay in its recommendation to him,* not to accept the offer it 
 made. 
 
 "135, WATER LOW BUILDINGS, WILMOTT STREET, 
 
 "BETHNAL GKEEN, E., May 14, 1875. 
 
 " SIR, In your 49th Letter you say that we clergy are not priests, 
 and cannot sacrifice. You also say that we are wTiatty responsible for, 
 and the efficient causes of, horrible outrages on women. In your 51st 
 Letter you speak of my friend and chief, Mr. Hansard, as being cour- 
 ageous, impulsive, and generous, but complacent, and living a life "all 
 aglow in vain " ; and you compare him, in Bethnal Green, to a moth in 
 candle -grease. 
 
 " I know that I, as a priest, am responsible for much wrong-doing ; 
 but I must claim you, and all who have failed to be perfect stewards 
 of their material and spiritual property, as responsible with me and the 
 rest of the clergy for the ignorance and crime of our fellow-countrymen. 
 
 "But I would ask you whether Mr. Hansard's life, even as you know 
 it, (and you don't know half the St. George-like work he has done and 
 is doing, ) is not a proof that we priests can and do sacrifice ; that we 
 can offer ourselves, our souls and bodies. 
 
 ' ' Of course I agree with you and Mr. Lyttel that the preaching of 
 " Christ's life instead of our lives" is false and damnatory, but I am 
 sorry that instead of backing those who teach the true and salutary 
 Gospel, you condemn us all alike, wholesale. I think you will find that 
 you will want even our help to get the true Gospel taught. 
 
 ' ' Allow me also to protest pretty strongly against my friends and 
 
 * At least, I think the terms of my letter might have been easily construed into such re- 
 commendation ; I fear they were not as clear as they might have been.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 435 
 
 neighbours here being compared to candle-grease. I fancy that, on 
 consideration, you would like to withdraw that parable ; perhaps, even, 
 you would like to make some kind of reparation, by helping us, candle- 
 grease-like Bethnal-greeners, to be better and happier. 
 
 " I am one of those clergymen spoken of in Letter XLIX. . and " hon- 
 estly believe myself impelled to say and do " many things by the Holy 
 Ghost ; and for that very reason I am bound to remember that you and 
 other men are inspired also by the same Holy Ghost ; and therefore tc 
 look out for and take any help which you and others choose to give me. 
 
 ' It is because I have already received so much help from you that I 
 write this letter. 
 
 " I am, yours faithfully, 
 
 " STEWART D. HEADLAM, 
 " Curate of St. Matthew's, Bethnal Green. 
 
 " To JOHN RUSKIN, Esq., LL.D." 
 
 I at first intended to make no comments on this letter, but, as I re- 
 read, find it so modestly fast in its temper, and so perilously loose in its 
 divinity, as to make it my duty, while I congratulate the well-meaning 
 and, I doubt not, well-doing writer, on his agreement with Mr. 
 Lyttel that the preaching of " Christ's life, instead of our lives," is false 
 and damnatory ; also to observe to him that the sacrifice of our own 
 bodies, instead of Christ's body, is an equally heretical, and I can as- 
 sure him, no less dangerous, reformation of the Doctrine of the Mass. 
 I beg him also to believe that I meant no disrespect to his friends and 
 neighbours in comparing them to candle-grease. He is unaccustomed 
 to my simple English, and would surely not have been offended if I had 
 said, instead, "oil for the light " ? If our chandlers, now-a-days, never 
 give us any so honest tallow as might fittingly be made the symbol of a 
 Christian congregation, is that my fault ? 
 
 I feel, however, that I do indeed owe some apology to Mr. Hansard 
 himself, to his many good and well-won friends, and especially to my 
 correspondent. Mr. Lyttel, for reprinting the following article from a 
 Birmingham paper very imperfectly, I am sure, exemplifying the 
 lustre produced by ecclesiastical labour in polishing what, perhaps, I 
 shall again be held disrespectful, in likening to the Pewter, instead of 
 the Grease, and Candlestick instead of Caudle, of sacredly inflammable 
 Religious Society. 
 
 PROFESSOR RUSKIN ON THE CLERGY. 
 
 " Not many years ago one might throw almost any calumny against 
 the Church or her clergy without fear of contradiction or exposure. 
 Happily, for the cause of truth and justice, those days are gone un- 
 happily, however, for the unfortunate individuals born too late for the 
 safe indulgence of their spleen. Amongst these, we fear, must be 
 reckoned Mr. Ruskin, the Oxford Professor of Fine Art. He issues 
 monthly a pamphlet, entitled Fors Clavigera, being ostensibly ' Let-
 
 436 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 ters to the Workmen and Labourers of Great Britain,' but the contents 
 of which do not appear likely to edify that class, even if the price (ten- 
 pence) were not prohibitory. In the forty-ninth of these letters a furi- 
 ous and wholly unjustifiable attack is made upon the Church. No 
 abuse is deemed too unjust or too coarse to bestow upon the clergy, and 
 they are assailed in a tone of vituperation worthy of the last century. 
 The Professor says that,* ' in general, any man's becoming a clergyman 
 in these days implies that, at best, his sentiment has overpowered his 
 intellect, and that, whatever the feebleness of the latter, the victory of 
 his impertinent piety has been probably owing to its alliance with his 
 conceit, and its promise to him of the gratification of being regarded as 
 an oracle, without the trouble of becoming wise, or the grief of being 
 so. ' Much more there is in the same insolent strain, as if the Profes- 
 sor's head had been turned by the height of critical infallibility to which 
 he has elevated himself, and from which he looks down with self-compla- 
 cent scorn and arrogance upon all fallible humanity, clerical or lay. He 
 concludes by appending ' a specimen of the conduct of the Saints to 
 whom our English clergymen have delivered the Faith. ' This specimen 
 is afforded, according to Mr. Ruskin, in two cases of revolting and almost 
 incredible barbarism, tried recently at Liverpool Assizes, in one of which 
 an unoffending man was kicked to death by a gang of street ruffians, in 
 the presence of an admiring crowd ; and in the other case, a drunken fe- 
 male tramp, drenched with the rain, was taken into a field and outraged 
 by half-a-dozen youths, after which they left her, and she was found 
 there next day dead. We need not enter into the details of these cases, 
 which were given fully enough at the time ; suffice it to say that in the 
 records of no age or nation will any tales be found surpassing these two 
 in savagery of mind and body, and in foulness of heart and soul. And 
 what is Mr. Ruskin' s reason for resuscitating the memory of these hor- 
 rors ? What is the explanation that he has to give of them ? What is 
 the judgment that he has to pass upon them ? Let our readers behold 
 it for themselves in his own words: 'The clergy may vainly exclaim 
 against being made responsible for this state of things. They, and chiefly 
 their Bishops, are wholly responsible for it ; nay, are efficiently the 
 causes of it, preaching a false gospel for hire.' These words have the 
 one merit of being perfectly plain. Mr. Ruskin does not insinuate his 
 vile charge by any indirect hints or roundabout verbiage, but expresses 
 his infamous meaning as unambiguously as possible. The clergy, he 
 says, are ' wholly responsible ' for the murders and rapes which horrify 
 us, which, indeed, they ' efficiently cause ' ; and the chiefs of these in- 
 carnate fiends are the Bishops. 
 
 " This very intemperate attack elicited a few temperate remarks 
 from one of the maligned class. The Rev. E. Z. Lyttel, of Werrington, 
 near Peterborough, wrote to Mr. Ruskin thus : ' I have been reading 
 your words to my conscience, but is it my unconscious hypocrisy, my self- 
 conceit, or my sentiment overpowering intellect which hinders me from 
 hearing the word Guilty ? The Gospel I endeavour with all my might 
 to preach and embody is this Believe on, be persuaded by, the Lord 
 Jesus Christ; let His life rule your lives, and you shall be safe and 
 
 * I permit the waste of type, and, it may well be, of my reader's patience, involved in 
 reprinting (instend of merely referring to) the quoted passages and letter, lest it should be 
 thought that I wished to evade the, points, or, by interruption, deaden the eloquence, of 
 the Birmingham article.
 
 FOES CLAVIGERA. 437 
 
 sound now and everlastingly. Is this a false Gospel preached for hire f 
 If not, what other Gospel do you refer to ? ' Mr. Lyttel seems to have 
 thought that the charge brought against himself and his clerical 
 brethren of causing murders and rapes was too gross for notice, or too 
 intoxicated to merit denial. He contented himself with the foregoing 
 very mild reply, which, however, proved adequate to the occasion 
 which called it forth. Mr. Lyttel was recently curate of St. Barnabas, 
 in this town, and has also held a curacy in London. His personal ex- 
 perience gives him a claim to be heard when he assures the Professor 
 that he knows that the morality of the parishes with which he is best 
 acquainted has been made better, and not worse, by the self-sacrificing 
 efforts of the clergy. It is also pointed out that while Mr. Ruskin has 
 been freely travelling about in the enjoyment of beautiful scenery and 
 fresh air, Mr. Lyttel and other clergymen have been occupied from day 
 to day in stuffy rooms, in crowded parishes, amongst ignorant and im- 
 moral people. And whilst the censorious Oxford luminary makes a 
 great fuss about getting paid for Fors Glavtgera and his other writ- 
 ings, Mr. Lyttel hints that surely the clergy should be paid for their 
 teaching too, being quite equally worthy of their hire. 
 
 " Our ex-townsman has so effectually disposed of the Professor's 
 charges, that there is no need to endeavour to answer them further. 
 We have only noticed them so far in order to show our readers the ex- 
 tent to which hatred of the Church becomes a craze with some persons, 
 otherwise estimable no doubt, whose judgment is for the time swept 
 away by passion. That there is no pleasing such persons is the more 
 apparent from Mr. Ruskin's curious comments upon the well-known 
 story of the Rev. Septimus Hansard, the rector of Bethnal Green, who 
 has caught the small-pox, the typhus fever, and the scarlet fever, on 
 three several occasions * in the discharge of his pastoral duties among 
 the sick poor. When he fell down in his pulpit with the small-pox, he 
 at once said he would go to an hospital, but refused to enter the cab 
 which his friends called, lest he should infect it ; and, a hearse happen- 
 ing to pass, he went in it a fine instance of courage and self-devotion. 
 Mr. Hansard's stipend is five hundred a year, out of which he has to 
 pay two curates. And what has Mr. Ruskin to say to this ? Surely 
 this must command his fullest sympathy, admiration, and approval ? 
 Far from it. His snarling comment is as follows : 'I am very sure 
 that while he was saving one poor soul in Bethnal he was leaving ten 
 rich souls to be damned at Tyburn, each of which would damn a 
 thousand or two more by their example or neglect.' This peculiar 
 mode of argument has the merit of being available under all circum- 
 stances ; for, of course, if Mr. Hansard's parish had happened to be 
 Tyburn instead of Bethnal, Mr. Ruskin would have been equally ready 
 with the glib remark that while the rector was saving one rich soul to 
 Tyburn, he was leaving ten poor souls to destruction in Bethnal. Are 
 we to understand that Mr. Ruskin thinks Mr. Hansard ought to be 
 able to be in two places at once, or are we to shrug our shoulders and 
 say that some persons are hard to please ? The heroism of self- 
 sacrifice Mr. Ruskin considers to be a waste and a mistake. Mr. Han- 
 
 * Birmingham accepts, with the child-like confidence due by one able Editor to another, 
 the report of Brighton. But all Mr. Hansard's friends are furious with me for "spread- 
 ing it ; " and I beg at once, on their authority, to contradict it in all essential particu- 
 lars ; and to apologize to Mr. Hansard for ever having suspected him of such things.
 
 438 FOES CLAVIOERA. 
 
 sard's life has all, says the Professor, ' been but one fit of scarlet fever 
 and all aglow in vain.' That noble-minded men should devote them- 
 selves to the noblest work of the Church for the love of Christ, and of 
 those for whom He died, is apparently beyond Mr. Ruskin's concep- 
 tion. Love of sensation, he says, is the cause of it all. ' Sensation 
 must be got out of death, or darkness, or frightfuiness. . . . And 
 the culmination of the black business is that the visible misery drags 
 and beguiles to its help all the enthusiastic simplicity of the religious 
 young, and the honest strength of the really noble type of English 
 clergymen, and swallows them, as Charybdis would life-boats. Cour- 
 ageous and impulsive men, with just sense enough to make them 
 soundly practical, and therefore complacent, in immediate business, 
 but not enough to enable them to see what the whole business comes 
 to when done, are sure to throw themselves desperately into the dirty 
 work, and die like lively moths in candle-grease. ' We have read phil- 
 osophy something like the above extract elsewhere before, and we 
 think the philosopher's name was Harold Skimpole. What the gospel 
 is with which Mr. Ruskin proposes to supplant Christianity and to re- 
 generate the world we do not know. A gospel of this tone, however, 
 published in tenpenny instalments, is not likely ever to reach the hands 
 of the workmen and labourers of Great Britain, much less their hearts." 
 
 With this interesting ebullition, shall we call it, of Holy Water, or 
 beautiful explosion, perhaps, more accurately, of Holy Steam, in 
 one of our great manufacturing centres, a very furnace, it would ap- 
 pear, of heartfelt zeal for the Church, I wish I could at once compare 
 
 a description of the effects of similar zeal for the Chapel, given me 
 
 in a letter just received from Wakefield, for which I sincerely thank my 
 correspondent, and will assume, unless I hear further from him, his 
 permission to print a great part of said letter in next Fors. 
 
 My more practical readers may perhaps be growing desperate, at the 
 continued non-announcement of advance in my main scheme. But 
 the transference to the St. George's Company of the few acres of land 
 hitherto offered us, cannot be effected without the establishment of 
 the society on a legal basis, which I find the most practised counsel 
 slow in reducing to terms such as the design could be carried out upon. 
 The form proposed shall, however, without fail, be submitted to the 
 existing members of the Company in my next letter.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 439 
 
 LETTER LV. 
 
 No MORE letters, at present, reaching me, from clergy- 
 men, I use the breathing-time permitted me, to express 
 more clearly the meaning of my charge, left in its brevity 
 obscure, that, as a body, they " teach a false gospel for 
 hire." 
 
 It is obscure, because associating two charges quite dis- 
 tinct. The first, that, whether for hire or not, they preach 
 a false gospel. The second that whether they preach truth 
 or falsehood, they preach as hirelings. 
 
 It will be observed that the three clergymen who have 
 successively corresponded with me Mr. Tipple, Mr. Lyttel, 
 and Mr. Headlam have every one, for their own part, ea- 
 gerly repudiated the doctrine of the Eleventh Article of the 
 Church of England. Nevertheless, the substance of that 
 article assuredly defines the method of salvation commonly 
 announced at this day from British pulpits ; and the effect 
 of this supremely pleasant and supremely false gospel, on 
 the British mind, may be bost illustrated by the reply, made 
 only the other day, by a dishonest, but sincerely religious, 
 commercial gentleman, to an acquaintance of mine, who had 
 expressed surprise that he should come to church after do- 
 ing the things he was well known to do : " Ah, my friend, 
 my standard is just the publican's." 
 
 In the second place, while it is unquestionably true that 
 many clergymen are doing what Mr. Headlam complacently 
 points out their ability to do, sacrificing, to wit, them- 
 selves, their souls, and bodies, (not that I clearly understand 
 what a clergyman means by sacrificing his soul,) without 
 any thought of temporal reward ; this preaching of Christ 
 has, nevertheless, become an acknowledged Profession, and 
 means of livelihood for gentlemen : and the Simony of to- 
 day differs only from that of apostolic times, in that, while
 
 440 FOBS CLAVIGEltA. 
 
 the elder Simon thought the gift of the Holy Ghost worth 
 a considerable offer in ready money, the modern Simon 
 would on the whole refuse to accept the same gift of the 
 Third Person of the Trinity, without a nice little attached 
 income, a pretty church, with a steeple restored by Mr. 
 Scott, and an eligible neighbourhood. 
 
 These are the two main branches of the charge I meant to 
 gather into my short sentence ; and to these I now further 
 add, that in defence of this Profession, with its pride, privi- 
 lege, and more or less roseate repose of domestic felicity, 
 extremely beautiful and enviable in country parishes, the 
 clergy, as a body, have, with what energy and power was in 
 them, repelled the advance both of science and scholarship, 
 so far as either interfered with what they had been accus- 
 tomed to teach ; and connived at every abuse in public and 
 private conduct, with which they felt it would be considered 
 uncivil, and feared it might ultimately prove unsafe, to in- 
 terfere. 
 
 And that, therefore, seeing that they were put in charge 
 to preach the Gospel of Christ, and have preached a false 
 gospel instead of it ; and seeing that they were put in 
 charge to enforce the Law of Christ, and have permitted 
 license instead of it, they are answerable, as no other men 
 are answerable, for the existing " state of things " in this 
 British nation, a state now recorded in its courts of justice 
 as productive of crimes respecting which the Birmingham 
 Defender of the Faith himself declares that " in the records 
 of no age or nation will any tales be found surpassing these 
 in savagery of mind and body, and in foulness of heart and 
 soul." 
 
 Answerable, as no other men are, I repeat ; and entirely 
 disdain my correspondent Mr. Headlam's attempt to involve 
 me, or any other layman, in his responsibility. He has 
 taken on himself the office of teacher. Mine is a painter's ; 
 and I am plagued to death by having to teach instead of 
 him, and his brethren, silent, they, for fear of their con- 
 gregations ! Which of them, from least to greatest, dares, 
 for instance, so much as to tell the truth to women about
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 441 
 
 their dress? Which of them has forbidden his feminine 
 audience to wear fine bonnets in church ? Do they think 
 the dainty garlands are wreathed round the studiously 
 dressed hair, because a woman " should have power on her 
 head because of the angels " ? Which of them understands 
 that text? which of them enforces it? Dares the boldest 
 ritualist order his women-congregation to come all with 
 white napkins over their heads, rich and poor alike, and 
 have done with their bonnets ? What, ' You cannot order ' ? 
 You could say you wouldn't preach if you saw one bonnet 
 in the church, couldn't you ? ' But everybody would say 
 you were mad.' Of course they would and that the devil 
 was in you. " If they have called the Master of the house 
 Beelzebub, how much more them of his household ? " but 
 now that 'all men speak well of you,' think you the Son of 
 Man will speak the same ? 
 
 And you, and especially your wives (as is likely !) are 
 very angry with me, I hear, on all hands ; and think me 
 hostile to you. As well might a carter asleep on his shafts 
 accuse me of being his enemy for trying to wake him ; or 
 his master's enemy, because I would fain not see the cart in 
 the ditch. Nay, this notable paragraph which has given 
 Mr. Hansard's friends so much offence, was credited and 
 printed by me, because I thought it one of the noblest in- 
 stances I had ever heard of energy and unselfishness ; and 
 though, of all the sects of ecclesiastics, for my own share, I 
 most dislike and distrust the so-called Evangelical, I took 
 the picture of Swiss life, which was meant to stand for a 
 perfect and true one, from the lips of an honest vicar of that 
 persuasion. 
 
 Which story, seeing that it has both been too long inter- 
 rupted, and that its entire lesson bears on what I have to say 
 respecting the ministrations of Felix Neff, I will interrupt 
 my too garrulous personal reminiscences by concluding, in 
 this letter, from that of March, 1874. 
 
 The old cart went again as well as ever ; and " he never 
 could have believed," said Hansli, "that a cart could have
 
 442 FOBS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 taken itself up so, and become so extremely changed for the 
 better. That might be an example to many living creat- 
 ures." 
 
 More than one young girl, however, in her own secret 
 heart reproached Hansli for his choice saying to herself 
 that she would have done for him quite as well. " If she 
 had thought he had been in such a hurry, she could have 
 gone well enough, too, to put herself on his road, and pre- 
 vented him from looking at that rubbishy rag of a girl. She 
 never could have thought Hansli was such a goose, he, who 
 might easily have married quite differently, if he had had 
 the sense to choose. As sure as the carnival was coming, he 
 would repent before he got to it. All the worse for him 
 it's his own fault : as one makes one's bed, one lies in it." 
 
 But Hansli had not been a goose at all, and never found 
 anything to repent of. He had a little wife who was just 
 the very thing he wanted, a little, modest, busy wife, who 
 made him as happy as if he had married Heaven itself in 
 person. 
 
 It is true that she didn't long help Hansli to pull the cart : 
 he soon found himself obliged to go in the shafts alone again ; 
 but aussi, once he saw he had a mustard,* he consoled him- 
 self. " What a fellow ! " said he, examining him. " In a 
 wink, he'll be big enough to help me himself." And, there- 
 upon, away he went with his cart, all alone, without finding 
 any difference. 
 
 It is true that in a very little while his wife wanted to come 
 again to help him. " If only we make a little haste to get 
 back," said she, " the little one can wait well enough besides 
 that the grandmother can give him something to drink while 
 we are away." But the mustard himself was not of their 
 mind, and soon made them walk in his own fashion. They 
 made all the haste they could to get home but before they 
 were within half a league of their door, the wife cried out, 
 "Mercy, what's that !" "That" was a shrill crying like a 
 little pig's when it is being killed. "Mercy on us, what is it, 
 what's the matter ! " cried she ; and left the cart, and ran 
 off at full speed : and there, sure enough, was the grand- 
 mother, whom the little thing's cries had put into a dreadful 
 fright lest it should have convulsions, and who could think 
 of nothing better than to bring it to meet mamma. The 
 heavy boy, the fright, and the run, had put the old woman so 
 
 * Moutard not -arde ; but I can't give better than this English for it.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 443 
 
 out of breath that it was really high time for somebody to 
 take the child. She was almost beside herself ; and it was 
 ever so long before she could say, "No T won't have him 
 alone any more : in my life I never saw such a little wretch : 
 I had rather come and draw the cart." 
 
 These worthy people thus learned what it is to have a ty- 
 rant in one's house, little one though he be. But all that 
 didn't interrupt their household ways. The little wife found 
 plenty to do staying at home ; gardening, and helping to 
 make the brooms. Without ever hurrying anything, she 
 worked without ceasing, and was never tired, so easily 
 things ran under her hand. Hansli was all surprise to find 
 he got along so well with a wife ; and to find his purse grow- 
 ing fatter so fast. He leased a little field ; and the grand- 
 mother saw a goat in it ; presently two. He would not hear 
 of a donkey, but arranged with the miller, when he went to 
 the town, to carry some of his brooms for him ; which, it is 
 true, skimmed off a little of the profit, and that vexed Hansli, 
 who could not bear the smallest kreutzer to escape him. But 
 his life soon became quite simple and continuous. The days 
 followed each other like the waves of a river, without much 
 difference between one and another. Every year grew new 
 twigs to make brooms with. Every year, also, without put- 
 ting herself much about, his wife gave him a new baby. She 
 brought it, and planted it there. Every day it cried a little, 
 every day it grew a little ; and, in a turn of the hand, it 
 was of use for something. The grandmother said that, old 
 as she was, she had never seen anything like it. It was, for 
 all the world, she said, like the little cats, which, at six weeks 
 old, catch mice. And all these children were really like so 
 many blessings the more there came, the more money one 
 made. Very soon only think of it the grandmother saw 
 a cow arrive. If she had not with her own eyes seen Hansli 
 pay for it, it would have been almost impossible to make her 
 believe that he had not stolen it. If the poor old woman had 
 lived two years more,* she would even have seen Hansli be- 
 come himself the owner of the little cottage in which she had 
 lived so long, with forest right which gave him more wood 
 
 * Fate, and the good novelist, thus dismiss poor grandmamma in a 
 passing sentence, just when we wanted her so much to live a little 
 longer, too! But that is Fors's way, and Gotthelf knows it. A bad 
 novelist would have made her live to exactly the proper moment, and 
 then die in a most instructive manner, and with pathetic incidents and 
 speeches which would have filled a chapter.
 
 444 FOHS CLAVIGERA. 
 
 than he wanted ; and ground enough to keep a cow and two 
 sheep, which are convenient things enough, when one has 
 children who wear worsted stockings. 
 
 (Upon all that,* Hansli certainly owed a good deal, but 
 it was well-placed money, arid no one would ask him for it, 
 as long as he paid the interest to the day ; for the rest, "if 
 God lent him life, these debts did not trouble him," said he.) 
 He might then learn that the first kreutzers are the most 
 difficult to save. There's always a hole they are running out 
 at, or a mouth to swallow them. But when once one has 
 got to the point of having no more debts, and is completely 
 set on one's legs, then things begin to go ! the very ground 
 seems to grow under your feet, everything profits more and 
 more, the rivulet becomes a river, and the gains become 
 always easier and larger : on one condition, nevertheless, 
 that one shall change nothing in one's way of life. For it is 
 just then that new needs spring out of the ground like 
 mushrooms on a dunghill, if not for the husband, at least for 
 the wife, if not for the parents, at least for the children. 
 A thousand things seem to become necessary, of which we 
 had never thought ; and we are ashamed of ever so many 
 others, which till then had not given us the smallest concern ; 
 and we exaggerate the value of what we have, because once 
 we had nothing ; arid our own value, because we attribute 
 our success to ourselves, and, one changes one's way of 
 life, and expenses increase, and labour lessens, and the 
 haughty spirit goes before the fall. 
 
 It was not so with Hansli. He continued to live and work 
 just the same ; and hardly ever spent anything at the inn ; 
 aussi, he rejoiced all the more to find something hot ready 
 for him when he came home ; and did honour to it. Nothing 
 was changed in him, unless that his strength for work became 
 always greater, little by little ; and his wife had the difficult 
 art of making the children serve themselves, each, according 
 to its age, not with many words neither ; and she herself 
 scarcely knew how. 
 
 A pedagogue would never have been able to get the least 
 explanation of it from her. Those children took care of each 
 other, helped their father to make his brooms, and their 
 mother in her work about the house ; none of them had the 
 least idea of the pleasures of doing nothing, nor of dreaming 
 
 * This paragraph implies, of course, the existence of all modern 
 abuses, the story dealing only with the world as it is.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 445 
 
 or lounging about ; and yet not one was overworked, or 
 neglected. They shot up like willows by a brookside, full of 
 vigour and gaiety. The parents had no time for idling with 
 them, but the children none the less knew their love, and 
 saw how pleased they were when their little ones did their 
 work well. Their parents prayed with them : on Sundays 
 the father read them a chapter which he explained afterwards 
 as well as he could, and on account of that also the children 
 were full of respect for him, considering him as the father of 
 the family who talks with God Himself (and who will tell 
 Him when children disobey*). The degree of respect felt 
 by children for their parents depends always on the manner 
 in which the parents bear themselves to God. Why do not 
 all parents reflect more on this ? f 
 
 Nor was our Hansli held in small esteem by other people, 
 any more than by his children. He was so decided and so 
 sure; words full of good sense were plenty with him; honour- 
 able in everything, he never set himself up for rich, nor 
 complained of being poor ; so that many a pretty lady would 
 come expressly into the kitchen, when she heard that the 
 broom-merchant was there, to inform herself how things 
 went in the country, and how such and such a matter was 
 turning out. Nay, in many of the houses he was trusted to 
 lay in their winter provisions, a business which brought him 
 many a bright batz. The Syndic's wife at Thun, herself, 
 often had a chat with him ; it had become, so to speak, 
 really a pressing need with her to see him at Thun every 
 Saturday ; and when she was talking to him, it had happened, 
 not once nor twice, that M. the Syndic himself had been 
 obliged to wait for an answer to something he had asked his 
 wife. After all, a Syndic's wife may surely give herself 
 leave to talk a little according to her own fancy, once a 
 week. 
 
 One fine day, however, it was the Saturday at Thun, and 
 there was not in all the town a shadow of the broom-mer- 
 chant. Thence, aussi, great emotion, and grave faces. More 
 than one maid was on the door-steps, with her arms akimbo, 
 leaving quietly upstairs in the kitchen the soup and the meat 
 to agree with each other as best they might. 
 
 * A minute Evangelical fragment dubitable enough. 
 
 f Primarily, because it is untrue. The respect of a child for its 
 parent depends on the parent's own personal character ; and not at all, 
 irrespective of that, on his religious behaviour. Which the practical 
 good sense of the reverend novelist presently admits.
 
 446 FORS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 " You haven't seen him then ? have you heard nothing of 
 him ? " asked they, one of the other. More than one lady 
 ran into her kitchen, prepared to dress* her servant well, 
 from head to foot, because she hadn't been told when the 
 broom-merchant was there. But she found no servant there, 
 and only the broth boiling over. Madame the Syndic her- 
 self got disturbed ; and interrogated, first her husband, and 
 then the gendarme. And as they knew nothing, neither the 
 one nor the other, down she went into the low town herself, 
 in person, to inquire after her broom-merchant. She was 
 quite out of brooms and the year's house-cleaning was to 
 be done next week and now no broom-merchant je vous 
 demande ! f And truly enough, no broom-merchant appeared ; 
 and during all the week there was a feeling of want in the 
 town, and an enormous disquietude the next Saturday. 
 Will he come ? Won't he come ? He came, in effect ; and 
 if he had tried to answer all the questions put to him, would 
 not have got away again till the next week. He contented 
 himself with saying to everybody that " he had been obliged 
 to go to the funeral." 
 
 " Whose funeral ? " asked Madame the Syndic, from whom 
 he could not escape so easily. 
 
 " My sister's," answered the broom-merchant. 
 
 " Who was she ? and when did they bury her ? " Madame 
 continued to ask. 
 
 The broom-merchat answered briefly, but frankly : aussi 
 Madame the Syndic cried out all at once, 
 
 " Mercy on us ! are you the brother of that servant-girl 
 there's been such a noise about, who turned out at her 
 master's death to have been his wife, and had all his fortune 
 left to her, and died herself soon afterwards ? " 
 
 " It is precisely so," answered Hansli, dryly.J 
 
 " But goodness of Heaven ! " cried Madame the Syndic, 
 "you inherit fifty thousand crowns at least, and behold you 
 still running over the country with your brooms ! " 
 
 * We keep the metaphor in the phrase, to ' give a dressing,' but the 
 short verb is better. 
 
 f Untranslateable. 
 
 \ It was unworthy of Gotthelf to spoil his story by this vulgar theat- 
 rical catastrophe ; and his object (namely, to exhibit the character of 
 Hansli in riches as well as poverty, ) does not justify him ; for, to be an 
 example to those in his own position, Hansli should have remained in it. 
 We will, however, take what good we can get: several of the points for 
 the sake of which I have translated the whole story, are in this part 
 of it.
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 447 
 
 "Why not?" said Hansli ; "I haven't got that money, 
 yet ; and I'm not going to let go my sparrow in the hand 
 for a pigeon on the tiles." 
 
 " Pigeon on the tiles, indeed ! " said Madame, " why, we 
 were speaking of it only this morning I and M. the Syndic; 
 and he said the thing was perfectly sure, and the money 
 came all to the brother." 
 
 " Ah, well, my faith, so much the better," said Hansli ; 
 "but about what I called to ask, must you have the brooms 
 in eight days, or fifteen ? " 
 
 "Ah, bah you and your brooms," cried Madame the 
 Syndic; "come in, will you; 1 want to see how wide 
 Monsieur will open his eyes ! " 
 
 " But, Madame, I am a little hurried to-day ; it's a long 
 way home from here, and the days 'are short." 
 
 " Long or short, come in, always," said Madame impera- 
 tively, and Hansli had nothing for it but to obey. 
 
 She did not take him into the kitchen, but into the dining- 
 room ; sent her maid to tell Monsieur that Hansli was there, 
 ordered up a bottle of wine, and forced Hansli to sit 
 down, in spite of his continued protesting that he had no 
 time, and that the days were short. But in a wink the 
 Monsieur was there, sat down at the table also, and drank to 
 Hansli's health and happiness ; requiring him at the same 
 time to explain how that had all happened. 
 
 " Ah, well, I'll tell you in two words, it is not long. As 
 soon as she had been confirmed, my sister went into the 
 world to look for work. She got on from place to place, and 
 was much valued, it seems. As for us at home, she occupied 
 herself little about us : only came to see us twice, in all the 
 time ; and, since my mother died, not at all. I have met her 
 at Berne, it is true ; but she never asked me to come and 
 see where she lived, only bid me salute the wife and chil- 
 dren, and said she would soon come, but she never did. It 
 is true she was not long at Berne, but was much out at 
 service in the neighbouring chateaux, and in French Switzer- 
 land, from what I hear. She had busy blood, and a fanciful 
 head, which never could stay long in the same place : but, 
 with that, well-conducted and proof-faithful ; * and one might 
 trust her fearlessly with anything. At last there came a re- 
 port that she had married a rich old gentleman, who did that 
 to punish his relations, with whom he was very angry ; but 
 
 * Fidele a toute epreuve. "
 
 448 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 
 
 I didn't much believe it, nor much think about it. And 
 then, all of a sudden, I got word that I must go directly to 
 my sister if I wanted to see her alive, and that she lived in 
 the country by Morat. So I set out. and got there in time 
 to see her die ; but was not able to say much to her. As 
 soon as she was buried, I came back as fast as I could. I 
 was in a hurry to get home, for since I first set up house 1 
 had never lost so much time about the world." 
 
 "What's that? lost so much time, indeed!" cried 
 Madame the Syndic. "Ah, nonsense; with your fifty 
 thousand crowns, are you going to keep carrying brooms 
 about the country ? " 
 
 "But very certainly, Madame the Syndic," said Hansli, 
 "I only half trust the thing; it seems to me impossible I 
 should have so much. After all, they say it can't fail ; but 
 be it as it will, I shall go on living my own life ; so that if 
 there cornes any hitch in the business, people shan't be able 
 to say of me, ' Ah, he thought himself already a gentleman, 
 did he ? Now he's glad to go back to his cart.! ' But if the 
 money really comes to me, I shall leave my brooms, though 
 not without regret ; but it would all the same, then, make 
 the world talk and laugh if I went on ; and I will not have 
 that." 
 
 "But that fortune is in safe hands, it runs no danger?" 
 asked M. the Syndic. 
 
 " I think so," said Hansli. " I promised some money to 
 the man, if the heritage really came to me ; then he got 
 angry, and said, ' If it's yours, you'll have it ; and if it isn't, 
 money won't get it : for the expenses and taxes, you'll have 
 the account in proper time and place.' Then I saw the 
 thing was well placed ; and I can wait well enough, till the 
 time's up." 
 
 " But, in truth," said Madame the Syndic, "I can't under- 
 stand such a sangfroid ! One has never seen the like of that 
 in Israel. That would make me leap out of my skin, if I was 
 your wife." 
 
 " You had better not," said Hansli, " at least until you have 
 found somebody able to put you into it again." 
 
 This sangfroid, and his carrying on his business, reconciled 
 many people to Hansli ; who were not the less very envious 
 of him : some indeed thought him a fool, and wanted to buy 
 the succession of him, declaring he would get nothing out of 
 it but lawsuits. 
 
 " What would you have ? " said Hansli. " In this world.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 449 
 
 one is sure of nothing. It will be time to think of it if the 
 affair gets into a mess." 
 
 But the affair got into nothing of the sort. Legal time 
 expired, he got invitation to Berne, when all difficulties were 
 cleared away. 
 
 When his wife saw him come back so rich, she began, first, 
 to cry ; and then, to scream. 
 
 So that Hansli had to ask her, again and again, what 
 was the matter with her, and whether anything had gone 
 wrong. 
 
 " Ah, now," said his wife, at last, (for she cried so sel- 
 dom, that she had all the more trouble to stop, when once 
 she began), " Ah, now, you will despise me, because you 
 are so rich, and think that you would like to have another 
 sort of wife than me. I've done what I could, to this day ; 
 but now I'm nothing but an old rag.* If only I was already 
 six feet under ground ! " 
 
 Thereupon Hansli sat himself down in his arm-chair, and 
 said : 
 
 " Wife, listen. Here are now nearly thirty years that we 
 have kept house ; and thou knowest, what one would have, 
 the other would have, too. I've never once beaten thee, and 
 the bad words we may have said to each other would be 
 easily counted. Well, wife, I tell thee, do not begin to be 
 ill-tempered now, or do anything else than you have always 
 done. Everything must remain between us as in the past. 
 This inheritance does not come from me ; nor from thee : 
 but from the good God, for us two, and for our children. 
 And now, I advise thee, and hold it for as sure a thing as if 
 it were written in the Bible, if you speak again of this to me 
 but once, be it with crying, or without, I will give thee a 
 beating with a new rope, such as that they may hear thee 
 cry from here to the Lake of Constance. Behold what is 
 said : now do as thou wilt." 
 
 It was resolute speaking ; much more resolute than the 
 diplomatic notes between Prussia and Austria. The wife 
 knew where she was, and did not recommence her song. 
 Things remained between them as they had been. Before 
 abandoning his brooms, Hansli gave a turn of his hand to 
 them, and made a present of a dozen to all his customers, 
 carrying them to each in his own person. He has repeated 
 many a time since, and nearly always with tears in his eyes, 
 
 * "Patraque," machine out of repair, and useless. 
 VOL. II. --29
 
 450 FOBS CLAV1GERA. 
 
 that it was a day he could never forget, and that he never 
 would have believed people loved him so. 
 
 Farming his own land, he kept his activity and simplicity, 
 prayed and worked as he had always done ; but he knew the 
 difference between a farmer and a broom-seller, and did hon- 
 our to his new position as he had to his old one. He knew 
 well, already, what was befitting in a farmer's house, and did 
 now for others as he had been thankful to have had done for 
 himself. 
 
 The good God spared both of them to see their sons-in-law 
 happy in their wives, and their daughters-in-law full of re- 
 spect and tenderness for their husbands ; and were they yet 
 alive this day, they would see what deep roots their family 
 had struck in their native land, because it has remained 
 faithful to the vital gerrns of domestic life ; the love of work ; 
 and religion : foundation that cannot be overthrown, un- 
 moved by mocking chance, or wavering winds. 
 
 I have no time, this month, to debate any of the debate 
 able matters in this storv. though I have translated it that 
 
 */ * O 
 
 we may together think of them as occasion serves. In the 
 meantime, note that the heads of question are these : 
 
 I. (Already suggested in p. 169 of my letter for March, 
 1874.) What are the relative dignities and felicities of 
 affection, in simple and gentle loves ? How far do you think 
 the regard existing between Hansli and his wife may be com- 
 pared, for nobleness and delight, to Sir Philip Sidney's re- 
 gard for his neighbour's wife ; or the relations between 
 Hansli and his sister, terminating in the brief 'was not able 
 to say much to her,' comparable to those between Sidney 
 and his sister, terminating in the completion of the brother's 
 Psalter by the sister's indistinguishably perfect song ? 
 
 II. If there be any difference, and you think the gentle 
 hearts have in anywise the better how far do you think this 
 separation between gentle and simple inevitable ? Suppose 
 Sir Philip, for instance among his many accomplishments 
 had been also taught the art of making brooms, (as indeed 
 I doubt not but his sister knew how to use them), and time 
 had thus been left to the broom-makers of his day for the 
 fashioning: of sonnets ? or the reading of more literature
 
 FOfiS CLAVIGERA. 451 
 
 than a ' chapitre ' on the Sunday afternoons ? Might such 
 not ' division ' but * collation ' of labour have bettered 
 both their lives ? 
 
 III. Or shall we rather be content with the apparent law 
 of Nature that there shall be divine Astrophels in the intel- 
 lectual heaven, and peaceful earthly glowworms on the banks 
 below ; or even on the Evangelical theory of human nature 
 worms without any glow ? And shall we be content to see 
 our broom-maker's children, at the best, growing up, as wil- 
 lows by the brook or in the simplest and innumerablest 
 crowd, as rushes in a marsh ; so long as they have whole- 
 some pith and sufficing strength to be securely sat upon in 
 rush-bottomed chairs ; while their masters' and lords' chil- 
 dren grow as roses on the mount of Sharon, and untoiling 
 lilies in the vales of Lebanon ? 
 
 IV. And even if we admit that the lives Penshurst, and 
 by the woods of Muri, though thus to be kept separate, are 
 yet, each in their manner, good, how far is the good of either 
 of them dependent merely, as our reverend Novelist tells us, 
 on " work " (with lance or willow wand) and " religion," or 
 how far on the particular circumstances and landscape of 
 Kent and Canton Berne, while, in other parts of England 
 and Switzerland, less favourably conditioned, the ministra- 
 tion of Mr. Septimus Hansard and Mr. Felix Neff will be 
 always required, for the mitigation of the deeper human 
 misery, meditation on which is to make our sweet English 
 ladies comfortable in nursing their cats ? 
 
 Leaving the first two of these questions to the reader's 
 thoughts, I will answer the last two for him ; The extremi- 
 ties of human degradation are not owing to natural causes ; 
 but to the habitual preying upon the labour of the poor by 
 the luxury of the rich ; and they are only encouraged and 
 increased by the local efforts of religious charity. The 
 clergy can neither absolve the rich from their sins for 
 money nor release them from their duties, for love. 
 Their business is not to soothe, by their saintly and dis- 
 tant example, the soft moments of cat-nursing ; but sternly 
 to forbid cat-nursing, till no child is left unnursed. And if
 
 452 FOR8 GLAVIGERA. 
 
 this true discipline of the Church were carried out, and the 
 larger body of less saintly clerical gentlemen, and Twfelix 
 Neffs, who now dine with the rich and preach to the poor, 
 were accustomed, on the contrary, to dine with the poor and 
 preach to the rich ; though still the various passions and 
 powers of the several orders would remain where the provi- 
 dence of Heaven placed them and the useful reed and use- 
 less rose would still bind the wintry waters with their border, 
 and brighten the May sunshine with their bloom, for each, 
 their happy being would be fulfilled in peace in the garden 
 of the world ; and the glow, if not of immortal, at least of 
 sacredly bequeathed, life, and endlessly cherished memory, 
 abide even within its chambers of the tomb.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 453 
 
 NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE. 
 
 I. I publish the following legal documents the first articles for 
 which I have to expend any of St. George's money, intact : venturing 
 not so much as the profanity of punctuation. The Memorandum is 
 drawn up by one of our leading counsel, from my sketch of what I 
 wanted. The points on which it may need some modification are re- 
 ferred to in my added notes ; and I now invite farther criticism or sug- 
 gestion from the subscribers to the Fund. 
 
 "2, BOND COUKT, WALBROOK, LONDON, E. C., 
 
 " June I5t?i, 1875. 
 " ST. GEORGE'S COMPANY. 
 
 " Dear Sir, According to the promise in our Mr. Tarrant's letter of 
 the llth, we now beg to send you what Mr. Wm. Barber, after reading 
 your sketch, has approved of as the written fundamental laws of the 
 Company, though we shall be quite prepared to find that some altera- 
 tions in it are still necessary to express your views correctly. 
 " We are, 
 
 "Dear Sir, 
 
 " Yours faithfully, 
 
 " TARRANT & MACKHELL. 
 '' Professor Ruskin, Corpus Ch. Coll., Oxford." 
 
 MEMORANDUM AND STATUTES OF THE COMPANY OF ST. 
 
 GEORGE. 
 
 The Company is constituted with the object of determining and in- 
 stituting in practice the wholesome laws of agricultural life and econ- 
 omy and of instructing the agricultural labourer in the science art and 
 literature of good husbandry, (a) 
 
 With this object it is proposed to acquire by gift purchase or other- 
 wise plots or tracts of land in different parts of the country which will 
 be brought into such state of cultivation or left uncultivated or turned 
 into waste or common land and applied to such purposes as having re- 
 gard to the nature of the soil and other surrounding circumstances may 
 in each case be thought to be most generally useful. 
 
 The members of the Company shall be styled Companions of the Com- 
 pany of St. George (b) Any person may become a Companion by sub- 
 scribing not less than in money to the funds of the Company or 
 by making a gift to the Company of land not less than in value
 
 454: FORS CLAV1GERA. 
 
 (c) and by having his name entered on the Roll of Companions with 
 due solemnity. 
 
 The name of every Companion shall be entered on the Roll of Com- 
 panions either by himself in the presence of two witnesses of full age 
 who shall attest such entry or if the Companion shall so desire by the 
 Master of the Company with the same formalities The Roll of Com- 
 panions shall be kept in safe custody within the walls of the College of 
 Corpus Christi in Oxford or at such other safe and commodious place 
 as the Companions shall from time to time direct. 
 
 Each Companion shall by virtue of the entry of his name on the Roll 
 be deemed to have bound himself by a solemn vow and promise as 
 strict as if the same had been ratified by oath to be true and loyal to the 
 Company and to the best of his power and might so far as in him lies 
 to forward and advance the objects and interests thereof and faithfully 
 to keep and obey the statutes and rules thereof yet so nevertheless that 
 he shall not be bound in any way to harass annoy injure or inconven- 
 ience his neighbour. 
 
 Chief among the Companions of the Company shall be the Master 
 thereof who so long as he shall hold office shall have full and absolute 
 power at his will and pleasure to make and repeal laws and bye laws (d) 
 and in all respects to rule regulate manage and direct the affairs of the 
 Company and receive apply and administer funds and subscriptions in 
 aid of its objects and to purchase acquire cultivate manage lease sell or 
 otherwise dispose of the estates and properties of the Company and 
 generally direct and control the operations thereof. 
 
 The Master shall be elected and may from time to time and at any 
 time be deposed by the votes of a majority in number of the Companions 
 in General Meeting assembled but except in the event of his resignation 
 or deposition shall hold office for life The first Master of the Company 
 shall be John Ruskin who shall however (subject to re-election) only 
 hold office until the first General Meeting of the Companions. 
 
 The Master shall render to each Companion and shall be at liberty if 
 he shall so think fit to print for public circulation a monthly report and 
 account of the operations and financial position of the Company. 
 
 No Master or other Companion of the Company shall either directly 
 or indirectly receive any pay profit emolument or advantage whatsoever 
 from out of by or by means of his office or position as a member of the 
 Company. 
 
 The practical supervision and management of the estates and proper- 
 ties of the Company shall subject to the direction and control of the 
 Master be entrusted to and carried out by land agents tenants and la- 
 bourers who shall be styled Retainers of the Company. 
 
 The name of each Retainer in the permanent employ of the Company 
 shall be entered in a Register to be called the Roll of Retainers and to 
 be kept at the same place as the Roll of Companions Such entry shall 
 be made either by the Retainer himself in the presence of one witness 
 of full age who shall attest the entry or if the Retainer shall so desire 
 by the Master with the same formalities. 
 
 No pecuniary liability shall attach to any Retainer of the Company 
 by virtue of his position as such but each Retainer shall by virtue of the 
 entry of his name on the Roll be deemed to have bound himself by a 
 solemn vow and promise as strict as if the same had been ratified by 
 oath to be true and loyal to the Company and faithfully to keep and
 
 FOBS CLAVIGERA. 455 
 
 obey the statutes and rules thereof and the orders and commands of the 
 officers of the Company who from time to time may be set over him. 
 
 Each land agent and labourer being a Retainer of the Company shall 
 receive and be paid a fixed salary in return for his services and shall not 
 by perquisites commissions or any other means whatever either directly 
 or indirectly receive or acquire any pay profit emolument or advantages 
 whatever other than such fixed salary from out of or by means of his 
 office or position as a Retainer of the Company. 
 
 The rents and profits to be derived from the estates and properties of 
 the Company shall be applied in the first instance in the development of 
 the land (e) and the physical intellectual moral social and religious im- 
 provement of the residents thereon in such manner as the Master shall 
 from time to time direct or approve and the surplus rents and profits if 
 any shall be applied in reduction of the amount paid by the tenants in 
 proportion to their respective skill and industry either by a gradual re- 
 mission of rent towards the close of the tenancy or in such other way as 
 may be thought best but in no case shall the Companions personally de- 
 rive any rents or profits from the property of the Company. 
 
 All land and hereditaments for the time being belonging to the Com- 
 pany shall be conveyed to and vested in any two or more of the Compan- 
 ions whom the Master may from time to time select for the office as 
 Trustees of the Company and shall be dealt with by them according to 
 the directions of the Master. (/) 
 
 The property of the Company shall belong to the Companions in the 
 shares and proportions in which they shall have respectively contributed 
 or by succession or accruer become entitled to the same. 
 
 Each Companion shall be entitled by writing under his hand during 
 his lifetime or by will or codicil to appoint one person as his successor 
 in the Company and such person shall on entry of his name on the Roll 
 of Companions in compliance with the formalities hereinbefore pre- 
 scribed become a Companion of the Company and become entitled to 
 the share of his appointer in the property of the Company, (g) 
 
 Each Companion shall at any time be entitled to resign his position 
 by giving to the Master a Notice under his hand of his desire and inten- 
 tion so to do. 
 
 If any Companion shall resign his position or die without having ap- 
 pointed a successor or if the person so appointed shall for calendar 
 months after the date when notice of such resignation shall have been 
 received by the Master or after the date of such death as the case may 
 be fail to have his name entered on the Roll of Companions in compli- 
 ance with the formalities hereinbefore prescribed his share in the prop- 
 erty of the Company shall forthwith become forfeited and shall accrue 
 to the other Companions in the shares and proportions in which they 
 shall inter se be for the time being entitled to the property of the Com- 
 pany. (/<) 
 
 The Company may at any time be dissolved by the Votes of three- 
 fourths of the Companions in General Meeting assembled and in the 
 event of the Company being so dissolved or being dissolved by any other 
 means not hereinbefore specially provided for the property of the Com- 
 pany shall subject to the debts liabilities and engagements thereof be- 
 come divisible among the Companions for the time being in the shares 
 and proportions in which they shall for the time being be entitled thereto 
 yet so nevertheless that all leases agreements for leases and other ten-
 
 456 FOR8 CLAVIGERA. 
 
 ancles for the time being subsisting on the property of the Company shall 
 bind the persons among whom the property comprised therein shall so 
 become divisible and shall continue as valid and effectual to all intents 
 and purposes as if the Company had not been dissolved. 
 
 NOTES ON THE ABOVE MEMORANDUM. 
 
 (a) This sentence must be changed into : li such science art and 
 literature as are properly connected with husbandry." 
 
 (b) In my sketch, I wrote Companions of St. George. But as the 
 existence of St. George cannot be legally proved or assumed, the tauto- 
 logically legal phrase must be permitted. 
 
 (c) This clause cannot stand. The admission into the Company must 
 not be purchaseable ; also many persons capable of giving enthusiastic 
 and wise help as Companions, may be unable to subscribe money. 
 Nothing can be required as a condition of entrance, except the consent 
 of the Master, and signature promising obedience to the laws. 
 
 (d) This clause needs much development. For though the Master 
 must be entirely unrestrained in action within the limits of the Laws of 
 the Company, he must not change or add to them without some manner 
 of consultation with the Companions. Even in now founding the So- 
 ciety, I do not venture to write a constitution for it without inviting the 
 help of its existing members ; and when once its main laws are agreed 
 upon, they must be inabrogable without the same concurrence of the 
 members which would be necessary to dissolve the Society altogether. 
 
 (e) To the development, and enlargement, of the Society's opera- 
 tions, also. 
 
 (/) I do not think the Master should have the power of choosing the 
 Trustees. I was obliged to do so, before any Society was in existence ; 
 but the Trustees have to verify the Master's accounts, and otherwise 
 act as a check upon him. They must not, therefore, be chosen by him. 
 
 (</) A questionable clause, which I have not at present time to dis- 
 cuss. 
 
 (h) Partly the corollary of (g). The word ' forfeited ' is morally, if 
 not legally, objectionable. No idea of forfeiture ought to attach to 
 the resolved surrender of transferable claim ; or to the accidental in- 
 ability to discover a fitting successor. 
 
 Reserving, therefore, the above clauses for future modification, the 
 rest of the Memorandum fully expresses what seems to me desirable for 
 the first basis of our constitution ; and I shall be glad to hear whether 
 any of the present subscribers to St. George's Fund will join me on 
 these conditions. 
 
 II. I should willingly have printed the letter from which the 
 following extracts are taken, (with comments,) as a Fors by itself ; 
 but having other matters pressing, must content myself to leave it
 
 FORS CLAVIOERA. 457 
 
 in the smaller print. The more interesting half of it is still reserved 
 for next month. 
 
 "What long years have passed since my eyes first saw the calm 
 sweet scene beyond Wakefield Bridge ! I was but a small creature then, 
 and had never been far from my mother's door. It was a memorable 
 day for me when I toddled a full mile from the shady up-towu street 
 where we lived, past strange windows, over unfamiliar flags, to see the 
 big weir and the chapel on the Bridge. Standing on tiptoe, I could just 
 see over the parapet and look down-stream. 
 
 " That was my first peep into fair, green England, and destined never 
 to be forgotten. The gray old chapel, the shining water below, the 
 far-winding green banks spangled with buttercups, the grove-clad hills 
 of Heath and Kirkthorpe, all seemed to pass into my heart for ever. 
 
 '' There was no railway then, only the Don caster coach careering 
 over the Bridge with a brave sound of horn ; fields and farmsteads 
 stood where the Kirkgate station is ; where the twenty black throats 
 of the foundry belch out flame and soot, there were only strawberry- 
 grounds and blossoming pear-orchards, among which the throstles and 
 blackbirds were shouting for gladness. 
 
 "The chapel lay neglected in a nest of wild willows, and a peaceful 
 cobbler dwelt in it. As I looked at it, Duke Richard and King Edward 
 became living realities to me ; the dry bones of Pinnock's Catechism 
 started suddenly into life. That was the real old chapel of the fifteenth 
 century. Some years after, they ousted the cobbler, pulled down the 
 old stones, restored it, and opened it for ritualistic worship ; but the 
 cheap stonework has crumbled away again, and it now looks as ancient 
 as in days of yore. Only, as I remember it, it had a white hoariness : 
 the foundry smoke has made it black at the present day. 
 
 " Some of my companions had been farther out in the world than 
 myself. They pointed out the dusky shape of Heath Hall, seen 
 
 through the thinly-clad elm-trees, and told me how old Lady 's 
 
 ghost still walked there on stormy nights. Beyond was Kirkthorpe, 
 where the forlorn shapes of the exiled Spanish nuns had been seen flit- 
 ting about their graves in the churchyard. 
 
 " There on the right was the tree-crowned mound of Sandal Castle, 
 which Cromwell had blown down ; the dry ditch was full of primroses, 
 they told me ; those woods bounded Crofton, famous for its cowslip 
 fields ; and in Heath wood you would see the ground white with snow- 
 drops in March. 
 
 '' I do not think that it is the partiality of a native that makes me 
 think you could hardly find a fairer inland pastoral scene, than the one 
 I beheld from Wakefield Bridge the first time I stood there. On the 
 chapel side there was the soft green English landscape, with woods and 
 spires and halls, and the brown sails of boats silently moving among the 
 flowery banks ; on the town side there were picturesque traffic and 
 life ; the thundering weir, the wide still water beyond, the big dark- 
 red granaries, with balconies and archways to the water, and the lofty 
 white mills grinding out their cheering music. 
 
 " But there were no worse shapes than honest, dusty millers' men, 
 and browned boatmen, decent people; no open vileness and foul 
 language %vere rampant in our quiet clean town in those days. I can 
 remember how clean the pavement used to look there, and at Don-
 
 458 FOBS CLAVIOERA. 
 
 caster. Both towns are incredibly dirty now. I cannot bear io look 
 at the filthy beslavered causeway, in places where I remember to have 
 never seen anything worse than the big round thunder- drops I used to 
 watch with gleeful interest. 
 
 " In those days we were proud of the cleanness and sweet air and 
 gentility of Wakefield. Leeds was then considered rather vulgar, as a 
 factory town, and Bradford was obscure, rough, and wild ; but Wake- 
 field prided itself in refined living on moderate means, and cultured 
 people of small income were fond of settling there. 
 
 " Market day used to be a great event for us all. 
 
 " I wish that you could have seen the handsome farmers' wives 
 ranged round the church walls, with their baskets of apricots and 
 cream cheese, before reform came, and they swept away my dear old 
 school-house of the seventeenth century, to make an ugly barren desert 
 of a market ground. You might have seen, too, the pretty cottagers' 
 daughters, with their bunches of lavender and baskets of fruit, or heaps 
 of cowslips and primroses for the wine and vinegar Wakefield house- 
 wives prided themselves upon. On certain days they stood to be hired 
 as maid-servants, and were prized in the country round as neat, clean, 
 modest-spoken girls. 
 
 "I do not know where they are gone to now, I suppose to the 
 factories. Anyhow, Wakefield ladies cry out that they must get ser- 
 vants from London, and Stafford, and Wales. So class gets parted 
 from class. 
 
 " Things were different then. Well-to-do ladies prided themselves on 
 doing their marketing in person, and kindly feeling and acquaintance- 
 ship sprang up between town and country folk. My Wakefield friends 
 nowadays laugh at the idea of going to market. They order every- 
 thing through the cook, and hardly know their own tradespeople by 
 sight. We used to get delicious butter at tenpence a pound, and such 
 curds and cream cheese as I never taste now. 'Cook' brings in in- 
 different butter mostly, at near two shillings. 
 
 "As for the farmers' wives, they would not like to be seen with a 
 butter-basket. They mostly send the dairy produce off by rail to 
 people whom they never see, and thus class is more sundered from 
 class every day, even by the very facilities that railways afford. I can 
 remember that the townspeople had simple merry-makings and neigh- 
 bourly ways that this generation would scorn. Many a pleasant walk 
 we had to the farms and halls that belted the old town ; and boating 
 parties on the Calder, and tea-drinkings and dances mostly extem- 
 pore, in the easy fashion of Vicar Primrose's days. 
 
 " But pleasure must be sought farther off now. Our young folks go 
 to London or Paris for their recreation. People seem to have no leisure 
 for being neighbourly, or to get settled in their houses. They seem to 
 be all expecting to make a heap of money, and to be much grander 
 presently, and finally to live in halls and villas, and look down on their 
 early friends. 
 
 "But I am sorry for the young people. They run through every- 
 thing so soon, and have nothing left to hope for or dream of in a few 
 years. They are better dressed than we were, and have more accom- 
 plishments ; but I cannot help thinking that we young folks were 
 happier in the old times, though shillings were not half so plentiful, 
 and we had only two frocks a year.
 
 FORS CLAVIGERA. 459 
 
 " Tradespeople were different, too, in old Wakefield. 
 
 " They expected to live with us all their lives; they had high notions 
 of honour as tradesmen, and they and their customers respected each 
 other. 
 
 " They prided themselves on the ' wear ' of their goods. If they had 
 passed upon the housewives a piece of sized calico or shoddy flannel, 
 they would have heard of it for years after. 
 
 " Now the richer ladies go to Leeds or Manchester to make pur- 
 chases ; the town tradesmen are soured and jealous. They put up big 
 plate-glass fronts, and send out flaming bills ; but one does not know 
 where to gee a piece of sound calico or stout linen, well spun and well 
 woven. 
 
 "Give me back our dingy old shops where everything was genuine, 
 instead of these glass palaces where we often get pins without points, 
 needles without eyes, and sewing thread sixty yards to the hundred 
 which I actually heard a young Quaker defend the other day as an 
 allowable trade practice." 
 
 III. I venture to print the following sentences from "a poor 
 mother's" letter, that my reply may be more generally intelligible. I 
 wish I could say, useful ; but the want of an art-grammar is every day 
 becoming more felt : 
 
 " I am rather ashamed to tell you how young he is (not quite eleven), 
 fearing you will say I have troubled you idly; but I was sincerely 
 anxious to know your views on the training of a boy for some definite 
 sort of art-work, and I have always fancied such training ought to 
 begin very early, [yes, assuredly], also, there are reasons why we 
 must decide early in what direction we shall look out for employment 
 for him." 
 
 (I never would advise any parents to look for employment in art as a 
 means of their children's support. It is only when the natural bias is 
 quite uncontrollable, that future eminence, and comfort of material 
 circumstances, can be looked for. And when it is uncontrollable, it 
 ceases to be a question whether we should control it. We have only to 
 guide it.) 
 
 " But I seem to dread the results of letting him run idle until he is 
 fourteen or fifteen years old [most wisely] and a poor and busy 
 mother like me has not time to superintend the employment of a boy 
 as a richer one might. This makes me long to put him to work under 
 a master early. As he does so little at book-learning, would the 
 practical learning of stone-cutting under the village stonemason (a good 
 man) be likely to lead to anything further ? " 
 
 I do not know, but it would be of the greatest service to the boy 
 meanwhile. Let him learn good joiners' work also, and to plough, with 
 time allowed him for drawing. I feel more and more the need of a 
 useful grammar of art for young people, and simple elementary teach- 
 ing in public schools. I have always hoped to remedy this want, but 
 have been hindered hitherto.