ft
 
 
 (Mt^tgO^juA^ 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 Prom a sketch by himself, published in the " Life and 
 Work of John Ruskin," by W. G. Collingwood, M.A. 
 By permission of Hough ton, Mifflin & Co,
 
 t
 
 3be Centura Glassies 
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 AND 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD 
 OLIVE 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN RUSKIN 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 Ube Century Co. 
 
 MCMI
 
 The tost adopted in this volume is that of the last edition of 
 "Sesame and Lilies" and "The Crown of Wild Olive" pub- 
 lished during Ruskin's lifetime. 
 
 Published October, 1901.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 PAGE 
 
 PREFACE v 
 
 LECTURE I 1 
 
 Sesame : Of Kings' Treasuries. 
 
 LECTURE II 81 
 
 Lilies : Of Queens' Gardens. 
 
 LECTURE III 135 
 
 The Mystery of Life and its Arts. 
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 INTRODUCTION 195 
 
 LECTURE 1 211 
 
 Work. 
 
 LECTURE II 259 
 
 Traffic. 
 
 LECTURE III 301 
 
 War. 
 
 LECTURE IV 355 
 
 The Future of England.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 BEING now fifty-one years old, and little 
 likely to change my mind hereafter on 
 any important subject of thought (unless 
 through weakness of age), I wish to publish a 
 connected series of such parts of my works as 
 now seem to me right, and likely to be of perma- 
 nent use. In doing so I shall omit much, but not 
 attempt to mend what I think worth reprinting. 
 A young man necessarily writes otherwise than 
 an old one, and it would be worse than wasted 
 tune to try to recast the juvenile language : nor 
 is it to be thought that I am ashamed even of 
 what I cancel ; for great part of my earlier work 
 was rapidly written for temporary purposes, and 
 is now unnecessary, though true, even to truism. 
 What I wrote about religion was, on the con- 
 trary, painstaking, and, I think, forcible, as com- 
 pared with most religious writing, especially in 
 its frankness and fearlessness : but it was wholly 
 mistaken ; for I had been educated in the doc- 
 trines of a narrow sect, and had read history as 
 obliquely as sectarians necessarily must. 
 
 Mingled among these either unnecessary or 
 erroneous statements, I find, indeed, some that 
 might be still of value ; but these, in my earlier 
 books, disfigured by affected language, partly 
 through the desire to be thought a fine writer, 
 and partly, as in the second volume of "Modern 
 Painters," in the notion of returning as far as 
 I could to what I thought the better style of old
 
 PREFACE 
 
 English literature, especially to that of my then 
 favorite, in prose, Richard Hooker. 
 
 For these reasons, though, as respects either 
 art, policy, or morality, as distinct from religion, 
 I not only still hold, but would even wish 
 strongly to reaffirm the substance of what I said 
 in my earliest books, I shall reprint scarcely 
 anything in this series out of the first and second 
 volumes of "Modern Painters"; and shall omit 
 much of the "Seven Lamps" and "Stones of 
 Venice"; but all my books written within the 
 last fifteen years will be republished without 
 change, as new editions of them are called for, 
 with here and there perhaps an additional note, 
 and having their text divided, for convenient 
 reference, into paragraphs, consecutive through 
 each volume. 1 I shall also throw together the 
 shorter fragments that bear on each other, and 
 fill in with such unprinted lectures or studies as 
 seem to me worth preserving, so as to keep the 
 volumes, on an average, composed of about a 
 hundred leaves each. 
 
 The first book of which a new edition is re- 
 quired chances to be " Sesame and Lilies," from 
 which I now detach the whole preface, about the 
 Alps, for use elsewhere ; and to which I add a 
 lecture given in Ireland on a subject closely con- 
 nected with that of the book itself. I am glad 
 that it should be the first of the complete series, 
 for many reasons ; though in now looking over 
 these two lectures, I am painfully struck by the 
 waste of good work in them. They cost me much 
 thought and much strong emotion ; but it was 
 foolish to suppose that I could rouse my audi- 
 ences in a little while to any sympathy with the 
 temper into which I had brought myself by years 
 1 The numbers of the paragraphs are not given in this reprint, 
 vl
 
 PREFACE 
 
 of thinking over subjects full of pain ; while, if I 
 missed my purpose at the time, it was little to be 
 hoped I could attain it afterwards, since phrases 
 written for oral delivery become ineffective when 
 quietly read. Yet I should only take away what 
 good is in them if I tried to translate them into 
 the language of books ; nor, indeed, could I at all 
 have done so at the time of their delivery, my 
 thoughts then habitually and impatiently putting 
 themselves into forms fit only for emphatic 
 speech ; and thus I am startled, in my review of 
 them, to find that, though there is much (forgive 
 me the impertinence) which seems to me accu- 
 rately and energetically said, there is scarcely 
 anything put in a form to be generally convin- 
 cing, or even easily intelligible ; and I can well 
 imagine a reader laying down the book without 
 being at all moved by it, still less guided, to any 
 definite course of action. 
 
 I think, however, if I now say briefly and 
 clearly what I meant my hearers to understand, 
 and what I wanted, and still would fain have, 
 them to do, there may afterwards be found some 
 better service in the passionately written text. 
 
 The first lecture says, or tries to say, that, life 
 being very short, and the quiet hours of it few, 
 we ought to waste none of them in reading value- 
 less books ; and that valuable books should, in a 
 civilized country, be within the reach of every 
 one, printed in excellent form, for a just price ; 
 but not in any vile, vulgar, or, by reason of small- 
 ness of type, physically injurious form, at a vile 
 price. For we none of us need many books, and 
 those which we need ought to be clearly printed, 
 on the best paper, and strongly bound. And 
 though we are, indeed, now, a wretched and 
 poverty-struck nation, and hardly able to keep
 
 PREFACE 
 
 soul and body together, still, as no person in 
 decent circumstances would put on his table con- 
 fessedly bad wine, or bad meat, without being 
 ashamed, so he need not have on his shelves ill- 
 printed or loosely and wretchedly stitched books ; 
 for though few can be rich, yet every man who 
 honestly exerts himself may, I think, still pro- 
 vide, for himself and his family, good shoes, good 
 gloves, strong harness for his cart- or carriage- 
 horses, and stout leather binding for his books. 
 And I would urge upon every young man, as the 
 beginning of his due and wise provision for his 
 household, to obtain as soon as he can, by the 
 severest economy, a restricted, serviceable, and 
 steadily however slowly increasing series of 
 books for use through life ; making his little 
 library, of all the furniture in his room, the most 
 studied and decorative piece ; every volume hav- 
 ing its assigned place, like a little statue in its 
 niche, and one of the earliest and strictest lessons 
 to the children of the house being how to turn 
 the pages of their own literary possessions lightly 
 and deliberately, with no chance of tearing or 
 dog's-ears. 
 
 That is my notion of the founding of Kings' 
 Treasuries ; and the first lecture is intended to 
 show somewhat the use and preciousness of their 
 treasures : but the two following ones have wider 
 scope, being written in the hope of awakening 
 the youth of England, so far as my poor words 
 might have any power with them, to take some 
 thought of the purposes of the life into which 
 they are entering, and the nature of the world 
 they have to conquer. 
 
 These two lectures are fragmentary and ill 
 arranged, but not, I think, diffuse or much com- 
 pressible. The entire gist and conclusion of them,
 
 PREFACE 
 
 however, is in the last six paragraphs, 135 to the 
 end, 1 of the third lecture, which I would beg the 
 reader to look over not once nor twice (rather 
 than any other part of the book), for they con- 
 tain the best expression I have yet been able to 
 put in words of what, so far as is within my 
 power, I mean henceforward both to do myself, 
 and to plead with all over whom I have any 
 influence to do also according to their means : 
 the letters begun on the first day of this year, to 
 the workmen of England, having the object of 
 originating, if possible, this movement among 
 them, in true alliance with whatever trustworthy 
 element of help they can find in the higher 
 classes. After these paragraphs, let me ask you 
 to read, by the fiery light of recent events, the 
 fable at page 170 ( 117), 2 andthen gg 129-131 ; 3 and 
 observe, my statement respecting the famine at 
 Orissa is not rhetorical, but certified by official 
 documents as within the truth. Five hundred 
 thousand persons, at least, died by starvation in 
 our British dominions, wholly in consequence of 
 carelessness and want of forethought. Keep that 
 well in your memory ; and note it as the best 
 possible illustration of modern political economy 
 in true practice, and of the relations it has ac- 
 complished between Supply and Demand. Then 
 begin the second lecture, and all will read clear 
 enough, I think, to the end ; only, since that 
 second lecture was written, questions have arisen 
 respecting the education and claims of women 
 which have greatly troubled simple minds and 
 excited restless ones. I am sometimes asked my 
 thoughts on this matter, and I suppose that some 
 girl readers of the second lecture may at the end 
 of it desire to be told summarily what I would 
 
 1 Pages 183-192. 2 Pages 161, 162. 3 Pages 175-179.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 have them do and desire in the present state 
 of things. This, then, is what I would say to 
 any girl who had confidence enough in me to 
 believe what I told her, or to do what I asked 
 her. 
 
 First, be quite sure of one thing, that, however 
 much you may know, and whatever advantages 
 you may possess, and however good you may be, 
 you have not been singled out, by the God who 
 made you, from all the other girls in the world, 
 to be especially informed respecting His own na- 
 ture and character. You have not been born in a 
 luminous point upon the surface of the globe, 
 where a perfect theology might be expounded to 
 you from your youth up, and where everything 
 you were taught would be true, and everything 
 that was enforced upon you, right. Of all the in- 
 solent, all the foolish persuasions that by any 
 chance could enter and hold your empty little 
 heart, this is the proudest and foolishest, that 
 you have been so much the darling of the Heavens, 
 and favorite of the Fates, as to be born in the 
 very nick of time, and in the punctual place, 
 when and where pure Divine truth had been 
 sifted from the errors of the Nations ; and that 
 your papa had been providentially disposed to 
 buy a house in the convenient neighborhood of 
 the steeple under which that Immaculate and 
 final verity would be beautifully proclaimed. Do 
 not think it, child ; it is not so. This, on the 
 contrary, is the fact, unpleasant you may think 
 it; pleasant, it seems to me, that you, with all 
 your pretty dresses, and dainty looks, and kindly 
 thoughts, and saintly aspirations, are not one 
 whit more thought of or loved by the great Maker 
 and Master than any poor little red, black, or 
 blue savage, running wild in the pestilent woods,
 
 PREFACE 
 
 or naked on the hot sands of the earth : and that, 
 of the two, you probably know less about God 
 than she does ; the only difference being that she 
 thinks little of Him that is right, and you much 
 that is wrong. 
 
 That, then, is the first thing to make sure of ; 
 that you are not yet perfectly well informed on 
 the most abstruse of all possible subjects, and that 
 if you care to behave with modesty or propriety, 
 you had better be silent about it. 
 
 The second thing which you may make sure of 
 is, that however good you may be, you have 
 faults ; that however dull you may be, you can 
 find out what some of them are ; and that how- 
 ever slight they may be, you had better make 
 some not too painful, but patient effort to get 
 quit of tnem. And so far as you have confidence 
 in me at all, trust me for this, that how many 
 soever you may find or fancy your faults to be, 
 there are only two that are of real consequence, 
 Idleness and Cruelty. Perhaps you may be proud. 
 Well, we can get much good out of pride, if only 
 it be not religious. Perhaps you may be vain ; 
 it is highly probable ; and very pleasant for the 
 people who like to praise you. Perhaps you are 
 a little envious : that is really very shocking ; but 
 then so is everybody else. Perhaps, also, you 
 are a little malicious, which I am truly concerned 
 to hear, but should probably only the more, if I 
 knew you, enjoy your conversation. But what- 
 ever else you may be, you must not be useless, 
 and you must not be cruel. If there is any one 
 point which, in six thousand years of think- 
 ing about right and wrong, wise and good men 
 have agreed upon, or successively by experi- 
 ence discovered, it is that God dislikes idle 
 and cruel people more than any others: that
 
 PREFACE 
 
 His first order is, " Work while you have light" ; 
 and His second, "Be merciful while you have 
 mercy." 
 
 "Work while you have light," especially while 
 you have the light of morning. There are few 
 things more wonderful to me than that old people 
 never tell young ones how precious their youth 
 is. They sometimes sentimentally regret their 
 own earlier days ; sometimes prudently forget 
 them ; often foolishly rebuke the young, often 
 more foolishly indulge, often most foolishly 
 thwart and restrain ; but scarcely ever warn or 
 watch them. Remember, then, that I, at least, 
 have warned you, that the happiness of your life, 
 and its power, and its part and rank in earth or 
 in heaven, depend on the way you pass your 
 days now. They are not to be sad days : far from 
 that, the first duty of young people is to be de- 
 lighted and delightful ; but they are to be in the 
 deepest sense solemn days. There is no solem- 
 nity so deep, to a rightly thinking creature, as 
 that of dawn. But not only in that beautiful 
 sense, but in all their character and method, they 
 are to be solemn days. Take your Latin diction- 
 ary, and look out " solennis," and fix the sense of 
 the word well in your mind, and remember that 
 every day of your early life is ordaining irrevo- 
 cably, for good or evil, the custom and practice 
 of your soul ; ordaining either sacred customs of 
 dear and lovely recurrence, or trenching deeper 
 and deeper the furrows for seed of sorrow. Now, 
 therefore, see that no day passes in which you do 
 not make yourself a somewhat better creature ; 
 and in order to do that, find out, first, what you 
 are now. Do not think vaguely about it ; take 
 pen and paper, and write down as accurate a 
 description of yourself as you can, with the date 
 xii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 to it. If you dare not do so, find out why you 
 dare not, and try to get strength of heart enough 
 to look yourself fairly in the face in mind as well 
 as body. I do not doubt but that the mind is a 
 less pleasant thing to look at than the face, and 
 for that very reason it needs more looking at ; so 
 always have two mirrors on your toilet-table, and 
 see that with proper care you dress body and 
 mind before them daily. After the dressing is 
 once over for the day, think no more about it : 
 as your hair will blow about your ears, so your 
 temper and thoughts will get ruffled with the 
 day's work, and may need, sometimes, twice 
 dressing ; but I don't want you to carry about a 
 mental pocket-comb ; only to be smooth braided 
 always in the morning. 
 
 Write down then, frankly, what you are, or, at 
 least, what you think yourself, not dwelling upon 
 those inevitable faults which I have just told you 
 are of little consequence, and which the action of 
 a right life will shake or smooth away ; but that 
 you may determine to the best of your intelligence 
 what you are good for and can be made into. 
 You will find that the mere resolve not to be use- 
 less, and the honest desire to help other people, 
 will, in the quickest and delicatest ways, improve 
 yourself. Thus, from the beginning, consider all 
 your accomplishments as means of assistance to 
 others ; read attentively, in this volume, para- 
 graphs 74, 75, 19, and 79, T and you will understand 
 what I mean, with respect to languages and 
 music. In music especially you will soon find 
 what personal benefit there is in being service- 
 able : it is probable that, however limited your 
 powers, you have voice and ear enough to sus- 
 tain a note of moderate compass in a concerted 
 
 1 Pages 110-112, 26, 27, 115.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 piece ; that, then, is the first thing to make sure 
 you can do. Get your voice disciplined and clear, 
 and think only of accuracy ; never of effect or 
 expression : if you have any soul worth express- 
 ing, it will show itself in your singing ; but most 
 likely there are very few feelings in you, at 
 present, needing any particular expression ; and 
 the one thing you have to do is to make a clear- 
 voiced little instrument of yourself, which other 
 people can entirely depend upon for the note 
 wanted. So, in drawing, as soon as you can set 
 down, the right shape of anything, and thereby 
 explain its character to another person, or make 
 the look of it clear and interesting to a child, you 
 will begin to enjoy the art vividly for its own 
 sake, and all your habits of mind and powers of 
 memory will gain precision : but if you only try 
 to make showy drawings for praise, or pretty 
 ones for amusement, your drawing will have 
 little of real interest for you, and no educational 
 power whatever. 
 
 Then, besides this more delicate work, resolve 
 to do every day some that is useful in the vulgar 
 sense. Learn first thoroughly the economy of 
 the kitchen ; the good and bad qualities of every 
 common article of food, and the simplest and 
 best modes of their preparation : when you have 
 time, go and help in the cooking of poorer fami- 
 lies, and show them how to make as much of 
 everything as possible, and how to make little, 
 nice ; coaxing and tempting them into tidy and 
 pretty ways, and pleading for well-folded table- 
 cloths, however coarse, and for a flower or two 
 out of the garden to strew on them. If you 
 manage to get a clean table-cloth, bright plates 
 on it, and a good dish in the middle, of your own 
 cooking, you may ask leave to say a short grace ;
 
 PREFACE 
 
 and let your religious ministries be confined to 
 that much for the present. 
 
 Again, let a certain part of your day (as little 
 as you choose, but not to be broken in upon) be 
 set apart for making strong and pretty dresses 
 for the poor. Learn the sound qualities of all 
 useful stuffs, and make everything of the best 
 you can get, whatever its price. I have many 
 reasons for desiring you to do this, too many to 
 be told just now, trust me, and be sure you get 
 everything as good as can be : and if, in the 
 villainous state of modern trade, you cannot get 
 it good at any price, buy its raw material, and 
 set some of the poor women about you to spin 
 and weave, till you have got stuff that can be 
 trusted : and then, every day, make some little 
 piece of useful clothing, sewn with your own 
 fingers as strongly as it can be stitched ; and em- 
 broider it or otherwise beautify it moderately 
 with fine needlework, such as a girl may be 
 proud of having done. And accumulate these 
 things by you until you hear of some honest per- 
 sons in need of clothing, which may often too 
 sorrowfully be ; and, even though you should be 
 deceived, and give them to the dishonest, and 
 hear of their being at once taken to the pawn- 
 broker's, never mind that, for the pawnbroker 
 must sell them to some one who has need of them. 
 That is no business of yours ; what concerns you 
 is only that when you see a half-naked child, you 
 should have good and fresh clothes to give it, if 
 its parents will let it be taught to wear them. If 
 they will not, consider how they came to be of 
 such a mind, which it will be wholesome for you 
 beyond most subjects of inquiry to ascertain. 
 And after you have gone on doing this a little 
 while, you will begin to understand the meaning
 
 PREFACE 
 
 of at least one chapter of your Bible, Proverbs 
 xxxi., without need of any labored comment, 
 sermon, or meditation. 
 
 In these, then (and of course in all minor ways 
 besides, that you can discover in your own house- 
 hold), you must be to the best of your strength 
 usefully employed during the greater part of the 
 day, so that you may be able at the end of it to 
 say, as proudly as any peasant, that you have not 
 eaten the bread of idleness. 
 
 Then, secondly, I said, you are not to be cruel. 
 Perhaps you think there is no chance of your 
 being so ; and indeed I hope it is not likely that 
 you should be deliberately unkind to any crea- 
 ture ; but unless you are deliberately kind to 
 every creature, you will often be cruel to many. 
 Gruel, partly through want of imagination (a far 
 rarer and weaker faculty in women than men), 
 and yet more, at the present day, through the 
 subtle encouragement of your selfishness by the 
 religious doctrine that all which we now suppose 
 to be evil will be brought to a good end ; doctrine 
 practically issuing, not in less earnest efforts that 
 the immediate unpleasantness may be averted 
 from ourselves, but in our remaining satisfied in 
 the contemplation of its ultimate objects, when 
 it is inflicted on others. 
 
 It is not likely that the more accurate methods 
 of recent mental education will now long permit 
 young people to grow up in the persuasion that, 
 in any danger or distress, they may expect to be 
 themselves saved by the Providence of God, 
 while those around them are lost by His improvi- 
 dence ; but they may be yet long restrained from 
 rightly kind action, and long accustomed to en- 
 dure both their own pain occasionally, and the 
 pain of others always, with an unwise patience, 
 xvi
 
 PREFACE 
 
 by misconception of the eternal and incurable 
 nature of real evil. Observe, therefore, carefully 
 in this matter ; there are degrees of pain, as de- 
 grees of faultfulness, which are altogether con- 
 querable, and which seem to be merely forms of 
 wholesome trial or discipline. Your fingers tingle 
 when you go out on a frosty morning, and are all 
 the warmer afterwards ; your limbs are weary 
 with wholesome work, and lie down in the pleas- 
 anter rest ; you are tried for a little while by 
 having to wait for some promised good, and it is 
 all the sweeter when it comes. But you cannot 
 carry the trial past a certain point. Let the cold 
 fasten on your hand in an extreme degree, and 
 your fingers will molder from their sockets. 
 Fatigue yourself, but once, to utter exhaustion, 
 and to the end of life you shall not recover the 
 former vigor of your frame. Let heart-sickness 
 pass beyond a certain bitter point, and the heart 
 loses its life forever. 
 
 Now, the very definition of evil is in this irre- 
 mediableness. It means sorrow, or sin, which 
 ends in death ; and assuredly, as far as we know, 
 or can conceive, there are many conditions both 
 of pain and sin which cannot but so end. Of 
 course we are ignorant and blind creatures, and 
 we cannot know what seeds of good may be in 
 present suffering, or present crime ; but with 
 what we cannot know we are not concerned. It 
 is conceivable that murderers and liars may in 
 some distant world be exalted into a higher 
 humanity than they could have reached without 
 homicide or falsehood ; but the contingency is 
 not one by which our actions should be guided. 
 There is, indeed, a better hope that the beggar, 
 who lies at our gates in misery, may, within gates 
 of pearl, be comforted ; but the Master, whose
 
 PREFACE 
 
 words are our only authority for thinking so, 
 never Himself inflicted disease as a blessing, nor 
 sent away the hungry unfed, or the wounded 
 unhealed. 
 
 Believe me then, the only right principle of 
 action here is to consider good and evil as de- 
 fined by our natural sense of both ; and to strive 
 to promote the one, and to conquer the other, 
 with as hearty endeavor as if there were, indeed, 
 no other world than this. Above all, get quit of 
 the absurd idea that Heaven will interfere to cor- 
 rect great errors, while allowing its laws to take 
 their course in punishing small ones. If you pre- 
 pare a dish of food carelessly, you do not expect 
 Providence to make it palatable ; neither if, 
 through years of folly, you misguide your own 
 life, need you expect Divine interference to bring 
 round everything at last for the best. I tell you, 
 positively, the world is not so constituted : the 
 consequences of great mistakes are just as sure 
 as those of small ones, and the happiness of your 
 whole life, and of all the lives over which you 
 have power, depends as literally on your own 
 common sense and discretion as the excellence 
 and order of the feast of a day. 
 
 Think carefully and bravely over these things, 
 and you will find them true ; having found them 
 so, think also carefully over your own position in 
 life. I assume that you belong to the middle or 
 upper classes, and that you would shrink from 
 descending into a lower sphere. You may fancy 
 you would not : nay, if you are very good, strong- 
 hearted, and romantic, perhaps you really would 
 not ; but it is not wrong that you should. You 
 have, then, I suppose, good food, pretty rooms to 
 live in, pretty dresses to wear, power of obtain- 
 ing every rational and wholesome pleasure ; you 
 xviii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 are, moreover, probably gentle and grateful, and 
 in the habit of every day thanking God for these 
 things. But why do you thank Him ? Is it be- 
 cause, in these matters, as well as in your religious 
 knowledge, you think He has made a favorite 
 of you ? Is the essential meaning of your thanks- 
 giving, "Lord, I thank Thee that I am not as 
 other girls are, not in that I fast twice in the 
 week while they feast, but in that I feast seven 
 times a week while they fast," and are you quite 
 sure this is a pleasing form of thanksgiving to 
 your Heavenly Father? Suppose you saw one 
 of your own true earthly sisters, Lucy or Emily, 
 cast out of your mortal father's house, starving, 
 helpless, heartbroken ; and that every morning 
 when you went into your father's room, you said 
 to him, "How good you are, father, to give me 
 what you don't give Lucy," are you sure that, 
 whatever anger your parent might have just 
 cause for against your sister, he would be pleased 
 by that thanksgiving, or flattered by that praise? 
 Nay, are you even sure that you are so much the 
 favorite? suppose that, all this while, he loves 
 poor Lucy just as well as you, and is only trying 
 you through her pain, and perhaps not angry 
 with her in any wise, but deeply angry with you, 
 and all the more for your thanksgivings ? Would 
 it not be well that you should think, and earnestly 
 too, over this standing of yours ; and all the more 
 if you wish to believe that text, which clergymen 
 so much dislike preaching on, " How hardly shall 
 they that have riches enter into the Kingdom of 
 God " ? You do not believe it now, or you would 
 be less complacent in your state ; and you cannot 
 believe it at all, until you know that the King- 
 dom of God means, "not meat and drink, but 
 justice, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost," nor
 
 PREFACE 
 
 until you know also that such joy is not by any 
 means, necessarily, in going to church, or in 
 singing hymns ; but may be joy in a dance, or 
 joy in a jest, or joy in anything you have deserved 
 to possess, or that you are willing to give ; but joy 
 in nothing that separates you, as by any strange 
 favor, from your fellow-creatures, that exalts you 
 through their degradation exempts you from 
 their toil or indulges you in time of their dis- 
 tress. 
 
 Think, then, and some day, I believe, you will 
 feel also, no morbid passion of pity such as 
 would turn you into a black Sister of Charity, 
 but the steady fire of perpetual kindness which 
 will make you a bright one. I speak in no dis- 
 paragement of them ; I know well how good the 
 Sisters of Charity are, and how much we owe to 
 them ; but all these professional pieties (except 
 so far as distinction or association may be neces- 
 sary for effectiveness of work) are in their spirit 
 wrong, and in practice merely plaster the sores 
 of disease that ought never to have been permit- 
 ted to exist ; encouraging at the same time the 
 herd of less excellent women in frivolity, by lead- 
 ing them to think that they must either be good 
 up to the black standard, or cannot be good for 
 anything. Wear a costume, by all means, if you 
 like ; but let it be a cheerful and becoming one ; 
 and be in your heart a Sister of Charity always, 
 without either veiled or voluble declaration of it. 
 
 As I pause, before ending my preface think- 
 ing of one or two more points that are difficult to 
 write of I find a letter in "The Times," from a 
 French lady, which says all I want so beautifully 
 that I will print it just as it stands : 
 
 SIB : It is often said that one example is worth many ser- 
 mons. Shall I be judged presumptuous if I point out one 
 xx
 
 PREFACE 
 
 which seems to me so striking just now that, however pain- 
 ful, I cannot help dwelling upon it? 
 
 It is the share, the sad and large share, that French society 
 and its recent habits of luxury, of expenses, of dress, of in- 
 dulgence in every kind of extravagant dissipation, has to lay 
 to its own door in its actual crisis of ruin, misery, and humili- 
 ation. If our menageres can be cited as an example to Eng- 
 lish housewives, so, alas ! can other classes of our society be 
 set up as an example not to be followed. 
 
 Bitter must be the feelings of many a Frenchwoman whose 
 days of luxury and expensive habits are at an end, and whose 
 bills of bygone splendor lie with a heavy weight on her con- 
 science, if not on her purse ! 
 
 With us the evil has spread high and low. Everywhere 
 have the examples given by the highest ladies in the land 
 been followed but too successfully. 
 
 Every year did dress become more extravagant, entertain- 
 ments more costly, expenses of every kind more considerable- 
 Lower and lower became the tone of society, its good breed- 
 ing, its delicacy. More and more were monde and demirtnonde 
 associated in newspaper accounts of fashionable doings, in 
 scandalous gossip, on race-courses, in premieres representa- 
 tions, in imitation of each other's costumes, mobiliers, and 
 slang. 
 
 Living beyond one's means became habitual almost ne- 
 cessary for every one to keep up with, if not to go beyond, 
 every one else. 
 
 What the result of all this has been we now see in the 
 wreck of our prosperity, in the downfall of all that seemed 
 brightest and highest. 
 
 Deeply and fearfully impressed by what my own country 
 has incurred and is suffering, I cannot help feeling sorrowful 
 when I see in England signs of our besetting sins appearing 
 also. Paint and chignons, slang and vaudevilles, knowing 
 " Anonymas" by name and reading doubtfully moral novels, 
 are in themselves small offenses, although not many years 
 ago they would have appeared very heinous ones, yet they 
 are quick and tempting conveyances on a very dangerous 
 highroad. 
 
 I would that all Englishwomen knew how they are looked 
 np to from abroad what a high opinion, what honor and 
 reverence we foreigners have for their principles, their truth- 
 fulness, the fresh and pure innocence of their daughters, the 
 healthy youthfulness of their lovely children. 
 
 May I illustrate this by a short example which happened 
 very near me ? During the days of the tmeutes of 1848, all the 
 houses in Paris were being searched for firearms by the mob.
 
 PREFACE 
 
 The one I was living in contained none, as the master of the 
 house repeatedly assured the furious and incredulous Repub- 
 licans. They were going to lay violent hands on him when 
 his wife, an English lady, hearing the loud discussion, came 
 bravely forward and assured them that no arms were con- 
 cealed. " Vous Stes anglaise, nous vous croyons ; les anglaises 
 disent toujours la ve'rite'," was the immediate answer, and 
 the rioters quietly left. 
 
 Now, sir, shall I be accused of unjustified criticism if, lov- 
 ing and admiring your country, as these lines will prove, 
 certain new features strike me as painful discrepancies in 
 English life ? 
 
 Far be it from me to preach the contempt of all that can 
 make life lovable and wholesomely pleasant. I love nothing 
 better than to see a woman nice, neat, elegant, looking her 
 best in the prettiest dress that her taste and purse can afford, 
 or your bright, fresh young girls fearlessly and perfectly 
 sitting their horses, or adorning their houses as pretty [sic; 
 it is not quite grammar, but it is better than if it were] as 
 care, trouble, and refinement can make them. 
 
 It is the degree beyond that which to us has proved so fatal, 
 and that I would our example could warn you from as a 
 small repayment for your hospitality and friendliness to us 
 in our days of trouble. 
 
 May Englishwomen accept this in a kindly spirit as a New- 
 Year's wish from A FRENCH LADY. 
 
 Dec. 29. 
 
 That, then, is the substance of what I would 
 fain say convincingly, if it might be, to my 
 girl friends ; at all events with certainty in my 
 own mind that I was thus far a safe guide to 
 them. 
 
 For other and older readers it is needful I 
 should write a few words more, respecting what 
 opportunity I have had to judge, or right I have 
 to speak, of such things ; for, indeed, too much 
 of what I have said about women has been said in 
 faith only. A wise and lovely English lady told 
 me, when "Sesame and Lilies" first appeared, 
 that she was sure the " Sesame " would be useful, 
 but that in the "Lilies" I had been writing of 
 what I knew nothing about. Which was in a 
 oB
 
 PREFACE 
 
 measure too true, and also that it is more partial 
 than my writings are usually : for as Ellesmere 
 spoke his speech on the - intervention, not, 
 indeed, otherwise than he felt, but yet altogether 
 for the sake of Gretchen, so I wrote the " Lilies" 
 to please one girl ; and were it not for what I 
 remember of her, and of few besides, should 
 now perhaps recast some of the sentences in the 
 "Lilies" in a very different tone: for as years 
 have gone by, it has chanced to me, untowardly 
 in some respects, fortunately in others (because 
 it enables me to read history more clearly), to 
 see the utmost evil that is in women, while I have 
 had but to believe the utmost good. The best 
 women are indeed necessarily the most difficult 
 to know ; they are recognized chiefly in the hap- 
 piness of their husbands and the nobleness of 
 their children ; they are only to be divined, not 
 discerned, by the stranger ; and, sometimes, seem 
 almost helpless except in their homes ; yet with- 
 out the help of one of them, 1 to whom this book 
 is dedicated, the day would probably have come 
 before now when I should have written and 
 thought no more. 
 
 On the other hand, the fashion of the time 
 renders whatever is forward, coarse, or senseless, 
 in feminine nature, too palpable to all men : 
 the weak picturesqueness of my earlier writings 
 brought me acquainted with much of their emp- 
 tiest enthusiasm ; and the chances of later life 
 gave me opportunities of watching women in 
 states of degradation and vindictiveness which 
 opened to me the gloomiest secrets of Greek and 
 Syrian tragedy. I have seen them betray their 
 household charities to lust, their pledged love to 
 devotion ; I have seen mothers dutiful to their 
 
 xxiii
 
 PREFACE 
 
 children, as Medea ; and children dutiful to their 
 parents, as the daughter of Herodias : but my 
 trust is still unmoved in the preciousness of the 
 natures that are so fatal in their error, and I 
 leave the words of the "Lilies" unchanged ; be- 
 lieving, yet, that no man ever lived a right life 
 who had not been chastened by a woman's love, 
 strengthened by her courage, and guided by her 
 discretion. 
 
 What I might myself have been, so helped, I 
 rarely indulge in the idleness of thinking ; but 
 what I am, since I take on me the function of a 
 teacher, it is well that the reader should know, 
 as far as I can tell him. 
 
 Not an unjust person ; not an unkind one ; not 
 a false one ; a lover of order, labor, and peace. 
 That, it seems to me, is enough to give me right 
 to say all I care to say on ethical subjects ; more, 
 I could only tell definitely through details of 
 autobiography such as none but prosperous and 
 (in the simple sense of the word) faultless lives 
 could justify ; and mine has been neither. Yet, 
 if any one, skilled in reading the torn manu- 
 scripts of the human soul, cares for more intimate 
 knowledge of me, he may have it by knowing 
 with what persons in past history I have most 
 sympathy. 
 
 I will name three. 
 
 In all that is strongest and deepest in me, 
 that fits me for my work, and gives light or 
 shadow to my being, I have sympathy with 
 Guido Guinicelli. 
 
 In my constant natural temper, and thoughts 
 of things and of people, with Marmontel. 
 
 In my enforced and accidental temper, and 
 thoughts of things and of people, with Dean 
 Swift. 
 
 zxlv
 
 PREFACE 
 
 Any one who can understand the natures of 
 those three men can understand mine ; and hav- 
 ing said so much, I am content to leave both life 
 and work to be remembered or forgotten, as their 
 uses may deserve. 
 
 DENMARK HILL, 
 1st January, 1871.
 
 LECTURE I 
 
 SESAME 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES
 
 LECTURE 
 I 
 
 SESAME: OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 You shall each have a cake of sesame, 
 and ten pound. 
 
 LUCIAN, The Fisherman. 
 
 M 
 
 "Y first duty this evening is to ask 
 your pardon for the ambiguity of 
 title under which the subject of 
 lecture has been announced: for indeed I am 
 not going to talk of kings, known as reg- 
 nant, nor of treasuries, understood to con- 
 tain wealth; but of quite another order of 
 royalty, and another material of riches, 
 than those usually acknowledged. I had 
 even intended to ask your attention for a 
 little while on trust, and (as sometimes one 
 contrives, in taking a friend to see a favor- 
 ite piece of scenery) to hide what I wanted 
 most to show, with such imperfect cunning 
 as I might, until we unexpectedly reached 
 the best point of view by winding paths. 
 But and as also I have heard it said, by 
 men practised in public address, that hear- 
 ers are never so much fatigued as by the 
 endeavor to follow a speaker who gives 
 3
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 them no clue to his purpose I will take 
 the slight mask off at once, and tell you 
 plainly that I want to speak to you about 
 the treasures hidden in books; and about 
 the way we find them, and the way we lose 
 them. A grave subject, you will say; and a 
 wide one! Yes; so wide that I shall make 
 no effort to touch the compass of it. I will 
 try only to bring before you a few simple 
 thoughts about reading, which press them- 
 selves upon me every day more deeply, as 
 I watch the course of the public mind with 
 respect to our daily enlarging means of edu- 
 cation; and the answeringly wider spreading 
 on the levels, of the irrigation of literature. 
 It happens that I have practically some 
 connection with schools for different classes 
 of youth; and I receive many letters from 
 parents respecting the education of their 
 children. In the mass of these letters I am 
 always struck by the precedence which the 
 idea of a "position in life" takes above all 
 other thoughts in the parents' more es- 
 pecially in the mothers' minds. "The 
 education befitting such and such a station 
 in life" this is the phrase, this the ob- 
 ject, always. They never seek, as far as I 
 can make out, an education good in itself; 
 even the conception of abstract Tightness 
 in training rarely seems reached by the 
 4
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 writers. But, an education "which shall 
 keep a good coat on my son's back; which 
 shall enable him to ring with confidence the 
 visitors' bell at double-belled doors; which 
 shall result ultimately in establishment of 
 a double-belled door to his own house; in 
 a word, which shall lead to advancement in 
 life; this we pray for on bent knees and 
 this is all we pray for." It never seems to 
 occur to the parents that there may be an 
 education which, in itself, is advancement 
 in Life; that any other than that may 
 perhaps be advancement in Death; and that 
 this essential education might be more 
 easily got, or given, than they fancy, if they 
 set about it in- the right way; while it is for 
 no price, and by no favor, to be got, if they 
 set about it in the wrong. 
 
 Indeed, among the ideas most prevalent 
 and effective in the mind of this busiest of 
 countries, I suppose the first at least that 
 which is confessed with the greatest frank- 
 ness, and put forward as the fittest stimu- 
 lus to youthful exertion is this of "Ad- 
 vancement in life." May I ask you to 
 consider with me what this idea practi- 
 cally includes, and what it should include? 
 
 Practically, then, at present, "advance- 
 ment in life " means, becoming conspicuous 
 in life; obtaining a position which shall be 
 5
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 acknowledged by others to be respectable 
 or honorable. We do not understand by 
 this advancement, in general, the mere 
 making of money, but the being known to 
 have made it; not the accomplishment of 
 any great aim, but the being seen to have 
 accomplished it. In a word, we mean the 
 gratification of our thirst for applause. 
 That thirst, if the last infirmity of noble 
 minds, is also the first infirmity of weak 
 ones; and, on the whole, the strongest im- 
 pulsive influence of average humanity: the 
 greatest efforts of the race have always been 
 traceable to the love of praise, as its great- 
 est catastrophes to the love of pleasure. 
 
 I am not about to attack or defend this 
 impulse. I want you only to feel how it 
 lies at the root of effort; especially of all 
 modern effort. It is the gratification of 
 vanity which is, with us, the stimulus of 
 toil and balm of repose; so closely does it 
 touch the very springs of life that the 
 wounding of our vanity is always spoken of 
 (and truly) as in its measure mortal; we 
 call it "mortification," using the same ex- 
 pression which we should apply to a gan- 
 grenous and incurable bodily hurt. And 
 although a few of us may be physicians 
 enough to recognize the various effect of 
 this passion upon health and energy, I be- 
 6
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 lieve most honest men know, and would at 
 once acknowledge, its leading power with 
 them as a motive. The seaman does not 
 commonly desire to he made captain only 
 because he knows he can manage the ship 
 better than any other sailor on board. He 
 wants to be made captain that he may be 
 called captain. The clergyman does not 
 usually want to be made a bishop only 
 because he believes that no other hand can, 
 as firmly as his, direct the diocese through 
 its difficulties. He wants to be made bishop 
 primarily that he may be called " My Lord." 
 And a prince does not usually desire to en- 
 large, or a subject to gain, a kingdom, 
 because he believes no one else can as well 
 serve the State, upon its throne; but, 
 briefly, because he wishes to be addressed 
 as "Your Majesty," by as many lips as may 
 be brought to such utterance. 
 
 This, then, being the main idea of " ad- 
 vancement in life," the force of it applies, 
 for all of us, according to our station, par- 
 ticularly to that secondary result of such 
 advancement which we call "getting into 
 good society." We want to get into good 
 society, not that we may have it, but that 
 we may be seen in it; and our notion of its 
 goodness depends primarily on its conspicu- 
 ousness. 
 
 7
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 Will you pardon me if I pause for a mo- 
 ment to put what I fear you may think an 
 impertinent question? I never can go on 
 with an address unless I feel, or know, that 
 my audience are either with me or against 
 me: I do not much care which, in begin- 
 ning; but I must know where they are; and 
 I would fain find out, at this instant, whether 
 you think I am putting the motives of popu- 
 lar action too low. I am resolved, to-night, 
 to state them low enough to be admitted as 
 probable; for whenever, in my writings on 
 Political Economy, I assume that a little 
 honesty, or generosity, or what used to be 
 called "virtue," may be calculated upon 
 as a human motive of action, people always 
 answer me, saying, "You must not calcu- 
 late on that: that is not in human nature. 
 You must not assume anything to be com- 
 mon to men but acquisitiveness and jeal- 
 ousy; no other feeling ever has influence on 
 them, except accidentally, and in matters 
 out of the way of business." I begin, ac- 
 cordingly, to-night low in the scale of 
 motives; but I must know if you think me 
 right in doing so. Therefore, let me ask 
 those who admit the love of praise to be 
 usually the strongest motive in men's minds 
 in seeking advancement, and the honest 
 desire of doing any kind of duty to be an 
 8
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 entirely secondary one, to hold up their 
 hands. (About a dozen hands held up the 
 audience, partly, not being sure the lecturer 
 is serious, and, partly, shy of expressing 
 opinion.) I am quite serious I really do 
 want to know what you think; however, 
 I can judge by putting the reverse question. 
 Will those who think that duty is generally 
 the first, and love of praise the second, 
 motive, hold up their hands? (One hand 
 reported to have been held up behind the 
 lecturer.) Very good: I see you are with 
 me, and that you think I have not begun 
 too near the ground. Now, without teasing 
 you by putting farther question, I venture 
 to assume that you will admit duty as at 
 least a secondary or tertiary motive. You 
 think that the desire of doing something 
 useful, or obtaining some real good, is in- 
 deed an existent collateral idea, though a 
 secondary one, in most men's desire of 
 advancement. You will grant that mod- 
 erately honest men desire place and office, 
 at least in some measure for the sake of 
 beneficent power; and would wish to asso- 
 ciate rather with sensible and well-informed 
 persons than with fools and ignorant per- 
 sons, whether they are seen in the company 
 of the sensible ones or not. And finally, 
 without being troubled by repetition of any 
 9
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 common truisms about the preciousness of 
 friends, and the influence of companions, 
 you will admit, doubtless, that according to 
 the sincerity of our desire that our friends 
 may be true, and our companions wise, 
 and in proportion to the earnestness and 
 discretion with which we choose both, 
 will be the general chances of our happi- 
 ness and usefulness. 
 
 But, granting that we had both the will 
 and the sense to choose our friends well, 
 how few of us have the power! or, at least, 
 how limited, for most, is the sphere of 
 choice! Nearly all our associations are 
 determined by chance or necessity, and 
 restricted within a narrow circle. We can- 
 not know whom we would; and those whom 
 we know, we cannot have at our side when 
 we most need them. All the higher circles 
 of human intelligence are, to those beneath, 
 only momentarily and partially open. We 
 may, by good fortune, obtain a glimpse of a 
 great poet, and hear the sound of his voice; 
 or put a question to a man of science, and 
 be answered good-humoredly. We may 
 intrude ten minutes' talk on a cabinet min- 
 ister, answered probably with words worse 
 than silence, being deceptive; or snatch, 
 once or twice in our lives, the privilege of 
 throwing a bouquet in the path of a prin- 
 10
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 cess, or arresting the kind glance of a 
 queen. And yet these momentary chances 
 we covet; and spend our years and passions 
 and powers in pursuit of little more than 
 these; while, meantime, there is a society 
 continually open to us, of people who will talk 
 to us as long as we like, whatever our rank 
 or occupation; talk to us in the best words 
 they can choose, and of the things nearest 
 their hearts. And this society, because it 
 is so numerous and so gentle, and can be 
 kept waiting round us all day long, kings 
 and statesmen lingering patiently, not to 
 grant audience, but to gain it! in those 
 plainly furnished and narrow anterooms, 
 our bookcase shelves, we make no account 
 of that company, perhaps never listen to 
 a word they would say, all day long! 
 
 You may tell me, perhaps, or think within 
 yourselves, that the apathy with which we 
 regard this company of the noble, who are 
 praying us to listen to them; and the pas- 
 sion with which we pursue the company, 
 probably of the ignoble, who despise us, or 
 who have nothing to teach us, are grounded 
 in this, that we can see the faces of the 
 living men, and it is themselves, and not 
 their sayings, with which we desire to be- 
 come familiar. But it is not so. Suppose 
 you never were to see their faces; suppose 
 11
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 you could be put behind a screen in the 
 statesman's cabinet, or the prince's cham- 
 ber, would you not be glad to listen to their 
 words, though you were forbidden to ad- 
 vance beyond the screen? And when the 
 screen is only a little less, folded in two in- 
 stead of four, and you can be hidden behind 
 the cover of the two boards that bind a 
 book, and listen all day long, not to the 
 casual talk, but to the studied, determined, 
 chosen addresses of the wisest of men; 
 this station of audience, and honorable privy 
 council, you despise! 
 
 But perhaps you will say that it is be- 
 cause the living people talk of things that 
 are passing, and are of immediate interest 
 to you, that you desire to hear them. Nay; 
 that cannot be so, for the living people will 
 themselves tell you about passing matters 
 much better in their writings than in their 
 careless talk. Yet I admit that this motive 
 does influence you, so far as you prefer 
 those rapid and ephemeral writings to slow 
 and enduring writings books, properly so 
 called. For all books are divisible into two 
 classes, the books of the hour, and the 
 books of all time. Mark this distinction 
 it is not one of quality only. It is not 
 merely the bad book that does not last, and 
 the good one that does. It is a distinction 
 12
 
 OP KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 of species. There are good books for the 
 hour, and good ones for all time; bad books 
 for the hour, and bad ones for all time. I 
 must define the two kinds before I go far- 
 ther. 
 
 The good book of the hour, then, I do 
 not speak of the bad ones, is simply the 
 useful or pleasant talk of some person 
 whom you cannot otherwise converse with, 
 printed for you. Very useful often, telling 
 you what you need to know; very pleasant 
 often, as a sensible friend's present talk 
 would be. These bright accounts of travels; 
 good-humored and witty discussions of 
 question; lively or pathetic story-telling in 
 the form of novel; firm fact-telling, by the 
 real agents concerned in the events of pass- 
 ing history; all these books of the hour, 
 multiplying among us as education becomes 
 more general, are a peculiar possession of 
 the present age. We ought to be entirely 
 thankful for them, and entirely ashamed of 
 ourselves if we make no good use of them. 
 But we make the worst possible use if we 
 allow them to usurp the place of true books; 
 for, strictly speaking, they are not books at 
 all, but merely letters or newspapers in 
 good print. Our friend's letter may be de- 
 lightful, or necessary, to-day; whether worth 
 keeping or not, is to be considered. The 
 13
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 newspaper may be entirely proper at break- 
 fast-time, but assuredly it is not reading 
 for all day. So, though bound up in a vol- 
 ume, the long letter which gives you so 
 pleasant an account of the inns, and roads, 
 and weather, last year at such a place, or 
 which tells you that amusing story, or gives 
 you the real circumstances of such and 
 such events, however valuable for occa- 
 sional reference, may not be, in the real 
 sense of the word, a "book" at all, nor, in 
 the real sense, to be "read." A book is 
 essentially not a talking thing, but a written 
 thing; and written, not with a view of mere 
 communication, but of permanence. The 
 book of talk is printed only because its 
 author cannot speak to thousands of people 
 at once; if he could, he would the volume 
 is mere multiplication of his voice. You 
 cannot talk to your friend in India; if you 
 could, you would; you write instead: that is 
 mere conveyance of voice. But a book is 
 written, not to multiply the voice merely, 
 not to carry it merely, but to perpetuate it. 
 The author has something to say which he 
 perceives to be true and useful, or helpfully 
 beautiful. So far as he knows, no one has 
 yet said it; so far as he knows, no one else 
 can say it. He is bound to say it, clearly 
 and melodiously if he may; clearly at all 
 14
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 events. In the sum of his life he finds this 
 to be the thing, or group of things, mani- 
 fest to him; this, the piece of true know- 
 ledge, or sight, which his share of sunshine 
 and earth has permitted him to seize. He 
 would fain set it down forever; engrave it 
 on rock, if he could; saying, "This is the 
 best of me; for the rest, I ate and drank 
 and slept, loved and hated, like another; my 
 life was as the vapor, and is not; but this I 
 saw and knew: this, if anything of mine, 
 is worth your memory." That is his "writ- 
 ing"; it is, in his small human way, and 
 with whatever degree of true inspiration is 
 in him, his inscription, or scripture. That 
 is a "Book." 
 
 Perhaps you think no books were ever so 
 written? 
 
 But, again, I ask you, do you at all believe 
 in honesty, or at all in kindness, or do you 
 think there is never any honesty or benevo- 
 lence in wise people? None of us, I hope, 
 are so unhappy as to think that. Well, 
 whatever bit of a wise man's work is hon- 
 estly and benevolently done, that bit is his 
 book or his piece of art. 1 It is mixed always 
 with evil fragments ill-done, redundant, 
 affected work. But if you read rightly, you 
 
 1 Note this sentence carefully, and compare the " Queen of 
 the Air," \ 106. 
 
 15
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 will easily discover the true bits, and those 
 are the book. 
 
 Now books of this kind have been written 
 in all ages by their greatest men by great 
 readers, great statesmen, and great think- 
 ers. These are all at your choice; and Life 
 is short. You have heard as much before; 
 yet have you measured and mapped out 
 this short life and its possibilities? Do 
 you know, if you read this, that you cannot 
 read that that what you lose to-day you 
 cannot gain to-morrow? Will you go and 
 gossip with your housemaid, or your stable- 
 boy, when you may talk with queens and 
 kings; or flatter yourself that it is with any 
 worthy consciousness of your own claims to 
 respect, that you jostle with the hungry and 
 common crowd for entree here, and audience 
 there, when all the while this eternal court 
 is open to you, with its society, wide as the 
 world, multitudinous as its days, the chosen 
 and the mighty of every place and time? 
 Into that you may enter always; in that you 
 may take fellowship and rank according to 
 your wish; from that, once entered into it, 
 you can never be outcast but by your own 
 fault: by your aristocracy of companionship 
 there, your own inherent aristocracy will 
 be assuredly tested, and the motives with 
 which you strive to take high place in the 
 16
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 society of the living, measured, as to all the 
 truth and sincerity that are in them, hy the 
 place you desire to take in this company of 
 the Dead. 
 
 "The place you desire," and the place you 
 fit yourself for, I must also say; because, 
 observe, this court of the past differs from 
 all living aristocracy in this: it is open to 
 labor and to merit, but to nothing else. No 
 wealth will bribe, no name overawe, no arti- 
 fice deceive, the guardian of those Elysian 
 gates. In the deep sense, no vile or vulgar 
 person ever enters there. At the portieres 
 of that silent Faubourg St. Germain, there 
 is but brief question: "Do you deserve to 
 enter? Pass. Do you ask to be the com- 
 panion of nobles? Make yourself noble, and 
 you shall be. Do you long for the conver- 
 sation of the wise? Learn to understand 
 it, and you shall hear it. But on other 
 terms? No. If you will not rise to us, we 
 cannot stoop to you. The living lord may 
 assume courtesy, the living philosopher ex- 
 plain his thought to you with considerate 
 pain; but here we neither feign nor inter- 
 pret; you must rise to the level of our 
 thoughts if you would be gladdened by 
 them, and share our feelings if you would 
 recognize our presence." 
 
 This, then, is what you have to do, and I
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 admit that it is much. You must, in a 
 word, love these people, if you are to be 
 among them. No ambition is of any use. 
 They scorn your ambition. You must love 
 them, and show your love in these two fol- 
 lowing ways. 
 
 (1) First, by a true desire to be taught by 
 them, and to enter into their thoughts. To 
 enter into theirs, observe; not to find your 
 own expressed by them. If the person who 
 wrote the book is not wiser than you, you 
 need not read it; if he be, he will think 
 differently from you in many respects. 
 
 (2) Very ready we are to say of a book, 
 "How good this is that 's exactly what I 
 think!" But the right feeling is, "How 
 strange that is! I never thought of that 
 before, and yet I see it is true; or if I do not 
 now, I hope I shall some day." But whether 
 thus submissively or not, at least be sure 
 that you go to the author to get at his mean- 
 ing, not to find yours. Judge it afterwards 
 if you think yourself qualified to do so; but 
 ascertain it first. And be sure, also, if the 
 author is worth anything, that you will not 
 get at his meaning all at once; nay, that 
 at his whole meaning you will not for a long 
 time arrive in any wise. Not that he does 
 not say what he means, and in strong words 
 too; but he cannot say it all; and, what is 
 
 18
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 more strange, will not, but in a hidden way 
 and in parables, in order that he may be sure 
 you want it. I cannot quite see the reason 
 of this, nor analyze that cruel reticence in 
 the breasts of wise men which makes them 
 always hide their deeper thought. They do 
 not give it you by way of help, but of re- 
 ward; and will make themselves sure that 
 you deserve it before they allow you to reach 
 it. But it is the same with the physical 
 type of wisdom, gold. There seems, to you 
 and me, no reason why the electric forces 
 of the earth should not carry whatever 
 there is of gold within it at once to the 
 mountain-tops, so that kings and people 
 might know that all the gold they could get 
 was there; and without any trouble of dig- 
 ging, or anxiety, or chance, or waste of 
 time, cut it away, and coin as much as they 
 needed. But Nature does not manage it so. 
 She puts it in little fissures in the earth, 
 nobody knows where: you may dig long 
 and find none; you must dig painfully to find 
 any. 
 
 And it is just the same with men's best 
 wisdom. When you come to a good book, 
 you must ask yourself, "Am I inclined to 
 work as an Australian miner would? Are 
 my pickaxes and shovels in good order, and 
 am I in good trim myself, my sleeves well 
 19
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 up to the elbow, and my breath good, and 
 my temper?" And, keeping the figure a 
 little longer, even at cost of tiresomeness, 
 for it is a thoroughly useful one, the metal 
 you are in search of being the author's mind 
 or meaning, his words are as the rock which 
 you have to crush and smelt in order to get 
 at it. And your pickaxes are your own care, 
 wit, and learning; your smel ting-furnace is 
 your own thoughtful soul. Do not hope to 
 get at any good author's meaning without 
 those tools and that fire; often you will 
 need sharpest, finest chiseling, and patient- 
 est fusing, before you can gather one grain 
 of the metal. 
 
 And, therefore, first of all, I tell you ear- 
 nestly and authoritatively (I know I am right 
 in this), you must get into the habit of look- 
 ing intensely at words, and assuring your- 
 self of their meaning, syllable by syllable 
 nay, letter by letter. For though it is only 
 by reason of the opposition of letters in the 
 function of signs, to sounds in the func- 
 tion of signs, that the study of books is 
 called "literature," and that a man versed 
 in it is called, by the consent of nations, a 
 man of letters instead of a man of books, or 
 of words, you may yet connect with that 
 accidental nomenclature this real fact: 
 that you might read all the books in the 
 20
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 British Museum (if you could live long 
 enough), and remain an utterly "illiter- 
 ate," uneducated person; but that if you 
 read ten pages of a good book, letter by 
 letter, that is to say, with real accuracy, 
 you are forevermore in some measure an 
 educated person. The entire difference 
 between education and non-education (as 
 regards the merely intellectual part of it) 
 consists in this accuracy. A well-educated 
 gentleman may not know many languages, 
 may not be able to speak any but his own, 
 may have read very few books. But 
 whatever language he knows, he knows 
 precisely; whatever word he pronounces, he 
 pronounces rightly; above all, he is learned 
 in the peerage of words; knows the words of 
 true descent and ancient blood, at a glance, 
 from words of modern canaille; remembers 
 all their ancestry, their intermarriages, dis- 
 tant relationships, and the extent to which 
 they were admitted, and offices they held, 
 among the national noblesse of words at 
 any time, and in any country. But an 
 uneducated person may know, by memory, 
 many languages, and talk them all, and yet 
 truly know not a word of any not a word 
 even of his own. An ordinarily clever and 
 sensible seaman will be able to make his 
 way ashore at most ports; yet he has only 
 21
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 to speak a sentence of any language to be 
 known for an illiterate person: so also the 
 accent, or turn of expression of a single 
 sentence, will at once mark a scholar. And 
 this is so strongly felt, so conclusively ad- 
 mitted, by educated persons, that a false 
 accent or a mistaken syllable is enough, in 
 the parliament of any civilized nation, to 
 assign to a man a certain degree of inferior 
 standing forever. 
 
 And this is right; but it is a pity that the 
 accuracy insisted on is not greater, and 
 required to a serious purpose. It is right 
 that a false Latin quantity should excite a 
 smile in the House of Commons; but it is 
 wrong that a false English meaning should 
 not excite a frown there. Let the accent of 
 words be watched, and closely; let their 
 meaning be watched more closely still, and 
 fewer will do the work. A few words well 
 chosen, and distinguished, will do work that 
 a thousand cannot, when every one is act- 
 ing, equivocally, in the function of another. 
 Yes; and words, if they are not watched, 
 will do deadly work sometimes. There are 
 masked words droning and skulking about 
 us in Europe just now (there never were 
 so many, owing to the spread of a shallow, 
 blotching, blundering, infectious "informa- 
 tion," or rather deformation, everywhere, 
 22
 
 and to the teaching of catechisms and 
 phrases at school instead of human mean- 
 ings) there are masked words abroad, I 
 say, which nobody understands, but which 
 everybody uses, and most people will also 
 fight for, live for, or even die for, fancying 
 they mean this or that, or the other, of 
 things dear to them: for such words wear 
 chameleon cloaks "ground-lion" cloaks, 
 of the color of the ground of any man's 
 fancy; on that ground they lie in wait, and 
 rend them with a spring from it. There 
 never were creatures of prey so mischie- 
 vous, never diplomatists so cunning, never 
 poisoners so deadly, as these masked words; 
 they are the unjust stewards of all men's 
 ideas. Whatever fancy or favorite instinct 
 a man most cherishes, he gives to his favor- 
 ite masked word to take care of for him; 
 the word at last comes to have an infinite 
 power over him, you cannot get at him 
 but by its ministry. 
 
 And in languages so mongrel in breed as 
 the English, there is a fatal power of equivo- 
 cation put into men's hands, almost whether 
 they will or no, in being able to use Greek 
 or Latin words for an idea when they want 
 it to be awful, and Saxon or otherwise com- 
 mon words when they want it to be vulgar. 
 What a singular and salutary effect, for in- 
 23
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 stance, would be produced on the minds of 
 people who are in the habit of taking the 
 Form of the " Word " they live by, for the 
 Power of which that Word tells them, if we 
 always either retained, or refused, the Greek 
 form "biblos," or "biblion," as the right ex- 
 pression for "book" instead of employing 
 it only in the one instance in which we wish 
 to give dignity to the idea, and translating 
 it into English everywhere else. How 
 wholesome it would be for many simple per- 
 sons if, in such places (for instance) as Acts 
 xix. 19, we retained the Greek expression, 
 instead of translating it, and they had to 
 read, " Many of them also which used curi- 
 ous arts brought their bibles together, and 
 burnt them before all men: and they 
 counted the price of them, and found it 
 fifty thousand pieces of silver"! Or if, on 
 the other hand, we translated where we 
 retain it, and always spoke of "The Holy 
 Book," instead of "Holy Bible," it might 
 come into more heads than it does at pres- 
 ent, that the Word of God, by which the 
 heavens were., of old, and by which they are 
 now kept in store, 1 cannot be made a pres- 
 ent of to anybody in morocco binding; nor 
 sown on any wayside by help either of steam- 
 plow or steam-press; but is nevertheless 
 
 i 2 Peter iil. 6-7. 
 24
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 being offered to us daily, and by us with 
 contumely refused; and sown in us daily, 
 and by us, as instantly as may be, choked. 
 So, again, consider what effect has been 
 produced on the English vulgar mind by the 
 use of the sonorous Latin form "damno," in 
 translating the Greek Karanpivu, when peo- 
 ple charitably wish to make it forcible; and 
 the substitution of the temperate "con- 
 demn " for it, when they choose to keep it 
 gentle; and what notable sermons have been 
 preached by illiterate clergymen on, "He 
 that believeth not shall be damned"; though 
 they would shrink with horror from trans- 
 lating Heb. xi. 7, "The saving of his house, 
 by which he damned the world," or John 
 viii. 10, 11, "Woman, hath no man damned 
 thee? She saith, No man, Lord. Jesus 
 answered her, Neither do I damn thee: go, 
 and sin no more." And divisions in the 
 mind of Europe, which have cost seas of 
 blood, and in the defense of which the 
 noblest souls of men have been cast away 
 in frantic desolation, countless as forest 
 leaves, though, in the heart of them, 
 founded on deeper causes, have neverthe- 
 less been rendered practically possible, 
 mainly, by the European adoption of the 
 Greek word for a public meeting, " ecclesia," 
 to give peculiar respectability to such meet- 
 25
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 ings, when held for religious purposes; and 
 other collateral equivocations, such as the 
 vulgar English one of using the word 
 "priest" as a contraction for "presbyter." 
 Now, in order to deal with words rightly, 
 this is the habit you must form. Nearly 
 every word in your language has been first 
 a word of some other language of Saxon, 
 German, French, Latin, or Greek (not to 
 speak of Eastern and primitive dialects). 
 And many words have been all these that 
 is to say, have been Greek first, Latin next, 
 French or German next, and English last: 
 undergoing a certain change of sense and 
 use on the lips of each nation, but retain- 
 ing a deep vital meaning, which all good 
 scholars feel in employing them, even at 
 this day. If you do not know the Greek 
 alphabet, learn it; young or old, girl or 
 boy, whoever you may be, if you think of 
 reading seriously (which, of course, implies 
 that you have some leisure at command), 
 learn your Greek alphabet; then get good 
 dictionaries of all these languages, and 
 whenever you are in doubt about a word, 
 hunt it down patiently. Read Max Miiller's 
 lectures thoroughly, to begin with; and, 
 after that, never let a word escape you that 
 looks suspicious. It is severe work; but you 
 will find it, even at first, interesting, and at 
 26
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 last endlessly amusing. And the general 
 gain to your character, in power and preci- 
 sion, will be quite incalculable. 
 
 Mind, this does not imply knowing, or 
 trying to know, Greek or Latin or French. 
 It takes a whole life to learn any language 
 perfectly. But you can easily ascertain the 
 meanings through which the English word 
 has passed; and those which in a good 
 writer's work it must still bear. 
 
 And now, merely for example's sake, I 
 will, with your permission, read a few lines 
 of a true book with you, carefully, and see 
 what will come out of them. I will take a 
 book perfectly known to you all. No Eng- 
 lish words are more familiar to us, yet few 
 perhaps have been read with less sincerity. 
 I will take these few following lines of 
 "Lycidas": 
 
 Last came, and last did go, 
 
 The pilot of the Galilean lake. 
 
 Two massy keys he bore of metals twain, 
 
 ( The golden opes, the iron shuts amain, ) 
 
 He shook his mitered locks, and stern bespake, 
 
 "How well could I have spared for thee, young 
 
 swain, 
 
 Enow of such as for their bellies' sake 
 Creep, and intrude, and climb into the fold ! 
 Of other care they little reckoning make, 
 Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, 
 And shove away the worthy bidden guest ; 
 
 27
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know how 
 
 to hold 
 
 A sheep-hook, or have learn'd aught else, the least 
 That to the faithful herdman's art belongs ! 
 What recks it them? What need they? They 
 
 are sped ; 
 
 And when they list, their lean and flashy songs 
 Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched straw ; 
 The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed, 
 But, swoln with wind, and the rank mist they 
 
 draw, 
 
 Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread ; 
 Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw 
 Daily devours apace, and nothing said." 
 
 Let us think over this passage, and ex- 
 amine its words. 
 
 First, is it not singular to find Milton 
 assigning to St. Peter, not only his full epis- 
 copal function, but the very types of it 
 which Protestants usually refuse most pas- 
 sionately? His "mitered" locks! Milton 
 was no Bishop-lover; how comes St. Peter 
 to be "mitered"? "Two massy keys he 
 bore." Is this, then, the power of the keys 
 claimed by the Bishops of Rome? and is 
 it acknowledged here by Milton only in a 
 poetical license, for the sake of its pictur- 
 esqueness, that he may get the gleam of 
 the golden keys to help his effect? 
 
 Do not think it. Great men do not play 
 stage tricks with the doctrines of life and 
 death; only little men do that. Milton 
 28
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 means what he says, and means it with his 
 might too is going to put the whole 
 strength of his spirit presently into the say- 
 ing of it. For though not a lover of false 
 bishops, he was a lover of true ones; and 
 the Lake-pilot is here, in his thoughts, the 
 type and head of true episcopal power. For 
 Milton reads that text, "I will give unto 
 thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven," 
 quite honestly. Puritan though he be, he 
 would not blot it out of the book because 
 there have been bad bishops. Nay, in order 
 to understand him, we must understand 
 that verse first; it will not do to eye it 
 askance, or whisper it under our breath, as if 
 it were a weapon of an adverse sect. It is 
 a solemn, universal assertion, deeply to be 
 kept in mind by all sects. But perhaps we 
 shall be better able to reason on it if we go 
 on a little farther, and come back to it. 
 For clearly this marked insistence on the 
 power of the true episcopate is to make us 
 feel more weightily what is to be charged 
 against the false claimants of episcopate; 
 or generally, against false claimants of 
 power and rank in the body of the clergy; 
 they who, " for their bellies' sake, creep, and 
 intrude, and climb into the fold." 
 
 Never think Milton uses those three words 
 to fill up his verse, as a loose writer would. 
 29
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 He needs all the three; especially those 
 three, and no more than those "creep," 
 and "intrude," and "climb"; no other 
 words would or could serve the turn, and 
 no more could be added. For they exhaus- 
 tively comprehend the three classes, cor- 
 respondent to the three characters, of men 
 who dishonestly seek ecclesiastical power. 
 First, those who "creep " into the fold, who 
 do not care for office, nor name, but for 
 secret influence, and do all things occultly 
 and cunningly, consenting to any servility 
 of office or conduct, so only that they may 
 intimately discern, and unawares direct, 
 the minds of men. Then those who "in- 
 trude " (thrust, that is) themselves into the 
 fold, who by natural insolence of heart, and 
 stout eloquence of tongue, and fearlessly 
 perseverant self-assertion, obtain hearing 
 and authority with the common crowd. 
 Lastly, those who "climb," who by labor 
 and learning, both stout and sound, but 
 selfishly exerted in the cause of their own 
 ambition, gain high dignities and authori- 
 ties, and become "lords over the heritage," 
 though not " ensamples to the flock." 
 Now go on: 
 
 Of other care they little reckoning make, 
 Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast. 
 Blind mouths 
 
 30
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 I pause again, for this is a strange ex- 
 pression; a broken metaphor, one might 
 think, careless and unscholarly. 
 
 Not so: its very audacity and pithiness 
 are intended to make us look close at the 
 phrase and remember it. Those two mono- 
 syllables express the precisely accurate 
 contraries of right character, in the two 
 great offices of the Church those of bishop 
 and pastor. 
 
 A "Bishop" means "a person who sees." 
 
 A " Pastor " means " a person who feeds." 
 
 The most unbishoply character a man 
 can have is therefore to be Blind. 
 
 The most unpastoral is, instead of feed- 
 ing, to want to be fed, to be a Mouth. 
 
 Take the two reverses together, and you 
 have "blind mouths." We may advisably 
 follow out this idea a little. Nearly all the 
 evils in the Church have arisen from bishops 
 desiring power more than light. They want 
 authority, not outlook. Whereas their real 
 office is not to rule; though it may be vig- 
 orously to exhort and rebuke. It is the 
 king's office to rule; the bishop's office is to 
 oversee the flock; to number it, sheep by 
 sheep; to be ready always to give full ac- 
 count of it. Now it is clear he cannot give 
 account of the souls, if he has not so much 
 as numbered the bodies, of his flock. The 
 31
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 first thing, therefore, that a bishop has to 
 do is at least to put himself in a position in 
 which, at any moment, he can obtain the 
 history, from childhood, of every living soul 
 in his diocese, and of its present state. 
 Down in that back street, Bill and Nancy, 
 knocking each other's teeth out! Does the 
 bishop know all about it? Has he his eye 
 upon them? Has he had his eye upon 
 them? Can he circumstantially explain to 
 us how Bill got into the habit of beating 
 Nancy about the head? If he cannot, he is 
 no bishop, though he had a miter as high 
 as Salisbury steeple; he is no bishop, he 
 has sought to be at the helm instead of 
 the masthead; he has no sight of things. 
 " Nay," you say, " it is not his duty to look 
 after Bill in the back street." What! the 
 fat sheep that have full fleeces you think it 
 is only those he should look after while (go 
 back to your Milton) "the hungry sheep 
 look up, and are not fed, besides what the 
 grim wolf with privy paw " (bishops know- 
 ing nothing about it) " daily devours apace, 
 and nothing said "? 
 
 " But that 's not our idea of a bishop." l 
 Perhaps not; but it was St. Paul's; and it 
 was Milton's. They may be right, or we 
 may be; but we must not think we are 
 
 i Compare the 13th Letter in " Time and Tide." 
 
 32
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 reading either one or the other by putting 
 our meaning into their words. 
 I go on. 
 
 But swoln with wind, and the rank mist they 
 draw. 
 
 This is to meet the vulgar answer that 
 "if the poor are not looked after in their 
 bodies, they are in their souls; they have 
 spiritual food." 
 
 And Milton says, "They have no such 
 thing as spiritual food; they are only swollen 
 with wind." At first you may think that 
 is a coarse type and an obscure one. But 
 again, it is a quite literally accurate one. 
 Take up your Latin and Greek dictionaries, 
 and find out the meaning of "Spirit." It 
 is only a contraction of the Latin word 
 "breath," and an indistinct translation of 
 the Greek word for "wind." The same 
 word is used in writing, " The wind bloweth 
 where it listeth"; and in writing, "So is 
 every one that is born of the Spirit "; born 
 of the breath, that is; for it means the 
 breath of God, in soul and body. We have 
 the true sense of it in our words " inspira- 
 tion" and "expire." Now, there are two 
 kinds of breath with which the flock may 
 be filled God's breath and man's. The 
 breath of God is health and life and peace 
 3 33
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 to them, as the air of heaven is to the 
 flocks on the hills; but man's breath 
 the word which he calls spiritual is disease 
 and contagion to them, as the fog of the 
 fen. They rot inwardly with it; they are 
 puffed up by it, as a dead body by the vapors 
 of its own decomposition. This is literally 
 true of all false religious teaching; the first 
 and last, and fatalest sign of it, is that 
 "puffing up." Your converted children, 
 who teach their parents; your converted 
 convicts, who teach honest men; your con- 
 verted dunces, who, having lived in cre- 
 tinous stupefaction half their lives, sud- 
 denly awaking to the fact of there being a 
 God, fancy themselves therefore His pecu- 
 liar people and messengers; your sectarians 
 of every species, small and great, Catholic 
 or Protestant, of high church or low, in so 
 far as they think themselves exclusively in 
 the right and others wrong; and, preemi- 
 nently, in every sect, those who hold that 
 men can be saved by thinking rightly in- 
 stead of doing rightly, by word instead of 
 act, and wish instead of work; these are 
 the true fog children clouds, these, with- 
 out water ; bodies, these, of putrescent vapor 
 and skin, without blood or flesh; blown bag- 
 pipes for the fiends to pipe with corrupt 
 and corrupting," Swoln with wind, and the 
 rank mist they draw." 
 34
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 Lastly, let us return to the lines respect- 
 ing the power of the keys, for now we can 
 understand them. Note the difference be- 
 tween Milton and Dante in their interpreta- 
 tion of this power. For once, the latter is 
 weaker in thought; he supposes both the 
 keys to be of the gate of heaven; one is of 
 gold, the other of silver; they are given 
 by St. Peter to the sentinel angel; and it is 
 not easy to determine the meaning either 
 of the substances of the three steps of the 
 gate, or of the two keys. But Milton makes 
 one, of gold, the key of heaven; the other, 
 of iron, the key of the prison in which the 
 wicked teachers are to be bound who " have 
 taken away the key of knowledge, yet en- 
 tered not in themselves." 
 
 We have seen that the duties of bishop 
 and pastor are to see and feed; and of all 
 who do so it is said, "He that watereth 
 shall be watered also himself." But the 
 reverse is truth also. He that watereth 
 not shall be withered himself; and he that 
 seeth not shall himself be shut out of sight 
 shut into the perpetual prison-house. 
 And that prison opens here, as well as 
 hereafter: he who is to be bound in heaven 
 must first be bound on earth. That com- 
 mand to the strong angels, of which the 
 rock-apostle is the image, "Take him, and 
 bind him hand and foot, and cast him out," 
 35
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 issues, in its measure, against the teacher, 
 for every help withheld, and for every truth 
 refused, and for every falsehood enforced; 
 so that he is more strictly fettered the 
 more he fetters, and farther outcast as he 
 more and more misleads, till at last the 
 bars of the iron cage close upon him, and 
 as " the golden opes, the iron shuts amain." 
 We have got something out of the lines, 
 I think, and much more is yet to be found 
 in them; but we have done enough by way 
 of example of the kind of word-by-word ex- 
 amination of your author which is rightly 
 called "reading"; watching every accent 
 and expression, and putting ourselves al- 
 ways in the author's place, annihilating our 
 own personality, and seeking to enter into 
 his, so as to be able assuredly to say, "Thus 
 Milton thought," not "Thus / thought, in 
 misreading Milton." And by this process 
 you will gradually come to attach less 
 weight to your own " Thus I thought " at 
 other times. You will begin to perceive 
 that what you thought was a matter of no 
 serious importance; that your thoughts 
 on any subject are not perhaps the clearest 
 and wisest that could be arrived at there- 
 upon: in fact, that unless you are a very 
 singular person, you cannot be said to have 
 any "thoughts" at all; that you have no 
 36
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 materials for them, in any serious mat- 
 ters"; 1 no right to "think," but only to 
 try to learn more of the facts. Nay, most 
 probably all your life (unless, as I said, you 
 are a singular person) you will have no 
 legitimate right to an "opinion" on any 
 business, except that instantly under your 
 hand. What must of necessity be done, you 
 can always find out, beyond question, how 
 to do. Have you a house to keep in order, 
 a commodity to sell, a field to plow, a ditch 
 to cleanse? There need be no two opinions 
 about these proceedings; it is at your peril 
 if you have not much more than an " opin- 
 ion " on the way to manage such matters. 
 And also, outside of your own business, 
 there are one or two subjects on which you 
 are bound to have but one opinion. That 
 roguery and lying are objectionable, and 
 are instantly to be flogged out of the way 
 whenever discovered; that covetousness 
 and love of quarreling are dangerous dis- 
 positions even in children, and deadly dis- 
 positions in men and nations; that, in the 
 end, the God of heaven and earth loves 
 active, modest, and kind people, and hates 
 idle, proud, greedy, and cruel ones; on 
 
 1 Modern "Education" for the most part signifies giving 
 people the faculty of thinking wrong on every conceivable 
 subject of importance to them. 
 
 37
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 these general facts you are bound to have 
 but one, and that a very strong, opinion. 
 For the rest, respecting religions, govern- 
 ments, sciences, arts, you will find that, on 
 the whole, you can know NOTHING, judge 
 nothing; that the best you can do, even 
 though you may be a well-educated person, 
 is to be silent, and strive to be wiser every 
 day, and to understand a little more of the 
 thoughts of others, which so soon as you 
 try to do honestly, you will discover that 
 the thoughts even of the wisest are very 
 little more than pertinent questions. To 
 put the difficulty into a clear shape, and ex- 
 hibit to you the grounds for indecision, that 
 is all they can generally do for you! and 
 well for them and for us, if indeed they are 
 able " to mix the music with our thoughts 
 and sadden us with heavenly doubts." This 
 writer from whom I have been reading to 
 you is not among the first or wisest: he 
 sees shrewdly as far as he sees, and there- 
 fore it is easy to find out his full meaning; 
 but with the greater men, you cannot fath- 
 om their meaning; they do not even wholly 
 measure it themselves, it is so wide. Sup- 
 pose I had asked you, for instance, to seek 
 for Shakspere's opinion, instead of Milton's, 
 on this matter of Church authority ? or for 
 Dante's? Have any of you, at this instant, 
 38
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 the least idea what either thought about 
 it? Have you ever balanced the scene with 
 the bishops in "Richard III" against the 
 character of Cranmer? the description of 
 St. Francis and St. Dominic against that of 
 him who made Virgil wonder to gaze upon 
 him, "disteso, tanto vilmente, nell' eterno 
 esilio "; or of him whom Dante stood beside, 
 " come '1 frate che conf essa lo perfido assas- 
 sin "? l Shakspere and Alighieri knew men 
 better than most of us, I presume! They 
 were both in the midst of the main strug- 
 gle between the temporal and spiritual 
 powers. They had an opinion, we may 
 guess. But where is it? Bring it into 
 court! Put Shakspere's or Dante's creed 
 into articles, and send it up for trial by the 
 Ecclesiastical Courts! 
 
 You will not be able, I tell you again, for 
 many and many a day, to come at the real 
 purposes and teaching of these great men; 
 but a very little honest study of them will 
 enable you to perceive that what you took 
 for your own "judgment " was mere chance 
 prejudice, and drifted, helpless, entangled 
 weed of castaway thought; nay, you will see 
 that most men's minds are indeed little 
 better than rough heath wilderness, neg- 
 lected and stubborn, partly barren, partly 
 
 i Inf. xxiii. 125, 126 ; xix. 49, 50. 
 
 39
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 overgrown with pestilent brakes and ven- 
 omous, wind-sown herbage of evil surmise; 
 that the first thing you have to do for them, 
 and yourself, is eagerly and scornfully to 
 set fire to this; burn all the jungle into 
 wholesome ash-heaps, and then plow and 
 sow. All the true literary work before you, 
 for life, must begin with obedience to that 
 order, "Break up your fallow ground, and 
 sow not among thorns." 
 
 Having then faithfully listened to the 
 great teachers, that you may enter into 
 their Thoughts, you have yet this higher 
 advance to make: you have to enter into 
 their Hearts. As you go to them first for 
 clear sight, so you must stay with them, 
 that you may share at last their just and 
 mighty Passion. Passion, or "sensation." 
 I am not afraid of the word; still less of 
 the thing. You have heard many outcries 
 against sensation lately; but, I can tell you, 
 it is not less sensation we want, but more. 
 The ennobling difference between one man 
 and another, between one animal and an- 
 other, is precisely in this, that one feels 
 more than another. If we were sponges, 
 perhaps sensation might not be easily got 
 for us; if we were earthworms, liable at 
 every instant to be cut in two by the spade, 
 perhaps too much sensation might not be 
 40
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 good for us. But being human creatures, 
 it is good for us; nay, we are only human in 
 so far as we are sensitive, and our honor is 
 precisely in proportion to our passion. 
 
 You know I said of that great and pure 
 society of the Dead, that it would allow 
 "no vain or vulgar person to enter there." 
 What do you think I meant by a " vulgar " 
 person? What do you yourselves mean by 
 "vulgarity"? You will find it a fruitful 
 subject of thought; but, briefly, the essence 
 of all vulgarity lies in want of sensation. 
 Simple and innocent vulgarity is merely 
 an untrained and undeveloped bluntness of 
 body and mind; but in true inbred vulgar- 
 ity there is a dreadful callousness, which, 
 in extremity, becomes capable of every sort 
 of bestial habit and crime, without fear, 
 without pleasure, without horror, and with- 
 out pity. It is in the blunt hand and the 
 dead heart, in the diseased habit, in the 
 hardened conscience, that men become vul- 
 gar; they are forever vulgar, precisely in 
 proportion as they are incapable of sympa- 
 thy, of quick understanding, of all that, 
 in deep insistence on the common but most 
 accurate term, may be called the " tact," or 
 "touch-faculty," of body and soul: that tact 
 which the Mimosa has in trees, which the 
 pure woman has above all creatures; fine- 
 41
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 ness and fullness of sensation, beyond rea- 
 son; the guide and sanctifier of reason 
 itself. Reason can but determine what is 
 true: it is the God-given passion of hu- 
 manity which alone can recognize what God 
 has made good. 
 
 We come then to that great concourse of 
 the Dead, not merely to know from them 
 what is True, but chiefly to feel with them 
 what is just. Now, to feel with them, we 
 must be like them; and none of us can 
 become that without pains. As the true 
 knowledge is disciplined and tested know- 
 ledge, not the first thought that comes, so 
 the true passion is disciplined and tested 
 passion, not the first passion that comes. 
 The first that come are the vain, the false, 
 the treacherous; if you yield to them they 
 will lead you wildly and far, in vain pursuit, 
 in hollow enthusiasm, till you have no true 
 purpose and no true passion left. Not that 
 any feeling possible to humanity is in itself 
 wrong, but only wrong when undisciplined. 
 Its nobility is in its force and justice; it is 
 wrong when it is weak, and felt for paltry 
 cause. There is a mean wonder, as of a 
 child who sees a juggler tossing golden 
 balls; and this is base, if you will. But do 
 you think that the wonder is ignoble, or the 
 sensation less, with which every human 
 42
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 soul is called to watch the golden halls of 
 heaven tossed through the night by the 
 Hand that made them? There is a mean 
 curiosity, as of a child opening a forbidden 
 door, or a servant prying into her master's 
 business; and a noble curiosity, question- 
 ing, in the front of danger, the source of 
 the great river beyond the sand, the place 
 of the great continents beyond the sea; a 
 nobler curiosity still, which questions of 
 the source of the River of Life, and of the 
 space of the Continent of Heaven, things 
 which " the angels desire to look into." So 
 the anxiety is ignoble with which you linger 
 over the course and catastrophe of an idle 
 tale; but do you think the anxiety is less, or 
 greater, with which you watch, or ought to 
 watch, the dealings of fate and destiny with 
 the life of an agonized nation? Alas! it is 
 the narrowness, selfishness, minuteness, of 
 your sensation that you have to deplore 
 in England at this day; sensation which 
 spends itself in bouquets and speeches, in 
 revelings and junketings, in sham fights 
 and gay puppet shows, while you can look 
 on and see noble nations murdered, man by 
 man, without an effort or a tear. 
 
 I said "minuteness" and "selfishness" 
 of sensation, but it would have been enough 
 to have said "injustice" or "unrighteous- 
 43
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 ness" of sensation. For as in nothing is 
 a gentleman better to be discerned from a 
 vulgar person, so in nothing is a gentle 
 nation (such nations have been) better to 
 be discerned from a mob, than in this, 
 that their feelings are constant and just, 
 results of due contemplation and of equal 
 thought. You can talk a mob into anything; 
 its feelings may be, usually are, on the 
 whole, generous and right; but it has no 
 foundation for them, no hold of them; you 
 may tease or tickle it into any, at your plea- 
 sure; it thinks by infection, for the most 
 part, catching an opinion like a cold, and 
 there is nothing so little that it will not 
 roar itself wild about, when the fit is on; 
 nothing so great but it will forget in an 
 hour, when the fit is past. But a gentle- 
 man's, or a gentle nation's, passions are 
 just, measured, and continuous. A great 
 nation, for instance, does not spend its 
 entire national wits for a couple of months 
 in weighing evidence of a single ruffian's 
 having done a single murder; and for a 
 couple of years see its own children murder 
 each other by their thousands or tens of 
 thousands a day, considering only what the 
 effect is likely to be on the price of cotton, 
 and caring nowise to determine which side 
 of battle is in the wrong. Neither does a 
 44
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 great nation send its poor little boys to jail 
 for stealing six walnuts, and allow its bank- 
 rupts to steal their hundreds of thousands 
 with a bow, and its bankers, rich with poor 
 men's savings, to close their doors "under 
 circumstances over which they have no 
 control," with a "by your leave "; and large 
 landed estates to be bought by men who 
 have made their money by going with 
 armed steamers up and down the China 
 Seas, selling opium at the cannon's mouth, 
 and altering, for the benefit of the foreign 
 nation, the common highwayman's demand 
 of "your money or your life," into that of 
 "your money and your life." Neither does 
 a great nation allow the lives of its inno- 
 cent poor to be parched out of them by fog 
 fever, and rotted out of them by dunghill 
 plague, for the sake of sixpence a life extra 
 per week to its landlords; 1 and then debate, 
 with driveling tears and diabolical sympa- 
 thies, whether it ought not piously to save, 
 and nursingly cherish, the lives of its mur- 
 derers. Also, a great nation, having made 
 up its mind that hanging is quite the whole- 
 somest process for its homicides in general, 
 can yet with mercy distinguish between 
 
 1 See note at end of lecture. I have put it in large type, be- 
 cause the course of matters since it was written has made it 
 perhaps better worth attention. 
 
 45
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 the degrees of guilt in homicides; and does 
 not yelp like a pack of frost-pinched wolf- 
 cubs on the blood-track of an unhappy 
 crazed boy, or gray-haired clodpate Othello, 
 "perplexed i' the extreme," at the very mo- 
 ment that it is sending a Minister of the 
 Crown to make polite speeches to a man 
 who is bayoneting young girls in their 
 fathers' sight, and killing noble youths in 
 cool blood, faster than a country butcher 
 kills lambs in spring. And, lastly, a great 
 nation does not mock Heaven and its Pow- 
 ers, by pretending belief in a revelation 
 which asserts the love of money to be the 
 root of all evil, and declaring, at the same 
 time, that it is actuated, and intends to be 
 actuated, in all chief national deeds and 
 measures, by no other love. 
 
 My friends, I do not know why any of us 
 should talk about reading. We want some 
 sharper discipline than that of reading; but, 
 at all events, be assured, we cannot read. 
 No reading is possible for a people with its 
 mind in this state. No sentence of any 
 great writer is intelligible to them. It is 
 simply and sternly impossible for the Eng- 
 lish public, at this moment, to understand 
 any thoughtful writing, so incapable of 
 thought has it become in its insanity of 
 avarice. Happily, our disease is, as yet, 
 46
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 little worse than this incapacity of thought; 
 it is not corruption of the inner nature; we 
 ring true still, when anything strikes home 
 to us; and though the idea that everything 
 should " pay " has infected our every pur- 
 pose so deeply that even when we would 
 play the good Samaritan we never take out 
 our twopence and give them to the host 
 without saying, " When I come again, thou 
 shalt give me fourpence," there is a capa- 
 city of noble passion left in our hearts' core. 
 We show it in our work in our war, even 
 in those unjust domestic affections which 
 make us furious at a small private wrong, 
 while we are polite to a boundless public 
 one: we are still industrious to the last hour 
 of the day, though we add the gambler's 
 fury to the laborer's patience; we are still 
 brave to the death, though incapable of dis- 
 cerning true cause for battle; and are still 
 true in affection to our own flesh, to the 
 death, as the sea-monsters are, and the 
 rock-eagles. And there is hope for a nation 
 while this can be still said of it. As long 
 as it holds its life in its hand, ready to give 
 it for its honor (though a foolish honor), for 
 its love (though a selfish love), and for its 
 business (though a base business), there is 
 hope for it. But hope only; for this in- 
 stinctive, reckless virtue cannot last. No 
 47
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 nation can last which has made a mob of 
 itself, however generous at heart. It must 
 discipline its passions, and direct them, or 
 they will discipline it, one day, with scor- 
 pion whips. Above all, a nation cannot last 
 as a money-making mob: it cannot with 
 impunity, it cannot with existence, go on 
 despising literature, despising science, de- 
 spising art, despising nature, despising com- 
 passion, and concentrating its soul on Pence. 
 Do you think these are harsh or wild words? 
 Have patience with me but a little longer. 
 I will prove their truth to you, clause by 
 clause. 
 
 I. I say first we have despised literature. 
 What do we, as a nation, care about books? 
 How much do you think we spend alto- 
 gether on our libraries, public or private, 
 as compared with what we spend on our 
 horses? If a man spends lavishly on his 
 library, you call him mad a bibliomaniac. 
 But you never call any one a horsemaniac, 
 though men ruin themselves every day by 
 their horses, and you do not hear of people 
 ruining themselves by their books. Or, to 
 go lower still, how much do you think the 
 contents of the book-shelves of the United 
 Kingdom, public and private, would fetch, 
 as compared with the contents of its wine- 
 cellars? What position would its expendi- 
 48
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 ture on literature take, as compared with 
 its expenditure on luxurious eating? We 
 talk of food for the mind, as of food for the 
 body: now a good book contains such food 
 inexhaustibly; it is a provision for life, and 
 for the best part of us; yet how long most 
 people would look at the best book before 
 they would give the price of a large turbot 
 for it! Though there have been men who 
 have pinched their stomachs and bared 
 their backs to buy a book, whose libraries 
 were cheaper to them, I think, in the end, 
 than most men's dinners are. We are few 
 of us put to such trial, and more the pity; 
 for, indeed, a precious thing is all the more 
 precious to us if it has been won by work or 
 economy; and if public libraries were half so 
 costly as public dinners, or books cost the 
 tenth part of what bracelets do, even fool- 
 ish men and women might sometimes sus- 
 pect there was good in reading, as well as 
 in munching and sparkling: whereas the 
 very cheapness of literature is making even 
 wise people forget that if a book is worth 
 reading, it is worth buying. No book is 
 worth anything which is not worth much ; 
 nor is it serviceable until it has been read, 
 and re-read, and loved, and loved again; and 
 marked, so that you can refer to the pas- 
 sages you want in it, as a soldier can seize 
 4 49
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 the weapon he needs in an armory, or a 
 housewife bring the spice she needs from 
 her store. Bread of flour is good; but there 
 is bread, sweet as honey, if we would eat it, 
 in a good book; and the family must be poor 
 indeed which, once in their lives, cannot, 
 for such multipliable barley-loaves, pay 
 their baker's bill. We call ourselves a rich 
 nation, and we are filthy and foolish enough 
 to thumb each other's books out of circu- 
 lating libraries! 
 
 II. I say we have despised science. 
 "What!" you exclaim, "are we not fore- 
 most in all discovery, 1 and is not the whole 
 world giddy by reason, or unreason, of our 
 inventions? " Yes; but do you suppose that 
 is national work? That work is all done 
 in spite of the nation; by private people's 
 zeal and money. We are glad enough, 
 indeed, to make our profit of science; we 
 snap up anything in the way of a scientific 
 bone that has meat on it, eagerly enough; 
 but if the scientific man comes for a bone 
 or a crust to ws, that is another story. 
 What have we publicly done for science? 
 We are obliged to know what o'clock it is, 
 for the safety of our ships, and therefore 
 
 1 Since this was written, the answer has become definitely 
 No ; we having surrendered the field of Arctic discovery to 
 the Continental nations, as being ourselves too poor to pay 
 for ships. 
 
 50
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 we pay for an observatory; and we allow 
 ourselves, in the person of our Parliament, 
 to be annually tormented into doing some- 
 thing, in a slovenly way, for the British 
 Museum; sullenly apprehending that to be 
 a place for keeping stuffed birds in, to amuse 
 our children. If anybody will pay for their 
 own telescope, and resolve another nebula, 
 we cackle over the discernment as if it were 
 our own; if one in ten thousand of our hunt- 
 ing squires suddenly perceives that the 
 earth was indeed made to be something else 
 than a portion for foxes, and burrows in it 
 himself, and tells us where the gold is, and 
 where the coals, we understand that there 
 is some use in that, and very properly 
 knight him; but is the accident of his hav- 
 ing found out how to employ himself use- 
 fully any credit to us ? (The negation of 
 such discovery among his brother squires 
 may perhaps be some discredit to us, if we 
 would consider of it.) But if you doubt 
 these generalities, here is one fact for us 
 all to meditate upon, illustrative of our love 
 of science. Two years ago there was a col- 
 lection of the fossils of Solnhofen to be 
 sold in Bavaria; the best in existence, con- 
 taining many specimens unique for perfect- 
 ness, and one unique as an example of a 
 species (a whole kingdom of unknown liv- 
 51
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 ing creatures being announced by that fos- 
 sil). This collection, of which the mere 
 market worth, among private buyers, would 
 probably have been some thousand or 
 twelve hundred pounds, was offered to the 
 English nation for seven hundred: but we 
 would not give seven hundred, and the 
 whole series would have been in the Munich 
 Museum at this moment, if Professor Owen : 
 had not, with loss of his own time, and pa- 
 tient tormenting of the British public in 
 person of its representatives, got leave to 
 give four hundred pounds at once, and him- 
 self become answerable for the other three! 
 which the said public will doubtless pay him 
 eventually, but sulkily, and caring nothing 
 about the matter all the while; only always 
 ready to cackle if any credit comes of it. 
 Consider, I beg of you, arithmetically, what 
 this fact means. Your annual expenditure 
 for public purposes (a third of it for mili- 
 tary apparatus) is at least fifty millions. 
 Now 700 is to 50,000,000, roughly, as seven- 
 pence to two thousand pounds. Suppose, 
 then, a gentleman of unknown income, but 
 whose wealth was to be conjectured from 
 
 1 I state this fact without Professor Owen's permission ; which 
 of course he could not with propriety have granted, had I 
 asked it ; but I consider it so important that the public should 
 be aware of the fact, that I do what seems to me right, though 
 rude. 
 
 52
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 the fact that he spent two thousand a year 
 on his park walls and footmen only, pro- 
 fesses himself fond of science; and that one 
 of his servants comes eagerly to tell him 
 that an unique collection of fossils, giving 
 clue to a new era of creation, is to be had 
 for the sum of sevenpence sterling; and 
 that the gentleman who is fond of science, 
 and spends two thousand a year on his 
 park, answers, after keeping his servant 
 waiting several months, "Well! I'll give 
 you fourpence for them, if you will be an- 
 swerable for the extra threepence yourself, 
 till next year!" 
 
 III. I say you have despised Art! "What!" 
 you again answer, "have we not Art ex- 
 hibitions, miles long? and do we not pay 
 thousands of pounds for single pictures? 
 and have we not Art schools and insti- 
 tutions, more than ever nation had be- 
 fore? " Yes, truly, but all that is for the 
 sake of the shop. You would fain sell can- 
 vas as well as coals, and crockery as well as 
 iron; you would take every other nation's 
 bread out of its mouth if you could; 1 not 
 being able to do that, your ideal of life is to 
 stand in the thoroughfares of the world, 
 
 1 That was our real idea of "Free Trade " "All the trade 
 to myself." You find now that by " competition " other peo- 
 ple can manage to sell something as well as you and now 
 we call for Protection again. Wretches ! 
 
 53
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 like Ludgate apprentices, screaming to 
 every passer-by, "What d' ye lack?" You 
 know nothing of your own faculties or cir- 
 cumstances; you fancy that, among your 
 damp, flat, fat fields of clay, you can have 
 as quick art-fancy as the Frenchman among 
 his bronzed vines, or the Italian under his 
 volcanic cliffs; that Art may be learned, 
 as bookkeeping is, and when learned, will 
 give you more books to keep. You care 
 for pictures, absolutely, no more than you 
 do for the bills pasted on your dead walls. 
 There is always room on the walls for the 
 bills to be read, never for the pictures to 
 be seen. You do not know what pictures 
 you have (by repute) in the country, nor 
 whether they are false or true, nor whether 
 they are taken care of or not; in foreign 
 countries, you calmly see the noblest exist- 
 ing pictures in the world rotting in aban- 
 doned wreck (in Venice you saw the 
 Austrian guns deliberately pointed at the 
 palaces containing them), and if you heard 
 that all the fine pictures in Europe were 
 made into sand-bags to-morrow on the 
 Austrian forts, it would not trouble you so 
 much as the chance of a brace or two of 
 game less in your own bags, in a day's shoot- 
 ing. That is your national love of Art. 
 IV. You have despised Nature; that is to 
 54
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 say, all the deep and sacred sensations 
 of natural scenery. The French revolu- 
 tionists made stables of the cathedrals of 
 France; you have made race-courses of the 
 cathedrals of the earth. Your one concep- 
 tion of pleasure is to drive in railroad-car- 
 riages round their aisles, and eat off their 
 altars. 1 You have put a railroad-bridge 
 over the falls of Schaffhausen; you have 
 tunneled the cliffs of Lucerne by Tell's 
 chapel; you have destroyed the Clarens 
 shore of the Lake of Geneva; there is not a 
 quiet valley in England that you have not 
 filled with bellowing fire; there is no parti- 
 cle left of English land which you have not 
 trampled coal ashes into 2 nor any foreign 
 city in which the spread of your presence is 
 not marked among its fair old streets and 
 happy gardens by a consuming white lep- 
 rosy of new hotels and perfumers' shops: 
 the Alps themselves, which your own poets 
 used to love so reverently, you look upon 
 as soaped poles in a bear-garden, which 
 you set yourselves to climb and slide down 
 
 1 I meant that the beautiful places of the world Switzer- 
 land, Italy, South Germany, and so on are, indeed, the 
 truest cathedrals places to be reverent in, and to worship 
 in ; and that we only care to drive through them, and to eat 
 and drink at their most sacred places. 2 I was singularly 
 struck, some years ago, by finding all the river shore at 
 Richmond, in Yorkshire, black in its earth, from the mere 
 drift of soot-laden air from places many miles away. 
 
 55
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 again, with "shrieks of delight." When 
 you are past shrieking, having no human 
 articulate voice to say you are glad with, 
 you fill the quietude of their valleys with 
 gunpowder blasts, and' rush home, red with 
 cutaneous eruption of conceit, and voluble 
 with convulsive hiccough of self-satisfac- 
 tion. I think nearly the two sorrowfulest 
 spectacles I have ever seen in humanity, 
 taking the deep inner significance of them, 
 are the English mobs in the valley of Cha- 
 monix, amusing themselves with firing 
 rusty howitzers; and the Swiss vintagers of 
 Zurich, expressing their Christian thanks 
 for the gift of the vine, by assembling in 
 knots in the " towers of the vineyards," and 
 slowly loading and firing horse-pistols from 
 morning till evening. It is pitiful to have 
 dim conceptions of duty; more pitiful, it 
 seems to me, to have conceptions like these, 
 of mirth. 
 
 Lastly. You despise compassion. There 
 is no need of words of mine for proof of 
 this. I will merely print one of the news- 
 paper paragraphs which I am in the habit 
 of cutting out and throwing into my store- 
 drawer; here is one from a "Daily Tele- 
 graph" of an early date this year (1867); 
 (date which, though by me carelessly left 
 unmarked, is easily discoverable; for on the 
 56
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 back of the slip there is the announcement 
 that " yesterday the seventh of the special 
 services of this year was performed by the 
 Bishop of Ripon in St. Paul's";) it relates 
 only one of such facts as happen now daily; 
 this by chance having taken a form in 
 which it came before the coroner. I will 
 print the paragraph in red. Be sure, the 
 facts themselves are written in that color, 
 in a book which we shall all of us, literate 
 or illiterate, have to read our page of, some 
 day. 
 
 1 An inquiry was held on Friday by Mr. 
 Richards, deputy coroner, at the White 
 Horse Tavern, Christ Church, Spitalfields, 
 respecting the death of Michael Collins, 
 aged 58 years. Mary Collins, a miserable- 
 looking woman, said that she lived with the 
 deceased and his son in a room at 2, Cobb's 
 Court, Christ Church. Deceased was a 
 " translator " of boots. Witness went out 
 and bought old boots; deceased and his son 
 made them into good ones, and then wit- 
 ness sold them for what she could get at 
 the shops, which was very little indeed. 
 Deceased and his son used to work night 
 and day to try and get a little bread and 
 tea, and pay for the room (2s. a week), so as 
 to keep the home together. On Friday- 
 
 i This paragraph was printed in red in the original edition. 
 
 57
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 night-week deceased got up from his bench 
 and began to shiver. He threw down the 
 boots, saying, "Somebody else must finish 
 them when I am gone, for I can do no more." 
 There was no fire, and he said, " I would be 
 better if I was warm." Witness therefore 
 took two pairs of translated boots l to sell 
 at the shop, but she could only get 14d. for 
 the two pairs, for the people at the shop 
 said, " We must have our profit." Witness 
 got 14 Ib. of coal, and a little tea and bread. 
 Her son sat up the whole night to make the 
 " translations," to get money, but deceased 
 died on Saturday morning. The family 
 never had enough to eat. Coroner: "It 
 seems to me deplorable that you did not 
 go into the workhouse." Witness: "We 
 wanted the comforts of our little home." 
 A juror asked what the comforts were, for 
 he only saw a little straw in the corner of 
 the room, the windows of which were broken. 
 The witness began to cry, and said that 
 they had a quilt and other little things. 
 The deceased said he never would go into 
 the workhouse. In summer, when the sea- 
 son was good, they sometimes made as 
 much as 10s. profit in the week. They then 
 
 1 One of the things which we must very resolutely enforce, 
 for the good of all classes, in our future arrangements, must 
 be that they wear no " translated " articles of dress. See the 
 preface. 
 
 58
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 always saved towards the next week, which 
 was generally a bad one. In winter they 
 made not half so much. For three years 
 they had been getting from bad to worse. 
 Cornelius Collins said that he had as- 
 sisted his father since 1847. They used to 
 work so far into the night that both nearly 
 lost their eyesight. Witness now had a 
 film over his eyes. Five years ago deceased 
 applied to the parish for aid. The relieving 
 officer gave him a 4-lb. loaf, and told him if 
 he came again he should " get the stones." l 
 That disgusted deceased, and he would have 
 nothing to do with them since. They got 
 worse and worse until last Friday week, 
 when they had not even a halfpenny to buy 
 a candle. Deceased then lay down on the 
 straw, and said he could not live till morn- 
 ing. A juror: "You are dying of starvation 
 
 i This abbreviation of the penalty of useless labor is curi- 
 ously coincident in verbal form with a certain passage which 
 some of us may remember. It may perhaps be well to pre- 
 serve beside this paragraph another cutting out of my store- 
 drawer, from the " Morning Post," of about a parallel date, 
 
 Friday, March 10, 1865: "The salons of Mme. C , who 
 
 did the honors with clever imitative grace and elegance, 
 were crowded with princes, dukes, marquises, and counts 
 in fact, with the same male company as one meets at the 
 parties of the Princess Metternich and Madame Drouyn de 
 Lhuys. Some English peers and members of Parliament 
 were present, and appeared to enjoy the animated and 
 dazzlingly improper scene. On the second floor the supper- 
 tables were loaded with every delicacy of the season. That 
 your readers may form some idea of the dainty fare of the 
 Parisian demi-monde, I copy the menu of the supper, which 
 
 59
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 yourself, and you ought to go into the house 
 until the summer." Witness: "If we went 
 in we should die. When we come out in 
 the summer we should be like people 
 dropped from the sky. No one would know 
 us, and we would not have even a room. I 
 could work now if I had food, for my sight 
 would get better." Dr. G. P. Walker said 
 deceased died from syncope, from exhaus- 
 tion from want of food. The deceased had 
 had no bedclothes. For four months he had 
 had nothing but bread to eat. There was 
 not a particle of fat in the body. There 
 was no disease, but, if there had been medi- 
 cal attendance, he might have survived the 
 syncope or fainting. The Coroner having 
 remarked upon the painful nature of the 
 case, the jury returned the following ver- 
 dict: "That deceased died from exhaustion 
 from want of food and the common neces- 
 
 was served to all the guests (about 200) seated at four o'clock. 
 Choice Yquem, Johannisberg, Laffltte, Tokay, and cham- 
 pagne of the finest vintages were served most lavishly 
 throughout the morning. After supper dancing was resumed 
 with increased animation, and the ball terminated with a 
 chatne diabolique and a cancan d'enfer at seven in the morn- 
 ing. (Morning service 'Ere the fresh lawns appeared, 
 under the opening eyelids of the Morn. ') Here is the 
 menu: 'Consommg de volaille a la Bagration: 16 hors- 
 d'oeuvres varies. Bouche'es a la Talleyrand. Saumons froids, 
 sauce Ravigote. Filets de bceuf en Bellevue, timbales mil.i- 
 naises, chaudfroid de gibier. Dindes truffdes. Pates de foies 
 gras, buissons d'ecrevisses, salades vengtiennes, gelfies 
 blanches aux fruits, gateaux mancini, parisiens et parisi- 
 ennes. Fromages glaces. Ananas. Dessert.'" 
 
 60
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 saries of life; also through want of medical 
 aid." 
 
 "Why would witness not go into the 
 workhouse? " you ask. Well, the poor seem 
 to have a prejudice against the workhouse 
 which the rich have not; for of course 
 every one who takes a pension from Govern- 
 ment goes into the workhouse on a grand 
 scale: l only the workhouses for the rich do 
 not involve the idea of work, and should be 
 called playhouses. But the poor like to die 
 independently, it appears; perhaps if we 
 made the playhouses for them pretty and 
 pleasant enough, or gave them their pen- 
 sions at home, and allowed them a little 
 introductory peculation with the public 
 money, their minds might be reconciled to 
 the conditions. Meantime, here are the 
 facts: we make our relief either so insulting 
 to them, or so painful, that they rather die 
 than take it at our hands; or, for third 
 alternative, we leave them so untaught and 
 foolish that they starve like brute creatures, 
 wild and dumb, not knowing what to do, or 
 what to ask. I say, you despise compas- 
 sion; if you did not, such a newspaper para- 
 graph would be as impossible in a Christian 
 
 1 Please observe this statement, and think of it, and consider 
 how it happens that a poor old woman will be ashamed to 
 take a shilling a week from the country but no one is 
 ashamed to take a pension of a thousand a year. 
 
 61
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 country as a deliberate assassination per- 
 mitted in its public streets. 1 "Christian/' 
 did I say? Alas! if we were but whole- 
 somely im-Christian, it would be impossi- 
 ble: it is our imaginary Christianity that 
 helps us to commit these crimes, for we 
 revel and luxuriate in our faith, for the 
 lewd sensation of it; dressing it up, like 
 everything else, in fiction. The dramatic 
 Christianity of the organ and aisle, of dawn- 
 service and twilight-revival the Christian- 
 ity which we do not fear to mix the mock- 
 ery of, pictorially, with our play about the 
 devil, in our Satanellas, Roberts, Fausts; 
 chanting hymns through traceried windows 
 for background effect, and artistically mod- 
 
 1 1 am heartily glad to see such a paper as the " Pall Mall 
 Gazette " established ; for the power of the press in the hands 
 of highly educated men, in independent position, and of 
 honest purpose, may indeed become all that it has been 
 hitherto vainly vaunted to be. Its editor will therefore, I 
 doubt not, pardon me, in that, by very reason of my respect 
 for the journal, I do not let pass unnoticed an article in its 
 third number, page 5, which was wrong in every word of it, 
 with the intense wrongness which only an honest man can 
 achieve who has taken a false turn of thought in the outset, 
 and is following it, regardless of consequences. It contained 
 at the end this notable passage : 
 
 "The bread of affliction, and the water of affliction, aye, 
 and the bedsteads and blankets of affliction, are the very 
 utmost that the law ought to give to outcasts, merely as 
 outcasts." I merely put beside this expression of the gentle- 
 manly mind of England in 1865 a part of the message which 
 Isaiah was ordered to "lift up his voice like a trumpet" in 
 declaring to the gentlemen of his day: "Ye fast for strife, 
 and to smite with the fist of wickedness. Is not this the fast 
 
 62
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 ulating the "Dio" through variation on 
 variation of mimicked prayer (while we 
 distribute tracts, next day, for the benefit 
 of uncultivated swearers, upon what we 
 suppose to be the signification of the Third 
 Commandment); this gas-lighted and 
 gas-inspired Christianity we are trium- 
 phant in, and draw back the hem of our 
 robes from the touch of the heretics who 
 dispute it. But to do a piece of common 
 Christian righteousness in a plain English 
 word or deed; to make Christian law any 
 rule of life, and found one National act or 
 hope thereon, we know too well what our 
 faith comes to for that! You might sooner 
 get lightning out of incense^smoke than 
 true action or passion out of your modern 
 
 that I have chosen, to deal thy bread to the hungry, and 
 that thou bring the poor that are cast out (margin, ' afflicted ') 
 to thy house?" The falsehood on which the writer had 
 mentally founded himself, as previously stated by him, was 
 this: "To confound the functions of the dispensers of the 
 poor-rates with those of the dispensers of a charitable institu- 
 tion is a great and pernicious error." This sentence is so 
 accurately .and exquisitely wrong that its substance must be 
 thus reversed in our minds before we can deal with any 
 existing problem of national distress. " To understand that 
 the dispensers of the poor-rates are the almoners of the 
 nation, and should distribute its alms with a gentleness and 
 freedom of hand as much greater and franker than that 
 possible to individual charity as the collective national wis- 
 dom and power may be supposed greater than those of any 
 single person, is the foundation of all law respecting pauper- 
 ism." (Since this was written the "Pall Mall Gazette" has 
 become a mere party paper like the rest ; but it writes well, 
 and does more good than mischief on the whole.) 
 
 63
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 English religion. You had better get rid of 
 the smoke and the organ-pipes, both: leave 
 them, and the Gothic windows, and the 
 painted glass, to the property-man; give up 
 your carbureted-hydrogen ghost in one 
 healthy expiration, and look after Lazarus 
 at the door-step. For there is a true Church 
 wherever one hand meets another help- 
 fully, and that is the only holy or Mother 
 Church which ever was, or ever shall be. 
 
 All these pleasures then, and all these 
 virtues, I repeat, you nationally despise. 
 You have, indeed, men among you who do 
 not; by whose work, by whose strength, by 
 whose life, by whose death, you live, and 
 never thank them. Your wealth, your 
 amusement, your pride, would all be alike 
 impossible, but for those whom you scorn 
 or forget. The policeman, who is walking 
 up and down the black lane all night to 
 watch the guilt you have created there, and 
 may have his brains beaten out, and be 
 maimed for life, at any moment, and never 
 be thanked; the sailor wrestling with the 
 sea's rage; the quiet student poring over 
 his book or his vial; the common worker, 
 without praise, and nearly without bread, 
 fulfilling his task as your horses drag your 
 carts, hopeless, and spurned of all: these 
 are the men by whom England lives; but 
 64
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 they are not the nation; they are only the 
 hody and nervous force of it, acting still 
 from old habit in a convulsive perseverance, 
 while the mind is gone. Our National wish 
 and purpose are only to be amused; our Na- 
 tional religion is the performance of church 
 ceremonies, and preaching of soporific truth 
 (or untruths) to keep the mob quietly at 
 work, while we amuse ourselves; and the 
 necessity for this amusement is fastening 
 on us, as a feverous disease of parched 
 throat and wandering eyes senseless, dis- 
 solute, merciless. How literally that word 
 Dis-Ease, the Negation and impossibility of 
 Ease, expresses the entire moral state of 
 our English Industry and its Amusements! 
 When men are rightly occupied, their 
 amusement grows out of their work, as the 
 color-petals out of a fruitful flower; when 
 they are faithfully helpful and compassion- 
 ate, all their emotions become steady, deep, 
 perpetual, and vivifying to the soul as the 
 natural pulse to the body. But now, hav- 
 ing no true business, we pour our whole 
 masculine energy into the false business of 
 money-making; and having no true emo- 
 tion, we must have false emotions dressed 
 up for us to play with, not innocently, as 
 children with dolls, but guiltily and darkly, 
 as the idolatrous Jews with their pictures 
 5 65
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 on cavern walls, which men had to dig to 
 detect. The justice we do not execute, we 
 mimic in the novel and on the stage; for 
 the beauty we destroy in nature, we sub- 
 stitute the metamorphosis of the panto- 
 mime, and (the human nature of us impera- 
 tively requiring awe and sorrow of some 
 kind) for the noble grief we should have 
 borne with our fellows, and the pure tears 
 we should have wept with them, we gloat 
 over the pathos of the police court, and 
 gather the night-dew of the grave. 
 
 It is difficult to estimate the true signifi- 
 cance of these things; the facts are fright- 
 ful enough; the measure of national fault 
 involved in them is perhaps not as great as 
 it would at first seem. We permit, or cause, 
 thousands of deaths daily, but we mean no 
 harm; we set fire to houses, and ravage 
 peasants' fields, yet we should be sorry to 
 find we had injured anybody. We are still 
 kind at heart; still capable of virtue, but 
 only as children are. Chalmers, at the end 
 of his long life, having had much power 
 with the public, being plagued in some seri- 
 ous matter by a reference to "public opin- 
 ion," uttered the impatient exclamation, 
 "The public is just a great baby!" And 
 the reason that I have allowed all these 
 graver subjects of thought to mix them- 
 66
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 selves up with an inquiry into methods of 
 reading is that, the more I see of our na- 
 tional faults or miseries, the more they 
 resolve themselves into conditions of child- 
 ish illiterateness and want of education in 
 the most ordinary habits of thought. It 
 is, I repeat, not vice, not selfishness, not 
 dullness of brain, which we have to lament; 
 but an unreachable school-boy's reckless- 
 ness, only differing from the true school- 
 boy's in its incapacity of being helped, be- 
 cause it acknowledges no master. 
 
 There is a curious type of us given in one 
 of the lovely, neglected works of the last 
 of our great painters. It is a drawing of 
 Kirkby Lonsdale churchyard, and of its 
 brook, and valley, and hills, and folded 
 morning sky beyond. And unmindful alike 
 of these, and of the dead who have left 
 these for other valleys and for other skies, 
 a group of school-boys have piled their little 
 books upon a grave, to strike them off with 
 stones. So, also, we play with the words of 
 the dead that would teach us, and strike 
 them far from us with our bitter, reckless 
 will ; little thinking that those leaves which 
 the wind scatters had been piled, not only 
 upon a gravestone, but upon the seal of an 
 enchanted vault nay, the gate of a great 
 city of sleeping kings, who would awake for 
 67
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 us and walk with us, if we knew but how to 
 call them by their names. How often, even 
 if we lift the marble entrance-gate, do we 
 but wander among those old kings in their 
 repose, and finger the robes they lie in, and 
 stir the crowns on their foreheads; and still 
 they are silent to us, and seem but a dusty 
 imagery; because we know not the incan- 
 tation of the heart that would wake them; 
 which, if they once heard, they would 
 start up to meet us in their power of long 
 ago, narrowly to look upon us and consider 
 us; and, as the fallen kings of Hades meet 
 the newly fallen, saying, "Art thou also 
 become weak as we art thou also become 
 one of us?" so would these kings, with 
 their undimmed, unshaken diadems, meet 
 us, saying, " Art thou also become pure and 
 mighty of heart as we art thou also be- 
 come one of us? " 
 
 Mighty of heart, mighty of mind "mag- 
 nanimous "to be this, is indeed to be great 
 in life; to become this increasingly, is in- 
 deed to "advance in life," in life itself 
 not in the trappings of it. My friends, do 
 you remember that old Scythian custom, 
 when the head of a house died? How he 
 was dressed in his finest dress, and set in 
 his chariot, and carried about to his friends' 
 houses; and each of them placed him at his 
 68
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 table's head, and all feasted in his presence? 
 Suppose it were offered to you in plain 
 words, as it is offered to you in dire facts, 
 that you should gain this Scythian honor, 
 gradually, while you yet thought yourself 
 alive. Suppose the offer were this: You 
 shall die slowly; your blood shall daily grow 
 cold, your flesh petrify, your heart beat at 
 last only as a rusted group of iron valves. 
 Your life shall fade from you, and sink 
 through the earth into the ice of Caina; but, 
 day by day, your body shall be dressed more 
 gaily, and set in higher chariots, and have 
 more orders on its breast crowns on its 
 head, if you will. Men shall bow before it, 
 stare and shout round it, crowd after it up 
 and down the streets; build palaces for it, 
 feast with it at their tables' heads all the 
 night long; your soul shall stay enough 
 within it to know what they do, and feel the 
 weight of the golden dress on its shoulders, 
 and the furrow of the crown-edge on the 
 skull ; no more. Would you take the offer, 
 verbally made by the death-angel? Would 
 the meanest among us take it, think you? 
 Yet practically and verily we grasp at it, 
 every one of us, in a measure; many of us 
 grasp at it in its fullness of horror. Every 
 man accepts it who desires to advance in 
 life without knowing what life is; who 
 69
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 means only that he is to get more horses, 
 and more footmen, and more fortune, and 
 more public honor, and no t more personal 
 soul. He only is advancing in life whose 
 heart is getting softer, whose blood warmer, 
 whose brain quicker, whose spirit is enter- 
 ing into Living l peace. And the men who 
 have this life in them are the true lords or 
 kings of the earth they, and they only. 
 All other kingships, so far as they are true, 
 are only the practical issue and expression 
 of theirs; if less than this, they are either 
 dramatic royalties, costly shows, set off, 
 indeed, with real jewels, instead of tinsel- 
 but still only the toys of nations; or else 
 they are no royalties at all, but tyrannies, 
 or the mere active and practical issue of 
 national folly; for which reason I have said 
 of them elsewhere, "Visible governments 
 are the toys of some nations, the diseases 
 of others, the harness of some, the burdens 
 of more." 
 
 But I have no words for the wonder with 
 which I hear Kinghood still spoken of, even 
 among thoughtful men, as if governed na- 
 tions were a personal property, and might 
 be bought and sold, or otherwise acquired, 
 as sheep, of whose flesh their king was to 
 feed, and whose fleece he was to gather; as 
 
 1 " TO Si ifipovritia. TOU TrvtiijxoTOS f) ai tip^vrf." 
 
 70
 
 OP KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 if Achilles' indignant epithet of base kings, 
 "people-eating," were the constant and 
 proper title of all monarchs; and the en- 
 largement of a king's dominion meant the 
 same thing as the increase of a private 
 man's estate! Kings who think so, how- 
 ever powerful, can no more be the true 
 kings of the nation than gadflies are the 
 kings of a horse; they suck it, and may drive 
 it wild, but do not guide it. They, and their 
 courts, and their armies are, if one could 
 see clearly, only a large species of marsh- 
 mosquito, with bayonet proboscis and melo- 
 dious, band-mastered trumpeting, in the 
 summer air; the twilight being, perhaps, 
 sometimes fairer, but hardly more whole- 
 some, for its glittering mists of midge com- 
 panies. The true kings, meanwhile, rule 
 quietly, if at all, and hate ruling; too many 
 of them make "il gran rifiuto "; and if they 
 do not, the mob, as soon as they are likely 
 to become useful to it, is pretty sure to 
 make its " gran rifiuto " of them. 
 
 Yet the visible king may also be a true 
 one, some day, if ever day comes when he 
 will estimate his dominion by the force of 
 it, not the geographical boundaries. It 
 matters very little whether Trent cuts you 
 a cantle out here, or Rhine rounds you a 
 castle less there. But it does matter to 
 71
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 you, king of men, whether you can verily 
 say to this man, "Go," and he goeth; and 
 to another, "Come," and he cometh. 
 Whether you can turn your people, as you 
 can Trent and where it is that you bid 
 them come, and where go. It matters to 
 you, king of men, whether your people hate 
 you, and die by you, or love you, and live by 
 you. You may measure your dominion by 
 multitudes, better than by miles; and count 
 degrees of love-latitude, not from, but to, 
 a wonderfully warm and infinite equator. 
 
 Measure! nay, you cannot measure. 
 Who shall measure the difference between 
 the power of those who " do and teach," and 
 who are greatest in the kingdoms of earth, 
 as of heaven and the power of those who 
 undo and consume whose power, at the 
 fullest, is only the power of the moth and 
 the rust? Strange! to think how the Moth- 
 kings lay up treasures for the moth; and 
 the Rust-kings, who are to their peoples' 
 strength as rust to armor, lay up treasures 
 for the rust; and the Robber-kings, trea- 
 sures for the robber; but how few kings 
 have ever laid up treasures that needed no 
 guarding treasures of which, the more 
 thieves there were, the better! Broidered 
 robe, only to be rent; helm and sword, only 
 to be dimmed; jewel and gold, only to be 
 72
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 scattered; there have been three kinds of 
 kings who have gathered these. Suppose 
 there ever should arise a Fourth order of 
 kings, who had read, in some obscure writ- 
 ing of long ago, that there was a Fourth 
 kind of treasure, which the jewel and gold 
 could not equal, neither should it be valued 
 with pure gold. A web made fair in the 
 weaving, by Athena's shuttle; an armor 
 forged in divine fire by Vulcanian force; a 
 gold to be mined in the very sun's red heart, 
 where he sets over the Delphian cliffs; 
 deep-pictured tissue; impenetrable armor; 
 potable gold! the three great Angels of 
 Conduct, Toil, and Thought, still calling to 
 us, and waiting at the posts of our doors, to 
 lead us, with their winged power, and guide 
 us, with their unerring eyes, by the path 
 which no fowl knoweth, and which the vul- 
 ture's eye has not seen! Suppose kings 
 should ever arise who heard and believed 
 this word, and at last gathered and brought 
 forth treasures of Wisdom for their 
 people? 
 
 Think what an amazing business that 
 would be! How inconceivable, in the state 
 of our present national wisdom! That we 
 should bring up our peasants to a book 
 exercise instead of a bayonet exercise! 
 organize, drill, maintain with pay and good 
 73
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 generalship, armies of thinkers, instead of 
 armies of stabbers! find national amuse- 
 ment in reading-rooms as well as rifle- 
 grounds; give prizes for a fair shot at a 
 fact, as well as for a leaden splash on a 
 target. What an absurd idea it seems, put 
 fairly in words, that the wealth of the capi- 
 talists of civilized nations should ever come 
 to support literature instead of war! 
 
 Have yet patience with me, while I read 
 you a single sentence out of the only book, 
 properly to be called a book, that I have yet 
 written myself, the one that will stand (if 
 anything stand) surest and longest of all 
 work of mine. 
 
 It is one very awful form of the operation of 
 wealth in Europe that it is entirely capitalists' 
 wealth which supports unjust wars. Just wars 
 do not need so much money to support them ; 
 for most of the men who wage such wage them 
 gratis ; but for an unjust war, men's bodies and 
 souls have both to be bought ; and the best tools 
 of war for them besides, which make such war 
 costly to the maximum ; not to speak of the cost 
 of base fear, and angry suspicion, between na- 
 tions which have not grace nor honesty enough 
 in all their multitudes to buy an hour's peace of 
 mind with ; as, at present, France and England, 
 purchasing of each other ten millions sterling 
 worth of consternation, annually (a remarkably 
 light crop, half thorns and half aspen-leaves, 
 sown, reaped, and granariedby the "science" of 
 
 74
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 the modern political economist, teaching covet- 
 ousness instead of truth). And, all unjust war 
 being supportable, if not by pillage of the enemy, 
 only by loans from capitalists, these loans are re- 
 paid by subsequent taxation of the people, who 
 appear to have no will in the matter, the capital- 
 ists' will being the primary root of the war ; but 
 its real root is the covetousness of the whole nation, 
 rendering it incapable of faith, frankness, or jus- 
 tice, and bringing about, therefore, in due time, his 
 own separate loss and punishment to each person. 
 
 France and England literally, observe, 
 buy panic of each other; they pay, each of 
 them, for ten thousand thousand pounds' 
 worth of terror, a year. Now suppose, in- 
 stead of buying these ten millions' worth 
 of panic annually, they made up their minds 
 to be at peace with each other, and buy ten 
 millions' worth of knowledge annually; and 
 that each nation spent its ten thousand 
 thousand pounds a year in founding royal 
 libraries, royal art galleries, royal museums, 
 royal gardens, and places of rest. Might it 
 not be better somewhat for both French and 
 English? 
 
 It will be long, yet, before that comes to 
 pass. Nevertheless, I hope it will not be 
 long before royal or national libraries will 
 be founded in every considerable city, with 
 a royal series of books in them; the same 
 series in every one of them, chosen books, 
 75
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 the best in every kind, prepared for that 
 national series in the most perfect way pos- 
 sible; their text printed all on leaves of 
 equal size, broad of margin, and divided into 
 pleasant volumes, light in the hand, beau- 
 tiful, and strong, and thorough as exam- 
 ples of binders' work; and that these great 
 libraries will be accessible to all clean and 
 orderly persons at all times of the day and 
 evening, strict law being enforced for this 
 cleanliness and quietness. 
 
 I could shape for you other plans, for art 
 galleries, and for natural-history galleries, 
 and for many precious many, it seems to 
 me, needful things; but this book plan is 
 the easiest and needfulest, and would prove 
 a considerable tonic to what we call our 
 British constitution, which has fallen drop- 
 sical of late, and has an evil thirst and evil 
 hunger, and wants healthier feeding. You 
 have got its corn laws repealed for it; try 
 if you cannot get corn laws established for 
 it, dealing in a better bread bread made 
 of that old enchanted Arabian grain, the 
 Sesame, which opens doors doors not of 
 robbers', but of Kings' Treasuries. 
 
 NOTE TO PAGE 45 
 
 Respecting the increase of rent by the 
 deaths of the poor, for evidence of which 
 76
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 see the preface to the Medical Officer's re- 
 port to the Privy Council, just published, 
 there are suggestions in its preface which 
 will make some stir among us, I fancy, 
 respecting which let me note these points 
 following: 
 
 There are two theories on the subject of 
 land now abroad, and in contention; both 
 false. 
 
 The first is that, by Heavenly law, there 
 have always existed, and must continue 
 to exist, a certain number of hereditarily 
 sacred persons to whom the earth, air, and 
 water of the world belong, as personal prop- 
 erty; of which earth, air, and water, these 
 persons may, at their pleasure, permit, or 
 forbid, the rest of the human race to eat, to 
 breathe, or to drink. This theory is not for 
 many years longer tenable. The adverse 
 theory is that a division of the land of the 
 world among the mob of the world would 
 immediately elevate the said mob into 
 sacred personages; that houses would then 
 build themselves, and corn grow of itself; 
 and that everybody would be able to live, 
 without doing any work for his living. 
 This theory would also be found highly 
 untenable in practice. 
 
 It will, however, require some rough ex- 
 periments and rougher catastrophes before 
 77
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 the generality of persons will be convinced 
 that no law concerning anything least of 
 all concerning land, for either holding or 
 dividing it, or renting it high, or renting it 
 low would be of the smallest ultimate use 
 to the people, so long as the general con- 
 test for life, and for the means of life, 
 remains one of mere brutal competition. 
 That contest, in an unprincipled nation, will 
 take one deadly form or another, whatever 
 laws you make against it. For instance, it 
 would be an entirely wholesome law for 
 England, if it could be carried, that maxi- 
 mum limits should be assigned to incomes 
 according to classes, and that every noble- 
 man's income should be paid to him as a 
 fixed salary or pension by the nation; and 
 not squeezed by him in variable sums, at 
 discretion, out of the tenants of his land. 
 But if you could get such a law passed to- 
 morrow, and if, which would be farther 
 necessary, you could fix the value of the 
 assigned incomes by making a given weight 
 of pure bread for a given sum, a twelve- 
 month would not pass before another cur- 
 rency would have been tacitly established, 
 and the power of accumulated wealth would 
 have reasserted itself in some other article, 
 or some other imaginary sign. There is 
 only one cure for public distress and that 
 78
 
 OF KINGS' TREASURIES 
 
 is public education, directed to make men 
 thoughtful, merciful, and just. There are, 
 indeed, many laws conceivable which would 
 gradually better and strengthen the national 
 temper; but, for the most part, they are 
 such as the national temper must be much 
 bettered before it would bear. A nation in 
 its youth may be helped by laws, as a weak 
 child by backboards, but when it is old it can- 
 not that way strengthen its crooked spine. 
 And besides, the problem of land, at its 
 worst, is a by one; distribute the earth as 
 you will, the principal question remains in- 
 exorable, Who is to dig it? Which of us, 
 in brief word, is to do the hard and dirty 
 work for the rest, and for what pay? Who 
 is to do the pleasant and clean work, and 
 for what pay? Who is to do no work, and 
 for what pay? And there are curious moral 
 and religious questions connected with 
 these. How far is it lawful to suck a por- 
 tion of the soul out of a great many per- 
 sons, in order to put the abstracted psychi- 
 cal quantities together and make one very 
 beautiful or ideal soul? If we had to deal 
 with mere blood instead of spirit (and the 
 thing might literally be done, as it has been 
 done with infants before now), so that it 
 were possible, by taking a certain quantity 
 of blood from the arms of a given number 
 79
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 of the mob, and putting it all into one per- 
 son, to make a more azure-blooded gentle- 
 man of him, the thing would of course be 
 managed; but secretly, I should conceive. 
 But now, because it is brain and soul that 
 we abstract, not visible blood, it can be done 
 quite openly, and we live, we gentlemen, on 
 delicatest prey, after the manner of weasels; 
 that is to say, we keep a certain number of 
 clowns digging and ditching, and generally 
 stupefied, in order that we, being fed gratis, 
 may have all the thinking and feeling to 
 ourselves. Yet there is a great deal to be 
 said for this. A highly bred and trained 
 English, French, Austrian, or Italian gentle- 
 man (much more a lady) is a great pro- 
 duction, a better production than most 
 statues; being beautifully colored as well as 
 shaped, and plus all the brains; a glorious 
 thing to look at, a wonderful thing to talk 
 to; and you cannot have it, any more than 
 a pyramid or a church, but by sacrifice of 
 much contributed life. And it is, perhaps, 
 better to build a beautiful human crea- 
 ture than a beautiful dome or steeple and 
 more delightful to look up reverently to a 
 creature far above us, than to a wall; only 
 the beautiful human creature will have 
 some duties to do in return duties of liv-. 
 ing belfry and rampart of which presently. 
 80
 
 LECTURE II 
 
 LILIES 
 OF QUEENS' GARDENS
 
 LECTURE 
 
 II 
 LILIES: OF QUEENS' GARDENS 
 
 Be thou glad, oh thirsting Desert; let the 
 desert be made cheerful, and bloom as the 
 lily; and the barren places of Jordan shall 
 run wild with wood. 
 
 Isaiah xxxv. 1 (Septuagint). 
 
 IT will, perhaps, be well, as this Lecture 
 is the sequel of one previously given, 
 that I should shortly state to you my 
 general intention in both. The questions 
 specially proposed to you in the first, 
 namely, How and What to Read, rose out 
 of a far deeper one, which it was my en- 
 deavor to make you propose earnestly to 
 yourselves, namely, Why to Read. I want 
 you to feel, with me, that whatever advan- 
 tages we possess in the present day in the 
 diffusion of education and of literature can 
 only be rightly used by any of us when we 
 have apprehended clearly what education is 
 to lead to, and literature to teach. I wish 
 you to see that both well-directed moral 
 training and well-chosen reading lead to the 
 possession of a power over the ill-guided 
 83
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 and illiterate, which is, according to the 
 measure of it, in the truest sense, kingly ; 
 conferring indeed the purest kingship that 
 can exist among men: too many other 
 kingships (however distinguished by visible 
 insignia or material power) being either 
 spectral or tyrannous; spectral that is 
 to say, aspects and shadows only of royalty, 
 hollow as death, and which only the "like- 
 ness of a kingly crown have on": or else- 
 tyrannous that is to say, substituting 
 their own will for the law of justice and 
 love by which all true kings rule. 
 
 There is, then, I repeat and as I want to 
 leave this idea with you, I begin with it, and 
 shall end with it only one pure kind of 
 kingship; an inevitable and eternal kind, 
 crowned or not; the kingship, namely, which 
 consists in a stronger moral state, and a 
 truer thoughtful state, than that of others; 
 enabling you, therefore, to guide or to raise 
 them. Observe that word "State"; we 
 have got into a loose way of using it. It 
 means literally the standing and stability 
 of a thing; and you have the full force of it 
 in the derived word "statue" "the im- 
 movable thing." A king's majesty or 
 " state," then, and the right of his kingdom 
 to be called a state, depends on the move- 
 lessness of both: without tremor, with- 
 84
 
 OF QUEENS' GARDENS 
 
 out quiver of balance; established and en- 
 throned upon a foundation of eternal law 
 which nothing can alter, nor overthrow. 
 
 Believing that all literature and all edu- 
 cation are only useful so far as they tend to 
 confirm this calm, beneficent, and therefore 
 kingly, power first, over ourselves, and, 
 through ourselves, over all around us, I 
 am now going to ask you to consider with 
 me farther what special portion or kind of 
 this royal authority, arising out of noble 
 education, may rightly be possessed by 
 women; and how far they also are called to 
 a true queenly power, not in their house- 
 holds merely, but over all within their 
 sphere. And in what sense, if they rightly 
 understood and exercised this royal or gra- 
 cious influence, the order and beauty in- 
 duced by such benignant power would jus- 
 tify us in speaking of the territories over 
 which each of them reigned as "Queens' 
 Gardens." 
 
 And here, in the very outset, we are met 
 by a far deeper question, which strange 
 though this may seem remains among 
 many of us yet quite undecided in spite of 
 its infinite importance. 
 
 We cannot determine what the queenly 
 power of women should be, until we are 
 agreed what their ordinary power should 
 85
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 be. We cannot consider how education may 
 fit them for any widely extending duty, 
 until we are agreed what is their true con- 
 stant duty. And there never was a time 
 when wilder words were spoken, or more 
 vain imagination permitted, respecting this 
 question quite vital to all social happiness. 
 The relations of the womanly to the manly 
 nature, their different capacities of intellect 
 or of virtue, seem never to have been yet 
 estimated with entire consent. We hear 
 of the "mission" and of the "rights" of 
 Woman, as if these could ever be separate 
 from the mission and the rights of Man- 
 as if she and her lord were creatures of in- 
 dependent kind and of irreconcilable claim. 
 This, at least, is wrong. And not less 
 wrong perhaps even more foolishly wrong 
 (for I will anticipate thus far what I hope 
 to prove) is the idea that woman is only 
 the shadow and attendant image of her lord, 
 owing him a thoughtless and servile obedi- 
 ence, and supported altogether in her weak- 
 ness by the preeminence of his fortitude. 
 
 This, I say, is the most foolish of all 
 errors respecting her who was made to be 
 the helpmate of man. As if he could be 
 helped effectively by a shadow, or worthily 
 by a slave! 
 
 Let us try, then, whether we cannot get 
 86
 
 OP QUEENS' GARDENS 
 
 at some clear and harmonious idea (it must 
 be harmonious if it is true) of what wo- 
 manly mind and virtue are in power and 
 office, with respect to man's; and how their 
 relations, rightly accepted, aid and increase 
 the vigor and honor and authority of both. 
 
 And now I must repeat one thing I said 
 in the last lecture: namely, that the first 
 use of education was to enable us to consult 
 with the wisest and the greatest men on all 
 points of earnest difficulty. That to use 
 books rightly was to go to them for help: 
 to appeal to them when our own know- 
 ledge and power of thought failed: to be led 
 by them into wider sight purer concep- 
 tionthan our own, and receive from them 
 the united sentence of the judges and coun- 
 cils of all time, against our solitary and 
 unstable opinion. 
 
 Let us do this now. Let us see whether 
 the greatest, the wisest, the purest-hearted 
 of all ages are agreed in any wise on this 
 point: let us hear the testimony they have 
 left respecting what they held to be the 
 true dignity of woman, and her mode of help 
 to man. 
 
 And first let us take Shakspere. 
 
 Note broadly in the outset, Shakspere has 
 no heroes; he has only heroines. There is 
 not one entirely heroic figure in all his 
 87
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 plays, except the slight sketch of Henry the 
 Fifth, exaggerated for the purposes of the 
 stage; and the still slighter Valentine in 
 "The Two Gentlemen of Verona." In his 
 labored and perfect plays you have no hero. 
 Othello would have been one, if his sim- 
 plicity had not been so great as to leave him 
 the prey of every base practice round him; 
 but he is the only example even approxi- 
 mating to the heroic type. Coriolanus 
 Caesar Antony stand in flawed strength, 
 and fall by their vanities; Hamlet is indo- 
 lent and drowsily speculative; Romeo an 
 impatient boy; the Merchant of Venice 
 languidly submissive to adverse fortune; 
 Kent, in " King Lear," is entirely noble at 
 heart, but too rough and unpolished to be 
 of true use at the critical time, and he 
 sinks into the office of a servant only. 
 Orlando, no less noble, is yet the despairing 
 toy of chance, followed, comforted, saved by 
 Rosalind. Whereas there is hardly a play 
 that has not a perfect woman in it, stead- 
 fast in grave hope and errorless purpose: 
 Cordelia, Desdemona, Isabella, Hermione, 
 Imogen, Queen Catherine, Perdita, Sylvia, 
 Viola, Rosalind, Helena, and last, and 
 perhaps loveliest, Virgilia, are all faultless; 
 conceived in the highest heroic type of 
 humanity. 
 
 88
 
 OP QUEENS' GARDENS 
 
 Then observe, secondly, 
 
 The catastrophe of every play is caused 
 always by the folly or fault of a man; the 
 redemption, if there be any, is by the wis- 
 dom and virtue of a woman, and, failing 
 that, there is none. The catastrophe of 
 King Lear is owing to his own want of judg- 
 ment, his impatient vanity, his misunder- 
 standing of his children; the virtue of his 
 one true daughter would have saved him 
 from all the injuries of the others, unless 
 he had cast her away from him; as it is, 
 she all but saves him. 
 
 Of Othello I need not trace the tale; nor 
 the one weakness of his so mighty love; nor 
 the inferiority of his perceptive intellect to 
 that even of the second woman character 
 in the play, the Emilia who dies in wild 
 testimony against his error: 
 
 Oh, murderous coxcomb ! what should such a fool 
 Do with so good a wife? 
 
 In "Romeo and Juliet," the wise and 
 brave stratagem of the wife is brought to 
 ruinous issue by the reckless impatience of 
 her husband. In "Winter's Tale," and in 
 "Cymbeline," the happiness and existence 
 of two princely households, lost through 
 long years, and imperiled to the death by 
 the folly and obstinacy of the husbands, 
 89
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 are redeemed at last by the queenly pa- 
 tience and wisdom of the wives. In " Mea- 
 sure for Measure," the foul injustice of the 
 judge, and the foul cowardice of the 
 brother, are opposed to the victorious 
 truth and adamantine purity of a woman. 
 In " Coriolanus," the mother's counsel, 
 acted upon in time, would have saved her 
 son from all evil; his momentary forgetful- 
 ness of it is his ruin; her prayer, at last 
 granted, saves him not, indeed, from 
 death, but from the curse of living as the 
 destroyer of his country. 
 
 And what shall I say of Julia, constant 
 against the fickleness of a lover who is a 
 mere wicked child? of Helena, against the 
 petulance and insult of a careless youth? 
 of the patience of Hero, the passion of 
 Beatrice, and the calmly devoted wisdom of 
 the "unlessoned girl," who appears among 
 the helplessness, the blindness, and the 
 vindictive passions of men, as a gentle 
 angel, bringing courage and safety by her 
 presence, and defeating the worst maligni- 
 ties of crime by what women are fancied 
 most to fail in, precision and accuracy of 
 thought. 
 
 Observe, further, among all the principal 
 figures in Shakspere's plays, there is only 
 one weak woman Ophelia; and it is be- 
 90
 
 cause she fails Hamlet at the critical mo- 
 ment, and is not, and cannot in her nature 
 be, a guide to him when he needs her most, 
 that all the bitter catastrophe follows. 
 Finally, though there are three wicked 
 women among the principal figures Lady 
 Macbeth, Regan, and Goneril they are felt 
 at once to be frightful exceptions to the 
 ordinary laws of life; fatal in their influence, 
 also, in proportion to the power for good 
 which they have abandoned. 
 
 Such, in broad light, is Shakspere's tes- 
 timony to the position and character of 
 women in human life. He represents them 
 as infallibly faithful and wise counselors, 
 incorruptibly just and pure examples 
 strong always to sanctify, even when they 
 cannot save. 
 
 Not as in any wise comparable in know- 
 ledge of the nature of man, still less in his 
 understanding of the causes and courses of 
 fate, but only as the writer who has given 
 us the broadest view of the conditions and 
 modes of ordinary thought in modern soci- 
 ety, I ask you next to receive the witness 
 of Walter Scott. 
 
 I put aside his merely romantic prose 
 
 writings as of no value, and though the 
 
 early romantic poetry is very beautiful, its 
 
 testimony is of no weight, other than that 
 
 91
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 of a boy's ideal. But his true works, studied 
 from Scottish life, bear a true witness; and 
 in the whole range of these there are but 
 three men who reach the heroic type 1 
 Dandie Dinmont, Rob Roy, and Claverhouse; 
 of these, one is a border farmer; another a 
 freebooter; the third a soldier in a bad 
 cause. And these touch the ideal of hero- 
 ism only in their courage and faith, together 
 with a strong, but uncultivated, or mistak- 
 enly applied, intellectual power; while his 
 younger men are the gentlemanly play- 
 things of fantastic fortune, and only by aid 
 (or accident) of that fortune survive, not 
 vanquish, the trials they involuntarily sus- 
 tain. Of any disciplined or consistent char- 
 acter, earnest in a purpose wisely conceived, 
 or dealing with forms of hostile evil, defi- 
 nitely challenged and resolutely subdued, 
 there is no trace in his conceptions of 
 young men. Whereas in his imaginations 
 of women, in the characters of Ellen Doug- 
 las, of Flora Maclvor, Rose Bradwardine, 
 
 1 1 ought, in order to make this assertion fully understood, 
 to have noted the various weaknesses which lower the ideal 
 of other great characters of men in the Waverley Novels 
 the selfishness and narrowness of thought in Redgauntlet, 
 the weak religious enthusiasm in Edward Qlendinning, and 
 the like ; and I ought to have noticed that there are several 
 quite perfect characters sketched sometimes in the bock* 
 grounds ; three let us accept joyously this courtesy to Eng- 
 land and her soldiers are English officers : Colonel Oardiner, 
 Colonel Talbot, and Colonel Mannering. 
 
 92
 
 OP QUEENS' GARDENS 
 
 Catherine Seyton, Diana Vernon, Lilias 
 Redgauntlet, Alice Bridgenorth, Alice Lee, 
 and Jeanie Deans, with endless varieties 
 of grace, tenderness, and intellectual power, 
 we find in all a quite infallible sense of 
 dignity and justice; a fearless, instant, and' 
 untiring self-sacrifice to even the appear- 
 ance of duty, much more to its real claims; 
 and, finally, a patient wisdom of deeply 
 restrained affection, which does infinitely 
 more than protect its objects from a mo- 
 mentary error; it gradually forms, ani- 
 mates, and exalts the characters of the 
 unworthy lovers, until, at the close of the 
 tale, we are just able, and no more, to take 
 patience in hearing of their unmerited suc- 
 cess. 
 
 So that, in all cases, with Scott as with 
 Shakspere, it is the woman who watches 
 over, teaches, and guides the youth; it is 
 never, by any chance, the youth who 
 watches over, or educates, his mistress. 
 
 Next take, though more briefly, graver 
 testimony that of the great Italians and 
 Greeks. You know well the plan of Dante's 
 great poem that it is a love-poem to his 
 dead lady; a song of praise for her watch 
 over his soul. Stooping only to pity, never 
 to love, she yet saves him from destruc- 
 tion saves him from hell. He is going 
 93
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 eternally astray in despair; she comes down 
 from heaven to his help, and throughout 
 the ascents of Paradise is his teacher, 
 interpreting for him the most difficult 
 truths, divine and human; and leading 
 him, with rebuke upon rebuke, from star 
 to star. 
 
 I do not insist upon Dante's conception; 
 if I began I could not cease: besides, you 
 might think this a wild imagination of one 
 poet's heart. So I will rather read to you 
 a few verses of the deliberate writing of a 
 knight of Pisa to his living lady, wholly 
 characteristic of the feeling of all the no- 
 blest men of the thirteenth, or early four- 
 teenth, century, preserved among many 
 other such records of knightly honor and 
 love, which Dante Rossetti has gathered 
 for us from among the early Italian poets. 
 
 For lo ! thy law is passed 
 That this my love should manifestly be 
 
 To serve and honor thee : 
 And so I do ; and my delight is full, 
 Accepted for the servant of thy rule. 
 
 Without almost, I am all rapturous, 
 
 Since thus my will was set 
 To serve, thou flower of joy, thine excellence : 
 Nor ever seems it anything could rouse 
 
 A pain or a regret. 
 But on thee dwells my every thought and sense ; 
 
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 Considering that from thee all virtues spread 
 As from a fountain-head, 
 
 That in thy gift is wisdom's best avail, 
 And honor without fail, 
 
 With whom each sovereign good dwells 
 separate, 
 
 Fulfilling the perfection of thy state. 
 
 Lady, since I conceived 
 Thy pleasurable aspect in my heart, 
 
 My life has been apart 
 In shining brightness and the place of truth; 
 
 Which till that time, good sooth, 
 Groped among shadows in a darken'd place, 
 
 Where many hours and days 
 It hardly ever had remember' d good. 
 
 But now my servitude 
 Is thine, and I am full of joy and rest. 
 
 A man from a wild beast 
 Thou madest me, since for thy love I lived. 
 
 You may think perhaps a Greek knight 
 would have had a lower estimate of women 
 than this Christian lover. His spiritual 
 subjection to them was indeed not so abso- 
 lute; but as regards their own personal 
 character, it was only because you could 
 not have followed me so easily that I did 
 not take the Greek women instead of Shak- 
 spere's; and instance, for chief ideal types of 
 human beauty and faith, the simple mo- 
 ther's and wife's heart of Andromache; the 
 divine yet rejected wisdom of Cassandra; 
 95
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 the playful kindness and simple princess- 
 life of happy Nausicaa; the housewifely calm 
 of that of Penelope, with its watch upon 
 the sea; the ever patient, fearless, hope- 
 lessly devoted piety of the sister, and 
 daughter, in Antigone; the bowing down of 
 Iphigenia, lamb-like and silent; and finally, 
 the expectation of the resurrection, made 
 clear to the soul of the Greeks in the return 
 from her grave of that Alcestis, who, to save 
 her husband, had passed calmly through 
 the bitterness of death. 
 
 Now I could multiply witness upon wit- 
 ness of this kind upon you if I had time. 
 I would take Chaucer, and show you why he 
 wrote a Legend of Good Women; but no 
 Legend of Good Men. I would take Spen- 
 ser, and show you how all his fairy knights 
 are sometimes deceived and sometimes 
 vanquished; but the soul of Una is never 
 darkened, and the spear of Britomart is 
 never broken. Nay, I could go back into 
 the mythical teaching of the most ancient 
 times, and show you how the great people, 
 by one of whose princesses it was ap- 
 pointed that the Lawgiver of all the earth 
 should be educated, rather than by his own 
 kindred; how that great Egyptian people, 
 wisest then of nations, gave to their Spirit 
 of Wisdom the form of a Woman; and into 
 96
 
 OF QUEENS' GARDENS 
 
 her hand, for a symbol, the weaver's shut- 
 tle; and how the name and the form of that 
 spirit, adopted, believed, and obeyed by the 
 Greeks, became that Athena of the olive 
 helm and cloudy shield, to faith in whom 
 you owe, down to this date, whatever you 
 hold most precious in art, in literature, or 
 in types of national virtue. 
 
 But I will not wander into this distant 
 and mythical element; I will only ask you 
 to give its legitimate value to the testimony 
 of these great poets and men of the world, 
 consistent, as you see it is, on this head. 
 I will ask you whether it can be supposed 
 that these men, in the main work of their 
 lives, are amusing themselves with a fic- 
 titious and idle view of the relations be- 
 tween man and woman; nay, worse than 
 fictitious or idle; for a thing may be imagi- 
 nary, yet desirable, if it were possible: but 
 this, their ideal of woman, is, according to 
 our common idea of the marriage relation, 
 wholly undesirable. The woman, we say, 
 is not to guide, nor even to think for her- 
 self. The man is always to be the wiser; 
 he is to be the thinker, the ruler, the su- 
 perior in knowledge and discretion, as in 
 power. 
 
 Is it not somewhat important to make up 
 our minds on this matter? Are all these 
 7 97
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 great men mistaken, or are we? Are 
 Shakspere and ^Sschylus, Dante and Homer, 
 merely dressing dolls for us; or, worse than 
 dolls, unnatural visions, the realization of 
 which, were it possible, would bring an- 
 archy into all households and ruin into all 
 affections? Nay, if you can suppose this, 
 take lastly the evidence of facts, given by 
 the human heart itself. In all Christian 
 ages which have been remarkable for their 
 purity or progress, there has been absolute 
 yielding of obedient devotion, by the lover, 
 to his mistress. I say obedient ; not 
 merely enthusiastic and worshiping in ima- 
 gination, but entirely subject, receiving 
 from the beloved woman, however young, 
 not only the encouragement, the praise, and 
 the reward of all toil, but, so far as any 
 choice is open, or any question difficult of 
 decision, the direction of all toil. That 
 chivalry, to the abuse and dishonor of which 
 are attributable primarily whatever is cruel 
 in war, unjust in peace, or corrupt and ig- 
 noble in domestic relations; and to the 
 original purity and power of which we owe 
 the defense alike of faith, of law, and of 
 love; that chivalry, I say, in its very first 
 conception of honorable life, assumes the 
 subjection of the young knight to the com- 
 mandshould it even be the command in 
 98
 
 OF QUEENS' GARDENS 
 
 caprice of his lady. It assumes this, be- 
 cause its masters knew that the first and 
 necessary impulse of every truly taught and 
 knightly heart is this of blind service to its 
 lady: that where that true faith and cap- 
 tivity are not, all wayward and wicked pas- 
 sion must be; and that in this rapturous 
 obedience to the single love of his youth is 
 the sanctification of all man's strength, and 
 the continuance of all his purposes. And 
 this, not because such obedience would be 
 safe, or honorable, were it ever rendered to 
 the unworthy; but because it ought to be 
 impossible for every noble youth it is im- 
 possible for every one rightly trained to 
 love any one whose gentle counsel he can- 
 not trust, or whose prayerful command he 
 can hesitate to obey. 
 
 I do not insist by any farther argument 
 on this, for I think it should commend it- 
 self at once to your knowledge of what has 
 been and to your feeling of what should be. 
 You cannot think that the buckling on of 
 the knight's armor by his lady's hand was 
 a mere caprice of romantic fashion. It is 
 the type of an eternal truth that the soul's 
 armor is never well set to the heart unless 
 a woman's hand has braced it; and it is only 
 when she braces it loosely that the honor 
 of manhood fails. Know you not those 
 99
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 lovely lines I would they were learned by 
 all youthful ladies of England: 
 
 Ah, wasteful woman ! she who may 
 On her sweet self set her own price, 
 Knowing he cannot choose but pay 
 How has she cheapen' d Paradise ! 
 How given for naught her priceless gift, 
 How spoiled the bread and spill' d the wine, 
 Which, spent with due respective thrift, 
 Had made brutes men, and men divine ! * 
 
 Thus much, then, respecting the relations 
 of lovers I believe you will accept. But 
 what we too often doubt is the fitness of 
 the continuance of such a relation through- 
 out the whole of human life. We think it 
 right in the lover and mistress, not in the 
 husband and wife. That is to say, we think 
 that a reverent and tender duty is due to 
 one whose affection we still doubt, and 
 whose character we as yet do but partially 
 and distantly discern; and that this rever- 
 ence and duty are to be withdrawn when 
 the affection has become wholly and limit- 
 lessly our own, and the character has been 
 so sifted and tried that we fear not to in- 
 trust it with the happiness of our lives. 
 
 1 Coventry Patmore. You cannot read him too often or 
 too carefully; as far as I know he is the only living poet 
 who always strengthens and purifies ; the others sometimes 
 darken, and nearly always depress and discourage, the ima- 
 gination they deeply seize. 
 
 100
 
 OF QUEENS' GARDENS 
 
 Do you not see how ignoble this is, as well 
 as how unreasonable? Do you not feel that 
 marriage when it is marriage at all is 
 only the seal which marks the vowed tran- 
 sition of temporary into untiring service, 
 and of fitful into eternal love? 
 
 But how, you will ask, is the idea of this 
 guiding function of the woman reconcilable 
 with a true wifely subjection? Simply in 
 that it is a guiding, not a determining, func- 
 tion. Let me try to show you briefly how 
 these powers seem to be rightly distinguish- 
 able. 
 
 We are foolish, and without excuse fool- 
 ish, in speaking of the " superiority " of one 
 sex to the other, as if they could be com- 
 pared in similar things. Each has what the 
 other has not: each completes the other, 
 and is completed by the other: they are in 
 nothing alike, and the happiness and per- 
 fection of both depends on each asking and 
 receiving from the other what the other 
 only can give. 
 
 Now their separate characters are briefly 
 these. The man's power is active, pro- 
 gressive, defensive. He is eminently the 
 doer, the creator, the discoverer, the de- 
 fender. His intellect is for speculation and 
 invention; his energy for adventure, for 
 war, and for conquest, wherever war is just, 
 101
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 wherever conquest necessary. But the 
 woman's power is for rule, not for battle, 
 and her intellect is not for invention or 
 creation, but for sweet ordering, arrange- 
 ment, and decision. She sees the qualities 
 of things, their claims, and their places. 
 Her great function is Praise; she enters 
 into no contest, but infallibly adjudges the 
 crown of contest. By her office, and place, 
 she is protected from all danger and temp- 
 tation. The man, in his rough work in open 
 world, must encounter all peril and trial; 
 to him, therefore, must be the failure, the 
 offense, the inevitable error: often he must 
 be wounded or subdued; often misled; and 
 always hardened. But he guards the 
 woman from all this; within his house, as 
 ruled by her, unless she herself has sought 
 it, need enter no danger, no temptation, no 
 cause of error or offense. This is the true 
 nature of home it is the place of Peace; 
 the shelter, not only from all injury, but 
 from all terror, doubt, and division. In so 
 far as it is not this, it is not home; so far 
 as the anxieties of the outer life penetrate 
 into it, and the inconsistently minded, un- 
 known, unloved, or hostile society of the 
 outer world is allowed by either husband or 
 wife to cross the threshold, it ceases to be 
 home; it is then only a part of that outer 
 102
 
 OP QUEENS' GARDENS 
 
 world which you have roofed over and 
 lighted fire in. But so far as it is a sacred 
 place, a vestal temple, a temple of the 
 hearth watched over by Household Gods, 
 before whose faces none may come but 
 those whom they can receive with love, so 
 far as it is this, and roof and fire are types 
 only of a nobler shade and light, shade as 
 of the rock in a weary land, and light as of 
 the Pharos in the stormy sea; so far it 
 vindicates the name, and fulfils the praise, 
 of Home. 
 
 And wherever a true wife comes, this 
 home is always round her. The stars only 
 may be over her head; the glow-worm in the 
 night-cold grass may be the only fire at 
 her foot; but home is yet wherever she is; 
 and for a noble woman it stretches far 
 round her, better than ceiled with cedar, or 
 painted with vermilion, shedding its quiet 
 light far, for those who else were homeless. 
 
 This, then, I believe to be will you not 
 admit it to be the woman's true place and 
 power? But do not you see that, to fulfil 
 this, she must as far as one can use such 
 terms of a human creature be incapable 
 of error? So far as she rules, all must be 
 right, or nothing is. She must be endur- 
 ingly, incorruptibly good; instinctively, in- 
 fallibly wise wise, notfor self-development, 
 103
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 but for self-renunciation: wise, not that she 
 may set herself above her husband, but 
 that she may never fail from his side: wise, 
 not with the narrowness of insolent and 
 loveless pride, but with the passionate gen- 
 tleness of an infinitely variable, because 
 infinitely applicable, modesty of service 
 the true changefulness of woman. In that 
 great sense "La donna e mobile," not 
 " Qual pium' al vento " ; no, nor yet " Variable 
 as the shade by the light quivering aspen 
 made"; but variable as the light, manifold in 
 fair and serene division, that it may take the 
 color of all that it falls upon, and exalt it. 
 
 II. I have been trying, thus far, to show you 
 what should be the place and what the power 
 of woman. Now, secondly, we ask, What 
 kind of education is to fit her for these? 
 
 And if you indeed think this a true con- 
 ception of her office and dignity, it will not 
 be difficult to trace the course of education 
 which would fit her for the one, and raise 
 her to the other. 
 
 The first of our duties to her no 
 thoughtful persons now doubt this is to 
 secure for her such physical training and 
 exercise as may confirm her health and 
 perfect her beauty; the highest refinement 
 of that beauty being unattainable without 
 splendor of activity and of delicate strength. 
 104
 
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 To perfect her beauty, I say, and increase 
 its power; it cannot be too powerful, nor 
 shed its sacred light too far: only remem- 
 ber that all physical freedom is vain to 
 produce beauty without a corresponding 
 freedom of heart. There are two passages 
 of that poet who is distinguished, it seems 
 to me, from all others not by power, but by 
 exquisite Tightness which point you to the 
 source, and describe to you, in a few syllables, 
 the completion of womanly beauty. I will 
 read the introductory stanzas, but the last 
 is the one I wish you specially to notice: 
 
 Three years she grew in sun and shower, 
 Then Nature said: " A lovelier flower 
 
 On earth was never sown ; 
 This child I to myself will take ; 
 She shall be mine, and I will make 
 
 A lady of my own. 
 
 " Myself will to my darling be 
 Both law and impulse ; and with me 
 
 The girl, in rock and plain, 
 In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, 
 Shall feel an overseeing power 
 
 To kindle, or restrain. 
 
 "The floating clouds their state shall lend 
 To her, for her the willow bend ; 
 
 Nor shall she fail to see, 
 Even in the motions of the storm, 
 Grace that shall mold the maiden's form 
 
 By silent sympathy. 
 
 105
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 " And vital feelings of delight 
 
 Shall rear her form to stately height, 
 
 Her virgin bosom swell. 
 Such thoughts to Lucy I will give, 
 While she and I together live, 
 
 Here in this happy dell." 1 
 
 " Vital feelings of delight," observe. 
 There are deadly feelings of delight; but the 
 natural ones are vital, necessary to very life. 
 
 And they must be feelings of delight, if 
 they are to be vital. Do not think you can 
 make a girl lovely, if you do not make her 
 happy. There is not one restraint you put 
 on a good girl's nature there is not one 
 check you give to her instincts of affection or 
 of effort which will not be indelibly written 
 on her features, with a hardness which is 
 all the more painful because it takes away 
 the brightness from the eyes of innocence, 
 and the charm from the brow of virtue. 
 
 This for the means: now note the end. 
 Take from the same poet, in two lines, a 
 perfect description of womanly beauty: 
 
 A countenance in which did meet 
 Sweet records, promises as sweet. 
 
 The perfect loveliness of a woman's coun- 
 tenance can only consist in that majestic 
 
 i Observe, it is " Nature " who is speaking throughout, and 
 who says, "while she and I together live." 
 
 106
 
 OF QUEENS' GARDENS 
 
 peace, which is founded in the memory of 
 happy and useful years, full of sweet rec- 
 ords; and from the joining of this with 
 that yet more majestic childishness, which 
 is still full of change and promise; opening 
 always modest at once, and bright, with 
 hope of better things to be won and to be 
 bestowed. There is no old age where there 
 is still that promise. 
 
 Thus, then, you have first to mold her 
 physical frame, and then, as the strength 
 she gains will permit you, to fill and temper 
 her mind with all knowledge and thoughts 
 which tend to confirm its natural instincts 
 of justice, and refine its natural tact of love. 
 
 All such knowledge should be given her 
 as may enable her to understand, and even 
 to aid, the work of men: and yet it should 
 be given, not as knowledge, not as if it 
 were, or could be, for her an object to know; 
 but only to feel and to judge. It is of no 
 moment, as a matter of pride or perfectness 
 in herself, whether she knows many lan- 
 guages or one; but it is of the utmost that 
 she should be able to show kindness to a 
 stranger, and to understand the sweetness 
 of a stranger's tongue. It is of no moment 
 to her own worth or dignity that she should 
 be acquainted with this science or that; but 
 it is of the highest that she should be 
 107
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 trained in habits of accurate thought; that 
 she should understand the meaning, the 
 inevitableness, and the loveliness of natural 
 laws; and follow at least some one path of 
 scientific attainment, as far as to the thresh- 
 old of that bitter Valley of Humiliation, 
 into which only the wisest and bravest of 
 men can descend, owning themselves for- 
 ever children, gathering pebbles on a bound- 
 less shore. It is of little consequence how 
 many positions of cities she knows, or how 
 many dates of events, or names of cele- 
 brated persons it is not the object of edu- 
 cation to turn the woman into a dictionary; 
 but it is deeply necessary that she should 
 be taught to enter with her whole person- 
 ality into the history she reads; to picture 
 the passages of it vitally in her own bright 
 imagination; to apprehend, with her fine 
 instincts, the pathetic circumstances and 
 dramatic relations, which the historian too 
 often only eclipses by his reasoning, and 
 disconnects by his arrangement: it is for 
 her to trace the hidden equities of divine 
 reward, and catch sight, through the dark- 
 ness, of the fateful threads of woven fire 
 that connect error with retribution. But, 
 chiefly of all, she is to be taught to extend 
 the limits of her sympathy with respect to 
 that history which is being forever deter- 
 108
 
 OF QUEENS' GARDENS 
 
 mined as the moments pass in which she 
 draws her peaceful breath; and to the con- 
 temporary calamity, which, were it but 
 rightly mourned by her, would recur no 
 more hereafter. She is to exercise herself 
 in imagining what would be the effects upon 
 her mind and conduct if she were daily 
 brought into the presence of the suffering 
 which is not the less real because shut from 
 her sight. She is to be taught somewhat 
 to understand the nothingness of the pro- 
 portion which that little world in which she 
 lives and loves, bears to the world in which 
 God lives and loves; and solemnly she is 
 to be taught to strive that her thoughts of 
 piety may not be feeble in proportion to the 
 number they embrace, nor her prayer more 
 languid than it is for the momentary relief 
 from pain of her husband or her child, 
 when it is uttered for the multitudes of 
 those who have none to love them, and is 
 "for all who are desolate and oppressed." 
 
 Thus far, I think, I have had your con- 
 currence; perhaps you will not be with me 
 in what I believe is most needful for me to 
 say. There is one dangerous science for 
 women one which they must indeed be- 
 ware how they profanely touch that of 
 theology. Strange, and miserably strange, 
 that while they are modest enough to doubt 
 109
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 their powers, and pause at the threshold of 
 sciences where every step is demonstrable 
 and sure, they will plunge headlong, and 
 without one thought of incompetency, into 
 that science in which the greatest men have 
 trembled, and the wisest erred. Strange, 
 that they will complacently and pridefully 
 bind up whatever vice or folly there is in 
 them, whatever arrogance, petulance, or 
 blind incomprehensiveness, into one bitter 
 bundle of consecrated myrrh. Strange, in 
 creatures born to be Love visible, that 
 where they can know least, they will con- 
 demn first, and think to recommend them- 
 selves to their Master, by crawling up the 
 steps of His judgment-throne to divide it 
 with Him. Strangest of all that they should 
 think they were led by the Spirit of the 
 Comforter into habits of mind which have 
 become in them the unmixed elements of 
 home discomfort; and that they dare to 
 turn the Household Gods of Christianity 
 into ugly idols of their own; spiritual dolls, 
 for them to dress according to their caprice; 
 and from which their husbands must turn 
 away in grieved contempt, lest they should 
 be shrieked at for breaking them. 
 
 I believe, then, with this exception, that 
 a girl's education should be nearly, in its 
 course and material of study, the same as 
 110
 
 a boy's; but quite differently directed. A 
 woman, in any rank of life, ought to know 
 whatever her husband is likely to know, but 
 to know it in a different way. His com- 
 mand of it should be foundational and pro- 
 gressive; hers, general and accomplished for 
 daily and helpful use. Not but that it 
 would often be wiser in men to learn things 
 in a womanly sort of way, for present use, 
 and to seek for the discipline and training 
 of their mental powers in such branches of 
 study as will be afterwards fittest for social 
 service; but, speaking broadly, a man ought 
 to know any language or science he learns, 
 thoroughly while a woman ought to know 
 the same language, or science, only so far 
 as may enable her to sympathize in her 
 husband's pleasures, and in those of his 
 best friends. 
 
 Yet, observe, with exquisite accuracy as 
 far as she reaches. There is a wide differ- 
 ence between elementary knowledge and 
 superficial knowledge between a firm be- 
 ginning, and an infirm attempt at compass- 
 ing. A woman may always help her hus- 
 band by what she knows, however little; by 
 what she half knows, or misknows, she 
 will only tease him. 
 
 And indeed, if there were to be any differ- 
 ence between a girl's education and a boy's, 
 111
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 I should say that of the two the girl should 
 be earlier led, as her intellect ripens faster, 
 into deep and serious subjects: and that her 
 range of literature should be, not more, but 
 less frivolous; calculated to add the quali- 
 ties of patience and seriousness to her natu- 
 ral poignancy of thought and quickness of 
 wit; and also to keep her in a lofty and pure 
 element of thought. I enter not now into 
 any question of choice of books; only let us 
 be sure that her books are not heaped up in 
 her lap as they fall out of the package of 
 the circulating library, wet with the last 
 and lightest spray of the fountain of folly. 
 
 Or even of the fountain of wit; for with 
 respect to the sore temptation of novel-read- 
 ing, it is not the badness of a novel that we 
 should dread, so much as its overwrought 
 interest. The weakest romance is not so 
 stupefying as the lower forms of religious 
 exciting literature, and the worst romance 
 is not so corrupting as false history, false 
 philosophy, or false political essays. But 
 the best romance becomes dangerous if, 
 by its excitement, it renders the ordinary 
 course of life uninteresting, and increases 
 the morbid thirst for useless acquaintance 
 with scenes in which we shall never be 
 called upon to act. 
 
 I speak therefore of good novels only; 
 112
 
 OF QUEENS' GARDENS 
 
 and our modern literature is particularly 
 rich in types of such. Well read, indeed, 
 these books have serious use, being nothing 
 less than treatises on moral anatomy and 
 chemistry; studies of human nature in the 
 elements of it. But I attach little weight 
 to this function: they are hardly ever read 
 with earnestness enough to permit them to 
 fulfil it. The utmost they usually do is to 
 enlarge somewhat the charity of a kind 
 reader, or the bitterness of a malicious one; 
 for each will gather, from the novel, food 
 for her own disposition. Those who are 
 naturally proud and envious will learn from 
 Thackeray to despise humanity; those who 
 are naturally gentle, to pity it; those who 
 are naturally shallow, to laugh at it. So, 
 also, there might be a serviceable power in 
 novels to bring before us, in vividness, a 
 human truth which we had before dimly 
 conceived; but the temptation to pictur- 
 esqueness of statement is so great that 
 often the best writers of fiction cannot 
 resist it; and our views are rendered so vio- 
 lent and one-sided that their vitality is 
 rather a harm than good. 
 
 Without, however, venturing here on any 
 
 attempt at decision how much novel-reading 
 
 should be allowed, let me at least clearly 
 
 assert this, that whether novels, or poetry, 
 
 8 113
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 or history be read, they should be chosen, 
 not for their freedom from evil, but for 
 their possession of good. The chance and 
 scattered evil that may here and there 
 haunt, or hide itself in, a powerful book, 
 never does any harm to a noble girl; but 
 the emptiness of an author oppresses her, 
 and his amiable folly degrades her. And if 
 she can have access to a good library of 
 old and classical books, there need be no 
 choosing at all. Keep the modern magazine 
 and novel out of your girl's way: turn her 
 loose into the old library every wet day, and 
 let her alone. She will find what is good 
 for her; you cannot: for there is just this 
 difference between the making of a girl's 
 character and a boy's you may chisel a boy 
 into shape, as you would a rock, or hammer 
 him into it, if he be of a better kind, as you 
 would a piece of bronze. But you cannot 
 hammer a girl into anything. She grows 
 as a flower does, she will wither without 
 sun; she will decay in her sheath, as a 
 narcissus will, if you do not give her air 
 enough; she may fall, and defile her head in 
 dust, if you leave her without help at some 
 moments of her life; but you cannot fetter 
 her; she must take her own fair form and 
 way, if she take any, and in mind as in 
 body must have always 
 114
 
 OF QUEENS' GARDENS 
 
 Her household motions light and free 
 And steps of virgin liberty. 
 
 Let her loose in the library, I say, as you 
 do a fawn in a field. It knows the bad 
 weeds twenty times better than you; and the 
 good ones too, and will eat some bitter and 
 prickly ones, good for it, which you had not 
 the slightest thought would have been so. 
 Then, in art, keep the finest models before 
 her, and let her practice in all accomplish- 
 ments be accurate and thorough, so as to 
 enable her to understand more than she 
 accomplishes. I say the finest models 
 that is to say, the truest, simplest, useful- 
 est. Note those epithets: they will range 
 through all the arts. Try them in music, 
 where you might think them the least 
 applicable. I say the truest, that in which 
 the notes most closely and faithfully ex- 
 press the meaning of the words, or the char- 
 acter of intended emotion; again, the sim- 
 plest, that in which the meaning and melody 
 are attained with the fewest and most sig- 
 nificant notes possible; and, finally, the use- 
 fulest, that music which makes the best 
 words most beautiful, which enchants them 
 in our memories each with its own glory 
 of sound, and which applies them closest 
 to the heart at the moment we need them. 
 115
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 And not only in the material and in the 
 course, but yet more earnestly in the spirit 
 of it, let a girl's education be as serious as 
 a boy's. You bring up your girls as if they 
 were meant for sideboard ornaments, and 
 then complain of their frivolity. Give them 
 the same advantages that you give their 
 brothers appeal to the same grand in- 
 stincts of virtue in them; teach them, also, 
 that courage and truth are the pillars of 
 their being: do you think that they would 
 not answer that appeal, brave and true as 
 they are even now, when you know that 
 there is hardly a girls' school in this Chris- 
 tian kingdom where the children's courage 
 or sincerity would be thought of half so 
 much importance as their way of coming in 
 at a door; and when the whole system of 
 society, as respects the mode of establishing 
 them in life, is one rotten plague of coward- 
 ice and imposture cowardice, in not dar- 
 ing to let them live, or love, except as 
 their neighbors choose; and imposture, in 
 bringing, for the purposes of our own 
 pride, the full glow of the world's worst 
 vanity upon a girl's eyes, at the very period 
 when the whole happiness of her future 
 existence depends upon her remaining un- 
 dazzled? 
 
 And give them, lastly, not only noble 
 116
 
 OF QUEENS' GARDENS 
 
 teachings, but noble teachers. You con- 
 sider somewhat, before you send your boy 
 to school, what kind of a man the master 
 is; whatsoever kind of a man he is, you at 
 least give him full authority over your son, 
 and show some respect to him yourself ; if 
 he comes to dine with you, you do not put 
 him at a side table. You know also that, at 
 college, your child's immediate tutor will be 
 under the direction of some still higher 
 tutor, for whom you have absolute rever- 
 ence. You do not treat the Dean of Christ 
 Church or the Master of Trinity as your 
 inferiors. 
 
 But what teachers do you give your girls, 
 and what reverence do you show to the 
 teachers you have chosen? Is a girl likely 
 to think her own conduct, or her own in- 
 tellect, of much importance, when you trust 
 the entire formation of her character, moral 
 and intellectual, to a person whom you let 
 your servants treat with less respect than 
 they do your housekeeper (as if the soul of 
 your child were a less charge than jams 
 and groceries), and whom you yourself think 
 you confer an honor upon by letting her 
 sometimes sit in the drawing-room in the 
 evening? 
 
 Thus, then, of literature as her help, and 
 thus of art. There is one more help which 
 117
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 she cannot do without one which, alone, 
 has sometimes done more than all other 
 influences besides, the help of wild and 
 fair nature. Hear this of the education of 
 Joan of Arc: 
 
 The education of this poor girl was mean, 
 according to the present standard ; was ineffably 
 grand, according to a purer philosophic standard ; 
 and only not good for our age, because for us it 
 would be unattainable. . . . 
 
 Next after her spiritual advantages, she owed 
 most to the advantages of her situation. The 
 fountain of Domr6my was on the brink of a bound- 
 less forest ; and it was haunted to that degree by 
 fairies that the parish priest (curd) was obliged 
 to read mass there once a year, in order to keep 
 them in decent bounds. . . . 
 
 But the forests of Domr6my those were the 
 glories of the land ; for in them abode mysterious 
 powers and ancient secrets that towered into 
 tragic strength. Abbeys there were, and abbey 
 windows, "like Moorish temples of the Hin- 
 dus," that exercised even princely power both 
 in Touraine and in the German Diets. These had 
 their sweet bells that pierced the forests for many 
 a league at matins or vespers, and each its own 
 dreamy legend. Few enough, and scattered 
 enough, were these abbeys, so as in no degree to 
 disturb the deep solitude of the region ; yet 
 many enough to spread a network or awning of 
 Christian sanctity over what else might have 
 seemed a heathen wilderness. 1 
 
 i "Joan of Arc: in reference to M. Michelet's 'History of 
 France.' " De Quincey's Works. Vol. ill. p. 217. 
 
 118
 
 OF QUEENS' GARDENS 
 
 Now, you cannot, indeed, have here in 
 England woods eighteen miles deep to the 
 center; but you can, perhaps, keep a fairy 
 or two for your children yet, if you wish to 
 keep them. But do you wish it? Suppose 
 you had each, at the back of your houses, 
 a garden, large enough for your children to 
 play in, with just as much lawn as would 
 give them room to run, no more, and 
 that you could not change your abode; but 
 that, if you chose, you could double your in- 
 come, or quadruple it, by digging a coal- 
 shaft in the middle of the lawn, and turning 
 the flower-beds into heaps of coke. Would 
 you do it? I hope not. I can tell you, you 
 would be wrong if you did, though it gave 
 you income sixtyfold instead of fourfold. 
 
 Yet this is what you are doing with all 
 England. The whole country is but a little 
 garden, not more than enough for your 
 children to run on the lawns of, if you 
 would let them all run there. And this 
 little garden you will turn into furnace 
 ground, and fill with heaps of cinders, if you 
 can; and those children of yours, not you, 
 will suffer for it. For the fairies will not be 
 all banished; there are fairies of the furnace 
 as of the wood, and their first gifts seem to 
 be " sharp arrows of the mighty "; but their 
 last gifts are "coals of juniper." 
 119
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 And yet I cannot though there is no 
 part of my subject that I feel more press 
 this upon you; for we made so little use of 
 the power of nature while we had it that we 
 shall hardly feel what we have lost. Just 
 on the other side of the Mersey you have 
 your Snowdon, and your Menai Straits, and 
 that mighty granite rock beyond the moors 
 of Anglesea, splendid in its heathery crest, 
 and foot planted in the deep sea, once 
 thought of as sacred a divine promontory, 
 looking westward; the Holy Head or Head- 
 land, still not without awe when its red 
 light glares first through storm. These 
 are the hills, and these the bays and blue 
 inlets, which, among the Greeks, would 
 have been always loved, always fateful in 
 influence on the national mind. That Snow- 
 don is your Parnassus; but where are its 
 Muses? That Holyhead mountain is your 
 Island of JEgina; but where is its Temple to 
 Minerva? 
 
 Shall I read you what the Christian Mi- 
 nerva had achieved under the shadow of our 
 Parnassus up to the year 1848? Here is a 
 little account of a Welsh school, from page 
 261 of the Report on Wales, published by 
 the Committee of Council on Education. 
 This is a school close to a town containing 
 5000 persons: 
 
 120
 
 OF QUEENS' GARDENS 
 
 I then called up a larger class, most of whom 
 had recently come to the school. Three girls re- 
 peatedly declared they had never heard of Christ, 
 and two that they had never heard of God. Two 
 out of six thought Christ was on earth now [they 
 might have had a worse thought perhaps], three 
 knew nothing about the Crucifixion. Four out 
 of seven did not know the names of the months 
 nor the number of days in a year. They had no 
 notion of addition beyond two and two, or three 
 and three ; their minds were perfect blanks. 
 
 Oh, ye women of England ! from the Prin- 
 cess of that Wales to the simplest of you, 
 do not think your own children can he 
 brought into their true fold of rest, while 
 these are scattered on the hills, as sheep 
 having no shepherd. And do not think 
 your daughters can he trained to the truth 
 of their own human beauty, while the pleas- 
 ant places, which God made at once for 
 their school-room and their playground, lie 
 desolate and defiled. You cannot baptize 
 them rightly in those inch-deep fonts of 
 yours, unless you baptize them also in the 
 sweet waters which the great Lawgiver 
 strikes forth forever from the rocks of your 
 native land waters which a Pagan would 
 have worshiped in their purity, and you 
 worship only with pollution. You cannot 
 lead your children faithfully to those nar- 
 row ax-hewn church altars of yours, while 
 121
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 the dark azure altars in heaven the moun- 
 tains that sustain your island throne, 
 mountains on which a Pagan would have 
 seen the powers of heaven rest in every 
 wreathed cloud, remain for you without 
 inscription; altars built, not to, but by an 
 Unknown God. 
 
 III. Thus far, then, of the nature, thus 
 far of the teaching, of woman, and thus of 
 her household office, and queenliness. We 
 now come to our last, our widest question. 
 What is her queenly office with respect 
 to the state? 
 
 Generally, we are under an impression 
 that a man's duties are public, and a 
 woman's private. But this is not altogether 
 so. A man has a personal work or duty, 
 relating to his own home, and a public work 
 or duty, which is the expansion of the other, 
 relating to the state. So a woman has a 
 personal work or duty, relating to her own 
 home, and a public work or duty, which is 
 also the expansion of that. 
 
 Now the man's work for his own home 
 is, as has been said, to secure its mainte- 
 nance, progress, and defense; the woman's 
 to secure its order, comfort, and loveliness. 
 
 Expand both these functions. The man's 
 duty, as a member of a commonwealth, is to 
 assist in the maintenance, in the advance, in 
 122
 
 OF QUEENS' GARDENS 
 
 the defense of the state. The woman's 
 duty, as a member of the commonwealth, is 
 to assist in the ordering, in the comforting, 
 and in the beautiful adornment of the state. 
 
 What the man is at his own gate, defend- 
 ing it, if need be, against insult and spoil, 
 that also, not in a less, but in a more de- 
 voted measure, he is to be at the gate of 
 his country, leaving his home, if need be, 
 even to the spoiler, to do his more incum- 
 bent work there. 
 
 And, in like manner, what the woman is 
 to be within her gates, as the center of 
 order, the balm of distress, and the mirror 
 of beauty: that she is also to be without her 
 gates, where order is more difficult, distress 
 more imminent, loveliness more rare. 
 
 And as within the human heart there is 
 always set an instinct for all its real duties, 
 an instinct which you cannot quench, but 
 only warp and corrupt if you withdraw it 
 from its true purpose: as there is the in- 
 tense instinct of love, which, rightly disci- 
 plined, maintains all the sanctities of life, 
 and, misdirected, undermines them; and 
 must do either the one or the other; so 
 there is in the human heart an inextin- 
 guishable instinct, the love of power, which, 
 rightly directed, maintains all the majesty of 
 law and life, and, misdirected, wrecks them. 
 123
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 Deep rooted in the innermost life of the 
 heart of man, and of the heart of woman, 
 God set it there, and God keeps it there. 
 Vainly, as falsely, you blame or rebuke 
 the desire of power! For Heaven's sake, 
 and for Man's sake, desire it all you can. 
 But what power? That is all the question. 
 Power to destroy? the lion's limb, and the 
 dragon's breath? Not so. Power to heal, 
 to redeem, to guide, and to guard. Power 
 of the scepter and shield; the power of the 
 royal hand that heals in touching, that 
 binds the fiend, and looses the captive; the 
 throne that is founded on the rock of Jus- 
 tice, and descended from only by steps of 
 Mercy. Will you not covet such power as 
 this, and seek such throne as this, and be 
 no more housewives, but queens? 
 
 It is now long since the women of Eng- 
 land arrogated, universally, a title which 
 once belonged to nobility only; and, having 
 once been in the habit of accepting the sim- 
 ple title of gentlewoman as correspondent to 
 that of gentleman, insisted on the privilege 
 of assuming the title of " Lady," l which prop- 
 erly corresponds only to the title of " Lord." 
 
 1 1 wish there were a true order of chivalry instituted for 
 our English youth of certain ranks, in which both boy and 
 girl should receive, at a given age, their knighthood and 
 ladyhood by true title ; attainable only by certain probation 
 and trial both of character and accomplishment ; and to be 
 
 124
 
 OF QUEENS' GARDENS 
 
 I do not blame them for this; but only for 
 their narrow motive in this. I would have 
 them desire and claim the title of Lady, 
 provided they claim, not merely the title, 
 but the office and duty signified by it. Lady 
 means " bread-giver " or " loaf -giver," and 
 Lord means " maintainer of laws," and both 
 titles have reference, not to the law which 
 is maintained in the house, nor to the bread 
 which is given to the household; but to law 
 maintained for the multitude, and to bread 
 broken among the multitude. So that a 
 Lord has legal claim only to his title in so 
 far as he is the maintainer of the justice of 
 the Lord of lords; and a Lady has legal 
 claim to her title only so far as she com- 
 municates that help to the poor represen- 
 tatives of her Master, which women once, 
 ministering to Him of their substance, were 
 permitted to extend to that Master Him- 
 self; and when she is known, as He Himself 
 once was, in breaking of bread. 
 
 And this beneficent and legal dominion, 
 this power of the Dominus, or House-Lord, 
 and of the Domina, or House-Lady, is great 
 and venerable, not in the number of those 
 
 forfeited, on conviction, by their peers, of any dishonorable 
 act. Such an institution would be entirely, and with all 
 noble results, possible, in a nation which loved honor. 
 That it would not be possible among us, is not to the dis- 
 credit of the scheme. 
 
 125
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 through whom it has lineally descended, 
 but in the number of those whom it grasps 
 within its sway; it is always regarded with 
 reverent worship wherever its dynasty is 
 founded on its duty, and its ambition co- 
 relative with its beneficence. Your fancy 
 is pleased with the thought of being noble 
 ladies, with a train of vassals. Be it so; 
 you cannot be too noble, and your train can- 
 not be too great; but see to it that your 
 train is of vassals whom you serve and feed, 
 not merely of slaves who serve and feed 
 you; and that the multitude which obeys 
 you is of those whom you have comforted, 
 not oppressed, whom you have redeemed, 
 not led into captivity. 
 
 And this, which is true of the lower or 
 household dominion, is equally true of the 
 queenly dominion; that highest dignity is 
 open to you, if you will also accept that 
 highest duty. Rex et Regina Roi et Reine 
 "Right-doers"; they differ but from the 
 Lady and Lord, in that their power is su- 
 preme over the mind as over the person 
 that they not only feed and clothe, but di- 
 rect and teach. And whether consciously 
 or not, you must be, in many a heart, en- 
 throned: there is no putting by that crown; 
 queens you must always be: queens to your 
 lovers; queens to your husbands and your 
 126
 
 OF QUEENS' GARDENS 
 
 sons; queens of higher mystery to the world 
 beyond, which hows itself, and will forever 
 bow, before the myrtle crown and the stain- 
 less scepter of womanhood. But, alas! you 
 are too often idle and careless queens, 
 grasping at majesty in the least things, 
 while you abdicate it in the greatest; and 
 leaving misrule and violence to work their 
 will among men, in defiance of the power 
 which, holding straight in gift from the 
 Prince of all Peace, the wicked among you 
 betray, and the good forget. 
 
 "Prince of Peace." Note that name. 
 When kings rule in that name, and nobles, 
 and the judges of the earth, they also, in 
 their narrow place, and mortal measure, 
 receive the power of it. There are no other 
 rulers than they; other rule than theirs is 
 but misrule; they who govern verily "Dei 
 Gratia" are all princes, yes, or princesses 
 of Peace. There is not a war in the world, 
 no, nor an injustice, but you women are 
 answerable for it; not in that you have pro- 
 voked, but in that you have not hindered. 
 Men, by their nature, are prone to fight; 
 they will fight for any cause, or for none. 
 It is for you to choose their cause for them, 
 and to forbid them when there is no cause. 
 There is no suffering, no injustice, no mis- 
 ery, in the earth, but the guilt of it lies with 
 127
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 you. Men can bear the sight of it, but you 
 should not be able to bear it. Men may 
 tread it down without sympathy in their 
 own struggle; but men are feeble in sym- 
 pathy, and contracted in hope; it is you only 
 who can feel the depths of pain, and con- 
 ceive the way of its healing. Instead of 
 trying to do this, you turn away from it; 
 you shut yourselves within your park walls 
 and garden gates; and you are content to 
 know that there is beyond them a whole 
 world in wilderness a world of secrets 
 which you dare not penetrate; and of suf- 
 fering which you dare not conceive. 
 
 I tell you that this is to me quite the 
 most amazing among the phenomena of 
 humanity. I am surprised at no depths to 
 which, when once warped from its honor, 
 that humanity can be degraded. I do not 
 wonder at the miser's death, with his hands, 
 as they relax, dropping gold. I do not won- 
 der at the sensualist's life, with the shroud 
 wrapped about his feet. I do not wonder 
 at the single-handed murder of a single 
 victim, done by the assassin in the darkness 
 of the railway, or reed shadow of the marsh. 
 I do not even wonder at the myriad-handed 
 murder of multitudes, done boastfully in 
 the daylight, by the frenzy of nations, 
 and the immeasurable, unimaginable guilt 
 128
 
 OF QUEENS' GARDENS 
 
 heaped up from hell to heaven, of their 
 priests, and kings. But this is wonderful 
 to me oh, how wonderful! to see the 
 tender and delicate woman among you, with 
 her child at her breast, and a power, if she 
 would wield it, over it, and over its father, 
 purer than the air of heaven, and stronger 
 than the seas of earth nay, a magnitude 
 of blessing which her husband would not 
 part with for all that earth itself, though it 
 were made of one entire and perfect chrys- 
 olite: to see her abdicate this majesty 
 to play at precedence with her next-door 
 neighbor! This is wonderful oh, wonder- 
 ful! to see her, with every innocent feel- 
 ing fresh within her, go out in the morning 
 into her garden to play with the fringes of 
 its guarded flowers, and lift their heads 
 when they are drooping, with her happy 
 smile upon her face, and no cloud upon her 
 brow, because there is a little wall around 
 her place of peace: and yet she knows, in 
 her heart, if she would only look for its 
 knowledge, that, outside of that little rose- 
 covered wall, the wild grass, to the horizon, 
 is torn up by the agony of men, and beat 
 level by the drift of their life-blood. 
 
 Have you ever considered what a deep 
 under-meaning there lies, or at least may 
 be read, if we choose, in our custom of 
 9 129
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 strewing flowers before those whom we 
 think most happy? Do you suppose it is 
 merely to deceive them into the hope that 
 happiness is always to fall thus in showers 
 at their feet? that wherever they pass 
 they will tread on herbs of sweet scent, and 
 that the rough ground will be made smooth 
 for them by depths of roses? So surely as 
 they believe that, they will have, instead, 
 to walk on bitter herbs and thorns; and the 
 only softness to their feet will be of snow. 
 But it is not thus intended they should be- 
 lieve; there is a better meaning in that old 
 custom. The path of a good woman is in- 
 deed strewn with flowers; but they rise be- 
 hind her steps, not before them. " Her feet 
 have touched the meadows, and left the 
 daisies rosy." 
 
 You think that only a lover's fancy; false 
 and vain! How if it could be true? You 
 think this also, perhaps, only a poet's 
 fancy: 
 
 Even the light harebell raised its head 
 Elastic from her airy tread. 
 
 But it is little to say of a woman, that she 
 only does not destroy where she passes. 
 She should revive; the harebells should 
 bloom, not stoop, as she passes. You think 
 I am rushing into wild hyperbole! Pardon 
 130
 
 OF QUEENS' GARDENS 
 
 me, not a whit I mean what I say in calm 
 English, spoken in resolute truth. You 
 have heard it said (and I believe there is 
 more than fancy even in that saying, but 
 let it pass for a fanciful one) that flowers 
 only flourish rightly in the garden of some 
 one who loves them. I know you would like 
 that to be true; you would think it a pleas- 
 ant magic if you could flush your flowers 
 into brighter bloom by a kind look upon 
 them: nay, more, if your look had the power, 
 not only to cheer, but to guard; if you 
 could bid the black blight turn away, and 
 the knotted caterpillar spare if you could 
 bid the dew fall upon them in the drought, 
 and say to the south wind, in frost" Come, 
 thou south, and breathe upon my garden, 
 that the spices of it may flow out." This 
 you would think a great thing? And do you 
 think it not a greater thing, that all this 
 (and how much more than this!) you can do, 
 for fairer flowers than these flowers that 
 could bless you for having blessed them, 
 and will love you for having loved them; 
 flowers that have thoughts like yours, and 
 lives like yours; and which, once saved, you 
 save forever? Is this only a little power? 
 Far among the moorlands and the rocks, 
 far in the darkness of the terrible streets, 
 these feeble florets are lying, with all 
 131
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 their fresh leaves torn, and their stems 
 broken: will you never go down to them, 
 nor set them in order in their little fragrant 
 beds, nor fence them, in their trembling, 
 from the fierce wind? Shall morning follow 
 morning, for you, but not for them; and the 
 dawn rise to watch, far away, those frantic 
 Dances of Death; 1 but no dawn rise to 
 breathe upon these living banks of wild 
 violet, and woodbine, and rose; nor call to 
 you, through your casement call (not giv- 
 ing you the name of the English poet's lady, 
 but the name of Dante's great Matilda, 
 who, on the edge of happy Lethe, stood, 
 wreathing flowers with flowers), saying: 
 
 Come into the garden, Maud, 
 
 For the black bat", night, has flown, 
 
 And the woodbine spices are wafted abroad, 
 
 And the musk of the roses blown ? 
 
 Will you not go down among them? 
 among those sweet living things, whose 
 new courage, sprung from the earth with 
 the deep color of heaven upon it, is starting 
 up in strength of goodly spire; and whose 
 purity, washed from the dust, is opening, 
 bud by bud, into the flower of promise; 
 and still they turn to you, and for you, 
 
 > See note, p. 59. 
 
 132
 
 OP QUEENS' GARDENS 
 
 "The Larkspur listens I hear, I hear! 
 And the Lily whispers I wait." 
 
 Did you notice that I missed two lines 
 when I read you that first stanza; and think 
 that I had forgotten them? Hear them 
 now: 
 
 Come into the garden, Maud, 
 For the black bat, night, has flown, 
 Come into the garden, Maud, 
 I am here at the gate, alone. 
 
 Who is it, think you, who stands at the 
 gate of this sweeter garden alone, waiting 
 for you? Did you ever hear, not of a Maud, 
 hut a Madeleine, who went down to her 
 garden in the dawn, and found One wait- 
 ing at the gate, whom she supposed to be 
 the gardener? Have you not sought Him 
 often; sought Him in vain, all through 
 the night; sought Him in vain at the gate 
 of that old garden where the fiery sword is 
 set? He is never there; but at the gate of 
 this garden He is waiting always waiting 
 to take your hand ready to go down to 
 see the fruits of the valley, to see whether 
 the vine has flourished, and the pomegran- 
 ate budded. There you shall see with Him 
 the little tendrils of the vines that His hand 
 is guiding there you shall see the pome- 
 granate springing where His hand cast the 
 133
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 sanguine seed; more: you shall see the 
 troops of the angel keepers that, with their 
 wings, wave away the hungry birds from 
 the pathsides where He has sown, and call 
 to each other between the vineyard rows, 
 "Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that 
 spoil the vines, for our vines have tender 
 grapes." Oh you queens you queens! 
 among the hills and happy greenwood of 
 this land of yours, shall the foxes have 
 holes, and the birds of the air have nests; 
 and in your cities, shall the stones cry out 
 against you, that they are the only pillows 
 where the Son of Man can lay His head? 
 
 134
 
 LECTURE III 
 
 THE MYSTERY OP LIFE 
 AND ITS ARTS
 
 LECTURE 
 III 
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 Lecture delivered in the theater of the Royal 
 College of Science, Dublin, 1868. 
 
 WHEN I accepted the privilege of 
 addressing you to-day, I was not 
 aware of a restriction with re- 
 spect to the topics of discussion which may 
 be brought before this Society 1 a restric- 
 tion which, though entirely wise and right 
 under the circumstances contemplated in 
 its introduction, would necessarily have dis- 
 abled me, thinking as I think, from prepar- 
 ing any lecture for you on the subject of 
 art in a form which might be permanently 
 useful. Pardon me, therefore, in so far as 
 I must trangress such limitation; for in- 
 deed my infringement will be of the letter 
 not of the spirit of your commands. In 
 whatever I may say touching the religion 
 which has been the foundation of art, or 
 the policy which has contributed to its 
 power, if I offend one, I shall offend all; for 
 
 1 That no reference should be made to religious questions. 
 
 137
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 I shall take no note of any separations in 
 creeds, or antagonisms in parties: neither 
 do I fear that ultimately I shall offend any, 
 by proving or at least stating as capable 
 of positive proof the connection of all that 
 is best in the crafts and arts of man, with 
 the simplicity of his faith, and the sincerity 
 of his patriotism. 
 
 But I speak to you under another disad- 
 vantage, by which I am checked in frank- 
 ness of utterance, not here only, but every- 
 where: namely, that I am never fully aware 
 how far my audiences are disposed to give 
 me credit for real knowledge of my subject, 
 or how far they grant me attention only 
 because I have been sometimes thought an 
 ingenious or pleasant essayist upon it. 
 For I have had what, in many respects, I 
 boldly call the misfortune, to set my words 
 sometimes prettily together; not without a 
 foolish vanity in the poor knack that I had 
 of doing so: until I was heavily punished 
 for this pride, by finding that many people 
 thought of the words only, and cared no- 
 thing for their meaning. Happily, there- 
 fore, the power of using such pleasant lan- 
 guageif indeed it ever were mine is 
 passing away from me; and whatever I am 
 now able to say at all, I find myself forced 
 to say with great plainness. For my 
 138
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 thoughts have changed also, as my words 
 have; and whereas in earlier life, what little 
 influence I obtained was due perhaps chiefly 
 to the enthusiasm with which I was able to 
 dwell on the beauty of the physical clouds, 
 and of their colors in the sky; so all the in- 
 fluence I now desire to retain must be due 
 to the earnestness with which I am en- 
 deavoring to trace the form and beauty of 
 another kind of cloud than those; the bright 
 cloud of which it is written "What is your 
 life? It is even as a vapor, that appeareth 
 for a little time, and then vanisheth away." 
 I suppose few people reach the middle or 
 latter period of their age, without having, 
 at some moment of change or disappoint- 
 ment, felt the truth of those bitter words; 
 and been startled by the fading of the sun- 
 shine from the cloud of their life into the 
 sudden agony of the knowledge that the 
 fabric of it was as fragile as a dream, and 
 the endurance of it as transient as the dew. 
 But it is not always that, even at such 
 times of melancholy surprise, we can enter 
 into any true perception that this human 
 life shares in the nature of it, not only the 
 evanescence, but the mystery of the cloud; 
 that its avenues are wreathed in darkness, 
 and its forms and courses no less fantastic, 
 than spectral and obscure; so that not only 
 139
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 in the vanity which we cannot grasp, but in 
 the shadow which we cannot pierce, it is 
 true of this cloudy life of ours, that "man 
 walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth 
 himself in vain." 
 
 And least of all, whatever may have been 
 the eagerness of our passions, or the height 
 of our pride, are we able to understand in 
 its depth the third and most solemn char- 
 acter in which our life is like those clouds 
 of heaven; that to it belongs not only their 
 transcience, not only their mystery, but 
 also their power; that in the cloud of the 
 human soul there is a fire stronger than 
 the lightning, and a grace more precious 
 than the rain; and that though of the good 
 and evil it shall one day be said alike, that 
 the place that knew them knows them no 
 more, there is an infinite separation be- 
 tween those whose brief presence had there 
 been a blessing, like the mist of Eden that 
 went up from the earth to water the gar- 
 den, and those whose place knew them only 
 as a drifting and changeful shade, of whom 
 the heavenly sentence is, that they are 
 "wells without water; clouds that are car- 
 ried with a tempest, to whom the mist of 
 darkness is reserved forever." 
 
 To those among us, however, who have 
 lived long enough to form some just esti- 
 140
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 mate of the rate of the changes which are, 
 hour by hour in accelerating catastrophe, 
 manifesting themselves in the laws, the 
 arts, and the creeds of men, it seems to me 
 that now at least, if never at any former 
 time, the thoughts of the true nature of 
 our life, and of its powers and responsibili- 
 ties, should present themselves with abso- 
 lute sadness and sternness. And although 
 I know that this feeling is much deepened 
 in my own mind by disappointment, which, 
 by chance, has attended the greater num- 
 ber of my cherished purposes, I do not 
 for that reason distrust the feeling itself, 
 though I am on my guard against an exag- 
 gerated degree of it: nay, I rather believe 
 that in periods of new effort and violent 
 change, disappointment is a wholesome 
 medicine; and that in the secret of it, as in 
 the twilight so beloved by Titian, we may 
 see the colors of things with deeper truth 
 than in the most dazzling sunshine. And 
 because these truths about the works of 
 men, which I want to bring to-day before 
 you, are most of them sad ones, though at 
 the same time helpful; and because also I 
 believe that your kind Irish hearts will an- 
 swer more gladly to the truthful expression 
 of a personal feeling than to the exposition 
 of an abstract principle, I will permit my- 
 141
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 self so much unreserved speaking of my 
 own causes of regret, as may enable you to 
 make just allowance for what, according to 
 your sympathies, you will call either the 
 bitterness, or the insight, of a mind which 
 has surrendered its best hopes, and been 
 foiled in its favorite aims. 
 
 I spent the ten strongest years of my life 
 (from twenty to thirty) in endeavoring to 
 show the excellence of the work of the man 
 whom I believed, and rightly believed, to 
 be the greatest painter of the schools of 
 England since Reynolds. I had then per- 
 fect faith in the power of every great truth 
 of beauty to prevail ultimately, and take its 
 right place in usefulness and honor; and I 
 strove to bring the painter's work into this 
 due place, while the painter was yet alive. 
 But he knew, better than I, the uselessness 
 of talking about what people could not see 
 for themselves. He always discouraged me 
 scornfully, even when he thanked me and 
 he died before even the superficial effect of 
 my work was visible. I went on, however, 
 thinking I could at least be of use to the 
 public, if not to him, in proving his power. 
 My books got talked about a little. The 
 prices of modern pictures, generally, rose, 
 and I was beginning to take some pleasure 
 in a sense of gradual victory, when, for- 
 142
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 tunately or unfortunately, an opportunity 
 of perfect trial undeceived me at once, and 
 forever. The Trustees of the National 
 Gallery commissioned me to arrange the 
 Turner drawings there, and permitted me 
 to prepare three hundred examples of his 
 studies from nature, for exhibition at Ken- 
 sington. At Kensington they were, and 
 are, placed for exhibition; but they are not 
 exhibited, for the room in which they hang 
 is always empty. 
 
 Well this showed me at once that 
 those ten years of my life had been, in their 
 chief purpose, lost. For that, I did not so 
 much care; I had, at least, learned my own 
 business thoroughly, and should be able, as 
 I fondly supposed, after such a lesson, now 
 to use my knowledge with better effect. 
 But what I did care for was the to me 
 frightful discovery, that the most splen- 
 did genius in the arts might be permitted 
 by Providence to labor and perish uselessly; 
 that in the very fineness of it there might be 
 something rendering it invisible to ordinary 
 eyes; but that, with this strange excellence, 
 faults might be mingled which would be as 
 deadly as its virtues were vain ; that the glory 
 of it was perishable, as well as invisible, and 
 the gift and grace of it might be to us as 
 snow in summer and as rain in harvest. 
 143
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 That was the first mystery of life to me. 
 But, while my best energy was given to the 
 study of painting, I had put collateral effort, 
 more prudent if less enthusiastic, into that 
 of architecture; and in this I could not com- 
 plain of meeting with no sympathy. Among 
 several personal reasons which caused me 
 to desire that I might give this, my closing 
 lecture on the subject of art here, in Ire- 
 land, one of the chief was that, in reading 
 it, I should stand near the beautiful build- 
 ingthe engineers' school of your college 
 which was the first realization I had the 
 joy to see, of the principles I had, until 
 then, been endeavoring to teach! but which, 
 alas, is now, to me, no more than the richly 
 canopied monument of one of the most 
 earnest souls that ever gave itself to the 
 arts, and one of my truest and most loving 
 friends, Benjamin Woodward. Nor was it 
 here in Ireland only that I received the help 
 of Irish sympathy and genius. When to 
 another friend, Sir Thomas Deane, with 
 Mr. Woodward, was intrusted the building 
 of the museum at Oxford, the best details 
 of the work were executed by sculptors who 
 had been born and trained here; and the 
 first window of the facade of the building, 
 in which was inaugurated the study of natu- 
 ral science in England, in true fellowship 
 144
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 with literature, was carved from my design 
 by an Irish sculptor. 
 
 You may perhaps think that no man 
 ought to speak of disappointment, to whom, 
 even in one branch of labor, so much suc- 
 cess was granted. Had Mr. Woodward now 
 been beside me, I had not so spoken; but 
 his gentle and passionate spirit was cut off 
 from the fulfilment of its purposes, and the 
 work we did together is now become vain. 
 It may not be so in future; but the archi- 
 tecture we endeavored to introduce is in- 
 consistent alike with the reckless luxury, 
 the deforming mechanism, and the squalid 
 misery of modern cities; among the forma- 
 tive fashions of the day, aided, especially in 
 England, by ecclesiastical sentiment, it in- 
 deed obtained notoriety; and sometimes be- 
 hind an engine furnace, or a railroad bank, 
 you may detect the pathetic discord of its 
 momentary grace, and, with toil, decipher its 
 floral carvings choked with soot. I felt an- 
 swerable to the schools I loved, only for their 
 injury. I perceived that this new portion 
 of my strength had also been spent in vain; 
 and from amidst streets of iron, and palaces 
 of crystal, shrank back at last to the carving 
 of the mountain and color of the flower. 
 
 And still I could tell of failure, and fail- 
 ure repeated, as years went on; but I have 
 10 145
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 trespassed enough on your patience to show 
 you, in part, the causes of my discourage- 
 ment. Now let me more deliberately tell 
 you its results. You know there is a ten- 
 dency in the minds of many men, when 
 they are heavily disappointed in the main 
 purposes of their life, to feel, and perhaps 
 in warning, perhaps in mockery, to declare, 
 that life itself is a vanity. Because it has 
 disappointed them, they think its nature is 
 of disappointment always, or at best, of 
 pleasure that can be grasped by imagina- 
 tion only; that the cloud of it has no 
 strength nor fire within; but is a painted 
 cloud only, to be delighted in, yet despised. 
 You know how beautifully Pope has ex- 
 pressed this particular phase of thought: 
 
 Meanwhile opinion gilds, with varying rays, 
 These painted clouds that beautify our days ; 
 Each want of happiness by hope supplied, 
 And each vacuity of sense, by pride. 
 Hope builds as fast as Knowledge can destroy; 
 In Folly's cup, still laughs the bubble joy. 
 One pleasure past, another still we gain, 
 And not a vanity is given in vain. 
 
 But the effect of failure upon my own 
 mind has been just the reverse of this. 
 The more that my life disappointed me, the 
 more solemn and wonderful it became to 
 me. It seemed, contrarily to Pope's say- 
 146
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 ing, that the vanity of it was indeed given 
 in vain; but that there was something be- 
 hind the veil of it, which was not vanity. 
 It became to me not a painted cloud, but a 
 terrible and impenetrable one: not a mirage, 
 which vanished as I drew near, but a pillar 
 of darkness, to which I was forbidden to 
 draw near. For I saw that both my own 
 failure, and such success in petty things as 
 in its poor triumph seemed to me worse 
 than failure, came from the want of suffi- 
 ciently earnest effort to understand the 
 whole law and meaning of existence, and to 
 bring it to noble and due end; as, on the 
 other hand, I saw more and more clearly 
 that all enduring success in the arts, or in 
 any other occupation, had come from the 
 ruling of lower purposes, not by a convic- 
 tion of their nothingness, but by a solemn 
 faith in the advancing power of human 
 nature, or in the promise, however dimly 
 apprehended, that the mortal part of it 
 would one day be swallowed up in immor- 
 tality; and that, indeed, the arts themselves 
 never had reached any vital strength or 
 honor, but in the effort to proclaim this 
 immortality, and in the service either of 
 great and just religion, or of some unselfish 
 patriotism, and law of such national life as 
 must be the foundation of religion. 
 147
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 Nothing that I have ever said is more 
 true or necessary nothing has been more 
 misunderstood or misapplied than my 
 strong assertion that the arts can never be 
 right themselves, unless their motive is 
 right. It is misunderstood this way: weak 
 painters, who have never learned their busi- 
 ness, and cannot lay a true line, continually 
 come to me, crying out "Look at this pic- 
 ture of mine; it must be good, I had such a 
 lovely motive. I have put my whole heart 
 into it, and taken years to think over its 
 treatment." Well, the only answer for 
 these people is if one had the cruelty to 
 make it "Sir, you cannot think over 
 am/thing in any number of years, you 
 have n't the head to do it; and though you 
 had fine motives, strong enough to make 
 you burn yourself in a slow fire, if only first 
 you could paint a picture, you can't paint 
 one, nor half an inch of one; you have n't 
 the hand to do it." 
 
 But, far more decisively we have to say to 
 the men who do know their business, or 
 may know it if they choose" Sir, you have 
 this gift, and a mighty one; see that you 
 serve your nation faithfully with it. It is 
 a greater trust than ships and armies: you 
 might cast them away, if you were their 
 captain, with less treason to your people 
 148
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 than in casting your own glorious power 
 away, and serving the devil with it instead 
 of men. Ships and armies you may replace 
 if they are lost, but a great intellect, once 
 abused, is a curse to the earth forever." 
 
 This, then, I meant by saying that the 
 arts must have noble motive. This also I 
 said respecting them, that they never had 
 prospered, nor could prosper, but when they 
 had such true purpose, and were devoted to 
 the proclamation of divine truth or law. 
 And yet I saw also that they had always 
 failed in this proclamation that poetry, 
 and sculpture, and painting, though only 
 great when they strove to teach us some- 
 thing about the gods, never had taught us 
 anything trustworthy about the gods, but 
 had always betrayed their trust in the 
 crisis of it, and, with their powers at the 
 full reach, became ministers to pride and 
 to lust. And I felt also, with increasing 
 amazement, the unconquerable apathy in 
 ourselves and hearers, no less than in 
 these the teachers; and that while the wis- 
 dom and Tightness of every act and art of 
 life could only be consistent with a right 
 understanding of the ends of life, we were 
 all plunged as in a languid dream our 
 hearts fat, and our eyes heavy, and our 
 ears closed, lest the inspiration of hand or 
 149
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 voice should reach us lest we should see 
 with our eyes, and understand with our 
 hearts, and be healed. 
 
 This intense apathy in all of us is the first 
 great mystery of life; it stands in the way 
 of every perception, every virtue. There is 
 no making ourselves feel enough astonish- 
 ment at it. That the occupations or pas- 
 times of life should have no motive, is 
 understandable; but that life itself should 
 have no motive that we neither care to 
 find out what it may lead to, nor to guard 
 against its being forever taken away from 
 us here is a mystery indeed. For just 
 suppose I were able to call at this moment 
 to any one in this audience by name, and to 
 tell him positively that I knew a large 
 estate had been lately left to him on some 
 curious conditions; but that though I knew 
 it was large, I did not know how large, nor 
 even where it was whether in the East 
 Indies or the West, or in England, or at the 
 Antipodes. I only knew it was a vast es- 
 tate, and that there was a chance of his 
 losing it altogether if he did not soon find 
 out on what terms it had been left to him. 
 Suppose I were able to say this positively to 
 any single man in this audience, and he 
 knew that I did not speak without warrant, 
 do you think that he would rest content 
 160
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 with that vague knowledge, if it were any- 
 wise possible to obtain more? Would he 
 not give every energy to find some trace of 
 the facts, and never rest till he had ascer- 
 tained where this place was, and what it 
 was like? And suppose he were a young 
 man, and all he could discover by his best 
 endeavor was that the estate was never to 
 be his at all, unless he persevered, during 
 certain years of probation, in an orderly 
 and industrious life; but that, according to 
 the Tightness of his conduct, the portion of 
 the estate assigned to him would be greater 
 or less, so that it literally depended on his 
 behavior from day to day whether he got 
 ten thousand a year, or thirty thousand a 
 year, or nothing whatever would you not 
 think it strange if the youth never troubled 
 himself to satisfy the conditions in any 
 way, nor even to know what was required 
 of him, but lived exactly as he chose, and 
 never inquired whether his chances of the 
 estate were increasing or passing away? 
 Well, you know that this is actually and 
 literally so with the greater number of the 
 educated persons now living in Christian 
 countries. Nearly every man and woman, 
 in any company such as this, outwardly 
 professes to believe and a large number 
 unquestionably think they believe much 
 151
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 more than this; not only that a quite un- 
 limited estate is in prospect for them if 
 they please the Holder of it, but that the 
 infinite contrary of such a possession an 
 estate of perpetual misery is in store for 
 them if they displease this great Land- 
 Holder, this great Heaven-Holder. And yet 
 there is not one in a thousand of these 
 human souls that cares to think, for ten 
 minutes of the day, where this estate is or 
 how beautiful it is, or what kind of life they 
 are to lead in it, or what kind of life they 
 must lead to obtain it. 
 
 You fancy that you care to know this: so 
 little do you care that, probably, at this 
 moment many of you are displeased with 
 me for talking of the matter! You came to 
 hear about the Art of this world, not about 
 the Life of the next, and you are provoked 
 with me for talking of what you can hear 
 any Sunday in church. But do not be afraid. 
 I will tell you something before you go 
 about pictures, and carvings, and pottery, 
 and what else you would like better to hear 
 of than the other world. Nay, perhaps you 
 say, " We want you to talk of pictures and 
 pottery, because we are sure that you know 
 something of them, and you know nothing 
 of the other world." Well -I don't. That 
 is quite true. But the very strangeness 
 152
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 and mystery of which I urge you to take 
 notice, is in this that I do not; nor you 
 either. Can you answer a single bold 
 question unflinchingly about that other 
 world? Are you sure there is a heaven? 
 Sure there is a hell? Sure that men are 
 dropping before your faces through the 
 pavements of these streets into eternal fire, 
 or sure that they are not? Sure that at 
 your own death you are going to be de- 
 livered from all sorrow, to be endowed with 
 all virtue, to be gifted with all felicity, and 
 raised into perpetual companionship with 
 a King, compared to whom the kings of the 
 earth are as grasshoppers, and the nations 
 as the dust of His feet? Are you sure of 
 this? or, if not sure, do any of us so much 
 as care to make it sure? and, if not, how 
 can anything that we do be right how can 
 anything we think be wise? what honor can 
 there be in the arts that amuse us, or what 
 profit in the possessions that please? 
 
 Is not this a mystery of life? 
 
 But farther, you may, perhaps, think it a 
 beneficent ordinance for the generality of 
 men that they do not, with earnestness or 
 anxiety, dwell on such questions of the fu- 
 ture because the business of the day could 
 not be done if this kind of thought were 
 taken by all of us for the morrow. Be it so: 
 153
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 but at least we might anticipate that the 
 greatest and wisest of us, who were evi- 
 dently the appointed teachers of the rest, 
 would set themselves apart to seek out 
 whatever could be surely known of the 
 future destinies of their race; and to teach 
 this in no rhetorical or ambiguous manner, 
 but in the plainest and mose severely ear- 
 nest words. 
 
 Now, the highest representatives of men 
 who have thus endeavored, during the 
 Christian era, to search out these deep 
 things, and relate them, are Dante and Mil- 
 ton. There are none who for earnestness 
 of thought, for mastery of word, can be 
 classed with these. I am not at present, 
 mind you, speaking of persons set apart in 
 any priestly or pastoral office, to deliver 
 creeds to us, or doctrines; but of men who 
 try to discover and set forth, as far as by 
 human intellect is possible, the facts of the 
 other world. Divines may perhaps teach 
 us how to arrive there, but only these two 
 poets have in any powerful manner striven 
 to discover, or in any definite words pro- 
 fessed to tell, what we shall see and become 
 there; or how those upper and nether 
 worlds are, and have been, inhabited. 
 
 And what have they told us? Milton's 
 account of the most important event in his 
 154
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 whole system of the universe, the fall of 
 the angels, is evidently unbelievable to 
 himself; and the more so, that it is wholly 
 founded on, and in a great part spoiled and 
 degraded from, Hesiod's account of the de- 
 cisive war of the younger gods with the 
 Titans. The rest of his poem is a pictur- 
 esque drama, in which every artifice of in- 
 vention is visibly and consciously employed; 
 not a single fact being, for an instant, 
 conceived as tenable by any living faith. 
 Dante's conception is far more intense, and, 
 by himself, for the time, not to be escaped 
 from; it is indeed a vision, but a vision only, 
 and that one of the wildest that ever en- 
 tranced a soul a dream in which every 
 grotesque type or fantasy of heathen tra- 
 dition is renewed, and adorned; and the des- 
 tinies of the Christian Church, under their 
 most sacred symbols, become literally sub- 
 ordinate to the praise, and are only to be 
 understood by the aid, of one dear Floren- 
 tine maiden. 
 
 I tell you truly that, as I strive more with 
 this strange lethargy and trance in myself, 
 and awake to the meaning and power of life, 
 it seems daily more amazing to me that 
 men such as these should dare to play with 
 the most precious truths (or the most 
 deadly untruths), by which the whole human 
 155
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 race listening to them could be informed, 
 or deceived; all the world their audiences 
 forever, with pleased ear, and passionate 
 heart; and yet, to this submissive infini- 
 tude of souls, and evermore succeeding and 
 succeeding multitude, hungry for bread of 
 life, they do but play upon sweetly modu- 
 lated pipes; with pompous nomenclature 
 adorn the councils of hell; touch a trouba- 
 dour's guitar to the courses of the suns; and 
 fill the openings of eternity, before which 
 prophets have veiled their faces, and which 
 angels desire to look into, with idle puppets 
 of their scholastic imagination, and melan- 
 choly lights of frantic faith in their lost 
 mortal love. 
 
 Is not this a mystery of life? 
 
 But more. We have to remember that 
 these two great teachers were both of them 
 warped in their temper, and thwarted in 
 their search for truth. They were men of 
 intellectual war, unable, through darkness 
 of controversy, or stress of personal grief, 
 to discern where their own ambition modi- 
 fied their utterances of the moral law; or 
 their own agony mingled with their anger 
 at its violation. But greater men than these 
 have been innocent-hearted too great 
 for contest. Men, like Homer and Shak- 
 spere, of so unrecognized personality that it 
 156
 
 THE MYSTERY OP LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 disappears in future ages, and becomes 
 ghostly, like the tradition of a lost heathen 
 god. Men, therefore, to whose unoffended, 
 uncondemning sight, the whole of human 
 nature reveals itself in a pathetic weakness, 
 with which they will not strive; or in 
 mournful and transitory strength, which 
 they dare not praise. And all Pagan and 
 Christian Civilization thus becomes subject 
 to them. It does not matter how little, or 
 how much, any of us have read, either of 
 Homer or Shakspere; everything round 
 us, in substance, or in thought, has been 
 molded by them. All Greek gentlemen were 
 educated under Homer. All Roman gentle- 
 men, by Greek literature. All Italian, and 
 French, and English gentlemen, by Roman 
 literature, and by its principles. Of the 
 scope of Shakspere, I will say only that the 
 intellectual measure of every man since 
 born, in the domains of creative thought, 
 may be assigned to him, according to the 
 degree in which he has been taught by 
 Shakspere. Well, what do these two men, 
 centers of mortal intelligence, deliver to us 
 of conviction respecting what it most be- 
 hooves that intelligence to grasp? What is 
 their hope their crown of rejoicing? what 
 manner of exhortation have they for us, or 
 of rebuke? what lies next their own hearts, 
 157
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 and dictates their undying words? Have 
 they any peace to promise to our unrest 
 any redemption to our misery? 
 
 Take Homer first, and think if there is 
 any sadder image of human fate than the 
 great Homeric story. The main features 
 in the character of Achilles are its intense 
 desire of justice, and its tenderness of 
 affection. And in that bitter song of the 
 Iliad, this man, though aided continually by 
 the wisest of the gods, and burning with 
 the desire of justice in his heart, becomes 
 yet, through ill-governed passion, the most 
 unjust of men: and, full of the deepest 
 tenderness in his heart, becomes yet, 
 through ill-governed passion, the most cruel 
 of men. Intense alike in love and in friend- 
 ship, he loses, first his mistress, and then 
 his friend; for the sake of the one, he sur- 
 renders to death the armies of his own land; 
 for the sake of the other, he surrenders all. 
 Will a man lay down his life for his friend? 
 Yea even for his dead friend, this Achilles, 
 though goddess-born, and goddess-taught, 
 gives up his kingdom, his country, and his 
 life casts alike the innocent and guilty, 
 with himself, into one gulf of slaughter, 
 and dies at last by the hand of the basest 
 of his adversaries. 
 
 Is not this a mystery of life? 
 158
 
 THE MYSTERY OP LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 But what, then, is the message to us of 
 our own poet, and searcher of hearts, after 
 fifteen hundred years of Christian faith have 
 been numbered over the graves of men? 
 Are his words more cheerful than the 
 Heathen's is his hope more near his 
 trust more sure his reading of fate more 
 happy? Ah, no! He differs from the 
 Heathen poet chiefly in this that he recog- 
 nizes, for deliverance, no gods nigh at hand; 
 and that, by petty chance by momentary 
 folly by broken message by fooPs tyr- 
 annyor traitor's snare, the strongest and 
 most righteous are brought to their ruin, 
 and perish without word of hope. He in- 
 deed, as part of his rendering of character, 
 ascribes the power and modesty of habitual 
 devotion to the gentle and the just. The 
 death-bed of Katharine is bright with vi- 
 sions of angels; and the great soldier-king, 
 standing by his few dead, acknowledges the 
 presence of the Hand that can save alike 
 by many or by few. But observe that from 
 those who with deepest spirit, meditate, and 
 with deepest passion, mourn, there are no 
 such words as these; nor in their hearts are 
 any such consolations. Instead of the per- 
 petual sense of the helpful presence of the 
 Deity, which, through all heathen tradition, 
 is the source of heroic strength, in battle, 
 159
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 in exile, and in the valley of the shadow of 
 death, we find only in the great Christian 
 poet, the consciousness of a moral law, 
 through which "the gods are just, and of 
 our pleasant vices make instruments to 
 scourge us "; and of the resolved arbitration 
 of the destinies, that conclude into precision 
 of doom what we feebly and blindly began; 
 and force us, when our indiscretion serves 
 us, and our deepest plots do pall, to the con- 
 fession that " there 's a divinity that shapes 
 our ends, rough hew them how we will." 
 
 Is not this a mystery of life? 
 
 Be it so, then. About this human life 
 that is to be, or that is, the wise religious 
 men tell us nothing that we can trust; and 
 the wise contemplative men, nothing that 
 can give us peace. But there is yet a third 
 class, to whom we may turn the wise 
 practical men. We have sat at the feet of 
 the poets who sang of heaven, and they 
 have told us their dreams. We have lis- 
 tened to the poets who sang of earth, and 
 they have chanted to us dirges and words 
 of despair. But there is one class of men 
 more: men, not capable of vision, nor 
 sensitive to sorrow, but firm of purpose 
 practised in business; learned in all that 
 can be (by handling) known. Men whose 
 hearts and hopes are wholly in this present 
 160
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 world, from whom, therefore, we may surely 
 learn, at least, how, at present, conveniently 
 to live in it. What will they say to us, or 
 show us by example? These kings these 
 councilors these statesmen and builders 
 of kingdoms these capitalists and men of 
 business, who weigh the earth, and the 
 dust of it, in a balance. They know the 
 world, surely; and what is the mystery of 
 life to us, is none to them. They can surely 
 show us how to live, while we live, and to 
 gather out of the present world what is 
 best. 
 
 I think I can best tell you their answer, 
 by telling you a dream I had once. For 
 though I am no poet, I have dreams some- 
 times: I dreamed I was at a child's May- 
 day party, in which every means of enter- 
 tainment had been provided for them, by 
 a wise and kind host. It was in a stately 
 house, wi^h beautiful gardens attached to 
 it; and the children had been set free in the 
 rooms and gardens, with no care whatever 
 but how to pass their afternoon rejoicingly. 
 They did not, indeed, know much about 
 what was to happen next day; and some of 
 them, I thought, were a little frightened, 
 because there was a chance of their being 
 sent to a new school where there were ex- 
 aminations; but they kept the thoughts of 
 11 161
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 that out of their heads as well as they could, 
 and resolved to enjoy themselves. The 
 house, I said, was in a beautiful garden, and 
 in the garden were all kinds of flowers; 
 sweet, grassy banks for rest; and smooth 
 lawns for play; and pleasant streams and 
 woods; and rocky places for climbing. And 
 the children were happy for a little while, 
 but presently they separated themselves 
 into parties; and then each party declared 
 it would have a piece of the garden for its 
 own, and that none of the others should 
 have anything to do with that piece. Next, 
 they quarreled violently which pieces they 
 would have; and at last the boys took up 
 the thing, as boys should do, "practically," 
 and fought in the flower-beds till there was 
 hardly a flower left standing; then they 
 trampled down each other's bits of the gar- 
 den out of spite; and the girls cried till they 
 could cry no more; and so they all lay down 
 at last breathless in the ruin, and waited 
 for the time when they were to be taken 
 home in the evening. 1 
 
 Meanwhile, the children in the house had 
 been making themselves happy also in their 
 manner. For them, there had been pro- 
 
 1 I have sometimes been asked what this means. I in- 
 tended it to set forth the wisdom of men in war contending 
 for kingdoms, and what follows to set forth their wisdom in 
 peace, contending for wealth. 
 
 162
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 vided every kind of indoor pleasure: there 
 was music for them to dance to; and the 
 library was open, with all manner of amus- 
 ing books; and there was a museum full of 
 the most curious shells, and animals, and 
 birds; and there was a workshop, with lathes 
 and carpenters' tools, for the ingenious 
 boys; and there were pretty fantastic 
 dresses, for the girls to dress in; and there 
 were microscopes, and kaleidoscopes; and 
 whatever toys a child could fancy; and a 
 table, in the dining-room, loaded with every- 
 thing nice to eat. 
 
 But, in the midst of all this, it struck 
 two or three of the more "practical" chil- 
 dren that they would like some of the 
 brass-headed nails that studded the chairs; 
 and so they set to work to pull them out. 
 Presently, the others, who were reading, or 
 looking at shells, took a fancy to do the 
 like; and, in a little while, all the children, 
 nearly, were spraining their fingers, in pull- 
 ing out brass-headed nails. With all that 
 they could pull out, they were not satisfied; 
 and then, everybody wanted some of some- 
 body else's. And at last, the really practi- 
 cal and sensible ones declared that nothing 
 was of any real consequence, that afternoon, 
 except to get plenty of brass-headed nails; 
 and that the books, and the cakes, and the 
 163
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 microscopes were of no use at all in them- 
 selves, but only if they could be exchanged 
 for nail-heads. And at last they began to 
 fight for nail-heads, as the others fought 
 for the bits of garden. Only here and there, 
 a despised one shrank away into a corner, 
 and tried to get a little quiet with a book, 
 in the midst of the noise; but all the 
 practical ones thought of nothing else but 
 counting nail-heads all the afternoon even 
 though they knew they would not be al- 
 lowed to carry so much as one brass knob 
 away with them. But no it was "Who 
 has most nails? I have a hundred, and you 
 have fifty; or, I have a thousand, and you 
 have two. I must have as many as you be- 
 fore I leave the house, or I cannot possibly 
 go home in peace." At last they made so 
 much noise that I awoke, and thought to 
 myself, "What a false dream that is, of 
 children ! " The child is the father of the 
 man, and wiser. Children never do such 
 foolish things. Only men do. 
 
 But there is yet one last class of persons 
 to be interrogated. The wise religious men 
 we have asked in vain; the wise contem- 
 plative men, in vain; the wise worldly men, 
 in vain. But there is another group yet. 
 In the midst of this vanity of empty religion 
 of tragic contemplation of wrathful and 
 164
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 wretched ambition, and dispute for dust, 
 there is yet one great group of persons, by 
 whom all these disputers live the persons 
 who have determined, or have had it by a 
 beneficent Providence determined for them, 
 that they will do something useful; that 
 whatever may be prepared for them here- 
 after, or happen to them here, they will, at 
 least, deserve the food that God gives them 
 by winning it honorably: and that, however 
 fallen from the purity, or far from the 
 peace, of Eden, they will carry out the duty 
 of human dominion, though they have lost 
 its felicity; and dress and keep the wilder- 
 ness, though they no more can dress or 
 keep the garden. 
 
 These, hewers of wood, and drawers of 
 water, these, bent under burdens, or torn 
 of scourges these, that dig and weave- 
 that plant and build; workers in wood, and 
 in marble, and in iron by whom all food, 
 clothing, habitation, furniture, and means 
 of delight are produced, for themselves, and 
 for all men beside; men, whose deeds are 
 good, though their words may be few; men, 
 whose lives are serviceable, be they never 
 so short, and worthy of honor, be they 
 never so humble; from these, surely, at 
 least, we may receive some clear mes- 
 sage of teaching; and pierce, for an in- 
 165
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 stant, into the mystery of life, and of its 
 arts. 
 
 Yes; from these, at last, we do receive a 
 lesson. But I grieve to say, or rather for 
 that is the deeper truth of the matter I 
 rejoice to say this message of theirs can 
 only be received by joining them not by 
 thinking about them. 
 
 You sent for me to talk to you of art; and 
 I have obeyed you in coming. But the main 
 thing I have to tell you is, that art must 
 not be talked about. The fact that there 
 is talk about it at all, signifies that it is ill 
 done, or cannot be done. No true painter 
 ever speaks, or ever has spoken, much of 
 his art. The greatest speak nothing. Even 
 Reynolds is no exception, for he wrote of 
 all that he could not himself do, and was 
 utterly silent respecting all that he himself 
 did. 
 
 The moment a man can really do his work 
 he becomes speechless about it. All words 
 become idle to him all theories. 
 
 Does a bird need to theorize about build- 
 ing its nest, or boast of it when built? All 
 good work is essentially done that way 
 without hesitation, without difficulty, with- 
 out boasting; and in the doers of the best, 
 there is an inner and involuntary power 
 which approximates literally to the instinct 
 166
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 of an animal nay, I am certain that in the 
 most perfect human artists, reason does 
 not supersede instinct, but is added to an 
 instinct as much more divine than that of 
 the lower animals as the human body is 
 more beautiful than theirs; that a great 
 singer sings not with less instinct than the 
 nightingale, but with more only more va- 
 rious, applicable, and governable; that a 
 great architect does not build with less in- 
 stinct than the beaver or the bee, but with 
 more with an innate cunning of propor- 
 tion that embraces all beauty, and a divine 
 ingenuity o'f skill that improvises all con- 
 struction. But be that as it may be the 
 instinct less or more than that of inferior 
 animals like or unlike theirs, still the hu- 
 man art is dependent on that first, and 
 then upon an amount of practice, of science, 
 and of imagination disciplined by thought, 
 which the true possessor of it knows to be 
 incommunicable, and the true critic of it, 
 inexplicable, except through long process 
 of laborious years. That journey of life's 
 conquest, in which hills over hills, and Alps 
 on Alps arose, and sank, do you think you 
 can make another trace it painlessly, by 
 talking? Why, you cannot even carry us 
 up an Alp, by talking. You can guide us 
 up it, step by step, no otherwise even so, 
 167
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 best silently. You girls, who have been 
 among the hills, know how the bad guide 
 chatters and gesticulates, and it is "Put 
 your foot here"; and "Mind how you bal- 
 ance yourself there "; but the good guide 
 walks on quietly, without a word, only with 
 his eyes on you when need is, and his arm 
 like an iron bar, if need be. 
 
 In that slow way, also, art can be taught 
 if you have faith in your guide, and will 
 let his arm be to you as an iron bar when 
 need is. But in what teacher of art have 
 you such faith? Certainly not in me; for, 
 as I told you at first, I know well enough it 
 is only because you think I can talk, not 
 because you think I know my business, that 
 you let me speak to you at all. If I were 
 to tell you anything that seemed to you 
 strange you would not believe it, and yet it 
 would only be in telling you strange things 
 that I could be of use to you. I could be of 
 great use to you infinite use with brief 
 saying, if you would believe it; but you 
 would not, just because the thing that 
 would be of real use would displease you. 
 You are all wild, for instance, with admira- 
 tion of Gustave Dore*. Well, suppose I were 
 to tell you, in the strongest terms I could 
 use, that Gustave Dore"'s art was bad bad, 
 not in weakness, not in failure, but bad 
 168
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 with dreadful power the power of the 
 Furies and the Harpies mingled, enraging, 
 and polluting; that so long as you looked at 
 it, no perception of pure or beautiful art 
 was possible for you. Suppose I were to 
 tell you that! What would be the use? 
 Would you look at Gustave Dore less? 
 Rather, more, I fancy. On the other hand, 
 I could soon put you into good humor with 
 me, if I chose. I know well enough what 
 you like, and how to praise it to your bet- 
 ter liking. I could talk to you about moon- 
 light, and twilight, and spring flowers, and 
 autumn leaves, and the Madonnas of Ra- 
 phaelhow motherly! and the Sibyls of 
 Michelangelo how majestic! and the 
 Saints of Angelico how pious! and the 
 Cherubs of Correggio how delicious! Old 
 as I am, I could play you a tune on the 
 harp yet, that you would dance to. But 
 neither you nor I should be a bit the better 
 or wiser; or, if we were, our increased wis- 
 dom could be of no practical effect. For, 
 indeed, the arts, as regards teachableness, 
 differ from the sciences also in this, that 
 their power is founded not merely on facts 
 which can be communicated, but on dis- 
 positions which require to be created. Art 
 is neither to be achieved by effort of think- 
 ing, nor explained by accuracy of speaking. 
 169
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 It is the instinctive and necessary result of 
 power, which can only be developed through 
 the mind of successive generations, and 
 which finally bursts into life under social 
 conditions as slow of growth as the facul- 
 ties they regulate. Whole eras of mighty 
 history are summed, and the passions of 
 dead myraids are concentrated, in the ex- 
 istence of a noble art; and if that noble art 
 were among us, we should feel it and re- 
 joice; not caring in the least to hear lec- 
 tures on it; and since it is not among us, be 
 assured we have to go back to the root of 
 it, or, at least, to the place where the stock 
 of it is yet alive, and the branches began to 
 die. 
 
 And now, may I have your pardon for 
 pointing out, partly with reference to mat- 
 ters which are at this time of greater mo- 
 ment than the arts that if we undertook 
 such recession to the vital germ of national 
 arts that have decayed, we should find a 
 more singular arrest of their power in Ire- 
 land than in any other European country? 
 For in the eighth century Ireland possessed 
 a school of art in her manuscripts and 
 sculpture, which, in many of its qualities 
 apparently in all essential qualities of deco- 
 rative invention was quite without rival; 
 seeming as if it might have advanced to the 
 170
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 highest triumphs in architecture and in 
 painting. But there was one fatal flaw in 
 its nature, hy which it was stayed, and 
 stayed with a conspicuousness of pause to 
 which there is no parallel: so that, long ago, 
 in tracing the progress of European schools 
 from infancy to strength, I chose for the 
 students of Kensington, in a lecture since 
 published, two characteristic examples of 
 early art, of equal skill; hut in the one case, 
 skill which was progressive in the other, 
 skill which was at pause. In the one case, 
 it was work receptive of correction hun- 
 gry for correction; and in the other, work 
 which inherently rejected correction. I 
 chose for them a corrigible Eve, and an 
 incorrigible Angel, and I grieve to say that 
 the incorrigible Angel was also an Irish 
 Angel! 1 
 
 And the fatal difference lay wholly in this. 
 In both pieces of art there was an equal 
 falling short of the needs of fact; but the 
 Lombardic Eve knew she was in the wrong, 
 and the Irish Angel thought himself all 
 right. The eager Lombardic sculptor, 
 though firmly insisting on his childish idea, 
 yet showed in the irregular broken touches 
 of the features, and the imperfect struggle 
 for softer lines in the form, a perception of 
 
 i See " The Two Paths," g 28 et seq. 
 171
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 beauty and law that he could not render; 
 there was the strain of effort, under con- 
 scious imperfection, in every line. But the 
 Irish missal-painter had drawn his angel 
 with no sense of failure, in happy compla- 
 cency, and put red dots into the palm of 
 each hand, and rounded the eyes into per- 
 fect circles, and, I regret to say, left the 
 mouth out altogether, with perfect satis- 
 faction to himself. 
 
 May I without offense ask you to con- 
 sider whether this mode of arrest in ancient 
 Irish art may not be indicative of points of 
 character which even yet, in some measure, 
 arrest your national power? I have seen 
 much of Irish character, and have watched 
 it closely, for I have also much loved it. 
 And I think the form of failure to which it is 
 most liable is this, that being generous- 
 hearted, and wholly intending always to do 
 right, it does not attend to the external 
 laws of right, but thinks it must necessarily 
 do right because it means to do so, and 
 therefore does wrong without finding it 
 out; and then, when the consequences of its 
 wrong come upon it, or upon others con- 
 nected with it, it cannot conceive that the 
 wrong is in any wise of its causing or of its 
 doing, but flies into wrath, and a strange 
 agony of desire for justice, as feeling itself 
 172
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 wholly innocent, which leads it farther 
 astray, until there is nothing that it is not 
 capable of doing with a good conscience. 
 
 But mind, I do not mean to say that, in 
 past or present relations between Ireland 
 and England, you have been wrong, and we 
 right. Far from that, I believe that in all 
 great questions of principle, and in all de- 
 tails of administration of law, you have been 
 usually right, and we wrong; sometimes in 
 misunderstanding you, sometimes in reso- 
 lute iniquity to you. Nevertheless, in all 
 disputes between states, though the 
 stronger is nearly always mainly in the 
 wrong, the weaker is often so in a minor 
 degree; and I think we sometimes admit 
 the possibility of our being in error, and 
 you never do. 
 
 And now, returning to the broader ques- 
 tion, what these arts and labors of life have 
 to teach us of its mystery, this is the first 
 of their lessons that the more beautiful 
 the art, the more it is essentially the work 
 of people who feel themselves wrong; who 
 are striving for the fulfilment of a law, and 
 the grasp of a loveliness, which they have 
 not yet attained, which they feel even far- 
 ther and farther from attaining the more 
 they strive for it. And yet, in still deeper 
 sense, it is the work of people who know 
 173
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 also that they are right. The very sense of 
 inevitable error from their purpose marks 
 the perfectness of that purpose, and the 
 continued sense of failure arises from the 
 continued opening of the eyes more clearly 
 to all the sacredest laws of truth. 
 
 This is one lesson. The second is a very 
 plain, and greatly precious one: namely 
 that whenever the arts and labors of life 
 are fulfilled in this spirit of striving against 
 misrule, and doing whatever we have to do, 
 honorably and perfectly, they invariably 
 bring happiness, as much as seems possible 
 to the nature of man. In all other paths by 
 which that happiness is pursued there is 
 disappointment, or destruction: for ambi- 
 tion and for passion there is no rest no 
 fruition; the fairest pleasures of youth per- 
 ish in a darkness greater than their past 
 light: and the loftiest and purest love too 
 often does but inflame the cloud of life with 
 endless fire of pain. But, ascending from 
 lowest to highest, through every scale of 
 human industry, that industry, worthily fol- 
 lowed, gives peace. Ask the laborer in the 
 field, at the forge, or in the mine; ask 
 the patient, delicate-fingered artizan, or 
 the strong-armed, fiery-hearted worker in 
 bronze, and in marble, and with the colors 
 of light; and none of these, who are true 
 174
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 \ 
 
 workmen, will ever tell you that they have 
 found the law of heaven an unkind one 
 that in the sweat of their face they should 
 eat bread, till they return to the ground; 
 nor that they ever found it an unrewarded 
 obedience, if, indeed, it was rendered faith- 
 fully to the command "Whatsoever thy 
 hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." 
 
 These are the two great and constant 
 lessons which our laborers teach us of the 
 mystery of life. But there is another, and 
 a sadder one, which they cannot teach us, 
 which we must read on their tombstones. 
 
 "Do it with thy might." There have 
 been myriads upon myriads of human crea- 
 tures who have obeyed this law who have 
 put every breath and nerve of their being 
 into its toil who have devoted every hour, 
 and exhausted every faculty who have be- 
 queathed their unaccomplished thoughts at 
 death who, being dead, have yet spoken, 
 by majesty of memory, and strength of ex- 
 ample. And, at last, what has all this 
 " Might " of humanity accomplished, in six 
 thousand years of labor and sorrow? What 
 has it done ? Take the three chief occupa- 
 tions and arts of men, one by one, and count 
 their achievements. Begin with the first 
 the lord of them all Agriculture. Six 
 thousand years have passed since we were 
 175
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 set to till the ground, from which we were 
 taken. How much of it is tilled? How 
 much of that which is, wisely or well? In 
 the very center and chief garden of Europe 
 where the two forms of parent Christi- 
 anity have had their fortresses where the 
 noble Catholics of the Forest Cantons, and 
 the noble Protestants of the Vaudois val- 
 leys, have maintained, for dateless ages, 
 their faiths and liberties there the un- 
 checked Alpine rivers yet run wild in dev- 
 astation; and the marshes, which a few 
 hundred men could redeem with a year's 
 labor, still blast their helpless inhabitants 
 into fevered idiotism. That is so, in the 
 center of Europe! While, on the near coast 
 of Africa, once the Garden of the Hesperi- 
 des, an Arab woman, but a few sunsets 
 since, ate her child, for famine. And, with 
 all the treasures of the East at our feet, 
 we, in our own dominion, could not find a 
 few grains of rice, for a people that asked 
 of us no more; but stood by, and saw five 
 hundred thousand of them perish of hun- 
 ger. 
 
 Then, after agriculture, the art of kings, 
 take the next head of human arts Weav- 
 ing; the art of queens, honored of all noble 
 Heathen women, in the person of their vir- 
 gin goddess honored of all Hebrew women, 
 176
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 by the word of their wisest king "She 
 layeth her hands to the spindle, and her 
 hands hold the distaff. She stretcheth out 
 her hand to the poor. She is not afraid of 
 the snow for her household: for all her 
 household are clothed with scarlet. She 
 maketh herself covering of tapestry; her 
 clothing is silk and purple. She maketh fine 
 linen, and selleth it; and delivereth girdles 
 to the merchant." What have we done in 
 all these thousands of years with this bright 
 art of Greek maid and Christian matron? 
 Six thousand years of weaving, and have we 
 learned to weave? Might not every naked 
 wall have been purple with tapestry, and 
 every feeble breast fenced with sweet colors 
 from the cold? What have we done? Our 
 fingers are too few, it seems, to twist to- 
 gether some poor covering for our bodies. 
 We set our streams to work for us, and 
 choke the air with fire, to turn our spin- 
 ning-wheels and, are we yet clothed? Are 
 not the streets of the capitals of Europe 
 foul with sale of cast clouts and rotten rags? 
 Is not the beauty of your sweet children 
 left in wretchedness of disgrace, while, with 
 better honor, nature clothes the brood of 
 the bird in its nest, and the suckling of 
 the wolf in her den? And does not every 
 winter's snow robe what you have not 
 
 12
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 robed, and shroud what you have not 
 shrouded; and every winter's wind bear up 
 to heaven its wasted souls, to witness 
 against you hereafter, by the voice of their 
 Christ, "I was naked, and ye clothed me 
 not"? 
 
 Lastly take the Art of Building the 
 strongest proudest most orderly most 
 enduring of the arts of man; that of which 
 the produce is in the surest manner ac- 
 cumulative, and need not perish, or be re- 
 placed; but if once well done, will stand 
 more strongly than the unbalanced rocks- 
 more prevalently than the crumbling hills. 
 The art which is associated with all civic 
 pride and sacred principle; with which men 
 record their power satisfy their enthusi- 
 asmmake sure their defense define and 
 make dear their habitation. And in six 
 thousand years of building, what have we 
 done? Of the greater part of all that skill 
 and strength, no vestige is left, but fallen 
 stones, that encumber the fields and im- 
 pede the streams. But, from this waste of 
 disorder, and of time, and of rage, what is 
 left to us? Constructive and progressive 
 creatures that we are, with ruling brains, 
 and forming hands, capable of fellowship, 
 and thirsting for fame, can we not contend, 
 in comfort, with the insects of the forest, 
 178
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 or, in achievement, with the worm of the 
 sea? The white surf rages in vain against 
 the ramparts built by poor atoms of scarcely 
 nascent life; but only ridges of formless 
 ruin mark the places where once dwelt 
 our noblest multitudes. The ant and the 
 moth have cells for each of their young, 
 but our little ones lie in festering heaps, 
 in homes that consume them like graves; 
 and night by night, from the corners of 
 our streets, rises up the cry of the home- 
 less "I was a stranger, and ye took me 
 not in." 
 
 Must it be always thus? Is our life for- 
 ever to be without profit without posses- 
 sion? Shall the strength of its generations 
 be as barren as death; or cast away their 
 labor, as the wild fig-tree casts her untimely 
 figs? Is it all a dream then, the desire of 
 the eyes and the pride of life, or, if it be, 
 might we not live in nobler dream than 
 this? The poets and prophets, the wise 
 men, and the scribes, though they have told 
 us nothing about a life to come, have told 
 us much about the life that is now. They 
 have had they also their dreams, and we 
 have laughed at them. They have dreamed 
 of mercy, and of justice; they have dreamed 
 of peace and good will; they have dreamed 
 of labor undisappointed, and of rest undis- 
 179
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 turbed; they have dreamed of fullness in 
 harvest, and overflowing in store; they 
 have dreamed of wisdom in council, and of 
 providence in law; of gladness of parents, 
 and strength of children, and glory of gray 
 hairs. And at these visions of theirs we 
 have mocked, and held them for idle and 
 vain, unreal and unaccomplishable. What 
 have we accomplished with our realities? 
 Is this what has come of our worldly wis- 
 dom, tried against their folly? this, our 
 mightiest possible, against their impotent 
 ideal? or, have we only wandered among 
 the spectra of a baser felicity, and chased 
 phantoms of the tombs, instead of visions 
 of the Almighty; and walked after the ima- 
 ginations of our evil hearts, instead of after 
 the counsels of Eternity, until our lives 
 not in the likeness of the cloud of heaven, 
 but of the smoke of hell have become "as 
 a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, 
 and then vanisheth away"? 
 
 Does it vanish then? Are you sure of 
 that? sure that the nothingness of the 
 grave will be a rest from this troubled 
 nothingness; and that the coiling shadow, 
 which disquiets itself in vain, cannot change 
 into the smoke of the torment that ascends 
 forever? Will any answer that they are 
 sure of it, and that there is no fear, nor 
 180
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 hope, nor desire, nor labor, whither they 
 go? Be it so: will you not, then, make as 
 sure of the Life that now is, as you are of 
 the Death that is to come? Your hearts 
 are wholly in this world will you not give 
 them to it wisely, as well as perfectly ? And 
 see, first of all, that you have hearts, and 
 sound hearts, too, to give. Because you 
 have no heaven to look for, is that any rea- 
 son that you should remain ignorant of this 
 wonderful and infinite earth, which is firmly 
 and instantly given you in possession? Al- 
 though your days are numbered, and the fol- 
 lowing darkness sure, is it necessary that 
 you should share the degradation of the 
 brute, because you are condemned to its 
 mortality; or live the life of the moth, and 
 of the worm, because you are to companion 
 them in the dust? Not so; we may have 
 but a few thousands of days to spend, per- 
 haps hundreds only perhaps tens; nay, 
 the longest of our time and best, looked 
 back on, will be but as a moment, as the 
 twinkling of an eye; still we are men, not 
 insects; we are living spirits, not passing 
 clouds. " He maketh the winds His mes- 
 sengers; the momentary fire, His minis- 
 ter "; and shall we do less than these ? Let 
 us do the work of men while we bear the 
 form of them; and, as we snatch our nar- 
 181
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 row portion of time out of Eternity, snatch 
 also our narrow inheritance of passion out 
 of Immortality even though our lives be 
 as a vapor, that appeareth for a little time, 
 and then vanisheth away. 
 
 But there are some of you who believe 
 not this who think this cloud of life has 
 no such close that it is to float, revealed 
 and illumined, upon the floor of heaven, in 
 the day when He cometh with clouds, and 
 every eye shall see Him. Some day, you 
 believe, within these five, or ten, or twenty 
 years, for every one of us the judgment will 
 be set, and the books opened. If that be 
 true, far more than that must be true. Is 
 there but one day of judgment? Why, for 
 us every day is a day of judgment every 
 day is a Dies Irae, and writes its irrevocable 
 verdict in the flame of its West. Think you 
 that judgment waits till the doors of the 
 grave are opened? It waits at the doors of 
 your houses it waits at the corners of 
 your streets; we are in the midst of judg- 
 mentthe insects that we crush are our 
 judges the moments we fret away are our 
 judges the elements that feed us, judge, 
 as they minister and the pleasures that 
 deceive us, judge, as they indulge. Let us, 
 for our lives, do the work of Men while 
 we bear the form of them, if indeed those 
 182
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 lives are Not as a vapor, and do Not vanish 
 away. 
 
 "The work of men" and what is that? 
 Well, we may any of us know very quickly, 
 on the condition of being wholly ready to 
 do it. But many of us are for the most 
 part thinking, not of what we are to do, 
 but of what we are to get; and the best of 
 us are sunk into the sin of Ananias, and it 
 is a mortal one we want to keep back part 
 of the price; and we continually talk of tak- 
 ing up our cross, as if the only harm in a 
 cross was the weight of it as if it was only 
 a thing to be carried, instead of to be 
 crucified upon. "They that are His have 
 crucified the flesh with the affections and 
 lusts." Does that mean, think you, that in 
 time of national distress, of religious trial, 
 of crisis for every interest and hope of 
 humanity none of us will cease jesting, 
 none cease idling, none put themselves to 
 any wholesome work^none take so much as 
 a tag of lace off their footmen's coats, to , 
 
 save the world? Or does it rather mean, 
 that they are ready to leave houses, lands, 
 and kindreds yes, and life, if need be? 
 Life! some of us are ready enough to 
 throw that away, joyless as we have made 
 it. But "station in Life "how many of us 
 are ready to quit that ? Is it not always the 
 183
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 great objection, where there is question of 
 finding something useful to do "We can- 
 not leave our stations in Life "? 
 
 Those of us who really cannot that is to 
 say, who can only maintain themselves by 
 continuing in some business or salaried 
 office, have already something to do; and 
 all that they have to see to is that they do 
 it honestly and with all their might. But 
 with most people who use that apology, 
 "remaining in the station of life to which 
 Providence has called them " means keeping 
 all the carriages, and all the footmen and 
 large houses they can possibly pay for; and, 
 once for all, I say that if ever Providence 
 did put them into stations of that sort 
 which is not at all a matter of certainty- 
 Providence is just now very distinctly call- 
 ing them out again. Levi's station in life 
 was the receipt of custom; and Peter's, the 
 shore of Galilee; and Paul's, the antecham- 
 bers of the High Priest, which "station 
 in life " each had to leave, with brief notice. 
 
 And, whatever our station in life may be, 
 at this crisis, those of us who mean to fulfil 
 our duty ought first to live on as little as 
 we can; and, secondly, to do all the whole- 
 some work for it we can, and to spend all 
 we can spare in doing all the sure good we 
 can. 
 
 184
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 And sure good is, first in feeding people, 
 then in dressing people, then in lodging 
 people, and lastly in rightly pleasing people, 
 with arts, or sciences, or any other subject 
 of thought. 
 
 I say first in feeding; and, once for all, do 
 not let yourselves be deceived by any of the 
 common talk of "indiscriminate charity." 
 The order to us is not to feed the deserving 
 hungry, nor the industrious hungry, nor 
 the amiable and well-intentioned hungry, 
 but simply to feed the hungry. It is quite 
 true, infallibly true, that if any man will 
 not work, neither should he eat think of 
 that, and every time you sit down to your 
 dinner, ladies and gentlemen, say solemnly, 
 before you ask a blessing, " How much work 
 have I done to-day for my dinner?" But 
 the proper way to enforce that order on 
 those below you, as well as on yourselves, 
 is not to leave vagabonds and honest peo- 
 ple to starve together, but very distinctly 
 to discern and seize your vagabond; and 
 shut your vagabond up out of honest peo- 
 ple's way, and very sternly then see that, 
 until he has worked, he does not eat. But 
 the first thing is to be sure you have the 
 food to give; and, therefore, to enforce the 
 organization of vast activities in agriculture 
 and in commerce, for the production of the 
 185
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 wholesomest food, and proper storing and 
 distribution of it, so that no famine shall 
 any more be possible among civilized beings. 
 There is plenty of work in this business 
 alone, and at once, for any number of peo- 
 ple who like to engage in it. 
 
 Secondly, dressing people that is to say, 
 urging every one within reach of your in- 
 fluence to be always neat and clean, and 
 giving them means of being so. In so far 
 as they absolutely refuse, you must give up 
 the effort with respect to them, only taking 
 care that no children within your sphere of 
 influence shall any more be brought up with 
 such habits; and that every person who is 
 willing to dress with propriety shall have 
 encouragement to do so. And the first ab- 
 solutely necessary step toward this is the 
 gradual adoption of a consistent dress for 
 different ranks of persons, so that their 
 rank shall be known by their dress; and the 
 restriction of the changes of fashion within 
 certain limits. All which appears for the 
 present quite impossible; but it is only so 
 far even difficult as it is difficult to conquer 
 our vanity, frivolity, and desire to appear 
 what we are not. And it is not, nor ever 
 shall be, creed of mine, that these mean and 
 shallow vices are unconquerable by Chris- 
 tian women. 
 
 186
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 And then, thirdly, lodging people, which 
 you may think should have been put first, 
 but I put it third, because we must feed and 
 clothe people where we find them, and lodge 
 them afterwards. And providing lodgment 
 for them means a great deal of vigorous 
 legislature, and cutting down of vested in- 
 terests that stand in the way, and after 
 that, or before that, so far as we can get it, 
 thorough sanitary and remedial action in 
 the houses that we have; and then the 
 building of more, strongly, beautifully, and 
 in groups of limited extent, kept in propor- 
 tion to their streams, and walled round, so 
 that there may be no festering and wretched 
 suburb anywhere, but clean and busy street 
 within, and the open country without, with 
 a belt of beautiful garden and orchard 
 round the walls, so that from any part of the 
 city perfectly fresh air and grass, and sight 
 of far horizon, might be reachable in a few 
 minutes' walk. This the final aim; but in 
 immediate action every minor and possible 
 good to be instantly done, when, and as, we 
 can; roofs mended that have holes in them 
 fences patched that have gaps in them 
 walls buttressed that totter and floors 
 propped that shake; cleanliness and order 
 enforced with our own hands and eyes, till 
 we are breathless, every day. And all the 
 187
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 fine arts will healthily follow. I myself 
 have washed a flight of stone stairs all 
 down, with bucket and broom, in a Savoy 
 inn, where they had n't washed their stairs 
 since they first went up them; and I never 
 made a better sketch than that afternoon. 
 These, then, are the three first needs of 
 civilized life; and the law for every Chris- 
 tian man and woman is that they shall be 
 in direct service towards one of these three 
 needs, as far as is consistent with their 
 own special occupation, and if they have no 
 special business, then wholly in one of these 
 services. And out of such exertion in plain 
 duty all other good will come; for in this 
 direct contention with material evil, you 
 will find out the real nature of all evil ; you 
 will discern by the various kinds of resis- 
 tance, what is really the fault and main 
 antagonism to good; also you will find the 
 most unexpected helps and profound les- 
 sons given, and truths will come thus down 
 to us which the speculation of all our lives 
 would never have raised us up to. You 
 will find nearly every educational problem 
 solved, as soon as you truly want to do 
 something; everybody will become of use in 
 their own fittest way, and will learn what 
 is best for them to know in that use. Com- 
 petitive examination will then, and not till 
 188
 
 THE MYSTERY OP LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 then, be wholesome, because it will be daily, 
 and calm, and in practice; and on these 
 familiar arts, and minute, but certain and 
 serviceable knowledges, will be surely edified 
 and sustained the greater arts and splendid 
 theoretical sciences. 
 
 But much more than this. On such holy 
 and simple practice will be founded, indeed, 
 at last, an infallible religion. The greatest 
 of all the mysteries of life, and the most 
 terrible, is the corruption of even the sin- 
 cerest religion, which is not daily founded 
 on rational, effective, humble, and helpful 
 action. Helpful action, observe! for there 
 is just one law, which, obeyed, keeps all 
 religions pure forgotten, makes them all 
 false. Whenever in any religious faith, dark 
 or bright, we allow our minds to dwell upon 
 the points in which we differ from other 
 people, we are wrong, and in the devil's 
 power. That is 'the essence of the Phari- 
 see's thanksgiving "Lord, I thank Thee, 
 that I am not as other men are." At every 
 moment of our lives we should be trying to 
 find out, not in what we differ from other 
 people, but in what we agree with them; 
 and the moment we find we can agree as to 
 anything that should be done, kind or good 
 (and who but fools could n't?), then do it; 
 push at it together: you can't quarrel in a 
 189
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 \. side-by-side push; but the moment that 
 even the best men stop pushing, and begin 
 talking, they mistake their pugnacity for 
 piety, and it 's all over. I will not speak of 
 the crimes which in past times have been 
 committed in the name of Christ, nor of 
 the follies which are at this hour held to be 
 consistent with obedience to Him; but I 
 mill speak of the morbid corruption and 
 waste of vital power in religious sentiment, 
 by which the pure strength of that which 
 should be the guiding soul of every nation, 
 the splendor of its youthful manhood, and 
 spotless light of its maidenhood, is averted 
 or cast away. You may see continually 
 girls who have never been taught to do a 
 single useful thing thoroughly; who cannot 
 sew, who cannot cook, who cannot cast an 
 account, nor prepare a medicine, whose 
 whole life has been passed either in play or 
 in pride; you will find girls like these, when 
 they are earnest-hearted, cast all their in- 
 nate passion of religious spirit, which was 
 meant by God to support them through the 
 irksomeness of daily toil, into grievous and 
 vain meditation over the meaning of the 
 great Book, of which no syllable was ever 
 yet to be understood but through a deed; 
 all the instinctive wisdom and mercy of 
 their womanhood made vain, and the glory 
 190
 
 THE MYSTERY OF LIFE AND ITS ARTS 
 
 of their pure consciences warped into fruit- 
 less agony concerning questions which the 
 laws of common serviceable life would have 
 either solved for them in an instant, or kept 
 out of their way. Give such a girl any true 
 work that will make her active in the dawn, 
 and weary at night, with the consciousness 
 that her fellow-creatures have indeed been 
 the better for her day, and the powerless 
 sorrow of her enthusiasm will transform 
 itself into a majesty of radiant and benefi- 
 cent peace. 
 
 So with our youths. We once taught 
 them to make Latin verses, and called them 
 educated; now we teach them to leap and 
 to row, to hit a ball with a bat, and call 
 them educated. Can they plow, can they 
 sow, can they plant at the right time, or 
 build with a steady hand? Is it the effort 
 of their lives to be chaste, knightly, faith- 
 ful, holy in thought, lovely in word and 
 deed? Indeed it is, with some, nay, with 
 many, and the strength of England is in 
 them, and the hope; but we have to turn 
 their courage from the toil of war to the 
 toil of mercy; and their intellect from dis- 
 pute of words to discernment of things; 
 and their knighthood from the errantry 
 of adventure to the state and fidelity of 
 a kingly power. And then, indeed, shall 
 191
 
 SESAME AND LILIES 
 
 abide, for them and for us, an incorruptible 
 felicity, and an infallible religion; shall abide 
 for us Faith, no more to be assailed by 
 temptation, no more to be defended by 
 wrath and by fear; shall abide with us 
 Hope, no more to be quenched by the years 
 that overwhelm, or made ashamed by the 
 shadows that betray: shall abide for us, 
 and with us, the greatest of these; the 
 abiding will, the abiding name of our Father. 
 For the greatest of these is Charity. 
 
 192
 
 THE CROWN OP WILD OLIVE 
 
 13
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 TWENTY years ago, there was no lovelier 
 piece of lowland scenery in South England, 
 nor any more pathetic, in the world, by its 
 expression of sweet human character and life, 
 than that immediately bordering on the sources 
 of the Wandel, and including the low moors of 
 Addington, and the villages of Beddington and 
 Carshalton, with all their pools and streams. 
 No clearer or diviner waters ever sang with con- 
 stant lips of the hand which "giveth rain from 
 heaven"; no pastures ever lightened in spring- 
 time with more passionate blossoming ; no sweeter 
 homes ever hallowed the heart of the passer-by 
 with their pride of peaceful gladness, fain- 
 hidden yet full-confessed. The place remains 
 (1870) nearly unchanged in its larger features; 
 but with deliberate mind I say that I have never 
 seen anything so ghastly in its inner tragic mean- 
 ing, not in Pisan Maremma, not by Campagna 
 tomb, not by the sand-isles of the Torcellan 
 shore, as the slow stealing of aspects of reck- 
 less, indolent, animal neglect, over the delicate 
 
 ' Called the " Preface " in former editions ; it is one of my 
 bad habits to put half my books into preface. Of this one, 
 the only prefatory thing I have to say is that most of the con- 
 tents are stated more fully in my other volumes ; but here 
 are put in what, at least, I meant to be a more popular form, 
 all but this introduction, which was written very carefully to 
 be read, not spoken, and the last lecture on the Future of 
 England, with which, and the following notes on it, I have 
 taken extreme pains. 
 
 195
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 sweetness of that English scene : nor is any blas- 
 phemy or impiety, any frantic saying, or god- 
 less thought, more appalling to me, using the 
 best power of judgment I have to discern its sense 
 and scope, than the insolent defiling of those 
 springs by the human herds that drink of them. 
 Just where the welling of stainless water, trem- 
 bling and pure, like a body of light, enters the 
 pool of Carshalton, cutting itself a radiant chan- 
 nel down to the gravel, through warp of feathery 
 weeds, all waving, which it traverses with its 
 deep threads of clearness, like the chalcedony 
 in moss-agate, starred here and there with the 
 white grenouillette ; just in the very rush and 
 murmur of the first spreading currents, the 
 human wretches of the place cast their street 
 and house foulness ; heaps of dust and slime, and 
 broken shreds of old metal, and rags of putrid 
 clothes; which, having neither energy to cart 
 away, nor decency enough to dig into the ground, 
 they thus shed into the stream, to diffuse what 
 venom of it will float and melt, far away, in all 
 places where God meant those waters to bring 
 joy and health. And, in a little pool behind 
 some houses farther in the village, where another 
 spring rises, the shattered stones of the well, and 
 of the little fretted channel which was long ago 
 built and traced for it by gentler hands, lie scat- 
 tered, each from each, under a ragged bank of 
 mortar, and scoria, and bricklayer's refuse, on 
 one side, which the clean water nevertheless 
 chastises to purity ; but it cannot conquer the 
 dead earth beyond : and there, circled and coiled 
 under festering scum, the stagnant edge of the 
 pool effaces itself into a slope of black slime, the 
 accumulation of indolent years. Half a dozen 
 
 1%
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 men with one day's work could cleanse those 
 pools, and trim the flowers about their banks, 
 and make every breath of summer air above 
 them rich with cool balm, and every glittering 
 wave medicinal, as if it ran, troubled only of 
 angels, from the porch of Bethesda. But that 
 day's work is never given, nor, I suppose, will 
 be ; nor will any joy be possible to heart of man, 
 forevermore, about those wells of English waters. 
 When I last left them, I walked up slowly 
 through the back streets of Croydon, from the 
 old church to the hospital ; and, just on the left, 
 before coming up to the crossing of the High 
 Street, there was a new public house built. And 
 the front of it was built in so wise manner that a 
 recess of two feet was left below its front win- 
 dows, between them and the street-pavement ; a 
 recess too narrow for any possible use (for even 
 if it had been occupied by a seat, as in old time 
 it might have been, everybody walking along 
 the street would have fallen over the legs of the 
 reposing wayfarer). But, by way of making this 
 two feet depth of freehold land more expressive 
 of the dignity of an establishment for the sale of 
 spirituous liquors, it was fenced from the pave- 
 ment by an imposing iron railing, having four or 
 five spear-heads to the yard of it, and six feet 
 high ; containing as much iron and ironwork, 
 indeed, as could well be put into the space ; and 
 by this stately arrangement, the little piece of 
 dead ground within, between wall and street, 
 became a protective receptacle of refuse ; cigar 
 ends, and oyster shells, and the like, such as an 
 open-handed English street-populace habitually 
 scatters ; and was thus left, unsweepable by any 
 ordinary methods. Now the iron bars which 
 
 197
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 uselessly (or in great degree worse than uselessly) 
 inclosed this bit of ground, and made it pestilent, 
 represented a quantity of work which would 
 have cleansed the Carshalton pools three times 
 over : of work, partly cramped and perilous, in 
 the mine ; partly grievous and horrible, at the fur- 
 nace; partly foolish and sedentary, of ill-taught 
 students making bad designs ; work from the 
 beginning to the last fruits of it, and in all the 
 branches of it, venomous, deathful^and miserable. 
 
 Now, how did it come to pass that this work 
 was done instead of the other ; that the strength 
 and life of the English operative were spent in 
 defiling ground, instead of redeeming it, and in 
 producing an entirely (in that place) valueless 
 piece of metal, which can neither be eaten nor 
 breathed, instead of medicinal fresh air and pure 
 water ? 
 
 There is but one reason for it, and at present a 
 conclusive one, that the capitalist can charge 
 percentage on the work in the one case, and 
 cannot in the other. If, having certain funds 
 for supporting labor at my disposal, I pay men 
 
 1 "A fearful occurrence took place a few days since, near 
 Wolverhampton. Thomas Snape, aged nineteen, was on duty 
 as the ' keeper ' of a blast-furnace at Deepfield, assisted by 
 John Gardner, aged eighteen, and Joseph Swift, aged thirty- 
 seven. The furnace contained four tons of molten iron, and 
 an equal amount of cinders, and ought to have been run out 
 at 7.30 P.M. But Snape and his mates, engaged in talking and 
 drinking, neglected their duty, and, in the meantime, the iron 
 rose in the furnace until it reached a pipe wherein water was 
 contained. Just as the men had stripped, and were proceed- 
 ing to tap the furnace, the water in the pipe, converted into 
 steam, burst down its front and let loose on them the molten 
 metal, which instantaneously consumed Qardner; Snape, 
 terribly burned, and mad with pain, leaped into the canal and 
 then ran home and fell dead on the threshold ; Swift survived 
 to reach the hospital, where he died too." 
 
 198
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 merely to keep my ground in order, my money 
 is, in that function, spent once for all ; but if I 
 pay them to dig iron out of my ground, and work 
 it, and sell it, I can charge rent for the ground, 
 and percentage both on the manufacture and the 
 sale, and make my capital profitable in these 
 three byways. The greater part of the profitable 
 investment of capital, in the present day, is in 
 operations of this kind, in which the public is 
 persuaded to buy something of no use to it, on 
 production or sale of which the capitalist may 
 charge percentage ; the said public remaining 
 all the while under the persuasion that the per- 
 centages thus obtained are real national gains, 
 whereas, they are merely filchings out of light 
 pockets, to swell heavy ones. 
 
 Thus, the Croydon publican buys the iron rail- 
 ing, to make himself more conspicuous to drunk- 
 ards. The public-house keeper on the other side 
 of the way presently buys another railing, to 
 outrail him with. Both are, as to their relative 
 attractiveness, just where they were before ; but 
 they have both lost the price of the railings ; 
 which they must either themselves finally lose, 
 or make their aforesaid customers, the amateurs 
 of railings, pay, by raising the price of their beer, 
 or adulterating it. Either the publicans, or their 
 customers, are thus poorer by precisely what the 
 capitalist has gained ; and the value of the indus- 
 try itself, meantime, has been lost to the nation ; 
 the iron bars, in that forjn and place, being 
 wholly useless. 
 
 It is this mode of taxation of the poor by the 
 rich which is referred to in the text ( 34), 1 in 
 comparing the modern acquisitive power of capi- 
 
 1 Page 233. 
 
 199
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 tal with that of the lance and sword ; the only 
 difference being that the levy of blackmail in 
 old times was by force, and is now by cozening. 
 The old rider and reaver frankly quartered him- 
 self on the publican for the night ; the modern 
 one merely makes his lance into an iron spike, 
 and persuades his host to buy it. One comes as 
 an open robber, the other as a cheating peddler ; 
 but the result, to the injured person's pocket, is 
 absolutely the same. Of course many useful in- 
 dustries mingle with, and disguise the useless 
 ones ; and in the habits of energy aroused by the 
 struggle, there is a certain direct good. It is 
 better to spend four thousand pounds in making 
 a gun, and then to blow it to pieces, than to pass 
 life in idleness. Only do not let the proceeding 
 be called " political economy." 
 
 There is also a confused notion in the minds of 
 many persons, that the gathering of the property 
 of the poor into the hands of the rich does no 
 ultimate harm ; since, in whosesoever hands it 
 may be, it must be spent at last ; and thus, they 
 think, return to the poor again. This fallacy has 
 been again and again exposed ; but granting the 
 plea true, the same apology may, of course, be 
 made for blackmail, or any other form of rob- 
 bery. It might be (though practically it never 
 is) as advantageous for the nation that the robber 
 should have the spending of the money he ex- 
 torts, as that the person robbed should have spent 
 it. But this is no excuse for the theft. If I were 
 to put a turnpike on the road where it passes my 
 own gate, and endeavor to exact a shilling from 
 every passenger, the public would soon do away 
 with my gate, without listening to any plea on 
 my part that "it was as advantageous to them, 
 
 200
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 in the end, that I should spend their shillings, as 
 that they themselves should." But if, instead of 
 outfacing them with a turnpike, I can only per- 
 suade them to come in and buy stones, or old 
 iron, or any such useless thing, out of my ground, 
 I may rob them to the same extent, and be, more- 
 over, thanked as a public benefactor, and pro- 
 moter of commercial prosperity. And this main 
 question for the poor of England for the poor 
 of all countries is wholly omitted in every 
 common treatise on the subject of wealth. Even 
 by the laborers themselves, the operation of capi- 
 tal is regarded only in its effect on their imme- 
 diate interests ; never in the far more terrific 
 power of its appointment of the kind and the ob- 
 ject of labor. It matters little, ultimately, how 
 much a laborer is paid for making anything ; but 
 it matters fearfully what the thing is, which he 
 is compelled to make. If his labor is so ordered 
 as to produce food, and fresh air, and fresh water, 
 no matter that his wages are low ; the food and 
 fresh air and water will be at last there ; and he 
 will at last get them. But if he is paid to destroy 
 food and fresh air, or to produce iron bars instead 
 of them, the food and air will finally not be 
 there, and he will not get them, to his great and 
 final inconvenience. 
 
 I have been long accustomed, as all men en- 
 gaged in work of investigation must be, to hear 
 my statements laughed at for years, before they 
 are examined or believed ; and I am generally 
 content to wait the public's time. But it has not 
 been without displeased surprise that I have 
 found myself totally unable, as yet, by any repe- 
 tition, or illustration, to force this plain thought 
 into my readers' heads, that the wealth of 
 
 201
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 nations, as of men, consists in substance, not in 
 ciphers ; and that the real good of all work, and 
 of all commerce, depends on the final intrinsic 
 worth of the thing you make, or get by it. 1 This 
 is a "practical" enough statement, one would 
 think : but the English public has been so pos- 
 sessed by its modern school of economists with 
 the notion that Business is always good, whether 
 it be busy in mischief or in benefit ; and that buy- 
 ing and selling are always salutary, whatever the 
 intrinsic worth of what you buy or sell, that it 
 seems impossible to gain so much as a patient 
 hearing for any inquiry respecting the substan- 
 tial result of our eager modern labor. 
 
 I have never felt more checked by the sense 
 of this impossibility than in arranging the heads 
 of the following lectures, which, though delivered 
 at considerable intervals of time, and in different 
 places, were not prepared without reference to 
 each other. Their connection would, however, 
 have been made far more distinct, if I had not 
 been prevented, by what I feel to be another 
 great difficulty in addressing English audiences, 
 from enforcing, with any decision, the common, 
 and to me the most important, part of their sub- 
 jects. I chiefly desired to question my hearers 
 operatives, merchants, and soldiers as to the 
 ultimate meaning of the business they had in 
 hand; and to know from them what they ex- 
 pected or intended their manufacture to come to, 
 their selling to come to, and their killing to come 
 to. That appeared the first point needing de- 
 termination before I could speak to them with 
 any real utility or effect. "You craftsmen 
 salesmen swordsmen do but tell me clearly 
 1 Compare Preface to " Munera Pulveris." 
 
 202
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 what you want ; then, if I can say anything to 
 help you, I will ; and if not, I will account to you 
 as I best may for my inability." 
 
 But in order to put this question into any 
 terms, one had first of all to face a difficulty, to 
 me for the present insuperable, the difficulty 
 of knowing whether to address one's audience as 
 believing, or not believing, in any other world 
 than this. For if you address any average mod- 
 ern English company as believing in an Eternal 
 life, and then endeavor to draw any conclusions 
 from this assumed belief, as to their present busi- 
 ness, they will forthwith tell you that " what you 
 say is very beautiful, but it is not practical." If, 
 on the contrary, you frankly address them as 
 unbelievers in Eternal life, and try to draw any 
 consequences from that unbelief, they immedi- 
 ately hold you for an accursed person, and shake 
 off the dust from their feet at you. 
 
 And the more I thought over what I had got to 
 say, the less I found I could say it, without some 
 reference to this intangible or intractable ques- 
 tion. It made all the difference, in asserting any 
 principle of war, whether one assumed that a 
 discharge of artillery would merely knead down 
 a certain quantity of once living clay into a level 
 line, as in a brick-field ; or whether, out of every 
 separately Christian-named portion of the ruinous 
 heap, there went out, into the smoke and dead- 
 fallen air of battle, some astonished condition of 
 soul, unwillingly released. It made all the differ- 
 ence, in speaking of the possible range of com- 
 merce, whether one assumed that all bargains 
 related only to visible property ; or whether 
 property, for the present invisible, but neverthe- 
 less real, was elsewhere purchasable on other 
 
 203
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 terms. It made all the difference, in addressing 
 a body of men subject to considerable hardship, 
 and having to find some way out of it whether 
 one could confidently say to them, "My friends, 
 you have only to die, and all will be right"; or 
 whether one had any secret misgiving that such 
 advice was more blessed to him that gave than 
 to him that took it. 
 
 And therefore the deliberate reader will find, 
 throughout these lectures, a hesitation in driving 
 points home, and a pausing short of conclusions 
 which he will feel I would fain have come to ; 
 hesitation which arises wholly from this uncer- 
 tainty of my hearers' temper. For I do not speak, 
 nor have I ever spoken, since the time of first 
 forward youth, in any proselytizing temper, as 
 desiring to persuade any one to believe anything ; 
 but whomsoever I venture to address, I take, for 
 the time, his creed as I find it ; and endeavor to 
 push it into such vital fruit as it seems capable 
 of. Thus, it is a creed with a great part of the 
 existing English people, that they are in posses- 
 sion of a book which tells them, straight from 
 the lips of God, all they ought to do, and need to 
 know. I have read that book, with as much care 
 as most of them, for some forty years ; and am 
 thankful that, on those who trust it, I can press 
 its pleadings. My endeavor has been uniformly 
 to make them trust it more deeply than they do ; 
 trust it, not in their own favorite verses only, 
 but in the sum of all ; trust it, not as a fetish or 
 talisman, which they are to be saved by daily 
 repetitions of; but as a Captain's order, to be 
 heard and obeyed at their peril. I was always 
 encouraged by supposing my hearers to hold 
 such belief. To these, if to any, I once had hope 
 
 204
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 of addressing, with acceptance, words which in- 
 sisted on the guilt of pride, and the futility of 
 avarice ; from these, if from any, I once expected 
 ratification of a political economy, which asserted 
 that the life was more than the meat, and the 
 body than raiment ; and these, it once seemed to 
 me, I might ask, without being accused of fanati- 
 cism, not merely in doctrine of the lips, but in the 
 bestowal of their heart's treasure, to separate 
 themselves from the crowd of whom it is written, 
 "After all these things do the Gentiles seek." 
 
 It cannot, however, be assumed, with any sem- 
 blance of reason, that a general audience is now 
 wholly, or even in majority, composed of these 
 religious persons. A large portion must always 
 consist of men who admit no such creed ; or who, 
 at least, are inaccessible to appeals founded on it. 
 And as, with the so-called Christian, I desired to 
 plead for honest declaration and fulfilment of his 
 belief in life, with the so-called Infidel, I de- 
 sired to plead for an honest declaration and ful- 
 filment of his belief in death. The dilemma is 
 inevitable. Men must either hereafter live, or 
 hereafter die ; fate may be bravely met, and con- 
 duct wisely ordered, on either expectation ; but 
 never in hesitation between ungrasped hope, and 
 unconfronted fear. We usually believe in im- 
 mortality, so far as to avoid preparation for 
 death ; and in mortality, so far as to avoid prepa- 
 ration for anything after death. Whereas, a 
 wise man will at least hold himself ready for one 
 or other of two events, of which one or other is 
 inevitable; and will have all things ended in 
 order, for his sleep, or left in order, for his 
 awakening. 
 
 Nor have we any right to call it an ignoble 
 
 205
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 judgment, if he determine to end them in order, 
 as for sleep. A brave belief in life is indeed an 
 enviable state of mind, but as far as I can discern, 
 an unusual one. I know few Christians so con- 
 vinced of the splendor of the rooms in their 
 Father's house, as to be happier when their 
 friends are called to those mansions, than they 
 would have been if the Queen had sent for them 
 to live at Court : nor has the Church's most ar- 
 dent "desire to depart, and be with Christ," ever 
 cured it of the singular habit of putting on 
 mourning for every person summoned to such 
 departure. On the contrary, a brave belief in 
 death has been assuredly held by many not 
 ignoble persons ; and it is a sign of the last de- 
 pravity in the Church itself, when it assumes 
 that such a belief is inconsistent with either 
 purity of character, or energy of hand. The 
 shortness of life is not, to any rational person, a 
 conclusive reason for wasting the space of it 
 which may be granted him ; nor does the antici- 
 pation of death, to-morrow, suggest, to any one 
 but a drunkard, the expediency of drunkenness 
 to-day. To teach that there is no device in the 
 grave, may indeed make the deviceless person 
 more contented in his dullness : but it will make 
 the deviser only more earnest in devising : nor is 
 human conduct likely, in every case, to be purer, 
 under the conviction that all its evil may in a 
 moment be pardoned, and all its wrong-doing in 
 a moment redeemed ; and that the sigh of repen- 
 tance, which purges the guilt of the past, will 
 waft the soul into a felicity which forgets its 
 pain, than it may be under the sterner, and to 
 many not unwise minds, more probable, appre- 
 hension, that "what a man soweth, that shall he 
 
 206
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 also reap " or others reap, when he, the living 
 seed of pestilence, walketh no more in darkness, 
 but lies down therein. 
 
 But to men for whom feebleness of sight, or 
 bitterness of soul, or the offense given by the 
 conduct of those who claim higher hope, may 
 have rendered this painful creed the only pos- 
 sible one, there is an appeal to be made, more 
 secure than any which can be addressed to hap- 
 pier persons. Might not a preacher, in comfort- 
 less, but faithful, zeal from the poor height of a 
 grave-hillock for his Hill of Mars, and with the 
 Cave of the Eumenides at his side say to them 
 thus : Hear me, you dying men, who will soon be 
 deaf forever. For these others, at your right 
 hand and your left, who look forward to a state 
 of infinite existence, in which all their errors will 
 be overruled, and all their faults forgiven ; for 
 these, who, stained and blackened in the battle- 
 smoke of mortality, have but to dip themselves 
 for an instant in the font of death, and to rise 
 renewed of plumage, as a dove that is covered 
 with silver, and her feathers like gold: for these, 
 indeed, it may be permissible to waste their 
 numbered moments, through faith in a future of 
 innumerable hours ; to these, in their weakness, 
 it may be conceded that they should tamper with 
 sin which can only bring forth fruit of righteous- 
 ness, and profit by the iniquity which, one day, 
 will be remembered no more. In them, it may 
 be no sign of hardness of heart to neglect the 
 poor, over whom they know their Master is 
 watching; and to leave those to perish tempo- 
 rarily, who cannot perish eternally. But for 
 you there is no such hope, and therefore no such 
 excuse. This fate, which you ordain for the 
 
 207
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 wretched, you believe to be all their inheritance ; 
 you may crush them, before the moth, and they 
 will never rise to rebuke you ; their breath, 
 which fails for lack of food, once expiring, will 
 never be recalled to whisper against you a word 
 of accusing; they and you, as you think, shall 
 lie down together in the dust, and the worms 
 cover you ; and for them there shall be no con- 
 solation, and on you no vengeance, only the 
 question murmured above your grave: "Who 
 shall repay him what he hath done ? " Is it there- 
 fore easier for you, in your heart, to inflict the 
 sorrow for which there is no remedy ? Will you 
 take, wantonly, this little all of his life from your 
 poor brother, and make his brief hours long to 
 him with pain ? Will you be more prompt to the 
 injustice which can never be redressed ; and more 
 niggardly of the mercy which you can bestow 
 but once, and which, refusing, you refuse forever? 
 I think better of you, even of the most selfish, 
 than that you would act thus, well understanding 
 your act. And for yourselves, it seems to me, 
 the question becomes not less grave when brought 
 into these curt limits. If your life were but a 
 fever fit, the madness of a night, whose follies 
 were all to be forgotten in the dawn, it might 
 matter little how you fretted away the sickly 
 hours, what toys you snatched at or let fall, 
 what visions you followed, wistfully, with the 
 deceived eyes of sleepless frenzy. Is the earth 
 only an hospital ? are health.and heaven to come ? 
 Then play, if you care to play, on the floor of the 
 hospital dens. Knit its straw into what crowns 
 please you ; gather the dust of it for treasure, and 
 die rich in that, though clutching at the black 
 motes in the air with your dying hands ; and 
 
 208
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 yet, it may be well with you. But if this life be 
 no dream, and the world no hospital, but your 
 palace-inheritance; if all the peace and power 
 and joy you can ever win, must be won now, and 
 all fruit of victory gathered here, or never ; will 
 you still, throughout the puny totality of your 
 life, weary yourselves in the fire for vanity ? If 
 there is no rest which remaineth for you, is there 
 none you might presently take? was this grass 
 of the earth made green for your shroud only, 
 not for your bed? and can you never lie down 
 upon it, but only under it ? The heathen, in their 
 saddest hours, thought not so. They knew that 
 life brought its contest, but they expected from 
 it also the crown of all contest : No proud one ! 
 no jeweled circlet flaming through Heaven above 
 the height of the unmerited throne ; only some 
 few leaves of wild olive, cool to the tired brow, 
 through a few years of peace. It should have 
 been of gold, they thought ; but Jupiter was poor ; 
 this was the best the god could give them. 
 Seeking a better than this, they had known it a 
 mockery. Not in war, not in wealth, not in tyr- 
 anny, was there any happiness to be found for 
 them only in kindly peace, fruitful and free. 
 The wreath was to be of wild olive, mark you : 
 the tree that grows carelessly, tufting the rocks 
 with no vivid bloom, no verdure of branch ; only 
 with soft snow of blossom, and scarcely fulfilled 
 fruit, mixed with gray leaf and thorn-set stem ; 
 no fastening of diadem for you but with such 
 sharp embroidery ! But this, such as it is, you 
 may win, while yet you live ; type of gray honor, 
 and sweet rest. 1 Free-heartedness, and gracious- 
 ness, and undisturbed trust, and requited love, 
 
 1 jueAiTOf(7<7 p a, atO\u>v y' tvfKtv, 
 
 14 209
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 and the sight of the peace of others, and the min- 
 istry to their pain ; these and the blue sky above 
 you, and the sweet waters and flowers of the earth 
 beneath, and mysteries and presences, innumer- 
 able, of living things may yet be here your 
 riches ; untormenting and divine : serviceable for 
 the life that now is ; nor, it may be, without 
 promise of that which is to come. 
 
 210
 
 LECTURE I 
 WORK
 
 LECTURE 
 
 I 
 WORK 
 
 Delivered before the Workingmen's 
 Institute, at Camberwell. 
 
 M 
 
 'Y FRIENDS, I have not come 
 among you to-night to endeavor 
 to give you an entertaining lec- 
 ture; but to tell you a few plain facts, and 
 ask you a few plain questions. I have seen 
 and known too much of the struggle for life 
 among our laboring population, to feel at 
 ease, under any circumstances, in inviting 
 them to dwell on the trivialities of my own 
 studies; but, much more, as I meet to- 
 night, for the first time, the members of a 
 working Institute established in the dis- 
 trict in which I have passed the greater 
 part of my life, I am desirous that we 
 should at once understand each other, on 
 graver matters. I would fain tell you, with 
 what feelings, and with what hope, I regard 
 this Institute, as one of many such, now 
 happily established throughout England, 
 as well as in other countries; and prepar- 
 213
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 ing the way for a great change in all the 
 circumstances of industrial life; but of 
 which the success must wholly depend 
 upon our clearly understanding the condi- 
 tions, and above all, the necessary limits 
 of this change. No teacher can truly pro- 
 mote the cause of education, until he 
 knows the mode of life for which that edu- 
 cation is to prepare his pupil. And the 
 fact that he is called upon to address you, 
 nominally, as a "Working Class," must 
 compel him, if he is in any wise earnest or 
 thoughtful, to inquire in the outset, on 
 what you yourselves suppose this class 
 distinction has been founded in the past, 
 and must be founded in the future. The 
 manner of the amusement, and the matter 
 of the teaching, which any of us can offer 
 you, must depend wholly on our first under- 
 standing from you, whether you think the 
 distinction heretofore drawn between work- 
 ingmen and others, is truly or falsely 
 founded. Do you accept it as it stands? 
 do you wish it to be modified? or do you 
 think the object of education is to efface 
 it, and enable us to forget it forever? 
 
 Let me make myself more distinctly 
 understood. We call this you and I a 
 " Workingmen's " Institute, and our col- 
 lege in London, a " Workingmen's " College. 
 214
 
 WORK 
 
 Now, how do you consider that these several 
 institutes differ, or ought to differ, from 
 "idle men's" institutes, and "idle men's" 
 colleges? Or by what other word than 
 " idle " shall I distinguish those whom the 
 happiest and wisest of workingmen do not 
 object to call the "Upper Classes"? Are 
 there necessarily upper classes? necessarily 
 lower? How much should those always be 
 elevated, how much these always depressed? 
 And I pray those among my audience who 
 chance to occupy, at present, the higher 
 position, to forgive me what offense there 
 may be in what I am going to say. It is 
 not / who wish to say it. Bitter voices say 
 it; voices of battle and of famine through 
 all the world, which must be heard some 
 day, whoever keeps silence. Neither, as 
 you well know, is it to you specially that I 
 say it. I am sure that most now present 
 know their duties of kindness, and fulfil 
 them, better perhaps than I do mine. But 
 I speak to you as representing your whole 
 class, which errs, I know, chiefly by 
 thoughtlessness, but not therefore the less 
 terribly. Wilful error is limited by the 
 will, but what limit is there to that of 
 which we are unconscious? 
 
 Bear with me, therefore, while I turn to 
 these workmen, and ask them, what they 
 215
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 think the " upper classes " are, and ought 
 to be, in relation to them. Answer, you 
 workmen who are here, as you would 
 among yourselves, frankly; and tell me 
 how you would have me call your employ- 
 ers. Am I to call them would you think 
 me right in calling them the idle classes ? 
 I think you would feel somewhat uneasy, 
 and as if I were not treating my subject 
 honestly, or speaking from my heart, if I 
 proceeded in my lecture under the suppo- 
 sition that all rich people were idle. You 
 would be both unjust and unwise if you al- 
 lowed me to say that; not less unjust than 
 the rich people who say that all the poor 
 are idle, and will never work if they can 
 help it, or more than they can help. 
 
 1 For indeed the fact is that there are 
 idle poor, and idle rich; and there are busy 
 poor, and busy rich. Many a beggar is as 
 lazy as if he had ten thousand a year; and 
 many a man of large fortune is busier than 
 his errand-boy, and never would think of 
 stopping in the street to play marbles. So 
 that, in a large view, the distinction be- 
 tween workers and idlers, as between 
 knaves and honest men, runs through the 
 
 1 Note this paragraph. I cannot enough wonder at the 
 want of common charity which blinds so many people to the 
 quite simple truth to which it refers. 
 
 216
 
 WORK 
 
 very heart and innermost nature of men of 
 all ranks and in all positions. There is a 
 working class strong and happy among 
 both rich and poor; there is an idle class- 
 weak, wicked, and miserable among both 
 rich and poor. And the worst of the mis- 
 understandings arising between the two 
 orders come of the unlucky fact that the 
 wise of one class (how little wise in this!) 
 habitually contemplate the foolish of the 
 other. If the busy rich people watched and re- 
 buked the idle rich people, all would be right 
 among them : and if the busy poor people 
 watched and rebuked the idle poor people, 
 all would be right among them. But each 
 look for the faults of the other. A hard- 
 working man of property is particularly 
 offended by an idle beggar; and an orderly, 
 but poor, workman is naturally intolerant 
 of the licentious luxury of the rich. And 
 what is severe judgment in the minds of 
 the just men of either class, becomes fierce 
 enmity in the unjust but among the un- 
 just only. None but the dissolute among 
 the poor look upon the rich as their natural 
 enemies, or desire to pillage their houses 
 and divide their property. None but the 
 dissolute among the rich speak in oppro- 
 brious terms of the vices and follies of the 
 poor. 
 
 217
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 There is, then, no worldly distinction be- 
 tween idle and industrious people; and I 
 am going to-night to speak only of the 
 industrious. The idle people we will put 
 out of our thoughts at once they are mere 
 nuisances what ought to be done with 
 them, we '11 talk of at another time. But 
 there are class distinctions among the 
 industrious themselves; tremendous dis- 
 tinctions, which rise and fall to every 
 degree in the infinite thermometer of hu- 
 man pain and of human power, distinc- 
 tions of high and low, of lost and won, 
 to the whole reach of man's soul and 
 body. 
 
 These separations we will study, and the 
 laws of them, among energetic men only, 
 who, whether they work or whether they 
 play, put their strength into the work, and 
 their strength into the game; being in the 
 full sense of the word "industrious," one 
 way or another, with purpose, or without. 
 And these distinctions are mainly four: 
 
 I. Between those who work, and those 
 who play. 
 
 II. Between those who produce the 
 means of life, and those who consume 
 them. 
 
 III. Between those who work with the 
 head, and those who work with the hand. 
 
 218
 
 WORK 
 
 IV. Between those who work wisely, and 
 those who work foolishly. 
 
 For easier memory, let us say we are 
 going to oppose, in our examination, 
 
 I. Work to play; 
 
 II. Production to consumption; 
 
 III. Head to hand; and, 
 
 IV. Sense to nonsense. 
 
 I. First, then, of the distinction between 
 the classes who work and the classes who 
 play. Of course we must agree upon a 
 definition of these terms, work and play, 
 before going farther. Now, roughly, not 
 with vain subtlety of definition, but for 
 plain use of the words, "play" is an exer- 
 tion of body or mind, made to please our- 
 selves, and with no determined end; and 
 work is a thing done because it ought to 
 be done, and with a determined end. You 
 play, as you call it, at cricket, for instance. 
 That is as hard work as anything else; but 
 it amuses you, and it has no result but the 
 amusement. If it were done as an ordered 
 form of exercise, for health's sake, it 
 would become work directly. So, in like 
 manner, whatever we do to please our- 
 selves, and only for the sake of the plea- 
 sure, not for an ultimate object, is "play," 
 the "pleasing thing," not the useful thing. 
 Play may be useful, in a secondary sense 
 219
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 (nothing is indeed more useful or neces- 
 sary); but the use of it depends on its 
 being spontaneous. 
 
 Let us, then, inquire together what sort 
 of games the playing class in England spend 
 their lives in playing at. 
 
 The first of all English games is making 
 money. That is an all-absorbing game; 
 and we knock each other down oftener in 
 playing at that, than at football, or any 
 other roughest sport; and it is absolutely 
 without purpose; no one who engages 
 heartily in that game ever knows why. 
 Ask a great money-maker what he wants 
 to do with his money, he never knows. 
 He does n't make it to do anything with it. 
 He gets it only that he may get it. " What 
 will you make of what you have got? " you 
 ask. "Well, I '11 get more," he says. Just 
 as, at cricket, you get more runs. There 's 
 no use in the runs, but to get more of them 
 than other people is the game. And there 's 
 no use in the money, but to have more of it 
 than other people is the game. So all that 
 great foul city of London there, rattling, 
 growling, smoking, stinking, a ghastly 
 heap of fermenting brickwork, pouring out 
 poison at every pore, you fancy it is a 
 city of work? Not a street of it! It is a 
 great city of play; very nasty play, and 
 220
 
 WORK 
 
 very hard play, but still play. It is only 
 Lord's cricket-ground without the turf: 
 a huge billiard-table without the cloth, and 
 with pockets as deep as the bottomless pit; 
 but mainly a billiard-table, after all. 
 
 Well, the first great English game is this 
 playing at counters. It differs from the 
 rest in that it appears always to be produ- 
 cing money, while every other game is ex- 
 pensive. But it does not always produce 
 money. There 's a great difference between 
 "winning" money and "making" it: a 
 great difference between getting it out 
 of another man's pocket into ours, or filling 
 both. 
 
 Our next great English games, however, 
 hunting and shooting, are costly altogether; 
 and how much we are fined for them 
 annually in land, horses, gamekeepers, and 
 game-laws, and the resultant demoraliza- 
 tion of ourselves, our children, and our 
 retainers, I will not endeavor to count 
 now; but note only that, except for exer- 
 cise, this is not merely a useless game, but 
 a deadly one, to all connected with it. For 
 through horse-racing you get every form 
 of what the higher classes everywhere call 
 "play," in distinction from all other plays; 
 that is, gambling; and through game-pre- 
 serving you get also some curious laying 
 221
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 out of ground: that beautiful arrangement 
 of dwelling-house for man and beast, by 
 which we have grouse and blackcock 
 so many brace to the acre, and men and 
 women so many brace to the garret. 
 I often wonder what the angelic builders 
 and surveyors the angelic builders who 
 build the "many mansions" up above 
 there; and the angelic surveyors who mea- 
 sured that four-square city with their mea- 
 suring-reedsI wonder what they think, or 
 are supposed to think, of the laying out of 
 ground by this nation. 1 
 
 Then, next to the gentlemen's game 
 of hunting, we must put the ladies' game 
 of dressing. It is not the cheapest of 
 games. And I wish I could tell you what 
 this "play" costs, altogether, in England, 
 France, and Russia annually. But it is a 
 pretty game, and on certain terms I like it; 
 nay, I don't see it played quite as much as 
 I would fain have it. You ladies like to 
 lead the fashion: by all means lead it- 
 lead it thoroughly lead it far enough. 
 Dress yourselves nicely, and dress everybody 
 else nicely. Lead the fashions for the poor 
 first; make them look well, and you your- 
 
 1 The subject is pursued at some length in " Fors Clavigera " 
 for March, 1873 ; but I have not yet properly stated the oppo- 
 site side of the question, nor insisted on the value of uncul- 
 tivated land to the national health of body and mind. 
 
 222
 
 WORK 
 
 selves will look, in ways of which you have 
 now no conception, all the better. The 
 fashions you have set for some time among 
 your peasantry are not pretty ones; their 
 doublets are too irregularly slashed, or as 
 Chaucer calls it "all to-slittered," though 
 not "for queintise," and the wind blows too 
 frankly through them. 
 
 Then there are other games, wild enough, 
 as I could show you if I had time. 
 
 There 's playing at literature, and play- 
 ing at art; very different, both, from work- 
 ing at literature, or working at art, but 
 I 've no time to speak of these. I pass to 
 the greatest of all the play of plays, the 
 great gentleman's game, which ladies like 
 them best to play at, the game of War. 
 It is entrancingly pleasant to the imagina- 
 tion; we dress for it, however, more finely 
 than for any other sport; and go out to it, 
 not merely in scarlet, as to hunt, but in 
 scarlet and gold, and all manner of fine 
 colors; of course we could fight better in 
 gray, and without feathers; but all nations 
 have agreed that it is good to be well 
 dressed at this play. Then the bats and 
 balls are very costly; our English and 
 French bats, with the balls and wickets, 
 even those which we don't make any use 
 of, costing, I suppose, now about fifteen 
 223
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 millions of money annually to each nation; 
 all which you know is paid for by hard 
 laborer's work in the furrow and furnace. 
 A costly game! not to speak of its conse- 
 quences; I will say at present nothing of 
 these. The mere immediate cost of all 
 these plays is what I want you to consider; 
 they are all paid for in deadly work some- 
 where, as many of us know too well. The 
 jewel-cutter, whose sight fails over the dia- 
 monds; the weaver, whose arm fails over 
 the web; the iron-forger, whose breath 
 fails before the furnace they know what 
 work is they, who have all the work, and 
 none of the play, except a kind they have 
 named for themselves down in the black 
 north country, where "play" means being 
 laid up by sickness. It is a pretty example 
 for philologists, of varying dialect, this 
 change in the sense of the word as used in 
 the black country of Birmingham, and the 
 red-and-black country of Baden-Baden. 
 Yes, gentlemen, and gentlewomen, of Eng- 
 land, who think " one moment unamused a 
 misery not made for feeble man," this is 
 what you have brought the word "play " to 
 mean, in the heart of merry England! You 
 may have your fluting and piping; but 
 there are sad children sitting in the mar- 
 ket-place, who indeed cannot say to you, 
 224
 
 WORK 
 
 " We have piped unto you, and ye have not 
 danced": but eternally shall say to you, 
 " We have mourned unto you, and ye have 
 not lamented." 
 
 This, then, is the first distinction be- 
 tween the "upper and lower " classes. And 
 this is one which is by no means necessary; 
 which indeed must, in process of good time, 
 be by all honest men's consent abolished. 
 Men will be taught that an existence of 
 play, sustained by the blood of other crea- 
 tures, is a good existence for gnats and 
 jellyfish; but not for men: that neither 
 days, nor lives, can be made holy or noble 
 by doing nothing in them: that the best 
 prayer at the beginning of a day is that we 
 may not lose its moments; and the best 
 grace before meat, the consciousness that 
 we have justly earned our dinner. And 
 when we have this much of plain Chris- 
 tianity preached to us again, and cease to 
 translate the strict words, " Son, go work 
 to-day in my vineyard," into the dainty 
 ones, "Baby, go play to-day in my vine- 
 yard," we shall all be workers in one way 
 or another; and this much at least of the 
 distinction between "upper" and "lower" 
 forgotten. 
 
 II. I pass then to our second distinc- 
 tion; between the rich and poor, between 
 15 225
 
 THE CROWN OP WILD OLIVE 
 
 Dives and Lazarus, distinction which ex- 
 ists more sternly, I suppose, in this day, 
 than ever in the world, Pagan or Christian, 
 till now. Consider, for instance, what the 
 general tenor of such a paper as the " Morn- 
 ing Post " implies of delicate luxury among 
 the rich; and then read this chance extract 
 from it: 
 
 "Yesterday morning, at eight o'clock, a 
 woman, passing a dung-heap in the stone- 
 yard near the recently erected almshouses 
 in Shadwell Gap, High Street, Shadwell, 
 called the attention of a Thames police- 
 constable to a man in a sitting position on 
 the dung-heap, and said she was afraid he 
 was dead. Her fears proved to be true. 
 The wretched creature appeared to have 
 been dead several hours. He had perished 
 of cold and wet, and the rain had been 
 beating down on him all night. The de- 
 ceased was a bone-picker. He was in the 
 lowest stage of poverty, poorly clad, and 
 half starved. The police had frequently 
 driven him away from the stone-yard, be- 
 tween sunset and sunrise, and told him to 
 go home. He selected a most desolate spot 
 for his wretched death. A penny and some 
 bones were found in his pockets. The de- 
 ceased was between fifty and sixty years of 
 age. Inspector Roberts, of the K division, 
 226
 
 WORK 
 
 has given directions for inquiries to be 
 made at the lodging-houses respecting the 
 deceased, to ascertain his identity if possi- 
 ble." Morning Post, November 25, 1864. 
 
 Compare the statement of the finding 
 bones in his pocket with the following, 
 from the "Telegraph " of January 16 of this 
 year: 
 
 "Again the dietary scale for adult and 
 juvenile paupers was drawn up by the most 
 conspicuous political economists in Eng- 
 land. It is low in quantity, but it is suffi- 
 cient to support nature: yet, within ten 
 years of the passing of the Poor Law Act, 
 we heard of the Paupers in the Andover 
 Union gnawing the scraps of putrid flesh, 
 and sucking the marrow from the bones of 
 horses which they were employed to crush." 
 
 You see my reason for thinking that our 
 Lazarus of Christianity has some advan- 
 tage over the Jewish one. Jewish Lazarus 
 expected, or, at least, prayed, to be fed 
 with crumbs from the rich man's table; 
 but our Lazarus is fed with crumbs from 
 the dog's table. 
 
 Now this distinction between rich and 
 poor rests on two bases. Within its proper 
 limits, on a basis which is lawful and ever- 
 lastingly necessary; beyond them, on a 
 basis unlawful, and everlastingly corrupt- 
 227
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 ing the framework of society. The lawful 
 basis of wealth is that a man who works 
 should be paid the fair value of his work; 
 and that if he does not choose to spend it 
 to-day, he should have free leave to keep 
 it, and spend it to-morrow. Thus, an in- 
 dustrious man working daily, and laying 
 by daily, attains at last the possession of 
 an accumulated sum of wealth, to which 
 he has absolute right. The idle person 
 who will not work, and the wasteful per- 
 son who lays nothing by, at the end of 
 the same time will be doubly poor 
 poor in possession, and dissolute in moral 
 habit; and he will then naturally covet 
 the money which the other has saved. 
 And if he is then allowed to attack the 
 other, and rob him of his well-earned 
 wealth, there is no more any motive for 
 saving, or any reward for good conduct; 
 and all society is thereupon dissolved, or 
 exists only in systems of rapine. There- 
 fore the first necessity of social life is the 
 clearness of national conscience in enfor- 
 cing the law that he should keep who has 
 
 JUSTLY EARNED. 
 
 That law, I say, is the proper basis of 
 distinction between rich and poor. But 
 there is also a false basis of distinction; 
 namely, the power held over those who are 
 
 228
 
 WORK 
 
 earning wealth by those who already pos- 
 sess it, and only use it to gain more. There 
 will be always a number of men who would 
 fain set themselves to the accumulation of 
 wealth as the sole object of their lives. 
 Necessarily, that class of men is an unedu- 
 cated class, inferior in intellect, and, more 
 or less, cowardly. It is physically impos- 
 sible for a well-educated, intellectual, or 
 brave man to make money the chief object 
 of his thoughts; just as it is for him to 
 make his dinner the principal object of 
 them. All healthy people like their din- 
 ners, but their dinner is not the main ob- 
 ject of their lives. So all healthily minded 
 people like making money ought to like 
 it, and to enjoy the sensation of winning 
 it: but the main object of their life is not 
 money; it is something better than money. 
 A good soldier, for instance, mainly wishes 
 to do his fighting well. He is glad of his 
 pay very properly so, and justly grumbles 
 when you keep him ten years without it; 
 still, his main notion of life is to win bat- 
 tles, not to be paid for winning them. So 
 of clergymen. They like pew-rents, and 
 baptismal fees, of course; but yet, if they 
 are brave and well educated, the pew-rent 
 is not the sole object of their lives, and the 
 baptismal fee is not the sole purpose of the 
 229
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 baptism; the clergyman's object is essen- 
 tially to baptize and preach, not to be paid 
 for preaching. So of doctors. They like 
 fees no doubt, ought to like them; yet if 
 they are brave and well educated, the en- 
 tire object of their lives is not fees. They, 
 on the whole, desire to cure the sick; and 
 if they are good doctors, and the choice 
 were fairly put to them would rather cure 
 their patient, and lose their fee, than kill 
 him, and get it. And so with all other 
 brave and rightly trained men; their work 
 is first, their fee second very important 
 always, but still second. But in every na- 
 tion, as I said, there are a vast class who 
 are ill educated, cowardly, and more or less 
 stupid. And with these people, just as cer- 
 tainly the fee is first, and the work second, 
 as with brave people the work is first, and 
 the fee second. And this is no small dis- 
 tinction. It is between life and death in a 
 man; between heaven and hell for him. 
 You cannot serve two masters: you must 
 serve one or other. If your work is first 
 with you, and your fee second, work is your 
 master, and the lord of work, who is God. 
 But if your fee is first with you, and your 
 work second, fee is your master, and the 
 lord of fee, who is the Devil; and not only 
 the Devil, but the lowest of devils the 
 230
 
 WORK 
 
 "least erected fiend that fell." So there 
 you have it in brief terms; Work first 
 you are God's servants; Fee first you are 
 the Fiend's. And it makes a difference, 
 now and ever, believe me, whether you 
 serve Him Who has on His vesture and 
 thigh written, " King of Kings," and whose 
 service is perfect freedom; or him on whose 
 vesture and thigh the name is written, 
 "Slave of Slaves," and whose service is 
 perfect slavery. 
 
 However, in every nation there are, and 
 must always be, a certain number of these 
 Fiend's servants, who have it principally 
 for the object of their lives to make money. 
 They are always, as I said, more or less 
 stupid, and cannot conceive of anything 
 else so nice as money. Stupidity is always 
 the basis of the Judas bargain. We do 
 great injustice to Iscariot, in thinking him 
 wicked above all common wickedness. He 
 was only a common money-lover, and, like 
 all money-lovers, did not understand Christ; 
 could not make out the worth of Him, or 
 meaning of Him. He never thought He 
 would be killed. He was horror-struck 
 when he found that Christ would be killed; 
 threw his money away instantly, and hanged 
 himself. How many of our present money- 
 seekers, think you, would have the grace 
 231
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 to hang themselves, whoever was killed? 
 But Judas was a common, selfish, muddle- 
 headed, pilfering fellow; his hand always 
 in the bag of the poor, not caring for them. 
 Helpless to understand Christ, he yet be- 
 lieved in Him, much more than most of 
 us do; had seen Him do miracles, thought 
 He was quite strong enough to shift for 
 Himself, and he, Judas, might as well make 
 his own little by-perquisites out of the 
 affair. Christ would come out of it well 
 enough, and he have his thirty pieces. 
 Now, that is the money-seeker's idea, all 
 over the world. <He does n't hate Christ, 
 but can't understand Him does n't care 
 for Him sees no good in that benevolent 
 business; makes his own little job out of 
 it at all events, come what will. And thus, 
 out of every mass of men, you have a cer- 
 tain number of bagmen your "fee-first" 
 men, whose main object is to make money. 
 And they do make it make it in all sorts of 
 unfair ways, chiefly by the weight and force 
 of money itself, or what is called the power 
 of capital; that is to say, the power which 
 money, once obtained, has over the labor of 
 the poor, so that the capitalist can take all its 
 produce to himself,except the laborer's food. 
 That is the modern Judas's way of " carrying 
 the bag," and "bearing what is put therein." 
 232
 
 WORK 
 
 Nay, but (it is asked) how is that an un- 
 fair advantage? Has not the man who has 
 worked for the money a right to use it as 
 he best can? No, in this respect, money is 
 now exactly what mountain promontories 
 over public roads were in old times. The 
 barons fought for them fairly: the strong- 
 est and cunningest got them; then fortified 
 them, and made every one who passed be- 
 low pay toll. Well, capital now is exactly 
 what crags were then. Men fight fairly 
 (we will, at least, grant so much, though it 
 is more than we ought) for their money; 
 but, once having got it, the fortified mil- 
 lionaire can make everybody who passes 
 below pay toll to his million, and build 
 another tower of his money castle. And I 
 can tell you, the poor vagrants by the 
 roadside suffer now quite as much from the 
 bag-baron, as ever they did from the crag- 
 baron. Bags and crags have just the same 
 result on rags. I have not time, however, 
 to-night, to show you in how many ways 
 the power of capital is unjust; but remem- 
 ber this one great principle, you will find 
 it unfailing, that whenever money is the 
 principal object of life with either man or 
 nation, it is both got ill, and spent ill; and 
 does harm both in the getting and spend- 
 ing; but when it is not the principal ob- 
 233
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 ject, it and all other things will be well 
 got, and well spent. And here is the test, 
 with every man, whether money is the 
 principal object with him or not. If in 
 mid-life he could pause and say, "Now I 
 have enough to live upon, I '11 live upon it; 
 and having well earned it, I will also well 
 spend it, and go out of the world poor, as 
 I came into it," then money is not princi- 
 pal with him; but if, having enough to live 
 upon in the manner befitting his charac- 
 ter and rank, he still wants to make more, 
 and to die rich, then money is the princi- 
 pal object with him, and it becomes a curse 
 to himself, and generally to those who spend 
 it after him. For you know it must be 
 spent some day; the only question is 
 whether the man who makes it shall spend 
 it, or some one else; and generally it is 
 better for the maker to spend it, for he 
 will know best its value and use. And 
 if a man does not choose thus to spend 
 his money, he must either hoard it or lend 
 it, and the worst thing he can generally 
 do is to lend it; for borrowers are nearly 
 always ill spenders, and it is with lent 
 money that all evil is mainly done, and all 
 unjust war protracted. 
 
 For observe what the real fact is, respect- 
 ing loans to foreign military governments, 
 234
 
 WORK 
 
 and how strange it is. If your little boy 
 came to you to ask for money to spend in 
 squibs and crackers, you would think twice 
 before you gave it him: and you would have 
 some idea that it was wasted, when you 
 saw it fly off in fireworks, even though he 
 did no mischief with it. But the Russian 
 children, and Austrian children, come to 
 you, borrowing money, not to spend in in- 
 nocent squibs, but in cartridges and bayo- 
 nets . to attack you in India with, and to 
 keep down, all noble life in Italy with, and 
 to murder Polish women and children with; 
 and thqt'yQu will give at once, because they 
 pay .you interest for it. Now, in order to 
 pay you that interest, they must tax every 
 working peasant in their dominions: and on 
 that t^ork you live. You therefore at once 
 rob #he Austrian peasant, assassinate or 
 banish the Polish peasant, and you live on 
 the prod'uce of the theft, and the bribe for 
 the assassinatio'n! That is the broad fact 
 that is the practical meaning of your 
 foreign loans, and of most large interest 
 of money; and then you quarrel with 
 Bishop Colenso, forsooth, as if he denied 
 the Bible, and you believed it! though 
 every deliberate act of your lives is a new 
 defiance of its primary orders. 
 III. I must pass, however, now to our 
 235
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 third condition of separation, between the 
 men who work with the hand, and those 
 who work with the head. 
 
 And here we have at last an inevitable 
 distinction. There must be work done by 
 the arms, or none of us could live. There 
 must be work done by the brains, or the 
 life we get would not be worth having. 
 And the same men cannot do both. There 
 is rough work to be done, and rough men 
 must do it; there is gentle work to be 
 done, and gentlemen must do it; and it is 
 physically impossible that one class should 
 do, or divide, the work of the other. And 
 it is of no use to try to conceal this sorrow- 
 ful fact by fine words, and to talk to the 
 workman about the honorableness of man- 
 ual labor and the dignity of humanity. 
 Rough work, honorable or not, takes the 
 life out of us; and the man who has been 
 heaving clay out of a ditch all day, or driv- 
 ing an express-train against the north wind 
 all night, or holding a collier's helm in a 
 gale on a lee shore, or whirling white-hot 
 iron at a furnace mouth, is not the same 
 man at the end of his day, or night, as one 
 who has been sitting in a quiet room, with 
 everything comfortable about him, reading 
 books, or classing butterflies, or painting 
 pictures. 1 If it is any comfort to you to be 
 
 1 Compare pages 266, 267. 
 
 236
 
 WORK 
 
 told that the rough work is the more hon- 
 orable of the two, I should be sorry to take 
 that much of consolation from you; and in 
 some sense I need not. The rough work 
 is at all events real, honest, and, generally 
 though not always, useful; while the fine 
 work is, a great deal of it, foolish and false, 
 as well as fine, and therefore dishonorable; 
 but when both kinds are equally well and 
 worthily done the head's is the noble work, 
 and the hand's the ignoble. Therefore, of 
 all hand-work whatsoever, necessary for 
 the maintenance of life, those old words, 
 " In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat 
 bread," indicate that the inherent nature 
 of it is one of calamity; and that the 
 ground, cursed for our sake, casts also some 
 shadow of degradation into our contest with 
 its thorn and its thistle: so that all nations 
 have held their days honorable, or "holy," 
 and constituted them "holydays," or "holi- 
 days," by making them days of rest; and 
 the promise which, among all our distant 
 hopes, seems to cast the chief brightness 
 over death, is that blessing of the dead 
 who die in the Lord, that " they rest from 
 their labors, and their works do follow 
 them." 
 
 And thus the perpetual question and 
 contest must arise, who is to do this rough 
 work? and how is the worker of it to be 
 237
 
 THE CROWN OP WILD OLIVE 
 
 comforted, redeemed, and rewarded? and 
 what kind of play should he have, and 
 what rest, in this world, sometimes, as well 
 as in the next? Well, my good, laborious 
 friends, these questions will take a little 
 time to answer yet. They must be an- 
 swered: all good men are occupied with 
 them, and all honest thinkers. There 's 
 grand head-work doing about them; but 
 much must be discovered, and much at- 
 tempted in vain, before anything decisive 
 can be told you. Only note these few par- 
 ticulars, which are already sure. 
 
 As to the distribution of the hard work. 
 None of us, or very few of us, do either 
 hard or soft work because we think we 
 ought; but because we have chanced to fall 
 into the way of it, and cannot help our- 
 selves. Now, nobody does anything well 
 that they cannot help doing: work is only 
 done well when it is done with a will; and 
 no man has a thoroughly sound will unless 
 he knows he is doing what he should, and 
 is in his place. And, depend upon it, all 
 work must be done at last, not in a dis- 
 orderly, scrambling, doggish way, but in 
 an ordered, soldierly, human way a law- 
 ful or " loyal " way. Men are enlisted for 
 the labor that kills the labor of war: they 
 are counted, trained, fed, dressed, and 
 238
 
 WORK 
 
 praised for that. Let them be enlisted also 
 for the labor that feeds: let them be 
 counted, trained, fed, dressed, praised for 
 that. Teach the plow exercise as carefully 
 as you do the sword exercise, and let the 
 officers of troops of life be held as much 
 gentlemen as the officers of troops of 
 death; and all is done: but neither this, nor 
 any other right thing, can be accomplished 
 you can't even see your way to it un- 
 less, first of all, both servant and master 
 are resolved that, come what will of it, 
 they will do each other justice. 
 
 People are perpetually squabbling about 
 what will be best to do, or easiest to do, or 
 advisablest to do, or profitablest to do; 
 but they never, so far as I hear them talk, 
 ever ask what it is just to do. And it is 
 the law of heaven that you shall not be 
 able to judge what is wise or easy, unless 
 you are first resolved to judge what is just, 
 and to do it. That is the one thing con- 
 stantly reiterated by our Master the order 
 of all others that is given oftenest "Do 
 justice and judgment." That 's your Bible 
 order; that 's the "Service of God," not 
 praying nor psalm-singing. You are told, 
 indeed, to sing psalms when you are merry, 
 and to pray when you need anything; and, 
 by the perverseness of the evil Spirit in us, 
 239
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 we get to think that praying and psalm- 
 singing are " service." If a child finds itself 
 in want of anything, it runs in and asks its 
 father for it does it call that doing its 
 father a service? If it begs for a toy or a 
 piece of cake does it call that serving its 
 father? That, with God, is prayer, and He 
 likes to hear it: He likes you to ask Him 
 for cake when you want it; but He does n't 
 call that "serving Him." Begging is not 
 serving: God likes mere beggars as little 
 as you do He likes honest servants, not 
 beggars. So when a child loves its father 
 very much, and is very happy, it may sing 
 little songs about him; but it does n't call 
 that serving its father; neither is singing 
 songs about God, serving God. It is enjoy- 
 ing ourselves, if it 's anything, most prob- 
 ably it is nothing; but if it 's anything it is 
 serving ourselves, not God. And yet we are 
 impudent enough to call our beggings and 
 chantings "Divine service": we say, "Di- 
 vine service will be ' performed ' " (that 's 
 our word the form of it gone through) 
 "at so-and-so o'clock." Alas; unless we 
 perform Divine service in every willing act 
 of life, we never perform it at all. The one 
 Divine work the one ordered sacrifice is 
 to do justice; and it is the last we are ever 
 inclined to do. Anything rather than that! 
 240
 
 WORK 
 
 As much charity as you choose, but no 
 justice. "Nay," you will say, "charity is 
 greater than justice." Yes, it is greater; 
 it is the summit of justice it is the temple 
 of which justice is the foundation. But 
 you can't have the top without the bottom; 
 you cannot build upon charity. You must 
 build upon justice, for this main reason, 
 that you have not, at first, charity to build 
 with. It is the last reward of good work. 
 Do justice to your brother (you can do that 
 whether you love him or not), and you will 
 come to love him. But do injustice to 
 him, because you don't love him; and you 
 will come to hate him. 
 
 It is all very fine to think you can build 
 upon charity to begin with; but you will 
 find all you have got to begin with begins 
 at home, and is essentially love of your- 
 self. You well-to-do people, for instance, 
 who are here to-night, will go to " Divine 
 service" next Sunday, all nice and tidy; 
 and your little children will have their 
 tight little Sunday boots on, and lovely 
 little Sunday feathers in their hats; and 
 you '11 think, complacently and piously, 
 how lovely they look going to church in 
 their best! So they do: and you love them 
 heartily, and you like sticking feathers in 
 their hats. That 's all right: that is 
 16 241
 
 THE CROWN OP WILD OLIVE 
 
 charity; but it is charity beginning at 
 home. Then you will come to the poor 
 little crossing-sweeper, got up also it in 
 its Sunday dress, the dirtiest rags it has, 
 that it may beg the better: you will give 
 it a penny, and think how good you are, 
 and how good God is to prefer your child 
 to the crossing-sweeper, and bestow on it 
 a divine hat, feather, and boots, and the 
 pleasure of giving pence, instead of beg- 
 ging for them. That 's charity going abroad. 
 But what does Justice say, walking and 
 watching near us? Christian Justice has 
 been strangely mute and seemingly blind; 
 and, if not blind, decrepit, this many a 
 day: she keeps her accounts still, however 
 quite steadily doing them at nights, 
 carefully, with her bandage off, and through 
 acutest spectacles (the only modern scien- 
 tific invention she cares about). You must 
 put 'your ear down ever so close to her 
 lips, to hear her speak; and then you will 
 start at what she first whispers, for it will 
 certainly be, "Why should n't that little 
 crossing-sweeper have a feather on its 
 head, as well as your own child?" Then 
 you may ask Justice, in an amazed man- 
 ner, " How she can possibly be so foolish as 
 to think children could sweep crossings 
 with feathers on their heads?" Then you 
 242
 
 WORK 
 
 stoop again, and Justice says still in her 
 dull, stupid way "Then, why don't you, 
 every other Sunday, leave your child to 
 sweep the crossing, and take the little 
 sweeper to church in a hat and feather? " 
 Mercy on us (you think), what will she say 
 next! And you answer, of course, that 
 "you don't, because everybody ought to 
 remain content in the position in which 
 Providence has placed them." Ah, my 
 friends, that 's the gist of the whole ques- 
 tion. Did Providence put them in that po- 
 sition, or did you ? You knock a man into 
 a ditch, and then you tell him to remain 
 content in the "position in which Provi- 
 dence has placed him." That 's modern 
 Christianity. You say" We did not knock 
 him into the ditch." We shall never know 
 what you have done, or left undone, until 
 the question with us, every morning, is, 
 not how to do the gainful thing, but how 
 to do the just thing, during the day; nor 
 until we are at least so far on the way to 
 being Christian, as to acknowledge that 
 maxim of the poor half-way Mohammedan, 
 "One hour in the execution of justice is 
 worth seventy years of prayer." 
 
 Supposing, then, we have it determined 
 with appropriate justice, who is to do the 
 hand-work, the next questions must be 
 243
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 how the hand-workers are to be paid, and 
 how they are to be refreshed, and what play 
 they are to have. Now, the possible quan- 
 tity of play depends on the possible quan- 
 tity of pay; and the quantity of pay is not 
 a matter for consideration to hand-workers 
 only, but to all workers. Generally, good, 
 useful work, whether of the hand or head, is 
 either ill-paid, or not paid at all. I don't say 
 it should be so, but it always is so. People, 
 as a rule, only pay for being amused or being 
 cheated, not for being served. Five thou- 
 sand a year to your talker, and a shilling a 
 day to your fighter, digger, and thinker, is 
 the rule. None of the best head-work in 
 art, literature, or science, is ever paid for. 
 How much do you think Homer got for his 
 "Iliad"? or Dante for his "Paradise"? 
 only bitter bread and salt, and going up 
 and down other people's stairs. In science, 
 the man who discovered the telescope, and 
 first saw heaven, was paid with a dungeon; 
 the man who invented the microscope, and 
 first saw earth, died of starvation, driven 
 from his home. It is indeed very clear 
 that God means all thoroughly good work 
 and talk to be done for nothing. Baruch 
 the scribe did not get a penny a line for 
 writing Jeremiah's second roll for him, I 
 fancy; and St. Stephen did not get bishop's 
 244
 
 WORK 
 
 pay for that long sermon of his to the 
 Pharisees; nothing but stones. For indeed 
 that is the world-father's proper payment. 
 So surely as any of the world's children 
 work for the world's good, honestly, with 
 head and heart; and come to it, saying, 
 "Give us a little bread; just to keep the life 
 in us," the world-father answers them, 
 "No, my children, not bread; a stone, if 
 you like, or as many as you need, to keep 
 you quiet, and tell to future ages, how un- 
 pleasant you made yourself to the one you 
 lived in." 
 
 But the hand-workers are not so ill off 
 as all this comes to. The worst that can 
 happen to you is to break stones; not be 
 broken by them. And for you there will 
 come a time for better payment; some day, 
 assuredly, we shall pay people not quite so 
 much for talking in Parliament and doing 
 nothing, as for holding their tongues out 
 of it, and doing something; we shall pay 
 our plowman a little more, and our lawyer 
 a little less, and so on: but, at least, we 
 may even now take care that whatever 
 work is done shall be fully paid for; and the 
 man who does it, paid for it, not somebody 
 else; and that it shall be done in an orderly, 
 soldierly, well-guided, wholesome way, un- 
 der good captains and lieutenants of labor; 
 245
 
 THE CROWN OP WILD OLIVE 
 
 and that it shall have its appointed times 
 of rest, and enough of them; and that, in 
 those times, the play shall be wholesome 
 play, not in theatrical gardens, with tin 
 flowers and gas sunshine, and girls dancing 
 because of their misery; but in true gar- 
 dens, with real flowers, and real sunshine, 
 and children dancing because of their glad- 
 ness; so that truly the streets shall be full 
 (the "streets," mind you, not the gutters) 
 of children, playing in the midst thereof. 
 We may take care that workingmen shall 
 have at least as good books to read as 
 anybody else, when they 've time to read 
 them; and as comfortable firesides to sit 
 at as anybody else, when they 've time to 
 sit at them. This, I think, can be man- 
 aged for you, my laborious friends, in the 
 good time. 
 
 IV. I must go on, however, to our last 
 head, concerning ourselves all, as workers. 
 What is wise work, and what is foolish 
 work? What the difference between sense 
 and nonsense, in daily occupation? 
 
 There are three tests of wise work: 
 that it must be honest, useful, and cheer- 
 ful. 
 
 I. It is HONEST. I hardly know anything 
 more strange than that you recognize hon- 
 esty in play, and you do not in work. In 
 246
 
 WORK 
 
 your lightest games, you have always some 
 one to see what you call "fair-play." In 
 boxing, you must hit fair; in racing, start 
 fair. Your English watchword is "fair- 
 play" your English hatred, foul-play. Did 
 it never strike you that you wanted an- 
 other watchword also, " f air-wor fc," and 
 another and bitterer hatred, "foul- work"! 
 Your prize-fighter has some honor in him 
 yet: and so have the men in the ring round 
 him: they will judge him to lose the match, 
 by foul hitting. But your prize-merchant 
 gains his match by foul selling, and no one 
 cries out against that! You drive a gam- 
 bler out of the gambling-room who loads 
 dice, but you leave a tradesman in flourish- 
 ing business who loads scales. For ob- 
 serve, all dishonest dealing is loading scales. 
 What difference does it make whether I get 
 short weight, adulterate substance, or dis- 
 honest fabric unless that flaw in the sub- 
 stance or fabric is the worse evil of the two? 
 Give me short measure of food, and I only 
 lose by you; but give me adulterate food, 
 and I die by you. 
 
 Here, then, is your chief duty, you work- 
 men and tradesmen, to be true to your- 
 selves and to us who would help you. We 
 can do nothing for you, nor you for your- 
 selves, without honesty. Get that, you get 
 247
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 all; without that, your suffrages, your re- 
 forms, your free-trade measures, your in- 
 stitutions of science, are all in vain. It 
 is useless to put your heads together, if 
 you can't put your hearts together. Shoul- 
 der to shoulder, right hand to right hand, 
 among yourselves, and no wrong hand to 
 anybody else, and you '11 win the world 
 yet. 
 
 II. Then, secondly, wise work is USEFUL. 
 No man minds, or ought to mind, its being 
 hard, if only it comes to something; but 
 when it is hard, and comes to nothing; 
 when all our bees' business turns to spi- 
 der's; and for honeycomb we have only 
 resultant cobweb, blown away by the next 
 breeze, that is the cruel thing for the 
 worker. Yet do we ever ask ourselves, 
 personally, or even nationally, whether our 
 work is coming to anything or not? We 
 don't care to keep what has been nobly 
 done; still less do we care to do nobly what 
 others would keep; and, least of all, to 
 make the work itself useful, instead of 
 deadly, to the doer, so as to exert his life 
 indeed, but not to waste it. Of all wastes, 
 the greatest waste that you can commit is 
 the waste of labor. If you went down in the 
 morning into your dairy, and found that 
 your youngest child had got down before 
 248
 
 WORK 
 
 you; and that he and the cat were at play 
 together, and that he had poured Out all 
 the cream on the floor for the cat to 
 lap up, you would scold the child, and be 
 sorry the cream was wasted. But if, in- 
 stead of wooden bowls with milk in them, 
 there are golden bowls with human life in 
 them, and instead of the cat to play with, 
 the devil to play with: and you your- 
 self the player; and instead of leaving that 
 golden bowl to be broken by God at the 
 fountain, you break it in the dust your- 
 self, and pour the human life out on the 
 ground for the fiend to lick up that is no 
 waste! 
 
 What! you perhaps think, "to waste the 
 labor of men is not to kill them." Is it 
 not? I should like to know how you could 
 kill them more utterly, kill them with 
 second deaths, seventh deaths, hundred- 
 fold deaths? It is the slightest way of 
 killing to stop a man's breath. Nay, the 
 hunger, and the cold, and the whistling 
 bullets our love messengers between na- 
 tion and nation have brought pleasant 
 messages to many a man before now: or- 
 ders of sweet release, and leave at last to 
 go where he will be most welcome and most 
 happy. At the worst you do but shorten 
 his life, you do not corrupt his life. But if 
 249
 
 THE CROWN OP WILD OLIVE 
 
 you put him to base labor, if you bind his 
 thoughts, if you blind his eyes, if you blunt 
 his hopes, if you steal his joys, if you stunt 
 his body, and blast his soul, and at last 
 leave him not so much as strength to reap 
 the poor fruit of his degradation, but 
 gather that for yourself, and dismiss him 
 to the grave, when you have done with 
 him, having, so far as in you lay, made the 
 walls of that grave everlasting: (though, 
 indeed, I fancy the goodly bricks of some 
 of our family vaults will hold closer in the 
 resurrection day than the sod over the la- 
 borer's head), this you think is no waste, 
 and no sin! 
 
 III. Then, lastly, wise work is CHEERFUL, 
 as a child's work is. And now I want you 
 to take one thought home with you, and 
 let it stay with you. 
 
 Everybody in this room has been taught 
 to pray daily, " Thy kingdom come." Now, 
 if we hear a man swear in the streets, we 
 think it very wrong, and say he "takes 
 God's name in vain." But there 's a twenty 
 times worse way of taking His name in 
 vain than that. It is to ask God for what 
 we don't want. He does n't like that sort 
 of prayer. If you don't want a thing, don't 
 ask for it: such asking is the worst mock- 
 ery of your King you can insult Him with; 
 250
 
 WORK 
 
 the soldiers striking Him on the head with 
 the reed was nothing to that. If you do 
 not wish for His kingdom, don't pray for 
 it. But if you do, you must do more than 
 pray for it; you must work for it. And, to 
 work for it, you must know what it is; we 
 have all prayed for it many a day without 
 thinking. Observe, it is a kingdom that is 
 to come to us; we are not to go to it. Also, 
 it is not to be a kingdom of the dead, but 
 of the living. Also, it is not to come all 
 at once, but quietly; nobody knows how. 
 "The kingdom of God cometh not with ob- 
 servation." Also, it is not to come outside 
 of us, but in our hearts: "the kingdom of 
 God is within you." And, being within us, 
 it is not a thing to be seen, but to be felt; 
 and though it brings all substance of good 
 with it, it does not consist in that: "the 
 kingdom of God is not meat and drink, but 
 righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy 
 Ghost"; joy, that is to say, in the holy, 
 healthful, and helpful Spirit. Now, if we 
 want to work for this kingdom, and to 
 bring it, and enter into it, there 's one cu- 
 rious condition to be first accepted. You 
 must enter it as children, or not at all: 
 "Whosoever will not receive it as a little 
 child shall not enter therein." And again, 
 "Suffer little children to come unto me, 
 251
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 and forbid them not, for of such is the king- 
 dom of heaven." l 
 
 Of such, observe. Not of children them- 
 selves, but of such as children. I believe 
 most mothers who read that text think 
 that all heaven or the earth when it gets 
 to be like heaven is to be full of babies. 
 But that 's not so. "Length of days and 
 long life and peace," that is the blessing, 
 not to die, still less to live, in babyhood. 
 It is the character of children we want, and 
 must gain at our peril; let us see, briefly, 
 in what it consists. 
 
 The first character of right childhood is 
 that it is Modest. A well-bred child does 
 not think it can teach its parents, or that 
 it knows everything. It may think its 
 father and mother know everything per- 
 haps that all grown-up people know every- 
 thing; very certainly it is sure that it does 
 not. And it is always asking questions, 
 and wanting to know more. Well, that is 
 the first character of a good and wise man 
 at his work. To know that he knows very 
 little; to perceive that there are many 
 above him wiser than he; and to be always 
 asking questions, wanting to learn, not to 
 
 1 [I have referred oftener to the words of the English Bible 
 in this lecture than in any other of my addresses, because I 
 was here speaking to an audience which professed to accept 
 its authority implicitly.] 
 
 252
 
 WORK 
 
 teach. No one ever teaches well who wants 
 to teach, or governs well who wants to gov- 
 ern; it is an old saying (Plato's, but I know 
 not if his, first) and as wise as old. 
 
 Then, the second character of right child- 
 hood is to be Faithful. Perceiving that its 
 father knows best what is good for it, and 
 having found always, when it has tried its 
 own way against his, that he was right and 
 it was wrong, a noble child trusts him at 
 last wholly, gives him its hand, and will 
 walk blindfold with him, if he bids it. And 
 that is the true character of all good men 
 also, as obedient workers, or soldiers under 
 captains. They must trust their captains; 
 they are bound for their lives to choose 
 none but those whom they can trust. Then, 
 they are not always to be thinking that 
 what seems strange to them, or wrong in 
 what they are desired to do, is strange or 
 wrong. They know their captain: where he 
 leads they must follow, what he bids, they 
 must do; and without this trust and faith, 
 without this captainship and soldiership, 
 no great deed, no great salvation, is pos- 
 sible to man. 
 
 Then, the third character of right child- 
 hood is to be Loving. Give a little love to 
 a child, and you get a great deal back. It 
 loves everything near it, when it is a right 
 253
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 kind of child; would hurt nothing, would 
 give the best it has away always, if you 
 need it; does not lay plans for getting 
 everything in the house for itself: and, 
 above all, delights in helping people; you 
 cannot please it so much as by giving it a 
 chance of being useful, in ever so humble 
 a way. 
 
 And because of all these characters, 
 lastly, it is Cheerful. Putting its trust in 
 its father, it is careful for nothing being 
 full of love to every creature, it is happy 
 always, whether in its play or its duty. 
 Well, that 's the great worker's character 
 also. Taking no thought for the morrow; 
 taking thought only for the duty of the 
 day; trusting somebody else to take care 
 of to-morrow; knowing indeed what labor 
 is, but not what sorrow is; and always 
 ready for play beautiful play. For lovely 
 human play is like the play of the Sun. 
 There 's a worker for you. He, steady to 
 his time, is set as a strong man to run his 
 course, but also he rejoiceth as a strong 
 man to run his course. See how he plays 
 in the morning, with the mists below, and 
 the clouds above, with a ray here, and a 
 flash there, and a shower of jewels every- 
 where; that 's the Sun's play; and great 
 human play is like his all various all 
 254
 
 WORK 
 
 full of light and life, and tender, as the 
 dew of the morning. 
 
 So then, you have the child's character 
 in these four things Humility, Faith, 
 Charity, and Cheerfulness. That 's what 
 you have got to he converted to. " Except 
 ye be converted and become as little chil- 
 dren." You hear much of conversion now- 
 adays: but people always seem to think 
 they have got to be made wretched by con- 
 version, to be converted to long faces. 
 No, friends, you have got to be converted 
 to short ones; you have to repent into 
 childhood, to repent into delight, and de- 
 lightsomeness. You can't go into a con- 
 venticle but you '11 hear plenty of talk of 
 backsliding. Backsliding, indeed! I can 
 tell you, on the ways most of us go, the 
 faster we slide back the better. Slide back 
 into the cradle, if going on is into the grave: 
 back, I tell you; back out of your long 
 faces, and into your long clothes. It is 
 among children only, and as children 
 only, that you will find medicine for your 
 healing and true wisdom for your teach- 
 ing. There is poison in the counsels of 
 the men of this world; the words they 
 speak are all bitterness, "the poison of 
 asps is under their lips," but "the suck- 
 ing child shall play by the hole of the 
 255
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 asp." There is death in the looks of men. 
 "Their eyes are privily set against the 
 poor ": they are as the uncharmable serpent, 
 the cockatrice, which slew by seeing. But 
 " the weaned child shall lay his hand on 
 the cockatrice' den." There is death in the 
 steps of men: " their feet are swift to shed 
 blood; they have compassed us in our steps 
 like the lion that is greedy of his prey, and 
 the young lion lurking in secret places"; 
 but, in that kingdom, the wolf shall lie 
 down with the lamb, and the fatling with 
 the lion, and "a little child shall lead 
 them." There is death in the thoughts of 
 men: the world is one wide riddle to them, 
 darker and darker as it draws to a close; 
 but the secret of it is known to the child, 
 and the Lord of heaven and earth is most 
 to be thanked in that "He has hidden 
 these things from the wise and prudent, 
 and has revealed them unto babes." Yes, 
 and there is death infinitude of death 
 in the principalities and powers of men. 
 As far as the east is from the west, so far 
 our sins are not set from us, but multi- 
 plied around us: the Sun himself, think 
 you he now "rejoices" to run his course, 
 when he plunges westward to the horizon, 
 so widely red, not with clouds, but blood? 
 And it will be red more widely yet. What- 
 256
 
 WORK 
 
 ever drought of the early and latter rain 
 may be, there will be none of that red 
 rain. You fortify yourselves, you arm 
 yourselves against it, in vain; the enemy 
 and avenger will be upon you also, unless 
 you learn that it is not out of the mouths 
 of the knitted gun, or the smoothed rifle, 
 but "out of the mouths of babes and suck- 
 lings " that the strength is ordained which 
 shall "still the enemy and avenger." 
 
 17 
 
 257
 
 LECTURE II 
 TRAFFIC
 
 LECTURE 
 II 
 
 TRAFFIC 
 
 Delivered in the Town Hall, Bradford. 
 
 M 
 
 "Y good Yorkshire friends, you asked 
 me down here among your hills 
 that I might talk to you about this 
 Exchange you are going to build: but, ear- 
 nestly and seriously asking you to pardon 
 me, I am going to do nothing of the kind. 
 I cannot talk, or at least can say very little, 
 about this same Exchange. I must talk of 
 quite other things, though not willingly; 
 I could not deserve your pardon if, when 
 you invited me to speak on one subject, I 
 wilfully spoke on another. But I cannot 
 speak, to purpose, of anything about which 
 I do not care; and most simply and sor- 
 rowfully I have to tell you, in the outset, 
 that I do not care about this Exchange of 
 yours. 
 
 If, however, when you sent me your in- 
 vitation, I had answered, "I won't come, 
 I don't care about the Exchange of Brad- 
 ford," you would have been justly offended 
 261
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 with me, not knowing the reasons of so 
 blunt a carelessness. So I have come down, 
 hoping that you will patiently let me tell 
 you why, on this, and many other such 
 occasions, I now remain silent, when for- 
 merly I should have caught at the oppor- 
 tunity of speaking to a gracious audience. 
 
 In a word, then, I do not care about this 
 Exchange, because you don't; and because 
 you know perfectly well I cannot make you. 
 Look at the essential conditions of the 
 case, which you, as business men, know 
 perfectly well, though perhaps you think 
 I forget them. You are going to spend 
 30,000, which to you, collectively, is no- 
 thing; the buying a new coat is, as to the 
 cost of it, a much more important matter 
 of consideration, to me, than building a 
 new Exchange is to you. But you think 
 you may as well have the right thing for 
 your money. You know there are a great 
 many odd styles of architecture about; 
 you don't want to do anything ridiculous; 
 you hear of me, among others, as a respec- 
 table architectural man-milliner; and you 
 send for me, that I may tell you the lead- 
 ing fashion; and what is, in our shops, for 
 the moment, the newest and sweetest 
 thing in pinnacles. 
 
 Now pardon me for telling you frankly, 
 262
 
 TRAFFIC 
 
 you cannot have good architecture merely 
 by asking people's advice on occasion. All 
 good architecture is the expression of na- 
 tional life and character; and it is produced 
 by a prevalent and eager national taste, or 
 desire for beauty. And I want you to think 
 a little of the deep significance of this word 
 "taste"; for no statement of mine has 
 been more earnestly or oftener contro- 
 verted than that good taste is essentially 
 a moral quality. "No," say many of my 
 antagonists, "taste is one thing, morality 
 is another. Tell us what is pretty: we 
 shall be glad to know that; but we need 
 no sermons, even were you able to preach 
 them, which may be doubted." 
 
 Permit me, therefore, to fortify this old 
 dogma of mine somewhat. Taste is not 
 only a part and an index of morality; it 
 is the ONLY morality. The first, and last, 
 and closest trial question to any living crea- 
 ture is, "What do you like?" Tell me 
 what you like, and I '11 tell you what you 
 are. Go out into the street, and ask the 
 first man or woman you meet, what their 
 "taste" is; and if they answer candidly, 
 you know them, body and soul. " You, my 
 friend in the rags, with the unsteady gait, 
 what do you like?" "A pipe, and a quar- 
 tern of gin." I know you. "You, good 
 263
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 woman, with the quick step and tidy bon- 
 net, what do you like? " "A swept hearth, 
 and a clean tea-table; and my husband op- 
 posite me, and a baby at my breast." Good, 
 I know you also. " You, little girl with the 
 golden hair and the soft eyes, what do you 
 like?" "My canary, and a run among the 
 wood-hyacinths." "You, little boy with 
 the dirty hands, and the low forehead, what 
 do you like?" "A shy at the sparrows, 
 and a game at pitch farthing." Good; we 
 know them all now. What more need we 
 ask? 
 
 "Nay," perhaps you answer; "we need 
 rather to ask what these people and chil- 
 dren do, than what they like. If they do 
 right, it is no matter that they like what 
 is wrong; and if they do wrong, it is no 
 matter that they like what is right. Doing 
 is the great thing; and it does not matter 
 that the man likes drinking, so that he 
 does not drink; nor that the little girl likes 
 to be kind to her canary, if she will not 
 learn her lessons; nor that the little boy 
 likes throwing stones at the sparrows, if 
 he goes to the Sunday-school." Indeed, 
 for a short time, and in a provisional sense, 
 this is true. For if, resolutely, people do 
 what is right, in time to come they like 
 doing it. But they only are in a right 
 264
 
 TRAFFIC 
 
 moral state when they have come to like 
 doing it; and as long as they don't like it, 
 they are still in a vicious state. The man 
 is not in health of body who is always think- 
 ing of the bottle in the cupboard, though 
 he bravely bears his thirst; but the man 
 who heartily enjoys water in the morning, 
 and wine in the evening, each in its proper 
 quantity and time. And the entire object 
 of true education is to make people not 
 merely do the right things, but enjoy the 
 right things: not merely industrious, but 
 to love industry not merely learned, 
 but to love knowledge not merely pure, 
 but to love purity not merely just, but to 
 hunger and thirst after justice. 
 
 But you may answer or think, "Is the 
 liking for outside ornaments, for pictures, 
 or statues, or furniture, or architecture, 
 a moral quality?" Yes, most surely, if a 
 rightly set liking. Taste for any pictures 
 or statues is not a moral quality, but taste 
 for good ones is. Only here again we have 
 to define the word "good." I don't mean 
 by "good," clever or learned or difficult 
 in the doing. Take a picture by Teniers, 
 of sots quarreling over their dice; it is an 
 entirely clever picture; so clever that no- 
 thing in its kind has ever been done equal 
 to it; but it is also an entirely base and 
 265
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 evil picture. It is an expression of delight 
 in the prolonged contemplation of a vile 
 thing, and delight in that is an "unman- 
 nered," or " immoral " quality. It is " bad 
 taste" in the profoundest sense it is the 
 taste of the devils. On the other hand, a 
 picture of Titian's, or a Greek statue, or a 
 Greek coin, or a Turner landscape, ex- 
 presses delight in the perpetual contempla- 
 tion of a good and perfect thing. That is 
 an entirely moral quality it is the taste of 
 the angels. And all delight in fine art, and 
 all love of it, resolve themselves into sim- 
 ple love of that which deserves love. That 
 deserving is the quality which we call 
 "loveliness" (we ought to have an oppo- 
 site word, hateliness, to be said of the 
 things which deserve to be hated); and it 
 is not an indifferent nor optional thing 
 whether we love this or that; but it is just 
 ^ the vital function of all our being. What 
 we like determines what we are, and is the 
 sign of what we are; and to teach taste is 
 s inevitably to form character. 
 
 As I was thinking over this, in walking 
 up Fleet Street the other day, my eye 
 caught the title of a book standing open in 
 a bookseller's window. It was "On the 
 necessity of the diffusion of taste among 
 all classes." "Ah," I thought to myself, 
 "my classifying friend, when you have dif- 
 266
 
 TRAFFIC 
 
 fused your taste, where will your classes 
 be? The man who likes what you like, be- 
 longs to the same class with you, I think. 
 Inevitably so. You may put him to other 
 work if you choose; but, by the condition 
 you have brought him into, he will dislike 
 the work as much as you would yourself. 
 You get hold of a scavenger or a coster- 
 monger, who enjoyed the Newgate ' Calen- 
 dar ' for literature, and ' Pop goes the Wea- 
 sel' for music. You think you can make 
 him like Dante and Beethoven? I wish 
 you joy of your lessons; but if you do, you 
 have made a gentleman of him: he won't 
 like to go back to his costermongering." 
 
 And so completely and unexceptionally 
 is this so that, if I had time to-night, I 
 could show you that a nation cannot be af- 
 fected by any vice, or weakness, without 
 expressing it, legibly, and forever, either in 
 bad art, or by want of art; and that there 
 is no national virtue, small or great, which 
 is not manifestly expressed in all the art 
 which circumstances enable the people pos- 
 sessing that virtue to produce. Take, for 
 instance, your great English virtue of en- 
 during and patient courage. You have at 
 present in England only one art of any con- 
 sequencethat is, iron-working. You know 
 thoroughly well how to cast and hammer 
 iron. Now, do you think, in those masses 
 267
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 of lava which you build volcanic cones to 
 melt, and which you forge at the mouths 
 of the Infernos you have created; do you 
 think, on those iron plates, your courage 
 and endurance are not written forever, 
 not merely with an iron pen, but on iron 
 parchment? And take also your great 
 English vice European vice vice of all 
 the world vice of all other worlds that 
 roll or shine in heaven, bearing with them 
 yet the atmosphere of hell the vice of 
 jealousy, which brings competition into 
 your commerce, treachery into your coun- 
 cils, and dishonor into your wars that 
 vice which has rendered for you, and for 
 your next neighboring nation, the daily oc- 
 cupations of existence no longer possible, 
 but with the mail upon your breasts and 
 the sword loose in its sheath; so that at 
 last you have realized for all the multi- 
 tudes of the two great peoples who lead 
 the so-called civilization of the earth, you 
 have realized for them all, I say, in person 
 and in policy, what was once true only of 
 the rough Border riders of your Cheviot 
 hills: 
 
 They carved at the meal 
 With gloves of steel, 
 
 And they drank the red wine through the helmet 
 barr'd ; 
 
 268
 
 TRAFFIC 
 
 do you think that this national shame and 
 dastardliness of heart are not written as 
 legibly on every rivet of your iron armor 
 as the strength of the right hands that 
 forged it? 
 
 Friends, I know not whether this thing 
 be the more ludicrous or the more melan- 
 choly. It is quite unspeakably both. Sup- 
 pose, instead of being now sent for by you, 
 I had been sent for by some private gen- 
 tleman, living in a suburban house, with 
 his garden separated only by a fruit wall 
 from his next-door neighbor's; and he 
 had called me to consult with him on the 
 furnishing of his drawing-room. I begin 
 looking about me, and find the walls 
 rather bare; I think such-and-such a paper 
 might be desirable perhaps a little fresco 
 here and there on the celling a damask 
 curtain or so at the windows. " Ah," says 
 my employer, "damask curtains, indeed! 
 That 's all very fine, but you know I can't 
 afford that kind of thing just now!" "Yet 
 the world credits you with a splendid in- 
 come!" "Ah, yes," says my friend, "but 
 do you know, at present I am obliged to 
 spend it nearly all in steel traps?" "Steel 
 traps! for whom? " " Why, for that fellow 
 on the other side the wall, you know: we 're 
 very good friends, capital friends; but we 
 269
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 are obliged to keep our traps set on both 
 sides of the wall; we could not possibly 
 keep on friendly terms without them, and 
 our spring-guns. The worst of it is, we 
 are both clever fellows enough; and there 's 
 never a day passes that we don't find out a 
 new trap, or a new gun-barrel, or some- 
 thing; we spend about fifteen millions a 
 year each in our traps, take it altogether; 
 and I don't see how we 're to do with less." 
 A highly comic state of life for two private 
 gentlemen! but for two nations, it seems 
 to me, not wholly comic. Bedlam would 
 be comic, perhaps, if there were only one 
 madman in it; and your Christmas panto- 
 mime is comic, when there in only one 
 clown in it; but when the whole world 
 turns clown, and paints itself red with its 
 own heart's blood instead of vermilion, it 
 is something else than comic, I think. 
 
 Mind, I know a great deal of this is play, 
 and willingly allow for that. You don't 
 know what to do with yourselves for a sen- 
 sation: fox-hunting and cricketing will not 
 carry you through the whole of this unen- 
 durably long mortal life: you liked pop-guns 
 when you were school-boys, and rifles and 
 Armstrongs are only the same things bet- 
 ter made: but then the worst of it is that 
 what was play to you when boys, was not 
 270
 
 TRAFFIC 
 
 play to the sparrows; and what is play to 
 you now, is not play to the small birds of 
 State neither; and for the black eagles, you 
 are somewhat shy of taking shots at them, 
 if I mistake not. 
 
 I must get back to the matter in hand, 
 however. Believe me, without farther in- 
 stance, I could show you, in all time, that 
 every nation's vice, or virtue, was written 
 in its art: the soldiership of early Greece; 
 the sensuality of late Italy; the visionary 
 religion of Tuscany; the splendid human 
 energy of Venice. I have no time to do 
 this to-night (I have done it elsewhere be- 
 fore now); but I proceed to apply the prin- 
 ciple to ourselves in a more searching 
 manner. 
 
 I notice that among all the new build- 
 ings which cover your once wild hills, 
 churches and schools are mixed in due, 
 that is to say, in large proportion, with 
 your mills and mansions; and I notice also 
 that the churches and schools are almost 
 always Gothic, and the mansions and mills 
 are never Gothic. May I ask the meaning 
 of this; for, remember, it is peculiarly a 
 modern phenomenon? When Gothic was 
 invented, houses were Gothic as well as 
 churches; and when the Italian style su- 
 perseded the Gothic, churches were Italian 
 271
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 as well as houses. If there is a Gothic 
 spire to the cathedral of Antwerp, there is 
 a Gothic belfry to the Hotel de Ville at 
 Brussels; if Inigo Jones builds an Italian 
 Whitehall, Sir Christopher Wren builds an 
 Italian St. Paul's. But now you live under 
 one school of architecture, and worship 
 under another. What do you mean by 
 doing this? Am I to understand that you 
 are thinking of changing your architec- 
 ture back to Gothic; and that you treat 
 your churches experimentally, because it 
 does not matter what mistakes you make 
 in a church? Or am I to understand that 
 you consider Gothic a preeminently sacred 
 and beautiful mode of building, which you 
 think, like the fine frankincense, should be 
 mixed for the tabernacle only, and reserved 
 for your religious services? For if this be 
 the feeling, though it may seem at first as 
 if it were graceful and reverent, at the 
 root of the matter, it signifies neither more 
 nor less than that you have separated your 
 religion from your life. 
 
 For consider what a wide significance 
 this fact has; and remember that it is not 
 you only, but all the people of England, who 
 are behaving thus, just now. 
 
 You have all got into the habit of calling 
 the church "the house of God." I have 
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 TRAFFIC 
 
 seen, over the doors of many churches, the 
 legend actually carved, " This is the house 
 of God, and this is the gate of heaven." 
 Now, note where that legend comes from, 
 and of what place it was first spoken. A 
 boy leaves his father's house to go on a 
 long journey on foot, to visit his uncle: he 
 has to cross a wild hill-desert; just as if 
 one of your own boys had to cross the 
 wolds to visit an uncle at Carlisle. The 
 second or third day your boy finds himself 
 somewhere between Hawes and Brough, in 
 the midst of the moors, at sunset. It is 
 stony ground, and boggy; he cannot go 
 one foot farther that night. Down he lies, 
 to sleep, on Wharnside, where best he may, 
 gathering a few of the stones together to 
 put under his head; so wild the place is, 
 he cannot get anything but stones. And 
 there, lying under the broad night, he has 
 a dream; and he sees a ladder set up on 
 the earth, and the top of it reaches to 
 heaven, and the angels of God are seen 
 ascending and descending upon it. And 
 when he wakes out of his sleep, he says, 
 "How dreadful is this place; surely this is 
 none other than the house of God, and this 
 is the gate of heaven." This PLACE, ob- 
 serve; not this church; not this city; not 
 this stone, even, which he puts up for a 
 18 273
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 memorial the piece of flint on which his 
 head was lain. But this place ; this windy 
 slope of Wharnside; this moorland hollow, 
 torrent-bitten, snow-blighted! this any 
 place where God lets down the ladder. 
 And how are you to know where that will 
 be? or how are you to determine where it 
 may be, but by being ready for it always? 
 Do you know where the lightning is to fall 
 next? You do know that, partly; you can 
 guide the lightning; but you cannot guide 
 the going forth of the Spirit, which is as 
 that lightning when it shines from the east 
 to the west. 
 
 But the perpetual and insolent warping 
 of that strong verse to serve a merely ec- 
 clesiastical purpose, is only one of the thou- 
 sand instances in which we sink back into 
 gross Judaism. We call our churches 
 " temples." Now, you know perfectly well 
 they are not temples. They have never 
 had, never can have, anything whatever to 
 do with temples. They are " synagogues " 
 "gathering-places" where you gather 
 yourselves together as an assembly; and 
 by not calling them so, you again miss the 
 force of another mighty text "Thou, when 
 thou prayest, shalt not be as the hypocrites 
 are: for they love to pray standing in the 
 churches" [we should translate it], "that 
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 they may be seen of men. But thou, when 
 thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and 
 when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy 
 Father which is," not in chancel nor in 
 aisle, but "in secret." 
 
 Now, you feel, as I say this to you I 
 know you feel as if I were trying to take 
 away the honor of your churches. Not so; 
 I am trying to prove to you the honor of 
 your houses and your hills; not that the 
 Church is not sacred but that the whole 
 Earth is. I would have you feel what care- 
 less, what constant, what infectious sin 
 there is in all modes of thought, whereby, 
 in calling your churches only "holy," you 
 call your hearths and homes "profane "; and 
 have separated yourselves from the heathen 
 by casting all your household gods to the 
 ground, instead of recognizing, in the places 
 of their many and feeble Lares, the presence 
 of your One and Mighty Lord and Lar. 
 
 "But what has all this to do with our 
 Exchange? " you ask me, impatiently. My 
 dear friends, it has just everything to do 
 with it; on these inner and great questions 
 depend all the outer and little ones; and if 
 you have asked me down here to speak to 
 you, because you had before been interested 
 in anything I have written, you must know 
 that all I have yet said about architecture 
 275
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 was to show this. The book I called "The 
 Seven Lamps" was to show that certain 
 right states of temper and moral feeling 
 were the magic powers by which all good 
 architecture, without exception, had been 
 produced. "The Stones of Venice" had, 
 from beginning to end, no other aim than 
 to show that the Gothic architecture of 
 Venice had arisen out of, and indicated in 
 all its features, a state of pure national 
 faith, and of domestic virtue; and that its 
 Renaissance architecture had arisen out of, 
 and in all its features indicated, a state of 
 concealed national infidelity, and of domes- 
 tic corruption. And now, you ask me what 
 style is best to build in, and how can I an- 
 swer, knowing the meaning 'of the two 
 styles, but by another question do you 
 mean to build as Christians or as Infidels? 
 And still more do you mean to build as 
 honest Christians or as honest Infidels? as 
 thoroughly and confessedly either one or 
 the other? You don't like to be asked such 
 rude questions. I cannot help it; they are 
 of much more importance than this Ex- 
 change business; and if they can be at once 
 answered, the Exchange business settles 
 itself in a moment. But before I press 
 them farther, I must ask leave to explain 
 one point clearly. 
 
 276
 
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 In all my past work, my endeavor has 
 been to show that good architecture is es- 
 sentially religious the production of a 
 faithful and virtuous, not of an infidel and 
 corrupted people. But in the course of do- 
 ing this, I have had also to show that good 
 architecture is not ecclesiastical. People 
 are so apt to look upon religion as the busi- 
 ness of the clergy, not their own, that the 
 moment they hear of anything depending 
 on "religion," they think it must also have 
 depended on the priesthood; and I have had 
 to take what place was to be occupied be- 
 tween these two errors, and fight both, of ten 
 with seeming contradiction. Good archi- 
 tecture is the work of good and believing 
 men; therefore, you say, at least some peo- 
 ple say, "Good architecture must essen- 
 tially have been the work of the clergy, 
 not of the laity." No a thousand times 
 no; good architecture l has always been 
 the work of the commonalty, not of the 
 clergy. What, you say, those glorious 
 cathedrals the pride of Europe did their 
 builders not form Gothic architecture? 
 No; they corrupted Gothic architecture. 
 Gothic was formed in the baron's castle, 
 and the burgher's street. It was formed 
 
 i [And all other arts, for the most part ; even of incredulous 
 and secularly minded commonalties]. 
 
 277
 
 THE CROWN OP WILD OLIVE 
 
 by the thoughts, and hands, and powers 
 of laboring citizens and warrior kings. 
 By the monk it was used as an instru- 
 ment for the aid of his superstition: when 
 that superstition became a beautiful mad- 
 ness, and the best hearts of Europe vainly 
 dreamed and pined in the cloister, and 
 vainly raged and perished in the crusade, 
 through that fury of perverted faith and 
 wasted war, the Gothic rose also to its 
 loveliest, most fantastic, and finally, most 
 foolish dreams; and in those dreams, was 
 lost. 
 
 I hope, now, that there is no risk of your 
 misunderstanding me when I come to the 
 gist of what I want to say to-night; when 
 I repeat that every great national archi- 
 tecture has been the result and exponent 
 of a great national religion. You can't 
 have bits of it here, bits there you must 
 have it everywhere or nowhere. It is not 
 the monopoly of a clerical company it is 
 not the exponent of a theological dogma- 
 it is not the hieroglyphic writing of an ini- 
 tiated priesthood; it is the manly language 
 of a people inspired by resolute and com- 
 mon purpose, and rendering resolute and 
 common fidelity to the legible laws of an 
 undoubted God. 
 
 Now there have as yet been three distinct 
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 schools of European architecture. I say, 
 European, because Asiatic and African 
 architectures belong so entirely to other 
 races and climates that there is no ques- 
 tion of them here; only, in passing, I will 
 simply assure you that whatever is good 
 or great in Egypt, and Syria, and India, is 
 just good or great for the same reasons as 
 the buildings on our side of the Bosporus. 
 We Europeans, then, have had three great 
 religions: the Greek, which was the wor- 
 ship of the God of Wisdom and Power; the 
 Medieval, which was the worship of the 
 God of Judgment and Consolation; the Re- 
 naissance, which was the worship of the 
 God of Pride and Beauty: these three we 
 have had they are past, and now, at last, 
 we English have got a fourth religion, and 
 a God of our own, about which I want to 
 ask you. But I must explain these three 
 old ones first. 
 
 I repeat, first, the Greeks essentially 
 worshiped the God of Wisdom; so that 
 whatever contended against their religion, 
 to the Jews a stumbling-block, was, to 
 the Greeks Foo lishness. 
 
 The first Greek idea of Deity was that 
 
 expressed in the word, of which we keep 
 
 the remnant in our words "Di-urnal" and 
 
 "Di- vine "the god of Day, Jupiter the re- 
 
 279
 
 THE CROWN OP WILD OLIVE 
 
 vealer. Athena is his daughter, but espe- 
 cially daughter of the Intellect, springing 
 armed from the head. We are only with 
 the help of recent investigation beginning 
 to penetrate the depth of meaning couched 
 under the Athenaic symbols: but I may 
 note rapidly, that her aegis, the mantle 
 with the serpent fringes, in which she often, 
 in the best statues, is represented as fold- 
 ing up her left hand, for better guard; and 
 the Gorgon, on her shield, are both repre- 
 sentative mainly of the chilling horror and 
 sadness (turning men to stone, as it were) 
 of the outmost and superficial spheres of 
 knowledge that knowledge which sepa- 
 rates, in bitterness, hardness, and sorrow, 
 the heart of the full-grown man from the 
 heart of the child. For out of imperfect 
 knowledge spring terror, dissension, dan- 
 ger, and disdain; but from perfect know- 
 ledge, given by the full-revealed Athena, 
 strength and peace, in sign of which she is 
 crowned with the olive spray, and bears 
 the resistless spear. 
 
 This, then, was the Greek conception of 
 purest Deity; and every habit of life, and 
 every form of his art developed themselves 
 from the seeking this bright, serene, resist- 
 less wisdom; and setting himself, as a 
 man, to do things evermore rightly and 
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 TRAFFIC 
 
 strongly; 1 not with any ardent affection or 
 ultimate hope; but with a resolute and 
 contingent energy of will, as knowing that 
 for failure there was no consolation, and 
 for sin there was no remission. And the 
 Greek architecture rose unerring, bright, 
 clearly defined, and self-contained. 
 
 Next followed in Europe the great Chris- 
 tian faith, which was essentially the re- 
 ligion of Comfort. Its great doctrine is the 
 remission of sins; for which cause, it hap- 
 pens, too often, in certain phases of Chris- 
 tianity, that sin and sickness themselves 
 are partly glorified, as if, the more you had 
 to be healed of, the more divine was the 
 healing. The practical result of this doc- 
 trine, in art, is a continual contemplation 
 of sin and disease, and of imaginary states 
 of purification from them; thus we have 
 an architecture conceived in a mingled 
 sentiment of melancholy and aspiration, 
 partly severe, partly luxuriant, which will 
 
 1 [It is an error to suppose that the Greek worship, or seeking, 
 was chiefly of Beauty. It was essentially of lightness and 
 strength, founded on Forethought: the principal character 
 of Greek art is not beauty, but design : and the Dorian Apollo- 
 worship and Athenian Virgin-worship are both expressions 
 of adoration of divine wisdom and purity. Next to these 
 great deities, rank, in power over the national mind, Diony- 
 sius and Ceres, the givers of human strength and life ; then, 
 for heroic examples, Hercules. There is no Venus-worship 
 among the Greeks in the great times: and the Muses are 
 essentially teachers of Truth, and of its harmonies. Com- 
 pare " Aratra Pentelici," \ 200.] 
 
 281
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 bend itself to every one of our needs, and 
 every one of our fancies, and be strong or 
 weak with us, as we are strong or weak 
 ourselves. It is, of all architecture, the 
 basest, when base people build it of all, 
 the noblest, when built by the noble. 
 
 And now note that both these religions 
 Greek and Medieval perished by false- 
 hood in their own main purpose. The 
 Greek religion of Wisdom perished in a 
 false philosophy "Oppositions of science, 
 falsely so called." The Medieval religion 
 of Consolation perished in false comfort; 
 in remission of sins given lyingly. It 
 was the selling of absolution that ended 
 the Medieval faith; and I can tell you more, 
 it is the selling of absolution which, to the 
 end of time, will mark false Christianity. 
 Pure Christianity gives her remission of 
 sins only by ending them; but false Chris- 
 tianity gets her remission of sins by com- 
 pounding for them. And there are many 
 ways of compounding for them. We Eng- 
 lish have beautiful little quiet ways of buy- 
 ing absolution, whether in low Church or 
 high, far more cunning than any of Tetzel's 
 trading. 
 
 Then, thirdly, there followed the religion 
 of Pleasure, in which all Europe gave itself 
 to luxury, ending in death. First, bals 
 282
 
 TRAFFIC 
 
 masques in every saloon, and then guillo- 
 tines in every square. And all these three 
 worships issue in vast temple-building. 
 Your Greek worshiped Wisdom, and built 
 you the Parthenon the Virgin's temple. 
 The Medieval worshiped Consolation, and 
 built you Virgin temples also but to our 
 Lady of Salvation. Then the Revivalist 
 worshiped beauty, of a sort, and built you 
 Versailles and the Vatican. Now, lastly, 
 will you tell me what we worship, and what 
 we build? 
 
 You know we are speaking always of 
 the real, active, continual, national wor- 
 ship; that by which men act, while they 
 live; not that which they talk of, when 
 they die. Now, we have, indeed, a nominal 
 religion, to which we pay tithes of property 
 and sevenths of time; but we have also a 
 practical and earnest religion, to which we 
 devote nine tenths of our property, and 
 six sevenths of our time. And we dispute 
 a great deal about the nominal religion: 
 but we are all unanimous about this prac- 
 tical one; of which I think you will admit 
 that the ruling goddess may be best gen- 
 erally described as the "Goddess of Get- 
 ting-on," or "Britannia of the Market." 
 The Athenians had an "Athena Agoraia," 
 or Athena of the Market; but she was a 
 283
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 subordinate type of their goddess, while 
 our Britannia Agoraia is the principal type 
 of ours. And all your great architectural 
 works are, of course, built to her. It is 
 long since you built a great cathedral; and 
 how you would laugh at me if I proposed 
 building a cathedral on the top of one of 
 these hills of yours, to make it an Acrop- 
 olis! But your railroad mounds, vaster 
 than the walls of Babylon; your railroad- 
 stations, vaster than the temple of Ephe- 
 sus, and innumerable; your chimneys, how 
 much more mighty and costly than cathe- 
 dral spires! your harbor-piers; your ware- 
 houses; your Exchanges! all these are 
 built to your great Goddess of "Getting- 
 on "; and she has formed, and will continue 
 to form, your architecture, as long as you 
 worship her; and it is quite vain to ask 
 me to tell you how to build to her; you 
 know far better than I. 
 
 There might, indeed, on some theories, 
 be a conceivably good architecture for Ex- 
 changesthat is to say, if there were any 
 heroism in the fact or deed of exchange, 
 which might be typically carved on the 
 outside of your building. For, you know, 
 all beautiful architecture must be adorned 
 with sculpture or painting; and for sculp- 
 ture or painting, you must have a subject. 
 284
 
 TRAFFIC 
 
 And hitherto it has been a received opinion 
 among the nations of the world that the 
 only right subjects for either, were hero- 
 isms of some sort. Even on his pots and 
 his flagons, the Greek put a Hercules slay- 
 ing lions, or an Apollo slaying serpents, or 
 Bacchus slaying melancholy giants, and 
 earth-born despondencies. On his temples, 
 the Greek put contests of great warriors 
 in founding states, or of gods with evil 
 spirits. On his houses and temples alike, 
 the Christian put carvings of angels con- 
 quering devils; or of hero-martyrs ex- 
 changing this world for another: subject 
 inappropriate, I think, to our direction of 
 exchange here. And the Master of Chris- 
 tians not only left His followers without 
 any orders as to the sculpture of affairs of 
 exchange on the outside of buildings, but 
 gave some strong evidence of His dislike 
 of affairs of exchange within them. And 
 yet there^ might surely be a heroism in 
 such affairs; and all commerce become a 
 Jdnd of selling of doves, not impious. The 
 wonder has always been great to me, that 
 heroism has never been supposed to be 
 in any wise consistent with the practice of 
 supplying people with food, or clothes; but 
 rather with that of quartering one's self 
 upon them for food, and stripping them of 
 285
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 their clothes. Spoiling of armor is an 
 heroic deed in all ages; but the selling of 
 clothes, old, or new, has never taken any 
 color of magnanimity. Yet one does not 
 see why feeding the hungry and clothing 
 the naked should ever become base busi- 
 nesses, even when engaged in on a large 
 scale. If one could contrive to attach the 
 notion of conquest to them anyhow! so 
 that, supposing there were anywhere an 
 obstinate race, who refused to be com- 
 forted, one might take some pride in giv- 
 ing them compulsory comfort! 1 and, as it 
 were, "occupying a country" with one's 
 gifts, instead of one's armies? If one 
 could only consider it as much a victory 
 to get a barren field sown, as to get an 
 eared field stripped; and contend who 
 should build villages, instead of who should 
 " carry " them ! Are not all forms of hero- 
 ism conceivable in doing these serviceable 
 deeds? You doubt who is strongest? It 
 might be ascertained by push of spade, as 
 well as push of sword. Who is wisest? 
 There are witty things to be thought of in 
 planning other business than campaigns. 
 Who is bravest? There are always the 
 elements to fight with, stronger than men; 
 and nearly as merciless. 
 
 1 [Quite serious, all this, though it reads like jest.] 
 286
 
 TRAFFIC 
 
 The only absolutely and unapproachably 
 heroic element in the soldier's work seems 
 to be that he is paid little for it and 
 regularly: while you traffickers, and ex- 
 changers, and others occupied in presum- 
 ably benevolent business, like to be paid 
 much for it and by chance. I never can 
 make out how it is that a knight-errant 
 does not expect to be paid for his trouble, 
 but a peddler-errant always does; that 
 people are willing to take hard knocks for 
 nothing, but never to sell ribbons cheap; 
 that they are ready to go on fervent cru- 
 sades, to recover the tomb of a buried God, 
 but never on any travels to fulfil the orders 
 of a living one; that they will go anywhere 
 barefoot to preach their faith, but must be 
 well bribed to practise it, and are perfectly 
 ready to give the Gospel gratis, but never 
 the loaves and fishes. 1 
 
 If you chose to take the matter up on 
 any such soldierly principle; to do your 
 commerce, and your feeding of nations, for 
 fixed salaries; and to be as particular about 
 giving people the best food, and the best 
 cloth, as soldiers are about giving them the 
 best gunpowder, I could carve something 
 
 1 [Please think over this paragraph, too briefly and antitheti- 
 cally put, but one of those which I am happiest in having 
 written.] 
 
 287
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 for you on your Exchange worth looking at. 
 But I can only at present suggest decorat- 
 ing its frieze with pendent purses; and 
 making its pillars broad at the base, for 
 the sticking of bills. And in the innermost 
 chambers of it there might be a statue of 
 Britannia of the Market, who may have, 
 perhaps advisedly, a partridge for her crest, 
 typical at once of her courage in fighting 
 for noble ideas, and of her interest in game; 
 and round its neck, the inscription in gol- 
 den letters, "Perdix fovit quae non pepe- 
 rit." 1 Then, for her spear, she might have 
 a weaver's beam; and on her shield, in- 
 stead of St. George's Cross, the Milanese 
 boar, semi-fleeced, with the town of Gen- 
 nesaret proper, in the field; and the legend, 
 " In the best market," 2 and her corselet, 
 of leather, folded over her heart in the 
 shape of a purse, with thirty slits in it, for 
 a piece of money to go in at, on each day 
 of the month. And I doubt not but that 
 people would come to see your Exchange, 
 and its goddess, with applause. 
 
 Nevertheless, I want to point out to you 
 certain strange characters in this goddess 
 
 1 Jeremiah xvii. 11 (best in Septuagint and Vulgate). "As 
 the partridge, fostering what she brought not forth, so he that 
 getteth riches, not by right, shall leave them in the midst of 
 his days, and at his end shall be a fool." 
 
 2 [Meaning, fully, " We have brought our pigs to it."] 
 
 288
 
 aAisq I 
 guoure) siq^ jo ! 
 as[a A'poqamos 
 ^ou op noA" ji ^n 
 jo eiqnoj^ aq^ ^i 
 C ure j JQJ 4 ss^ 
 os ji ipueds 
 
 W8QIU HOA OQ 
 
 uoi^senb 
 
 jo uoi^sseo jo $i 
 -senb ou SIZM. 9J 
 
 aq^ 
 
 jaq jo 
 ui
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 when you have gathered, finally eat? You 
 gather gold: will you make your house- 
 roofs of it, or pave your streets with it? That 
 is still one way of spending it. But if you keep 
 it, that you may get more, I '11 give you more; 
 I '11 give you all the gold you want all you 
 can imagine if you can tell me what you '11 
 do with it. You shall have thousands of 
 gold pieces; thousands of thousands 
 millions mountains, of gold: where will 
 you keep them? Will you put an Olympus 
 of silver upon a golden Pelion make Ossa 
 like a wart? Do you think the rain and 
 dew would then come down to you, in the 
 streams from such mountains, more bless- 
 edly than they will down the mountains 
 which God has made for you, of moss and 
 whinstone? But it is not gold that you want 
 to gather! What is it? greenbacks? No; 
 not those neither. What is it then is it 
 ciphers after a capital I? Cannot you prac- 
 tise writing ciphers, and write as many as 
 you want ! Write ciphers for an hour every 
 morning, in a big book, and say every even- 
 ing, I am worth all those naughts more 
 than I was yesterday. Won't that do? 
 Well, what in the name of Plutus is it 
 you want? Not gold, not greenbacks, not 
 ciphers after a capital I? You will have to 
 answer, after all, "No; we want, somehow 
 290
 
 TRAFFIC 
 
 or other, money's worth" Well, what is 
 that? Let your Goddess of Getting-on dis- 
 cover it, and let her learn to stay therein. 
 
 II. But there is yet another question to 
 be asked respecting this Goddess of Get- 
 ting-on. The first was of the Continuance 
 of her power; the second is of its Extent. 
 
 Pallas and the Madonna were supposed 
 to be all the world's Pallas, and all the 
 world's Madonna. They could teach all 
 men, and they could comfort all men. 
 But, look strictly into the nature of the 
 power of your Goddess of Getting-on; and 
 you will find she is the Goddess not of 
 everybody's getting on but only of some- 
 body's getting on. This is a vital, or 
 rather deathful, distinction. Examine it 
 in your own ideal of the state of national 
 life which this Goddess is to evoke and 
 maintain. I asked you what it was, when 
 I was last here; ] you have never told me. 
 Now, shall I try to tell you? 
 
 Your ideal of human life then is, I think, 
 that it should be passed in a pleasant un- 
 dulating world, with iron and coal every- 
 where underneath it. On each pleasant 
 bank of this world is to be a beautiful 
 mansion, with two wings; and stables, and 
 coach-houses; a moderately sized park; 
 
 1 " The Two Paths," 89. 
 291
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 a large garden and hothouses; and pleas- 
 ant carriage drives through the shub- 
 beries. In this mansion are to live the 
 favored votaries of the Goddess; the Eng- 
 lish gentleman, with his gracious wife, and 
 his beautiful family; he always able to have 
 the boudoir and the jewels for the wife, 
 and the beautiful ball dresses for the daugh- 
 ters, and hunters for the sons, and a shoot- 
 ing in the Highlands for himself. At the 
 bottom of the bank is to be the mill; not 
 less than a quarter of a mile long, with one 
 steam-engine at each end, and two in the 
 middle, and a chimney three hundred feet 
 high. In this mill are to be in constant 
 employment from eight hundred to a thou- 
 sand workers, who never drink, never 
 strike, always go to church on Sunday, and 
 always express themselves in respectful 
 language. 
 
 Is not that, broadly, and in the main 
 features, the kind of thing you propose to 
 yourselves? It is very pretty indeed, seen 
 from above; not at all so pretty, seen from 
 below. For, observe, while to one family 
 this deity is indeed the Goddess of Getting- 
 on, to a thousand families she is the God- 
 dess of not Getting-on. "Nay," you say, 
 "they have all their chance." Yes, so has 
 every one in a lottery, but there must 
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 TRAFFIC 
 
 always be the same number of blanks. 
 "Ah! but in a lottery it is not skill and in- 
 telligence which take the lead, but blind 
 chance." What then! do you think the 
 old practice, that "they should take who 
 have the power, and they should keep who 
 can," is less iniquitous, when the power 
 has become power of brains instead of fist? 
 and that, though we may not take advan- 
 tage of a child's or a woman's weakness, 
 we may of a man's foolishness? " Nay, but 
 finally, work must be done, and some one 
 must be at the top, some one at the bot- 
 tom." Granted, my friends. Work must 
 always be, and captains of work must 
 always be; and if you in the least remem- 
 ber the tone of any of my writings, you 
 must know that they are thought unfit for 
 this age, because they are always insisting 
 on need of government, and speaking with 
 scorn of liberty. But I beg you to observe 
 that there is a wide difference between 
 being captains or governors of work, and 
 taking the profits of it. It does not fol- 
 low, because you are general of an army, 
 that you are to take all the treasure, or 
 land, it wins (if it fight for treasure or 
 land); neither, because you are king of a 
 nation, that you are to consume all the 
 profits of the nation's work. Real kings, 
 293
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 on the contrary, are known invariably by 
 their doing quite the reverse of this, by 
 their taking the least possible quantity of 
 the nation's work for themselves. There 
 is no test of real kinghood so infallible 
 as that. Does the crowned creature live 
 simply, bravely, unostentatiously? prob- 
 ably he is a King. Does he cover his body 
 with jewels, and his table with delicates? 
 in all probability he is not a King. It is 
 possible he may be, as Solomon was; but 
 that is when the nation shares his splendor 
 with him. Solomon made gold, not only 
 to be in his own palace as stones, but to 
 be in Jerusalem as stones. But, even so, 
 for the most part, these splendid kinghoods 
 expire in ruin, and only the true kinghoods 
 live, which are of royal laborers governing 
 loyal laborers; who, both leading rough 
 lives, establish the true dynasties. Con- 
 clusively you will find that because you are 
 king of a nation, it does not follow that 
 you are to gather for yourself all the wealth 
 of that nation; neither, because you are 
 king of a small part of the nation, and 
 lord over the means of its maintenance, 
 over field, or mill, or mine, are you to 
 take all the produce of that piece of the 
 foundation of national existence for your- 
 self. 
 
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 TRAFFIC 
 
 You will tell me I need not preach against 
 these things, for I cannot mend them. No, 
 good friends, I cannot; but you can, and 
 you will; or something else can and will. 
 Even good things have no abiding power 
 and shall these evil things persist in vic- 
 torious evil? All history shows, on the 
 contrary, that to be the exact thing they 
 never can do. Change must come; but it 
 is ours to determine whether change of 
 growth, or change of death. Shall the 
 Parthenon be in ruins on its rock, and 
 Bolton priory in its meadow, but these 
 mills of yours be the consummation of the 
 buildings of the earth, and their wheels be 
 as the wheels of eternity? Think you that 
 " men may come, and men may go," but 
 mills go on forever? Not so; out of 
 these, better or worse shall come; and it 
 is for you to choose which. 
 
 I know that none of this wrong is done 
 with deliberate purpose. I know, on the 
 contrary, that you wish your workmen 
 well; that you do much for them, and that 
 you desire to do more for them, if you saw 
 your way to such benevolence safely. I 
 know that even all this wrong and misery 
 are brought about by a warped sense of 
 duty, each of you striving to do his best; 
 but, unhappily, not knowing for whom this 
 295
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 best should be done. And all our hearts 
 have been betrayed by the plausible im- 
 piety of the modern economist, telling us 
 that, "To do the best for ourselves, is 
 finally to do the best for others." Friends, 
 our great Master said not so; and most ab- 
 solutely we shall find this world is not 
 made so. Indeed, to do the best for others, 
 is finally to do the best for ourselves; but 
 it will not do to have our eyes fixed on that 
 issue. The Pagans had got beyond that. 
 Hear what a Pagan says of this matter; 
 hear what were, perhaps, the last written 
 words of Plato, if not the last actually 
 written (for this we cannot know), yet 
 assuredly in fact and power his parting 
 words, in which, endeavoring to give full 
 crowning and harmonious close to all his 
 thoughts, and to speak the sum of them 
 by the imagined sentence of the Great 
 Spirit, his strength and his heart fail him, 
 and the words cease, broken off forever. 
 
 They are at the close of the dialogue 
 called "Critias," in which he describes, 
 partly from real tradition, partly in ideal 
 dream, the early state of Athens; and the 
 genesis, and order, and religion, of the fa- 
 bled isle of Atlantis; in which genesis he 
 conceives the same first perfection and 
 final degeneracy of man, which in our own 
 296
 
 TRAFFIC 
 
 Scriptural tradition is expressed by saying 
 that the Sons of God intermarried with the 
 daughters of men, for he supposes the ear- 
 liest race to have been indeed the children 
 of God; and to have corrupted themselves, 
 until "their spot was not the spot of his 
 children." And this, he says, was the end; 
 that indeed "through many generations, 
 so long as the God's nature in them yet 
 was full, they were submissive to the sa- 
 cred laws, and carried themselves lovingly 
 to all that had kindred with them in di- 
 vineness; for their uttermost spirit was 
 faithful and true, and in every wise great; 
 so that, in all meekness of wisdom, they dealt 
 with each other, and took all the chances of 
 life; and despising all things except virtue, 
 they cared little what happened day by day, 
 and bore lightly the burden of gold and of 
 possessions; for they saw that, if only their 
 common love and virtue increased, all these 
 things would be increased together with 
 them; but to set their esteem and ardent 
 pursuit upon material possession would be 
 to lose that first, and their virtue and affec- 
 tion together with it. And by such rea- 
 soning, and what of the divine nature 
 remained in them, they gained all this 
 greatness of which we have already told; 
 but when the God's part of them faded and 
 297
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 became extinct, being mixed again and 
 again, and effaced by the prevalent mortal- 
 ity; and the human nature at last exceeded, 
 they then became unable to endure the 
 courses of fortune; and fell into shape- 
 lessness of life, and baseness in the sight 
 of him who could see, having lost every- 
 thing that was fairest of their honor; while 
 to the blind hearts which could not discern 
 the true life, tending to happiness, it seemed 
 that they were then chiefly noble and happy, 
 being filled with all iniquity of inordinate 
 possession and power. Whereupon, the 
 God of Gods, whose Kinghood is in laws, 
 beholding a once just nation thus cast into 
 misery, and desiring to lay such punish- 
 ment upon them as might make them re- 
 pent into restraining, gathered together all 
 the gods into his dwelling-place, which 
 from heaven's center overlooks whatever 
 has part in creation; and having assembled 
 them, he said" 
 
 The rest is silence. Last words of the 
 chief wisdom of the heathen, spoken of this 
 idol of riches; this idol of yours; this golden 
 image, high by measureless cubits, set up 
 where your green fields of England are fur- 
 nace-burnt into the likeness of the plain of 
 Dura: this idol, forbidden to us, first of all 
 idols, by our own Master and faith; forbid- 
 298
 
 TRAFFIC 
 
 den to us also by every human lip that has 
 ever, in any age or people, been accounted 
 of as able to speak according to the pur- 
 poses of God. Continue to make that for- 
 bidden deity your principal one, and soon 
 no more art, no more science, no more 
 pleasure will be possible. Catastrophe will 
 come; or, worse than catastrophe, slow 
 moldering and withering into Hades. But 
 if you can fix some conception of a true 
 human state of life to be striven for life, 
 good for all men, as for yourselves; if you 
 can determine some honest and simple 
 order of existence; following those trodden 
 ways of wisdom, which are pleasantness, 
 and seeking her quiet and withdrawn paths, 
 which are peace; 1 then, and so sanctify- 
 ing wealth into "commonwealth," all your 
 art, your literature, your daily labors, your 
 domestic affection, and citizen's duty, will 
 join and increase into one magnificent har- 
 mony. You will know then how to build, 
 well enough; you will build with stone well, 
 but with flesh better; temples not made 
 with hands, but riveted of hearts; and that 
 kind of marble crimson-veined, is indeed 
 eternal. 
 
 1 [I imagine the Hebrew chant merely intends passionate 
 repetition, and not a distinction of this somewhat fanciful 
 kind ; yet we may profitably make it in reading the English.] 
 
 299
 
 LECTURE III 
 WAR
 
 LECTURE 
 
 III 
 WAR 
 
 Delivered at the Royal Military Academy, 
 Woolwich, 1865, 
 
 YOUNG SOLDIERS,-! do not doubt 
 but that many of you came unwill- 
 ingly to-night, and many in merely 
 contemptuous curiosity, to hear what a 
 writer on painting could possibly say, or 
 would venture to say, respecting your great 
 art of war. You may well think within 
 yourselves that a painter might, perhaps 
 without immodesty, lecture younger paint- 
 ers upon painting, but not young lawyers 
 upon law, nor young physicians upon medi- 
 cineleast of all, it may seem to you, 
 young warriors upon war. And, indeed, 
 when I was asked to address you, I declined 
 at first, and declined long; for I felt that 
 you would not be interested in my special 
 business, and would certainly think there 
 was small need for me to come to teach 
 you yours. Nay, I knew that there ought 
 to be no such need, for the great veteran 
 303
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 soldiers of England are now men every way 
 so thoughtful, so noble, and so good, that 
 no other teaching than their knightly ex- 
 ample, and their few words of grave and 
 tried counsel, should be either necessary 
 for you, or even, without assurance of due 
 modesty in the offerer, endured by you. 
 
 But being asked, not once nor twice, I 
 have not ventured persistently to refuse; 
 and I will try, in very few words, to lay 
 before you some reason why you should 
 accept my excuse, and hear me patiently. 
 You may imagine that your work is wholly 
 foreign to, and separate from, mine. So far 
 from that, all the pure and noble arts of 
 peace are founded on war; no great art ever 
 yet rose on earth, but among a nation of 
 soldiers. There is no art among a shep- 
 herd people, if it remains at peace. There 
 is no art among an agricultural people, if 
 it remains at peace. Commerce is barely 
 consistent with fine art; but cannot pro- 
 duce it. Manufacture not only is unable to 
 produce it, but invariably destroys what- 
 ever seeds of it exist. There is no great 
 art possible to a nation but that which is 
 based on battle. 
 
 Now, though I hope you love fighting for 
 its own sake, you must, I imagine, be sur- 
 prised at my assertion that there is any 
 304
 
 WAR 
 
 such good fruit of fighting. You supposed, 
 probably, that your office was to defend the 
 works of peace, but certainly not to found 
 them: nay, the common course of war, you 
 may have thought, was only to destroy 
 them. And truly, I, who tell you this of 
 the use of war, should have been the last 
 of men to tell you so, had I trusted my own 
 experience only. Hear why: I have given 
 a considerable part of my life to the inves- 
 tigation of Venetian painting; and the re- 
 sult of that inquiry was my fixing upon one 
 man as the greatest of all Venetians, and 
 therefore, as I believed, of all painters 
 whatsoever. I formed this faith (whether 
 right or wrong matters at present nothing) 
 in the supremacy of the painter Tintoret, 
 under a roof covered with his pictures; and 
 of those pictures, three of the noblest were 
 then in the form of shreds of ragged can- 
 vas, mixed up with the laths of the roof, 
 rent through by three Austrian shells. 
 Now, it is not every lecturer who could tell 
 you that he had seen three of his favorite 
 pictures torn to rags by bomb-shells. And 
 after such a sight, it is not every lecturer 
 who would tell you that, nevertheless, war 
 was the foundation of all great art. 
 
 Yet the conclusion is inevitable, from any 
 careful comparison of the states of great 
 20 305
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 historic races at different periods. Merely 
 to show you what I mean, I will sketch for 
 you, very briefly, the broad steps of the ad- 
 vance of the best art of the world. The 
 first dawn of it is in Egypt; and the power 
 of it is founded on the perpetual contem- 
 plation of death, and of future judgment, 
 by the mind of a nation of which the ruling 
 caste were priests, and the second, soldiers. 
 The greatest works produced by them are 
 sculptures of their kings going out to bat- 
 tle, or receiving the homage of conquered 
 armies. And you must remember, also, as 
 one of the great keys to the splendor of the 
 Egyptian nation, that the priests were not 
 occupied in theology only. Their theology 
 was the basis of practical government and 
 law; so that they were not so much priests 
 as religious judges; the office of Samuel, 
 among the Jews, being as nearly as possible 
 correspondent to theirs. 
 
 All the rudiments of art then, and much 
 more than the rudiments of all science, 
 were laid first by this great warrior-nation, 
 which held in contempt all mechanical 
 trades, and in absolute hatred the peaceful 
 life of shepherds. From Egypt art passes 
 directly into Greece, where all poetry, and 
 all painting, are nothing else than the 
 description, praise, or dramatic represen- 
 306
 
 WAR 
 
 tation of war, or of the exercises which 
 prepare for it, in their connection with 
 offices of religion. All Greek institutions 
 had first respect to war; and their concep- 
 tion of it, as one necessary office of all hu- 
 man and divine life, is expressed simply by 
 the images of their guiding gods. Apollo 
 is the god of all wisdom of the intellect; 
 he bears the arrow and the bow, before he 
 bears the lyre. Again, Athena is the god- 
 dess of all wisdom in conduct. Yet it is by 
 the helmet and the shield, oftener than by 
 the shuttle, that she is distinguished from 
 other deities. 
 
 There were, however, two great differ- 
 ences in principle between the Greek and 
 the Egyptian theories of policy. In Greece 
 there was no soldier caste; every citizen 
 was necessarily a soldier. And, again, 
 while the Greeks rightly despised mechan- 
 ical arts as much as the Egyptians, they 
 did not make the fatal mistake of despising 
 agricultural and pastoral life, but perfectly 
 honored both. These two conditions of 
 truer thought raise them quite into the 
 highest rank of wise manhood that has yet 
 been reached; for all our great arts, and 
 nearly all our great thoughts, have been 
 borrowed or derived from them. Take 
 away from us what they have given, and 
 307
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 we hardly can imagine how low the mod- 
 ern 1 European would stand. 
 
 Now, you are to remember, in passing to 
 the next phase of history, that though you 
 must have war to produce art, you must 
 also have much more than war; namely, an 
 art instinct or genius in the people; and 
 that, though all the talent for painting in 
 the world won't make painters of you, un- 
 less you have a gift for fighting as well, 
 you may have the gift for fighting, and 
 none for painting. Now, in the next great 
 dynasty of soldiers, the art-instinct is 
 wholly wanting. I have not yet investi- 
 gated the Roman character enough to tell 
 you the causes of this; but I believe, para- 
 doxical as it may seem to you, that how- 
 ever truly the Roman might say of himself 
 that he was born of Mars, and suckled by 
 the wolf, he was nevertheless, at heart, 
 more of a farmer than a soldier. The ex- 
 ercises of war were with him practical, not 
 poetical; his poetry was in domestic life 
 only, and the object of battle, "pads im- 
 ponere morem." And the arts are extin- 
 guished in his hands, and do not rise again, 
 until, with Gothic chivalry, there comes 
 
 i [The modern, observe, because we have lost all inheritance 
 from. Florence or Venice, and are now pensioners upon the 
 Greeks only,] 
 
 308
 
 WAR 
 
 back into the mind of Europe a passionate 
 delight in war itself, for the sake of war. 
 And then, with the romantic knighthood 
 which can imagine no other noble employ- 
 ment, under the fighting kings of France, 
 England, and Spain; and under the fighting 
 dukeships and citizenships of Italy, art is 
 born again, and rises to her height in the 
 great valleys of Lombardy and Tuscany, 
 through which there flows not a single 
 stream, from all their Alps or Apennines, 
 that did not once run dark red from bat- 
 tle; and it reaches its culminating glory in 
 the city which gave to history the most in- 
 tense type of soldiership yet seen among 
 men; the city whose armies were led in 
 their assault by their king, 1 led through it 
 to victory by their king, and so led, though 
 that king of theirs was blind, and in the ex- 
 tremity of his age. 
 
 And from this time forward, as peace is 
 established or extended in Europe, the arts 
 decline. They reach an unparalleled pitch 
 of costliness, but lose their life, enlist them- 
 selves at last on the side of luxury and 
 various corruption, and, among wholly 
 tranquil nations, wither utterly away; re- 
 maining only in partial practice among 
 
 i [Henry Dandolo : the king of Bohemia at Crecy is very grand, 
 too, and in the issue, his knighthood is, to us, more memorable.] 
 
 309
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 races who, like the French and us, have 
 still the minds, though we cannot all live 
 the lives, of soldiers. 
 
 " It may be so," I can suppose that a phi- 
 lanthropist might exclaim. "Perish then 
 the arts, if they can flourish only at such a 
 cost. What worth is there in toys of can- 
 vas and stone, if compared to the joy and 
 peace of artless domestic life? " and the an- 
 swer is truly, in themselves, none. But 
 as expressions of the highest state of the 
 human spirit, their worth is infinite. As 
 results they may be worthless, but, as 
 signs, they are above price. For it is 
 an assured truth that, whenever the fac- 
 ulties of men are at their fullness, they 
 must express themselves by art; and to 
 say that a state is without such expres- 
 sion, is to say that it is sunk from its 
 proper level of manly nature. So that, 
 when I tell you that war is the foundation 
 of all the arts, I mean also that it is the 
 foundation of all the high virtues and fac- 
 ulties of men. 
 
 It is very strange to me to discover this; 
 and very dreadful but I saw it to be quite 
 an undeniable fact. The common notion 
 that peace and the virtues of civil life 
 flourished together, I found to be wholly 
 untenable. Peace and the vices of civil life 
 310
 
 WAR 
 
 only flourish together. We talk of peace 
 and learning, and of peace and plenty, and 
 of peace and civilization; but I found that 
 those were not the words which the Muse 
 of History coupled together: that, on her 
 lips, the words were peace, and sensuality 
 peace, and selfishness peace, and death. 
 I found, in brief, that all great nations 
 learned their truth of word, and strength 
 of thought, in war; that they were nour- 
 ished in war, and wasted by peace; taught 
 by war, and deceived by peace; trained by 
 war, and betrayed by peace; in a word, 
 that they were born in war, and expired in 
 peace. 
 
 Yet now note carefully, in the second 
 place, it is not all war of which this can be 
 said nor all dragon's teeth which, sown, 
 will start up into men. It is not the rage 
 of a barbarian wolf-flock, as under Genseric 
 or Suwarrow; nor the habitual restlessness 
 and rapine of mountaineers, as on the old 
 borders of Scotland; nor the occasional 
 struggle of a strong peaceful nation for its 
 life, as in the wars of the Swiss with Aus- 
 tria; nor the contest of merely ambitious 
 nations for extent of power, as in the wars 
 of France under Napoleon, or the just ter- 
 minated war in America. None of these 
 forms of war build anything but tombs. 
 311
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 But the creative, or foundational, war is that 
 in which the natural restlessness and love of 
 contest among men are disciplined, by con- 
 sent, into modesof beautiful though it may 
 be fatal play; in which the natural ambi- 
 tion and love of power of men are disciplined 
 into the aggressive conquest of surround- 
 ing evil : and in which the natural instincts 
 of self-defense are sanctified by the noble- 
 ness of the institutions, and purity of the 
 households which they are appointed to de- 
 fend. To such war as this all men are born ; 
 in such war as this any man may happily 
 die; and out of such war as this have arisen, 
 throughout the extent of past ages, all the 
 highest sanctities and virtues of humanity. 
 
 I shall therefore divide the war of which 
 I would speak to you into three heads: 
 war for exercise or play; war for domin- 
 ion; and war for defense. 
 
 I. And first, of war for exercise or play; 
 I speak of it primarily in this light, be- 
 cause, through all past history, manly war 
 has been more an exercise than anything 
 else, among the classes who cause and pro- 
 claim it It is not a game to the conscript, 
 or the pressed sailor; but neither of these 
 are the causers of it. To the governor who 
 determines that war shall be, and to the 
 youths who voluntarily adopt it as their 
 312
 
 WAR 
 
 profession, it has always been a grand pas- 
 time; and chiefly pursued because they had 
 nothing else to do. And this is true with- 
 out any exception. No king whose mind 
 was fully occupied with the development of 
 the inner resources of his kingdom, or with 
 any other sufficing subject of thought, ever 
 entered into war but on compulsion. No 
 youth who was earnestly busy with any 
 peaceful subject of study, or set on any 
 serviceable course of action, ever volunta- 
 rily became a soldier. Occupy him, early 
 and wisely, in agriculture or business, in 
 science or in literature, and he will never 
 think of war otherwise than as a calamity. 1 
 But leave him idle; and, the more brave 
 and active and capable he is by nature, the 
 more he will thirst for some appointed field 
 for action; and find, in the passion and 
 peril of battle, the only satisfying fulfil- 
 ment of his unoccupied being. And from 
 the earliest incipient civilization until now, 
 the population of the earth divides itself, 
 when you look at it widely, into two races, 
 one of workers, and the other of players : 
 one tilling the ground, manufacturing, 
 building, and otherwise providing for the 
 
 1 [A wholesome calamity, observe; not to be shrunk from, 
 though not to be provoked. But see the opening of the 
 notes on Prussia, 161,] 
 
 313
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 necessities of life; the other part proudly 
 idle, and continually, therefore, needing 
 recreation, in which they use the produc- 
 tive and laborious orders partly as their 
 cattle, and partly as their puppets or pieces 
 in the game of death. 
 
 : Now, remember, whatever virtue or 
 goodliness there may be in this game of 
 war, rightly played, there is none when you 
 thus play it with a multitude of human 
 pawns. 
 
 If you, the gentlemen of this or any other 
 kingdom, choose to make your pastime of 
 contest, do so, and welcome; but set not 
 up these unhappy peasant-pieces upon the 
 checker of forest and field. If the wager is 
 to be of death, lay it on your own heads, 
 not theirs. A goodly struggle in the Olym- 
 pic dust, though it be the dust of the grave, 
 the gods will look upon, and be with you in; 
 but they will not be with you if you sit on 
 the sides of the amphitheater, whose steps 
 are the mountains of earth, whose arena 
 its valleys, to urge your peasant mil- 
 lions into gladiatorial war. You also, you 
 
 1 [I dislike more and more every day the declamatory forms 
 in which what I most desired to make impressive was ar- 
 ranged for oral delivery ; but these two paragraphs, 97 and 98 
 [BO numbered in the original edition], sacrifice no accuracy 
 in their endeavor to be pompous, and are among the most 
 importantly true passages I have ever written.] 
 
 314
 
 WAR 
 
 tender and delicate women, for whom, and 
 by whose command, all true battle has 
 been, and must ever be; you would perhaps 
 shrink now, though you need not, from the 
 thought of sitting as queens above set lists 
 where the jousting game might be mortal. 
 How much more, then, ought you to shrink 
 from the thought of sitting above a theater 
 pit in which even a few condemned slaves 
 were slaying each other only for your de- 
 light! And do you not shrink from the fact 
 of sitting above a theater pit where not 
 condemned slaves, but the best and brav- 
 est of the poor sons of your people, slay 
 each other not man to man, as the 
 coupled gladiators, but race to race, in duel 
 of generations? You would tell me, per- 
 haps, that you do not sit to see this; and it 
 is, indeed, true that the women of Europe 
 those who have no heart-interest of their 
 own at peril in the contest draw the cur- 
 tains of their boxes, and muffle the open- 
 ings; so that from the pit of the circus of 
 slaughter there may reach them only at 
 intervals a half -heard cry, and a murmur as 
 of the wind's sighing, when myriads of 
 souls expire. They shut out the death- 
 cries, and are happy, and talk wittily among 
 themselves. That is the utter, literal fact 
 of what our ladies do in their pleasant lives. 
 315
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 Nay, you might answer, speaking with 
 them "We do not let these wars come to 
 pass for our play, nor by our carelessness; 
 we cannot help them. How can any final 
 quarrel of nations be settled otherwise than 
 by war?" 
 
 I cannot now delay to tell you how politi- 
 cal quarrels might be otherwise settled. 
 But grant that they cannot. Grant that no 
 law of reason can be understood by na- 
 tions; no law of justice submitted to by 
 them; and that, while questions of a few 
 acres, and of petty cash, can be determined 
 by truth and equity, the questions which 
 are to issue in the perishing or saving of 
 kingdoms can be determined only by the 
 truth of the sword, and the equity of the 
 rifle. Grant this, and even then judge if 
 it will always be necessary for you to put 
 your quarrel into the hearts of your poor, 
 and sign your treaties with peasants' blood. 
 You would be ashamed to do this in your 
 own private position and power. Why 
 should you not be ashamed also to do it in 
 public place and power? If you quarrel 
 with your neighbor, and the quarrel be in- 
 determinable by law, and mortal, you and 
 he do not send your footmen to Battersea 
 fields to fight it out; nor do you set fire to 
 his tenants' cottages, nor spoil their goods. 
 316
 
 WAR 
 
 You fight out your quarrel yourselves, and 
 at your own danger, if at all. And you do 
 not think it materially affects the arbitra- 
 ment that one of you has a larger house- 
 hold than the other; so that, if the servants 
 or tenants were brought into the field with 
 their masters, the issue of the contest could 
 not be doubtful? You either refuse the 
 private duel, or you practise it under laws 
 of honor, not of physical force; that so it 
 may be, in a manner, justly concluded. 
 Now the just or unjust conclusion of the pri- 
 vate feud is of little moment, while the just 
 or unjust conclusion of the public feud is of 
 eternal moment: and yet, in this public 
 quarrel, you take your servants' sons from 
 their arms to fight for it, and your servants' 
 food from their lips to support it; and 
 the black seals on the parchment of your 
 treaties of peace are the deserted hearth, 
 and the fruitless field. 
 
 There is a ghastly ludicrousness in this, 
 as there is mostly in these wide and uni- 
 versal crimes. Hear the statement of the 
 very fact of it in the most literal words of 
 the greatest of our English thinkers: 
 
 "What, speaking in quite unofficial lan- 
 guage, is the net purport and upshot of 
 war? To my own knowledge, for example, 
 there dwell and toil, in the British village 
 317
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 of Dumdrudge, usually some five hundred 
 souls. Prom these, by certain * natural 
 enemies' of the French there are succes- 
 sively selected, during the French war, say 
 thirty able-bodied men. Dumdrudge, at 
 her own expense, has suckled and nursed 
 them; she has, not without difficulty and 
 sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even 
 trained them to crafts, so that one can 
 weave, another build, another hammer, and 
 the weakest can stand under thirty stone 
 avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid much 
 weeping and swearing, they are selected; 
 all dressed in red; and shipped away, at the 
 public charges, some two thousand miles, 
 or say only to the south of Spain; and fed 
 there till wanted. 
 
 " And now to that same spot in the south 
 of Spain are thirty similar French artisans, 
 from a French Dumdrudge, in like manner 
 wending; till at length, after infinite effort, 
 the two parties come into actual juxtaposi- 
 tion; and Thirty stands fronting Thirty, 
 each with a gun in his hand. 
 
 "Straightway the word 'Fire!' is given, 
 and they blow the souls out of one another, 
 and in place of sixty brisk, useful craftsmen, 
 the world has sixty dead carcasses, which it 
 must bury, and anon shed tears for. Had 
 these men any quarrel? Busy as the devil 
 318
 
 WAR 
 
 is, not the smallest ! They lived far enough 
 apart; were the entirest strangers; nay, in 
 so wide a universe, there was even, uncon- 
 sciously, by commerce, some mutual help- 
 fulness between them. How then? Sim- 
 pleton! their governors had fallen out; and 
 instead of shooting one another, had the 
 cunning to make these poor blockheads 
 shoot." Sar tor Resartus. 
 
 Positively, then, gentlemen, the game of 
 battle must not, and shall not, ultimately 
 be played this way. But should it be played 
 any way? Should it, if not by your ser- 
 vants, be practised by yourselves? I think, 
 yes. Both history and human instinct seem 
 alike to say, yes. All healthy men like 
 fighting, and like the sense of danger; all 
 brave women like to hear of their fighting, 
 and of their facing danger. This is a fixed 
 instinct in the fine race of them; and I can- 
 not help fancying that fair fight is the best 
 play for them; and that a tournament was 
 a better game than a steeplechase. The 
 time may perhaps come, in France, as well 
 as here, for universal hurdle-races and 
 cricketing: but I do not think universal 
 cricket will bring out the best qualities of 
 the nobles of either country. I use, in such 
 question, the test which I have adopted, of 
 the connection of war with other arts; and 
 319
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 I reflect how, as a sculptor, I should feel if 
 I were asked to design a monument for a 
 dead knight, in Westminster Abbey, with a 
 carving of a bat at one end, and a ball at 
 the other. It may be the remains in me 
 only of savage Gothic prejudice; but I had 
 rather carve it with a shield at one end, and 
 a sword at the other. And this, observe, 
 with no reference whatever to any story of 
 duty done, or cause defended. Assume 
 the knight merely to have ridden out occa- 
 sionally to fight his neighbor for exercise; 
 assume him even a soldier of fortune, and 
 to have gained his bread, and filled his 
 purse, at the sword's point. Still, I feel as 
 if it were, somehow, grander and worthier 
 in him to have made his bread by sword- 
 play than any other play; I had rather he 
 had made it by thrusting than by batting; 
 much rather than by betting; much 
 rather that he should ride war-horses than 
 back race-horses; and I say it sternly and 
 deliberately much rather would I have him 
 slay his neighbor than cheat him. 
 
 But remember, so far as this may be true, 
 the game of war is only that in which the 
 full personal power of the human creature 
 is brought out in management of its weap- 
 ons. And this for three reasons: 
 
 First, the great justification of this game 
 320
 
 WAR 
 
 is that it truly, when well played, deter- 
 mines who is the best man; who is the 
 highest bred, the most self-denying, the 
 most fearless, the coolest of nerve, the 
 swiftest of eye and hand. You cannot test 
 these qualities wholly, unless there is a 
 clear possibility of the struggle's ending in 
 death. It is only in the fronting of that 
 condition that the full trial of the man, 
 soul and body, comes out. You may go to 
 your game of wickets, or of hurdles, or of 
 cards, and any knavery that is in you may 
 stay unchallenged all the while. But if the 
 play may be ended at any moment by a 
 lance-thrust, a man will probably make up 
 his accounts a little before he enters it. 
 Whatever is rotten and evil in him will 
 weaken his hand more in holding a sword- 
 hilt than in balancing a billiard-cue; and, on 
 the whole, the habit of living lightly hearted, 
 in daily presence of death, always has had, 
 and must have, power both in the making 
 and testing of honest men. But for the 
 final testing, observe, you must make the 
 issue of battle strictly dependent on fine- 
 ness of frame and firmness of hand. You 
 must not make it the question, which of the 
 combatants has the longest gun, or which 
 has got behind the biggest tree, or which 
 has the wind in his face, or which has gun- 
 21 321
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 powder made by the best chemists, or iron 
 smelted with the best coal, or the angriest 
 mob at his back. Decide your battle, 
 whether of nations or individuals, on those 
 terms, and you have only multiplied con- 
 fusion, and added slaughter to iniquity. 
 But decide your battle by pure trial which 
 has the strongest arm, and steadiest heart, 
 and you have gone far to decide a great 
 many matters besides, and to decide them 
 rightly. 1 
 
 And the other reasons for this mode of 
 decision of cause, are the diminution both 
 of the material destructiveness, or cost, and 
 of the physical distress of war. For you 
 must not think that in speaking to you in 
 this (as you may imagine) fantastic praise 
 of battle, I have overlooked the conditions 
 weighing against me. I pray all of you, 
 who have not read, to read with the most 
 earnest attention Mr. Helps' two essays, on 
 War, and Government, in the first volume 
 of the last series of "Friends in Council." 
 Everything that can be urged against war 
 is there simply, exhaustively, and most 
 graphically stated. And all, there urged, is 
 true. But the two great counts of evil al- 
 leged against war by that most thoughtful 
 writer, hold only against modern war. If 
 
 1 Compare " Fors Clavigera," Letter XIV. p. 9. 
 322
 
 WAR 
 
 you have to take away masses of men from 
 all industrial employment, to feed them 
 by the labor of others, to provide them 
 with destructive machines, varied daily in 
 national rivalship of inventive cost; if you 
 have to ravage the country which you at- 
 tack, to destroy, for a score of future 
 years, its roads, its woods, its cities, and its 
 harbors; and if, finally, having brought 
 masses of men, counted by hundreds of 
 thousands, face to face, you tear those 
 masses to pieces with jagged shot, and leave 
 the living creatures, countlessly beyond 
 all help of surgery, to starve and parch, 
 through days of torture, down into clots of 
 clay what book of accounts shall record 
 the cost of your work; what book of judg- 
 ment sentence the guilt of it? 
 
 That, I say, is modern war, scientific 
 war, chemical and mechanic war, how 
 much worse than the savage's poisoned 
 arrow ! And yet you will tell me, perhaps, 
 that any other war than this is impossible 
 now. It may be so; the progress of science 
 cannot, perhaps, be otherwise registered 
 than by new facilities of destruction; and 
 the brotherly love of our enlarging Chris- 
 tianity be only proved by multiplication of 
 murder. Yet hear, for a moment, what 
 war was, in Pagan and ignorant days; 
 323
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 what war might yet be, if we could extin- 
 guish our science in darkness, and join the 
 heathen's practice to the Christian's creed. 
 I read you this from a book which probably 
 most of you know well, and all ought to 
 know Miiller's "Dorians"; 1 but I have 
 put the points I wish you to remember in 
 closer connection than in his text. 
 
 " The chief characteristic of the warriors 
 of Sparta was great composure and a sub- 
 dued strength; the violence (Moaa) of Aris- 
 todemus and Isadas being considered as 
 deserving rather of blame than praise; and 
 these qualities in general distinguished 
 the Greeks from the northern Barbarians, 
 whose boldness always consisted in noise 
 and tumult. For the same reason the Spar- 
 tans sacrificed to the Muses before an action; 
 these goddesses being expected to produce 
 regularity and order in battle; as they sac- 
 rificed on the same occasion in Crete to the 
 god of love, as the confirmer of mutual es- 
 teem and shame. Every man put on a 
 crown, when the band of flute-players gave 
 the signal for attack; all the shields of the 
 line glittered with their high polish, and 
 mingled their splendor with the dark red of 
 the purple mantles, which were meant both 
 to adorn the combatant, and to conceal the 
 
 I Vol. ii. Chap. 12, | 9. 
 
 324
 
 WAR 
 
 blood of the wounded; to fall well and de- 
 corously being an incentive the more to the 
 most heroic valor. The conduct of the 
 Spartans in battle denotes a high and noble 
 disposition, which rejected all the extremes 
 of brutal rage. The pursuit of the enemy 
 ceased when the victory was completed; and 
 after the signal for retreat had been given, 
 all hostilities ceased. The spoiling of arms, 
 at least during the battle, was also inter- 
 dicted; and the consecration of the spoils of 
 slain enemies to the gods, as, in general, all 
 rejoicings for victory, were considered as 
 ill-omened." 
 
 Such was the war of the greatest soldiers 
 who prayed to heathen gods. What Chris- 
 tian war is, preached by Christian minis- 
 ters, let any one tell you, who saw the 
 sacred crowning, and heard the sacred flute- 
 playing, and was inspired and sanctified by 
 the divinely measured and musical lan- 
 guage, of any North American regiment 
 preparing for its charge. And what is the 
 relative cost of life in Pagan and Christian 
 wars, let this one fact tell you; the Spar- 
 tans won the decisive battle of Corinth with 
 the loss of eight men; the victors at inde- 
 cisive Gettysburg confess to the loss of 
 30,000. 
 
 II. I pass now to our second order of 
 325
 
 THE CROWN OP WILD OLIVE 
 
 war, the commonest among men, that un- 
 dertaken in desire of dominion. And let me 
 ask you to think for a few moments what 
 the real meaning of this desire of dominion 
 is first in the minds of kings then in that 
 of nations. 
 
 Now, mind you this first, that I speak 
 either about kings, or masses of men, with 
 a fixed conviction that human nature is a 
 noble and beautiful thing; not a foul nor a 
 base thing. All the sin of men I esteem as 
 their disease, not their nature; as a folly 
 which may be prevented, not a necessity 
 which must be accepted. And my wonder, 
 even when things are at their worst, is al- 
 ways at the height which this human na- 
 ture can attain. Thinking it high, I find it 
 always a higher thing than I thought it; 
 while those who think it low, find it, and 
 will find it, always, lower than they thought 
 it: the fact being, that it is infinite, and 
 capable of infinite height and infinite fall; 
 but the nature of it and here is the faith 
 which I would have you hold with me the 
 nature of it is in the nobleness, not in the 
 catastrophe. 
 
 Take the faith in its utmost terms. 
 
 When the captain of the London shook 
 
 hands with his mate, saying, " God speed 
 
 you! I will go down with my passengers," 
 
 326
 
 WAR 
 
 that I believe to be "human nature." He 
 does not do it from any religious motive, 
 from any hope of reward, or any fear of 
 punishment; he does it because he is a man. 
 But when a mother, living among the fair 
 fields of merry England, gives her two-year- 
 old child to be suffocated under a mattress 
 in her inner room, while the said mother 
 waits and talks outside, that I believe to be 
 not human nature. You have the two ex- 
 tremes there, shortly. And you, men, and 
 mothers, who are here face to face with me 
 to-night, I call upon you to say which of 
 these is human, and which inhuman, 
 which "natural" and which "unnatural." 
 Choose your creed at once, I beseech you: 
 choose it with unshaken choice, choose 
 it forever. Will you take, for foundation of 
 act and hope, the faith that this man was 
 such as God made him, or that this woman 
 was such as God made her? Which of them 
 has failed from their nature, from their 
 present, possible, actual nature; not their 
 nature of long ago, but their nature of now? 
 Which has betrayed it falsified it? Did 
 the guardian who died in his trust die in- 
 humanly, and as a fool; and did the mur- 
 deress of her child fulfil the law of her 
 being? Choose, I say; infinitude of choices 
 hang upon this. You have had false 
 327
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 prophets among you, for centuries you 
 have had them, solemnly warned against 
 them though you were; false prophets, who 
 have told you that all men are nothing but 
 fiends or wolves, half beast, half devil. Be- 
 lieve that, and indeed you may sink to that. 
 But refuse that, and have faith that God 
 "made you upright," though you have 
 sought out many inventions; so, you will 
 strive daily to become more what your 
 Maker meant and means you to be, and 
 daily gives you also the power to be, and 
 you will cling more and more to the noble- 
 ness and virtue that is in you, saying, " My 
 righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it 
 go." 
 
 I have put this to you as a choice, as if 
 you might hold either of these creeds you 
 liked best. But there is in reality no choice 
 for you; the facts being quite easily ascer- 
 tainable. You have no business to think 
 about this matter, or to choose in it. The 
 broad fact is, that a human creature of the 
 highest race, and most perfect as a human 
 thing, is invariably both kind and true; and 
 that as you lower the race, you get cruelty 
 and falseness as you get deformity: and this 
 so steadily and assuredly that the two great 
 words which, in their first use, meant only 
 perfection of race, have come, by conse- 
 328
 
 WAR 
 
 quence of the invariable connection of vir- 
 tue with the fine human nature, both to 
 signify benevolence of disposition. The 
 word " generous," and the word " gentle," 
 both, in their origin, meant only "of pure 
 race," but because charity and tenderness 
 are inseparable from this purity of blood, 
 the words which once stood only for pride, 
 now stand as synonyms for virtue. 
 
 Now, this being the true power of our 
 inherent humanity, and seeing that all the 
 aim of education should be to develop this, 
 and seeing also what magnificent self- 
 sacrifice the higher classes of men are ca- 
 pable of, for any cause that they understand 
 or feel, it is wholly inconceivable to me 
 how well-educated princes, who ought to be 
 of all gentlemen the gentlest, and of all 
 nobles the most generous, and whose title 
 of royalty means only their function of 
 doing every man "right" how these, I 
 say, throughout history, should so rarely 
 pronounce themselves on the side of the 
 poor, and of justice, but continually main- 
 tain themselves and their own interests by 
 oppression of the poor, and by wresting of 
 justice; and how this should be accepted as 
 so natural that the word "loyalty," which 
 means faithfulness to law, is used as if it 
 were only the duty of a people to be loyal 
 329
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 to their king, and not the duty of a king to 
 be infinitely more loyal to his people. How 
 comes it to pass that a captain will die with 
 his passengers, and lean over the gunwale 
 to give the parting boat its course; but that 
 a king will not usually die with, much less 
 for, his passengers thinks it rather incum- 
 bent on his passengers, in any number, to 
 die for him ? 
 
 Think, I beseech you, of the wonder of 
 this. The sea-captain, not captain by 
 divine right, but only by company's appoint- 
 ment; not a man of royal descent, but only 
 a plebeian who can steer; not with the eyes 
 of the world upon him, but with feeble 
 chance, depending on one poor boat, of his 
 name being ever heard above the wash of 
 the fatal waves; not with the cause of a na- 
 tion resting on his act, but helpless to save 
 so much as a child from among the lost 
 crowd with whom he resolves to be lost, 
 yet goes down quietly to his grave, rather 
 than break his faith to these few emigrants. 
 But your captain by divine right, your 
 captain with the hues of a hundred shields 
 of kings upon his breast, your captain 
 whose every deed, brave or base, will be 
 illuminated or branded forever before un- 
 escapable eyes of men, your captain whose 
 every thought and act are beneficent, or 
 330
 
 WAR 
 
 fatal, from sun-rising to -setting, blessing 
 as the sunshine, or shadowing as the night, 
 this captain, as you find him in history, 
 for the most part thinks only how he may 
 tax his passengers, and sit at most ease in 
 his state cabin! 
 
 For observe, if there had been indeed in 
 the hearts of the rulers of great multitudes 
 of men any such conception of work for the 
 good of those under their command, as 
 there is in the good and thoughtful masters 
 of any small company of men, not only wars 
 for the sake of mere increase of power 
 could never take place, but our idea of 
 power itself would be entirely altered. Do 
 you suppose that to think and act even for 
 a million of men, to hear their complaints, 
 watch their weaknesses, restrain their vices, 
 make laws for them, lead them, day by day, 
 to purer life, is not enough for one man's 
 work? If any of us were absolute lord only 
 of a district of a hundred miles square and 
 were resolved on doing our utmost for it; 
 making it feed as large a number of people 
 as possible; making every clod productive, 
 and every rock defensive, and every human 
 being happy: should we not have enough on 
 our hands, think you? 
 
 But if the ruler has any other aim than 
 this; if, careless of the result of his inter- 
 331
 
 THE CROWN OP WILD OLIVE 
 
 ference, he desires only the authority to in- 
 terfere; and, regardless of what is ill done 
 or well done, cares only that it shall be done 
 at his bidding; if he would rather do two 
 hundred miles' space of mischief than one 
 hundred miles' space of good, of course he 
 will try to add to his territory; and to add 
 inimitably. But does he add to his power? 
 Do you call it power in a child, if he is al- 
 lowed to play with the wheels and bands of 
 some vast engine, pleased with their mur- 
 mur and whirl, till his unwise touch, wan- 
 dering where it ought not, scatters beam 
 and wheel into ruin? Yet what machine is 
 so vast, so incognizable, as the working of 
 the mind of a nation; what child's touch so 
 wanton as the word of a selfish king? And 
 yet, how long have we allowed the historian 
 to speak of the extent of the calamity a 
 man causes, as a just ground for his pride; 
 and to extol him as the greatest prince, who 
 is only the center of the widest error. Fol- 
 low out this thought by yourselves; and you 
 will find that all power, properly so called, 
 is wise and benevolent. There may be 
 capacity in a drifting fire-ship to destroy a 
 fleet; there may be venom enough in a dead 
 body to infect a nation: but which of you, 
 the most ambitious, would desire a drifting 
 kinghood, robed in consuming fire, or a poi- 
 332
 
 WAR 
 
 son-dipped scepter whose touch was mor- 
 tal? There is no true potency, remember, 
 but that of help; nor true ambition, but 
 ambition to save. 
 
 And then, observe farther, this true 
 power, the power of saving, depends neither 
 on multitude of men, nor on extent of ter- 
 ritory. We are continually assuming that 
 nations become strong according to their 
 numbers. They indeed become so, if those 
 numbers can be made of one mind; but how 
 are you sure you can stay them in one 
 mind, and keep them from having north 
 and south minds? Grant them unanimous, 
 how know you they will be unanimous in 
 right? If they are unanimous in wrong, 
 the more they are, essentially the weaker 
 they are. Or, suppose that they can neither 
 be of one mind, nor of two minds, but can 
 only be of no mind? Suppose they are a 
 mere helpless mob; tottering into precipi- 
 tant catastrophe, like a wagon-load of stones 
 when the wheel comes off. Dangerous 
 enough for their neighbors, certainly, but 
 not "powerful." 
 
 Neither does strength depend on extent 
 of territory, any more than upon number 
 of population. Take up your maps when 
 you go home this evening, put the cluster 
 of British Isles beside the mass of South 
 333
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 America; and then consider whether any 
 race of men need care how much ground 
 they stand upon. The strength is in the 
 men, and in their unity and virtue, not in 
 their standing-room: a little group of wise 
 hearts is better than a wilderness full of 
 fools; and only that nation gains true ter- 
 ritory which gains itself. 
 
 And now for the brief practical outcome 
 of all this. Remember, no government is 
 ultimately strong, but in proportion to its 
 kindness and justice; and that a nation does 
 not strengthen by merely multiplying and 
 diffusing itself. We have not strengthened, 
 as yet, by multiplying into America. Nay, 
 even when it has not to encounter the 
 separating conditions of emigration, a na- 
 tion need not boast itself of multiplying on 
 its own ground, if it multiplies only as 
 flies or locusts do, with the god of flies for 
 its god. It multiplies its strength only by 
 increasing as one great family, in perfect 
 fellowship and brotherhood. And lastly, 
 it does not strengthen itself by seizing do- 
 minion over races whom it cannot benefit. 
 Austria is npt strengthened, but weakened, 
 by her grasp of Lombardy; and whatever 
 apparent increase of majesty and of wealth 
 may have accrued to us from the posses- 
 sion of India, whether these prove to us 
 334
 
 WAR 
 
 ultimately power or weakness, depends 
 wholly on the degree in which our influence 
 on the native race shall be benevolent and 
 exalting. 
 
 But, as it is at their own peril that any 
 race extends their dominion in mere desire 
 of power, so it is at their own still greater 
 peril that they refuse to undertake aggres- 
 sive war, according to their force, whenever 
 they are assured that their authority would 
 be helpful and protective. Nor need you 
 listen to any sophistical objection of the 
 impossibility of knowing when a people's 
 help is needed, or when not. Make your 
 national conscience clean, and your na- 
 tional eyes will soon be clear. No man who 
 is truly ready to take part in a noble quar- 
 rel will ever stand long in doubt by whom, 
 or in what cause, his aid is needed. I hold 
 it my duty to make no political statement of 
 any special bearing in this presence; but I 
 tell you broadly and boldly that, within 
 these last ten years, we English have, as a 
 knightly nation, lost our spurs: we have 
 fought where we should not have fought, 
 for gain; and we have been passive where 
 we should not have been passive, for fear. 
 I tell you that the principle of non-inter- 
 vention, as now preached among us, is as 
 selfish and cruel as the worst frenzy of con- 
 335
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 quest, and differs from it only by being, not 
 only malignant, but dastardly. 
 
 I know, however, that my opinions on 
 this subject differ too widely from those 
 ordinarily held, to be any farther intruded 
 upon you; and therefore I pass lastly to ex- 
 amine the conditions of the third kind of 
 noble war; war waged simply for defense 
 of the country in which we were born, and 
 for the maintenance and execution of her 
 laws, by whomsoever threatened or defied. 
 It is to this duty that I suppose most men 
 entering the army consider themselves in 
 reality to be bound, and I want you now to 
 reflect what the laws of mere defense are; 
 and what the soldier's duty, as now under- 
 stood, or supposed to be understood. You 
 have solemnly devoted yourselves to be 
 English soldiers, for the guardianship of 
 England. I want you to feel what this vow 
 of yours indeed means, or is gradually com- 
 ing to mean. 
 
 You take it upon you, first, while you are 
 sentimental school-boys; you go into your 
 military convent, or barracks, just as a girl 
 goes into her convent while she is a senti- 
 mental school-girl; neither of you then know 
 what you are about, though both the good 
 soldiers and good nuns make the best of it 
 afterwards. You don't understand perhaps 
 336
 
 WAR 
 
 why I call you " sentimental " school-boys 
 when you go into the army? Because, on 
 the whole, it is the love of adventure, of 
 excitement, of fine dress and of the pride of 
 fame, all which are sentimental motives, 
 which chiefly make a boy like going into 
 the Guards better than into a counting- 
 house. You fancy, perhaps, that there is a 
 severe sense of duty mixed with these pea- 
 cocky motives? And in the best of you 
 there is; but do not think that it is princi- 
 pal. If you cared to do your duty to your 
 country in a prosaic and unsentimental way, 
 depend upon it, there is now truer duty to 
 be done in raising harvests,, than in burning 
 them; more in building houses, than in shell- 
 ing them; more in winning money by your 
 own work, wherewith to help men, than 
 in other people's work, taxing for money 
 wherewith to slay men; more duty, finally, 
 in honest and unselfish living than in 
 honest and unselfish dying, though that 
 seems to your boys' eyes the bravest. So 
 far, then, as for your own honor, and the 
 honor of your families, you choose brave 
 death in a red coat before brave life in a 
 black one, you are sentimental; and now 
 see what this passionate vow of yours comes 
 to. For a little while you ride, and you 
 
 hunt tigers or savages, you shoot, and are 
 22 337
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 shot; you are happy, and proud, always, 
 and honored and wept if you die; and you 
 are satisfied with your life, and with the 
 end of it; believing, on the whole, that good 
 rather than harm of it comes to others, and 
 much pleasure to you. 
 
 But as the sense of duty enters into your 
 forming minds, the vow takes another as- 
 pect. You find that you have put your- 
 selves into the hand of your country as a 
 weapon. You have vowed to strike, when 
 she bids you, and to stay scabbarded when 
 she bids you; all that you need answer for 
 is that you fail not in her grasp. And 
 there is goodness in this, and greatness, if 
 you can trust the hand and heart of the 
 Britomart who has braced you to her side, 
 and are assured that when she leaves you 
 sheathed in darkness, there is no need for 
 your fiash to the sun. But remember, good 
 and noble as this state may be, it is a state 
 of slavery. There are different kinds of 
 slaves and different masters. Some slaves 
 are scourged to their work by whips, others 
 are scourged to it by restlessness or ambi- 
 tion. It does not matter what the whip is; 
 it is none the less a whip because you have 
 cut thongs for it out of your own souls: the 
 fact, so far, of slavery, is in being driven to 
 your work, without thought, at another's 
 338
 
 WAR 
 
 bidding. Again, some slaves are bought 
 with money, and others with praise. It 
 matters not what the purchase-money is. 
 The distinguishing sign of slavery is to 
 have a price, and be bought for it. Again, 
 it matters not what kind of work you are 
 set on; some slaves are set to forced dig- 
 gings, others to forced marches; some dig 
 furrows, others field-works, and others 
 graves. Some press the juice of reeds, and 
 some the juice of vines, and some the blood 
 of men. The fact of the captivity is the 
 same, whatever work we are set upon, 
 though the fruits of the toil may be differ- 
 ent. 
 
 But, remember, in thus vowing ourselves 
 to be the slaves of any master, it ought to 
 be some subject of forethought with us, 
 what work he is likely to put us upon. You 
 may think that the whole duty of a soldier 
 is to be passive, that it is the country you 
 have left behind who is to command, and 
 you have only to obey. But are you sure 
 that you have left all your country behind, 
 or that the part of it you have so left is in- 
 deed the best part of it? Suppose and, 
 remember, it is quite conceivable that you 
 yourselves are indeed the best part of Eng- 
 land; that you, who have become the slaves, 
 ought to have been the masters; and that 
 339
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 those who are the masters ought to have 
 been the slaves! If it is a noble and whole- 
 hearted England, whose bidding you are 
 bound to do, it is well; but if you are your- 
 selves the best of her heart, and the Eng- 
 land you have left be but a half-hearted 
 England, how say you of your obedience? 
 You were too proud to become shopkeep- 
 ers: are you satisfied, then, to become the 
 servants of shopkeepers? You were too 
 proud to become merchants or farmers 
 yourselves: will you have merchants or 
 farmers, then, for your field-marshals? 
 You had no gifts of special grace for Exeter 
 Hall: will you have some gifted person 
 thereat for your commander-in-chief, to 
 judge of your work, and reward it? You 
 imagine yourselves to be the army of Eng- 
 land: how if you should find yourselves, at 
 last, only the police of her manufacturing 
 towns, and the beadles of her Little Bethels? 
 It is not so yet, nor will be so, I trust, 
 forever; but what I want you to see, and to 
 be assured of, is that the ideal of soldier- 
 ship is not mere passive obedience and 
 bravery; that, so far from this, no country 
 is in a healthy state which has separated, 
 even in a small degree, her civil from her 
 military power. All states of the world, 
 however great, fall at once when they use 
 340
 
 WAR 
 
 mercenary armies; and although it is a less 
 instant form of error (because involving no 
 national taint of cowardice), it is yet an 
 error no less ultimately fatal it is the 
 error especially of modern times, of which 
 we cannot yet know all the calamitous con- 
 sequencesto take away the best blood 
 and strength of the nation, all the soul-sub- 
 stance of it that is brave, and careless of 
 reward, and scornful of pain, and faithful in 
 trust, and to cast that into steel, and make 
 a mere sword of it, taking away its voice 
 and will; but to keep the worst part of the 
 nation whatever is cowardly, avaricious, 
 sensual, and faithless and to give to this 
 the voice, to this the authority, to this the 
 chief privilege, where there is least capacity 
 of thought. 
 
 The fulfilment of your vow for the de- 
 fense of England will by no means consist 
 in carrying out such a system. You are 
 not true soldiers, if you only mean to stand 
 at a shop door, to protect shop-boys who 
 are cheating inside. A soldier's vow to his 
 country is that he will die for the guardian- 
 ship of her domestic virtue, of her right- 
 eous laws, and of her any-way challenged or 
 endangered honor. A state without virtue, 
 without laws, and without honor, he is 
 bound not to defend; nay, bound to redress 
 341
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 by his own right hand that which he sees 
 to be base in her. 
 
 So sternly is this the law of Nature and 
 life that a nation once utterly corrupt can 
 only be redeemed by a military despotism 
 never by talking, nor by its free effort. 
 And the health of any state consists simply 
 in this: that in it, those who are wisest 
 shall also be strongest; its rulers should be 
 also its soldiers; or, rather, by force of in- 
 tellect more than of sword, its soldiers also 
 its rulers. Whatever the hold which the 
 aristocracy of England has on the heart of 
 England, in that they are still always in 
 front of her battles, this hold will not be 
 enough, unless they are also in front of her 
 thoughts. And truly her thoughts need 
 good captain's leading now, if ever! Do 
 you know what, by this beautiful division 
 of labor (her brave men fighting, and her 
 cowards thinking), she has come at last to 
 think? Here is a paper in my hand, 1 a good 
 one too, and an honest one; quite repre- 
 sentative of the best common public 
 
 1 [I do not care to refer to the journal quoted, because the 
 article was unworthy of its general tone, though in order to 
 enable the audience to verify the quoted sentence, I left the 
 number containing it on the table, when I gave this Lecture. 
 But a saying of Baron Liebig's, quoted at the head of a leader 
 on the same subject in the "Daily Telegraph " of January 11, 
 1866, summarily digests and presents the maximum folly of 
 modern .thought in this respect. " Civilization," says the 
 
 342
 
 WAR 
 
 thought of England at this moment; and it 
 is holding forth in one of its leaders upon 
 our " social welfare "upon our " vivid life " 
 upon the "political supremacy of Great 
 Britain." And what do you think all these 
 are owing to? To what our English sires 
 have done for us, and taught us, age after 
 age? No; not to that. To our honesty of 
 heart, or coolness of head, or steadiness of 
 will? No; not to these. To our thinkers, 
 or our statesmen, or our poets, or our cap- 
 tains, or our martyrs, or the patient labor 
 of our poor? No; not to these; or at least 
 not to these in any chief measure. Nay, 
 says the journal, "more than any agency, 
 it is the cheapness and abundance of our 
 coal which have made us what we are." If 
 it be so, then "ashes to ashes" be our 
 epitaph! and the sooner the better. 
 
 Gentlemen of England, if ever you would 
 have your country breathe the pure breath 
 of heaven again, and receive again a soul 
 into her body, instead of rotting into a car- 
 cass, blown up in the belly with carbonic 
 
 Baron, " is the economy of power, and English power is coal." 
 Not altogether so, my chemical friend. Civilization is the 
 making of civil persons, which is a kind of distillation of 
 which alembics are incapable, and does not at all imply the 
 turning of a small company of gentlemen into a large com- 
 pany of ironmongers. And English power (what little of it 
 may be left) is by no means coal, but, indeed, of that which, 
 "when the whole world turns to coal, then chiefly lives."] 
 
 343
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 acid (and great that way), you must think, 
 and feel, for your England, as well as fight 
 for her: you must teach her that all the 
 true greatness she ever had, she won while 
 her fields were green and her faces ruddy; 
 and that greatness is still possible for Eng- 
 lishmen, even though the ground be not 
 hollow under their feet, nor the sky black 
 over their heads. 
 
 And bear with me, you soldier youths, 
 who are thus in all ways the hope of your 
 country, or must be, if she have any hope, 
 if I urge you with rude earnestness to 
 remember that your fitness for all future 
 trust depends upon what you are now. No 
 good soldier in his old age was ever careless 
 or indolent in his youth. Many a giddy 
 and thoughtless boy has become a good 
 bishop, or a good lawyer, or a good mer- 
 chant; but no such an one ever became a 
 good general. I challenge you, in all his- 
 tory, to find a record of a good soldier who 
 was not grave and earnest in his youth. 
 And, in general, I have no patience with 
 people who talk of ** the thoughtlessness of 
 youth " indulgently. I had infinitely rather 
 hear of thoughtless old age, and the indul- 
 gence due to that. When a man has done 
 his work, and nothing can any way be ma- 
 terially altered in his fate, let him forget 
 344
 
 WAR 
 
 his toil, and jest with his fate, if he will; 
 but what excuse can you find for wilfulness 
 of thought at the very time when every 
 crisis of future fortune hangs on your de- 
 cisions? A youth thoughtless! when all 
 the happiness of his home forever depends 
 on the chances, or the passions, of an hour! 
 A youth thoughtless! when the career of 
 all his days depends on the opportunity of 
 a moment ! A youth thoughtless ! when his 
 every act is as a torch to the laid train of 
 future conduct, and every imagination a 
 fountain of life or death! Be thoughtless 
 in -any after years, rather than now 
 though, indeed, there is only one place 
 where a man may be nobly thoughtless 
 his death-bed. No thinking should ever be 
 left to be done there. 
 
 Having, then, resolved that you will not 
 waste recklessly, but earnestly use, these 
 early days of yours, remember that all the 
 duties of her children to England may be 
 summed in two words industry, and honor. 
 I say, first, industry, for it is in this that 
 soldier youth are especially tempted to fail. 
 Yet, surely, there is no reason, because 
 your life may possibly or probably be 
 shorter than other men's, that you should 
 therefore waste more recklessly the por- 
 tion of it that is granted you; neither do the 
 345
 
 THE CROWN OP WILD OLIVE 
 
 duties of your profession, which require you 
 to keep your bodies strong, in any wise in- 
 volve the keeping of your minds weak. So 
 far from that, the experience, the hardship, 
 and the activity of a soldier's life render 
 his powers of thought more accurate than 
 those of other men; and while, for others, 
 all knowledge is often little more than a 
 means of amusement, there is no form of 
 science which a soldier may not at some 
 time or other find bearing on business of 
 life and death. A young mathematician 
 may be excused for languor in studying 
 curves to be described only with a pencil; 
 but not in tracing those which are to be 
 described with a rocket. Your knowledge 
 of a wholesome herb may involve the feed- 
 ing of an army; and acquaintance with an 
 obscure point of geography, the success of 
 a campaign. Never waste an instant's 
 time, therefore: the sin of idleness is a 
 thousandfold greater in you than in other 
 youths; for the fates of those who will one 
 day be under your command hang upon 
 your knowledge; lost moments now will be 
 lost lives then, and every instant which 
 you carelessly take for play, you buy with 
 blood. 
 
 But there is one way of wasting time, of 
 all the vilest, because it wastes, not time 
 346
 
 WAR 
 
 only, but the interest and energy of your 
 minds. Of all the ungentlemanly habits 
 into which you can fall, the vilest is betting, 
 or interesting yourselves in the issues of 
 betting. It unites nearly every condition 
 of folly and vice; you concentrate your in- 
 terest upon a matter of chance, instead of 
 upon a subject of true knowledge; and you 
 back opinions which you have no grounds 
 for forming, merely because they are your 
 own. All the insolence of egotism is in 
 this; and so far as the love of excitement 
 is complicated with the hope of winning 
 money, you turn yourselves into the basest 
 sort of tradesmen those who live by specu- 
 lation. Were there no other ground for 
 industry, this would be a sufficient one: that 
 it protected you from the temptation to so 
 scandalous a vice. Work faithfully, and 
 you will put yourselves in possession of a 
 glorious and enlarging happiness; not such 
 as can be won by the speed of a horse, or 
 marred by the obliquity of a ball. 
 
 First, then, by industry you must fulfil 
 your vow to your country; but all industry 
 and earnestness will be useless unless they 
 are consecrated by your resolution to be in 
 all things men of honor; not honor in the 
 common sense only, but in the highest. 
 Rest on the force of the two main words in 
 347
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 the great verse, "integer vitse, scelerisque 
 purus." You have vowed your life to Eng- 
 land; give it her wholly; a bright, stain- 
 less, perfect life a knightly life. Because 
 you have to fight with machines instead of 
 lances, there may be a necessity for more 
 ghastly danger, but there is none for less 
 worthiness of character than in olden time. 
 You may be true knights yet, though per- 
 haps not equites; you may have to call your- 
 selves "cannonry" instead of "chivalry," 
 but that is no reason why you should not 
 call yourselves true men. So the first 
 thing you have to see to in becoming sol- 
 diers is that you make yourselves wholly 
 true. Courage is a mere matter of course 
 among any ordinarily well-born youths; but 
 neither truth nor gentleness is matter of 
 course. You must bind them like shields 
 about your necks; you must write them on 
 the tables of your hearts. Though it be 
 not exacted of you, yet exact it of your- 
 selves, this vow of stainless truth. Your 
 hearts are, if you leave them unstirred, as 
 tombs in which a god lies buried. Vow 
 yourselves crusaders to redeem that sacred 
 sepulcher. And remember, before all 
 things, for no other memory will be so pro- 
 tective of you, that the highest law of this 
 knightly truth is that under which it is 
 348
 
 WAR 
 
 vowed to women. Whomsoever else you 
 deceive, whomsoever you injure, whomso- 
 ever you leave unaided, you must not de- 
 ceive, nor injure, nor leave unaided, accord- 
 ing to your power, any woman, of whatever 
 rank. Believe me, every virtue of the 
 higher phases of manly character begins in 
 this; in truth and modesty before the face 
 of all maidens; in truth and pity, or truth 
 and reverence, to all womanhood. 
 
 And now let me turn for a moment to 
 you, wives and maidens, who are the souls 
 of soldiers; to you, mothers, who have de- 
 voted your children to the great hierarchy 
 of war. Let me ask you to consider what 
 part you have to take for the aid of those 
 who love you; for if you fail in your part 
 they cannot fulfil theirs; such absolute help- 
 mates you are that no man can stand with- 
 out that help, nor labor in his own strength. 
 
 I know your hearts, and that the truth of 
 them never fails when an hour of trial 
 comes which you recognize for such. But 
 you know not when the hour of trial first 
 finds you, nor when it verily finds you. You 
 imagine that you are only called upon to 
 wait and to suffer; to surrender and to 
 mourn. You know that you must not 
 weaken the hearts of your husbands and 
 lovers, even by the one fear of which those 
 349
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 hearts are capable, the fear of parting 
 from you, or of causing you grief. Through 
 weary years of separation; through fearful 
 expectancies of unknown fate; through the 
 tenfold bitterness of the sorrow which 
 might so easily have been joy, and the ten- 
 fold yearning for glorious life struck down 
 in its prime; through all these agonies you 
 fail not, and never will fail. But your trial 
 is not in these. To be heroic in danger is 
 little; you are Englishwomen. To be 
 heroic in change and sway of fortune is 
 little; for do you not love? To be patient 
 through the great chasm and pause of loss 
 is little; for do you not still love in heaven? 
 But to be heroic in happiness; to bear your- 
 selves gravely and righteously in the daz- 
 zling of the sunshine of morning; not to 
 forget the God in whom you trust, when He 
 gives you most; not to fail those who trust 
 you, when they seem to need you least 
 this is the difficult fortitude. It is not in the 
 pining of absence, not in the peril of battle, 
 not in the wasting of sickness, that your 
 prayer should be most passionate, or your 
 guardianship most tender. Pray, mothers 
 and maidens, for your young soldiers in the 
 bloom of their pride; pray for them while 
 the only dangers round them are in their 
 own wayward wills; watch you, and pray, 
 350
 
 WAR 
 
 when they have to face, not death, but 
 temptation. But it is this fortitude also for 
 which there is the crowning reward. Be- 
 lieve me, the whole course and character of 
 your lovers' lives is in your hands: what 
 you would have them be, they shall be, if 
 you not only desire to have them so, but 
 deserve to have them so; for they are but 
 mirrors in which you will see yourselves 
 imaged. If you are frivolous, they will be 
 so also; if you have no understanding of the 
 scope of their duty, they also will forget it; 
 they will listen they can listen to no 
 other interpretation of it than that uttered 
 from your lips. Bid them be brave; they 
 will be brave for you: bid them be cowards; 
 and how noble soever they be, they will 
 quail for you. Bid them be wise, and they 
 will be wise for you; mock at their counsel, 
 they will be fools for you: such and so abso- 
 lute is your rule over them. You fancy, 
 perhaps, as you have been told so often, 
 that a wife's rule should only be over her 
 husband's house, not over his mind. Ah, 
 no! the true rule is just the reverse of that; 
 a true wife, in her husband's house, is his 
 servant; it is in his heart that she is queen. 
 Whatever of best he can conceive, it is her 
 part to be; whatever of highest he can hope, 
 it is hers to promise; all that is dark in him 
 351
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 she must purge into purity; all that is fail- 
 ing in him she must strengthen into truth; 
 from her, through all the world's clamor, 
 he must win his praise; in her, through all 
 the world's warfare, he must find his peace. 
 And now, but one word more. You may 
 wonder, perhaps, that I have spoken all 
 this night in praise of war. Yet, truly, if it 
 might be, I, for one, would fain join in the 
 cadence of hammer-strokes that should beat 
 swords into plowshares: and that this can- 
 not be is not the fault of us men. It is 
 your fault. Wholly yours. Only by your 
 command, or by your permission, can any 
 contest take place among us. And the real, 
 final reason for all the poverty, misery, and 
 rage of battle throughout Europe, is simply 
 that you women, however good, however 
 religious, however self-sacrificing for those 
 whom you love, are too selfish and too 
 thoughtless to take pains for any crea- 
 ture out of your own immediate circles. 
 You fancy that you are sorry for the pain 
 of others. Now I just tell you this: that if 
 the usual course of war, instead of unroofing 
 peasants' houses, and ravaging peasants' 
 fields, merely broke the china upon your own 
 drawing-room tables, no war in civilized 
 countries would last a week. I tell you 
 more: that at whatever moment you chose 
 352
 
 WAR 
 
 to put a period to war, you could do it with 
 less trouble than you take any day to go out 
 to dinner. You know, or at least you 
 might know if you would think, that every 
 battle you hear of has made many widows 
 and orphans. We have, none of us, heart 
 enough truly to mourn with these. But at 
 least we might put on the outer symbols of 
 mourning with them. Let but every Chris- 
 tian lady who has conscience toward God, 
 vow that she will mourn, at least outwardly, 
 for His killed creatures. Your praying is 
 useless, and your church-going mere mock- 
 ery of God, if you have not plain obedience 
 in you enough for this. Let every lady in 
 the upper classes of civilized Europe simply 
 vow that, while any cruel war proceeds, she 
 will wear black; a mute's black, with no 
 jewel, no ornament, no excuse for, or eva- 
 sion into, prettiness I tell you again, no 
 war would last a week. 
 
 And, lastly. You women of England are 
 all now shrieking with one voice, you and 
 your clergymen together, because you hear 
 of your Bibles being attacked. If you choose 
 to obey your Bibles, you will never care who 
 attacks them. It is just because you never 
 fulfil a single downright precept of the 
 Book that you are so careful for its credit: 
 and just because you don't care to obey its 
 23 353
 
 THE CROWN OP WILD OLIVE 
 
 whole words that you are so particular 
 about the letters of them. The Bible tells 
 you to dress plainly, and you are mad for 
 finery; the Bible tells you to have pity on 
 the poor, and you crush them under your 
 carriage wheels; the Bible tells you to do 
 judgment and justice, and you do not 
 know, nor care to know, so much as what 
 the Bible word "justice" means. Do but 
 learn so much of God's truth as that comes 
 to; know what He means when He tells you 
 to be just; and teach your sons that their 
 bravery is but a fool's boast and their deeds 
 but a firebrand's tossing, unless they are 
 indeed Just men, and Perfect in the Fear of 
 God: and you will soon have no more war, 
 unless it be indeed such as is willed by Him 
 of whom, though Prince of Peace, it is also 
 written, " In Righteousness He doth judge, 
 and make war." 
 
 354
 
 LECTURE IV 
 THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND
 
 LECTURE 
 
 IV 
 THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND 
 
 Delivered at the R.A. Institution, Woolwich, 
 December 14, 1869. 
 
 I WOULD fain have left to the frank ex- 
 pression of the moment, but fear I could 
 not have found clear words I cannot 
 easily find them, even deliberately to tell 
 you how glad I am, and yet how ashamed, 
 to accept your permission to speak to you. 
 Ashamed of appearing to think that I can 
 tell you any truth which you have not more 
 deeply felt than I; but glad in the thought 
 that my less experience, and way of life 
 sheltered from the trials, and free from the 
 responsibilities of yours, may have left me 
 with something of a child's power of help 
 to you; a sureness of hope, which may per- 
 haps be the one thing that can be helpful to 
 men who have done too much not to have 
 often failed in doing all that they desired. 
 And, indeed, even the most hopeful of us 
 cannot but now be in many things appre- 
 hensive. For this at least we all know too 
 357
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 well: that we are on the eve of a great po- 
 litical crisis, if not of political change. That 
 a struggle is approaching between the 
 newly risen power of democracy and the 
 apparently departing power of feudalism; 
 and another struggle, no less imminent, 
 and far more dangerous, between wealth 
 and pauperism. These two quarrels are 
 constantly thought of as the same. They 
 are being fought together, and an appa- 
 rently common interest unites for the most 
 part the millionaire with the noble, in re- 
 sistance to a multitude, crying, part of it 
 for bread and part of it for liberty. 
 
 And yet no two quarrels can be more dis- 
 tinct. Riches so far from being necessary 
 to noblesse are adverse to it. So utterly 
 adverse that the first character of all the 
 Nobilities which have founded great dynas- 
 ties in the world is to be poor; often poor 
 by oath always poor by generosity. And 
 of every true knight in the chivalric ages, 
 the first thing history tells you is that he 
 never kept treasure for himself. 
 
 Thus the causes of wealth and noblesse 
 are not the same, but opposite. On the 
 other hand, the causes of anarchy and of 
 the poor are not the same, but opposite. 
 Side by side, in the same rank, are now in- 
 deed set the pride that revolts against au- 
 358
 
 THE FUTURE OP ENGLAND 
 
 thority, and the misery that appeals against 
 avarice. But, so far from being a common 
 cause, all anarchy is the forerunner of pov- 
 erty, and all prosperity begins in obedience. 
 So that, thus, it has become impossible to 
 give due support to the cause of order, with- 
 out seeming to countenance injury; and 
 impossible to plead justly the claims of 
 sorrow, without seeming to plead also for 
 those of license. 
 
 Let me try, then, to put in very brief 
 terms the real plan of this various quarrel, 
 and the truth of the cause on each side. 
 Let us face that full truth, whatever it may 
 be, and decide what part, according to our 
 power, we should take in the quarrel. 
 
 First. For eleven hundred years, all but 
 five, since Charlemagne set on his head the 
 Lombard crown, the body of European peo- 
 ple have submitted patiently to be gov- 
 erned; generally by kings always by single 
 leaders of some kind. But for the last fifty 
 years they have begun to suspect, and of 
 late they have many of them concluded, that 
 they have been on the whole ill-governed, 
 or misgoverned, by their kings. Where- 
 upon they say, more and more widely, " Let 
 us henceforth have no kings; and no gov- 
 ernment at all." 
 
 Now we said we must face the full truth 
 359
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 of the matter, in order to see what we are 
 to do. And the truth is that the people 
 have been misgoverned; that very little is 
 to be said, hitherto, for most of their mas- 
 tersand that certainly in many places 
 they will try their new system of " no mas- 
 ters": and as that arrangement will be 
 delightful to all foolish persons, and, at 
 first, profitable to all wicked ones, and as 
 these classes are not wanting or unimpor- 
 tant in any human society, the experiment 
 is likely to be tried extensively. And the 
 world may be quite content to endure much 
 suffering with this fresh hope, and retain 
 its faith in anarchy, whatever conies of it, 
 till it can endure no more. 
 
 Then, secondly. The people have begun 
 to suspect that one particular form of this 
 past misgovernment has been that their 
 masters have set them to do all the work, 
 and have themselves taken all the wages. 
 In a word, that what was called governing 
 them, meant only wearing fine clothes, and 
 living on good fare, at their expense. And, 
 I am sorry to say, the people are quite right 
 in this opinion also. If you inquire into 
 the vital fact of the matter, this you will 
 find to be the constant structure of Euro- 
 pean society for the thousand years of the 
 feudal system: it was divided into peasants 
 360
 
 THE FUTURE OP ENGLAND 
 
 who lived by working; priests who lived by 
 begging; and knights who lived by pillag- 
 ing; and as the luminous public mind be- 
 comes gradually cognizant of these facts, it 
 will assuredly not suffer things to be alto- 
 gether arranged that way any more; and 
 the devising of other ways will be an agi- 
 tating business; especially because the first 
 impression of the intelligent populace is 
 that, whereas, in the dark ages, half the 
 nation lived idle, in the bright ages to come, 
 the whole of it may. 
 
 Now, thirdly and here is much the 
 worst phase of the crisis. This past system 
 of misgovernment, especially during the 
 last three hundred years, has prepared, by 
 its neglect, a class among the lower orders 
 which it is now peculiarly difficult to gov- 
 ern. It deservedly lost their respect but 
 that was the least part of the mischief. 
 The deadly part of it was that the lower 
 orders lost their habit, and at last their 
 faculty, of respect lost the very capability 
 of reverence, which is the most precious 
 part of the human .soul. Exactly in the 
 degree in which you can find creatures 
 greater than yourself to look up to, in that 
 degree you are ennobled yourself, and, in 
 that degree, happy. If you could live al- 
 ways in the presence of archangels, you 
 361
 
 THE CROWN OP WILD OLIVE 
 
 would be happier than in that of men; but 
 even if only in the company of admirable 
 knights and beautiful ladies, the more noble 
 and bright they were, and the more you 
 could reverence their virtue, the happier 
 you would be. On the contrary, if you 
 were condemned to live among a multitude 
 of idiots, dumb, distorted, and malicious, 
 you would not be happy in the constant 
 sense of your own superiority. Thus all 
 real joy and power of progress in humanity 
 depend on finding something to reverence, 
 and all the baseness and misery of human- 
 ity begin in a habit of disdain. Now, by 
 general misgovernment, I repeat, we have 
 created in Europe a vast populace, and out 
 of Europe a still vaster one, which has lost 
 even the power and conception of rever- 
 ence; l which exists only in the worship of 
 itself; which can neither see anything 
 beautiful around it, nor conceive anything 
 virtuous above it; which has, towards all 
 goodness and greatness, no other feelings 
 than those of the lowest creatures fear, 
 hatred, or hunger; a populace which has 
 sunk below your appeal in their nature, as 
 it has risen beyond your power in their 
 multitude; whom you can now no more 
 
 > Compare "Time and Tide," g 169, and "Fore Clavigera," 
 Letter XIV. p. 9. 
 
 362
 
 THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND 
 
 charm than you can the adder, nor disci- 
 pline than you can the summer fly. 
 
 It is a crisis, gentlemen; and time to 
 think of it. I have roughly and broadly put 
 it before you in its darkness. Let us look 
 what we may find of light. 
 
 Only the other day, in a journal which is 
 a fairly representative exponent of the 
 Conservatism of our day, and for the most 
 part not at all in favor of strikes or other 
 popular proceedings, only about three weeks 
 since, there was a leader with this, or a 
 similar, title "What is to become of the 
 House of Lords?" It startled me, for it 
 seemed as if we were going even faster than 
 I had thought, when such a question was 
 put as a subject of quite open debate, in a 
 journal meant chiefly for the reading of the 
 middle and upper classes. Open or not 
 the debate is near. What is to become of 
 them? And the answer to such question 
 depends first on their being able to answer 
 another question "What is the use of 
 them!" For some time back, I think the 
 theory of the nation has been, that they are 
 useful as impediments to business, so as 
 to give time for second thoughts. But the 
 nation is getting impatient of impediments 
 to business; and certainly, sooner or later, 
 will think it needless to maintain these ex- 
 363
 
 THE CROWN OP WILD OLIVE 
 
 pensive obstacles to its humors. And I 
 have not heard, either in public or from 
 any of themselves, a clear expression of 
 their own conception of their use. So that 
 it seems thus to become needful for all men 
 to tell them, as our one quite clear-sighted 
 teacher, Carlyle, has been telling us for 
 many a year, that the use of the Lords of a 
 country is to govern the country. If they 
 answer that use, the country will rejoice in 
 keeping them; if not, that will become of 
 them which must of all things found to 
 have lost their serviceableness. 
 
 Here, therefore, is the one question, at 
 this crisis, for them, and for us. Will they 
 be lords indeed, and give us laws dukes 
 indeed, and give us guiding princes in- 
 deed, and give us beginning, of truer dy- 
 nasty, which shall not be soiled by covet- 
 ousness, nor disordered by iniquity? Have 
 they themselves sunk so far as not to hope 
 this? Are there yet any among them who 
 can stand forward with open English brows, 
 and say, So far as in me lies, I will govern 
 with my might, not for Dieu et mon Droit, 
 but for the first grand reading of the war- 
 cry from which that was corrupted, " Dieu 
 et Droit"? Among them I know there are 
 some among you, soldiers of England, I 
 know there are many who can do this; and 
 364
 
 THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND 
 
 in you is our trust. I, one of the lower peo- 
 ple of your country, ask of you in their 
 name, you whom I will not any more call 
 soldiers, but by the truer name of Knights; 
 Equites of England. How many yet of 
 you are there, knights errant now beyond 
 all former fields of danger knights patient 
 now beyond all former endurance; who still 
 retain the ancient and eternal purpose of 
 knighthood, to subdue the wicked, and aid 
 the weak? To them, be they few or many, 
 we English people call for help to the 
 wretchedness, and for rule over the base- 
 ness, of multitudes desolate and deceived, 
 shrieking to one another this new gospel of 
 their new religion: "Let the weak do as 
 they can, and the wicked as they will." 
 
 I can hear you saying in your hearts, even 
 the bravest of you, "The time is past for 
 all that." Gentlemen, it is not so. The 
 time has come for more than all that. 
 Hitherto, soldiers have given their lives for 
 false fame, and for cruel power. The day 
 is now when they must give their lives for 
 true fame, and for beneficent power: and 
 the work is near every one of you close 
 beside you the means of it even thrust 
 into your hands. The people are crying to 
 you for command, and you stand there at 
 pause, and silent. You think they don't 
 365
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 want to be commanded: try them; deter- 
 mine what is needful for them honorable 
 for them; show it them, promise to bring 
 them to it, and they will follow you through 
 fire. " Govern us," they cry with one heart, 
 though many minds. They can be gov- 
 erned still, these English; they are men 
 still; not gnats, nor serpents. They love 
 their old ways yet, and their old masters, 
 and their old land. They would fain live in 
 it, as many as may stay there, if you will 
 show them how, there, to live; or show 
 them even how, there, like Englishmen, to 
 die. 
 
 "To live in it, as many as may!" How 
 many do you think may? How many can ? 
 How many do you want to live there? As 
 masters, your first object must be to in- 
 crease your power; and in what does the 
 power of a country consist? Will you have 
 dominion over its stones, or over its clouds, 
 or over its souls? What do you mean by a 
 great nation, but a great multitude of men 
 who are true to each other, and strong, and 
 of worth? Now you can increase the mul- 
 titude only definitely your island has only 
 so much standing-room but you can in- 
 crease the worth indefinitely. It is but a 
 little island; suppose, little as it is, you 
 were to fill it with friends? You may, and 
 366
 
 THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND 
 
 that easily. You must, and that speedily; 
 or there will be an end to this England of 
 ours, and to all its loves and enmities. 
 
 To fill this little island with true friends 
 men brave, wise, and happy! Is it so im- 
 possible, think you, after the world's eigh- 
 teen hundred years of Christianity, and our 
 own thousand years of toil, to fill only this 
 little white gleaming crag with happy crea- 
 tures, helpful to each other? Africa, and 
 India, and the Brazilian wide-watered plain, 
 are these not wide enough for the ignorance 
 of our race? have they not space enough 
 for its pain ? Must we remain here also sav- 
 age, here at enmity with each other, 
 here foodless, houseless, in rags, in dust, 
 and without hope, as thousands and tens 
 of thousands of us are lying? Do not think 
 it, gentlemen. The thought that it is in- 
 evitable is the last infidelity; infidelity not 
 to God only, but to every creature and 
 every law that He has made. Are we to 
 think that the earth was only shaped to be 
 a globe of torture; and that there cannot be 
 one spot of it where peace can rest, or jus- 
 tice reign? Where are men ever to be 
 happy, if not in England? by whom shall 
 they ever be taught to do right, if not by 
 you? Are we not of a race first among the 
 strong ones of the earth; the blood in us 
 367
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 incapable of weariness, unconquerable by 
 grief? Have we not a history of which we 
 can hardly think without becoming insolent 
 in our just pride of it? Can we dare, with- 
 out passing every limit of courtesy to other 
 nations, to say how much more we have to 
 be proud of in our ancestors than they? 
 Among our ancient monarchs, great crimes 
 stand out as monstrous and strange. But 
 their valor, and, according to their under- 
 standing, their benevolence, are constant. 
 The Wars of the Roses, which are as a fear- 
 ful crimson shadow on our land, represent 
 the normal condition of other nations; while 
 from the days of the Heptarchy downwards 
 we have had examples given us, in all ranks, 
 of the most varied and exalted virtue; a 
 heap of treasure that no moth can corrupt, 
 and which even our traitorship, if we are to 
 become traitors to it, cannot sully. 
 
 And this is the race, then, that we know 
 not any more how to govern! and this the 
 history which we are to behold broken off 
 by sedition! and this is the country, of all 
 others, where life is to become difficult to 
 the honest, and ridiculous to the wise ! And 
 the catastrophe, forsooth, is to come just 
 when we have been making swiftest prog- 
 ress beyond the wisdom and wealth of the 
 past. Our cities are a wilderness of spin- 
 368
 
 THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND 
 
 ning-wheels instead of palaces; yet the 
 people have not clothes. We have black- 
 ened every leaf of English greenwood with 
 ashes, and the people die of cold; our har- 
 bors are a forest of merchant-ships, and the 
 people die of hunger. 
 
 Whose fault is it? Yours, gentlemen; 
 yours only. You alone can feed them, and 
 clothe, and bring into their right minds, for 
 you only can govern that is to say, you 
 only can educate them. 
 
 Educate, or govern, they are one and the 
 same word. Education does not mean 
 teaching people to know what they do not 
 know. It means teaching them to behave 
 as they do not behave. And the true 
 " compulsory education " which the people 
 now ask of you is not catechism, but drill. 
 It is not teaching the youth of England the 
 shapes of letters and the tricks of numbers; 
 and then leaving them to turn their arith- 
 metic to roguery, and their literature to 
 lust. It is, on the contrary, training them 
 into the perfect exercise and kingly conti- 
 nence of their bodies and souls. It is a pain- 
 ful, continual, and difficult work; to be done 
 by kindness, by watching, by warning, by 
 precept, and by praise, but above all by 
 example. 
 
 Compulsory! Yes, by all means! "Go 
 24 369
 
 THE CROWN OP WILD OLIVE 
 
 ye out into the highways and hedges, and 
 compel them to come in." Compulsory! 
 Yes, and gratis also. Dei Gratia, they must 
 be taught, as, Dei Gratia, you are set to 
 teach them. I hear strange talk continu- 
 ally, " how difficult it is to make people pay 
 for being educated! " Why, I should think 
 so! Do you make your children pay for 
 their education, or do you give it them com- 
 pulsorily, and gratis? You do not expect 
 them to pay you for their teaching, except 
 by becoming good children. Why should 
 you expect a peasant to pay for his, except 
 by becoming a good man? payment enough, 
 I think, if we knew it Payment enough to 
 himself, as to us. For that is another of 
 our grand popular mistakes people are 
 always thinking of education as a means of 
 livelihood. Education is not a profitable 
 business, but a costly one; nay, even the 
 best attainments of it are always unprofit- 
 able, in any terms of coin. No nation ever 
 made its bread either by its great arts or 
 its great wisdoms. By its minor arts or 
 manufactures, by its practical knowledges, 
 yes: but its noble scholarship, its noble 
 philosophy, and its noble art, are always to 
 be bought as a treasure, not sold for a live- 
 lihood. You do not learn that you may live 
 you live that you may learn. You are to 
 370
 
 THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND 
 
 spend on National Education, and to be 
 spent for it, and to make by it, not more 
 money, but better men; to get into this 
 British Island the greatest possible number 
 of good and brave Englishmen. They are 
 to be your " money's worth." 
 
 But where is the money to come from? 
 Yes, that is to be asked. Let us, as quite 
 the first business in this our national crisis, 
 look not only into our affairs, but into our 
 accounts, and obtain some general notion 
 how we annually spend our money, and 
 what we are getting for it. Observe, I do 
 not mean to inquire into the public revenue 
 only; of that some account is rendered al- 
 ready. But let us do the best we can to set 
 down the items of the national private ex- 
 penditure; and know what we spend alto- 
 gether, and how. 
 
 To begin with this matter of education. 
 You probably have nearly all seen the ad- 
 mirable lecture lately given by Captain 
 Maxse, at Southampton. It contains a clear 
 statement of the facts at present ascer- 
 tained as to our expenditure in that respect. 
 It appears that of our public moneys, for 
 every pound that we spend on education we 
 spend twelve either in charity or punish- 
 ment; ten millions a year in pauperism 
 and crime, and eight hundred thousand in 
 371
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 instruction. Now Captain Maxse adds to 
 this estimate of ten millions public money 
 spent on crime and want, a more or less 
 conjectural sum of eight millions for pri- 
 vate charities. My impression is that this 
 is much beneath the truth, but at all events 
 it leaves out of consideration much the 
 heaviest and saddest form of charity the 
 maintenance, by the working members of 
 families, of the unfortunate or ill-conducted 
 persons whom the general course of mis- 
 rule now leaves helpless to be the burden 
 of the rest. 
 
 Now I want to get first at some, I do not 
 say approximate, but at all events some 
 suggestive, estimate of the quantity of real 
 distress and misguided life in this country. 
 Then next, I want some fairly representa- 
 tive estimate of our private expenditure in 
 luxuries. We won't spend more, publicly, 
 it appears, than eight hundred thousand a 
 year, on educating men gratis. I want to 
 know, as nearly as possible, what we spend 
 privately a year, in educating horses gratis. 
 Let us, at least, quit ourselves in this from 
 the taunt of Rabshakeh, and see that for 
 every horse we train also a horseman; arid 
 that the rider be at least as high-bred as 
 the horse, not j ockey, but cheval ier. Again, 
 we spend eight hundred thousand, which is 
 372
 
 THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND 
 
 certainly a great deal of money, in making 
 rough minds bright. I want to know how 
 much we spend annually in making rough 
 stones bright; that is to say, what may be 
 the united annual sum, or near it, of our 
 jewelers' bills. So much we pay for edu- 
 cating children gratis; how much for edu- 
 cating diamonds gratis? and which pays 
 best for brightening, the spirit, or the char- 
 coal? Let us get those two items set down 
 with some sincerity, and a few more of the 
 same kind. Publicly set down. We must 
 not be ashamed of the way we spend our 
 money. If our right hand is not to know 
 what our left does, it must not be because 
 it would be ashamed if it did. 
 
 That is, therefore, quite the first practi- 
 cal thing to be done. Let every man who 
 wishes well to his country, render it yearly 
 an account of his income, and of the main 
 heads of his expenditure; or, if he is ashamed 
 to do so, let him no more impute to the poor 
 their poverty as a crime, nor set them to 
 break stones in order to frighten them from 
 committing it. To lose money ill is indeed 
 often a crime; but to get it ill is a worse 
 one, and to spend it ill, worst of all. You 
 object, Lords of England, to increase, to the 
 poor, the wages you give them, because they 
 spend them, you say, unadvisedly. Render 
 25
 
 THE CROWN OP WILD OLIVE 
 
 them, therefore, an account of the wages 
 which they give you; and show them, by 
 your example, how to spend theirs, to the 
 last farthing, advisedly. 
 
 It is indeed time to make this an acknow- 
 ledged subject of instruction, to the work- 
 ingman, how to spend his wages. For, 
 gentlemen, we must give that instruction, 
 whether we will or no, one way or the 
 other. We have given it in years gone by; 
 and now we find fault with our peasantry 
 for having been too docile, and profited too 
 shrewdly by our tuition. Only a few days 
 since I had a letter from the wife of a vil- 
 lage rector, a man of common sense and 
 kindness, who was greatly troubled in his 
 mind because it was precisely the men who 
 got highest wages in summer that came 
 destitute to his door in the winter. Des- 
 titute, and of riotous temper for their 
 method of spending wages in their period 
 of prosperity was by sitting two days a 
 week in the tavern parlor, ladling port wine, 
 not out of bowls, but out of buckets. Well, 
 gentlemen, who taught them that method 
 of festivity? Thirty years ago, I, a most 
 inexperienced freshman, went to my first 
 college supper; at the head of the table sat 
 a nobleman of high promise and of admir- 
 able powers, since dead of palsy; there also 
 374
 
 THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND 
 
 we had in the midst of us, not buckets, in- 
 deed, but bowls as large as buckets; there 
 also we helped ourselves with ladles. There 
 (for this beginning of college education was 
 compulsory) I, choosing ladlefuls of punch 
 instead of claret, because I was then able, 
 unperceived, to pour them into my waist- 
 coat instead of down my throat, stood it 
 out to the end, and helped to carry four of 
 my fellow-students, one of them the son of 
 the head of a college, head foremost, down- 
 stairs and home. 
 
 Such things are no more; but the fruit of 
 them remains, and will for many a day to 
 come. The laborers whom you cannot now 
 shut out of the ale-house are only the too 
 faithful disciples of the gentlemen who 
 were wont to shut themselves into the din- 
 ing-room. The gentlemen have not thought 
 it necessary, in order to correct their own 
 habits, to diminish their incomes; and, be- 
 lieve me, the way to deal with your drunken 
 workman is not to lower his wages, but to 
 mend his wits. 1 
 
 And if indeed we do not yet see quite 
 clearly how to deal with the sins of our 
 poor brother, it is possible that our dimness 
 of sight may still have other causes that 
 can be cast out. There are two opposite 
 
 i Compare 70 of " Time and Tide." 
 
 375
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 cries of the great Liberal and Conservative 
 parties, which are both most right, and 
 worthy to be rallying-cries. On their side, 
 " Let every man have his chance "; on yours, 
 " Let every man stand in his place." Yes, 
 indeed, let that be so, every man in his 
 place, and every man fit for it. See that he 
 holds that place from Heaven's Providence; 
 and not from his family's Providence. Let 
 the Lords Spiritual quit themselves of 
 simony, we laymen will look after the here- 
 tics for them. Let the Lords Temporal 
 quit themselves of nepotism, and we will 
 take care of their authority for them. Pub- 
 lish for us, you soldiers, an army gazette, 
 in which the one subject of daily intelli- 
 gence shall be the grounds of promotion; a 
 gazette which shall simply tell us, what 
 there certainly can be no detriment to the 
 service in our knowing, when any officer is 
 appointed to a new command, what his 
 former services and successes have been, 
 whom he has superseded, and on what 
 ground. It will be always a satisfaction to 
 us; it may sometimes be an advantage to 
 you: and then, when there is really neces- 
 sary debate respecting reduction of wages, 
 let us always begin, not with the wages of 
 the industrious classes, but with those of 
 the idle ones. Let there be honorary titles, 
 376
 
 THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND 
 
 if people like them; but let there be no hon- 
 orary incomes. 
 
 So much for the master's motto, " Every 
 man in his place." Next for the laborer's 
 motto, "Every man his chance." Let us 
 mend that for them a little, and say, " Every 
 man his certainty "certainty that if he 
 does well, he will be honored, and aided, 
 and advanced in such degree as may be fit- 
 ting for his faculty and consistent with his 
 peace; and equal certainty that if he does 
 ill, he will by sure justice be judged, and by 
 sure punishment be chastised if it may be, 
 corrected, and if that may not be, con- 
 demned. That is the right reading of the 
 Republican motto, " Every man his chance." 
 And then, with such a system of govern- 
 ment, pure, watchful, and just, you may 
 approach your great problem of national 
 education, or, in other words, of national 
 employment. For all education begins in 
 work. What we think, or what we know, 
 or what we believe, is, in the end, of little 
 consequence. The only thing of conse- 
 quence is what we do : and for man, woman, 
 or child, the first point of education is to 
 make them do their best. It is the law of 
 good economy to make the best of every- 
 thing. How much more to make the best 
 of every creature! Therefore, when your 
 377
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 pauper comes to you and asks for bread, 
 ask of him instantly What faculty have 
 you? What can you do best? Can you 
 drive a nail into wood? Go and mend the 
 parish fences. Can you lay a brick? Mend 
 the walls of the cottages where the wind 
 comes in. Can you lift a spadeful of earth? 
 Turn this field up three feet deep all over. 
 Can you only drag a weight with your 
 shoulders? Stand at the bottom of this 
 hill and help up the overladen horses. Can 
 you weld iron and chisel stone? Fortify 
 this wreck-strewn coast into a harbor; and 
 change these shifting sands into fruitful 
 ground. Wherever death was, bring life; 
 that is to be your work; that your parish 
 refuge; that your education. So and no 
 otherwise can we meet existent distress. 
 But for the continual education of the whole 
 people, and for their future happiness, they 
 must have such consistent employment as 
 shall develop all the powers of the fingers, 
 and the limbs, and the brain: and that de- 
 velopment is only to be obtained by hand- 
 labor, of which you have these four great 
 divisions hand-labor on the earth, hand- 
 labor on the sea, hand-labor in art, hand- 
 labor in war. Of the last two of these I 
 cannot speak to-night, and of the first two 
 only with extreme brevity. 
 378
 
 THE FUTURE OP ENGLAND 
 
 I. Hand-labor on the earth, the work of 
 the husbandman and of the shepherd; to 
 dress the earth and to keep the flocks of it 
 the first task of man, and the final one 
 the education always of noblest law-givers, 
 kings and teachers; the education of Hesiod, 
 of Moses, of David, of all the true strength 
 of Rome; and all its tenderness: the pride 
 of Cincinnatus, and the inspiration of Vir- 
 gil. Hand-labor on the earth, and the 
 harvest of it brought forth with singing: 
 not steam-piston labor on the earth, and 
 the harvest of it brought forth with steam- 
 whistling. You will have no prophet's 
 voice accompanied by that shepherd's pipe, 
 and pastoral symphony. Do you know that 
 lately, in Cumberland, in the chief pastoral 
 district of England, in Wordsworth's own 
 home, a procession of villagers on their 
 festa day provided for themselves, by way 
 of music, a steam-plow whistling at the 
 head of them. 
 
 Give me patience while I put the princi- 
 ple of machine labor before you, as clearly 
 and in as short compass as possible; it is 
 one that should be known at this juncture. 
 Suppose a farming proprietor needs to em- 
 ploy a hundred men on his estate, and that 
 the labor of these hundred men is enough, 
 but not more than enough, to till all his 
 379
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 land, and to raise from it food for his own 
 family, and for the hundred laborers. He 
 is obliged, under such circumstances, to 
 maintain all the men in moderate comfort, 
 and can only by economy accumulate much 
 for himself. But, suppose he contrive a 
 machine that will easily do the work of fifty 
 men, with only one man to watch it. This 
 sounds like a great advance in civilization. 
 The farmer of course gets his machine 
 made, turns off the fifty men, who may 
 starve or emigrate at their choice, and now 
 he can keep half of the produce of his es- 
 tate, which formerly went to feed them, all 
 to himself. That is the essential and con- 
 stant operation of machinery among us at 
 this moment. 
 
 Nay, it is at first answered; no man can 
 in reality keep half the produce of an estate 
 to himself, nor can he in the end keep more 
 than his own human share of anything; his 
 riches must diffuse themselves at some 
 time; he must maintain somebody else with 
 them, however he spends them. That is 
 mainly true (not altogether so), for food 
 and fuel are in ordinary circumstances per- 
 sonally wasted by rich people, in quantities 
 which would save many lives. One of my 
 own great luxuries, for instance, is candle- 
 lightand I probably burn, for myself alone, 
 380
 
 THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND 
 
 as many candles, during the winter, as 
 would comfort the old eyes, or spare the 
 young ones, of a whole rush-lighted country 
 village. Still, it is mainly true that it is 
 not by their personal waste that rich people 
 prevent the lives of the poor. This is the 
 way they do it. Let me go back to my 
 farmer. He has got his machine made, 
 which goes creaking, screaming, and occa- 
 sionally exploding, about modern Arcadia. 
 He has turned off his fifty men to starve. 
 Now, at some distance from his own farm, 
 there is another on which the laborers were 
 working for their bread in the same way, 
 by tilling the land. The machinist sends 
 over to these, saying "I have got food 
 enough for you without your digging or 
 plowing any more. I can maintain you in 
 other occupations instead of plowing that 
 land; if you rake in its gravel you will find 
 some hard stones you shall grind those on 
 mills till they glitter; then, my wife shall 
 wear a necklace of them. Also, if you turn 
 up the meadows below, you will find some 
 fine white clay, of which you shall make a 
 porcelain service for me: and the rest of 
 the farm I want for pasture for horses for 
 my carriage and you shall groom them, 
 and some of you ride behind the carriage 
 with staves in your hands, and I will keep 
 381
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 you much fatter for doing that than you 
 can keep yourselves by digging." 
 
 Well but it is answered, are we to have 
 no diamonds, nor china, nor pictures, nor 
 footmen, then but all to be farmers? I 
 am not saying what we ought to do; I want 
 only to show you with perfect clearness 
 first what we are doing; and that, I repeat, 
 is the upshot of machine-contriving in this 
 country. And observe its effect on the 
 national strength. Without machines, you 
 have a hundred and fifty yeomen ready to 
 join for defense of the land. You get your 
 machine, starve fifty of them, make dia- 
 mond-cutters or footmen of as many more, 
 and for your national defense against an 
 enemy you have now, and can have, only 
 fifty men, instead of a hundred and fifty; 
 these also now with minds much alienated 
 from you as their chief, 1 and the rest, lapi- 
 daries or footmen; and a steam-plow. 
 
 That is one effect of machinery; but, at 
 all events, if we have thus lost in men, we 
 have gained in riches; instead of happy 
 human souls, we have at least got pictures, 
 china, horses, and are ourselves better off 
 than we were before. But very often, and 
 in much of our machine-contriving, even 
 
 1 [They were deserting, I am informed, in the early part of 
 this year, 1873, at the rate of a regiment a week.] 
 
 382
 
 THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND 
 
 that result does not follow. We are not 
 one whit the richer for the machine; we 
 only employ it for our amusement. For 
 observe, our gaining in riches depends on 
 the men who are out of employment con- 
 senting to he starved, or sent out of the 
 country. But suppose they do not consent 
 passively to be starved, but some of them 
 become criminals, and have to be taken 
 charge of and fed at a much greater cost 
 than if they were at work, and others, 
 paupers, rioters, and the like, then you at- 
 tain the real outcome of modern wisdom 
 and ingenuity. You had your hundred men 
 honestly at country work; but you don't like 
 the sight of human beings in your fields; 
 you like better to see a smoking kettle. 
 You pay, as an amateur, for that pleasure, 
 and you employ your fifty men in picking 
 oakum, or begging, rioting, and thieving. 
 
 By hand-labor, therefore, and that alone, 
 we are to till the ground. By hand-labor 
 also to plow the sea; both for food, and in 
 commerce, and in war: not with floating 
 kettles there neither, but with hempen 
 bridle, and the winds of heaven in harness. 
 That is the way the power of Greece rose 
 on her ^gean, the power of Venice on her 
 Adria, of Amalfi in her blue bay, of the Nor- 
 man sea-riders from the North Cape to 
 383
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 Sicily: so, your own dominion also of the 
 past. Of the past, mind you. On the Bal- 
 tic and the Nile, your power is already de- 
 parted. By machinery you would advance 
 to discovery; by machinery you would carry 
 your commerce; you would he engineers 
 instead of sailors; and instantly in the North 
 seas you are beaten among the ice, and 
 before the very Gods of Nile, beaten among 
 the sand. Agriculture, then, by the hand 
 or by the plow drawn only by animals, and 
 shepherd and pastoral husbandry, are to be 
 the chief schools of Englishmen. And this 
 most royal academy of all academies you 
 have to open over all the land, purifying 
 your heaths and hills, and waters, and 
 keeping them full of every kind of lovely 
 natural organism, in tree, herb, and living 
 creature. All land that is waste and ugly, 
 you must redeem into ordered fruitfulness; 
 all ruin, desolateness, imperfectness of hut 
 or habitation, you must do away with; and 
 throughout every village and city of your 
 English dominion, there must not be a hand 
 that cannot find a helper, nor a heart that 
 cannot find a comforter. 
 
 " How impossible! " I know you are think- 
 ing. Ah! So far from impossible, it is 
 easy, it is natural, it is necessary, and I 
 declare to you that, sooner or later, it must 
 384
 
 THE FUTURE OP ENGLAND 
 
 be done, at our peril. If now our English 
 lords of land will fix this idea steadily be- 
 fore them; take the people to their hearts, 
 trust to their loyalty, lead their labor; 
 then indeed there will be princes again 
 in the midst of us, worthy of the island 
 throne, 
 
 This royal throne of kings this sceptered isle 
 This fortress built by nature for herself 
 Against infection, and the hand of war ; 
 This precious stone set in the silver sea ; 
 This happy breed of men this little world: 
 This other Eden Demi-Paradise. 
 
 But if they refuse to do this, and hesitate 
 and equivocate, clutching through the con- 
 fused catastrophe of all things only at what 
 they can still keep stealthily for themselves, 
 their doom is nearer than even their ad- 
 versaries hope, and it will be deeper than 
 even their despisers dream. 
 
 That, believe me, is the work you have to 
 do in England; and out of England you have 
 room for everything else you care to do. 
 Are her dominions in the world so narrow 
 that she can find no place to spin cotton in 
 but Yorkshire? We may organize emigra- 
 tion into an infinite power. We may as- 
 semble troops of the more adventurous and 
 ambitious of our youth; we may send them 
 on truest foreign service, founding new seats 
 385
 
 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 
 
 of authority, and centers of thought, in 
 uncultivated and unconquered lands; retain- 
 ing the full affection to the native country 
 no less in our colonists than in our armies, 
 teaching them to maintain allegiance to 
 their fatherland in labor no less than in 
 battle; aiding them with free hand in the 
 prosecution of discovery, and the victory 
 over adverse natural powers; establishing 
 seats of every manufacture in the climates 
 and places best fitted for it, and bringing 
 ourselves into due alliance and harmony of 
 skill with the dexterities of every race, and 
 the wisdoms of every tradition and every 
 tongue. 
 
 And then you may make England itself 
 the center of the learning, of the arts, of 
 the courtesies and felicities of the world. 
 You may cover her mountains with pasture; 
 her plains with corn, her valleys with the 
 lily, and her gardens with the rose. You 
 may bring together there in peace the wise 
 and the pure, and the gentle of the earth, 
 and by their word, command through its 
 farthest darkness the birth of "God's first 
 creature, which was Light." You know 
 whose words those are: the words of the 
 wisest of Englishmen. He, and with him 
 the wisest of all other great nations, have 
 spoken always to men of this hope, and they 
 386
 
 THE FUTURE OF ENGLAND 
 
 would not hear. Plato, in the dialogue of 
 Critias, his last, broken off at his death, 
 Pindar, in passionate singing of the fortu- 
 nate islands, Virgil, in the prophetic tenth 
 eclogue, Bacon, in his fable of the New 
 Atlantis, More, in the book which, too im- 
 patiently wise, became the by-word of fools 
 these all have told us with one voice 
 what we should strive to attain; they not 
 hopeless of it, but for our follies forced, as 
 it seems, by heaven, to tell us only partly 
 and in parables, lest we should hear them 
 and obey. 
 
 Shall we never listen to the words of 
 these wisest of men? Then listen at least 
 to the words of your children let us in the 
 lips of babes and sucklings find our strength; 
 and see that we do not make them mock 
 instead of pray, when we teach them, night 
 and morning, to ask for what we believe 
 never can be granted; that the will of the 
 Father which is, that His creatures may 
 be righteous and happy should be done, 
 on earth, as it is in Heaven. 
 
 387
 
 .
 
 rmm 
 
 l^l