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Title: Arrows of the Chace, v. 2
       being a collection of scattered letters published chiefly
              in the daily newspapers 1840-1880

Author: John Ruskin

Release Date: January 18, 2015 [EBook #48015]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARROWS OF THE CHACE, V. 2 ***




Produced by Richard Tonsing, Juliet Sutherland and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

[Pg i]

THE COMPLETE WORKS

OF

JOHN RUSKIN

VOLUME XXIII

ARROWS OF THE CHACE

VOLUMES I-II

[Pg ii]
[Pg iii]

[Pg iv]

"I NEVER WROTE A LETTER IN MY LIFE WHICH ALL THE WORLD ARE NOT WELCOME TO READ IF THEY WILL."

Fors Clavigera, Letter 59, 1875.

[Pg v]

CONTENTS OF VOLUME II.

NOTE TO THE SECOND VOLUME.

The letters relating to Mr. Ruskin's candidature for the Lord Rectorship of Glasgow University were published when this volume was almost out of the printer's hands. They have however been included, by Mr. Ruskin's wish, and will be found at the end of this volume, where a letter to the late Mr. W. H. Harrison, which has just been brought to my notice, and two very recent letters on Dramatic Reform, have, at the cost of some delay, been also added.—[Ed.]

November 15, 1880.

[Pg xii][Pg xiii][Pg xiv]

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE LETTERS CONTAINED IN THE SECOND VOLUME.

Note.—In the second and third columns the bracketed words and figures are more or less certainly conjectured; whilst those unbracketed give the actual dating of the letters.

LETTERS ON POLITICS AND WAR.

The Italian Question. 1859.
(Three letters: June 6, June 15, and August 1.)

The Foreign Policy of England. 1863.

The Position of Denmark. 1864.

The Jamaica Insurrection. 1865.

The Franco-Prussian War. 1870.
(Two letters: October 6 and 7.)

Modern Warfare. 1876.

[Pg 2]
[Pg 3]

ARROWS OF THE CHACE.

LETTERS ON POLITICS AND WAR.

[From "The Scotsman," July 20, 1859.]
THE ITALIAN QUESTION.[1]
Berlin, June 6, 1859.

I have been thinking of sending a few lines about what I have seen of Austrians and Italians; but every time I took my pen and turned from my own work about clouds and leafage to think for a few minutes concerning political clouds and thickets, I sank into a state of amazement which reduced me to helpless silence. I will try and send you an incoherent line to-day; for the smallest endeavor at coherence will bring me into that atmosphere of astonishment again, in which I find no expression.

You northern Protestant people are always overrating the value of Protestantism as such. Your poetical clergymen make sentimental tours in the Vaudois country, as if there were no worthy people in the Alps but the Vaudois. Did the enlightened Edinburgh evangelicals never take any interest in the freedom of the Swiss, nor hear of such people as Winkelried or Tell? Not but that there is some chance of Tell disappearing one of these days under acutest historical investigation.

[Pg 4]

Still, he, or somebody else, verily got Switzerland rid of much evil, and made it capable of much good; and if you examine the influence of the battles of Morgarten and Sempach on European history, you will find they were good and true pieces of God's work.[2] Do people suppose they were done by Protestants? Switzerland owes all that she is—all that she is ever likely to be—to her stout and stern Roman Catholics, faithful to their faith to this day—they, and the Tyrolese, about the truest Roman Catholics in Christendom and certainly among its worthiest people, though they laid your Zuingli and a good deal of ranting Protestantism which Zuingli in vain tried to make either rational or charitable, dead together on the green meadows of Cappel, and though the Tyrolese marksmen at this moment are following up their rifle practice to good purpose, and with good will, with your Vaudois hearts for targets.

The amazement atmosphere keeps floating with its edges about me, though I write on as fast as I can in hopes of keeping out of it. You Scotch, and we English!! to keep up the miserable hypocrisy of calling ourselves Protestants! And here have been two of the most powerful protests (sealed with quite as much blood as is usually needed for such documents) that ever were made against the Papacy—one in 1848,[3] and [Pg 5]one now—twenty thousand men or thereabouts lying, at this time being, in the form of torn flesh and shattered bones, among the rice marshes of the Novarrese, and not one jot of our precious Protestant blood gone to the signature. Not so much as one noble flush of it, that I can see, on our clay cheeks, besmirched, as they are, with sweat and smoke; but all for gold, and out of chimneys. Of sweat for bread that perishes not, or of the old Sinai smoke for honor of God's law, and revelation thereof—no drop nor shadow. Not so much as a coroner's inquest on those dead bodies in the rice fields—dead men who must have been murdered by somebody. If a drunken man falls in a ditch, you will have your Dogberry and Verges talk over him by way of doing justice; but your twenty thousand—not drunken, but honest, respectable, well-meaning, and serviceable men—are made rice manure of, and you think it is all right. We Protestants indeed! The Italians are Protestants, and in a measure the French—nay, even the Austrians (at all events those conical-hatted mountaineers), according to their understanding of the matter. What we are, Moloch or Mammon, or the Protestant devil make up of both, perhaps knows.

Do not think I dislike the Austrians. I have great respect and affection for them, and I have seen more of them in familiar intercourse than most Englishmen. One of my best friends in Venice in the winter of 1849-50 was the Artillery officer who had directed the fire on the side of Mestre in 1848. I have never known a nobler person. Brave, kind, and gay—as gentle as a lamb, as playful as a kitten—knightly in courtesy and in all tones of thought—ready at any instant to lay down his life for his country or his Emperor. He was by no means a rare instance either of gentleness or of virtue among the men whom the Liberal portion of our English press represent as only tyrants and barbarians. Radetzky himself was one of the kindest of men—his habitual expression was one of overflowing bonhommie, or of fatherly regard for the welfare of all around him. All who knew him loved him. In little things his kindness was almost ludicrous. I saw him at Verona[Pg 6] run out of his own supper-room and return with a plate of soup in his hand, the waiters (his youngest aides-de-camp) not serving his lady guests fast enough to please him; yet they were nimble enough, as I knew in a race with two of them among the fire-flies by the Mincio, only the evening before. For a long time I regarded the Austrians as the only protection of Italy from utter dissolution (such as that which, I see to-day, it is reported that the Tuscan army has fallen into, left for five weeks to itself), and I should have looked upon them as such still, if the Sardinian Government had not shown itself fit to take their place. And the moment that any Italian Government was able to take their place, the Austrians necessarily became an obstacle to Italian progress, for all their virtues are incomprehensible to the Italians, and useless to them. Unselfish individually, the Austrians are nationally entirely selfish, and in this consists, so far as it is truly alleged against them, their barbarism. These men of whom I have been speaking would have given, any of them, life and fortune unhesitatingly, at their Emperor's bidding, but their magnanimity was precisely that of the Highlander or the Indian, incognizant of any principle of action but that of devotion to his chief or nation. All abstract grounds of conscience, all universal and human hopes, were inconceivable by them. Such men are at present capable of no feeling towards Italy but scorn; their power was like a bituminous cerecloth wrapping her corpse—it saved her from the rottenness of revolution; but it must be unwound, if the time has come for her resurrection.

I do not know if that time has come, or can come. Italy's true oppression is all her own. Spain is oppressed by the Spaniard, not by the Austrian. Greece needs but to be saved from the Greeks. No French Emperor, however mighty his arm or sound his faith, can give Italy freedom.

But the time is come at least to bid her be free, if she has the[Pg 7] power of freedom. It is not England, certainly, who should forbid her. I believe that is what it will come to, however—not so much because we are afraid of Napoleon, as because we are jealous of him. But of him and us I have something more to say than there is time for to-night. These good, stupid, affectionate, faithful Germans, too (grand fellows under arms; I never imagined so magnificent a soldiery as 15,000 of them which I made a shift to see, through sand clouds, march past the Prince Frederick William[4] on Saturday morning last). But to hear them fretting and foaming at the French getting into Milan!—they having absolutely no other idea on all this complicated business than that French are fighting Germans! Wrong or right, why or wherefore, matters not a jot to them. French are fighting Germans—somehow, somewhere, for some reason—and beer and Vaterland are in peril, and the English in fault, as we are assuredly, but not on that side, for I believe it to be quite true which a French friend, high in position, says in a letter this morning—"If the English had not sympathized with the Austrians there would have been no war." By way of keeping up the character of incoherence to which I have vowed myself, I may tell you that before that French letter came, I received another from a very sagacious Scotch friend (belonging, as I suppose most Scotch people do, to the class of persons who call themselves "religious"), containing this marvellous enunciation of moral principle, to be acted upon in difficult circumstances, "Mind your own business." It is a serviceable principle enough for men of the world, but a surprising one in the mouth of a person who professes to be a Bible obeyer. For, as far as I remember the tone of that obsolete book, "our own" is precisely the last business which it ever tells us to mind. It tells us often to mind God's business, often to mind other people's business; our own, in any eager or earnest way, not at all. "What thy hand findeth to [Pg 8]do." Yes; but in God's fields, not ours. One can imagine the wiser fishermen of the Galilean lake objecting to Peter and Andrew that they were not minding their business, much more the commercial friends of Levi speaking with gentle pity of him about the receipt of Custom. "A bad man of business always—see what has come of it—quite mad at last."

And my astonishing friend went on to say that this was to be our principle of action "where the path was not quite clear"—as if any path ever was clear till you got to the end of it, or saw it a long way off; as if all human possibility of path was not among clouds and brambles—often cold, always thorny—misty with roses occasionally, or dim with dew, often also with shadow of Death—misty, more particularly in England just now, with shadow of that commercially and otherwise valuable smoke before spoken of.

However, if the path is not to be seen, it may be felt, or at least tumbled off, without any particular difficulty. This latter course of proceeding is our probablest, of course.—But I can't write any more to-night. I am, etc.,

J. Ruskin.

[From the "Scotsman," July 23, 1859.]
THE ITALIAN QUESTION.
Berlin, June 15.

You would have had this second letter sooner, had I not lost myself, after despatching the first, in farther consideration of the theory of Non-Intervention, or minding one's own business. What, in logical terms, is the theory? If one sees a costermonger wringing his donkey's tail, is it proper to "intervene"? and if one sees an Emperor or a System wringing a nation's neck, is it improper to intervene? Or is the Interven[Pg 9]tion allowable only in the case of hides, not of souls? for even so, I think you might find among modern Italians many quite as deserving of intervention as the donkey. Or is interference allowable when one person does one wrong to another person, but not when two persons do two wrongs to two, or three to three, or a multitude to a multitude; and is there any algebraic work on these square and cube roots of morality wherein I may find how many coadjutors or commissions any given crooked requires to make it straight? Or is it a geographical question; and may one advisably interfere at Berwick but not at Haddington? Or is there any graduated scale of intervention, practicable according to the longitude? I see my way less clearly, because the illustrations of the theory of Non-intervention are as obscure as its statement. The French are at present happy and prosperous; content with their ruler and themselves; their trade increasing, and their science and art advancing; their feelings towards other nations becoming every day more just. Under which circumstances we English non-interventionalists consider it our duty to use every means in our power of making the ruler suspected by the nation, and the nation unmanageable by the ruler. We call both all manner of names; exhaust every term of impertinence and every method of disturbance; and do our best, in indirect and underhand ways, to bring about revolution, assassination, or any other close of the existing system likely to be satisfactory to Royals[5] in general. This is your non-intervention when a nation is prosperous.

On the other hand, the Italian nation is unhappy and unprosperous; its trade annihilated, its arts and sciences retrograde, its nerve and moral sense prostrated together; it is capable only of calling to you for help, and you will not help it. The man you have been calling names, with his unruly colonels, undertakes to help it, and Christian England, with secret hope that, in order to satisfy her spite against the unruly colonels, the French army may be beaten, and the Papacy fully[Pg 10] established over the whole of Italy—Christian England, I say, with this spiteful jealousy for one of her motives, and a dim, stupid, short-sighted, sluggish horror of interruption of business for the other, takes, declaratively and ostensibly, this highly Christian position. "Let who will prosper or perish, die or live—let what will be declared or believed—let whatsoever iniquity be done, whatsoever tyranny be triumphant, how many soever of faithful or fiery soldiery be laid in new embankments of dead bodies along those old embankments of Mincio and Brenta; yet will we English drive our looms, cast up our accounts, and bet on the Derby, in peace and gladness; our business is only therewith; for us there is no book of fate, only ledgers and betting-books; for us there is no call to meddle in far-away business. See ye to it. We wash our hands of it in that sea-foam of ours; surely the English Channel is better than Abana and Pharpar, or than the silver basin which Pilate made use of, and our soap is of the best almond-cake."

I hear the Derby was great this year.[6] I wonder, sometimes, whether anybody has ever calculated, in England, how much taxation the nation pays annually for the maintenance of that great national institution. Observe—what I say of the spirit in which the English bear themselves at present, is founded on what I myself have seen and heard, not on what I read in journals. I read them little at home—here I hardly see them. I have no doubt that in the Liberal papers one might find much mouthing about liberty, as in the Conservative much about order, it being neither liberty nor order which is wanted, but Justice. You may have Freedom of all Abomination, and Order of all Iniquity—if you look for Forms instead of Facts. Look for the facts first—the doing of justice howsoever and by whatsoever forms or informalities. And the forms will come—shapely enough, and sightly enough, afterwards. Yet, perhaps, not till long afterwards. Earnest as I am for the freedom of Italy, no one can hope less from it, for many a year [Pg 11]to come. Even those Vaudois, whom you Presbyterians admire so much, have made as yet no great show of fruit out of their religious freedom. I went up from Turin to Torre di Lucerna to look at them last year. I have seldom slept in a dirtier inn, seldom seen peasants' cottages so ill built, and never yet in my life saw anywhere paths so full of nettles. The faces of the people are interesting, and their voices sweet, except in howlings on Sunday evening, which they performed to a very disquieting extent in the street till about half-past ten, waking me afterwards between twelve and one with another "catch," and a dance through the village of the liveliest character. Protestantism is apt sometimes to take a gayer character abroad than with us. Geneva has an especially disreputable look on Sunday evenings, and at Hanover I see the shops are as wide open on Sunday as Saturday; here, however, in Berlin, they shut up as close as you do at Edinburgh. I think the thing that annoyed me most at La Tour, however, was the intense sectarianism of the Protestant dogs. I can make friends generally, fast enough, with any canine or feline creature; but I could make nothing of those evangelical brutes, and there was as much snarling and yelping that afternoon before I got past the farmhouses to the open hill-side, as in any of your Free Church discussions. It contrasted very painfully with the behavior of such Roman Catholic dogs as I happen to know—St. Bernard's and others—who make it their business to entertain strangers. But the hill-side was worth reaching—for though that Lucerna valley is one of the least interesting I ever saw in the Alps, there is a craggy ridge on the north of it which commands a notable view. In about an hour and a half's walking you may get up to the top of a green, saddle-shaped hill, which separates the Lucerna valley from that of Angrogna; if then, turning to the left (westward), you take the steepest way you can find up the hill, another couple of hours will bring you to a cone of stones which the shepherds have built on the ridge, and there you may see all the historical sites of the valley of Angrogna as in a map—and as much of Monte Viso and Piedmont as clouds will let you. I wish I could draw you a map of Pied[Pg 12]mont as I saw it that afternoon. The air was half full of white cumulus clouds, lying nearly level about fifteen hundred feet under the ridge; and through every gap of them a piece of Piedmont with a city or two. Turin, twenty-eight miles away as the bird flies, shows through one cloud-opening like a handful of golden sand in a pool of blue sea.

I've no time to write any more to-day, for I've been to Charlottenburg, out of love for Queen Louise.[7] I can't see a good painting of her anywhere, and they show her tomb by blue light, like the nun scene in Robert le Diable. A German woman's face, if beautiful at all, is exquisitely beautiful; but it depends mainly on the thoughtfulness of the eyes, and the bright hair. It rarely depends much upon the nose, which has perhaps a tendency to be—if anything—a little too broadish and flattish—perhaps one might even say in some cases, knobbish. (The Hartz mountains, I see, looking at them from Brunswick, have similar tendencies, less excusably and more decidedly.) So when the eyes are closed—and for the soft hair one has only furrowed marble—and the nose to its natural disadvantages adds that of being seen under blue light, the general effect is disappointing.

Frederick the Great's celebrated statue is at the least ten yards too high[8] from the ground to be of any use; one sees nothing but the edges of the cloak he never wore, the soles of his boots, and, in a redundant manner, his horse's tail. Under [Pg 13]which vertically is his Apotheosis. In which process he sits upon the back of an eagle, and waves a palm, with appearance of satisfaction to himself, and it is to be hoped no danger of any damage to three stars in the neighborhood.

Kiss's Amazon makes a good grotesque for the side of the Museum steps; it was seen to disadvantage in London. The interior of the gallery is very beautiful in many ways; and Holbein's portrait of George Gyzen is worth coming all the way from England to see only ten minutes. I never saw so noble a piece of work of its kind in my life.

Believe me, etc.,
J. Ruskin.

[From "The Scotsman," August 6, 1859.]
THE ITALIAN QUESTION.
Schaffhausen, August 1, 1859.

Letter to the Editor (of "The Scotsman").

Sir: I have just received the number of the Scotsman containing my second letter from Berlin, in which there is rather an awkward misprint of "royals" for "rogues," which must have puzzled some of your readers, no less than the general tone of the letter, written as it was for publication at another time, and as one of a series begun in another journal. I am obliged by the admission of the letter into your columns; and I should have been glad to continue in those columns the series I intended, had not the refusal of this letter by the Witness[9] shown me the liability to misapprehension under [Pg 14]which I should be writing. I had thought that, seeing for these twenty years I have been more or less conversant with Italy and the Italians, a few familiar letters written to a personal friend, at such times as I could win from my own work, might not have been uninteresting to Scottish readers, even though my opinions might occasionally differ sharply from theirs, or be expressed in such rough way as strong opinions must be, when one has no time to polish them into more pleasing presentability. The refusal of the letter by the Witness showed me that this was not so; and as I have no leisure to take up the subject methodically, I must leave what I have written in its present imperfect form. It is indeed not mainly a question of time, which I would spend gladly, though to handle the subject of the present state of Italy with any completeness would involve a total abandonment of other work for some weeks. But I feel too deeply in this matter to allow myself to think of it continuously. To me, the state of the modern political mind, which hangs the slaughter of twenty thousand men, and the destinies of twenty myriads of human souls, on the trick that transforms a Ministry, or the chances of an enlarged or diminished interest in trade, is something so horrible that I find no utterance wherewith to characterize it—nor any courage wherewith to face the continued thought of it, unless I had clear expectation of doing good by the effort—expectation which the mere existence of the fact forbids. I leave therefore the words I have written to such work as they may; hoping, indeed, nothing from any words; thankful, if a few people here and there understand and sympathize in the feelings with which they were written; and thankful, if none so sympathize, that I am able at least to claim some share in [Pg 15]the sadness, though not in the triumph, of the words of Farinata—

I am, etc., J. Ruskin.

[From "The Liverpool Albion," November 2, 1863.]
THE FOREIGN POLICY OF ENGLAND.[11]
Zurich, Oct. 25th, 1863.

Sir: I beg to acknowledge your favor of the 20th of October. My health does not now admit of my taking part frequently in public business; yet I should have held it a duty to accept the invitation of the directors of the Liverpool Institute, but that, for the time being, my temper is at fault, as well as my health; and I am wholly unable to go on with any of my proper work, owing to the horror and shame with which I regard the political position taken, or rather sunk into, by [Pg 16]England in her foreign relations—especially in the affairs of Italy and Poland.[12] What these matters have to do with Art may not at first be clear, but I can perhaps make it so by a short similitude. Suppose I had been engaged by an English gentleman to give lectures on Art to his son. Matters at first go smoothly, and I am diligent in my definitions of line and color, until, one Sunday morning at breakfast time, a ticket-of-leave man takes a fancy to murder a girl in the road leading round the lawn, before the house-windows. My patron, hearing the screams, puts down his paper, adjusts his spectacles, slowly apprehends what is going on, and rings the bells for his smallest footman. "John, take my card and compliments to that gentleman outside the hedge, and tell him that his proceedings are abnormal, and, I may add, to me personally—offensive. Had that road passed through my property, I should have felt it my duty to interfere." John takes the card, and returns with it; the ticket-of-leave man finishes his work at his leisure; but, the screams ceasing as he fills the girl's mouth with clay, the English gentleman returns to his muffins, and congratulates himself on having "kept out of that mess." Presently afterwards he sends for me to know if I shall be ready to lecture on Monday. I am somewhat nervous, and answer—I fear rudely—"Sir, your son is a good lad; I hope he will grow to be a man—but, for the present, I cannot teach him anything. I should like, indeed, to teach you something, but have no words for the lesson." Which indeed I have not. If I say any words on such matters, people ask me, "Would I have the country go to war? do I know how dreadful a thing war is?" Yes, truly, I know it. I like war as ill as most people—so ill, that I would not spend twenty millions a year in making machines for it, neither my holidays and pocket money in playing at it; yet I would have the country go to war, with haste, in a good quarrel; and, which is perhaps eccentric in me, rather in another's quarrel than in her own. We say of ourselves complacently that we will not go to war for an idea; but the phrase interpreted [Pg 17]means only, that we will go to war for a bale of goods, but not for justice nor for mercy; and I would ask you to favor me so far as to read this letter to the students at your meeting, and say to them that I heartily wish them well; but for the present I am too sad to be of any service to them; that our wars in China and Japan[13] are not likely to furnish good subjects for historical pictures; that "ideas" happen, unfortunately, to be, in Art, the principal things; and that a country which will not fight for its ideas is not likely to have anything worth painting.

I have the honor to be, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin.

The Secretary of the Liverpool Institute.

[From "The Morning Post," July 7, 1864.]
THE POSITION OF DENMARK.

To the Editor of "The Morning Post."

Sir: Will you allow me, in fewest words, to say how deeply I concur in all that is said in that noble letter of Lord Townshend's published in your columns this morning—except only in its last sentence, "It is time to protest."[14] Alas! if protests were of any use, men with hearts and lips would have protested [Pg 18]enough by this time. But they are of none, and can be of none. What true words are worth any man's utterance, while it is possible for such debates as last Monday's to be, and two English gentlemen can stand up before the English Commons to quote Virgil at each other, and round sentences, and show their fineness of wrist in their pretty little venomous carte and tierce of personality, while, even as they speak, the everlasting silence is wrapping the brave massacred Danes?[15] I do not know, never shall know, how this is possible. If a cannon shot carried off their usher's head, nay, carried off but his rod's head, at their room door, they would not round their sentences, I fancy, in asking where the shot came from; but because these infinite masses of advancing slaughter are a few hundred miles distant from them, they can speak their stage speeches out in content. Mr. Gladstone must go to places, it seems, before he can feel! Let him go to Alsen, as he went to Naples,[16] and quote Virgil to the Prussian army. The English mind, judging by your leaders, seems divided between the German-cannon nuisance and the Savoyard street-organ nuisance; but was there ever hurdy-gurdy like this dissonance of eternal talk?[17] The Savoyard at least grinds his handle one [Pg 19]way, but these classical discords on the double pipe, like Mr. Kinglake's two tunes—past and present[18]—on Savoy and Denmark, need stricter police interference, it seems to me! The cession of Savoy was the peaceful present of a few crags, goats, and goatherds by one king to another; it was also fair pay for fair work, and, in the profoundest sense, no business of ours. Whereupon Mr. Kinglake mewed like a moonstruck cat going to be made a mummy of for Bubastis. But we saw the noble Circassian nation murdered, and never uttered word for them. We saw the noble Polish nation sent to pine in ice, and never struck blow for them. Now the nation of our future Queen calls to us for help in its last agony, and we round sentences and turn our backs. Sir, I have no words for these things, because I have no hope. It is not these squeaking puppets who play before us whom we have to accuse; it is not by cutting the strings of them that we can redeem our deadly error.

We English, as a nation, know not, and care not to know, a single broad or basic principle of human justice. We have only our instincts to guide us. We will hit anybody again who hits us. We will take care of our own families and our own pockets; and we are characterized in our present phase of enlightenment mainly by rage in speculation, lavish expenditure on suspicion or panic, generosity whereon generosity is useless, anxiety for the souls of savages, regardlessness of those of civilized nations, enthusiasm for liberation of blacks, apathy to enslavement of whites, proper horror of regicide, polite respect for populicide, sympathy with those whom we can no longer serve, and reverence for the dead, whom we have ourselves delivered to death.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin.

Denmark Hill, July 6.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," December 20, 1865.]
THE JAMAICA INSURRECTION.[19]

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: Will you allow me, in this informal manner, to express what I should have wished to express by signature of the memorial you publish to-day from Huddersfield[20] respecting the Jamaica insurrection, and to thank you for your excellent article of the 15th December on the same subject. I am compelled to make this request, because I see my friend Mr. Thomas Hughes has been abetting the Radical movement against Governor Eyre; and as I employed what little influence I have with the London workmen to aid the return of Mr. Hughes for Lambeth, I may perhaps be thought to concur with him in every line of action he may see fit subsequently to adopt. Permit me, then, once for all, through your widely-read columns, to say that I did what I could towards the return both of Mr. J. S. Mill and of Mr. Hughes,[21] not because I held with them in all their opinions, or even in the main principle of their opinions, but because I knew they had a principle of opinions; that they were honest, thoughtful, and benevolent men; and far worthier to be in Parliament (even though it might be in opposition to many causes I had at heart) than any other candidates I knew. They are my opponents in many things, though I thought better of them both than that they would countenance this fatuous outcry against Governor [Pg 21]Eyre. But in most directions of thought and action they are for Liberty, and I am for Lordship; they are Mob's men and I am a King's man. Yes, sir, I am one of those almost forgotten creatures who shrivel under your daily scorn; I am a "Conservative," and hope forever to be a Conservative in the deepest sense—a Re-former, not a De-former. Not that I like slavery, or object to the emancipation of any kind or number of blacks in due place and time. But I understand something more by "slavery" than either Mr. J. S. Mill or Mr. Hughes; and believe that white emancipation not only ought to precede, but must by law of all fate precede, black emancipation. I much dislike the slavery, to man, of an African laborer, with a spade on his shoulder; but I more dislike the slavery, to the devil, of a Calabrian robber with a gun on his shoulder. I dislike the American serf-economy, which separates, occasionally, man and wife; but I more dislike the English serf-economy, which prevents men from being able to have wives at all. I dislike the slavery which obliges women (if it does) to carry their children over frozen rivers; but I more dislike the slavery which makes them throw their children into wells. I would willingly hinder the selling of girls on the Gold Coast; but primarily, if I might, would hinder the selling of them in Mayfair. And, finally, while I regret the need that may exist among savages in a distant island for their governor to do his work sharply and suddenly on them, I far more regret the need among men of race and capacity for the work of governors when they have no governor to give it them. Of all dishonorable and impious captivities of this age, the darkest was that of England to Russia, by which she was compelled to refuse to give Greece a King when Greece besought one from her, and to permit that there should be set on the Acropolis throne no Governor Eyre, nor anything like him, but such a shadow of King as the black fates cast upon a nation for a curse, saying, "Woe to thee, O land, when thy king is a child!"[22]

[Pg 22]

Let the men who would now deserve well of England reserve their impeachments, or turn them from those among us who have saved colonies to those who have destroyed nations.

I am, Sir, yours, etc.,
J. Ruskin.[23]

Denmark Hill, Dec. 19.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," October 7, 1870.]
THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR.

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: My friends ask me why I speak no word about this war, supposing—like vain friends as they are—that I might have some poor influence of intercession for filigree-work, French clocks, and other tender articles of vertu, felt at this moment to be in grave danger.

But, in the first place, I know that the just Fates will reward no intercession, either for human life or chinaware, until their will has been accomplished upon all of us. In the second, I know also that the German armies will spare what they can, and think they ought, without taking advice of me. In the third, I have said long ago—no one listening—the best I had to say on these matters.

But, after your notice to-day of the escape of M. Edouard[Pg 23] Frère,[24] whose gentle power I was, I believe, the first to recognize publicly in England, it is possible that some of your readers may care to look back at what I wrote of modern war four years ago, and to know the aspect it takes to me, now that it has come to pass.

If you will reprint these few following sentences for me from the "Crown of Wild Olive,"[25] I shall be able to-morrow to put what I would add to them briefly enough to claim little space in your columns:

If you have to take away masses of men from all industrial employment—to feed them by the labor of others—to move them, and provide them with destructive machines, varied daily in national rivalship of inventive cost; if you have to ravage the country which you attack—to destroy, for a score of future years, its roads, its woods, its cities, and its 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 fragments of living creatures, countlessly beyond all help of surgery, to starve and parch, through days of torture, down into clots of clay—what book of accounts shall record the cost of your work—what book of judgment sentence the guilt of it?

That, I say, is modern war—scientific war—chemical and mechanical war—worse even than the savage's poisoned arrow. And yet you will tell me, perhaps, that any other war than this [Pg 24]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 Christianity be only proved by multiplication of murder.

But the wonder has always been great to me that heroism has never been supposed consistent with the practice of supplying people with food, or clothes, but only with that of quartering one's self upon them for food, and stripping them of 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 businesses 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 comforted, one might take some pride in giving them compulsory comfort, and, as it were, "occupying a country" with one's gifts, instead of one's armies? If one could only consider it as much a victory to get a barren field sown as to get an eared field stripped; and contend who should build villages, instead of who should "carry" them? Are not all forms of heroism conceivable in doing these serviceable deeds? You doubt who is strongest? It might be ascertained by push of spade as well as push of sword. Who is wisest? There are witty things to be thought of in planning other business than campaigns. Who is bravest? There are always the elements to fight with, stronger than men; and nearly as merciless.

And, then, observe farther, this true power, the power of saving, depends neither on multitude of men, nor on extent of territory. We are continually assuming that nations become strong 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 precipitant catastrophe, like a wagon-load of [Pg 25]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 masses, put the cluster of the British Isles beside the mass of South America, and then consider whether any race of men need consider how much ground they stand upon. The strength is in the men, and in their unity and virtue, not in their standing-room. A little group of wise hearts is better than a wilderness full of fools; and only that nation gains true territory which gains itself.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin.

Denmark Hill, S.E., Oct. 6.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," October 8, 1870.]
THE FRANCO-PRUSSIAN WAR.

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: As I am always blamed if I approach my subject on any but its picturesque side, it is well for me that in to-day's Times I find it announced that at Strasburg the Picture Gallery—with the pictures in it?—the Library—with the books in it?—and the Theatre, with certainly two hundred persons in it, have been burnt to the ground under an auxiliary cannonade, the flames at night being "a tempting target." It is true that in your columns I find the consolatory news that the Parisians are repairing those losses by casting a bronze Strasburg;[26] but if, as a poor art professor, I may venture an opinion, I would fain suggest to them that if their own picture gallery, with the pictures and bits of marble in it—Venus of [Pg 26]Melos and the like—and their own Library—Royal, Impériale, Nationale, or whatever they now call it—should presently become tempting targets also by the light of their own flames, the casting of a bronze Paris, in even the most imposing of attitudes, will scarcely redeem their loss, were it but to the admiring eyes of Paris herself.

There is yet another letter in the Times[27] of more importance than the one from Strasburg. It is headed, "The Difficulties of Neutrality," dated Bonn, and anticipates part of what I was going to say; for the rest, the lessons of the war, as I read them, are briefly these.

As to its cause, neither the French nation nor their Emperor brought on war by any present will of their own. Neither of them were capable of a will at all—far less of executing it. The nation has since declared, by submission, with acclaim, to a change of Government which for the time renders all political treaty with it practically impossible, that during the last twenty years it has been deceived or subdued into obedience to a man for whom it had no respect, and who had no hereditary claim to the throne. What "will" or responsibility of action can be expected from a nation which confesses this of itself? On the other hand, the Emperor, be his motives never so selfish, could only have hoped to save his dynasty by compliance with the passions of a populace which he knew would overthrow it in the first hour of their mortification. It is in these vain passions and the falsehoods on which they have fed that we must look for the deep roots of all this misery. Since the days of the First Empire, no cottage in France has been without its Napoleonic picture and legend, fostering one and the same faith in the heart of every peasant boy, that there is[Pg 27] no glory but in battle; and since the founding of the Second Empire no street of any city has risen into its foolish magnificence without collateral proclamation that there was no pleasure but in vice.

Then, secondly, for the actual question of the war: it is a simple and testing struggle between pure Republicanism on the one side, expressed in the most exquisite, finished, and exemplary anarchy, yet achieved under—earth—and one of the truest Monarchies and schools of honor and obedience yet organized under heaven. And the secret of its strength, we have to note, is essentially pacific; for all the wars of the Great Friedrich would have passed away resultless—as great wars usually do—had it not been for this pregnant fact at the end of them: "All his artillery horses are parted into plough-teams, and given to those who otherwise can get none" (Carlyle, vol. vi., first edition, p. 350)—that 21st book on the repair of Prussia being of extant literature the most important piece for us to read and digest in these days of "raising the poor without gifts"—never asking who first let them fall—and of turning workmen out of dockyards, without any consciousness that, of all the stores in the yard, the men were exactly the most precious. You expressed, Sir, in your article on the loss of the Captain,[28] a feeling common, I suppose, for once, to all of us, that the principal loss was not the iron of the ship, but the five hundred men in her. Perhaps, had she been of gold instead of iron plate, public mourning might have inclined itself to the side of the metal. But how if the whole British public should be itself at this instant afloat in a captain-less Captain, built of somewhat dirty yet substantial gold, and in extremest peril of turning bottom upwards? Which will be the end, indeed, unless the said public quickly perceive that their hope must be, not in docks nor ships, but in men. They, and they only, are our guarantee for territory. Prussia herself seems as simple as the rest of us in her talk of [Pg 28]"guarantees." Alsace and Lorraine, if dishonestly come by, may be honestly retaken; but if for "guarantee," why these only? Why not Burgundy and Anjou—Auvergne and the Limousin? Let France lose what she may, if she can but find a Charles and Roland among her children, she will recover her empire, though she had been beaten back to the Brêche; and if she find them not, Germany has all the guarantee she needs in her own name, and in her own right hand.

Let her look to it, now, that her fame be not sullied. She is pressing her victory too far—dangerously far, as uselessly. The Nemesis of battle may indeed be near her; greater glory she cannot win by the taking of Paris, nor the overrunning of provinces—she only prolongs suffering, redoubles death, extends loss, incalculable and irremediable. But let her now give unconditional armistice, and offer terms that France can accept with honor, and she will bear such rank among the nations as never yet shone on Christian history.

For us, we ought to help France now, if we ever did anything, but of course there remains for us only neutrality—selling of coke, and silence (if we have grace enough left to keep it). I have only broken mine to say that I am ashamed to speak as being one of a nation regardless of its honor alike in trade and policy; poor, yet not careful to keep even the treasure of probity—and rich, without being able to afford itself the luxury of courage.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin.

Oct. 7.

[From "Fraser's Magazine," July, 1876, pp. 121-123.]
MODERN WARFARE.

To the Editor of "Fraser's Magazine."

Sir: The article on modern warfare in your last June number[29] contains statements of so great importance to public interest, that I do not hesitate to ask you to spare me space for a question or two respecting it, which by answering, your contributor may make the facts he has brought forward more valuable for practical issues.

The statistics[30] given in the second column of page 695, on which P. S. C. rests his "incontestable" conclusion that "battles are less sanguinary than they were," are incomplete in this vital respect, that they furnish us only with the proportion, and not with the total number, of combatants slain. A barricade fight between a mob of rioters a thousand strong, and a battery of artillery, in which fifty reformers get shot, is not "less sanguinary" than a street quarrel between three topers, of whom one gets knocked on the head with a pewter pot: though no more than the twentieth part of the forces on one side fall in the first case, and a third of the total forces engaged, in the second. Nor could it be proved by the exhibition of these proportions of loss, that the substitution of explosive shells, as offensive weapons, for pewter pots, rendered wounds less painful, or war more humane.

Now, the practical difference between ancient and modern war, as carried on by civilized nations, is, broadly, of this kind. Formerly, the persons who had quarrelled settled their differences by the strength of their own arms, at the head of their retainers, with comparatively inexpensive weapons such as they [Pg 30]could conveniently wield; weapons which they had paid for out of their own pockets, and with which they struck only the people they meant to strike: while, nowadays, persons who quarrel fight at a distance, with mechanical apparatus, for the manufacture of which they have taxed the public, and which will kill anybody who happens to be in the way; gathering at the same time, to put into the way of them, as large a quantity of senseless and innocent mob as can be beguiled, or compelled, to the slaughter. So that, in the words of your contributor, "Modern armies are not now small fractions of the population whence they are drawn; they represent—in fact are—whole nations in arms." I have only to correct this somewhat vague and rhetorical statement by pointing out that the persons in arms, led out for mutual destruction, are by no means "the whole nation" on either side, but only the individuals of it who are able-bodied, honest, and brave, selected to be shot, from among its invalids, rogues, and cowards.

The deficiencies in your contributor's evidence as to the totality of loss do not, however, invalidate his conclusion that, out of given numbers engaged, the mitrailleuse kills fewer than the musket.[31] It is, nevertheless, a very startling conclusion, and one not to be accepted without closer examination of the statistics on which it is based. I will, therefore, tabulate them in a simpler form, which the eye can catch easily, omitting only one or two instances which add nothing to the force of the evidence.

In the six under-named battles of bygone times, there fell, according to your contributor's estimate, out of the total combatants—

while in the under-named five recent battles the proportion of loss was—

Now, there is a very important difference in the character of the battles named in these two lists. Every one of the first six was decisive, and both sides knew that it must be so when the engagement began, and did their best to win. But Königgratz was only decisive by sudden and appalling demonstration of the power of a new weapon. Solferino was only half fought, and not followed up because the French Emperor had exhausted his corps d'élite at Magenta, and could not (or, at least, so it is reported) depend on his troops of the line. Worth was an experiment; Sedan a discouraged ruin; Gravelotte was, I believe, well contested, but I do not know on what extent of the line, and we have no real evidence as to the power of modern mechanics for death, until the proportions are calculated, not from the numbers engaged, but from those under fire for equal times. Now, in all the upper list of battles, probably every man of both armies was under fire, and some of the regiments under fire for half the day; while in the lower list of battles, only fragments of the line were hotly engaged, and the dispute on any point reaching its intensity would be ended in half an hour.

That the close of contest is so rapid may indeed be one of the conditions of improvement in our military system alleged by your correspondent; and the statistics he has brought forward do indeed clearly prove one of two things—either that modern weapons do not kill, or that modern soldiers do not fight as effectually as in old times. I do not know if this is thought a desirable change in military circles; but I, as a poor civilian, beg to express my strong objection to being taxed six times over what I used to be, either for the equipment of soldiers who rarely fight, or the manufacture of weapons which[Pg 32] rarely kill. It may be perfectly true that our last cruise on the Baltic was "less sanguinary" than that which concluded in Copenhagen. But we shook hands with the Danes after fighting them, and the differences between us were ended: while our expensive contemplation of the defences of Cronstadt leaves us still in daily dread of an inspection by the Russian of those of Calcutta.

It is true that the ingenuity of our inventors is far from being exhausted, and that in a few years more we may be able to destroy a regiment round a corner and bombard a fleet over the horizon; but I believe the effective result of these crowning scientific successes will only be to confirm the at present partial impression on the minds of military and naval officers, that their duty is rather to take care of their weapons than to use them. "England will expect" of her generals and admirals to maintain a dignified moral position as far as possible out of the enemy's sight: and in a perfectly scientific era of seamanship we shall see two adverse fleets affected by a constant law of mutual repulsion at distances of two or three hundred miles; while in either squadron, an occasional collision between the leading ships, or inexplicable foundering of the last improved ones, will make these prudential manœuvres on the whole as destructive of the force, and about ten times more costly to the pocket, of the nation, than the ancient, and, perhaps, more honorable tactics of poorly-armed pugnacity.

There is, however, one point touched upon in P. S. C.'s letter, to me the most interesting of all, with respect to which the data for accurate comparison of our former and present systems are especially desirable, though it never seems to have occurred to your correspondent to collect them—the estimates, namely, of the relative destruction of civil property.

Of wilful destruction, I most thankfully acknowledge the cessation in Christian warfare; and in the great change between the day of the sack of Magdeburg and that of the march into Paris, recognize a true sign of the approach of the reign of national peace. But of inevitable destruction—of loss inflicted on the peasant by the merely imperative requirements and[Pg 33] operations of contending armies—it will materially hasten the advent of such peace, if we ascertain the increasing pressure during our nominally mollified and merciful war. The agricultural losses sustained by France in one year are estimated by your correspondent at one hundred and seventy millions of pounds. Let him add to this sum the agricultural loss necessitated in the same year throughout Germany, through the withdrawal of capital from productive industry, for the maintenance of her armies; and of labor from it by their composition; and, for third item, add the total cost of weapons, horses, and ammunition on both sides; and let him then inform us whether the cost, thus summed, of a year's actual war between two European States, is supposed by military authorities to be fairly representative of that which the settlement of political dispute between any two such Powers, with modern instruments of battle, will on an average, in future, involve. If so, I will only venture further to suggest that the nations minded thus to try their quarrel should at least raise the stakes for their match before they make the ring, instead of drawing bills for them upon futurity. For that the money-lenders whose pockets are filled, while everybody else's are emptied, by recent military finance, should occultly exercise irresistible influence, not only on the development of our—according to your contributor—daily more harmless armaments, but also on the deliberation of Cabinets, and passions of the populace, is inevitable under present circumstances; and the exercise of such influence, however advantageous to contractors and projectors, can scarcely be held consistent either with the honor of a Senate or the safety of a State.

I am, Sir,
Your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin.

P.S.—I wish I could get a broad approximate estimate of the expenditure in money, and loss of men by France and Prussia in the respective years of Jena and Sedan, and by France and Austria in the respective years of Arcola and Solferino.

[Pg 34]

LETTERS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY.

The Depreciation of Gold. 1863.

The Law of Supply and Demand. 1864.
(Three letters: October 26 and 29, and November 2.)

Mr. Ruskin and Professor Hodgson. 1873.
(Two letters: November 8 and 15.)

Strikes v. Arbitration. 1865.

Work and Wages. 1865.
(Five letters: April 20, 22, and 29, and May 4 and 20.)

The Standard of Wages. 1867.

How the Rich Spend their Money. 1873.
(Three letters: January 23, 28, and 30.)

Commercial Morality. 1875.

The Definition of Wealth. 1875.

The Principles of Property. 1877.

On Coöperation. (Two letters.) 1879-80.

[Pg 36]
[Pg 37]

LETTERS ON POLITICAL ECONOMY.

[From "The Times," October 8, 1863.]
THE DEPRECIATION OF GOLD.

To the Editor of "The Times."

Sir: Being out of the way of my letters, I did not, till now, see your excellent article of the 23d September on the depreciation of gold.[32] Will you allow me, thus late, a very few words in confirmation of your statement of the insufficiency of the evidence hitherto offered on that subject?

The market value of "a pound" depends less on the supply of gold than on the extravagance or economy of the persons holding documentary currency (that is to say, claim to goods). Suppose, for instance, that I hold stock to the value of £500 a year;—if I live on a hundred a year, and lay by four hundred, I (for the time) keep down the prices of all goods to the distributed amount of £400 a year, or, in other words, neutralize the effect on the market of 400 pounds in gold imported annually from Australia. If, instead of laying by this sum in paper, I choose to throw it into bullion (whether gold-plate or coin does not matter), I not only keep down the price of goods, but raise the price of gold as a commodity, and neutralize 800 pounds' worth of imported gold. But if I annually spend my entire 500 (unproductively) I annually raise the price of goods by that amount, and neutralize a correspondent diminution[Pg 38] in the supply of gold. If I spend my 500 productively, that is to say, so as to produce as much as, or more than I consume, I either leave the market as I find it, or by the excess of production increase the value of gold.

Similarly, whatever I lay by will, as it is ultimately spent by my successors, productively or unproductively, in that degree (cœteris paribus) increase or lower the value of gold. These agencies of daily economy have so much more power over the market than the supply from the mine that no statistics of which we are yet in possession are (at least in their existing form) sufficient to prove the dependence of any given phenomena of the market on the rate of metallic supply. The destruction of property in the American war and our European amusements in the manufacture of monster guns and steel "backings" lower the value of money far more surely and fatally than an increased supply of bullion, for the latter may very possibly excite parallel force of productive industry.

But the lowered value of money is often (and this is a very curious case of economical back current) indicated, not so much by a rise in the price of goods, as by a fall in that of labor. The household lives as comfortably as it did on a hundred a year, but the master has to work half as hard again to get it. This increase of toil is to an active nation often a kind of play; men go into it as into a violent game; fathers of families die quicker, and the gates of orphan asylums are choked with applicants; distress and crime spread and fester through a thousand silent channels; but there is no commercial or elementary convulsion; no chasm opens into the abyss through the London clay; no gilded victim is asked of the Guards; the Stock-Exchange falls into no hysterics; and the old lady of Threadneedle Street does not so much as ask for "My fan, Peter."

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
J. Ruskin.

Chamounix, Oct. 2.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," October 28, 1864.]
THE LAW OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND.

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: In your valuable article of to-day on the strike of the colliers, while you lay down the true and just law[33] respecting all such combinations, you take your stand, in the outset, on a maxim of political economy, which, however trite, stands yet—if I am not deceived—in need of much examination and qualification. "Labor," you say, like every other vendible commodity, "depends for its value on the relation of supply to demand." But, Sir, might it not be asked by any simple and practical person, who had heard this assertion for the first time—as I hope all practical persons will some day hear it for the last time—"Yes; but what does demand depend upon, and what does supply depend upon?" If, for instance, all death-beds came to resemble that so forcibly depicted in your next following article, and, in consequence, the demand for gin were unlimitedly increased towards the close of human life,[34] would this demand necessitate, or indicate, a relative increase in the "value" of gin as a necessary article of national wealth, and liquid foundation of national prosperity? Or might we not advisably make some steady and generally understood distinction between the terms "value" and "price," and determine at once whether there be, or be not, such a thing as intrinsic "value" or goodness in some things, and as intrinsic un-value or badness in other things; and as value extrinsic, or according to use, in all things? and whether a demand for intrinsically good things, and a corresponding knowledge of their use, be not conditions likely, on the whole, to tend towards national [Pg 40]wealth? and whether a demand for intrinsically bad things, and relative experience in their use, be not conditions likely to lead to quite the reverse of national wealth, in exact proportion to the facility of the supply of the said bad things? I should be entirely grateful to you, Sir, or to any of your correspondents, if you or they would answer these short questions clearly for me.

I am, Sir, yours, etc.,
J. Ruskin.[35]

Denmark Hill, Oct. 26.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," October 31, 1864.]
THE LAW OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND.

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: I am grateful to your correspondent "Economist" for trying his hand on me, and will be a docile pupil; but I hope his hand is not quite untried hitherto, for it would waste your space, and my time, and your readers' patience, if he taught me what I had afterwards to unlearn. But I think none of these will be wasted if he answers my questions clearly; there are, I am sure, many innocent persons who, like myself, will be glad of the information.

1. He tells me, then, in the outset, "The intrinsic value of commodities is a question outside political economy."

Is that an axiom for all political economists? and may I put it down for future reference? I particularly wish to be assured of this.

2. Assuming, for the present, that I may so set it down, and that exchangeable value is the only subject of politico-economical inquiry, I proceed to my informant's following statement:

[Pg 41]

"The" (question) "of intrinsic value belongs to the domain of philosophy, morals, or statecraft. The intrinsic value of anything depends on its qualities; the exchangeable value depends on how much there is of it, and how much people want it."

(This "want" of it never, of course, in anywise depending on its qualities.)

Μανθανω. Accordingly, in that ancient and rashly-speculative adage, "Venture a sprat to catch a herring," it is only assumed that people will always want herrings rather than sprats, and that there will always be fewer of them. No reference is involved, according to economists, to the relative sizes of a sprat and herring.

Farther: Were a fashionable doctor to write an essay on sprats, and increase their display at West-end tables to that extent that unseasonable sprats became worth a guinea a head, while herrings remained at the old nursery rate of one and a half for three-halfpence, would my "recognition" of the value of sprats in paying a guinea for one enable me to dine off it better than I should off that mysterious eleven-penny worth of herring? Or to take a more elevated instance. There is now on my room wall a water-color drawing, which was once bought for £30, and for which any dealer would to-morrow give me £300. The drawing is intrinsically worth about one-tenth of what it was when bought for £30, the sky having faded out of it, and many colors having changed elsewhere. But men's minds have changed like the colors, and Lord A. or Sir John B. are now ready to give me £300 instead of £30 for it.

Now, I want to know what it matters to "Economist," or to the Economical Society he (as I understand) represents, or to the British nation generally, whether Lord A. has the bit of colored paper and I the £300, or Lord A. the £300 and I the bit of paper. The pounds are there, and the paper is there: what does it nationally matter which of us have which?

Farther: What does it nationally matter whether Lord A. gives me £30 or £300 on the exchange? (Mind, I do not say[Pg 42] it does not matter—I only want "Economist" to tell me if it does, and how it does.) In one case my lord has £270 more to spend; in the other I have. What does it signify which of us has?

Farther: To us, the exchangers, of what use is "Economist's" information that the rate of exchange depends on the "demand and supply" of colored paper and pounds? No ghost need come from the grave to tell us that. But if any economical ghost would tell my lord how to get more pounds, or me how to get more drawings, it might be to the purpose.

But yet farther, passing from specialties to generals:

Let the entire property of the nation be enumerated in the several articles of which it consists—a, b, c, d, etc.; we will say only three, for convenience sake. Then all the national property consists of a + b + c.

I ask, first, what a is worth.

"Economist" answers (suppose) 2 b.

I ask, next, what b is worth.

"Economist" answers (suppose) 3 c.

I ask, next, what c is worth.

"Economist" answers—a/b.

Many thanks. That is certainly Cocker's view of it.

I ask, finally, What is it all worth?

"Economist" answers, 1⅔ a, or 3⅓ b, or 10 c.

Thanks again. But now, intrinsic value not being in "Economist's" domain, but—if I chance to be a philosopher—in mine, I may any day discover any given intrinsic value to belong to any one of these articles.

Suppose I find, for instance, the value of c to be intrinsically zero, then the entire national property = 10c = intrinsically 0.

Shall I be justified in this conclusion?

3. In relation to the question of strikes, the difficulty, you told me yourself, Mr. Editor[36] (and doubtless "Economist" will tell me also), depends simply on supply and demand: that [Pg 43]is to say, on an under-supply of wages and an over-supply of laborers. Profoundest thanks again; but I, poor blundering, thick-headed collier, feel disposed further to ask, "On what do this underness and overness of supply depend?" Have they any remote connection with marriage, or with improvidence, or with avarice, or with accumulativeness, or any other human weaknesses out of the ken of political economy? And, whatever they arise from, how are they to be dealt with? It appears to me, poor simple collier, that the shortest way of dealing with this "darned" supply of laborers will be by knocking some of them down, or otherwise disabling them for the present. Why is this mode of regulating the supply interdicted to me? and what have Economists to do with the morality of any proceeding whatever? and, in the name of economy generally, what else can I do?[37]

I am, Sir, yours, etc.,
J. Ruskin.

Denmark Hill, Oct. 29. [Monday.]

[From "The Daily Telegraph," November 8, 1864.]
THE LAW OF SUPPLY AND DEMAND.

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: Having, unfortunately, occupation enough in my own business for all hours of the day, I cannot undertake to reply to the general correspondence which might, in large supply to my limited demand, propose itself in your columns. If my first respondent, "Economist," or any other person learned in his science, will give me direct answers to the direct questions asked in my Monday's letter, I may, with your permission,[Pg 44] follow the points at issue farther; if not, I will trouble you no more. Your correspondent of to-day, Mr. Plummer, may ascertain whether I confuse the terms "value" and "price" by reference to the bottom of the second column in page 787 of "Fraser's Magazine" for June, 1862. Of my opinions respecting the treatment of the working classes he knows nothing, and can guess nothing.[38]

I am, Sir, yours, etc.,
J. Ruskin.

Denmark Hill, Nov. 2.

[From "The Scotsman," November 10, 1873.]
MR. RUSKIN AND PROFESSOR HODGSON.
CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, OXFORD,
Nov. 8th, 1873.

To the Editor of "The Scotsman."

Sir: In your impression of the 6th inst. I find a report of a lecture delivered by Professor Hodgson in the University of Edinburgh on the subject of "Supply and Demand," in which the Professor speaks of my "denunciations" of the principles he had expounded. Permit me, in a matter respecting which accuracy is of more importance to others than to myself, to correct the Professor's expression. I have never "denounced" the principles expounded by the Professor. I have simply stated that no such principles exist; that no "law of supply and demand," as expounded by Professor Hodgson and modern economists, ever did or can exist.

Professor Hodgson, as reported in your columns, states that[Pg 45] "demand regulates supply." He does not appear to entertain the incomparably more important economical question, "What regulates demand?" But without pressing upon him that first question of all, I am content absolutely to contradict and to challenge him before the University of Edinburgh to maintain his statement that "demand regulates supply," and together with it (if he has ventured to advance it) the correlative proposition, "supply regulates demand."

A. Demand does not regulate supply.

For instance—there is at this moment a larger demand for champagne wine in England and Scotland than there was ten years ago; and a much more limited supply of champagne wine.

B. Supply does not regulate demand.

For instance—I can name many districts in Scotland where the supply of pure water is larger than in other namable localities, but where the inhabitants drink less water and more whiskey than in other namable localities.

I do not therefore denounce the so-called law of supply and demand, but I absolutely deny the existence of such law; and I do in the very strongest terms denounce the assertion of the existence of such a law before the University of Edinburgh as disgraceful both to its assertor and to the University, unless immediate steps be taken to define, in scientific terms, the limitations under which such statement is to be understood.

I am, etc.,
John Ruskin.[39]

[From "The Scotsman," November 18, 1873]
MR. RUSKIN AND PROFESSOR HODGSON.
Oxford, November 15, 1873.

To the Editor of "The Scotsman."

Sir: For Professor Hodgson's "undue encroachments on your space and his own time," I leave you to answer to your readers, and the Professor to console his class. To his criticisms on my language and temper I bow, their defence being irrelevant to the matter in hand. Of his harmless confusion of the word "correlative" with the word "consequent" I take no notice; and his promise of a sifting examination of my economic teaching I anticipate with grateful awe.[40]

But there is one sentence in his letter of real significance, and to that alone I reply. The Professor ventured (he says) to suggest that possibly I with others "believe that economists confused existing demand with wise and beneficial demand, and existing supply with wise and beneficial supply."

I do believe this. I have written all my books on political economy in such belief. And the entire gist of them is the assertion that a real law of relation holds between the non-existent wise demand and the non-existent beneficial supply, but that no real law of relation holds between the existent foolish demand and the existent mischievous supply.

That is to say (to follow Professor Hodgson with greater accuracy into his lunar illustrations), if you ask for the moon, it does not follow that you will get it; nor is your satisfaction more secure if you ask for sixpence from a Poor-Law guardian; but if you limit your demand to an honest penny, and endeavor to turn it by honest work, the divine law of supply will, in the plurality of cases, answer that rational and therefore divine demand.

[Pg 47]

Now, Professor Hodgson's statement, as reported in your columns, was that "demand regulates supply." If his assertion, in his lecture, was the qualified one, or that "wise demand regulates beneficial supply," your reporter is much to be blamed, the Professor's class profoundly to be congratulated, and this correspondence is at an end; while I look forward with deepest interest to the necessary elucidations by the Professor of the nature of wisdom and benefit; neither of these ideas having been yet familiar ones in common economical treatises. But I wrote under the impression that the Professor dealt hitherto, as it has been the boast of economists to deal, with things existent, and not theoretical (and assuredly the practical men of this country expect their children to be instructed by him in the laws which govern existing things); and it is therefore only in the name of your practical readers that I challenged him, and to-day repeat my challenge, in terms from which I trust he will not again attempt to escape by circumambient criticism of my works,[41] to define, in scientific terms, the limits under which his general statement that "supply regulates demand" is to be understood. That is to say, whether he, as Professor of Political Economy, is about to explain the relations (A) of rational and satiable demand with beneficial and benevolently-directly supply; or (B) of irrational and insatiable demand with mischievous and malevolently-directed supply; or (C) of a demand of which he cannot explain the character with a supply of which he cannot predict the consequence?

I am, etc.,
J. Ruskin.

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," April 18, 1865.]
STRIKES v. ARBITRATION.

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: I read your Gazette so attentively that I am always falling into arrears, and have only to-day arrived at your last week's articles on strikes, arbitration, etc., which afford me the greatest satisfaction, but nevertheless embarrass me somewhat. Will you permit me to ask for a word or two of further elucidation?

I am an entirely selfish person, and having the means of indulging myself (in moderation), should, I believe, have led a comfortable life, had it not been for occasional fits and twinges of conscience, to which I inherit some family predisposition, and from which I suffer great uneasiness in cloudy weather. Articles like yours of Wednesday,[42] on the proper attention to one's own interests, are very comforting and helpful to me; but, as I said, there are yet some points in them I do not understand.

Of course it is right to arrange all one's business with reference to one's own interest; but what will the practical difference be ultimately between such arrangement and the old and simple conscientious one? In those bygone days, I remember, one endeavored, with such rough estimate as could be quickly made, to give one's Roland for one's Oliver; if a man did you a service, you tried in return to do as much for him; if he[Pg 49] broke your head, you broke his, shook hands, and were both the better for it. Contrariwise, on this modern principle of self-interest, I understand very well that if a man does me a service, I am always to do the least I can in return for it; but I don't see how I am always to get more out of him than he gets out of me. I dislike any references to abstract justice as much as you do, but I cannot see my way to keeping this injustice always in my own favor; and if I cannot, it seems to me the matter may as well be settled at first, as it must come to be settled at last, in that disagreeably just way.

Thus, for instance, in producing a piece of iron for the market, one man digs it, another smelts it, another puddles it, and I sell it. We get so much between us four; and I suppose your conscientious people would say that the division of the pay should have some reference to the hardness of the work, and the time spent in it. It is true that by encouraging the diggers and puddlers to spend all they get in drink, and by turning them off as soon as I hear they are laying by money, it may yet be possible to get them for some time to take less than I suppose they should have; but I cannot hide from myself that the men are beginning to understand the game a little themselves; and if they should, with the help of those confounded—(I beg pardon! I forgot that one does not print such expressions in Pall Mall)—education-mongers, learn to be men, and to look after their own business as I do mine, what am I to do? Even at present I don't feel easy in telling them that I ought to have more money than they because I know better how to spend it, for even this involves a distant reference to notions of propriety and principle which I would gladly avoid. Will you kindly tell me what is best to be done (or said)?

I am, Sir, your obliged servant,
John Ruskin.

Easter Monday, 1865.

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," April 21, 1865.]
WORK AND WAGES.

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: I am not usually unready for controversy, but I dislike it in spring, as I do the east wind (pace Mr. Kingsley), and I both regret having given occasion to the only dull leader which has yet[43] appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette, and the necessity I am involved in of dissecting the same, instead of a violet, on which I was about this morning to begin operations.

But I see, Sir, that you mean fairly, and that you have careful thinkers and writers on your staff. And I will accept your battle, if you will fight with short swords, which is clearly your interest, for such another article would sink the Gazette; and mine, for I have no time to answer speculations on what you writers suppose my opinions may be, "if we understand" them.

You shall understand them utterly, as I already understand yours. I will not call yours "fallacies" à priori; you shall not call mine so. I will not tell you of your "unconscious" meanings; you shall not tell me of mine.[44] But I will ask you the plainest questions, and make to you the plainest answers my English will admit of, on one point at a time only, expecting you also to ask or answer as briefly, without divergence or deprecation. And twenty lines will always contain all I would say, at any intervals of time you choose.

[Pg 51]

For example: I said I must "dissect" your leader, meaning that I should have to take a piece of it, as I would of my flower, and deal with that first; then with its sequences.

I take this sentence then: "He (Mr. R.) seems to think that apart from the question of the powers of the parties, there is some such thing as a just rate of wages. He seems to be under the impression that the wages ought to be proportioned, not to the supply and demand of labor and capital, but 'to the hardship of the work and the time spent in it.'"

Yes, Sir, I am decisively under that impression—as decisively as ever Greek coin was under its impression. You will beat me out of all shape, if you can beat me out of this. Will you join issue on it, and are these following statements clear enough for you, either to accept or deny, in as positive terms?—

I. A man should in justice be paid for two hours' work twice as much as for one hour's work, and for n hour's work n times as much, if the effort be similar and continuous.

II. A man should in justice be paid for difficult or dangerous work proportionately more than for easy and safe work, supposing the other conditions of the work similar.

III. (And now look out, for this proposition involves the ultimate principle of all just wages.) If a man does a given quantity of work for me, I am bound in justice to do, or procure to be done, a precisely equal quantity of work for him; and just trade in labor is the exchange of equivalent quantities of labor of different kinds.

If you pause at this word "equivalent," you shall have definition of it in my next letter. I am sure you will in fairness insert this challenge, whether you accept it or decline.

I am, Sir, your obliged servant,
John Ruskin.[45]

Denmark Hill, Thursday, April 20.

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," April 26, 1865.]
WORK AND WAGES.

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: I accept your terms, and reply in the fewest words I can.

I. You "see no injustice in hiring a fly for 2s. 6d. for the first hour and 1s. 6d. for each succeeding one." Nor I either; so far from it, that I never give a cabman less than a shilling; which I doubt not is your practice also, and a very proper one. The cabmen make no objection, and you could not have given a neater instance of the proportion of payment to labor which you deny. You pay in the first hour for the various trouble involved in taking the man off his stand, and for a proportion of the time during which he has waited for the chance of your custom. That paid, you hire him by the formula which I state, and you deny.

II. "Danger and difficulty have attractions for some men." They have, and if, under the influence of those attractions, they choose to make you a present of their labor, for love (in your own terms,[46] "as you give a penny to a beggar"), you may accept the gift as the beggar does, without question of justice. But if they do not choose to give it you, they have a right to higher payment. My guide may perhaps, for love, play at climbing Mont Blanc with me; if he will not, he has a right to be paid more than for climbing the Breven.

III. "Mr. Ruskin can define justice, or any other word, as he chooses."

It is a gracious permission; but suppose justice be something more than a word! When you derived it jussum[47] (falsely, for it is not derived from jussum, but from the root of [Pg 53]jungo), you forgot, or ignored, that the Saxons had also a word for it, by which the English workman still pleads for it; that the Greeks had a word for it, by which Plato and St. Paul reasoned of it; and that the Powers of Heaven have, presumably, an idea of it with which it may be well for "our interests" that your definition, as well as mine, should ultimately correspond, since their "definitions" are commonly not by a word but a blow.

But accepting for the nonce your own conception of it as "the fulfilment of a compulsory agreement" ("the wages" you say "which you force the men to take, and they can force you to pay"), allow me to ask your definition of force, or compulsion. As thus: (Case 1.) I agree with my friend that we will pay a visit to Mr. A. at two in the morning. My friend agrees with me that he will hold a pistol to Mr. A.'s head. Under those circumstances, I agree with Mr. A. that I shall remove his plate without expression of objection on his part. Is this agreement, in your sense, "jussum"? (Case 2.) Mr. B. goes half through the ice into the canal on a frosty morning. I, on the shore, agree with Mr. B. that I shall have a hundred pounds for throwing him a rope. Is this agreement validly "jussum"?

The first of these cases expresses in small compass the general nature of arrangements under compulsory circumstances over which one of the parties has entire control. The second, that of arrangements made under circumstances accidentally compulsory, when the capital is in one party's hands exclusively. For you will observe Mr. B. has no right whatever to the use of my rope: and that capital (though it would probably have been only the final result of my operations with respect to Mr. A.) makes me completely master of the situation with reference to Mr. B.

I am, Sir, your obliged servant,
John Ruskin[48]

Denmark Hill, Saturday, April 22, 1865.

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," May 2, 1865.]
WORK AND WAGES.

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: I have not hastened my reply to your last letter, thinking that your space at present would be otherwise occupied; having also my own thoughts busied in various directions, such as you may fancy; yet busied chiefly in a sad wonder, which perhaps you would not fancy. I mourn for Mr. Lincoln,[49] as man should mourn the fate of man, when it is sudden and supreme. I hate regicide as I do populicide—deeply, if frenzied; more deeply, if deliberate. But my wonder is in remembering the tone of the English people and press respecting this man during his life; and in comparing it with their sayings of him in his death. They caricatured and reviled him when his cause was poised in deadly balance—when their praise would have been grateful to him, and their help priceless. They now declare his cause to have been just, when it needs no aid; and his purposes to have been noble, when all human thoughts of them have become vanity, and will never so much as mix their murmurs in his ears with the sentence of the Tribunal which has summoned him to receive a juster praise and tenderer blame than ours.

I have twice (I see) used the word "just" inadvertently, forgetting that it has no meaning, or may mean (you tell me) quite what we choose; and that so far as it has a meaning, "the important question is not whether the action is just." Indeed when I read this curious sentence in your reply on Tuesday last, "Justice, as we use it, implies merely the conformity[Pg 55] of an action to any rules whatever, good or bad," I had nearly closed the discussion by telling you that there remained no ground on which we could meet, for the English workmen, in whose name I wrote to you, asked, not for conformity with bad rules, but enactment of good ones. But I will not pounce upon these careless sentences, which you are forced to write in all haste, and at all disadvantage, while I have the definitions and results determined through years of quiet labor, lying ready at my hand. You never meant what you wrote (when I said I would not tell you of unconscious meanings, I did not promise not to tell you of unconscious wants of meanings); but it is for you to tell me what you mean by a bad rule, and what by a good one. Of the law of the Eternal Lawgiver, it is dictated that "the commandment is holy, and just, and good." Not merely that it is a law; but that it is such and such a law. Are these terms senseless to you? or do you understand by them only that the observance of that law is generally conducive to our interests? And if so, what are our interests? Have we ever an interest in being something, as well as in getting something; may not even all getting be at last summed in being? is it not the uttermost of interests to be just rather than unjust? Let us leave catching at phrases, and try to look in each other's faces and hearts; so define our thoughts; then reason from them. [See below.][50]

Yet, lest you say I evade you in generalities, here is present answer point by point.

I. "The fare has nothing to do with the labor in preparing the fly for being hired."—Nor, of course, the price of any article with the labor expended in preparing it for being sold? This will be a useful note to the next edition of "Ricardo." [The price depends on the relative forces of the buyer and the seller. The price asked by the seller no doubt depends on the labor expended. The price given by the buyer depends on the degree in which he desires to possess the thing sold, which has nothing to do with the labor laid out on it.]

[Pg 56]

The answer to your instances[51] is that all just price involves an allowance for average necessary, not for unnecessary, labor. The just price of coals at Newcastle does not involve an allowance for their carriage to Newcastle. But the just price of a cab at a stand involves an allowance to the cabman for having stood there. [Why? who is to determine what is necessary?]

II. "This admits the principle of Bargaining." No, Sir; it only admits the principle of Begging. If you like to ask your guide to give you his legs for nothing, or your workman his arms for nothing, or your shopkeeper his goods for nothing, and they consent, for love, or for play—you are doubtless both dignified and fortunate; but there is no question of trade in the matters; only of Alms. [We mean by Alms money or goods given merely from motives of benevolence, and without return. In the case supposed the guide goes one mile to please himself, and ten more for hire, which satisfies him. How does he give Alms? He goes for less money than he otherwise would require, because he likes the job, not because his employer likes it. The Alms are thus given by himself to himself.]

III. It is true that "every one can affix to words any sense he chooses." But if I pay for a yard of broadcloth, and the shopman cuts me three-quarters, I shall not put up with my loss more patiently on being informed that Bishop Butler meant by justice something quite different from what Bentham meant by it, or that to give for every yard three-quarters, is the rule of that establishment. [If the word "yard" were as ambiguous as the word "justice," Mr. Ruskin ought to be much obliged to the shopman for defining his sense of it, especially if he gave you full notice before he cut the cloth.]

Further, it is easy to ascertain the uses of words by the best scholars—[Nothing is more difficult. To ascertain what Locke meant by an "idea," or Sir W. Hamilton by the word "inconceivable,"[Pg 57] is no easy task.]—and well to adopt them, because they are sure to be founded on the feelings of gentlemen.—[Different gentlemen feel and think in very different ways. Though we differ from Mr. Ruskin, we hope he will not deny this.] Thus, when Horace couples his tenacem propositi with justum, he means to assert that the tenacity is only noble which is justified by uprightness, and shows itself by insuffer-ance of the jussa "prava jubentium" And although Portia does indeed accept your definition of justice from the lips of Shylock, changing the divine, "who sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not" into the somewhat less divine "who sweareth to his neighbor's hurt and changeth not;" and though she carries out his and your conception of such justice to the uttermost, the result is not, even in Shylock's view of it, "for the interest of both parties."

IV. To your two final questions "exhausting" (by no means, my dear Sir, I assure you) "the points at issue,"[52] I [Pg 58]reply in both cases, "No." And to your plaintive "why should they do so?" while, observe, I do not admit it to be a monstrous requirement of men that they should sometimes sacrifice their own interests, I would for the present merely answer that I have never found my own interests seriously compromised by my practice, which is, when I cannot get the fair price of a thing, not to sell it, and when I cannot give the fair price of a thing, not to buy it. The other day, a dealer in want of money offered me a series of Hartz minerals for two-thirds of their value. I knew their value, but did not care to spend the entire sum which would have covered it. I therefore chose forty specimens out of the seventy, and gave the dealer what he asked for the whole.

In the example you give, it is not the interest of the guide to take his fifty francs rather than nothing; because all future travellers, though they could afford the hundred, would then say, "You went for fifty; we will give you no more." [Does a man say to a broker, "You sold stock yesterday at 90; I will pay no more to-day"?] And for me, if I am not able to pay my hundred francs, I either forego Mont Blanc, or climb alone; and keep my fifty francs to pay at another time, for a less service, some man who also would have got nothing otherwise, and who will be honestly paid by what I give him, for what I ask of him.

I am, Sir, your obliged servant,
John Ruskin.

Saturday, 29th April, 1865.

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," May 9, 1865.]
WORK AND WAGES.

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: I am under the impression that we are both getting prosy, or, at all events, that no one will read either my last letter, or your comments upon it, in the places in which you have so gracefully introduced them. For which I am sorry, and you, I imagine, are not.

It is true that differences of feeling may exist among gentlemen; yet I think that gentlemen of all countries agree that it is rude to interrupt your opponent while he is speaking; for a futile answer gains no real force by becoming an interjection; and a strong one can abide its time. I will therefore pray you, in future, if you publish my letters at all, to practice towards them so much of old English manners as may yet be found lingering round some old English dinner-tables; where, though we may be compelled by fashion to turn the room into a greenhouse, and serve everything cold, the pièces de résistance are still presented whole, and carved afterwards.

Of course it is open to you to reply that I dislike close argument. Which little flourish being executed, and if you are well breathed—en garde, if you please.

I. Your original position was that wages (or price) bear no relation to hardship of work. On that I asked you to join issue. You now admit, though with apparent reluctance, that "the price asked by the seller, no doubt, depends on the labor expended."

The price asked by the seller has, I believe, in respectable commercial houses, and respectable shops, very approximate relation to the price paid by the buyer. I do not know if you are in the habit of asking, from your wine-merchant or tailor, reduction of price on the ground that the sum remitted will be "alms to themselves;" but, having been myself in some[Pg 60]what intimate connection with a house of business in the City,[53] not dishonorably accounted of during the last forty years, I know enough of their correspondents in every important town in the United Kingdom to be sure that they will bear me witness that the difference between the prices asked and the prices taken was always a very "imaginary" quantity.

But urging this no farther for the present, and marking, for gained ground, only your admission that "the price asked depends on the labor expended," will you farther tell me, whether that dependence is constant, or variable? If constant, under what law; if variable, within what limits?

II. "The alms are thus given by himself to himself." I never said they were not. I said it was a question of alms, not of trade. And if your original leader had only been an exhortation to English workmen to consider every diminution of their pay, in the picturesque though perhaps somewhat dim, religious light of alms paid by themselves to themselves, I never should have troubled you with a letter on the subject. For, singular enough, Sir, this is not one of the passages of your letters, however apparently indefensible, which I care to attack.

So far from it, in my own serious writings I have always maintained that the best work is done, and can only be done, for love.[54] But the point at issue between us is not whether there should be charity, but whether there can be trade; not whether men may give away their labor, but whether, if they do not choose to do so, there is such a thing as a price for it. And my statement, as opposed to yours, is briefly this—that for all labor, there is, under given circumstances, a just price approximately determinable; that every conscious deflection from this price towards zero is either gift on the part of the [Pg 61]laborer, or theft on the part of the employer; and that all payment in conscious excess of this price is either theft on the part of the laborer, or gift on that of the employer.

III. If you wish to substitute the word "moral" for "just" in the above statement, I am prepared to allow the substitution; only, as you, not I, introduced this new word, I must pray for your definition of it first, whether remembered from Mr. Hobbes, or original.

IV. I am sorry you doubt my understanding your views; but, in that case, it may be well to ask for a word or two of farther elucidation.

"Justice," you say, is "conformity with any rule whatever, good or bad." And "good rules are rules which promote the general happiness of those whom they affect." And bad rules are (therefore) rules which promote the general misery of those whom they affect? Justice, therefore, may as often as not promote the general misery of those who practice it? Do you intend this?[55]

Again: "Good rules are rules which promote the general happiness of those whom they affect." But "the greatest happiness of the greatest number is best secured by laying down no rule at all" (as to the price of "labor").

Do you propose this as a sequitur? For if not, it is merely a petitio principii, and a somewhat wide one. Before, therefore, we branch into poetical questions concerning happiness, we will, with your permission, and according to my original stipulation, that we should dispute only of one point at a time, determine the matters already at issue. To which end, also, I leave without reply some parts of your last letter; not without a little strain on the ερκος ὀδοντων, for which I think, Sir, you may give me openly, credit, if not tacitly, thanks.

I am, Sir, your obliged servant,
John Ruskin.

Denmark Hill, May 4.

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," May 22, 1865.]
WORK AND WAGES.

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: I have long delayed my reply to your notes on my last letter; partly being otherwise busy—partly in a pause of surprise and doubt how low in the elements of ethics we were to descend.

Let me, however, first assure you that I heartily concur in your opening remarks, and shall be glad to spare useless and avoid discourteous words. When you said, in your first reply to me, that my letter embodied fallacies which appeared to you pernicious in the highest degree, I also "could not consider this sort of language well judged." When you called one of your own questions an answer, and declared it to be "simple and perfectly conclusive," I thought the flourish might have been spared; and for having accused you of writing carelessly, I must hope your pardon; for the discourtesy, in my mind, would have been in imagining you to be writing with care.

For instance, I should hold it discourteous to suppose you unaware of the ordinary distinction between law and equity: yet no consciousness of such a distinction appears in your articles. I should hold it discourteous to doubt your acquaintance with the elementary principles laid down by the great jurists of all nations respecting Divine and Human law; yet such a doubt forces itself on me if I consider your replies as deliberate. And I should decline to continue the discussion with an opponent who could conceive of justice as (under any circumstances) "an hideously bad thing," if I did not suppose him to have mistaken the hideousness of justice, in certain phases, to certain persons, for its ultimate nature and power.

There may be question respecting these inaccuracies of thought; there can be none respecting the carelessness of[Pg 63] expression which causes the phrases "are" and "ought to be" to alternate in your articles as if they were alike in meaning.

I have permitted this, that I might see the course of your argument in your own terms, but it is now needful that the confusion should cease. That wages are determined by supply and demand is no proof that under any circumstances they must be—still less that under all circumstances they ought to be. Permit me, therefore, to know the sense in which you use the word "ought" in your paragraph lettered b, page 832[56] (second column), and to ask whether the words "due," "duty," "devoir," and other such, connected in idea with the first and third of the "præcepta juris" of Justinian, quoted by Blackstone as a summary of the whole doctrine of law (honeste vivere,—alterum non lædere,—suumque cuique tribuere), are without meaning to you except as conditions of agreement?[57] Whether, in fact, there be, in your view, any honos, absolutely; or whether we are to launch out into an historical investigation of the several kinds of happiness enjoyed in lives of rapine, of selfish trade, and of unselfish citizenship, and to decide only upon evidence whether we will live as pirates, as pedlers, or as gentlemen? If so, while I shall be glad to see you undertake, independently, so interesting an inquiry, I must reserve my comments on it until its close.

But if you admit an absolute idea of a "devoir" of one man to another, and of every honorable man to himself, tell me why you dissent from my statement of the terms of that debt in the opening of this discussion. Observe, I asked for no evangelical virtue of returning good for evil: I asked only for the Sinaitic equity of return in good for good, as for Sinaitic equity of return in evil for evil. "Eye for eye," "tooth for [Pg 64]tooth"—be it so; but will you thus pray according to the lex talionis and not according to the lex gratiæ? Your debt is on both sides. Does a man take of your life, you take also of his. Shall he give you of his life, and will you not give him also of yours? If this be not your law of duty to him, tell me what other there is, or if you verily believe there is none.

But you ask of such repayment, "Who shall determine how much?"[58] I took no notice of the question, irrelevant when you asked it; but in its broad bearing it is the one imperative question of national economy. Of old, as at bridge-foot of Florence, men regulated their revenge by the law of demand and supply, and asked in measureless anger, "Who shall determine how much?" with economy of blood, such as we know. That "much" is now, with some approximate equity, determined at the judgment-seat, but for the other debt, the debt of love, we have no law but that of the wolf, and the locust, and the "fishes of the sea, which have no ruler over them." The workmen of England—of the world, ask for the return—as of wrath, so of reward by law; and for blood resolutely spent, as for that recklessly shed; for life devoted through its duration, as for that untimely cast away; they require from you to determine, in judgment, the equities of "Human Retribution."

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin.[59]

May 20, 1865.

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," May 1, 1867. Reprinted also, with slight alterations, in "Time and Tide," App. vii.]
THE STANDARD OF WAGES.

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: In the course of your yesterday's article on strikes[60] you have very neatly and tersely expressed the primal fallacy of modern political economy—to wit, that the value of any piece of labor cannot be defined; and that "all that can be ascertained is simply whether any man can be got to do it for a certain sum."

Now, Sir, the "value" of any piece of labor (I should have written "price," not "value," but it is no matter)—that is to say, the quantity of food and air which will enable a man to perform it without eventually losing any of his flesh or nervous energy, is as absolutely fixed a quantity as the weight of powder necessary to carry a given ball a given distance. And within limits varying by exceedingly minor and unimportant circumstances, it is an ascertainable quantity. I told the public this five years ago, and—under pardon of your politico-economical contributor, it is not a sentimental, but a chemical, fact. Let any half-dozen London physicians of recognized standing state in precise terms the quantity and kind of food, and space of lodging, they consider approximately necessary for the healthy life of a laborer in any given manufacture, and the number of[Pg 66] hours he may, without shortening his life, work at such business daily, if in such manner he be sustained. Let all masters be bound to give their men a choice between an order for that quantity of food and space of lodging, or the market wages for that specified number of hours of work. Proper laws for the maintenance of families would require further concession; but in the outset, let but this law of wages be established, and if then we have more strikes, you may denounce them without one word of remonstrance either from sense or sensibility.

I am, Sir, with sentiments of great respect,
Your faithful servant,
John Ruskin.

Denmark Hill, April 30, 1867.

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," January 24, 1873.]
HOW THE RICH SPEND THEIR MONEY.

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: Here among the hills, I read little, and withstand, sometimes for a fortnight together, even the attractions of my Pall Mall Gazette. A friend, however, sent me, two days ago, your article signed W. R. G. on spending of money (January 13),[61] which, as I happened to have over-eaten myself the day before, and taken perhaps a glass too much besides of quite priceless port (Quarles Harris, twenty years in bottle), [Pg 67]would have been a great comfort to my mind, showing me that if I had done some harm to myself, I had at least conferred benefit upon the poor by these excesses, had I not been left in some painful doubt, even at the end of W. R. G.'s most intelligent illustrations, whether I ought not to have exerted myself further in the cause of humanity, and by the use of some cathartic process, such as appears to have been without inconvenience practised by the ancients, enabled myself to eat two dinners instead of one. But I write to you to-day, because if I were a poor man, instead of a (moderately) rich one, I am nearly certain that W. R. G.'s paper would suggest to me a question, which I am sure he will kindly answer in your columns, namely, "These means of living, which this generous and useful gentleman is so fortunately disposed to bestow on me—where does he get them himself?"

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin.

Brantwood, Coniston, Jan. 23.

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," January 29, 1873.]
HOW THE RICH SPEND THEIR MONEY.

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: I am disappointed of my Gazette to-day, and shall be grievously busy to morrow. I think it better, therefore, to follow up my own letter, if you will permit me, with a simple and brief statement of the facts, than to wait till I see your correspondent W. R. G.'s reply, if he has vouchsafed me one.

These are the facts. The laborious poor produce "the means of life" by their labor. Rich persons possess themselves by various expedients of a right to dispense these "means of life," and keeping as much means as they want of it for themselves, and rather more, dispense the rest, usually only in return for more labor from the poor, expended in producing various[Pg 68] delights for the rich dispenser. The idea is now gradually entering poor men's minds, that they may as well keep in their own hands the right of distributing "the means of life" they produce; and employ themselves, so far as they need extra occupation, for their own entertainment or benefit, rather than that of other people. There is something to be said, nevertheless, in favor of the present arrangement, but it cannot be defended in disguise; and it is impossible to do more harm to the cause of order, or the rights of property, than by endeavors, such as that of your correspondent, to revive the absurd and, among all vigorous thinkers, long since exploded notion of the dependence of the poor upon the rich.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
J. Ruskin.

January 28.

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," January 31, 1873.]
HOW THE RICH SPEND THEIR MONEY.

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: I have my Pall Mall Gazette of the 28th to-day, and must at once, with your permission, solemnly deny the insidiosity of my question, "Where does the rich man get his means of living?" I don't myself see how a more straightforward question could be put! So straightforward indeed that I particularly dislike making a martyr of myself in answering it, as I must this blessed day—a martyr, at least, in the way of witness; for if we rich people don't begin to speak honestly with our tongues, we shall, some day soon, lose them and our heads together, having for some time back, most of us, made false use of the one and none of the other. Well, for the point in question then, as to means of living: the most exemplary manner of answer is simply to state how I got my own, or rather how my father got them for me. He and his partners entered into what your correspondent mellifluously[Pg 69] styles "a mutually beneficent partnership,"[62] with certain laborers in Spain. These laborers produced from the earth annually a certain number of bottles of wine. These productions were sold by my father and his partners, who kept nine-tenths, or thereabouts, of the price themselves, and gave one-tenth, or thereabouts, to the laborers. In which state of mutual beneficence my father and his partners naturally became rich, and the laborers as naturally remained poor. Then my good father gave all his money to me (who never did a stroke of work in my life worth my salt, not to mention my dinner), and so far from finding his money "grow" in my hands, I never try to buy anything with it; but people tell me "money isn't what it was in your father's time, everything is so much dearer." I should be heartily glad to learn from your correspondent as much pecuniary botany as will enable me to set my money a-growing; and in the mean time, as I have thus given a quite indubitable instance of my notions of the way money is made, will he be so kind as to give us, not an heraldic example in the dark ages (though I suspect I know more of the pedigree of money, if he comes to that, than he does),[63] but a living example of a rich gentleman who has made his money by saving an equal portion of profit in some mutually beneficent partnership with his laborers?

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
J. Ruskin.

Brantwood, Coniston,
King Charles the Martyr, 1873.

P.S.—I see by Christie & Manson's advertisement that [Pg 70]some of the best bits of work of a good laborer I once knew, J. M. W. Turner (the original plates namely of the "Liber Studiorum"), are just going to be destroyed by some of his affectionate relations. May I beg your correspondent to explain, for your readers' benefit, this charming case of hereditary accumulation?

[Date and place of publication unknown.]
COMMERCIAL MORALITY.[64]

My dear Sir: Mr. Johnson's speech in the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, which you favor me by sending, appears to me the most important event that has occurred in relation to the true interests of the country during my lifetime. It begins an era of true civilization. I shall allude to it in the "Fors" of March, and make it the chief subject of the one following (the matter of this being already prepared).[65] It goes far beyond what I had even hoped to hear admitted—how much less enforced so gravely and weightily in the commercial world.

Believe me, faithfully yours,
J. Ruskin.

[From "The Monetary and Mining Gazette," November 13, 1875.]
THE DEFINITION OF WEALTH.
Corpus Christi College, Oxford,
9th November, 1875.

To the Editor of "The Monetary Gazette."

Sir: I congratulate you with all my mind on the sense, and with all my heart on the courage, of your last Saturday's leading article, which I have just seen.[66] You have asserted in it the two vital principles of economy, that society cannot exist by reciprocal pilfering, but must produce wealth if it would have it; and that money must not be lent, but administered by its masters.

You have not yet, however, defined wealth itself, or told the ingenuity of the public what it is to produce.

I have never been able to obtain this definition from economists;[67] perhaps, under the pressure of facts, they may at last discover some meaning in mine at the tenth and eleventh pages of "Munera Pulveris."

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
J. Ruskin.

[From "The Socialist," an Advocate of Love, Truth, Justice, etc. etc. Printed and Published by the Proprietor, W. Freeland, 52 Scotland Street, Sheffield, November, 1877.]
THE PRINCIPLES OF PROPERTY.
10th Oct., 1877.

To the Editor of "The Socialist."

Sir: Some Sheffield friend has sent me your fourth number, in the general teaching of which I am thankful to be able [Pg 72]to concur without qualification: but let me earnestly beg of you not to confuse the discussion of the principles of Property in Earth, Air, or Water, with the discussion of principles of Property in general.[68] The things which, being our neighbor's, the Mosaic Law commands us not to covet, are by the most solemn Natural Laws indeed our neighbor's "property," and any attempts to communize these have always ended, and will always end, in ruin and shame.

Do not attempt to learn from America. An Englishman has brains enough to discover for himself what is good for England; and should learn, when he is to be taught anything, from his Fathers, not from his children.

I observe in the first column of your 15th page the assertion by your correspondent of his definition of money as if different from mine. He only weakens my definition with a "certificate of credit "instead of a "promise to pay." What is the use of giving a man "credit"—if you don't engage to pay him?

But I observe that nearly all my readers stop at this more or less metaphysical definition, which I give in "Unto this Last," instead of going on to the practical statement of immediate need made in "Munera Pulveris."[69]

The promise to find Labor is one which meets general demand; but the promise to find Bread is the answer needed to immediate demand; and the only sound bases of National Currency are shown both in "Munera Pulveris," and "Fors Clavigera," to be bread, fuel, and clothing material, of certified quality.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin.

[From "The Christian Life," December 20, 1879.]
ON CO-OPERATION.[70]
Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire.

Dear Mr. Holyoake: I am not able to write you a pretty letter to-day, being sadly tired, but am very heartily glad to be remembered by you. But it utterly silences me that you should waste your time and energy in writing "Histories of Co-operation" anywhere as yet. My dear Sir, you might as well write the history of the yellow spot in an egg—in two volumes. Co-operation is as yet—in any true sense—as impossible as the crystallization of Thames mud.

Ever faithfully yours,
J. Ruskin.

[From "The Daily News," June 19, 1880.]
ON CO-OPERATION.
Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire,
April 12, 1880.

Dear Mr. Holyoake: I am very glad that you are safe back in England, and am not a little grateful for your kind reference to me while in America, and for your letter about Sheffield Museum.[71] But let me pray for another interpretation [Pg 74]of my former letter than mere Utopianism. The one calamity which I perceive or dread for an Englishman is his becoming a rascal, and co-operation among rascals—if it were possible—would bring a curse. Every year sees our workmen more eager to do bad work and rob their customers on the sly. All political movement among such animals I call essentially fermentation and putrefaction—not co-operation.

Ever affectionately yours,
J. Ruskin.

MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS.

I. The Management of Railways.

II. Servants and Houses.

III. Roman Inundations.

IV. Education, for Rich and Poor.

V. Women: Their Work and their Dress.

VI. Literary Criticism.

[Pg 76]
[Pg 77]

MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS.

I.
THE MANAGEMENT OF RAILWAYS.

Is England Big Enough? 1868.

The Ownership of Railways. 1868.

Railway Economy. 1868.

Our Railway System. 1865.

Railway Safety. 1870.

[Pg 78]
[Pg 79]

I.

THE MANAGEMENT OF RAILWAYS.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," July 31, 1868.]
IS ENGLAND BIG ENOUGH?

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: You terminate to-day a discussion which seems to have been greatly interesting to your readers, by telling them the "broad fact, that England is no longer big enough for her inhabitants."[72]

Might you not, in the leisure of the recess, open with advantage a discussion likely to be no less interesting, and much more useful—namely, how big England may be made for economical inhabitants, and how little she may be made for wasteful ones? Might you not invite letters on this quite radical and essential question—how money is truly made, and how it is truly lost, not by one person or another, but by the whole nation?

For, practically, people's eyes are so intensely fixed on the immediate operation of money as it changes hands, that they hardly ever reflect on its first origin or final disappearance. They are always considering how to get it from somebody else, but never how to get it where that somebody else got it.

[Pg 80]

Also, they very naturally mourn over their loss of it to other people, without reflecting that, if not lost altogether, it may still be of some reflective advantage to them. Whereas, the real national question is not who is losing or gaining money, but who is making and who destroying it. I do not of course mean making money, in the sense of printing notes or finding gold. True money cannot be so made. When an island is too small for its inhabitants, it would not help them to one ounce of bread more to have the entire island turned into one nugget, or to find bank notes growing by its rivulets instead of fern leaves. Neither, by destroying money, do I mean burning notes, or throwing gold away. If I burn a five-pound note, or throw five sovereigns into the sea, I hurt no one but myself; nay, I benefit others, for everybody with a pound in his pocket is richer by the withdrawal of my competition in the market. But what I want you to make your readers discover is how the true money is made that will get them houses and dinners; and on the other hand how money is truly lost, or so diminished in value that all they can get in a year will not buy them comfortable houses, nor satisfactory dinners.

Surely this is a question which people would like to have clearly answered for them, and it might lead to some important results if the answer were acted upon. The riband-makers at Coventry, starving, invite the ladies of England to wear ribands. The compassionate ladies of England invest themselves in rainbows, and admiring economists declare the nation to be benefited. No one asks where the ladies got the money to spend in rainbows (which is the first question in the business), nor whether the money once so spent will ever return again, or has really faded with the faded ribands and disappeared forever. Again, honest people every day lose quantities of money to dishonest people. But that is merely a change of hands much to be regretted; but the money is not therefore itself lost; the dishonest people must spend it at last somehow. A youth at college loses his year's income to a Jew. But the Jew must spend it instead of him. Miser or[Pg 81] not, the day must come when his hands relax. A railroad shareholder loses his money to a director; but the director must some day spend it instead of him. That is not—at least in the first fact of it—national loss. But what the public need to know is, how a final and perfect loss of money takes place, so that the whole nation, instead of being rich, shall be getting gradually poor. And then, indeed, if one man in spending his money destroys it, and another in spending it makes more of it, it becomes a grave question in whose hands it is, and whether honest or dishonest people are likely to spend it to the best purpose. Will you permit me, Sir, to lay this not unprofitable subject of inquiry before your readers, while, to the very best purpose, they are investing a little money in sea air?

Very sincerely yours,
J. Ruskin.

Denmark Hill, July 30.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," August 6, 1868.]
THE OWNERSHIP OF RAILWAYS.[73]

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: The ingenious British public seems to be discovering, to its cost, that the beautiful law of supply and demand does not apply in a pleasant manner to railroad transit. But if they are prepared to submit patiently to the "natural" laws of[Pg 82] political economy, what right have they to complain? The railroad belongs to the shareholders; and has not everybody a right to ask the highest price he can get for his wares? The public have a perfect right to walk, or to make other opposition railroads for themselves, if they please, but not to abuse the shareholders for asking as much as they think they can get.

Will you allow me to put the real rights of the matter before them in a few words?

Neither the roads nor the railroads of any nation should belong to any private persons. All means of public transit should be provided at public expense, by public determination where such means are needed, and the public should be its own "shareholder."

Neither road, nor railroad, nor canal should ever pay dividends to anybody. They should pay their working expenses, and no more. All dividends are simply a tax on the traveller and the goods, levied by the person to whom the road or canal belongs, for the right of passing over his property. And this right should at once be purchased by the nation, and the original cost of the roadway—be it of gravel, iron, or adamant—at once defrayed by the nation, and then the whole work of the carriage of persons or goods done for ascertained prices, by salaried officers, as the carriage of letters is done now.

I believe, if the votes of the proprietors of all the railroads in the kingdom were taken en masse, it would be found that the majority would gladly receive back their original capital, and cede their right of "revising" prices of railway tickets. And if railway property is a good and wise investment of capital, the public need not shrink from taking the whole off their hands. Let the public take it. (I, for one, who never held a rag of railroad scrip in my life, nor ever willingly travelled behind an engine where a horse could pull me, will most gladly subscribe my proper share for such purchase according to my income.) Then let them examine what lines pay their working expenses and what lines do not, and boldly leave the un-paying embankments to be white over with sheep, like[Pg 83] Roman camps, take up the working lines on sound principles, pay their drivers and pointsmen well, keep their carriages clean and in good repair, and make it as wonderful a thing for a train, as for an old mail-coach, to be behind its time; and the sagacious British public will very soon find its pocket heavier, its heart lighter, and its "passages" pleasanter, than any of the three have been, for many a day.

I am, Sir, always faithfully yours,
J. Ruskin.

Denmark Hill, Aug. 5.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," August 10, 1868.]
RAILWAY ECONOMY.

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: I had not intended again to trespass on your space until I could obtain a general idea of the views of your correspondents on the questions you permitted me to lay before them in my letters of the 31st July and 5th inst.; but I must ask you to allow me to correct an impression likely to be created by your reference to that second letter in your interesting article on the Great Eastern Railway, and to reply briefly to the question of your correspondent "S." on the same subject.[74]

[Pg 84]

You say that I mistook the charge against the railway companies in taunting my unfortunate neighbors at Sydenham[75] with their complaints against the operation of the law of supply and demand, and that it was because the companies neglected that law that they suffered.

But, Sir, the law of supply and demand, as believed in by the British public under the guidance of their economists, is a natural law regulating prices, which it is not at all in their option to "neglect." And it is precisely because I have always declared that there is no such natural law, but that prices can be, and ought to be, regulated by laws of expediency and justice, that political economists have thought I did not understand their science, and you now say I laugh at it. No, Sir, I laughed only at what was clearly no science, but vain endeavor to allege as irresistible natural law, what is indeed a too easily resisted prudential law, rewarding and chastising us according to our obedience. So far from despising true political economy, based on such prudential law, I have for years been chiefly occupied in defending its conclusions, having given this definition of it in 1862. "Political Economy is neither an art nor a science; but a system of conduct and legislature founded on the sciences, including the arts, and impossible except under certain conditions of moral culture."[76]

And, Sir, nothing could better show the evil of competition as opposed to the equitable regulation of prices than the instance to which you refer your correspondent "Fair Play"—the agitation in Brighton for a second railway. True prudential [Pg 85]law would make one railway serve it thoroughly, and fix the fares necessary to pay for thorough service. Competition will make two railways (sinking twice the capital really required); then, if the two companies combine, they can oppress the public as effectively as one could; if they do not, they will keep the said public in dirty carriages and in danger of its life, by lowering the working expenses to a minimum in their antagonism.

Next, to the question of your correspondent "S.," "what I expect the capitalist to do with his money," so far as it is asked in good faith I gladly reply, that no one's "expectations" are in this matter of the slightest consequence; but that the moral laws which properly regulate the disposition of revenue, and the physical laws which determine returns proportioned to the wisdom of its employment, are of the greatest consequence; and these may be briefly stated as follows:

1. All capital is justly and rationally invested which supports productive labor (that is to say, labor directly producing or distributing good food, clothes, lodging, or fuel); so long as it renders to the possessor of the capital, and to those whom he employs, only such gain as shall justly remunerate the superintendence and labor given to the business, and maintain both master and operative happily in the positions of life involved by their several functions. And it is highly advantageous for the nation that wise superintendence and honest labor should both be highly rewarded. But all rates of interest or modes of profit on capital, which render possible the rapid accumulation of fortunes, are simply forms of taxation, by individuals, on labor, purchase, or transport; and are highly detrimental to the national interests, being, indeed, no means of national gain, but only the abstraction of small gains from many to form the large gain of one. For, though inequality of fortune is not in itself an evil, but in many respects desirable, it is always an evil when unjustly or stealthily obtained, since the men who desire to make fortunes by large interest are precisely those who will make the worst use of their wealth.

2. Capital sunk in the production of objects which do not[Pg 86] immediately support life (as statues, pictures, architecture, books, garden-flowers, and the like) is beneficially sunk if the things thus produced are good of their kind, and honestly desired by the nation for their own sake; but it is sunk ruinously if they are bad of their kind, or desired only for pride or gain. Neither can good art be produced as an "investment." You cannot build a good cathedral if you only build it that you may charge sixpence for entrance.

3. "Private enterprise" should never be interfered with, but, on the contrary, much encouraged, so long as it is indeed "enterprise" (the exercise of individual ingenuity and audacity in new fields of true labor), and so long as it is indeed "private," paying its way at its own cost, and in no wise harmfully affecting public comforts or interests. But "private enterprise" which poisons its neighborhood, or speculates for individual gain at common risk, is very sharply to be interfered with.

4. All enterprise, constantly and demonstrably profitable on ascertained conditions, should be made public enterprise, under Government administration and security; and the funds now innocently contributed, and too often far from innocently absorbed, in vain speculation, as noted in your correspondent "Fair Play's" excellent letter,[77] ought to be received by Government, employed by it, not in casting guns, but in growing corn and feeding cattle, and the largest possible legitimate interest returned without risk to these small and variously occupied capitalists who cannot look after their own money. We should need another kind of Government to do this for us, it is true; also it is true that we can get it, if we choose; but we must recognize the duties of governors before we can elect the men fit to perform them.

The benefit of these several modes of right investment of capital would be quickly felt by the nation, not in the increase of isolated or nominal wealth, but in steady lowering of the[Pg 87] prices of all the necessaries and innocent luxuries of life, and in the disciplined, orderly, and in that degree educational employment of every able-bodied person. For, Sir (again with your pardon), my question "Is England big enough?" was not answered by the sad experience of the artisans of Poplar. Had they been employed in earth-building instead of in shipbuilding, and heaped the Isle of Dogs itself into half as much space of good land, capable of growing corn instead of mosquitoes, they would actually have made habitable England a little bigger by this time;[78] and if the first principle of economy in employment were understood among us—namely, always to use whatever vital power of breath and muscle you have got in the country before you use the artificial power of steam and iron for what living arms can do, and never plough by steam while you forward your ploughmen to Quebec—those old familiar faces need not yet have looked their last at each other from the deck of the St. Lawrence. But on this subject I will ask your permission to write you in a few days some further words.[79]

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin.

Denmark Hill, Aug. 9.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," December 8, 1865.]
OUR RAILWAY SYSTEM.

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: Will you allow me a few words with reference to your excellent article of to-day on railroads.[80] All you say is true. But of what use is it to tell the public this? Of all the economical stupidities of the public—and they are many—the out-and-out stupidest is underpaying their pointsmen; but if the said public choose always to leave their lines in the hands of companies—that is to say, practically, of engineers and lawyers—the money they pay for fares will always go, most of it, into the engineers' and lawyers' pockets. It will be spent in decorating railroad stations with black and blue bricks, and in fighting bills for branch lines. I hear there are more bills for new lines to be brought forward this year than at any previous session. But, Sir, it might do some little good if you were to put it into the engineers' and lawyers' heads that they might for some time to come get as much money for themselves (and a little more safety for the public) by bringing in bills for doubling laterally the present lines as for ramifying them; and if you were also to explain to the shareholders that it would be wiser to spend their capital in preventing accidents attended by costly damages, than in running trains at a loss on opposition branches. It is little business of mine—for I am not a railroad traveller usually more than twice in the year; but I don't like to hear of people's being smashed, even when it is all their fault; so I will ask you merely to reprint this passage from my article on Political Economy in Fraser's Magazine for April, 1863, and so leave the matter to your handling:

"Had the money spent in local mistakes and vain private[Pg 89] litigation on the railroads of England been laid out, instead, under proper Government restraint, on really useful railroad work, and had no absurd expense been incurred in ornamenting stations, we might already have had—what ultimately it will be found we must have—quadruple rails, two for passengers and two for traffic, on every great line, and we might have been carried in swift safety, and watched and warded by well-paid pointsmen, for half the present fares."[81]

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin.

Denmark Hill, Dec. 7.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," November 30, 1870.]
RAILWAY SAFETY.[82]

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: I am very busy, and have not time to write new phrases. Would you mind again reprinting (as you were good enough to do a few days ago[83]) a sentence from one of the books of mine which everybody said were frantic when I wrote them? You see the date—1863.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin.

Denmark Hill, Nov. 29, 1870.

I have underlined the words I want to be noticed, but, as you see, made no change in a syllable.

[Pg 90]

Already the Government, not unapproved, carries letters and parcels for us. Larger packages may in time follow—even general merchandise; why not, at last, ourselves? Had the money spent in local mistakes and vain private litigations on the railroads of England been laid out, instead, under proper Government restraint, on really useful railroad work, and had no absurd expense been incurred in ornamenting stations, we might already have had—what ultimately it will be found we must have—quadruple rails, two for passengers, and two for traffic, on every great line; and we might have been carried in swift safety, and watched and warded by well-paid pointsmen, for half the present fares.

MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS.

II.
SERVANTS AND HOUSES.

Mastership. 1865.

Experience. 1865.

Sonship and Slavery. 1865.

Modern Houses. 1865.

[Pg 92]
[Pg 93]

II.

SERVANTS AND HOUSES.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," September 5, 1865.]
DOMESTIC SERVANTS—MASTERSHIP.

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: You so seldom write nonsense, that you will, I am sure, pardon your friends for telling you when you do. Your article on servants to-day is nonsense. It is just as easy and as difficult now to get good servants as it ever was.[84] You may have them, as you may have pines and peaches, for the growing, or you may even buy them good, if you can persuade the good growers to spare you them off their walls; but you cannot get them by political economy and the law of supply and demand.

There are broadly two ways of making good servants; the first, a sound, wholesome, thoroughgoing slavery—which was the heathen way, and no bad one neither, provided you understand that to make real "slaves" you must make yourself a real "master" (which is not easy). The second is the Christian's way: "whoso delicately bringeth up his servant from a child, shall have him become his son at the last."[85] And as few people want their servants to become their sons, this is not a way to their liking. So that, neither having courage or self-discipline enough on the one hand to make themselves nobly [Pg 94]dominant after the heathen fashion, nor tenderness or justice enough to make themselves nobly protective after the Christian, the present public thinks to manufacture servants bodily out of powder and hay-stuffing—mentally by early instillation of Catechism and other mechanico-religious appliances—and economically, as you helplessly suggest, by the law of supply and demand,[86] with such results as we all see, and most of us more or less feel, and shall feel daily more and more to our cost and selfish sorrow.

Sir, there is only one way to have good servants; that is, to be worthy of being well served. All nature and all humanity will serve a good master, and rebel against an ignoble one. And there is no surer test of the quality of a nation than the quality of its servants, for they are their masters' shadows, and distort their faults in a flattened mimicry. A wise nation will have philosophers in its servants' hall; a knavish nation will have knaves there; and a kindly nation will have friends there. Only let it be remembered that "kindness" means, as with your child, so with your servant, not indulgence, but care.—I am, Sir, seeing that you usually write good sense, and "serve" good causes, your servant to command.

J. Ruskin.[87]

Denmark Hill, Sept. 2.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," September 7, 1865.]
DOMESTIC SERVANTS—EXPERIENCE.

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: I thank you much for your kind insertion of my letter, and your courteous and graceful answer to it. Others will thank you also; for your suggestions are indeed much more ad rem than my mere assertions of principle; but both are necessary. Statements of practical difficulty, and the immediate means of conquering it, are precisely what the editor of a powerful daily journal is able to give; but he cannot give them justly if he ever allow himself to lose sight of the eternal laws which in their imperative bearings manifest themselves more clearly to the retired student of human life in the phases of its history. My own personal experience—if worth anything—has been simply that wherever I myself knew how a thing should be done, and was resolved to have it done, I could always get subordinates, if made of average good human material, to do it, and that, on the whole, cheerfully, thoroughly, and even affectionately; and my wonder is usually rather at the quantity of service they are willing to do for me, than at their occasional indolences, or fallings below the standard of seraphic wisdom and conscientiousness. That they shall be of average human material, it is, as you wisely point out, every householder's business to make sure. We cannot choose our relations, but we can our servants; and what sagacity we have and knowledge of human nature cannot be better employed. If your house is to be comfortable, your servants' hearts must be sound, as the timber and stones of its walls; and there must be discretion in the choice, and time allowed for the "settling" of both. The luxury of having pretty servants must be paid for, like all luxuries, in the penalty of their occasional loss; but I fancy the best sort of female servant is generally in aspect and general qualities like[Pg 96] Sydney Smith's "Bunch,"[88] and a very retainable creature. And for the rest, the dearth of good service, if such there be, may perhaps wholesomely teach us that, if we were all a little more in the habit of serving ourselves in many matters, we should be none the worse or the less happy.

I am, Sir, yours, etc.,
J. Ruskin.

Denmark Hill, Sept. 6.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," September 18, 1865.]
DOMESTIC SERVANTS: SONSHIP AND SLAVERY.

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: I have been watching the domestic correspondence in your columns with much interest, and thought of offering you a short analysis of it when you saw good to bring it to a close,[89] and perhaps a note or two of my own experience, being somewhat conceited on the subject just now, because I have a gardener who lets me keep old-fashioned plants in the greenhouse, understands that my cherries are grown for the blackbirds, and sees me gather a bunch of my own grapes without making a wry face. But your admirable article of yesterday causes me to abandon my purpose; the more willingly, because among all the letters you have hitherto published there is not one from any head of a household which contains a com[Pg 97]plaint worth notice. All the masters or mistresses whose letters are thoughtful or well written say they get on well enough with their servants; no part has yet been taken in the discussion by the heads of old families. The servants' letters, hitherto, furnish the best data; but the better class of servants are also silent, and must remain so. Launce, Grumio, or Fairservice[90] may have something to say for themselves; but you will hear nothing from Old Adam nor from carefu' Mattie. One proverb from Sancho, if we could get it, would settle the whole business for us; but his master and he are indeed "no more." I would have walked down to Dulwich to hear what Sam Weller had to say; but the high-level railway went through Mr. Pickwick's parlor two months ago, and it is of no use writing to Sam, for, as you are well aware, he is no penman. And, indeed, Sir, little good will come of any writing on the matter. "The cat will mew, the dog will have his day." You yourself, excellent as is the greater part of what you have said, and to the point, speak but vainly when you talk of "probing the evil to the bottom." This is no sore that can be probed, no sword nor bullet wound. This is a plague spot. Small or great, it is in the significance of it, not in the depth, that you have to measure it. It is essentially bottomless, cancerous; a putrescence through the constitution of the people is indicated by this galled place. Because I know this thoroughly, I say so little, and that little, as your correspondents think, who know nothing of me, and as you say, who might have known more of me, unpractically. Pardon me, I am no seller of plasters, nor of ounces of civet. The patient's sickness is his own fault, and only years of discipline will work it out of him. That is the only really "practical" saying that can be uttered to him. The relation of master and servant involves every other—touches every condition of moral health through the State. Put that right, and you put all right; but you will find it can only come ultimately, not primarily, right; you [Pg 98]cannot begin with it. Some of the evidence you have got together is valuable, many pieces of partial advice very good. You need hardly, I think, unless you wanted a type of British logic, have printed a letter in which the writer accused (or would have accused, if he had possessed Latinity enough) all London servants of being thieves because he had known one robbery to have been committed by a nice-looking girl.[91] But on the whole there is much common-sense in the letters; the singular point in them all, to my mind, being the in-apprehension of the breadth and connection of the question, and the general resistance to, and stubborn rejection of, the abstract ideas of sonship and slavery, which include whatever is possible in wise treatment of servants. It is very strange to see that, while everybody shrinks at abstract suggestions of there being possible error in a book of Scripture,[92] your sensible English housewife fearlessly rejects Solomon's opinion when it runs slightly counter to her own, and that not one of your many correspondents seems ever to have read the Epistle to Philemon. It is no less strange that while most English boys of ordinary position hammer through their Horace at one or other time of their school life, no word of his wit or his teaching seems to remain by them: for all the good they get out of them, the Satires need never have been written. The Roman gentleman's account of his childhood and of his domestic life possesses no charm for them: and even men of education would sometimes start to be reminded that his "noctes cænæque Deum!" meant supping with his merry slaves on beans and bacon. Will you allow me, on this general question of liberty and slavery, to refer your correspondents to a paper of mine [Pg 99]touching closely upon it, the leader in the Art-Journal for July last? and to ask them also to meditate a little over the two beautiful epitaphs on Epictetus and Zosima, quoted in the last paper of the Idler?[93]

How might we, over many an "independent" Englishman, reverse this last legend, and write—

I will not pass without notice—for it bears also on wide interests—your correspondent's question, how my principles differ from the ordinary economist's view of supply and demand.[94] Simply in that the economy I have taught, in opposition to the popular view, is the science which not merely ascertains the relations of existing demand and supply, but determines what ought to be demanded and what can be supplied. A child demands the moon, and, the supply not being in this case equal to the demand, is wisely accommodated with a rattle; a footpad demands your purse, and is supplied according to the less or more rational economy of the State, with that or a halter; a foolish nation, not able to get into its head that free trade does indeed mean the removal of taxation from its imports, but not of supervision from them, demands unlimited foreign beef, and is supplied with the cattle murrain and the [Pg 100]like. There may be all manner of demands, all manner of supplies. The true political economist regulates these; the false political economist leaves them to be regulated by (not Divine) Providence. For, indeed, the largest final demand anywhere reported of, is that of hell; and the supply of it (by the broad-gauge line) would be very nearly equal to the demand at this day, unless there were here and there a swineherd or two who could keep his pigs out of sight of the lake.

Thus in this business of servants everything depends on what sort of servant you at heart wish for or "demand." If for nurses you want Charlotte Winsors, they are to be had for money; but by no means for money, such as that German girl who, the other day, on her own scarce-floating fragment of wreck, saved the abandoned child of another woman, keeping it alive by the moisture from her lips.[95] What kind of servant do you want? It is a momentous question for you yourself—for the nation itself. Are we to be a nation of shopkeepers, wanting only shop-boys; or of manufacturers, wanting only hands; or are there to be knights among us, who will need squires—captains among us, needing crews? Will you have clansmen for your candlesticks, or silver plate? Myrmidons at your tents, ant-born, or only a mob on the Gillies Hill? Are you resolved that you will never have any but your inferiors to serve you, or shall Enid ever lay your trencher with tender little thumb, and Cinderella sweep your hearth, and be cherished there? It might come to that in time, and plate and hearth be the brighter; but if your servants are to be held your inferiors, at least be sure they are so, and that you are indeed wiser, and better-tempered, and more useful than they. Determine what their education ought to be, and organize proper servants' schools, and there give it them. So they will be fit for their position, and will do honor to it, and stay in it: let the masters be as sure they do honor to theirs, and are as willing to stay in that. Remember that every people which [Pg 101]gives itself to the pursuit of riches, invariably, and of necessity, gets the scum uppermost in time, and is set by the genii, like the ugly bridegroom in the Arabian Nights, at its own door with its heels in the air, showing its shoe-soles instead of a Face. And the reversal is a serious matter, if reversal be even possible, and it comes right end uppermost again, instead of to conclusive Wrong end.

I suppose I am getting unpractical again. Well, here is one practical morsel, and I have done. One or two of your correspondents have spoken of the facilities of servants for leaving their places. Drive that nail home, Sir. A large stray branch of the difficulty lies there. Many and many a time I have heard Mr. Carlyle speak of this, and too often I have felt it myself as one of the evils closely accompanying the fever of modern change in the habits and hopes of life. My own architectural work drives me to think of it continually. Round every railroad station, out of the once quiet fields, there bursts up first a blotch of brick-fields, and then of ghastly houses, washed over with slime into miserable fineries of cornice and portico. A gentleman would hew for himself a log hut, and thresh for himself a straw bed, before he would live in such; but the builders count safely on tenants—people who know no quietness nor simplicity of pleasure, who care only for the stucco, and lodge only in the portico, of human life—understanding not so much as the name of House or House-Hold. They and their servants are always "bettering themselves" divergently.

You will do good service at least in teaching any of these who will listen to you, that if they can once make up their minds to a fixed state of life, and a fixed income, and a fixed expenditure—if they can by any means get their servants to stay long enough with them to fit into their places and know the run of the furrows—then something like service and mastership, and fulfilment of understood and reciprocal duty, may become possible; no otherwise. I leave this matter to your better handling, and will trespass on your patience no more. Only, as I think you will get into some disgrace with your[Pg 102] lady correspondents for your ungallant conclusions respecting them[96]—which I confess surprised me a little, though I might have been prepared for it if I had remembered what order the husband even of so good a housewife as Penelope was obliged to take with some of her female servants after prolonged absence,—I have translated a short passage of Xenophon's Economics[97] for you, which may make your peace if you will print it. I wish the whole book were well translated; meantime, your lady readers must be told that this is part of a Greek country gentleman's account of the conversation he had with his young wife (a girl of fifteen only), a little while after their marriage, when "she had got used to him," and was not frightened at being spoken gravely to. First they pray together; and then they have a long happy talk, of which this is the close:

"But there is one of the duties belonging to you," I said, "which, perhaps will be more painful to you than any other, namely, the care of your servants when they are ill." "Nay," answered my wife, "that will be the most pleasing of all my duties to me, if only my servants will be grateful when I minister rightly to them, and will love me better." And I, pleased with her answer, said, "Indeed, lady, it is in some such way as [Pg 103]this that the queen of the hive is so regarded by her bees, that, if she leave the hive, none will quit her, but all will follow her." Then she answered, "I should wonder if this office of leader were not yours rather than mine, for truly my care and distribution of things would be but a jest were it not for your inbringing." "Yes," I said, "but what a jest would my inbringing be if there were no one to take care of what I brought. Do not you know how those are pitied of whom it is fabled that they have always to pour water into a pierced vessel?" "Yes; and they are unhappy, if in truth they do it," said she. "Then also," I said, "remember your other personal cares. Will all be sweet to you when, taking one of your maidens who knows not how to spin, you teach her, and make her twice the girl she was; or one who has no method nor habit of direction, and you teach her how to manage a house, and make her faithful and mistress-like and every way worthy, and when you have the power of benefiting those who are orderly and useful in the house, and of punishing any one who is manifestly disposed to evil? But what will be sweetest of all, if it may come to pass, will be that you should show yourself better even than me, and so make me your servant also: so that you need not fear in advancing age to be less honored in my house; but may have sure hope that in becoming old, by how much more you have become also a noble fellow-worker with me, and joint guardian of our children's possessions, by so much shall you be more honored in my household. For what is lovely and good increases for all men—not through fairness of the body, but through strength and virtue in things pertaining to life." And this is what I remember chiefly of what we said in our first talk together.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin.

Denmark Hill, Sept. 16.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," October 17, 1865.]
MODERN HOUSES.

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: I trust you will hold the very able and interesting letter from "W. H. W.,"[98] which you publish to-day, excuse enough for my briefly trespassing on your space once more. Indeed, it has been a discomfort to me that I have not yet asked the pardon of your correspondent, "A Tenant, not at will" (Sept. 21),[99] for the apparent discourtesy of thought of which he accused me. He need not have done so: for although I said "a gentleman would hew for himself a log hut" rather than live in modern houses, I never said he would rather abandon his family and his business than live in them; and your correspondent himself, in his previously written letter, had used precisely the same words. And he must not suspect that I intend to be ironical in saying that the prolonged coincidence of thought and word in the two letters well deserves the notice [Pg 105]of your readers, in the proof it gives of the strength and truth of the impression on both minds. "W. H. W.'s" graphic description of his house is also sorrowfully faithful to the facts of daily experience; and I doubt not that you will soon have other communications of the same tenor, and all too true.

I made no attempt to answer "A Tenant, not at will," because the subject is much too wide for any detailed treatment in a letter; and you do not care for generalizations of mine. But I am sure your two correspondents, and the large class of sufferers which they represent, would be very sincerely grateful for some generalizations of yours on this matter. For, Sir, surely of all questions for the political economist, this of putting good houses over people's heads is the closest and simplest. The first question in all economy, practically as well as etymologically, must be this, of lodging. The "Eco" must come before the "Nomy." You must have a house before you can put anything into it; and preparatorily to laying up treasure, at the least dig a hole for it. Well, Sir, here, as it seems to my poor thinking, is a beautiful and simple problem for you to illustrate the law of demand and supply upon. Here you have a considerable body of very deserving persons "demanding" a good and cheap article in the way of a house. Will you or any of your politico-economic correspondents explain to them and to me the Divinely Providential law by which, in due course, the supply of such cannot but be brought about for them?

There is another column in your impression of to-day to which, also, I would ask leave to direct your readers' attention—the 4th of the 3d page; and especially, at the bottom of it, Dr. Whitmore's account of Crawford Place,[100] and his following statement that it is "a kind of property constituting a most [Pg 106]profitable investment;" and I do so in the hope that you will expand your interpretation of the laws of political economy so far as to teach us how, by their beneficent and inevitable operation, good houses must finally be provided for the classes who live in Crawford Place, and such other places; and, without necessity of eviction, also for the colliers of Cramlington (vide 2d column of the same 3d page).[101] I have, indeed, my own notions on the subject, but I do not trouble you with them, for they are unfortunately based an that wild notion of there being a "just" price for all things, which you say in your article of Oct. 10, on the Sheffield strikes, "has no existence but in the minds of theorists."[102] The Pall Mall Gazette, with which journal I have already held some discussion on the subject, eagerly quoted your authority on its side, in its impression of the same evening; nor do I care to pursue the debate until I can inform you of the continuous result of some direct results which I am making on my Utopian principles. I have bought a little bit of property of the Crawford Place description, and mending it somewhat according to my notions, I make my tenants pay me what I hold to be a "just" price for the lodging provided. That lodging I partly look after, partly teach the tenants to look after for themselves; and I look a little after them, as well as after the rents. I do not mean to make a highly profitable investment of their poor little rooms; but I do mean to sell a good article, in the way of house room, at a fair price; and hitherto my customers are satisfied, and so am I.[103]

[Pg 107]

In the mean time, being entirely busy in other directions, I must leave the discussion, if it is to proceed at all, wholly between you and your readers. I will write no word more till I see what they all have got to say, and until you yourself have explained to me, in its anticipated results, the working—as regards the keeping out of winter and rough weather—of the principles of Non-iquity (I presume that is the proper politico-economic form for the old and exploded word Iniquity); and so I remain, Sir, yours, etc.,

J. Ruskin.

Denmark Hill, Oct. 16.

[Pg 108]

MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS.

III.
ROMAN INUNDATIONS.

A King's First Duty. 1871.

A Nation's Defences. 1871.

The Waters of Comfort. 1871.

The Streams of Italy. 1871.

The Streets of London. 1871.

[Pg 110]
[Pg 111]

III.

ROMAN INUNDATIONS.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," January 12, 1871. Also reprinted in "Fors Clavigera," 1873, Letter 33, p. 23.]
A KING'S FIRST DUTY.

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: May I ask you to add to your article on the inundation of the Tiber some momentary invitation to your readers to think with Horace rather than to smile with him?

In the briefest and proudest words he wrote of himself he thought of his native land chiefly as divided into the two districts of violent and scanty waters:

Now the anger and power of that "tauriformis Aufidus" is precisely because "regna Dauni præfluit"—because it flows past the poor kingdoms which it should enrich. Stay it there, and it is treasure instead of ruin. And so also with Tiber and Eridanus. They are so much gold, at their sources—they are[Pg 112] so much death, if they once break down unbridled into the plains.

At the end of your report of the events of the inundation, it is said that the King of Italy expressed "an earnest desire to do something, as far as science and industry could effect it, to prevent or mitigate inundations for the future."

Now science and industry can do, not "something," but everything, and not merely to mitigate inundations—and, deadliest of inundations, because perpetual, maremmas—but to change them into national banks instead of debts.

The first thing the King of any country has to do is to manage the streams of it.

If he can manage the streams, he can also the people; for the people also form alternately torrent and maremma, in pestilential fury or pestilential idleness. They also will change into living streams of men, if their Kings literally "lead them forth beside the waters of comfort." Half the money lost by this inundation of Tiber, spent rightly on the hill-sides last summer, would have changed every wave of it into so much fruit and foliage in spring where now there will be only burning rock. And the men who have been killed within the last two months, and whose work, and the money spent in doing it, have filled Europe with misery which fifty years will not efface,[105] they had been set at the same cost to do good instead of evil, and to save life instead of destroying it, might, by this 10th of January, 1871, have embanked every dangerous stream at the roots of the Rhine, the Rhone, and the Po, and left to Germany, to France, and to Italy an inheritance of blessing for centuries to come—they and their families living all the while in brightest happiness and peace. And now! Let the Red Prince look to it; red inundation bears also its fruit in time.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
John Ruskin.

Jan. 10.

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," January 19, 1871.]
A NATION'S DEFENCES.

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: The letter to which you do me the honor to refer, in your yesterday's article on the Tiber, entered into no detail,[106] because I had already laid the plans spoken of before the Royal Institution in my lecture there last February;[107] in which my principal object was to state the causes of the incalculably destructive inundations of the Rhone, Toccia, and Ticino, in 1868; and to point out that no mountain river ever was or can be successfully embanked in the valleys; but that the rainfall must be arrested on the high and softly rounded hill surfaces, before it reaches any ravine in which its force can be concentrated. Every mountain farm ought to have a dike about two feet high—with a small ditch within it—carried at intervals in regular, scarcely perceptible incline across its fields; with discharge into a reservoir large enough to contain a week's maximum rainfall on the area of that farm in the stormiest weather-[Pg 114]the higher uncultivated land being guarded over larger spaces with bolder embankments. No drop of water that had once touched hill ground ought ever to reach the plains till it was wanted there: and the maintenance of the bank and reservoir, once built, on any farm, would not cost more than the keeping up of its cattle-sheds against chance of whirlwind and snow.

The first construction of the work would be costly enough; and, say the Economists, "would not pay." I never heard of any National Defences that did! Presumably, we shall have to pay more income-tax next year, without hope of any dividend on the disbursement. Nay—you must usually wait a year or two before you get paid for any great work, even when the gain is secure. The fortifications of Paris did not pay, till very lately; they are doubtless returning cent. per cent. now, since the kind of rain falls heavy within them which they were meant to catch. Our experimental embankments against (perhaps too economically cheap) shot at Shoeburyness are property which we can only safely "realize" under similarly favorable conditions. But my low embankments would not depend for their utility on the advent of a hypothetical foe, but would have to contend with an instant and inevitable one; yet with one who is only an adversary if unresisted; who, resisted, becomes a faithful friend—a lavish benefactor.

Give me the old bayonets in the Tower, if I can't have anything so good as spades; and a few regiments of "volunteers" with good Engineer officers over them, and, in three years' time, an Inundation of Tiber, at least, shall be Impossible.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
John Ruskin.

Denmark Hill, Jan. 19, 1871.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," February 4, 1871.]
THE WATERS OF COMFORT.

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: I did not see your impression of yesterday until too late to reply to the question of your correspondent in Rome;[108] and I am hurried to-day; but will send you to-morrow a precise statement of what I believe can be done in the Italian uplands. The simplest and surest beginning would be the purchase, either by the Government or by a small company formed in Rome, of a few plots of highland in the Apennines, now barren for want of water, and valueless; and the showing what could be made of them by terraced irrigation such as English officers have already introduced in many parts of India. The Agricultural College at Cirencester ought, I think, to be able to send out two or three superintendents, who would direct rightly the first processes of cultivation, choosing for purchase good soil in good exposures, and which would need only irrigation to become fruitful; and by next summer, if not by the end of this, there would be growing food for men and cattle where now there is only hot dust; and I do not think there would be much further question "where the money was to come from." The real question is only, "Will you pay your money in advance for what is actually new land added to the kingdom of living Italy?" or "Will you pay it under call from the Tiber every ten or twenty years as the price of the work done by the river for your destruction?"

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin.

Oxford, Feb. 3.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," February 7, 1871.]
THE STREAMS OF ITALY.[109]

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: In this month, just thirty years ago, I was at Naples, and the days were nearly as dark as these, but with clouds and rain, not fog. The streets leading down from St. Elmo became beds of torrents. A story went about—true or not I do not know, but credible enough—of a child's having been carried off by the gutter and drowned at the bottom of the hill. At last came indeed what, in those simple times, people thought a serious loss of life. A heavy storm burst one night above a village on the flank of the Monte St. Angelo, a mile or two south of Pompeii. The limestones slope steeply there under about three feet of block earth. The water peeled a piece of the rock of its earth, as one would peel an orange, and brought down three or four acres of the good soil in a heap on the village at midnight, driving in the upper walls, and briefly burying some fourteen or fifteen people in their sleep—and, as I say, in those times there was some talk even about fourteen or fifteen. But the same kind of thing takes place, of course, more or less, among the hills in almost every violent storm, generally with the double result of ruining more ground below than is removed from the rocks above; for the frantic streams mostly finish their work with a heap of gravel and blocks of stone like that which came down the ravine below the glacier of Greppond about ten years ago, and destroyed, for at least fifty years to come, some of quite the best land in Chamouni.

In slower, but ceaseless process of ruin, the Po, Arno, and Tiber steadily remove the soil from the hills, and carry it down to their deltas. The Venetians have contended now for a[Pg 117] thousand years in vain even with the Brenta and the minor streams that enter their lagoons, and have only kept their canals clear by turning the river south to Malamocco with embankments which have unhealthily checked the drainage of all the flat country about Padua.

And this constant mischief takes place, be it observed, irrespective of inundation. All that Florence, Pisa, and Rome have suffered and suffer periodically from floods is so much mischief added to that of increasing maremmas, spoiled harborages, and lost mountain-ground.

There is yet one further evil. The snow on the bared rock slips lower and melts faster; snow, which in mossy or grass ground would have lain long, and furnished steadily flowing streams far on into summer, fall or melt from the bare rock in avalanche and flood, and spend in desolation in a few days what would have been nourishment for half the year. And against all this there are no remedies possible in any sudden or external action. It is the law of the Heaven which sends flood and food, that national prosperity can only be achieved by national forethought and unity of purpose.

In the year 1858 I was staying the greater part of the summer at Bellinzona, during a drought as harmful as the storms of ten years later. The Ticino sank into a green rivulet; and not having seen the right way to deal with the matter, I had many a talk with the parroco of a little church whose tower I was drawing, as to the possibility of setting his peasants to work to repair the embankment while the river was low. But the good old priest said, sorrowfully, the peasants were too jealous of each other, that no one would build anything or protect his own ground for fear his work might also benefit his neighbors.

But the people of Bellinzona are Swiss, not Italians. I believe the Roman and Sienese races, in different ways, possess qualities of strength and gentleness far more precious than the sunshine and rain upon their mountains, and, hitherto, as cruelly lost. It is in them that all the real power of Italy still lives; it is only by them, and by what care, and provi[Pg 118]dence, and accordant good-will ever be found in them, that the work is to be done, not by money; though, if money were all that is needed, do we in England owe so little to Italy of delight that we cannot so much as lend her spades and pick-axes at her need? Would she trust us? Would her government let us send over some engineer officers and a few sappers and miners, and bear, for a time, with an English instead of a French "occupation" of her barrenest hills?

But she does not need us. Good engineers she has, and has had many since Leonardo designed the canals of Lombardy. Agriculturists she has had, I think, among her gentlemen a little before there were gentlemen farmers in England; something she has told us of agriculture, also, pleasantly by the reeds of Mincio and among the apple-blossoms wet with Arno. Her streams have learned obedience before now: Fonte Branda and the Fountain of Joy flow at Sienna still; the rivulets that make green the slopes of Casentino may yet satisfy true men's thirst. "Where is the money to come from?" Let Italy keep her souls pure, and she will not need to alloy her florins. The only question for her is whether still the mossy rock and the "rivus aquæ" are "in rotis" or rather the racecourse and the boulevard—the curses of England and of France.

At all events, if any one of the Princes of Rome will lead, help enough will follow to set the work on foot, and show the peasants, in some narrow district, what can be done. Take any arid piece of Apennine towards the sources of the Tiber; let the drainage be carried along the hill-sides away from the existing water-courses; let cisterns, as of old in Palestine, and larger reservoirs, such as we now can build, be established at every point convenient for arrest of the streams; let channels of regulated flow be established from these over the tracts that are driest in summer; let ramparts be carried, not along the river banks, but round the heads of the ravines, throwing the water aside into lateral canals; then terrace and support the looser soil on all the steeper slopes; and the entire mountain side may be made one garden of orange and vine and olive beneath; and a wide blossoming orchard above; and a green[Pg 119] highest pasture for cattle, and flowers for bees—up to the edge of the snows of spring.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
John Ruskin.

Oxford, Feb. 3.

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," December 28, 1871.]
THE STREETS OF LONDON.

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: I have been every day on the point of writing to you since your notice, on the 18th,[110] of the dirty state of the London streets, to ask whether any of your readers would care to know how such matters are managed in my neighborhood. I was obliged, a few years ago, for the benefit of my health, to take a small house in one of the country towns of Utopia; and though I was at first disappointed in the climate, which indeed is no better than our own (except that there is no foul marsh air), I found my cheerfulness and ability for work greatly increased by the mere power of getting exercise pleasantly close to my door, even in the worst of the winter, when, though I have a little garden at the back of my house, I dislike going into it, because the things look all so dead; and find my walk on the whole pleasanter in the streets, these being always perfectly clean, and the wood-carving of the houses prettier than much of our indoor furniture. But it was about the streets I wanted to tell you. The Utopians have the oddest way of carrying out things, when once they begin, as far as they can go; and it occurred to them one dirty December long since, when they, like us, had only crossing-sweepers, that they might just as well sweep the whole of the street as the crossings of it, so that they might cross anywhere. Of course that meant more [Pg 120]work for the sweepers; but the Utopians have always hands enough for whatever work is to be done in the open air;—they appointed a due number of brooms-men to every quarter of the town; and since then, at any time of the year, it is in our little town as in great Rotterdam when Doctor Brown saw it on his journey from Norwich to Colen in 1668, "the women go about in white slippers," which is pretty to see.[111] Now, Sir, it would, of course, be more difficult to manage anything like this in London, because, for one thing, in our town we have a rivulet running down every street that slopes to the river; and besides, because you have coal-dust and smoke and what not to deal with; and the habit of spitting, which is worst of all—in Utopia, a man would as soon vomit as spit in the street (or anywhere else, indeed, if he could help it). But still it is certain we can at least anywhere do as much for the whole street, as we have done for the crossing; and to show that we can, I mean, on 1st January next, to take three street-sweepers into constant service; they will be the first workpeople I employ with the interest of the St. George's fund, of which I shall get my first dividend this January; and, whenever I can get leave from the police and inhabitants, I will keep my three sweepers steadily at work for eight hours a day; and I hope soon to show you a bit of our London streets kept as clean as the deck of a ship of the line.[112]

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
John Ruskin.

December 27, 1871.

MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS.

IV.
EDUCATION FOR RICH AND POOR.

True Education. 1868.

The Value of Lectures. 1874.

The Cradle of Art! 1876.

St. George's Museum. 1875.

The Morality of Field Sports. 1870.

Drunkenness and Crime. 1871.

Madness and Crime. 1872.

Employment for the Destitute Poor and Criminal Classes. 1868.

Notes on the General Principles of Employment for the Destitute and Criminal Classes (a pamphlet). 1868.

Blindness and Sight. 1879.

The Eagle's Nest. 1879.

Politics in Youth. 1879.

"Act, Act in the Living Present." 1873.

"Laborare est Orare." 1874.

A Pagan Message. 1878.

The Foundations of Chivalry.
(Five letters: February 8, 10, 11, and 12, 1877, and July 3, 1878.)

[Pg 122]
[Pg 123]

IV.

EDUCATION FOR RICH AND POOR.

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," January 31, 1868.]
TRUE EDUCATION.[113]

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: The letter you published yesterday from a parish schoolboy of "Sixty Years Since" at Weary-faulds (confirmed as it would be doubtless in all practical respects by testimony of English boys educated at Waverley Honour) has my hearty sympathy; but I am wearier than any tenant of Weary-faulds of seeing this subject of education always treated as if "education" only meant teaching children to write or to cipher or to repeat catechism. You know, Sir, as you have shown by your comments on the Bishop of Oxford's last speech on this subject, and you could not at present use your influence more beneficially than by farther showing that the real education-[Pg 124]the education which alone should be compulsory—means nothing of the kind. It means teaching children to be clean, active, honest, and useful. All these characters can be taught, and cannot be acquired by sickly and ill-dispositioned children without being taught; but they can be untaught to any extent, by evil habit and example at home. Public schools, in which the aim was to form character faithfully, would return to them in due time to their parents, worth more than their "weight in gold." That is the real answer to the objections founded on economical difficulties. Will you not make some effort, Sir, to get your readers to feel this? I am myself quite sick of saying it over and over again in vain.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin.

Denmark Hill, Jan. 31, 1868.

[From "The Glasgow Herald," June 5, 1874. Also reprinted in "The Times" of June 6, 1874.]
THE VALUE OF LECTURES.[114]
Rome, 26th May, 1874.

My dear Sir: I have your obliging letter, but am compelled by increase of work to cease lecturing except at Oxford—and practically there also—for, indeed, I find the desire of audiences to be audiences only becoming an entirely pestilent character of the age. Everybody wants to hear—nobody to read—nobody to think; to be excited for an hour—and, if possible, amused; to get the knowledge it has cost a man half[Pg 125] his life to gather, first sweetened up to make it palatable, and then kneaded into the smallest possible pills—and to swallow it homœopathically and be wise—this is the passionate desire and hope of the multitude of the day.

It is not to be done. A living comment quietly given to a class on a book they are earnestly reading—this kind of lecture is eternally necessary and wholesome; your modern fire-working, smooth-downy-curry-and-strawberry-ice-and-milk-punch-altogether lecture is an entirely pestilent and abominable vanity; and the miserable death of poor Dickens, when he might have been writing blessed books till he was eighty, but for the pestiferous demand of the mob, is a very solemn warning to us all, if we would take it.[115]

God willing, I will go on writing, and as well as I can. There are three volumes published of my Oxford lectures,[116] in which every sentence is set down as carefully as may be. If people want to learn from me, let them read them or my monthly letter Fors Clavigera. If they don't care for these, I don't care to talk to them.

Truly yours,
J. Ruskin.

[Date and place of publication unknown.]
THE CRADLE OF ART![117]
18th Feb. 1876.

My dear Sir: I lose a frightful quantity of time because people won't read what I ask them to read, nor believe any[Pg 126]thing of what I tell them, and yet ask me to talk whenever they think they can take a shilling or two at the door by me. I have written fifty times, if once, that you can't have art where you have smoke; you may have it in hell, perhaps, for the Devil is too clever not to consume his own smoke, if he wants to. But you will never have it in Sheffield. You may learn something about nature, shrivelled, and stones, and iron; and what little you can see of that sort, I'm going to try and show you. But pictures, never.

Ever faithfully yours,
John Ruskin.

If for no other reason, no artist worth sixpence in a day would live in Sheffield, nor would any one who cared for pictures—for a million a year.

[From "The Sheffield Daily Telegraph," September 7, 1875.]
ST. GEORGE'S MUSEUM.[118]
Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire.

My dear Sir: I am obliged by your note, but the work of the St. George's Company is necessarily distinct from all other. My "museum" may be perhaps nothing but a two-windowed garret. But it will have in it nothing but what deserves respect in art or admiration in nature. A great museum in the present state of the public mind is simply an exhibition of the possible modes of doing wrong in art, and an accumulation of uselessly multiplied ugliness in misunderstood nature. Our own museum[Pg 127] at Oxford is full of distorted skulls, and your Sheffield ironwork department will necessarily contain the most barbarous abortions that human rudeness has ever produced with human fingers. The capitals of the iron shafts in any railway station, for instance, are things to make a man wish—for shame of his species—that he had been born a dog or a bee.

Ever faithfully yours,
J. Ruskin.

P.S.—I have no doubt the geological department will be well done, and my poor little cabinets will enable your men to use it to better advantage, but would be entirely lost if united with it.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," January 15, 1870.]
THE MORALITY OF FIELD SPORTS.

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: As, thirty years ago,[119] I publicly expressed a strong opinion on the subject of field sports, and as with more accurate knowledge I hold the same opinion still, and more strongly—will you permit me to place the controversy between your correspondents[120] in which I have no time to take part, on somewhat clearer grounds.

[Pg 128]

Reprobation of fox-hunting on the ground of cruelty to the fox is entirely futile. More pain is caused to the draught-horses of London in an hour by avariciously overloading them, than to all the foxes in England by the hunts of the year: and the rending of body and heart in human death, caused by neglect, in our country cottages, in any one winter, could not be equalled by the death-pangs of any quantity of foxes.

The real evils of fox-hunting are that it wastes the time, misapplies the energy, exhausts the wealth, narrows the capacity, debases the taste, and abates the honor of the upper classes of this country; and instead of keeping, as your correspondent "Forester" supposes, "thousands from the workhouse," it sends thousands of the poor, both there, and into the grave.

The athletic training given by fox-hunting is excellent; and such training is vitally necessary to the upper classes. But it ought always to be in real service to their country; in personal agricultural labor at the head of their tenantry; and in extending English life and dominion in waste regions, against the adverse powers of nature. Let them become Captains of Emigration;—hunt down the foxes that spoil the Vineyard of the World; and keep their eyes on the leading hound, in Packs of Men.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin.[121]

Denmark Hill, Jan. 14.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," December 11, 1871.]
DRUNKENNESS AND CRIME.

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: I am greatly surprised by the slightness of your article to-day on the statistics of drunkenness and the relative statistics of crime.[122]

The tables you have given, if given only in that form by Professor Leone Levi, are anything but "instructive." Liquor is not, for such purpose, to be measured only by the gallon, but by the gallon with accompanying statement of strength.

Crime is not for such purpose to be measured by the number of criminals, but by the number, with accompanying statement of the crime committed. Drunkenness very slightly encourages theft, very largely encourages murder, and universally encourages idleness, which is not a crime apparent in a[Pg 130] tabular form. But, whatever results might, even by such more accurate statement, be attainable, are not material to the question at issue. Drunkenness is not the cause of crime in any case. It is itself crime in every case. A gentleman will not knock out his wife's brains when he is drunk; but it is nevertheless his duty to remain sober.

Much more is it his duty to teach his peasantry to remain sober, and to furnish them with sojourn more pleasant than the pothouse, and means of amusement less circumscribed than the pot. And the encouragement of drunkenness, for the sake of the profit on sale of drink, is certainly one of the most criminal methods of assassination for money hitherto adopted by the bravos of an age or country.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
John Ruskin.

Denmark Hill, Dec. 9.

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," November 4, 1872. (Also reprinted in "Fors Clavigera," Letter 48, p. 286, vol. iv., 1874),]
MADNESS AND CRIME.

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: Towards the close of the excellent article on the Taylor trial in your issue for October 31[123] you say that people never will be, nor ought to be, persuaded, "to treat criminals simply as vermin which they destroy, and not as men who are to be punished." Certainly not, Sir! Who ever talked, or thought, of regarding criminals "simply" as anything (or innocent people either, if there be any)? But regarding criminals complexly and accurately, they are partly men, partly vermin; what is human in them you must punish—what is vermicular, abolish. Anything between—if you can find it—I wish you joy of, and hope you may be able to preserve it to [Pg 131]society. Insane persons, horses, dogs, or cats become vermin when they become dangerous. I am sorry for darling Fido, but there is no question about what is to be done with him.

Yet, I assure you, Sir, insanity is a tender point with me. One of my best friends has just gone mad; and all the rest say I am mad myself. But if ever I murder anybody—and, indeed, there are numbers of people I should like to murder—I won't say that I ought to be hanged; for I think nobody but a bishop or a bank-director can ever be rogue enough to deserve hanging; but I particularly, and with all that is left me of what I imagine to be sound mind, request that I may be immediately shot.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
J. Ruskin.

Corpus Christi College, Oxford,
November 2.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," December 26, 1868.]
EMPLOYMENT FOR THE DESTITUTE POOR AND CRIMINAL CLASSES

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: Your admirable leader of to-day[124] will do great good; but it will do more if you complete it by pointing out the chief reason for the frequent failure of almsgiving in accomplishing any real benefit to the poor. No almsgiving of money is so helpful as almsgiving of care and thought; the giving of money without thought is indeed continually mischievous; but the invective of the economist against indiscriminate charity is idle, if it be not coupled with pleading for discriminate charity, and, above all, for that charity which discerns the uses that people may be put to, and helps them by setting them to work in those services. That is the help beyond all others, find out how to make useless people useful, and let them earn [Pg 132]their money instead of begging it. Few are so feeble as to be incapable of all occupation, none so faultful but that occupation, well chosen, and kindly compelled, will be medicine for them in soul and body. I have lately drawn up a few notes for private circulation on possible methods of employment for the poor.[125] The reasons which weighed with me in not publishing them have now ceased to exist; and in case you should think the paper worth its room in your columns, and any portion of it deserving your ratification, I send it you herewith, and remain your faithful servant,

J. Ruskin.

Denmark Hill, S.E., Dec. 24.

NOTES ON THE GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF EMPLOYMENT FOR THE DESTITUTE AND CRIMINAL CLASSES.
[For Private Circulation only. 1868. (Pp. 15, including the title-page. Printed by Strangeways & Walden, Castle Street, Leicester Square.)[126]]

The first great fact on which all wise and enduring legislation respecting labor must be founded, is, that the character of men depends more on their occupations than on any teaching we can give them, or principles with which we can imbue them.

The employment forms the habits of body and mind, and these are the constitution of the man—the greater part of his moral or persistent nature, whatever effort, under special [Pg 133]excitement, he may make to change or overcome them. Employment is the half, and the primal half, of education—it is the warp of it; and the fineness or the endurance of all subsequently woven pattern depends wholly on its straightness and strength. And whatever difficulty there may be in tracing through past history the remoter connections of event and cause, one chain of sequence is always clear: the formation, namely, of the character of nations by their employments, and the determination of their final fate by their character. The moment and the first direction of circumstances, of decisive revolutions, often depend on accident; but their persistent course, and their consequences, depend wholly on the nature of the people. The passing of the Reform Bill by the late English Parliament[127] may have been more or less accidental: the results of the measure now rest on the character of the English people, as it has been developed by their recent interests, occupations, and habits of life. Whether as a body, they employ their new powers for good or evil will depend not on their facilities for knowledge, nor even on the general intelligence they may possess, but on the number of persons among them whom wholesome employments have rendered familiar with the duties, and temperate in their estimate of the promises of life.

But especially in passing laws respecting the treatment or employment of improvident and more or less vicious persons it is to be remembered that as men are not to be made heroes by an act of heroism, but must be brave before they can perform it, so they are not made villains by the commission of a crime, but were villains before they committed it; and that the right of public interference with their conduct begins when they begin to corrupt themselves, not merely at the moment when they have proved themselves hopelessly corrupt.

All measures of reformation are effective in exact proportion to their timeliness: partial decay may be cut away and cleansed; incipient error corrected; but there is a point[Pg 134] at which corruption can no more be stayed, nor wandering recalled; it has been the manner of modern philanthropy to remain passive until that precise period, and to leave the rich to perish and the foolish to stray, while it exhausted itself in frantic exertions to raise the dead and reform the dust.

The recent direction of a great weight of public opinion against capital punishment is, I think, the sign of an awakening perception that punishment is the last and worst instrument in the hands of the legislature for the prevention of crime.

The true instruments of reformation are employment and reward—not punishment. Aid the willing, honor the virtuous, and compel the idle into occupation, and there will be no need for the compelling of any into the great and last indolence of death. The beginning of all true reformation among the criminal classes depends on the establishment of institutions for their active employment, while their criminality is still unripe, and their feelings of self-respect, capacities of affection, and sense of justice not altogether quenched. That those who are desirous of employment should be always able to find it, will hardly, at the present day, be disputed; but that those who are undesirous of employment should of all persons be the most strictly compelled to it, the public are hardly yet convinced. If the damage of the principal thoroughfares in their capital city, and the multiplication of crimes more ghastly than ever yet disgraced a nominal civilization, do not convince them, they will not have to wait long before they receive sterner lessons. For our neglect of the lower orders has reached a point, at which it begins to bear its necessary fruit, and every day makes the harvest darker and more sure.[128]

The general principles by which employment should be regulated may be briefly stated as follows:

1. There being three great classes of mechanical powers at our disposal, namely, (a) vital muscular power; (b) natural mechanical power of wind, water, and electricity; and (c) artificially[Pg 135] produced mechanical power; it is the first principle of economy to use all available vital power first, then the inexpensive natural forces, and only at last to have recourse to artificial power. And this, because it is always better for a man to work with his own hands to feed and clothe himself, than to stand idle while a machine works for him; and if he cannot by all the labor healthily possible to him, feed and clothe himself, then it is better to use an inexpensive machine—as a wind-mill or water-mill—than a costly one like a steam-engine, so long as we have natural force enough at our disposal. Whereas at present we continually hear economists regret that the water-powers of the cascades or streams of a country should be lost, but hardly ever that the muscular power of its idle inhabitants should be lost; and, again, we see vast districts, as the south of Provence, where a strong wind[129] blows steady all day long for six days out of seven throughout the year, without a wind-mill, while men are continually employed a hundred miles to the north, in digging fuel to obtain artificial power.

But the principal point of all to be kept in view is that in every idle arm and shoulder throughout the country there is a certain quantity of force, equivalent to the force of so much fuel; and that it is mere insane waste to dig for coal for our force, while the vital force is unused; and not only unused, but, in being so, corrupting and polluting itself. We waste our coal and spoil our humanity at one and the same instant. Therefore, whenever there is an idle arm, always save coal with it, and the stores of England will last all the longer. And precisely the same argument answers the common one about "taking employment out of the hands of the industrious laborer." Why, what is "employment" but the putting out of vital force instead of mechanical force? We are continually [Pg 136]in search of means of strength—to pull, to hammer, to fetch, to carry; we waste our future resources to get power, while we leave all the living fuel to burn itself out in mere pestiferous breath and production of its variously noisome forms of ashes! Clearly, if we want fire for force, we want men for force first. The industrious hands must have so much to do that they can do no more, or else we need not use machines to help them: then use the idle hands first. Instead of dragging petroleum with a steam-engine, put it on a canal, and drag it with human arms and shoulders. Petroleum cannot possibly be in a hurry to arrive anywhere. We can always order that and many other things time enough before we want it. So the carriage of everything which does not spoil by keeping may most wholesomely and safely be done by water-traction and sailing vessels, and no healthier work nor better discipline can men be put to than such active porterage.

2. In employing all the muscular power at our disposal, we are to make the employments we choose as educational as possible. For a wholesome human employment is the first and best method of education, mental as well as bodily. A man taught to plough, row or steer well, and a woman taught to cook properly and make dress neatly, are already educated in many essential moral habits. Labor considered as a discipline has hitherto been thought of only for criminals; but the real and noblest function of labor is to prevent crime, and not to be Reformatory but Formatory.

3. The third great principle of employment is, that whenever there is pressure of poverty to be met, all enforced occupation should be directed to the production of useful articles only, that is to say, of food, of simple clothing, of lodging, or of the means of conveying, distributing, and preserving these. It is yet little understood by economists, and not at all by the public, that the employment of persons in a useless business cannot relieve ultimate distress. The money given to employ riband-makers at Coventry is merely so much money withdrawn from what would have employed lace-makers at Honiton, or makers of something else, as useless, elsewhere. We[Pg 137] must spend our money in some way, at some time, and it cannot at any time be spent without employing somebody. If we gamble it away, the person who wins it must spend it; if we lose it in a railroad speculation, it has gone into some one else's pockets, or merely gone to pay navvies for making a useless embankment, instead of to pay riband or button makers for making useless ribands or buttons; we cannot lose it (unless by actually destroying it) without giving employment of some kind, and therefore, whatever quantity of money exists, the relative quantity of employment must some day came out of it; but the distress of the nation signifies that the employments given have produced nothing that will support its existence. Men cannot live on ribands, or buttons, or velvet, or by going quickly from place to place; and every coin spent in useless ornament, or useless motion, is so much withdrawn from the national means of life. Whereas every coin spent in cultivating ground, in repairing lodgings, in making necessary and good roads, in preventing danger by sea or land, and in carriage of food or fuel where they are required, is so much absolute and direct gain to the whole nation. To cultivate land round Coventry makes living easier at Honiton, and every house well built in Edinburgh makes lodgings cheaper in Glasgow and London.

4th, and lastly. Since for every idle person some one else must be working somewhere to provide him with clothes and food, and doing therefore double the quantity of work that would be enough for his own needs, it is only a matter of pure justice to compel the idle person to work for his maintenance himself. The conscription has been used in many countries to take away laborers who supported their families from their useful work, and maintain them for purposes chiefly of military display at public expense. Since this had been long endured by the most civilized nations, let it not be thought that they would not much more gladly endure a conscription which should seize only the vicious and idle already living by criminal procedures at the public expense, and which should discipline and educate them to labor, which would not only[Pg 138] maintain themselves, but be serviceable to the commonwealth. The question is simply this: we must feed the drunkard, vagabond, and thief. But shall we do so by letting them rob us of their food, and do no work for it; or shall we give them their food in appointed quantity, and enforce their doing work which shall be worth it, and which, in process of time, will redeem their own characters, and make them happy and serviceable members of society?[130]

The different classes of work for which bodies of men could be consistently organized might ultimately become numerous; these following divisions of occupation may at once be suggested.

1. Road-making.—Good roads to be made wherever needed, and kept in constant repair; and the annual loss on unfrequented roads in spoiled horses, strained wheels, and time, done away with.

2. Bringing in of Waste Land.—All wastelands not necessary for public health, to be made accessible and gradually reclaimed.

3. Harbor-Making.—The deficiencies of safe or convenient harborage in our smaller ports to be remedied; other harbors built at dangerous points of coast, and a disciplined body of men always kept in connection with the pilot and lifeboat services. There is room for every order of intelligence in this work, and for a large body of superior officers.

4. Porterage.—All heavy goods not requiring speed in transit, to be carried (under preventive duty on transit by railroad) by canal boats, employing men for draught, and the merchant shipping service extended by sea; so that no ships may be wrecked for want of hands, while there are idle ones in mischief on shore.

5. Repair of Buildings.—A body of men in various trades to be kept at the disposal of the authorities in every large town for consistent repair of buildings, especially the houses of the poorer orders, who, if no such provision were made,[Pg 139] could not employ workmen on their own houses, but would simply live with rent walls and roofs.

6. Dress-making.—Substantial dress, of standard material and kind, strong shoes, and stout bedding, to be manufactured for the poor, so as to render it unnecessary for them, unless by extremity of improvidence, to wear cast clothes, or be without sufficiency of clothing.

7. Works of Art.—Schools to be established on thoroughly sound principles of manufacture and use of materials, and with simple and, for given periods, unalterable modes of work; first in pottery, and embracing gradually metal work, sculpture, and decorative painting; the two points insisted upon, in distinction from ordinary commercial establishments, being perfectness of material to the utmost attainable degree; and the production of everything by hand-work, for the special purpose of developing personal power and skill in the workman.

The two last departments, and some subordinate branches of the others, would include the service of women and children.

[From "The Y. M. A. Magazine," conducted by the Young Men's Association, Clapham Congregational Church. September, 1879. Vol. iii., No. 12, p. 242.]
BLINDNESS AND SIGHT.[132]
Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire,
18th July, 1879.

My dear Sir: The reason I never answered was—I now find—the difficulty of explaining my fixed principle never to join in any invalid charities. All the foolish world is ready to help in them; and will spend large incomes in trying to make idiots think, and the blind read, but will leave the noblest intellects to go to the Devil, and the brightest eyes to remain[Pg 140] spiritually blind forever! All my work is to help those who have eyes and see not.

Ever faithfully yours, J. Ruskin.

Thos. Pocock, Esq.

I must add that, to my mind, the prefix of "Protestant" to your society's name indicates far stonier blindness than any it will relieve.

[From "The Y. M. A. Magazine," October, 1879, Vol. iv., No. 1, p. 12.]
THE EAGLE'S NEST.[133]

To the Editor of "The Y. M. A. Magazine."

My dear Sir: There is a mass of letters on my table this morning, and I am not quite sure if the "Y. M. A. Magazine," among them, is the magazine which yours of the 15th speaks of as "enclosed;" but you are entirely welcome to print my letter about Blind Asylums anywhere, and if in the "Y. M. A." I should be glad to convey to its editor, at the same time, my thanks for the article on "Growing Old," which has not a little comforted me this morning—and my modest recommendation that, by way of antidote to the No. III. paper on the Sun, he should reproduce the 104th, 115th, and 116th paragraphs of my "Eagle's Nest," closing them with this following sentence from the 12th Book of the Laws of Plato, dictating the due time for the sittings of a Parliament seeking righteous policy (and composed, they may note farther, for such search, of Young Men and Old):

Ever faithfully yours, J. Ruskin.

Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire, August 17th, 1879.

[From "The Y. M. A. Magazine," November, 1879, Vol. iv., No. 2, p. 36.]
POLITICS IN YOUTH.

To the Editor of "The Y. M. A. Magazine."

My dear Sir: I am heartily obliged by your publication of those pieces of "Eagle's Nest," and generally interested in your Magazine, papers on politics excepted. Young men have no business with politics at all; and when the time is come for them to have opinions, they will find all political parties resolve themselves at last into two—that which holds with Solomon, that a rod is for the fool's back,[134] and that which holds with the fool himself, that a crown is for his head, a vote for his mouth, and all the universe for his belly.

Ever faithfully yours,
(Signed) J. Ruskin.

The song on "Life's Mid-day" is very beautiful, except the third stanza. The river of God will one day sweep down the great city, not feed it.[135]

Sheffield, October 19th, 1879.

[From the "New Year's Address and Messages to Blackfriars Bible Class." Aberdeen, 1873.]
"ACT, ACT IN THE LIVING PRESENT."[136]
Corpus Christi College, Oxford,
Christmas Eve, '72.

My dear Sir: I am always much interested in any effort such as you are making on the part of the laity.

[Pg 142]

If you care to give your class a word directly from me, say to them that they will find it well, throughout life, never to trouble themselves about what they ought not to do, but about what they ought to do. The condemnation given from the judgment throne—most solemnly described—is all for the undones and not for the dones.[137] People are perpetually afraid of doing wrong; but unless they are doing its reverse energetically, they do it all day long, and the degree does not matter. The Commandments are necessarily negative, because a new set of positive ones would be needed for every person: while the negatives are constant.

But Christ sums them all into two rigorous positions, and the first position for young people is active and attentive kindness to animals, supposing themselves set by God to feed His real sheep and ravens before the time comes for doing either figuratively. There is scarcely any conception left of the character which animals and birds might have if kindly treated in a wild state.

Make your young hearers resolve to be honest in their work in this life.—Heaven will take care of them for the other.

Truly yours,
John Ruskin.

[From "New Year's Address and Messages to Blackfriars Bible Class." Aberdeen, 1874.]
"LABORARE EST ORARE."
Corpus Christi College, Oxford,
December, 1873.

My dear Sir: I should much like to send your class some message, but have no time for anything I like.

My own constant cry to all Bible readers is a very simple[Pg 143] one—Don't think that nature (human or other) is corrupt; don't think that you yourself are elect out of it; and don't think to serve God by praying instead of obeying.

Ever, my dear Sir, very faithfully yours,
John Ruskin.

[From "New Year's Address," etc. (as above), 1878.]
A PAGAN MESSAGE.
Herne Hill, London, S.E.
19 Dec. 1877.

My dear Sir: I am sure you know as well as I that the best message for any of your young men who really are trying to read their Bibles is whatever they first chance to read on whatever morning.

But here's a Pagan message for them, which will be a grandly harmonized bass for whatever words they get on the New Year.

("Amid hope and sorrow, amid fear and wrath, believe every day that has dawned on thee to be thy last.")

Ever faithfully yours,
John Ruskin.

[From "The Science of Life."]
THE FOUNDATIONS OF CHIVALRY.[139]
Venice, February 8th, 1877.

My dear——: This is a nobly done piece of work of yours—a fireman's duty in fire of hell; and I would fain help [Pg 144]you in all I could, but my way of going at the thing would be from the top down—putting the fire out with the sun, not with vain sprinklings. People would say I wasn't practical, as usual of course; but it seems to me the last thing one should do in the business is to play Lord Angelo, and set bar and door to deluge. Not but I should sift the windows of our Oxford printsellers, if I had my full way in my Art Professorship; but I can't say the tenth part of what I would. I'm in the very gist and main effort of quite other work, and can't get my mind turned to this rightly, for this, in the heart of it, involves—well, to say the whole range of moral philosophy, is nothing; this, in the heart of it, one can't touch unless one knew the moral philosophy of angels also, and what that means, "but are as the angels in heaven." For indeed there is no true conqueror of Lust but Love; and in this beautifully scientific day of the British nation, in which you have no God to love any more, but only an omnipotent coagulation of copulation: in which you have no Law nor King to love any more, but only a competition and a constitution, and the oil of anointing for king and priest used to grease your iron wheels down hill: when you have no country to love any more, but "patriotism is nationally what selfishness is individually,"[140] such the eternally-damned modern view of the matter—the moral syphilis of the entire national blood: and, finally, when you have no true bride and groom to love each other any more, but a girl looking out for a carriage and a man for a position, what have you left on earth to take pleasure in, except theft and adultery?

The two great vices play into each other's hands. Ill-got money is always finally spent on the harlot. Look at Hogarth's two 'prentices; the sum of social wisdom is in that bit of rude art-work, if one reads it solemnly.

Venice, February 10th.

Hence, if from any place in earth, I ought to be able to send you some words of warning to English youths, for the ruin of this mighty city was all in one word—fornication. Fools who think they can write history will tell you it was "the discovery of the Cape of Good Hope," and the like! Alas it was indeed the covering of every hope she had, in God and his Law.

For indeed, my dear friend, I doubt if you can fight this evil by mere heroism and common-sense. Not many men are heroes; not many are rich in common-sense. They will train for a boat-race; will they for the race of life? For the applause of the pretty girls in blue on the banks; yes. But to win the soul and body of a noble woman for their own forever, will they? Not as things are going, I think, though how or where they are to go or end is to me at present inconceivable.

You think, perhaps, I could help you therefore with a lecture on good taste and Titian? No, not at all; I might with one on politics, but that everybody would say was none of my business. Yet to understand the real meaning of the word "Sire," with respect to the rider as well as the horse, is indeed the basis of all knowledge, in policy, chivalry, and social order.

All that you have advised and exposed is wisely said and bravely told; but no advice, no exposure, will be of use, until the right relation exists again between the father and the mother and their son. To deserve his confidence, to keep it as the chief treasure committed in trust to them by God: to be the father his strength, the mother his sanctification, and both his chosen refuge, through all weakness, evil, danger, and amazement of his young life. My friend, while you still teach in Oxford the "philosophy," forsooth, of that poor cretinous wretch, Stuart Mill, and are endeavoring to open other "careers" to English women than that of the Wife and the[Pg 146] Mother, you won't make your men chaste by recommending them to leave off tea.[141]

Venice, 11th February.

My dear——: I would say much more, if I thought any one would believe me, of the especial calamity of this time, with respect to the discipline of youth—in having no food any more to offer to their imagination. Military distinction is no more possible by prowess, and the young soldier thinks of the hurdle-race as one of the lists and the field—but the noble temper will not train for that trial with equal joy. Clerical eminence—the bishopric or popular pastorship—may be tempting to men of genial pride or sensitive conceit: but the fierce blood that would have burned into a patriarch, or lashed itself into a saint—what "career" has your modern philosophy to offer to it?

The entire cessation of all employment for the faculty, which, in the best men of former ages, was continually exercised and satisfied in the realization of the presence of Christ with the hosts of Heaven, leaves the part of the brain which it employed absolutely vacant, and ready to suck in, with the avidity of vacuum, whatever pleasantness may be presented to the natural sight in the gas-lighted beauty of pantomimic and casino Paradise.

All these disadvantages, you will say, are inevitable, and need not be dwelt upon. In my own school of St. George I mean to avoid them by simply making the study of Christianity a true piece of intellectual work; my boys shall at least know what their fathers believed, before they make up their own wise minds to disbelieve it. They shall be infidels, if they choose, at thirty; but only students, and very modest ones, at[Pg 147] fifteen. But I shall at least ask of modern science so much help as shall enable me to begin to teach them at that age the physical laws relating to their own bodies, openly, thoroughly, and with awe; and of modern civilization, I shall ask so much help as may enable me to teach them what is indeed right, and what wrong, for the citizen of a state of noble humanity to do, and permit to be done, by others, unaccused.

And if you can found two such chairs in Oxford—one, of the Science of Physical Health; the other, of the Law of Human Honor—you need not trim your Horace, nor forbid us our chatty afternoon tea.

I could say ever so much more, of course, if there were only time, or if it would be of any use—about the mis-appliance of the imagination. But really, the essential thing is the founding of real schools of instruction for both boys and girls—first, in domestic medicine and all that it means; and secondly, in the plain moral law of all humanity: "Thou shalt not commit adultery," with all that it means.

Ever most truly yours,
J. Ruskin.

Venice, 12th February, '77.

My dear——: Two words more, and an end. I have just re-read the paper throughout. There are two omissions which seem to me to need serious notice.

The first, that the entire code of counsel which you have drawn up, as that which a father should give his son, must be founded on the assumption that, at the proper time of life, the youth will be able, no less than eager, to marry. You ought certainly to point out, incidentally, what in my St. George's work I am teaching primarily, that unless this first economical condition of human society be secured, all props and plasters of its morality will be in vain.

And in the second place, you have spoken too exclusively of Lust, as if it were the normal condition of sexual feeling, and the only one properly to be called sexual. But the great relation of the sexes is Love, not Lust; that is the relation in[Pg 148] which "male and female created He them;" putting into them, indeed, to be distinctly restrained to the office of fruitfulness, the brutal passion of Lust: but giving them the spiritual power of Love, that each spirit might be greater and purer by its bond to another associate spirit, in this world, and that which is to come; help-mates, and sharers of each other's joy forever.

Ever most truly yours,
J. Ruskin.

Malham, July 3d, 1878.

Dear——: I wish I were able to add a few more words, with energy and clearness, to my former letters, respecting a subject of which my best strength—though in great part lately given to it, has not yet enforced the moment—the function, namely, of the arts of music and dancing as leaders and governors of the bodily, and instinctive mental, passions. No nation will ever bring up its youth to be at once refined and pure, till its masters have learned the use of all the arts, and primarily of these; till they again recognize the gulf that separates the Doric and Lydian modes, and perceive the great ordinance of Nature, that the pleasures which, rightly ordered, exalt, discipline, and guide the hearts of men, if abandoned to a reckless and popular Dis-order, as surely degrade, scatter, and deceive alike the passions and intellect.

I observe in the journals of yesterday, announcement that the masters of many of our chief schools are at last desirous of making the elements of Greek art one of the branches of their code of instruction: but that they imagine such elements may be learned from plaster casts of elegant limbs and delicate noses.

They will find that Greek art can only be learned from Greek law, and from the religion which gives law of life to all the nations of the earth. Let our youth once more learn the meaning of the words "music," "chorus," and "hymn" practically; and with the understanding that all such practice, from lowest to highest, is, if rightly done, always in the presence[Pg 149] and to the praise of God; and we shall have gone far to shield them in a noble peace and glorious safety from the darkest questions and the foulest sins that have perplexed and consumed the youth of past generations for the last four hundred years.

Have you ever heard the charity children sing in St. Paul's? Suppose we sometimes allowed God the honor of seeing our noble children collected in like manner to sing to Him, what think you might be the effect of such a festival—even if only held once a year—on the national manners and hearts?

Ever faithfully and affectionately yours,
J. Ruskin.

[Pg 150]
[Pg 151]

MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS.

V.
WOMEN: THEIR WORK AND THEIR DRESS.

Woman's Work. 1873.

Female Franchise. 1870.

Proverbs on Right Dress. 1862.

Sad-colored Costumes. 1870.

Oak Silkworms. 1862.

[Pg 152]
[Pg 153]

V.

WOMEN: THEIR WORK AND THEIR DRESS.

[From "L'Espérance, Journel Mensuel, organe de l'Association des Femmes." Genève, le 8 Mai, 1873.]
WOMAN'S WORK.

Lettre à la Présidente.[142]

Ma chère Madame: Je vous remercie de votre lettre si intéressante, car je sympathise de tout mon cœur avec la plupart des sentiments et des souhaits que vous y exprimez. Mais arriver à rendre des femmes plus nobles et plus sages est une chose; les élever de façon à ce qu'elles entretiennient leurs maris est une autre!

Je ne puis trouver des termes assez forts pour exprimer la haine et le mépris que je ressens pour l'idée moderne qu'une femme doit cesser d'être mère, fille, ou femme pour qu'elle puisse devenir commis ou ingénieur.

Vous êtes toutes entièrement sottes dans cette matière. Le devoir d'un homme est d'entretenir sa femme et ses enfants, celui d'une femme est de le rendre heureux chez lui, et d'élever ses enfants sagement. Aucune femme n'est capable de faire plus que cela. Aucune femme ne doit faire moins, et un homme qui ne peut pas nourrir sa femme, et désire qu'elle travaille pour lui, mérite d'être pendu au-dessus de sa porte.

Je suis, Madame, fidèlement à vous,
J. Ruskin.

[Date and place of publication unknown.]
FEMALE FRANCHISE.
Venice, 29th May, 1870.

Sir: I am obliged by your note. I have no time for private correspondence at present, but you are quite right in your supposition as to my views respecting female franchise. So far from wishing to give votes to women, I would fain take them away from most men.[143]

Very sincerely yours,
J. Ruskin.

[From "The Monthly Packet," November, 1863, p. 556.]
PROVERBS ON RIGHT DRESS.[144]
Geneva, October 20th, 1862.

My dear Sir: I am much obliged by your letter: pardon me if for brevity's sake I answer with appearance of dogmatism. You will see the subject treated as fully as I am able in the course of the papers on political economy, of which the two first have already appeared in Fraser's Magazine.[145]

The man and woman are meant by God to be perfectly [Pg 155]noble and beautiful in each other's eyes. The dress is right which makes them so. The best dress is that which is beautiful in the eyes of noble and wise persons.

Right dress is therefore that which is fit for the station in life, and the work to be done in it; and which is otherwise graceful—becoming—lasting—healthful—and easy; on occasion, splendid; always as beautiful as possible.

Right dress is therefore strong—simple—radiantly clean—carefully put on—carefully kept.

Cheap dress, bought for cheapness sake, and costly dress bought for costliness sake, are both abominations. Right dress is bought for its worth, and at its worth; and bought only when wanted.

Beautiful dress is chiefly beautiful in color—in harmony of parts—and in mode of putting on and wearing. Rightness of mind is in nothing more shown than in the mode of wearing simple dress.

Ornamentation involving design, such as embroidery, etc., produced solely by industry of hand, is highly desirable in the state dresses of all classes, down to the lowest peasantry.

National costume, wisely adopted and consistently worn, is not only desirable but necessary in right national organization. Obeying fashion is a great folly, and a greater crime; but gradual changes in dress properly accompany a healthful national development.

The Scriptural authority for dress is centralized by Proverbs xxxi. 21, 22; and by 1 Samuel i. 24; the latter especially indicating the duty of the king or governor of the state; as the former the duty of the housewife. It is necessary for the complete understanding of those passages, that the reader should know that "scarlet" means intense central radiance of pure color; it is the type of purest color—between pale and dark—between sad and gay. It was therefore used with hyssop as a type of purification. There are many stronger passages, such as Psalm xlv. 13, 14; but as some people read them under the impression of their being figurative, I need not refer to them. The passages in the Prophecies and[Pg 156] Epistles against dress apply only to its abuses. Dress worn for the sake of vanity, or coveted in jealousy, is as evil as anything else similarly so abused. A woman should earnestly desire to be beautiful, as she should desire to be intelligent; her dress should be as studied as her words; but if the one is worn or the other spoken in vanity or insolence, both are equally criminal.

I have not time, and there is no need, to refer you to the scattered notices of dress in my books: the most important is rather near the beginning of my Political Economy of Art;[146] but I have not the book by me: if you make any use of this letter (you may make any you please), I should like you to add that passage to it, as it refers to the more immediate need of economy in dress, when the modes of its manufacture are irregular, and cause distress to the operative.

Believe me, my dear Sir, very faithfully yours,
J. Ruskin.

[From "Macmillan's Magazine," November, 1870, p. 80.]
SAD-COLORED COSTUMES.
Denmark Hill, S.E., 14th Oct., 1870.

To the Editor of "Macmillan's Magazine."

Sir: At p. 423 of your current number, Mr. Stopford A. Brooke states that it is a proposal of mine for regenerating the country, that the poor should be "dressed all in one sad-colored costume."[147]

It is, indeed, too probable that one sad-colored costume [Pg 157]may soon be "your only wear," instead of the present motley—for both poor and rich. But the attainment of this monotony was never a proposition of mine; and as I am well aware Mr. Brooke would not have been guilty of misrepresentation, if he had had time to read the books he was speaking of, I am sure he will concur in my request that you would print in full the passages to which he imagined himself to be referring.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
John Ruskin.

1. "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 yourselves will look—in ways of which you have at present no conception—all the better."—Crown of Wild Olive (1866), p. 18.[148]

2. "In the simplest and clearest definition of it, economy, whether public or private, means the wise management of labor; and it means this mainly in three senses: namely, first, applying your labor rationally; secondly, preserving its produce carefully; lastly, distributing its produce seasonably.

"I say first, applying your labor rationally; that is, so as to obtain the most precious things you can, and the most lasting things by it: not growing oats in land where you can grow wheat, nor putting fine embroidery on a stuff that will not wear. Secondly, preserving its produce carefully; that is to say, laying up your wheat wisely in storehouses for the time of famine, and keeping your embroidery watchfully from the moth; and lastly, distributing its produce seasonably; that is to say, being able to carry your corn at once to the place where the people are hungry, and your embroideries to the place where they are gay; so fulfilling in all ways the wise man's description, whether of the queenly housewife or queenly nation: 'She riseth while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens. She maketh herself coverings of tapestry, her clothing is silk and purple. Strength and honor are in her clothing, and she shall rejoice in time to come.'

[Pg 158]

"Now you will observe that in this description of the perfect economist, or mistress of a household, there is a studied expression of the balanced division of her care between the two great objects of utility and splendor: in her right hand, food and flax, for life and clothing; in her left hand, the purple and the needlework, for honor and for beauty.... And in private and household economy you may always judge of its perfectness by its fair balance between the use and the pleasure of its possessions: you will see the wise cottager's garden trimly divided between its well-set vegetables and its fragrant flowers: you will see the good housewife taking pride in her pretty tablecloth and her glittering shelves, no less than in her well-dressed dish and full store-room: the care will alternate with gayety; and though you will reverence her in her seriousness, you will know her best by her smile."—"Political Economy of Art" (1857), pp. 10-13.[149]

[From "The Times," October 24, 1862.]
OAK SILKWORMS.

To the Editor of "The Times."

Sir: In your excellent article of October 17, on possible substitutes for cotton, you say "it is very doubtful whether we could introduce the silkworm with profit." The silkworm of the mulberry tree, indeed, requires a warmer climate than ours, but has attention yet been directed to the silkworm of the oak? A day or two ago a physician of European reputation, Dr. L. A. Gosse, was speaking to me of the experiments recently made in France in its acclimatization. He stated to me that the only real difficulty was temporary—namely, in the importation of the eggs, which are prematurely hatched as they are brought through warm latitudes. A few only have reached Europe, and their multiplication is slow, but once let them be obtained in quantity and the stripping of an oak[Pg 159] coppice is both robe and revenue. The silk is stronger than that of the mulberry tree, and the stuff woven of it more healthy than cotton stuffs for the wearer; it also wears twice as long. This is Dr. Gosse's report—likely to be a trust-worthy one—at all events, it seems to me worth sending you.

I remain your obedient servant,
J. Ruskin.

Geneva, Oct. 20th.

[Pg 160]
[Pg 161]

MISCELLANEOUS LETTERS.

VI.
LITERARY CRITICISM.

The Publication of Books. 1875.

A Mistaken Review. 1875.

The Position of Critics. 1875.

Coventry Patmore's "Faithful for Ever." 1860.

"The Queen of the Air." 1871.

The Animals of Scripture: A Review. 1856.

"Limner" and "Illumination." 1854.

Notes on a Word in Shakespeare. 1878. (Two Letters.)

The Merchant of Venice. 1880.

Recitations. 1880.

[Pg 162]
[Pg 163]

VI.

LITERARY CRITICISM.

[From "The World," June 9, 1875.]
THE PUBLICATION OF BOOKS.[150]
Corpus Christi College, Oxford,
June 6, 1875.

To the Editor of "The World."

Sir: I am very grateful for the attention and candor with which you have noticed my effort to introduce a new method of publishing.

Will you allow me to explain one or two points in which I am generally misunderstood? I meant to have asked your leave to do so at some length, but have been entirely busy,[Pg 164] and can only say, respecting two of your questions, what in my own mind are the answers.

I. "How many authors are strong enough to do without advertisements?"

None: while advertisement is the practice. But let it become the fashion to announce books once for all in a monthly circular (publisher's, for instance), and the public will simply refer to that for all they want to know. Such advertisement I use now, and always would.

II. "Why has he determined to be his own publisher?"

I wish entirely to resist the practice of writing for money early in life. I think an author's business requires as much training as a musician's, and that, as soon as he can write really well, there would always, for a man of worth and sense, be found capital enough to enable him to be able to print, say, a hundred pages of his careful work; which, if the public were pleased with, they would soon enable him to print more. I do not think young men should rush into print, nor old ones modify their books to please publishers.

III. And it seems to me, considering that the existing excellent books in the world would—if they were heaped together in great towns—overtop their cathedrals, that at any age a man should think long before he invites his neighbors to listen to his sayings on any subject whatever.

What I do, therefore, is done only in the conviction, foolish, egotistic, whatever you like to call it, but firm, that I am writing what is needful and useful for my fellow-creatures; that if it is so, they will in due time discover it, and that before due time I do not want it discovered. And it seems to [Pg 165]me that no sound scholar or true well-wisher to the people about him would write in any other temper. I mean to be paid for my work, if it is worth payment. Not otherwise. And it seems to me my mode of publication is the proper method of ascertaining that fact. I had much more to say, but have no more time, and am, sir, very respectfully yours,

John Ruskin.

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," January 11, 1875.]
A MISTAKEN REVIEW.[151]

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: The excellent letters and notes which have recently appeared in your columns on the subject of reviewing lead me to think that you will give me space for the statement of one or two things which I believe it is right the public should know respecting the review which appeared in the Examiner of the 2d of this month (but which I did not see till yesterday), by Mr. W. B. Scott, of Mr. St. J. Tyrrwhitt's "Letters on Landscape Art."

1. Mr. Scott is one of the rather numerous class of artists of whose works I have never taken any public notice, and who attribute my silence to my inherent stupidity of disposition.

2. Mr. Scott is also one of the more limited and peculiarly unfortunate class of artists who suppose themselves to have great native genius, dislike being told to learn perspective, and prefer the first volume of "Modern Painters," which praises[Pg 166] many third-rate painters, and teaches none, to the following volumes, which praise none but good painters, and sometimes admit the weakness of advising bad ones.

3. My first acquaintance with Mr. Scott was at the house of a gentleman whose interior walls he was decorating with historic frescos, and whose patronage I (rightly or wrongly) imagined at that time to be of importance to him. I was then more good-natured and less conscientious than I am now, and my host and hostess attached weight to my opinions. I said all the good I truly could of the frescos, and no harm; painted a corn-cockle on the walls myself, in reverent subordination to them; got out of the house as soon afterwards as I could, and never since sought Mr. Scott's acquaintance further (though, to my regret, he was once photographed in the same plate with Mr. Rosetti and me). Mr. Scott is an honest man, and naturally thinks me a hypocrite and turncoat as well as a fool.

4. The honestest man in writing a review is apt sometimes to give obscure statements of facts which ought to have been clearly stated to make the review entirely fair. Permit me to state in very few words those which I think the review in question does not clearly represent. My "Elements of Drawing" were out of print, and sometimes asked for; I wished to rewrite them, but had no time, and knew that my friend and pupil, Mr. Tyrrwhitt, was better acquainted than I myself with some processes of water-color sketching, and was perfectly acquainted with and heartily acceptant of the principles which I have taught to be essential in all art. I knew he could write, and I therefore asked him to write, a book of his own to take the place of the "Elements," and authorized him to make arrangements with my former publisher for my wood-blocks, mostly drawn on the wood by myself.

The book is his own, not mine, else it would have been published as mine, not his. I have not read it all, and do not answer for it all. But when I wrote the "Elements" I believed conscientiously that book of mine to be the best then attainable by the public on the subject of elementary drawing.[Pg 167] I think Mr. Tyrrwhitt's a better book, know it to be a more interesting one, and believe it to be, in like manner, the best now attainable by the British public on elementary practice of art.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
John Ruskin.

Brantwood, Jan. 10.

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," January 19, 1875.]
THE POSITION OF CRITICS.

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: I see you are writing of criticism;[152] some of your readers may, perhaps, be interested in hearing the notions of a man who has dabbled in it a good many years. I believe, in a word, that criticism is as impertinent in the world as it is in a drawing-room. In a kindly and well-bred company, if anybody tries to please them, they try to be pleased; if anybody tries to astonish them, they have the courtesy to be astonished; if people become tiresome, they ask somebody else to play, or sing, or what not, but they don't criticise. For the rest, a bad critic is probably the most mischievous person in the world (Swift's Goddess of Criticism in the "Tale of a Tub" seems what need be represented on that subject[153]), and a good one the most helpless and unhappy: the more he knows, the less he is trusted, and it is too likely he may become morose in his unacknowledged power. A good executant, in any art, gives pleasure to multitudes, and breathes an atmosphere of praise, but a strong critic is every man's adversary—men feel that he [Pg 168]knows their foibles, and cannot conceive that he knows more. His praise, to be acceptable, must be always unqualified; his equity is an offence instead of a virtue; and the art of correction, which he has learned so laboriously, only fills his hearers with disgust.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
John Ruskin.

Brantwood, Jan. 18.

[From "The Critic," October 27, 1860.]
COVENTRY PATMORE'S "FAITHFUL FOR EVER."

To the Editor of "The Critic."

Sir: I do not doubt, from what I have observed of the general tone of the criticisms in your columns, that, in candor and courtesy, you will allow me to enter protest, bearing such worth as private opinion may, against the estimate expressed in your last number of the merits of Mr. C. Patmore's new poem.[154] It seems to me that you have read it hastily; and that you have taken such view of it as on a first reading almost every reader of good but impatient judgment would be but too apt to concur with you in adopting—one, nevertheless, which, if you examine the poem with care, you will, I think, both for your readers' sake and Mr. Patmore's, regret having expressed so decidedly.

The poem is, to the best of my perception and belief, a singularly perfect piece of art; containing, as all good art does, many very curious shortcomings (to appearance), and places of rest, or of dead color, or of intended harshness, which, if they are seen or quoted without the parts of the piece to which they relate, are of course absurd enough, precisely as the discords in a fine piece of music would be if you played them without their resolutions. You have quoted separately Mr. Patmore's discords; you might by the same[Pg 169] system of examination have made Mozart or Mendelssohn appear to be no musicians, as you have probably convinced your quick readers that Mr. Patmore is no poet.

I will not beg of you so much space as would be necessary to analyze the poem, but I hope you will let me—once for all—protest against the method of criticism which assumes that entire familiarity and simplicity in certain portions of a great work destroy its dignity. Simple things ought to be simply said, and truly poetical diction is nothing more nor less than right diction; the incident being itself poetical or not, according to its relations and the feelings which it is intended to manifest—not according to its own nature merely. To take a single instance out of Homer bearing on that same simple household work which you are so shocked at Mr. Patmore's taking notice of, Homer describes the business of a family washing, when it comes into his poem, in the most accurate terms he can find. "They took the clothes in their hands; and poured on the clean water; and trod them in trenches thoroughly, trying who could do it best; and when they had washed them and got off all the dirt, they spread them out on the sea-beach, where the sea had blanched the shingle cleanest."[155]

[Pg 170]

These are the terms in which the great poet explains the matter. The less poet—or, rather, man of modern wit and breeding, without superior poetical power—thus puts the affair into dignified language:

Now, to my mind, Homer's language is by far the most poetical of the two—is, in fact, the only poetical language possible in the matter. Whether it was desirable to give any account of this, or anything else, depends wholly on the relation of the passage to the rest of the poem, and you could only show Mr. Patmore's glance into the servant's room to be ridiculous by proving the mother's mind, which it illustrates, to be ridiculous. Similarly, if you were to take one of Mr. George Richmond's perfectest modern portraits, and give a little separate engraving of a bit of the neck-tie or coat-lappet, you might easily demonstrate a very prosaic character either in the riband-end or the button-hole. But the only real question respecting them is their relation to the face, and the degree in which they help to express the character of the wearer. What the real relations of the parts are in the poem in question only a thoughtful and sensitive reader will discover. The poem is not meant for a song, or calculated for an hour's amusement; it is, as I said, to the best of my belief, a finished and tender work of very noble art. Whatever on this head may be the final judgment of the public, I am bound, for my own part, to express my obligation to Mr. Patmore, as one of my severest models and tutors in use of English, and my [Pg 171]respect for him as one of the truest and tenderest thinkers who have ever illustrated the most important, because commonest, states of noble human life.[156]

I remain, Sir, yours, etc.,
J. Ruskin.

Denmark Hill.

[From "The Asiatic," May 23, 1871.]
"THE QUEEN OF THE AIR."

To the Editor of "The Asiatic."

Sir: I am obliged and flattered by the tone of your article on my "Queen of the Air" in your last number, but not at all by the substance of it; and it so much misinterprets my attempt in that book that I will ask your leave to correct it in main points.[157] The "Queen of the Air" was written to show, not what could be fancied, but what was felt and meant, in the myth of Athena. Every British sailor knows, that Neptune is the god of the sea. He does not know that Athena is the goddess of the air; I doubt if many of our school-boys know it—I doubt even if many of our school-masters know it; and I believe the evidence of it given in the "Queen of the Air" to be the first clear and connected approximate proof of it which has yet been rendered by scientific mythology, properly so called.

You say, "I have not attempted to explain all mythology."

[Pg 172]

I wonder what you would have said of me if I had? I only know a little piece of it here and there, just as I know a crag of alp or a bend of river; and even what I know could not be put into a small octavo volume. Nevertheless, I should have had another such out by this time on the Apolline Myths, and, perhaps, one on the Earth-Gods, but for my Oxford work; and shall at all events have a little more to say on the matter than I have yet said—and much need there is—when all that has yet been done by "scientific" mythology ends in the assertion made by your reviewer, that "mythology is useful mainly as a storehouse for poets, and for literary men in want of some simile or metaphor to produce a striking effect."

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
John Ruskin.

May 18, 1871.

[From "The Morning Chronicle," January 20, 1855. (Reprinted in "The Evening Journal," January 22.)]
THE ANIMALS OF SCRIPTURE: A REVIEW.[158]

Among the various illustrated works which usually grace the beginning of the year, has appeared one which, though of graver and less attractive character than its companions, is likely to occupy a more permanent place on the library shelves. We allude to "Illustrations of Scripture, by an Animal Painter," a work which, whatever its faults or weaknesses, shows at least a singular power of giving reality and interest to scenes which are apt to be but feebly, if at all, brought before the mental vision, in consequence of our familiarity with the words which describe them. The idea of the work is itself sufficiently original. The animals are[Pg 173] throughout principal, and the pathos or moral of the passage to be illustrated is developed from its apparently subordinate part in it. Thus the luxury and idolatry of the reign of Solomon are hinted behind a group of "apes and peacocks;" the Deluge is subordinate to the dove; and the healing of the lunatic at Gennesareth to the destruction of the herd of swine.

In general, to approach an object from a new point of view is to place it in a clearer light, and perhaps the very strangeness of the treatment in some cases renders the subject more impressive than it could have been made by any more regular method of conception. But, at all events, supposing the studies of the artist to have been chiefly directed to animals, and her power to lie principally in seizing their character, she is to be thanked for filling her sketches of the inferior creatures with so much depth of meaning, and rendering the delineation even of an ape, or a swallow, suggestive of the most solemn trains of thought.

As so suggestive, without pretence or formalism, these drawings deserve a place of peculiar honor in the libraries of the young, while there are also some qualities in them which fit them for companionship with more elaborate works of art. The subject of "Lazarus" is treated with a courage and tenderness which say much for the painter's imagination, and more for her heart; and the waste of waters above which the raven hovers is expressed, though rudely, yet in a way which tells of many an hour spent in watching the play of the evening light upon the movement of the wearied sea. It is true that most of the compositions are weakened by a very visible contempt, if not ignorance, of the laws which regulate the harmonies of shade, as well as by a painful deficiency in the drawing. Still there is a life and sincerity in them which are among the rarest qualities in art; and one characteristic, very remarkable in the works of a person described in the text (we doubt not, much against her will) as an "accomplished lady"—we mean the peculiar tendency to conceptions of fearfulness, or horror, rather than of beauty. The camel, for instance, might, we should have thought, as[Pg 174] easily, and to many persons much more pleasingly, have illustrated the meeting of Rebekah with the servant of Abraham, as the desolation of Rabbah; and the dog might as gracefully have been brought forward to remind us of the words of the Syro-Phœnician woman, as to increase the horror of the death of Jezebel. There are curious evidences of a similar disposition in some of the other plates; and while it appears to us indicative of the strength of a mind of no common order, we would caution the fair artist against permitting it to appear too frequently. It renders the series of drawings in some degree repulsive to many persons, and even by those who can sympathize with it might sometimes be suspected of having its root in a sublime kind of affectation.

We have spoken of these studies as drawings. They are, in fact, as good, being photographic facsimiles of the original sketches. The text is copious, and useful as an elucidation of the natural history of Scripture.

[From "The Builder," December 9, 1854.]
"LIMNER" AND ILLUMINATION.[159]

(To the Editor of "The Builder.")

I do not usually answer objections to my written statements, otherwise I should waste my life in idle controversy; but as what I say to the workmen at the Architectural Museum[Pg 175] is necessarily brief, and in its words, though not in its substance, unconsidered, I will answer, if you will permit me, any questions or cavils which you may think worthy of admission into your columns on the subject of these lectures.

I do not know if the Cambridge correspondent, whose letter you inserted last week, is more zealous for the honor of Cary, or anxious to detect me in a mistake. If the former, he will find, if he take the trouble to look at the note in the 264th page of the second volume of the "Stones of Venice," that Cary's reputation is not likely to suffer at my hands.[160] But the translation in the instance quoted is inadmissible. It does not matter in the least whence the word "limner" is derived. I did not know when I found fault with it that it was a corruption of "illuminator," but I knew perfectly that it did not in the existing state of the English language mean "illuminator." No one talks of "limning a missal," or of a "limned missal." The word is now universally understood as signifying a painter or draughtsman in the ordinary sense, and cannot be accepted as a translation of the phrase of which it is a corruption.

Touching the last clause of the letter, I should have thought that a master of arts of Cambridge might have had wit enough to comprehend that characters may be illegible by being far[Pg 176] off, as well as by being ill-shaped; and that it is not less difficult to read what is too small to be seen than what is too strange to be understood. The inscription on the Houses of Parliament are illegible, not because they are in black letters, but because, like all the rest of the work on that, I suppose, the most effeminate and effectless heap of stones ever raised by man, they are utterly unfit for their position.

J. Ruskin.

[From the "Transactions of the New Shakspere Society" for 1878-9, pp. 409-12.]
NOTES ON A WORD IN SHAKESPEARE.[161]

Julius Cæsar, II. i. 103-4.

I.
Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire.

My dear Furnivall: Of course, in any great writer's word, the question is far less what the word came from, than where it has come to. Fret means all manner of things in that place; primarily, the rippling of clouds—as sea by wind; secondarily, the breaking it asunder for light to come through. It implies a certain degree of vexation—some dissolution—much order, and extreme beauty. I have myself used this word substantively, to express the rippled edge of a wing-feather. In architecture and jewellery it means simply roughening in a decorative manner.[162]

Ever affectionately yours,
J. Ruskin.

NOTES ON A WORD IN SHAKESPEARE.
II.
Edinburgh, 29th Sept., 1878.

Dear Furnivall: Your kind letter comes to me here, and I must answer on this paper, for, if that bit of note is really of any use to you, you must please add this word or two more in printing, as it wouldn't do to let it be such a mere fret on the vault of its subject. You say not one man in 150 knows what the line means: my dear Furnivall, not one man in 15,000, in the 19th century, knows, or ever can know, what any line—or any word means, used by a great writer. For most words stand for things that are seen, or things that are thought of; and in the 19th century there is certainly not one man in 15,000 who ever looks at anything, and not one in 15,000,000 capable of a thought. Take the intelligence of this word in this line for example—the root of the whole matter is, first, that the reader should have seen what he has often heard of, but probably not seen twice in his life—"Daybreak." Next, it is needful he should think what "break" means in that word—what is broken, namely, and by what. That is to say, the cloud of night is Broken up, as a city is broken up (Jerusalem, when Zedekiah fled), as a school breaks up, as a constitution, or a ship, is broken up; in every case with a not inconsiderable change of idea and addition to the central word. This breaking up is done by the Day, which breaks—out, as a man breaks, or bursts out, from his restraint in a passion; breaks down in tears; or breaks in, as from heaven to earth—with a breach in the cloud-wall of it; or breaks out, with a sense of outward—as the sun—out and out, farther and farther, after rain. Well; next, the thing that the day breaks up is partly a garment, rent, more than broken; a mantle, the day itself "in russet mantle clad"—the blanket of the dark, torn to be peeped through—whereon instantly you get into a whole host of new ideas; fretting as[Pg 178] a moth frets a garment; unravelling at the edge, afterwards;—thence you get into fringe, which is an entirely double word, meaning partly a thing that guards, and partly a thing that is worn away on the ground; the French Frange has, I believe, a reminiscence of φρασσω in it—our "fringe" runs partly toward frico and friction—both are essentially connected with frango, and the fringe of "breakers" at the shores of all seas, and the breaking of the ripples and foam all over them—but this is wholly different in a northern mind, which has only seen the sea

Break, break, break, on its cold gray stones,—

and a southern, which has seen a hot sea on hot sand break into lightning of phosphor flame—half a mile of fire in an instant—following in time, like the flash of minute-guns. Then come the great new ideas of order and time, and

and so the timely succession of either ball, flower, or dentil, in architecture: but this, again, going off to a totally different and still lovely idea, the main one in the word aurifrigium—which rooted once in aurifex, went on in Etruscan work, followed in Florence into a much closer connection with frigidus—their style being always in frosted gold (see the dew on a cabbage-leaf or, better, on a gray lichen, in early sunshine)—going back, nobody knows how far, but to the Temple of the Dew of Athens, and gold of Mycenæ, anyhow; and in Etruria to the Deluge, I suppose. Well, then, the notion of the music of morning comes in—with strings of lyre (or frets of Katharine's instrument, whatever it was) and stops of various quills; which gets us into another group beginning with plectrum, going aside again into plico and plight, and Milton's

"Play in the plighted clouds"

(the quills on the fretful porcupine are all thought of, first, in their piped complexity like rushes, before the standing up[Pg 179] in ill-temper), and so on into the plight of folded drapery, and round again to our blanket. I think that's enough to sketch out the compass of the word. Of course the real power of it in any place depends on the writer's grasp of it, and use of the facet he wants to cut with.

[From "The Theatre," March, 1880, p. 169.]
"THE MERCHANT OF VENICE."[163]
6th Feb., 1880.

I have no doubt that whatever Mr. Irving has stated that I said, I did say. But in personal address to an artist, to whom one is introduced for the first time, one does not usually say all that may be in one's mind. And if expressions, limited, if not even somewhat exaggerated, by courtesy, be afterwards quoted as a total and carefully-expressed criticism, the general reader will be—or may be easily—much misled. I did and do much admire Mr. Irving's own acting of Shylock. But I entirely dissent (and indignantly as well as entirely) from his general reading and treatment of the play. And I think that a modern audience will invariably be not only wrong, but diametrically and with polar accuracy opposite to the real view of any great author in the moulding of his work. So far as I could in kindness venture, I expressed my feelings[Pg 180] to that effect, in a letter which I wrote to Mr. Irving on the day after I saw the play; and I should be sincerely obliged to him, under the existing circumstances, if he would publish the whole of that letter.

RECITATIONS.
Sheffield, 16th February, 1880.

My dear Sir:[164] I am most happy to assure you, in reply to your interesting letter of the 12th, that I heard your daughters' recitations in London last autumn, with quite unmixed pleasure and the sincerest admiration—nor merely that, but with grave change in my opinions of the general value of recitations as a means of popular instruction. Usually, I like better to hear beautiful poetry read quietly than recited with action. But I felt, in hearing Shelley's "Cloud" recited (I think it was by Miss Josephine) that I also was "one of the people," and understood the poem better than ever before, though I am by way of knowing something about clouds, too. I also know the "Jackdaw of Rheims" pretty nearly by heart; but I would gladly come to London straightway, had I the time, to hear Miss Peggy speak it again. And—in fine—I have not seen any public entertainment—for many a long year—at once so sweet, so innocent, and so helpful, as that which your children can give to all the gentle and simple in mind and heart.—Believe me, my dear Sir, faithfully, and with all felicitation, yours,

J. Ruskin.

APPENDIX.

Letter to W. C. Bennett, LL.D. 1852.

Letter to Thomas Guthrie, D.D. 1853.

Mr. Windus' Sale of Pictures. 1859.

At the Play. 1867.

An Object of Charity. 1868.

Excuses from Correspondence. 1868.

Letter to the Author of a Review. 1872.

An Oxford Protest. 1875.

Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Lowe. 1877.

The Bibliography of Ruskin. 1878.
(Two Letters: September 30, and October 23.)

The Society of the Rose. 1879.

[Pg 182]
[Pg 183]

APPENDIX.

[From the "Testimonials" of W. C. Bennett, LL.D. 1871; p. 22.]
LETTER TO W. C. BENNETT, LL.D.[165]
Herne Hill, Dulwich, December 28th, 1852.

Dear Mr. Bennett: I hope this line will arrive in time to wish you and yours a happy New Year, and to assure you of the great pleasure I had in receiving your poems from you, and of the continual pleasure I shall have in possessing them. I deferred writing to you in order that I might tell you how I liked those which were new to me, but Christmas, and certain little "pattering pairs of restless shoes" which have somehow or another got into the house in his train, have hitherto prevented me from settling myself for a quiet read. In fact, I am terribly afraid of being quite turned upside down when I do, so as to lose my own identity, for you have already nearly made me like babies, and I see an ode further on to another antipathy of mine—the only one I have in the kingdom of flowers—the chrysanthemum. However, I am sure you will be well pleased if you can cure me of all dislikes. I should write to you now more cheerfully, but that I am anxious for the person who, of all I know, has fewest dislikes and warmest likings—for Miss Mitford.

[Pg 184]

I trust she is better, and that she may be spared for many years to come. I don't know if England has such another warm heart.

I hope I may have the pleasure of seeing you here in case your occasions should at any time bring you to London, and

I remain, with much respect, most truly yours,
J. Ruskin.

[From the "Memoir of Thomas Guthrie, D.D." Vol. ii. pp. 321-2 (1875).]
LETTER TO DR. GUTHRIE.[166]
Saturday, 26th, 1853.

I found a little difficulty in writing the words on the first page, wondering whether you would think the "affectionate" misused or insincere. But I made up my mind at last to write what I felt; believing that you must be accustomed to people's getting very seriously and truly attached to you, almost at first sight, and therefore would believe me.

You asked me, the other evening, some kind questions about my father. He was an Edinburgh boy, and in answer to some account by me of the pleasure I had had in hearing you, and the privilege of knowing you, as also of your exertions in the cause of the Edinburgh poor, he desires to send you the enclosed, to be applied by you in such manner as you may think fittest for the good of his native city. I have added slightly to my father's trust. I wish I could have done so more largely, but my profession of fault-finding with the world in general is not a lucrative one.

Always respectfully and affectionately yours,
J. Ruskin.

[From "The Times," March 29, 1859.]
THE SALE OF MR. WINDUS' PICTURES.

To the Editor of "The Times."

Sir: Will you oblige me by correcting an error in your account given this morning of the sale of Mr. Windus' pictures on Saturday,[167] in which the purchase of Mr. Millais's picture "Pot Pourri" is attributed to me? I neither purchased Mr. Millais's picture, nor any other picture at that sale.

I have the honor to be, Sir, your obedient servant,
J. Ruskin.

Denmark Hill, March 28.

[From "The Pall Mall Gazette," March 1, 1867.]
AT THE PLAY.

To the Editor of "The Pall Mall Gazette."

Sir: I am writing a series of private letters on matters of political economy to a working man in Newcastle, without objecting to his printing them, but writing just as I should if they were for his eye only. I necessarily take copies of them for reference, and the one I sent him last Monday seems to me not unlikely to interest some of your readers who care about modern drama. So I send you the copy of it to use if you like.[168]

Truly yours,
J. Ruskin.

Denmark Hill, Feb. 28, 1867.

[From "The Daily Telegraph," January 22, 1868.]
AN OBJECT OF CHARITY.[169]

To the Editor of "The Daily Telegraph."

Sir: Except in "Gil Blas," I never read of anything Astræan on the earth so perfect as the story in your fourth article to-day.

I send you a check for the Chancellor. If 40, in legal terms, means 400, you must explain the further requirements to your impulsive public.

I am, Sir, your faithful servant,
J. Ruskin.

Denmark Hill, S., Jan. 21, 1868.

EXCUSES FROM CORRESPONDENCE.
Denmark Hill, S.,
2d February, 1868.

I am about to enter on some work which cannot be well done or even approximately well, unless without interruption, and it would be desirable for me, were it in my power, to leave home[Pg 187] for some time, and carry out my undertaking in seclusion. But as my materials are partly in London, I cannot do this; so that my only alternative is to ask you to think of me as if actually absent from England, and not to be displeased though I must decline all correspondence. And I pray you to trust my assurance that, whatever reasons I may have for so uncouth behavior, none of them are inconsistent with the respect and regard in which I remain,

Faithfully yours,[170]

[From "The Liverpool Weekly Albion," November 9, 1872.]
LETTER TO THE AUTHOR OF A REVIEW.[171]
Corpus Christi College, Oxford,
Wednesday, 30th Oct.

[My dear] Sir: I was on the point of writing to the Editor of The Albion to ask the name of the author of that article. Of [Pg 188]course, one likes praise [and I'm so glad of it that I can take a great many kinds], but I never got any [that] I liked so much before, because, as far as I [can] remember nobody ever noticed or allowed for the range of work I've had to do, and which really has been dreadfully costly and painful to me, compelling me to leave things just at the point when one's work on them has become secure and delightsome, to attack them on another rough side. It is a most painful manner of life, and I never got any credit for it before. But the more I see, the more I feel the necessity of seeing all round, however hastily.

I am entirely grateful for the review and the understanding of me; and I needed some help just now—for I'm at once single-handed and dead—or worse—hearted, and as nearly beaten as I've been in my life.

Always therefore I shall be, for the encouragement at a heavy time,

Very gratefully yours,
(Signed) J. Ruskin.

[From "The Globe," October 29, 1874.]
AN OXFORD PROTEST.[172]

The Slade Professor has tried for five years to please everybody in Oxford by lecturing at any time that might be conveniently subordinate to other dates of study in the University. He finds he has pleased nobody, and must for the future at least make his hour known and consistent. He cannot alter it this term because people sometimes come from a distance and have settled their plans by the hours announced in the Gazette, but for many he reasons he thinks it right to change the place, and will hereafter lecture in the theatre of the museum.[173] On Friday [Pg 189]the 30th he will not begin till half-past twelve to allow settling time. Afterwards, all his lectures will be at twelve in this and future terms. He feels that if he cannot be granted so much as twelve hours of serious audience in working time during the whole Oxford year, he need not in future prepare public lectures at which his pupils need not much regret their non-attendance.

[From "The Standard," August 28, 1877. Reprinted in the "Notes and Correspondence" to "Fors Clavigera," Letter 81, September, 1877, p. 268.]
MR. RUSKIN AND MR. LOWE.

To the Editor of "The Standard."

Sir: My attention has been directed to an article in your columns of the 22d inst., referring to a supposed correspondence between Mr. Lowe and me.[174] Permit me to state that the letter in question is not Mr. Lowe's. The general value of your article as a review of my work and methods of writing will, I trust, rather be enhanced than diminished by the correction, due to Mr. Lowe, of this original error; and the more, that your critic in the course of his review expresses his not unjustifiable conviction that no correspondence between Mr. Lowe and me is possible on any intellectual subject whatever.

I am, Sir, your obedient servant,
John Ruskin.

Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire,
August 24.

[From the List of "Mr. Shepherd's Publications" printed at the end of his "The Bibliography of Dickens," 1880.]
THE BIBLIOGRAPHY OF RUSKIN.

I.
Brantwood, Coniston,
Sept. 30, 1878.

Dear Sir: So far from being distasteful to me, your perfect reckoning up of me not only flatters my vanity extremely, but will be in the highest degree useful to myself. But you know so much more about me than I now remember about anything, that I can't find a single thing to correct or add—glancing through at least.

I will not say that you have wasted your time; but I may at least regret the quantity of trouble the book must have given you, and am, therefore, somewhat ashamedly, but very gratefully yours,

J. Ruskin.

R. H. Shepherd, Esq.

II.
Brantwood, Coniston,
Oct. 23, 1878.

Dear Mr. Shepherd: I am very deeply grateful to you, as I am in all duty bound, for this very curious record of myself. It will be of extreme value to me in filling up what gaps I can in this patched coverlid of my life before it is draped over my coffin—if it may be.

I am especially glad to have note of the letters to newspapers, but most chiefly to have the good news of so earnest and patient a friend.

Ever gratefully yours,
J. Ruskin.

[Pg 191]

[From the "First Annual Report" of the "Ruskin Society" (of the Rose), Manchester 1880.]
THE SOCIETY OF THE ROSE.[175]

"No, indeed, I don't want to discourage the plan you have so kindly and earnestly formed, but I could not easily or decorously promote it myself, could I? But I fully proposed to write you a letter to be read at the first meeting, guarding you especially against an 'ism,' or a possibility of giving occasion for one; and I am exceedingly glad to receive your present letter. Mine was not written because it gave me trouble to think of it, and I can't take trouble now. But without thinking, I can at once assure you that the taking of the name of St. George would give me endless trouble, and cause all manner of mistakes, and perhaps even legal difficulties. We must not have that, please.

"But I think you might with grace and truth take the name of the Society of the Rose—meaning the English wild rose—and that the object of the society would be to promote such English learning and life as can abide where it grows. You see it is the heraldic sign on my books, so that you might still keep pretty close to me.

"Supposing this were thought too far-fetched or sentimental by the promoters of the society, I think the 'More' Society would be a good name, following out the teaching of the Utopia as it is taken up in 'Fors.' I can't write more to-day, but I dare say something else may come into my head, and I'll write again, or you can send me more names for choice."

[From "The Autographic Mirror," December 23 and 30, 1865.]
LETTER TO MR. W. H. HARRISON.[176]

Dear Mr. Harrison: The plate I send is unluckily merely outlined in its principal griffin (it is just being finished), but it may render your six nights' work a little more amusing. I don't want it back.

Never mind putting "see to quotations," as I always do. And, in the second revise, don't look to all my alterations to tick them off, but merely read straight through the new proof to see if any mistake strikes you. This will be more useful to me than the other.

Most truly yours, with a thousand thanks,
J. Ruskin.

[From the "Journal of Dramatic Reform," November, 1880.]
DRAMATIC REFORM.[177]

I.

My Dear Sir: Yes, I began writing something—a year ago, is it?—on your subject, but have lost it, and am now utterly too busy to touch so difficult and so important a subject. I shall come on it, some day, necessarily.

Meantime, the one thing I have to say mainly is that the idea of making money by a theatre, and making it educational at the same time, is utterly to be got out of people's heads. You don't make money out of a Ship of the Line, nor should you out of a Church, nor should you out of a College, nor should you out of a Theatre.

Pay your Ship's officers, your Church officers, your College tutors, and your Stage tutors, what will honorably maintain them. Let there be no starring on the Stage boards, more than on the deck, but the Broadside well delivered.

And let the English Gentleman consider with himself what he has got to teach the people: perhaps then, he may tell the English Actor what he has to teach them.

Ever faithfully yours,
(Signed) J. Ruskin.

Brantwood, July 30th, 1880.

II.

My Dear Sir: I am heartily glad you think my letter may be of some use. I wish it had contained the tenth part of what I wanted to say.

May I ask you at least to add this note to it, to tell how[Pg 194] indignant I was, a few days ago, to see the drop-scene(!) of the Folies at Paris composed of huge advertisements! The ghastly want of sense of beauty, and endurance of loathsomeness gaining hourly on the people!

They were playing the Fille du Tambour Major superbly, for the most part; they gave the introductory convent scene without the least caricature, the Abbess being played by a very beautiful and gracefully-mannered actress, and the whole thing would have been delightful had the mere decorations of the theatre been clean and pretty. To think that all the strength of the world combining in Paris to amuse itself can't have clean box-curtains! or a pretty landscape sketch for a drop scene!—but sits in squalor and dismalness, with bills stuck all over its rideau!

I saw Le Chalet here last night, in many respects well played and sung, and it is a quite charming little opera in its story, only it requires an actress of extreme refinement for the main part, and everybody last night sang too loud. There is no music of any high quality in it, but the piece is one which, played with such delicacy as almost any clever, well-bred girl could put into the heroine's part (if the audiences would look for acting more than voice), ought to be extremely delightful to simple persons.

On the other hand, I heard William Tell entirely massacred at the great opera-house at Paris. My belief is they scarcely sang a piece of pure Rossini all night, but had fitted in modern skimble-skamble tunes, and quite unspeakably clumsy and common ballet. I scarcely came away in better humor from the mouthed tediousness of Gerin at the Français, but they took pains with it, and I suppose it pleased a certain class of audience. The William Tell could please nobody at heart.

The libretto of Jean de Nivelle is very beautiful, and ought to have new music written for it. Anything so helplessly tuneless as its present music I never heard, except mosquitoes and cicadas.

Ever faithfully yours,
(Signed) J. Ruskin.

Amiens, October 12th, 1880.

[From the "Glasgow Herald," October 7, 1880.]
THE LORD RECTORSHIP OF GLASGOW UNIVERSITY.[178]

I.
Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire, 10th June, 1880.

My Dear Sir: I am greatly flattered by your letter, but there are two reasons why I can't stand—the first, that though I believe myself the stanchest Conservative in the British Islands, I hold some opinions, and must soon clearly utter them, concerning both lands and rents, which I fear the Conservative Club would be very far from sanctioning, and think Mr. Bright himself had been their safer choice. The second, that I am not in the least disposed myself to stand in any contest where it is possible that Mr. Bright might beat me.

Are there really no Scottish gentlemen of birth and learning from whom you could choose a Rector worthier than Mr. Bright? and better able than any Southron to rectify what might be oblique, or hold straight what wasn't yet so, in a Scottish University?

Might I ask the favor of the transmission of a copy of this letter to the Independent Club? It will save me the difficulty of repetition in other terms.—And believe me, my dear sir, always the club's and your faithful servant,

(Signed) J. Ruskin.

Matt. P. Fraser, Esq.

II.
13th June, 1880.

My Dear Sir: I am too tired at this moment (I mean this day or two back) to be able to think. My health may break[Pg 196] down any day, and I cannot bear a sense of having to do anything. If you would take me on condition of my residence for a little while with you, and giving a little address to the students after I had seen something of them, I think I could come, but I won't stand ceremonies nor make long speeches, and you really should try to get somebody else.

Ever respectfully yours,
(Signed) J. Ruskin.

Matt. P. Fraser. Esq.

III.
24th June, 1880.

My Dear Sir: I am grieved at my own vacillation, and fear it is more vanity than sense of duty in which I leave this matter of nomination to your own pleasure. But I had rather err in vanity than in heartlessness, and so will do my best for you if you want me.

Ever respectfully yours,
(Signed) J. Ruskin.

IV.
Rouen, 28th September, 1880.

Sir: I am obliged by your letter, but can absolutely pay no regard to anything said or done by Mr. Bright's Committee beyond requesting my own committees to print for their inspection—or their use—in any way they like, every word of every letter I have written to my supporters, or non-supporters, or any other person in Glasgow, so far as such letters may be recoverable.

Faithfully yours,
(Signed) J. Ruskin.

Matt. P. Fraser, Esq.

[Pg 197]

V.[179]
[From "The Glasgow Herald," October 12, 1880.]
Brantwood, Coniston, Lancashire.

My Dear Sir: What in the devil's name have you to do with either Mr. D'Israeli or Mr. Gladstone? You are students at the University, and have no more business with politics than you have with rat-catching.

Had you ever read ten words of mine [with understanding] you would have known that I care no more [either] for Mr. D'Israeli or Mr. Gladstone than for two old bagpipes with the drones going by steam, but that I hate all Liberalism as I do Beelzebub, and that, with Carlyle, I stand, we two alone now in England, for God and the Queen.

Ever faithfully yours,
J. Ruskin.

Alex. Mitchell, Esq., Avoch, by Inverness.

P.S.—You had better, however, ask the Conservatives for a copy of my entire letters to them.

[Pg 198]

[Pg 200]
[Pg 201]

EPILOGUE.

I find my immitigable Editor insists on epilogue as well as prologue from his submissive Author; which would have fretted me a little, since the last letter of the series appears to me a very pretty and comprehensive sum of the matters in the book, had not the day on which, as Fors would have it, I am to write its last line, brought to my mind something of importance which I forgot to say in the preface; nor will it perhaps be right to leave wholly without explanation the short closing letter to which I have just referred.

It should be observed that it was written to the President of the Liberal party of the Glasgow students, in answer to the question which I felt to be wholly irrelevant to the business in hand, and which could not have been answered in anything like official terms with anything short of a forenoon's work. I gave the answer, therefore, in my own terms, not in the least petulant, but chosen to convey as much information as I could in the smallest compass; and carrying it accurately faceted and polished on the angles.

For instance, I never, under any conditions of provocation or haste, would have said that I hated Liberalism as I did Mammon, or Belial, or Moloch. I chose the milder fiend of Ekron, as the true exponent and patron of Liberty, the God of Flies; and if my Editor, in final kindness, can refer the reader to the comparison of the House-fly and House-dog, in (he, and not I, must say where)[180] the letter will have received all the illustration which I am minded to give it. I was only surprised that after its publication, of course never intended, [Pg 202]though never forbidden by me, it passed with so little challenge, and was, on the whole, understood as it was meant.

The more important matter I have to note in closing, is the security given to the conclusions arrived at in many subjects treated of in these letters, in consequence of the breadth of the basis on which the reasoning is founded. The multiplicity of subject, and opposite directions of investigation, which have so often been alleged against me, as if sources of weakness, are in reality, as the multiplied buttresses of the apse of Amiens, as secure in allied result as they are opposed in direction. Whatever (for instance) I have urged in economy has ten times the force when it is remembered to have been pleaded for by a man loving the splendor, and advising the luxury of ages which overlaid their towers with gold, and their walls with ivory. No man, oftener than I, has had cast in his teeth the favorite adage of the insolent and the feeble—"ne sutor." But it has always been forgotten by the speakers that, although the proverb might on some occasions be wisely spoken by an artist to a cobbler, it could never be wisely spoken by a cobbler to an artist.

J. Ruskin.

Amiens, St. Crispin's Day, 1880.

[Pg 203]

CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF THE LETTERS CONTAINED IN BOTH VOLUMES.

Note.—In the second and third columns the bracketed words and figures are more or less certainly conjectured; whilst those unbracketed give the actual dating of the letter.

INDEX.

Abana and Pharpar, ii. 10.

Academy-studies, i. 119;
usual tendencies of academies, i. 73;
the Liverpool, ib.;
Royal Academy, pictures seen to disadvantage in the, i. 20;
Exhibitions of the, i. 59, 67, 176 (note), 119 (note);
the Scotch Academy, i. 74 (note); 176 (note).

Acland, Sir Thomas, i. 25.

---- (Dr.), Henry, i. 25; i. 125 (note); i. 130; i. 170. (See also Oxford Museum.)

Advertisement of books, ii. 164.

Æschylus, his work, i. 22 (note).

Agassiz and Forbes, i. 176; i. 187.

Age, the present, one of "steam and iron, luxury and selfishness," i. 18;
one in which poetry is disregarded, i. 18;
fever of change in, ii. 101;
shallow learning, the curse of, ii. 124.

Agreements, compulsory, ii. 53.

Ailsa Rock, i. 146.

Alisma Plantago, i. 61.

Allen, Mr. George, i. 163; i. 169 (note).

Alms and Wages, ii. 56; ii. 60.

Almsgiving, ii. 101. (See Charity.)

Alps, conformation of the, i. 173, seqq.;
origin of form of, i. 174;
charts of sections of chain wanted, i. 175;
extent of chain, i. 182;
Mr. Ruskin's lecture on the Savoy Alps, i. 174, and note.

Alsace and Lorraine, ii. 28.

Alsen, ii. 18, and note.

Amazon, Kiss', ii. 13 (note), 12.

Ambition, tone of modern, ii. 144, 146.

America, England no need to learn from, ii. 73;
has no castles, i. 151 (note);
reference to Mr. Ruskin by Mr. Holyoake in, ii. 73;
serf economy in, ii. 21.

American War, loss of property in, ii. 38. (See also Lincoln, Pres.)

Amiens, Cathedral of, i. 154, ii. 202;
the theatres at, ii. 193.

Andrew, St., ii. 8.

Angelico, i. 43, i. 118;
and Giotto, their theology of death, i. 118;
holiness of, ii. 23 (note);
his "highest inspiration" destroyed at Florence, i. 38, and note;
his "Last Judgment," i. 44, and note;
[Pg 214]formerly no picture by in National Gallery, i. 43, and note.

Angrogna, the valley of, ii. 11.

Animals, kindness and cruelty to, ii. 128 seqq.; 128 (note); ii. 142;
portraiture of in architecture, i. 141;
of Scripture, ii. 172.

Anjou, ii. 28.

Annual Register (1859) quoted, ii. 10 (note).

Antwerp, "Rubens" at, i. 39.

"A Pagan Message," ii. 143.

Apolline Myths, the, ii. 172.

Apollo Belvedere, the, i. 7.

Appendix, List of letters in the, ii. 181.

Arabian Nights, the, quoted, "the seals of Solomon," (Story of the Fisherman, Chapter ii.), i. 136;
Story of the Ugly Bridegroom, ii. 101.

Arbia, the, ii. 15 (note).

Arbitration and Strikes (letter), ii. 48.

Archer knight, the, i. 158.

Architect, The, (Dec. 27, 1873,) Letter on E. George's Etchings, i. 113.

Architecture, List of Letters on, i. 123;
its beauty dependent on its use, i. 148;
Byzantine builders, i. 167;
cultivation of feeling for drawing in, i. 114;
English copying of old, i. 141;
expressional character of, i. 157;
Frankenstein monsters, i. 156;
Gothic and Classic, i. 99 (note);
Gothic, and the Oxford Museum (letters), i. 125 seqq., 131 seqq.;
Greek work freehand, i. 168; jobbery in modern, i. 158;
pseudo-Venetian, i. 157;
sculpture, use of, in, i. 139 seqq.;
St. Mark's, Venice, place of, in, i. 161;
Ruskin's influence on modern, i. 154-157;
unity in, i. 140.
(See also Gothic Architecture.)

Arcola, ii. 33.

Argument, the best kind of, i. 37.

Aristotle, his work, i. 22 (note).

Arno, the, ii. 116-118.

Art, the alphabet of (Dr. Acland on), i. 130;
color and design, i. 29;
connection of with other studies, i. 28, 31;
conventionalism in, i. 142;
dancing, ii. 148;
dicta in, dangerous, i. 24, 28;
drawing—practical value of, i. 28;
an essential part of education, i. 26;
its uses, ib.;
a more universal faculty than music, ib.;
—education in art, i. 30;
enjoyment of different kinds of art by different people, i. 14, i. 27;
generalization in art, i. 75;
Greek art, study of, ii. 148;
growth of art in England and Italy, i. 9;
happiness and knowledge of art, i. 25;
highest art the most truthful, i. 140;
history of, i. 27;
how far to be studied, i. 29;
"ideas" in, ii. 17;
inclusive of what, i. 30;
should be public, permanent, and expressive, i. 127, 54;
manufacture and, i. 29, ii. 138;
music, ii. 148;
ornamental art, i. 142;
special gift for, how to detect, i. 29;
studies, how to direct, i. 27;
teaching by correspondence, i. 32;
unity of purpose in, i. 140;
use of before printing, i. 125 (note).

Art Criticism, List of Letters on, i. 2;
letter, "Art Criticism," i. 10 seqq.;
art criticism, impossible to very young men, and why, i. 27;
necessarily partial, and why, i. 27;
[Pg 215]the common dicta of, their dangerous
use, i. 24, 26;
how to develop the power of, ib.;
the foundation of, i. 27;
the kinds of, right and wrong, ib.

Art-critics, i. 12;
two kinds of, i. 10;
qualifications of, i. 10 (note).

Art Education, List of Letters on, i. 2;
danger of two good models, i. 28.
(See Art.)

Art Examinations, range and object of, i. 25;
examples of questions to be set in, i. 25.

Artist (see Art), two courses open to the, i. 18;
extent of his work, i. 26;
ignorance of landscape in portrait painters, i. 15, and note;
letters on artists and pictures, i. 111 seqq.

Artist and Amateur's Magazine, Letter on Art Criticism in (January 1844), i. 10 seqq.;
allusion to article in, i. 18, and note;
Letter to Editor on "Reflections in Water" (February 1844), i. 191 seqq.;
review of "Modern Painters," in, i. 200 (note).

Art Journal, "Cestus of Aglaia" referred to, ii. 99, and note;
Letters on "A Museum or Picture Gallery" mentioned, i. xvii. and note.

Arts, Society of. (See Societies.)

Art Union, on "Modern Painters," i. 191;
writers for the, i. 15.

Arve, foul water of the, i. 195.

Arveron, the, i. 179.

Ashmolean Society, Proceedings of (1841), Letter on "A Landslip near Giagnano" in, i. 202.

Asiatic, The, (May 23, 1871,) Letter, "The Queen of the Air," ii. 171.

Astræan anecdote, an, ii. 180.

Athena, i. 162, 165 (note); the Queen of the Air, ii. 171.

Athenæum, The, (February 14, 1857,) Letter on the Gentian, i. 204;
the Glasgow Athenæum, ii. 124 (note).

Athens, ii. 178.

Atmospheric pressure, i. 185 seqq.

Atreus' treasury and St. Mark's, i. 162.

Audiences, modern, ii. 124; ii. 179.

Aurifrigium, ii. 178.

Authorship, early in life, deprecated, ii. 164; needs training, ib.

Austerlitz, battle of, ii. 30.

Austin's definition of Justice, ii. 57 (note).

Australia, gold in, ii. 56 (note).

Austria, characteristics of the nation, ii. 5 seqq.;
"barbarism," and magnanimity of, ii. 6;
and France, loss in war between, ii. 33;
work of, in Italy, ii. 6 seqq.

Autographic Mirror, The (Dec. 23, 1865), letter to W. H. Harrison in, ii. 192.

Auvergne, ii. 28.

Aytoun's "Ballads of Scotland " referred to, i. 76 (note).


Babies, ii. 183;
"Baby May," ib. (note).

Backhuysen, i. 12.

[Pg 216]Bacon, his mission and work, i. 22 (note).

Ballads, Scotch, i. 76 (note);
"Burd Helen," ib.

Bandinelli, i. 43.

Bank directors, ii. 131.

Bargaining and begging, ii. 56.

Barometer, use of the, i. 185.

Barry, Sir C., ii. 175 (note);
James, R. A., anecdote of, i. 15, 16, and note.

Bartholomew Fair, i. 55.

Bartolomeo, Fra, no picture by in the National Gallery, i. 44, and note.

Bass, Mr. M. T., ii. 18 (note).

Bass-rock, The, i. 145.

Beaconsfield, Lord, and Mr. Gladstone, ii. 197.

Beaumont, Sir G., i. 7 (note).

Bee, the Queen, ii. 103.

Beelzebub, ii. 197.

Begging and Bargaining, ii. 56.

Bellini, i. 43, 47, 165 (note);
his "Doge Leonardo Loredano," 45, 46, and note;
character of as an artist, ib.

Bellinzona, the people of, ii. 117;
Mr. Ruskin at, ib.

Bennett, W. C., Letter to, ii. 183;
his Poems, ib., and note.

Bentham's definition of justice, ii. 56.

Ben Wyvis, i. 146.

Berlin, Mr. Ruskin's letters from, ii. 3, 8;
the sights of, ii. 12 and 12 (note);
Sundays at, ii. 11.

Bible, animals of the, ii. 172 seqq.;
possible errors in the, ii. 98, and note;
what to read in the, ii. 142;
quoted or referred to,—
"What are these wounds in thy hands" (Zechariah xiii. 6), i. 60 (note).
"I meditate on all thy works" (Psalm cxliii. 5), i. 61 (note).
"Behold, I stand at the door and knock" (Revelation iii. 20), i. 68.
The wild grass "whereof the mower filleth not his hand" (Psalm cxxix. 7), i. 68.
(See both Bible and Prayer-book versions.)
"The feet of those who publish peace" (Isaiah iii. 7), i. 133.
"We also are his offspring" (Acts xvii. 28), i. 162.
"Abana and Pharpar" (2 Kings v. 12), ii. 10.
"Woe unto thee, O land, when thy king is a child " (Ecclesiastes x. 16), ii. 21.
"Raising the poor" (1 Sam. ii. 8; Psalm cxiii. 7), ii. 27.
"The commandment is holy, just, and good" (Romans vii. 12), ii. 55.
"Who sweareth to his own hurt, and changeth not" (Psalm xv. 4), ii. 57.
"Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth" (Exodus xxi. 24, and reff.), ii. 63.
"He that delicately bringeth up his servant," etc. (Proverbs xxix. 21), ii. 93.
"Not now as a servant, but above a servant, a brother beloved" (Philemon 16), ii. 98.
"The waters of comfort" (Psalm xxiii. 2, Prayer-book version), ii. 115.
"Eyes have they, and see not" (Jeremiah v. 21), ii. 140.
"A rod for the fool's back" (Proverbs xxvi. 3), ii. 141.
"A rod is for the back of him that is void of understanding" (Proverbs x. 13), ib.
"Thou shalt not commit adultery" (Exodus xx. 14), ii. 147.
"Male and female created he them" (Genesis i. 27), ii. 148.
"I will make a helpmeet for him" (Genesis ii. 18), ib.
"All her household are clothed with scarlet" (Proverbs xxxi. 21, 22), ii. 155.
[Pg 217]"Who clothed you in scarlet" (2 Samuel i. 24), ib.
"The king's daughter is all glorious within" (Psalm xiv. 13, 14), ii. 155.
"She riseth while it is yet night.... Strength and honor are her clothing" (Proverbs xxxi. 15, xxii. 5), ii. 157.
"And the city was broken up" (2 Kings xxv. 4), ii. 177.

Bigg, Mr. W. M., sale of pictures, i. 102 (note).

Bills, for fresh railways, ii. 88;
the reform bill (1867), ii. 133.

Birds, preservation of wild, ii. 128 (note);
treatment of, ii. 142.

Birmingham Daily Mail, Nov. 27, 1879 (Mr. Ruskin on St. Mark's, Venice), i. 170.

Bishops, ii. 131.

Black, W., "The Daughter of Heth," i. 120 (note).

Black-letter, not illegible, ii. (note), 174, 175.

Blackfriars Bible Class. See "New Year's Address."

Blackstone's summary of law, ii. 63, and note.

Blackwood's Magazine, the art critic of, i. 13.

"Blind Fiddler," the, i. 7.

Bluecoat School, i. 55.

Boat-race, training for, ii. 145.

Boileau quoted, i. 14.

"Bold" work in drawing and music, i. 95.

Bonheur, Mdlle. Rosa, escape of, from Paris, ii. 23 (note).

Books, publication of, ii. 163;
number of in the world, ii. 164.

Booth, J. Wilkes (assassin of President Lincoln), ii. 54 (note).

Botany, an examination paper in, i. 32.
(See also Flowers.)

Bouguer, Pierre, i. 196 (note).

Bourges Cathedral, i. 154.

Bragge, Mr. W. and the Sheffield Museum, ii. 126 (note).

"Break," meaning of, ii. 177.

Brêche, the, ii. 28.

Brenta, the, ii. 10, 117.

Brewster, Sir D., i. 196.

Bridgewater House, "Turner" at, i. 11, and note.

Bright, Mr. John, M.P., ii. 195 seqq.

Brighton, railway competition at, ii. 83 (note).

British Museum, Letter on, i. 52 seqq.;
i. 102, 103;
catalogues of the, i. 53;
Henry VI.'s psalter at, i. 54, and note;
preservation of drawings at, i. 84;
what it is and is not, i. 53, 54.

Brodie, Prof., at Oxford, i. 134, and note.

Bromley, villas at, i. 156.

Brooke, Stopford A., ii. 156, and note.

Browne, Edward, Dr., ii. 120, and note;
Thomas, Sir, ib.

Browning, Robert, ii. 183 (note).

Bubastis, cats sacred to (Herodotus, ii. 67), ii. 19.

Buchan's Scotch Ballads referred to, i. 76 (note).

Buckland, Dr. William, i. 182 (note).

[Pg 218]Builder, The (Dec. 9, 1854), Letter, "Limner" and Illumination, ii. 174.

Buildings, modern, ii. 147, i. 156;
repair of, ii. 203.

Bunch, Sydney Smith's, ii. 96, and note.

Bunney, Mr., painting of St. Mark's, i. 169 (note).

Buonaroti, i. 43.

"Burd Helen," i. 76, and note;
meaning of "Burd," ib.

Burgundy, ii. 28.

Burial and immortality, i. 141.

Burlington House, i. 118.

Burne Jones, Mr., and St. Mark's, Venice, i. 170.

Burns, quoted, i. 19, and note.

Butler, Bishop, ii. 56.

Byron, quoted, i. 19, and note, i. 20;
Turner's illustrations of, i. 102 (note).


Cabmen's fares, ii. 52.

Calcutta, ii. 32.

California, gold in, ii. 37 (note).

Callcott, Sir A., i. 14, 21, 23.

Campanile, St. Mark's, Venice, i. 167;
at Verona, i. 169.

Campbell, quoted, i. 20 (note), 21.

Canterbury Cathedral, i. 161.

Cape of Good Hope and Venetian History, ii. 145.

Capital, employment of, ii. 85 seqq.;
sunk in works of art, ii. 86.

Capital Punishment, ii. 134.

Cappel, ii. 4 (note), 5.

Capri, grotto of, i. 200 (note).

"Captain," loss of the, ii. 27, and note.

Caracci and Titian, i. 51.

Careers, modern, ii. 144, 145, 146.

Carlyle, Thomas, quoted, his "Frederick the Great," ii. 27;
on the Jamaica Insurrection and the Eyre Defence Fund, ii. 20 (note), 22 (note);
on servants, ii. 101;
letter to W. C. Bennett, ii. 183 (note).

Carpenter, W. H., i. 84, and note, 92.

Carriage of heavy goods, ii. 136, 138.

Cary's Dante quoted, ii. 15 (note);
criticised, 174, and note.

Casentino, ii. 118.

Castel-a-mare, landslip near, i. 203.

Castles—building of, i. 148, 149;
definition of, i. 148;
not to be imitated, i. 149;
proper, no longer needed or possible, i. 148;
none in America, i. 151 (note);
Warwick Castle, i. 151 seqq.

Casts of St. Mark's, i. 163, 169.

Catechism, won't make good servants, ii. 94;
or educate children, ii. 123.

Cathartics, use of by ancients, ii. 67.

Catholics, Roman, and Protestants, ii. 4 seqq.

Cellini, i, 43.

"Cestus of Aglaia." (See Ruskin.)

Chamouni, i. 174;
the rocks of, i. 179;
[Pg 219]land destroyed at, ii. 116.

Champagne, demand for, ii. 45.

Chantrey, Sir F., i. 21, 23.

Chapman, Mr. (of Glasgow Athenæum), ii. 124.

Character formed by employment, ii. 132.

Charity, ii. 131;
invalid charities, ii. 139;
"an object of" (letter), ii. 186

Charity-children singing at St. Paul's, ii. 149.

Charles the Bold, ii. 28.

Charlottenburg, tomb of Queen Louise at, i. 12, and note.

Chartres Cathedral, i. 154.

"Chasing," meaning of the word, ii. 176 (note).

Chiaroscuro, i. 4;
of Leech, i. 111.

"Child Waters," ballad of, i. 77 (note).

China, war in, ii. 17.

Chivalry, the foundation of, ii. 143 seqq.

"Chorus," ii. 148.

Christ, offices of, to the soul, i. 68, 69.

Christ Church, Dean of, and St. Mark's, Venice, i. 170.

Christian Life, The (Dec. 20, 1879), Letter on Co-operation in, ii. 73.

Christie and Manson, sales by, i. 77 (note), ii. 69, ii. 183 (note).

Chrysanthema, ii. 183.

Cimabue, anecdote relating to, i. 9, and note;
his picture of the Virgin, ib.;
teaches Giotto, i. 25 (note).

Cinderella, ii. 100.

Cirencester, Agricultural College at, ii. 115.

Citadel, definition of a, i. 148.

Civet, ii. 97.

Claude, i. 24;
challenged by Turner, i. 46, and note;
his "Seaport" and "Mill," ib.;
pictures of, restored, i. 46 (note).
(See National Gallery.)

Cleopatra dissolving the pearl, i. 50.

Coal, how to economize English, ii. 135.

Cocker, Edward, arithmetician (b. 1631, d. 1677), ii. 42.

Coincidence, a strange, ii. 104 (note), 104.

Colen, ii. 120.

Colenso, Bishop, ii. 98 (note);
his book on the Pentateuch, ib.

Collins, C. A., i. 60 seqq.; ib. (note);
his "Convent Thoughts," ib.;
portrait of Wm. Bennett, ib.;
his writings, ib.

Cologne, the "Rubens" at, i. 39.

Colonization, ii. 87, ii. 128.

Color, and design, i. 29;
eye for, rare, i. 15;
the laws of, how far defined, i. 137;
"scarlet" the purest, ii. 196;
of water, i. 197.

Combe, Mr., purchase of the "Light of the World" by, i. 67 (note).

Commandments, the Ten, ii. 142.

Commercial morality (letter), ii. 70;
putrefaction, ii. 74.

Commons, House of, tone of debate on Denmark, ii. 18.

Conscience, the light of, i. 68.

[Pg 220]Conscription, forms of true, ii. 137.

Consistency, the nature of true, i. 25 (note).

Contemporary Review, Mr. Goldwin Smith's article in (Dec., 1872), ii. 66 (note);
Mr. Ruskin's "Home and its Economies" in (May, 1873), ii. 144 (note);
"Letters on the Lord's Prayer" in (Dec., 1879), ii. 142.

Conventionalism in Art, i. 142.

Conway Castle, i. 151.

Co-operation, letters to Mr. G. J. Holyoake on, ii. 73, 74.

Copenhagen, ii. 32.

Copies, of pictures in England and Italy, i. 106;
of Turner, i. 105.

Cornhill Magazine, Mr. Ruskin's article on Sir Joshua and Holbein (March, 1860), ii. 12 (note).

Cornwall, clear water on coast of, i. 196.

Correggio, i. 47, 75, 96;
copies of, i. 106;
in the Louvre, i. 50.

Correspondence, Mr. Ruskin's excuses from, ii. 186.

Cotopaxi, i. 183.

Cotton, substitutes for, ii. 158.

Coventry, riband-makers of, ii. 80, 136;
Co-operative Record, letter in, on co-operation, ii. 73 (note).

Cramlington, strike at, ii. 106, and note.

Crawford Place, ii. 105, and note.

Creation, man its greatest marvel, i. 96.

Cricklade, i. 53 (note).

Criticism (See Art-criticism), List of Letters on literary, ii. 161;
literary, ii. 165, 167;
position of critics, ii. 167;
the Goddess of Criticism, ib. (note);
rarity of good, i. 3.

Crime, how to prevent, ii. 134;
and drunkenness, ii. 130;
and madness, ii. 130 (note).

Criminal classes, letter and pamphlet on the, ii. 131, 132 seqq.;
how to treat criminals, ii. 130.

Cronstadt, ii. 32.

Crossing-sweepers in Utopia and London, ii. 119.

Crown, the, jewels, i. 53.

Cruelty to animals, ii. 127 (note).

"Cruise upon Wheels," A, i. 61 (note).

Curtius, ii. 4 (note).

Custozza, ii. 4 (note).

Cuyp, pictures of in National Gallery, i. 39, and note.


Daily News, The, Letter of Mr. Ruskin "on Co-operation" in (June 19, 1880), ii. 73;
Speech of Mr. Ruskin at the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (July 11, 1877), ii. 128 (note).

Daily Telegraph, The, Letters and Articles in (in order of date):—
(Oct. 28. 1864) "The Law of Supply and Demand," ii. 39.
(Oct. 31, 1864)      "        "      "        ii. 40.
(Nov. 3, 1864)      "        "      "        ii. 43.
(Dec. 20, 1865) "The Jamaica Insurrection," ii. 20.
[Pg 221]Carlyle's Letter to the Eyre Defence Fund, ii. 22 (note)
(Sept. 5, 1865) "Domestic Servants"—Mastership, ii. 93.
(Sept. 7, 1865)    "      "      Experience, ii. 95.
(Sept. 18, 1865)    "      "      Sonship and Slavery, ii. 96.
Articles, etc., on servants, ii. 94 (note), 99 (note), 102 (note).
(Oct. 17, 1865) "Modern Houses," ii. 104.
Other correspondence on houses, ib. (note).
(Dec. 8, 1865) "Our Railway System," ii. 88.
Article on railways, ib. (note).
(Jan. 22, 1868) "An object of charity," ii. 186.
Article on Matilda Griggs, ib. (note).
(July 16, 1868) Strikes, Mr. Ruskin's Proposition as to, ii. 65 (note).
(July 31, 1868) "Is England big enough?" ii. 79.
Article, "Marriage or Celibacy," ib. (note).
(Aug. 6, 1868) "The Ownership of Railways," ii. 81.
Articles on railways, ib. (note) 83.
(Aug. 10, 1868) "Railway Economy," ii. 83.
"Fair Play's" letter on railways, ii. 83, 84, 84 (note).
"East End Emigrants," article, ii. 87 (note).
(Dec. 26, 1868) "Employment for the Destitute Poor and Criminal Classes," ii. 131.
"Employment, etc.," (pamphlet), ii. 132 (note), 134 (note).
(Jan. 15, 1870) "The Morality of Field Sports," ii. 127.
Articles on sport, ib. (note).
(Oct. 7, 1870) "The Franco-Prussian War," ii. 22.
(Oct. 8, 1870)    "      "          "  ii. 25.
(Nov. 30, 1870) "Railway Safety," ii. 89.
Article on railway accidents, ib. (note).
(Jan. 12, 1871) "A King's first duty," ii. 111.
Article on the Roman Inundations, ib. (note); ii. 165.
(Jan. 19, 1871) "Notre Dame de Paris," i. 154.
(Feb. 4, 1871) "The Waters of Comfort," ii. 115.
(Feb. 7, 1871) "The Streams of Italy," ii. 116.
(Feb. 21, 1871) "Woman's sphere," extract from a letter of Mr. Ruskin to Miss Faithfull, ii. 154 (note).
(Dec. 8, 1871) Article on Taverns, i. 151 (note).
(Dec. 11, 1871) "Drunkenness and Crime," ii. 129.
(Dec. 22, 1871) "Castles and Kennels," i. 151.
(Dec. 25, 1871) "Verona v. Warwick," i. 152.
Articles on Warwick Castle, i. 151, 152 (note).
(July 5, 1876) "Turner's Drawings," i. 100 seqq.
(July 19, 1876)  "        "      i. 104.

Dancing, art of, ii. 148.

Danger and difficulty, how far factors in regulating wages, ii. 52.

Dante quoted, ii. 15, and note.
(See also Cary.)

Darkness, effect of, on drawings, i. 89.

David, restoration of Raphaels by, i. 38.

Daybreak, ii. 177.

Deane, Sir Thomas, i. 125 (note).

Dearle, Mr. T., his "Evening on the Marchno," i. 70, and note.

Decoration, delicate and rough, i. 137, 138.

Demand, law of supply and, letters on, 39-44;
foolish, ii. 100;
the largest, that of hell, ib.

[Pg 222]Denmark, the position of, in 1863, ii. 17 seqq.

Denudation, i. 181, 182;
its place in physical mythology, i. 183, 184.

Derby, the, 1859, ii. 10 (note).

"Derby Day," Frith's, i. 55.
(See also i., xvii. note.)

De Saussure, i. 188, 189 (note).

Deucalion, the myth of, i. 183.

"Deucalion" referred to. (See Ruskin, books quoted.)

Diagrams, illustrating rainbow reflections, i. 201, 202.

Dickens, letter of, to Mr. Bennett, ii. 183 (note);
bibliography of, letters in the, ii. 190;
death of, ii. 125 (note).
"Pickwick" referred to, ii. 97.

Dinner tables, modern, ii. 59.

"Disciple of Art and Votary of Science," article in Liverpool Albion, ii. 187 (note).

Discovery, the merits of, i. 187 seqq.

Distances, focal, i. 5.

Dividends, railway—a tax on the traveller, ii. 82.

Dogs, Protestant and Catholic, ii. 11;
"dog or bee" letter, ii. 127.

Domestic servants. (See Servants.) Meaning of word "domestic," ii. 102 (note.)

"Dones" and "undones," ii. 142.

Doric modes, ii. 148.

Drama, reform of the, ii. 193, 194.

Drawing. (See Art.)

Drawing-master, the first work of a, i. 28.

Drawings, chance beauty of good, i. 111;
subtlety possible in, i. 93, 94 seqq.;
effect of light, etc., on, i. 83, 84, 102, 103, 105;
how to mount, i. 83;
how to frame, i. 83.

Dreams, Homeric myth as to, i. 75, and note.

Dress, right, ii. 154 seqq.;
national, ii. 155;
dress-making, ii. 139;
letter on "sad colored costumes," ii. 156.

Drunkenness, and Crime, ii. 129;
a crime in itself, ib.;
instance of death by, ii. 39 (note).

Dudley, Lord, "Angelico" in the collection of pictures of, i. 44, and note.

Dulwich, railway at, ii. 97.

Duncan's, Mr., "Shiplake, on the Thames," i. 201 (note).

Dürer, Albert, i. 28, 63;
and Holbein, their theology of death, i. 118.

Durham Cathedral, i. 161.

Duty, meaning of the word, ii. 63, 142.


"E. A. F." letter signed, on the designs for the "Foreign Office," i. 99.

"Eagle's Nest" (see Ruskin: books quoted), ii. 146.

Earth-Gods, ii. 172.

Eastlake, Sir C., attack on, i. 37 (note), 39, 91;
his knowledge of oil pictures, i. 46, 47 (note);
his paintings, and Byron's poems, i. 20.

---- Mr. C. L., his book on the Gothic Revival, i. 155 (note).

[Pg 223]"Economist," letter in Daily Telegraph from, ii. 41, 44 (note).

Economy defined, its three senses, ii. 157;
meaning of the word, ii. 105.
(See Political Economy.)

Edinburgh, ii. 137;
improvements at, i. 145, 150;
Sundays at, ii. 11;
Trinity Chapel, i. 147;
University of, and Prof. Hodgson, ii. 44 seqq.

---- Castle, alterations at, i. 147, 149, 150;
its grandeur, ib.;
no longer a military position, i. 150.

---- Castle Rock, its place among Scotch "craigs," i. 146, 147;
proposal to blast, ib.

Education, list of letters on, ii. 121;
an "average first-class man," i. 31;
compulsory, ii. 124;
division of studies, i. 30;
employment the primal half of, ii. 132;
involution of studies, i. 31;
education mongers, ii. 49;
place of science in, i. 133;
"true," letter on, ii. 123.

Edward the Confessor, i. 161.

Egg, yellow spot on, ii. 73.

Ehrenberg, C. G., i. 132, 133 (note).

Electricity, use of, ii. 134.

Elgin marbles, the, i. 28.

Ellis, Mr. Wynn, i. 106 (note).

Embankment of Italian rivers, plan for, ii. 112 seqq.

Embroidery, use of, ii. 157.

Emigration, ii. 87, 128.

Employment, ii. 134;
to be educational, ii. 136;
forms character, ii. 132;
modes of for poor, ii. 138;
always obtainable, ii. 46, 196;
principles of, ii. 134 seqq.

England, big enough? (letter) ii. 79;
buildings of destroyed, i. 151;
and Denmark, ii. 17, 18;
France and, 1859, ii. 9;
1870, ii. 28;
independent, ii. 99;
and Italy, 1859, ii. 6;
and Italian inundations, ii. 113 (note), 117;
and Italy, their treatment of art, i. 9;
literature of, i. 118;
"machine-and devil driven," ii. 124 (note);
and Poland, ii. 19;
protection of pictures in, i. 37;
and the Reform Bill, 1867, ii. 133;
shopkeepers, a nation of? ii. 100;
trade and policy of, ii. 28;
and war, ii. 16, 17, 19.

Enid, ii. 100.

Enterprise, public and private, ii. 86.

"Epitaphs," the Essay on, ii. 99.

Epictetus, ib.

Eridanus, ii. 111.

Etching, George's, Ernest, i. 113 seqq.;
principles of, ib.;
(a) chiaroscuro, 116;
(b) few lines, 116;
(c) a single biting enough, 115;
(d) use pencil, 116;
thirteenth century work and its imitators, ib.

Etruscan work, ii. 178.

Equity and Law, ii. 62.

Evening Journal, The (Jan. 22, 1855), review of "Animals of Scripture" in, ii. 172.

Examination. (See Art.)

[Pg 224]Examiner, The, review of "Our Sketching Club" in, ii. 165, and note.

Expenditure, objects of public, i. 102;
national, on pictures, parks, and peaches respectively, i. 92.

"Eye-witness, The," i. 61 (note).

Eylau, battle of, ii. 30.

Eyre, Governor, and the Jamaica Insurrection, ii. 20, and note.


Failure, the lesson of, i. 23, 125, 126.

"Fair Play," letter of in Daily Telegraph, ii. 83 (note), 84-86 (note).

Fairservice (see Scott, Sir Walter), ii. 97 (note).

Faithfull, Miss E., lecture by, ii. 154 (note);
letter to, ib.

Fallacies, à priori, ii. 50.

Family, meaning of the word, ii. 102.

Farinata, ii. 15, and note.

Fashion, change of, ii. 155;
how to lead, ii. 157.

Fate and trial, the laws of, i. 125 (note).

Father's, a, counsel to his son, ii. 147.

Fauna, Oxford prize for essay on the, i. 132 (note).

Fesch, Cardinal "Angelico" in the collection of, i. 44, and note.

Fielding, Copley, and Mr. Ruskin, i. 192.

Field sports, morality of, ii. 127.

Fiésole, i. 9.

Finden, engraving in Rogers' Poems, i. 93.

Fine Art Society, i. 105 (note), 159, 166.

Finlason, G. W., "History of the Jamaica Case" referred to, ii. 22 (note).

Florence, "Angelico" destroyed at, i. 38;
and floods, ii. 117;
gallery of, i. 50;
Ghibelline proposal to destroy, ii. 15 (note);
revenge in old, ii. 64.

Flowers, use of in architecture, i. 141 seqq.;
"Alisma Plantago," i. 61;
Chrysanthema, ii. 183;
Gentian, i. 204.

Fonte Branda, ii. 118.

Food, amount of, determines wages and price, ii. 65.

Forbes, George, Prof., i. 187 (note).

Forbes, James David, i. 176;
letter on "his real greatness," i. 177 seqq.;
and Agassiz, i. 176, 190;
his "Danger of Superficial Knowledge" quoted, i. 189 (note);
letter to Mr. Ruskin, i. 190;
letter of a pupil of, to Mr. Ruskin, i. 190.

Force, use of human, ii. 134 seqq.

Foreground and background, painting of, i. 6.

"Forester," lecture of in Daily Telegraph on Field Sports, ii. 128 (note).

Forster's Life of Dickens, ii. 125 (note).

Fortnightly Review, Mr. Freeman and Mr. Trollope on field sports, ii. 127 (note).

Fortress, definition of a, i. 148.

Fortunes, rapidly accumulated, ii. 85;
inequality of desirable, ib.

Fountain of joy at Siena, ii. 118.

Fox-hunting, ii. 128.

[Pg 225]Fra Bartolomeo, none in National Gallery, i. 44, and note.

Framing, methods of, for delicate drawings, i. 83.

France and Austria, loss of in war, ii. 33;
cathedrals of, i. 154;
empire, war the key-note of the first, vice of the second, ii. 26;
position of in 1859, ii. 9.

Franco-Prussian war, letters on, ii. seqq.;
cause of, ii. 26;
character of the contest, ii. 27;
Germany to stop within limits, ii. 28;
loss of property in, ii. 32, 33;
misery of, ii. 112, and note;
England's position as regards, ii. 28;
refugees during, ii. 154 (note);
the Sainte Chapelle in danger during, i. 154.

Franchise, female, ii. 154 (note).

"Frange," ii. 178.

"Frango," ii. 178.

Fraser's Magazine (July, 1875), letter on "Modern Warfare," ii. 29.

Frederick the Great, his statue at Berlin, ii. 12 (note);
his wars, virtue of, ii. 27.

Freedom, "not to be given," ii. 7, 8 (note).

Freeman, Mr. E., on field sports, ii. 127 (note).

Frère, M. Edouard, escape from Paris, ii. 23, and note.

Fresco-painting, laws of, determined by Perugino, i. 117.

"Fret," etymology of, ii. 178 seqq.

"Frico," ii. 178.

Frith's, Mr., "Derby Day," i. 55. (See also i. xvii., note.)

Furnivall, Mr., letters to, ii. 177.

Fuseli quoted, i. 59, 75.


Gainsborough, his landscapes, i. 13;
his speed, i. 112.

Gardens, ii. 158.

Garisenda, tower of, i. 169.

Gas, effect of, on pictures, i. 98, 105.

Generalization in art, i. 76.

Geneva, lake of, i. 180;
its color, i. 196;
letter to journal at, 153;
Sundays at, ii. 11.

Genius, the tone of true, i. 188, 189.

Gentian, letter on the, i. 204;
species of the, ib.

Gentlemen, duties of, to their peasantry, ii. 128.

Geological letters, i. 173, seqq.

Geology, English v. Alpine, i. 181 seqq.;
museum of, at Sheffield, ii. 126;
Mr. Ruskin's study of, i. 173, 178;
work needed in the science, i. 175.
(See also Glaciers.)

George, Mr. Ernest, his etchings, i. 113 (note), and seqq.

"Gerin," play of, mentioned, ii. 194.

Germany, characteristics of the nation, ii. 7;
Emperor of, ii. 7 (note);
Franco-Prussian war and, ii. 22, 28;
heroism of a German girl, ii. 100;
German soldiery, ii. 7;
German women, type of features, ii. 12.

Ghibelline faction at Florence, ii. 15 (note).

Ghirlandajo, i. 43;
[Pg 226]no picture by in National Gallery, i. 44 (note).

Giagnano, landslip near, i. 202.

Gideon's fleece, i. 133.

"Gil Blas," ii. 186.

Giorgione, i. 75.

Giotta, his "public," i. 15;
pupil of Cimabue, i. 25, and note, i. 43;
his theology of death, i. 118.

Glaciers, action of, compared with that of water, i. 175-178;
excavation of lake basins by, i. 173 seqq.;
the G. des Bois, i. 178-180;
experiments with honey illustrating, i. 178;
hardness of, i. 177;
motion of, i. 176, 177.

Gladstone, Mr., ii. 142 (note);
his "Juventus Mundi," ii. 171 (note);
at Naples, i. 18, and note;
and Lord Beaconsfield, ii. 197.

Glasgow, ii. 137;
the G. Athenæum, ii. 124 (note);
the Lord Rectorship of G. University, ii. 195 seqq.

Glasgow Herald, The, letters in:—
(June 5, 1874) "The Value of Lectures," ii. 124.
(Oct. 7, 1880) The Lord Rectorship of Glasgow University (four letters), ii. 195 seqq.
(Oct. 12, 1880) The Lord Rectorship, etc., ii. 197.

Globe, The (Oct. 29, 1875), "An Oxford Protest" in, ii. 188.

"G. M.," letter of, in the Reader, i. 185.

Gneiss, the rocks of Chamouni made of, i. 179.

Gold, depreciation of, ii. 37;
discoveries of, ib. (note).

Goldwin Smith, Mr., on Luxury, ii. 66 (note).

Good Words, "Animals of Scripture" reprinted in (1861), ii. 172 (note).

Gosse, Dr. L. A., ii. 158.

Gothic architecture, adaptability of, i. 125 seqq., 131, 132;
and classic, i. 99 (note);
decoration of, i. 127, 138, 141;
effect of strength in, i. 168;
employment of various degrees of skill in, i. 129;
English, Italian, and Venetian, i. 157;
and the Oxford Museum, i. 125 seqq.;
the G. Revival, i. 128, 129, 155 (note);
types of French, i. 154.

Government, the kind of, needed, ii. 86.

Gravelotte, battle of, ii. 31.

Great Eastern Railway (article in Daily Telegraph on), the, ii. 83.

Greece, the king of, ii. 21 (note);
oppressed by Greeks only, ii. 6;
and Venice, relation of architecture, i. 163.

Greek art, study of, ii. 148.

Grenville, Sir Richard, ii. 4 (note).

Greppond, glacier of, ii. 116.

Greswell, Rev. R., and the Oxford Museum, i. 139.

Grief, effect of trifles on minds distressed by, i. 72.

Griggs, Matilda, ii. 186, and note.

"Growing old," article on, in Y. M. A. Magazine, ii. 140.

Grumio. (See Shakespeare).

Guelfi, faction at Florence, ii. 15 (note).

[Pg 227]Guido, pictures by, in the National Gallery, i. 43.

Guthrie, letter to Dr., ii. 184.

Guy's bowl at Warwick Castle, i. 153.


Hamilton's, Sir W., logic, ii. 56.

Hanging, who deserve, ii. 131.

Hanover, Sundays at, ii. 11.

Harbor-making, ii. 138.

Harding, i. 23.

Harold the Saxon, i. 161.

Harrison, letter to W. H., ii. 192.

Hartz minerals, purchase of by Mr. Ruskin, ii. 58.

Hartz mountains, ii. 12.

Hasselt's "Histoire de Rubens" referred to, i. 14 (note).

Hawley's, Sir J., "Musjid" (Derby winner), ii. 10 (note).

Health, chair of Physical, at Oxford, ii. 147.

Hemling, i. 65.

Henry VI.'s Psalter, i. 54, and note.

Herodotus referred to, i. 184.
(See also Bubastis.)

Heroism, true forms of, ii. 24;
instance of, ii. 100;
and vice, ii. 133.

Hervet, Gentian, his "Economist of Xenophon," ii. 149 (note).

Hervey, Lord Francis, i. 100 (note).

Highlanders, a characteristic of, ii. 6.

Highlands, the rocks of the, i. 146.

Historical monuments, loss of, in England, i. 158;
and small interest taken in, i. 29.

History, true, what it is, i. 28;
how written hitherto, ib.

Hobbes, definition of Justice, ii. 57 (note), 61.

Hodgson, Professor, and Mr. Ruskin on supply and demand, ii. 44 seqq.

Hogarth, his "public," i. 14;
his "Two 'prentices," ii. 144.

Holbein, the libel on, 37 (note), 45, and note;
portrait of George Gyzen at Berlin, ii. 13, 12 (note);
his quiet work, i. 112;
Mr. Ruskin's article on, ii. 12 (note);
his theology of death, i. 118;
Wornum's life of, ii. 12 (note).

Holy Sepulchre, and St. Mark's, Venice, i. 162.

Holyoake, Mr. G. J., letters on Co-operation to, ii. 78;
his "History of Co-operation," ii. 73 (note);
reference to Mr. Ruskin in America, ii. 73, and note;
and the Sheffield Museum, ib.

Homer, Odyssey quoted or referred to:
(vi. 90), ii. 169, 170 (note);
(xix. 562), i. 75;
(xxii. end), ii. 102.

Honiton lace-makers, ii. 136, 137.

"Honos," existence of any absolute, ii. 63.

Horace, expurgated editions of, ii. 147;
his theology of death, i. 118;
quoted or referred to, ii. 57 (Odes, iii. 3, 1), 98, 111 (Odes, iii. 16, 29), and note, 143;
study of, in England, ii. 143.

Horeb, i. 133.

House-hold, ii. 101.

[Pg 228]Houses, letter on modern, ii. 104.

Huddersfield and the Jamaica Insurrection, ii. 20.

Hughes, Mr. T., M. P. for Lambeth, ii. 20 (notes).

Hullah, Mr., on music, i. 25 (note), 26.

Hume, Mr. Hamilton, and the Eyre Defence Fund, ii. 22 (note).

Hunt, Mr. Alfred, and the Liverpool Academy, i. 73 (note).

---- Mr. Holman, i. 71;
"Awakening Conscience, The," i. 71;
his early work criticised in the Times, i. 59 (note);
exaggerates reflected light, i. 64;
"Light of the World," i. 67 seqq.;
technical details of, i. 68;
"Valentine rescuing Sylvia," i. 60 (note), 63, 64 seqq.

---- William, i. 121.
(Mr. Ruskin's "Notes on Prout and Hunt," referred to. See Ruskin.)

Hunting, ii. 128.

Husbands, duty of, ii. 153.

"Hymn," meaning of, ii. 148.

Hyssop, ii. 155.


Ideal, definition of the, i. 7, and note.

Idle, treatment of the, ii. 147.

"Illustrations of Scripture," ii. 172.

Imagination, no food for, in modern life, ii. 147.

Increased Railway Fares (articles in Daily Telegraph), ii. 81 (note).

Indians, ideas of duty in, ii. 6;
irrigation in India, ii. 115.

Infidelity, modern, i. 147.

Ingoldsby Legends ("Jackdaw of Rheims") referred to, ii. 180.

Initials, no need of, in scientific discussion, i. 186.

Iniquity, an exploded word, ii. 107.

Interest, one's own, ii. 7, ii. 48.

Interference, public, with the individual, ii. 133.

Intervention, principles of, ii. 7, 9, 10.

Inundations, ii. 111-119.

Iron manufacture, ii. 49;
modern ironwork, ii. 127.

Irrigation for Italy, ii. 114, 115.

Irving's, Mr., "Shylock," ii. 262.

Isle of Dogs, emigration from the, ii. 87.

Italian and English treatment of art, i. 9;
masters, pencilling of, i. 112;
mannerisms of Italian masters, i. 4.

Italy, state of, in 1859, letters on, ii. 3, 9, 13;
extent of question, ii. 14;
position of, ii. 9;
passions of people noble, ii. 113 (note);
power of, ii. 117;
self-government, ii. 6;
streams of, 116 seqq.

"Italy," a reputed Turner, i. 106, and note.


"Jackdaw of Rheims" (Ingoldsby Legends), ii. 180.

Jamaica Insurrection and Governor Eyre, ii. 20 seqq.

Jameson's "Early Italian Painters" referred to, i. 9 (note);
"History of Our Lord," i. 38 (note), 44 (note).

[Pg 229]Jameson's "Scotch Ballads," i. 76, 77 (note).

Janssens, Abraham, and Rubens, i. 14.

Japan, war in, ii. 17.

"Jean de Nivelle" mentioned, ii. 194.

Jena, battle of, ii. 30, 33.

Jerusalem, ii. 177.

Jezebel, ii. 174.

Johnson, Mr. Richard, on commerce, ii. 70; and note.

Journal de Genève, L'Espérance, 1873, Letter on Women's Work, ii. 153.

Judgment-throne, condemnation from the, ii. 142.

Jukes, Mr. T. B., F.R.S., letters on geology, etc., i. 181 (note), 184.

Jussum, ii. 52, 53.

Just price, a, ii. 106 (note).

Justice, abstract, ii. 54;
conceivable as a hideously bad thing, ii. 61 (note), 63;
definition and derivation of, ii. 52;
defined as "conformity with any rule, good or bad," ii. 54, 58 (note), 61;
need of, ii. 10;
principles of, ii. 48;
different words for, ii. 52.

Justinian, summary of law by, ii. 63, and note.


Katharine's instrument (see Shakespeare), ii. 178.

Kail leaf, the, used in Melrose Abbey, i. 141 (note).
(See Scott, "The Abbot," chap, xvi.; "The Monastery," Introduction.)

Keble College, Oxford, "The Light of the World" at, i. 67 (note).

Kennedy, Mr. T. S., copy of Turner's "Fluelen" possessed by, i. 105 (note).

Kensington Museum, Art School at, 100 (note);
Turners at, i. 98 (note).
Kidderminster Times, The (July 28, 1877), letter on "Ribbesford Church," i. 158.

King Charles the Martyr, ii. 68-9.

King, the first duty of a, ii. 111;
must govern the rivers of his country, ib.

Kinglake, Mr. A. W., on Savoy and Denmark, ii. 19.

Kingsley's, Charles, "Ode to the North-East Wind," ii. 50 (note).

Kingsley, Mr., of Sidney Sussex College, on optics, i. 94-6.

Kiss' Amazon, ii. 13, 12 (note).

Königgratz, battle of, ii. 31.


Labor, as a discipline, ii. 136;
the forces of, order of their employment, ii. 87, 135;
giving of the best charity, ii. 131;
its influence on character, ii. 133;
price of, ii. 40, 65;
promise to find, ii. 72.

"La Fille du Tambour Major," Offenbach's, mentioned, ii. 194.

Lake basins, excavated by glaciers, i. 174 (see Glaciers).

Lambeth, Mr. T. Hughes, M. P. for, ii. 20, 21.

Lammermuirs, the, i. 146.

Lancet, The, founded by Mr. Wakley, i. 19 (note).

Landseer, i. 23, 63 (note);
illustrated by Burns, i. 19.

Landslip near Giagnano, letters on, i. 202.

[Pg 230]"Langharne Castle," Turner's, i. 102, and note.

"Le Chalet" mentioned, ii. 194.

Launce (see Shakespeare), ii. 97.

Law Courts, the new, i. 156, and note.

Laws, criminal, ii. 133;
equity and law, ii. 62;
eternal, and practical difficulties, ii. 95;
of nature, ii. 72;
summary of law, by Blackstone and Justinian, ii. 63, and note;
lex talionis, lex gratiæ, ii. 64.

Lazarus, ii. 173.

Leconfield, "Turner" in possession of Lord, i. 106 (note).

Lectures, the value of, ii. 124, and note.

Lee, Fred. Richard, R.A., i. 13, and note.

Leech, John, letter on his outlines, i. 111;
characteristics of his work, ib.;
chiaroscuro, "felicity and prosperous haste," i. 112;
death of, i. 111 (note);
especial value of first sketches, i. 112;
fastidious work, i. 113;
proposal to distribute his drawings among national schools, i. 113, i. 54 (note).

Leicester Chronicle and Mercury (Jan. 31, 1880), letter on "Purchase of Pictures," i. 55.

Leicester, proposal for picture-gallery at, i. 55.

Leith, Mr. J., and the Blackfriars Bible class, Aberdeen, ii. 142 (note).

Lennox, Lord H., i. 52 (note); i. 100 (note).

Lenses and specula, grinding of, i. 95.

Leonardo da Vinci, i. 75;
designed canals of Lombardy, ii. 118.

Leone Levi, M., and statistics of drink, ii. 129.

Leonidas, ii. 4 (note).

L'Espérance, Geneva, letter "Women's Work" in, ii. 153.

Letter, "to the author of a review," ii. 187;
black letter, ii. 175 (note), 256;
letters, carriage of, ii. 82, 90.
(See for the letters in the book the Tables of Contents and the Index under the special headings, Appendix; Architecture; Art Criticism and Art Education; Education; Literary Criticism; Pictures and Artists; Political Economy; Politics; Pre-Raphaelitism; Public Institutions and the National Gallery; Railways; Roman Inundations; Science; Servants and Houses; Turner; War; Women, their work and their dress.)

Lewis, John, i. 74;
"Encampment under Sinai," i. 117 (note);
"The Hhareem," i. 65, and note.

"Liber Studiorum," value of, i. 97;
sale of original plates, ii. 70.

Liberalism, modern, ii. 197, 201.

Liberty and order, ii. 10;
and slavery, ii. 98, 99.

Liebreich, Dr., lecture on Turner and Mulready, i. 155, and note.

"Life's Mid-day," song in "Y. M. A. Magazine," ii. 141.

Light, effect of on drawings, i. 89, 90, 98, 102, 105;
upon water, phenomenon of, i. 191;
"Light of the World," i, 67 seqq.

"Limner and Illumination," letter on, ii. 174.

Limousin, the, ii. 28.

Lincoln, President, death of, ii. 54, and note;
English opinion of, ib.

[Pg 231]Lindisfarne, i. 161.

Literature, what it includes, i. 30.

Literary criticism, list of letters on, ii. 161.

Literary Gazette (Nov. 13, 1858);
"Turner Sketches and Drawings" (letter), i. 88, and note;
mention of Edinburgh Castle in, i. 147, and note.

Liverpool Albion—
(January 11, 1858), Letters on "Pre-Raphaelitism in Liverpool," i. 73.
(November 2, 1863), "The Foreign Policy of England," ii. 15.
(November 9, 1872), "To the author of a Review," ii. 187.
Articles on "Disciple of Art and Votary of Science," in, ib. (note).

Liverpool Academy, i. 73 (note);
Institute, Mr. Ruskin's refusal to lecture at, ii. 15 (note);
pre-Raphaelitism in, i. 73 (note).

Locke, ii. 56.

Logic, instance of English, ii. 98.

Lombardy, the canals of, ii. 118;
insurrection, ii. 4, and note.

London, ii. 201;
London and Northwestern Railway accidents, ii. 89 (note);
the streets of (letter), ii. 119 seqq.;
London Review (May 16, 1861), letter on "The Reflection of Rainbows," i. 201.

Lorraine and Alsace, ii. 28.

Louise, Queen of Prussia, her tomb, ii. 12, and note.

Louvre, the arrangement of, i. 50;
preservation of drawings at, i. 87;
richly furnished, i. 92;
salon carré, i. 50;
pictures in:
"Immaculate Conception," i. 87 (note), 88;
"Marriage in Cana," i. 87;
"Susannah and the Elders," i. 50 (note).

Love, the conqueror of lust, ii. 144, 147.

Lowe, Mr., and Mr. Ruskin, ii. 189.

Lucerna Valley, the, ii. 11, 12.

Lucina (the goddess "who brings things to light," and especially, therefore, of birth), i. 179.

Lust (see Love).

Luxury, of the present age, i. 18;
and political economy, ii. 66, 67, 80.

Lydian modes, ii. 148.


"M. A.," Letter on "limner" from, ii. 174.

"M. A. C.," Letter on atmospheric pressure from, i. 185.

Macaulay, Lord, saying of quoted and criticised, i. 189, and note;
tone of his mind, i. 189.

Machiavelli quoted, ii. 15 (note).

Machinery, use of, ii. 135.

Macmillan's Magazine (Nov., 1870), "Sad-colored costumes," ii. 156.

Madonna, the, and Venus, i. 162.

Magdeburg, sack of, ii. 32.

Magenta, ii. 3 (note), 31.

Malamocco, ii. 117.

[Pg 232]Malines, "Rubens" at, i. 39.

Manchester, Art Treasures Exhibition, 1858, i. 102 (note);
Chamber of Commerce, ii. 70 (note);
Dramatic Reform Association of, ii. 193 (note);
Ruskin Society of, ii. 191.

Manufacture and Art, i. 29;
of dress, ii. 155.

Marengo, battle of, ii. 30.

Market, the laws of honest, i. 165 (note).

Marks, Mr. H. S., R. A., Letter on F. Walker to, i. 116 seqq.

Marriage, ii. 147;
"Marriage or Celibacy" (Daily Telegraph article on), ii. 79 (note).

Mars, i. 162.

Martin, illustrated by Milton, i. 20.

Marylebone Council, ii. 105 (note).

Maskelyne, Mr. Nevil S., M.P., i. 53, and note;
his work on minerals at the British Museum, i. 54.

"Matilda Y.," letter of, i. 10, and note;
Matilda Griggs, letter on, ii. 186.

Mattie, carefu' (see Scott's "Rob Roy"), ii. 97.

Maw, J. H., Letter from, 191 (note), 200 (note).

Matthew, St., ii. 8.

Means of life, the, ii. 68, 69.

Mechanical power, natural to be used before artificial, ii. 134.

Medicine, to be learnt by children, ii. 147.

Meduna, M., and St. Mark's, i. 168.

Meissonier, his pictures, i. 127.

Melrose, i. 141;
the monks of (see Scott's "Abbot," chap, xvi.), i. 141 (note).

Mendelssohn, ii. 169.

Mercury, experiment with, i. 197.

Mestre, ii. 5.

Marlborough House. (See Turner Drawings.)

Michael Angelo, i. 146.

Milan, the French in, ii. 3 (note), 7.

Mill, J. S., ii. 146 (note);
direction of his thought, ii. 21;
and the Jamaica Insurrection, ii. 20-21;
political economy of, ii. 71 (note).

Millais, Mr., i. 66 (note), 74;
criticised in the Times (1851); i. 59 (note);
early work, i. 59;
flesh-painting by, i. 65;
painted glass of, i. 66;
pictures of, mentioned:
"Autumn Leaves," i. 76 (note);
"Blind Girl," i. 73 (note), 77 (note);
early sacred picture (1850), i. 60;
"Ferdinand lured by Ariel," i. 60 (note);
"Mariana," i. 60 (note,) 62, 63, 66;
"Portrait of a Gentleman and his Grandchild," i. 60 (note);
"Pot Pourri," ii. 185;
"Return of the Dove to the Ark," i. 60 (note), 63, 65;
"Wives of the Sons of Noah," i. 63;
"Woodman's Daughter," i. 60 (note).

Miller, John, collection of pictures of, i. 77 (note).

Milton quoted ("Comus," l. 301), ii. 178;
"Paradise Lost," i. 19.

Mincio, the, 6, 10, 118.

Miniatures, painting of, i. 117; use of, i. 121, 127.

Miscellaneous Letters, list of subjects, ii. 75.

Missal paintings, condition of, good, and why, i. 90, 91.
[Pg 233]
Mistress, an ideal house-, ii. 102.

Mitford, Mary Russell, ii. 183 (note), 183.

Mitrailleuse and musket, relative effect of, ii. 30.

Mock-castles, etc., i. 151.

Modern houses, letter on, ii. 104;
world, destruction of buildings by the, i. 158;
theology of, i. 118.
(See also Age, the Present.)

"Modern Painters." (See under Ruskin, Mr.)

Monetary and Mining Gazette (Nov. 13, 1875), letter on "The Definition of Wealth," ii. 71.

Money, true, ii. 115;
definition of, ii. 71, and note;
distribution of, ii. 49;
ill got, ill spent, ii. 144;
loss of, ii. 137;
how made and lost, ii. 79, 80;
pedigree of, ii. 69;
how the rich get and spend, ii. 66-70;
value of, ii. 37;
lowered value of, its effect, ii. 38.

Montanvert, the, i. 179.

Montaperto, battle of, ii. 15 (note).

Mont Blanc, guides up, ii. 52, 56, 58 (note);
Cenis (and James Barry), i. 15, 16 (note);
St. Angelo, ii. 116;
Viso, ii. 11.

Monthly Packet, The (Nov. 1863), "Proverbs on right dress," ii. 155.

Moore, Mr. Morris, and the National Gallery, i. 37 (note), 47.

Moore, Thomas, National Airs, "Oft in the stilly night," referred to, i. 71;
his "Public," i. 14.

Morality of Field Sports, ii. 127 seqq.

Moore, Sir T., "Utopia" of, ii. 191.

Morgarten, battle of, ii. 4, and note.

Morning Chronicle (Jan. 20, 1855), "The Animals of Scripture, a Review," ii. 172.

Morning Post (July 7, 1864), letter, "The Position of Denmark," ii. 17.

Morris, Mr. William, and St. Mark's, Venice, i. 170.

Mosaic Law, the, ii. 72.

Mother, place of a, ii. 146.

Mounting of drawings. (See Drawings.)

Mozart, ii. 169.

Mulready, i. 65, 66 (note);
Dr. Liebreich on, i. 154, and note.

Munro, Mr., and the Oxford Museum, i. 139.

Murchison, Sir Roderick, and the Excavation of Glaciers, i. 173 (note);
and the Eyre Defence Fund, ii. 22 (note).

Murillo's "Immaculate Conception," i. 87 (note), 88.

Muscle, use of, in labor, ii. 136.

Museum, a modern, ii. 126;
a national, its objects and uses, i. 53;
St. George's, ii. 186.

Music, ii. 158;
the art of, ii. 148;
a less common faculty than drawing, i. 26, 95;
ear for, commoner than eye for color, i. 15.

Musjid, Derby-winner, ii. 10 (note).

Mycenæ, ii. 178.

Mythology, ii. 171;
Christian and Greek, i. 163;
and religion, i. 118.
[Pg 234]

Naples, Mr. Gladstone and the political prisoners at, ii. 18 (note);
storm at, ii. 116.

Napoleon Bonaparte, i. 44 (note), 49; ii. 26;
the Third, ii. 6, 26, 27;
purchase of the Louvre "Murillo" by, i. 87.

Nations, "A nation's defences," ii. 113;
defences of, "do not pay!" ii. 114;
gain and loss of, 79, 80;
their quality shown in that of their servants, ii. 94;
their strength in union, not in number, ii. 25.

National Gallery, the (see also Pictures);
debate on vote for, i. 86 (note);
an European jest, i. 38;
an ideal arrangement of, i. 48 seqq., 50-52;
keepers of;
Eastlake, Sir C., i. 37 (note);
Uwins, R. A., i. 46 (note);
Wornum, i. 86;
Letters to Times on, i. 37, 45, 86;
a new gallery proposed, i. 49, 51, and note;
no Ghirlandajo Fra Bartolomeo, or Verrochio in, i. 44 (note), 45;
Parliamentary Blue Books referred to, i. 37 (note), 42 (note), 46 (note), 48 (note);
popular idea of its object, i. 48;
restoration of pictures in, i. 37 (note) and seqq., 45;
purchase of pictures for, i. 43, 44, 45;
strictures on, i. 42 (note);
the Vernon gift, i. 50, and note.

National Gallery, Pictures referred to in the—
Albertinelli's "Virgin and Child," i. 44 (note).
Angelico's "Adoration of the Magi," ib.
"      "Christ amid the Blessed," ib.
Bellini, "Doge Leonardo Loredano," i. 45.
Claude's "Marriage of Isaac and Rebecca," i. 46 (note).
"    "Mill," i. 46 (note).
"    "Queen of Sheba," i. 46 (note).
"    "Seaport," i. 46 (note).
Cuyp, "Large Dort," i. 39 (note).
"  "Landscape, Evening," ib.
Guido, "Lot and his Daughters," i. 43.
"    "Magdalen," ib. (note).
"    "St. Jerome," ib.
"    "Susannah and the Elders," ib.
Holbein, libel on, i. 37 (note), 45, and note.
Lorenzo di Credi, "Virgin and Child," i. 44 (note).
Perugino, "Virgin and Child, with St. Jerome and St. Francis," ib.
"      "Virgin and Infant Christ, with St. John," ib.
"      "Virgin and Infant Christ, with Archangels Michael, Raphael, and Tobias," ib. 120.
Poussin, "Sacrifice of Isaac," i. 3, and note.
Rubens, "Judgment of Paris," i. 44, and note.
"    "Peace and War," i. 39.
Titian, "Bacchus and Ariadne," i. 40-54.
Turner, "Dido building Carthage," i. 46, and note.
"    "The sun rising in a mist," ib.
"    Drawings and Sketches, i. 50, and note; 81 (note).
Van Eyck, "Jean Arnolfini and his wife," i. 46 (note).
Velasquez, "Philip IV. hunting the Wild Boar," i. 40.
Veronese, "Consecration of St. Nicholas," i. 46, and note.
"      "Rape of Europa," ib.
Wilkie, "The Blind Fiddler," i. 7.

Natural History, study of, i. 135;
letter on, i. 204.

[Pg 235]Nature and Art, letter on "Art Teaching by Correspondence" in, i. 32.

Nature, general ignorance of, i. 16;
human, not corrupt, ii. 143;
its lessons true, i. 24;
neglect of, i. 17;
understanding of, ib.

Neptune, ii. 171.

Neutrality, the "difficulties of," letter, ii. 26;
of England, ii. 15.

New Shakespeare Society, letters in Transactions of, ii. 176 seqq.

Newspaper, duty and power of an editor, ii. 95.

Newtonian law, i. 199 (note), 200.

Newton's "Principia," i. 14.

New Year's Address and Messages to Blackfriars Bible Class, Aberdeen:
"Act, act in the living present" (1873), ii. 141.
"Laborare est orare" (1874), ii. 142.
"A Pagan Message" (1878), ii. 143.

Nineteenth Century: Mr. Ruskin's "Fiction, Fair and Foul," quoted, ii. 97 (note).

Nino Pisano, i. 43.

Nobert, line-ruling by, i. 94.

Non-iquity, ii. 107.

Norton, Prof. C. E. (U.S.A.), letters of Mr. Ruskin to, i. 86 (note), 97 (note), 105 (note);
lecture on Turner, ib.

"Notes on Employment of the Criminal Classes" (Daily Telegraph, letter and pamphlet), ii. 129-132 seqq.

"Notes on Prout and Hunt" (see Ruskin, Mr.), i. 166 (note).

"Notre Dame de Paris," its place among French cathedrals, i. 153.

Norwich, Dr. Browne at, ii. 120, and note.


"Oak Silkworms," letter in Times (Oct. 24, 1862) on, ii. 158.

Obedience, the real "Divine service," ii. 143.

Offenbach's "Fille du Tambour Major" referred to, ii. 194.

Oil painting, determined by Titian, i. 117.

Old Adam (see Shakespeare), ii. 97.

Old Masters, exhibition, i. 106.

Oliver, Roland for an, ii. 48.

Opie, i. 75.

Optical work, delicacy of, i. 94, 95.

Optics, writers on, i. 195 (note).

Organ, street nuisance of, ii. 18, 19 (note).

Ornament, natural forms in, i. 129;
in dress, ii. 155.

O'Shea, and the Oxford Museum, i. 139, 142 (note).

"Ought" and "are," ii. 63.

"Our Sketching Club," ii. 165, and note.

Oxford, Balliol oriel-window, i. 135;
bishop of, on education, ii. 123 (note), 178;
Bodleian library, traceries of, i. 135;
Christ Church, fan-vaulting at, ib.;
drawing schools, i. 102, 113;
examinations, letter on, i. 24;
meeting in on St. Mark's, Venice, i. 170;
printsellers, ii. 144;
"An Oxford Protest," ii. 188;
[Pg 236]rich buildings, i. 135.

Oxford Museum, the, letters on, i. 125-145;
Acland, Dr., his lecture on, quoted, i. 125 (note), 130 (note), 132 (note);
building of, i. 125 (note);
capital in, i. 141, and note;
decoration of, i. 127, 136, 137, 138, 143;
porch proposed, i. 130;
sculpture of, i. 137;
spandril in, i. 144;
success of its Gothic architecture, i. 130;
its teaching, i. 138;
the west front, i. 139.


Padua, ii. 117.

Painters, how roused to exercise their strength, i. 139;
vision of, how it affects their pictures, i. 155.

Painting and poetry, closely allied, i. 19;
portrait-painting, ii. 170.

Pall Mall Gazette, The—
(April 18, 1865) "Strikes v. Arbitration," ii. 48.
Articles on strikes, ib.
"  masters and men, ii. 50, and note.
(April 21, 1865) "Work and Wages," ii. 50.
(  "  25,  " )  "        "    ii. 52.
(May    2,  " )  "        "    ii. 54.
( "    9,  " )  "        "    ii. 59.
( "    22,  " )  "        "    ii. 62.
Interpolation of, in Mr. Ruskin's letters, ii. 57-69.
(March 1, 1867) "At the Play," ii. 185.
(May 1, 1867) "Standard of Wages," ii. 65.
(January 31, 1868) "True Education," ii. 123.
(  "    19, 1871) "A Nation's Defences," ii. 113.
(December 28, 1871) "The Streets of London," ii. 119.
(March 16, 1872) "Mr. Ruskin's Influence—a defence," i. 154.
(  "  21,  " ) "Mr. Ruskin's Influence—a rejoinder," i. 156.
(November 4, 1872) "Madness and Crime," ii. 130.
(January 24, 1873) "How the Rich spend their Money," ii. 66.
(  "    29,  " )      "          "          "    ii. 67.
(  "    31,  " )      "          "          "      ii 68.
(  "    11, 1875) " A Mistaken Review," ii. 165.
(  "    19,  " ) "The Position of Critics," ii. 167.

Pan-droseion, i. 161.

Parents and children, relation of, ii. 145.

Paris, fortifications of, ii. 114;
in Franco-Prussian war, ii. 25;
theatres of, ii. 194.

Parliament, ii. 140;
of 1868, ii. 133;
debate on Denmark, ii. 27;
on Turner bequest, i. 86;
Houses of, ii. 175 (note), 176.

Partnership of masters and men, ii. 69, and note.

Patmore, Coventry, i. 60 (note), ii. 168, 171 (note).

Paton, Waller, R.S.A., i. 74, and note.

Patriotism, ii. 4 (note), ii. 144.

Peebles v. Plainstanes. (See Scott.)

Penelope and her servants (see Homer, Od. xxii.), ii. 102.

Penrith, letter from, i. 147.

"Percy's Reliques" quoted, i. 77 (note).

[Pg 237]Permanence, the blessing of a fixed life, ii. 101.

Perseus, i. 162.

Perugino, i. 44 (note), 117, 120, note, and 121.

Peter, St., ii. 8.

Petroleum, ii. 136.

Pharpar and Abana, ii. 10.

Phidias and Titian, i. 142, 162.

Φρασσω, ii. 178.

"Pickwick" referred to, ii. 97.

Pictures,—and artists, letters on, i. 111;
arrangement of in a gallery, i. 42, 43, 50;
cleaning of, i. 41;
galleries, fatigue of visiting, i. 42, 51;
glazing of, i. 41, 47, 48;
are great books, i. 48, 49 (note), 69, 103;
London atmosphere, effect of on, i. 38;
modern appreciation of, i. 55;
novelty of a purpose in, i. 69;
popular idea of, i. 73;
preservation of, i. 39, 49;
restoration of, i. 47;
purchase of, i. 55;
common tendency of, i. 72;
tone left by time on, i. 39;
touches on, value of last, i. 47;
must be understood as well as seen, i. 70;
value of studies for, i. 52;
vanity in possessing, i. 127;
worth buying, worth seeing, i. 42, 48, 92.
(See also National Gallery.)

Pictures referred to, see National Gallery, Louvre, and under the names of artists.

Piedmont, a view of, ii. 11.

"Pilgrim's Progress" referred to, i. 66.

Pisa, ii. 117.

Plato, quoted, i. 16, 183; ii. 206;
and justice, ii. 53.

"Plight," ii. 178.

Plummer, John, letter on "Supply and Demand," ii. 43, 44 (note).

Po, delta of, ii. 116;
embankments for, ii. 112.

Pocock, Mr. T., ii. 140.

Poetry, disregarded in this age, i. 18;
and painting allied, i. 19;
principles of criticism of, ii. 169;
better read than recited, ii. 180;
requisites for enjoyment of, i. 18;
of Turner's pictures, ib.

Poets, modern, ii. 171 (note).

Pointsmen, under-payment of, ii. 88.

Poland and Russia, ii. 16.

Pole, Geffrey, his "Xenophon," ii. 102 (note).

Political Economy, list of letters on, ii. 35;
and morality, how connected, ii. 42, 43;
primal fallacy of modern, ii. 65;
Ruskin, Mr., and his definition of, ii. 83 (84-87);
scope of his economy, ii. 99;
shelter the first question in, ii. 105, 106;
true and false, ii. 99.

Politics, list of letters on, ii. 1;
bewilderment of Mr. Ruskin at, ii. 3;
the path in, ii. 7, 8;
tone of modern, ii. 14;
in youth, ii. 141.

Pompeii, ii. 116.

Pope's "Odyssey" quoted, ii. 169, and note.

Poplar, artisans of, emigration, ii. 86, 87 (note).

Porterage, ii. 136, 138.

[Pg 238]Portrait-painters, their ignorance of landscape, i. 16.

Pottery, ii. 139.

Poussin, Gaspar, i. 3, 7;
his "Sacrifice of Isaac," i. 3.

" Nicholas, i. 4.

Powers, for labor, order of their employ, ii. 134;
of a nation—dependent on what, ii. 25.

Poynter, Mr., R.A., at Kensington, i. 100, and note.

Prayer, obedience the best, ii. 143.

Pre-Raphaelitism, etc., list of letters on, i. 58;
choice of features by, i. 63, 64;
conceits of, i. 77, and note;
drapery of, i. 63;
flesh-painting of, i. 65;
growth of, i. 74;
labor of Pre-Raphaelite pictures, i. 68;
Liverpool and, i. 73;
meaning of the word, i. 61,
and note; perspective of the Pre-Raphaelite Brethren, i. 62;
probable success of, i. 66;
religious tendencies of Pre-Raphaelite Brethren, i. 60, 66;
respective value of Pre-Raphaelite and other work, i. 74, 76;
want of shade in Pre-Raphaelite work, i. 66;
Pre-Raphaelite work, true and false, i. 70.

Price, dependent on labor, ii. 55, 60;
a just, ii. 106 (note);
determinable, ii. 61;
allows for necessary labor, ii. 56;
and value, ii. 39, 64.

Principle, the sense of, how blunted, i. 8.

Property, distribution of, ii. 67, 68;
principles of, ii. 71;
loss of in war, ii. 32, 38.

Proteus, character of Shakespeare's, i. 64.

Prout, i. 63 (note).
(See Ruskin, Mr., "Notes on Prout and Hunt.")

Provence, winds of, ii. 135.

"Protestant," ii. 140.

Protestantism, remarks on, ii. 3, 4;
aspect of, at home and abroad, ii. 11;
hypocrisy of, ii. 4;
of Italians, French, and Austrians, ii. 5.

Protests, uselessness of, ii. 17.

Protractor, the use of the, i. 181 (note), 184.

Prussia, Frederick William IV. of, ii. 7 (note).
(See also Franco-Prussian war.)

Public, the, defined, i. 15;
their judgment in art, i. 15;
and in other matters, i. 17;
their ignorance of nature, i. 17;
Frederick Walker, how affected by, i. 122.

Public Institutions and the National Gallery, list of letters on, i. 36.
(See National Gallery, British Museum.)

Pullen, Mr. F. W., Letter to on St. Mark's, Venice, i. 170 (note).

Punishment, ii. 134


Quarles Harris' port, ii. 66.

Quebec, emigration to, ii. 87.


Rabbah, ii. 174.

Radetzky, ii. —;
his character, ii. 5.

Railways, list of letters on, ii. 77;
accidents, ii. 88, 89;
doubling of lines, ii. 88, 89;
at Dulwich, ii. 97;
economy, ii. 83;
investment in, ii. 81;
management of, ii. 82;
ownership of, ii. 81-83;
payment of pointsmen, ii. 83, 88;
[Pg 239]stations, decoration of, ii. 88, 89.

Rainbows, reflection of in water, i. 201.

Raphael, i. 43, 75;
distinction in art before and after, i. 62;
pictures of in the Louvre, i. 49;
in the National Gallery, i. 47;
restored by David and Vernet, ib.

Rationalism, modern, and the Liber Studiorum, i. 97 (note).

Rauch, Christian, ii. 17, 18 (note).

Reader, The, Letters in—
(November 12, 1864) "The Conformation of the Alps," i. 173.
(November 26, 1864) "Concerning Glaciers," i. 175.
(December 3, 1864) "English v. Alpine Geology," i. 181.
(December 10, 1864) "Concerning Hydrostatics," i. 185.
Letters and articles, etc., referred to:
by "M. A. C." and "G. M.," i. 185 (note);
Jukes, Mr., i. 181 (note), 182 (note), 184 (note), 185 (note);
Murchison, Sir R., i. 173 (note);
"Tain Caimbeul," i. 175 (note).

Real, the, and the ideal, not opposed, i. 7, and note.

Rebekah, ii. 174.

Recitations, Letter on, ii. 180.

Red Prince, the, ii. 112.

Reflections in water, letter on, i. 191;
two kinds of, i. 195 (note);
lines of moonlight on the sea, i. 193;
of rainbows, i. 201.

Reformation, ii. 133;
instruments of, ib. 134.

Reform Bill, 1867, ii. 133.

Religion and mythology, i. 118;
and science, i. 133.

Rembrandt, i. 13, 28, 115 (note).

Rendu's Glaciers of Savoy—letter on Forbes in, i. 187.

Repair of buildings, ii. 138.

Republicanism v. Monarchy in the Franco-Prussian war, ii. 40.

Restoration, modern, letter on, i. 157;
impossible, i. 153;
in Italy, i. 170.

Reverence, a mark of high intellect, i. 189.

Review-writing, ii. 166.

Reynolds, Sir Joshua, effect of gas on his pictures, i. 99;
grace of, ii. 34 (note);
speed of, i. 112;
vehicles used by, i. 98;
Mr. Ruskin's article on, ii. 18 (note).

Rheims Cathedral, i. 154.

Rhine, embankments for the, ii. 112;
foul water of the, i. 195 (note).

Rhone, the, ii. 112.

Ribbesford Church, i. 158.

Ricardo's "Political Economy," ii. 80.

Rich and Poor, money how spent and made by, ii. 98-104.

Richmond, George, R.A., ii. 170;
Professor W. B., i. 170.

Rivers, Italian, ii. 111 seqq.
(See Roman Inundation letters.)

Road-making, ii. 138.

Roads, who should own, ii. 119, 120.

Robert le Diable, opera of, ii. 17.

Rogers' "Italy," i. 83;
Poems, i. 82, 93;
his old servant, i. 104

Roland, a, needed by France, ii. 42;
[Pg 240]for one's Oliver, ii, 70.

Roman inundations, list of letters on, ii. 157.

Roman race, the qualities of the, ii. 117.

Rome, and the floods, ii. 116.

Rose, Society of the, ii. 191;
the heraldic sign on Mr. Ruskin's books, ib.

Ross, Sir William, A.R.A., i. 62.

Rosse, microscopes of Lord, i. 94.

Rossetti, i. 74, ii. 166.

Rossini, ii. 194.

Rotterdam, cleanness of, ii. 120.

Rouen Cathedral, i. 154.

Royal Institution, Dr. Liebreich's lecture at, i. 154, and note.

" " Mr. Ruskin's lecture on "The Alps" at, i. 174 (note).

" " Mr. Ruskin's lecture on "Verona" at, ib.

Rubens, advantageous condition in which to see his pictures, i. 39;
characteristics as an artist, i. 39;
his landscapes, i. 13;
his reply to A. Janssens, i. 14 (note);
pictures, at Antwerp, Malines, Cologne, i. 39;
"Judgment of Paris," i. 44, and note;
"Peace and War," i. 39.

Rules, good and bad, ii. 89, 90.

Ruskin, Mr., antipathies of, ii. 183;
an antiquary, i. 153;
art-teaching by correspondence approved by, i. 32;
art-work, how first begun, i. 180;
Austrian friend of, at Venice, ii. 6;
at Bellinzona, ii. 117;
bewildered by modern politics, ii. 3;
and the "Bibliography of R.," ii. 190;
his books, ii. 164 (see below, books of, quoted);
his books read for the sound of the words, i. 161;
botany, notes on, i. 69, 204, ii. 183;
castles, his love of, i. 147, 149, 151 (note);
changes residence, and why, i. 156;
charity of, i. 152, ii. 139, 186;
conscience hereditary to, ii. 69;
a conservative, i. 152, 153, ii. 31;
and Copley Fielding, i. 192;
criticism,—principles of his, i. 190;
rarely replies to, i. 3, 88, ii. 174;
—crossing-sweepers of, ii. 120 (note);
diagram of Alpine aiguilles, i. 186;
dispirited, ii. 188;
drawing of St. Mark's, Venice, i. 161;
excuses from correspondence, ii. 186;
his father,—business of, ii. 87, and note, 102, 103;
an Edinburgh boy, ii. 184;
—Forbes' gratitude to, i. 187 (note);
fortune of, ii. 102, 103;
gardener of, ii. 140;
geology, knowledge and early love of, i. 180, ii. 172;
geological work amongst the Alps, i. 173;
Griggs, Matilda, and, ii. 186;
Guthrie, Dr., and, ii. 184;
Harrison, Mr. W. H., and, ii. 192;
Hartz minerals purchased by, ii. 58;
Holyoake, Mr., and, ii. 73, 74;
illness in 1878, i. 160, and note;
"inconsistency" of, i. 25 (note), ii.;
influence of, on architecture, i. 154 seqq., 157;
insanity, a tender point with, ii. 131;
investment in house property, ii. 106;
investment in railways—"never held a rag of railroad scrip," ii. 82;
Irving, Mr., and, ii. 179 (note);
Italy, knowledge of, ii. 14,
and the Italian question, ii. 3 seqq.;
lectures, refusal to give, ii. 15, and note, 124;
lectures at Westminster Architectural Museum, ii. 174 (note);
Lowe, Mr., and (letter), ii. 189;
at Naples, ii. 116;
natural history, love of, i. 204;
newspapers little read by, ii. 10;
at Oxford, ii. 172, 188;
resigns professorship, i. 163;
political economy of, i. 180, ii. 84, 99, 100 (see s. v.);
[Pg 241]publication of books, ii. 163 seqq.;
as a railway traveller, ii. 82;
range of work, ii. 188;
religious tone of his writings, i. 60, and note;
restoration, horror of modern, i. 153, 157, 159, 160;
rich, moderately, ii. 67;
science, love of, i. 132, 180;
servants of, ii. 93;
strikes, proposal as to, ii. 65 (note);
a Tory, i. 152, 153;
Turner, R.'s insight for his work, i. 106;
called mad for praising Turner, i. 106;
arranges the Turner bequest, i. 81, 83, 84, and note, 86, 88, 98, 100;
executor of Turner's will, i. 81;
love of Turner's pictures, i. 10;
Thornbury's "Life of Turner" criticised by, i. 107;
St. Mark's, Venice, and, i. 162, 169;
Ruskin Society, i. 170 (note), ii. 191;
Utopian home, ii. 119;
residence in Venice, i. 87;
wish to buy "Verona" (see Verona), i. 152.

Ruskin, Mr., books of, quoted or referred to:—
"Academy Notes," i. 67 (note), 76 (note), 117; ii. 23 (note).
"A Joy for Ever," i. 25 (note), 102 (note), 189 (note); ii. 156 (note), 158.
"Aratra Pentalici," ii. 125 (note).
"Ariadne Florentina," i. 105 (note), 114 (note).
"Bibliotheca Pastorum," vol. i., ii. 4 (note), 102 (note), 144 (note).
"Cestus of Aglaia," ii. 99 (note).
"Crown of Wild Olive," ii. 23, 60 (note), 157.
"Deucalion," i. 180 (note).
"Eagle's Nest," ii. 125 (note), 140.
"Education in Art," i. 25 (note).
"Elements of Drawing," i. 95; ii. 165 (note).
"Essays on Political Economy," see below, "Munera Pulveris."
Evidence before National Gallery Commission, 1857, i. 48 (note), 84 (note).
"Examples of Venetian Architecture," i. 157 (note).
"Fiction Fair and Foul," ii. 97 (note).
"Fors Clavigera," i. 151, and note, 160 (note), 168, 169, 170; ii. 60 (note), 70 (note), 72, 106 (note), 126 (note), 130, 164 (note), 187, 189.
"Giotto and his Works in Padua," i. 25 (note).
Holbein, article on, ii. 12 (note).
"Home and its Economies," ii. 144 (note).
Lectures on Architecture and Painting, i. 22 (note), 107 (note).
Lectures on Art, ii. 125, 156. (note).
Lecture, on Forms of Stratified Alps, i. 174 (note).
—— on Verona and its ruins, ii. 113 (note).
Letters on the Lord's Prayer, ii. 142.
"Modern Painters," i. 3, 4 (note), 4 (note), 5 (note), 7, 8 (note), 40, 60 (note), 62 (note), 67 (note), 101 (note), 107 (note), 108 (note), 155, 174, 186, 191 (note), 193 (note); ii. 127, 165.
"Munera Pulveris," ii. 44 (note), 71, 72, 84, and note, 89, 226, 262 (note).
"My First Editor," ii. 192 (note).
Notes on Criminal Classes, ii. 131 seqq.
Notes on Prout and Hunt, ii. (note).
Oxford Lectures, ii. 125.
"Political Economy of Art;" see above, "A Joy for Ever."
Pre-Raphaelitism, i. 12, 65 (note).
"Queen of the Air," ii. 171, 201.
"Sesame and Lilies," i. 60 (note); ii. 168 (note), 171 (note).
"Seven Lamps of Architecture," i. 60 (note).
"Stones of Venice," i. 157 (note), 161; ii. 175 (note), 184 (note), 192 (note).
[Pg 242]"Time and Tide," ii. 65, 185.
Turner pamphlets, Catalogues of Sketches and Drawings, i. 84, and note, 88 (note), 101 (note).
"      "      Notes, 1857, 86 (note), 92, and note, 102 (note), 204.
"      "      Report, i. 52 (note), 54, and note, 88 (note).
"Two Paths," i. 88, 95.
"Unto this Last," ii. 72 (note).
"Val d'Arno," i, 114 (note); ii. 125.

Russia, England, and India, ii. 31.


"S," letter on capital from, ii. 83 (and note), 84.

Saint Bernard, dogs of, ii. 11.

St. Elmo, ii. 116.

St. George, i. 162;
Company or guild of, i. 169 (note), 190;
fund, ii. 120;
letters on, 187 (note);
museum of, i. 163, ii. 73, 126;
schools of, ii. 146;
Society of the Rose not to take name of, ii. 191.

St. James of the Rialto, i. 165, and note.

St. Jean d'Acre pillars, i. 166.

"St. Lawrence," emigration in the, ii. 87.

St. Michael, i. 162.

St. Mark's, Venice, circular relating to, i. 159;
letters on, i. 169 (note), 170;
antiquity of, i. 161, 162;
architecture of, i. 162;
bill-posters on, i. 168;
bit off it, at Brantwood, i. 167;
photographs of, i. 164;
restoration of south façade, i. 168, and note;
stability of, i. 166, 169;
subscriptions for, i. 163, 169 (note).

St. Paul and Justice, ii. 53.

St. Paul's, Charity children singing at, ii. 149.

Sainte Chapelle, the, i. 136, 153, 154.

Salamanca, battle of, ii. 30.

Salvation, the Light of the hope of, i. 69.

Salvator Rosa, i. 15;
his "Mercury and the Woodman," i. 4.

Sancho, ii. 97.

Sardinia, position of in 1859, ii. 3, 6.

Savoy, cession of, ii. 19, and note.

Scarlet, the purest color, ii. 155.

Schaffhausen, letter from, ii. 13.

Scholarship, result of English, ii. 98.

Schools (see Education, St. George).

Science, list of letters on, i, 171;
connection of the different sciences, i. 132 (note);
what it includes, i. 30;
growth of, i. 32, 132, 134;
and religion, i. 133;
use of, i. 133.

Science of Life," "The, letters in, ii. 143, 149.

Scotch, ballads, i. 76 (note);
"craigs," i. 146;
people, religious tone of, ii. 3, 4, 7.

Scotsman, The, letters in—
(July 20, 1859) "The Italian Question," ii. 3.
( "  23,  " )  "    "        "      ii. 8.
(Aug.  6,  " )  "    "        "    ii. 13.
(Nov. 10, 1873) "Mr. Ruskin and Prof. Hodgson," ii. 44.
[Pg 243]( "  18,  "  )    "        "      "          ii. 46.

Scotsman, The, referred to, i. 74 (note).

Scott, Sir Gilbert, design for Foreign Office, i. 99.

----, Sir Walter, books of, referred to—
"The Abbot," chap. xvi. ("The monks of Melrose made good kail," also quoted in the introduction to "The Monastery"), i. 141.
"The Antiquary" (Fairservice), ii. 97.
"Lady of the Lake," canto v. st. x. quoted, i. 181.
"Lay of the Last Minstrel," canto ii. st. viii. quoted, i. 141.
"Redgauntlet," Letter xiii. (Peebles v. Plainstanes), i. 184.
"Rob Roy" (carefu' Mattie), ii. 97.
"Waverley" referred to, ii. 123 (note).

----, Mr. W. B., ii. 165;
reviews Mr. Tyrwhitt's "Sketching Club," ib.

Sculpture, in architecture, i. 126, 137 seqq.;
of hair, i. 143, ii. 12;
portrait statues, i. 140.

Sea, the, ii. 173;
color of, i. 196;
light and shadow on, i. 194 seqq.;
southern and northern seas, ii. 178.

Sedan, battle of, ii. 31, 33.

Seine-series, Turner's, i. 82, 101.

Self-interest, ii. 7, 48, 55.

Sempach, ii. 4, and note;
battle of, i. 182, and note.

Serf-economy in America, ii. 21.

Servants and Houses, list of letters on, ii. 90;
education of, ii. 100;
facilities for leaving places, ii. 101;
good, how to secure, ii. 93;
kindness to means care, ii. 94;
rarity of good, ii. 93, and note;
and masters, ii. 97;
must be permanent to be good, ii. 95, 101;
Mr. Ruskin's experience of, ii. 95.

Service, value of self service, ii. 96.

Sexes, relation of the, ii. 147.

Shadow in distant effect, i. 194 seqq.;
on water, i. 198;
impossible "on clear water, near the eye," i. 192 seqq.

Shakespeare, his mission and work, i. 22 (note);
notes on a word in, ii. 176, 177;
Society, ib.;
quoted or referred to—
"As You Like It," Act 2, sc. 3 (Old Adam), ii. 97.
"      "      Act 2, sc. 7 ("motley's the only wear"), ii. 157.
"Coriolanus," Act 3, sc. 1 ("mutable, rank-scented many"), i. 38.
"Hamlet," Act 5, sc. 1 ("The cat will mew," etc.), ii. 97.
"Julius Cæsar," Act 2, sc. 1 ("And yon grey lines," etc.), ii. 176.
"Measure for Measure" (Lord Angelo), ii. 144.
"Merchant of Venice," ii. 57, i. 165, ii. 179.
"Merry Wives of Windsor," i. 118.
"Midsummer Night's Dream," ii. 5, Act 1, sc. 1, i. 60, 61 (note).
"Romeo and Juliet," Act 2, sc. 4 ("My fan, Peter"), ii. 38.
"Taming of the Shrew" (Grumio), ii. 97, 178.
"      "    "    Act 2, sc. 1 ("Katharine's frets").
"Two Gentlemen of Verona," Act 2, sc. 4 ("As rich in having," etc.), i. 64.
"            "          (Launce), ii. 97.

Shallow, Justice, his theology of death, i. 118.

[Pg 244]Sheepshanks collection at Kensington, i. 98 (note).

Sheffield, art impossible in, ii. 126;
ironwork at, ii. 127;
Museum, ii. 73 (note), i. 163;
Western Park at, opened, ii. 126 (note);
strikes at, ii. 106.

Sheffield Daily Telegraph (Sept. 7, 1875), St. George's Museum, ii. 126.

Sheffield Independent (March 8, 1880), Mr. Holyoake on St. George's Museum, ii. 73.

Shelley, quoted to illustrate Turner, i. 20;
his "Cloud," ii. 180.

Shenstone quoted, i. 72, and note.

Shepherd, Mr. R. H., two letters on the Bibliography of Ruskin, to, ii. 190.

Shoeburyness, ii. 114.

Siena, Fount of Joy at, ii. 118.

Sienese, qualities of the race, ii. 117.

Simmons, W. H., engraver of "Light of the World," i. 67 (note).

Sinai, the desert of, ii. 5.

Singing for children, ii. 149.

Sire, meaning of, i. 145.

"Sixty years ago" (letter in Pall Mall Gazette, Jan. 30, 1868), ii. 123.

Slave markets in Mayfair, ii. 21.

Slavery and emancipation, ii. 21, 22;
and liberty, ii. 98, 99;
and sonship, ii. 93, 94, 96.

Smith, Mr. Collingwood, on water colors, i. 104 (note).

Smith, Sydney, memoirs quoted ("Bunch"), ii. 96 (note).

Smoke, no art in midst of, ii. 126.

Socialist, The (Nov., 1877), letter on the "Principles of Property" in, ii. 71.

Society, of Arts, i. 52;
of Artists, Sheffield, ii. 181;
Ashmolean, i. 202;
New Shakespeare, ii. 176, 177;
for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, Mr. Ruskin at, ii. 128 (note);
Ruskin Society (of the Rose), ii. 191;
Science Association, Mr. Ruskin at, ii. 65 (note).

Solferino, ii. 3 (note), 31, 33.

Solomon, ii. 141, 173;
"seals of Solomon" (Suleyman), see Arabian Nights.

Solomon, Mr. A., his "Waiting for the Verdict," i. 73 (note).

Son, relation of, to father, ii. 145.

Sonship and slavery, ii. 96-98.

Sorrento, i. 203.

Soult, Marshal, collection of, i. 87 (note).

Southey's Colloquies quoted, i. 21 (note).

Spain, oppressed by Spaniards, ii. 6.

Sparkes, i. 100 (note).

Spencer, Mr. Herbert, quoted, i. 194 (note), ii. 144 (note).

Sport, field, ii. 127.

Sprat, venture a, to catch a herring, ii. 41.

Standard, The, letter "Mr. Ruskin and Mr. Lowe" (Aug. 28, 1877), ii. 189;
article on St. Mark's, Venice, i. 168.

Stanfield, i. 23, 192;
illustrated by Campbell, i. 20;
water-painting by, i. 198.

[Pg 245]Statues, commemorative, modern use of, i. 140.

Steam, to be employed after muscular power, ii. 87, 135.

Stones, pressure of, in water, i. 177, 186.

Stothard, engraving of design by, in "Rogers's Poems," i. 93.

Strasburg, ruin of, in Franco-Prussian war, ii. 25.

Street, Mr., influenced by Mr. Ruskin, i. 156;
his New Law Courts, i. 156;
and St. Mark's, i. 170.

Streets, state of London, ii. 119.

Strikes, ii. 42, 43;
letter "Strikes v. Arbitration," ii. 48;
at Cramlington, ii. 106, and note;
Mr. Ruskin's proposal as to, ii. 65 (note);
at Sheffield, ii. 106;
in Staffordshire, ii. 39.

Stucco, ii. 101.

Sunrise, rarely seen, ii. 177.

Supply and Demand, letters on, ii. 39 seqq., 43 seqq.;
beneficial supply, ii. 43;
law of, ii. 81, 84, 93, 94, 105;
Mr. Ruskin and, ii. 99, 100.

Swift, quoted, ii. 167.

Swiss, the people of Bellinzona, ii. 117;
the liberties of Europe and, i. 182;
Protestantism, ii. 3-5.

Sydenham, and railway complaints, ii. 84, and note.

Syro-Phœnicia, the woman of, ii. 174.


"Tain Caimbeul," letter in Reader, i. 175 (note).

Taylor, the trial, ii. 130, and note.

Telford, "Ruskin, T., and Domecq," ii. 60 (note).

Tell, William, ii. 3, and note;
opera of, ii. 194.

Tempera-painting, determined by Angelico, i. 118.

Temple, Rev. F. (Bishop of Exeter), i. 25 (note), 31.

Tennyson, quoted: "Mariana," i. 60 (note);
"In Memoriam," i. 179;
"Enid," ii. 100;
"Break, break," etc., ii. 178;
mentioned, ii. 183 (note).

Territory, extent of, ii. 24.

Thackeray, Miss, "The Chaplain's Daughter" referred to, i. 120, 121 (note);
"Jack the Giant Killer," ib.

Thames, the, i. 183;
its commerce, i. 165 (note);
its mud, ii. 73.

Theatre, the, letter, "At the Play," ii. 185,
(See Drama.)

Theatre, The, letter in, "The Merchant of Venice," ii. 179.

Thorburn, i. 62.

Thornbury, Walter, "Life of Turner," i. 108.

Tiber, inundations, ii. 111, 116, 118.

Ticino, inundations, ii. 113, 117.

Times, The letters in:—
(January 7, 1847) Danger to the National Gallery, i. 37.
(May 13, 1851) The Pre-Raphaelite Brethren, i. 57.
(May 30, 1851) The Pre-Raphaelite Brethren, i. 63.
(December 29, 1852) The National Gallery, i. 45.
(May 5, 1854) "The Light of the World," i. 67.
(May 25, 1854) "The Awakening Conscience," i. 71.
(October 28, 1856) The Turner Bequest, i. 81.
[Pg 246](July 9, 1857) The Turner Bequest and the National Gallery, i. 86.
(March 29, 1859) The sale of Mr. Windus' pictures, ii. 185.
(October 21, 1859) The Turner Gallery at Kensington, i. 98.
(October 24, 1862) Oak Silkworms, ii. 158.
(October 8, 1863) The Depreciation of Gold, ii. 37.
(January 27, 1866) The British Museum, i. 52.
(January 24, 1871) Turners False and True, i. 106.
(June 6, 1874) The Value of Lectures, ii. 124.
(January 20, 1876) The Frederick Walter Exhibition, i. 116.
(April 25, 1878) Copies of Turner's Drawings, i. 105.
(February 12, 1876) Despair (extract), ii. 124 (note).
(February 2, 1880) The Purchase of Pictures, i. 55.
Articles, etc., referred to:—
Critique on early Pre-Raphaelite works, i. 59 (note).
"Difficulties of Neutrality," Letter, ii. 26 (note).
And see notes to above-named letters.

Tintoret, i. 49, 75, 96, 112;
"Susannah and the Elders," i. 50, and note.

Titian, i. 24, 28, 42, 43, 49, 51, 75, 96, 106, 112, 117, 142; ii. 214;
his "Bacchus and Ariadne," i. 40, 54, and note.

Toccia, inundation of the, ii. 113.

Tombs, pompous, i. 140.

Tour, La, ii. 11, 12.

Townshend, Lord, letter by, on the Circassian exodus, ii. 17, and note.

Traceries, not to be copied, i. 159.

Trade, the true dignity of, ii. 70, and note.

Training, moral and athletic, ii. 145.

Translation, the, of words, ii. 175.

Trevelyan, Sir W. C., i. 133, and note.

Trial and fate, the laws of, i. 125-6.

Trollope, Anthony, on field sports, ii. 128 (note).

Tunbridge Wells, education meeting at, 123.

Turin, ii. 11, 12.

Turner, J. W. M., list of letters on, i. 80 seqq.;
his pictures ill seen in the Academy, i. 20, 21;
bequest to the nation, i. 50, and note, 81, 100;
his best work in gray, i. 96;
his best work his modern work (1843), i. 23 (note);
change in price and value of his pictures, ii. 41;
character of, i. 107;
Claude challenged by, i. 46, and note;
the Turner collection, i. 54, and note;
copies of, 105, and note;
difficulty of copying, i. 95;
lesson in art of copying, i. 23;
his delicacy of hand, i. 95;
engravings of, their value, i. 90;
exhibitions of Marlboro' House, i. 81, and note, 88-9, 92, 98, 101;
eyesight of (Dr. Liebreich on the), i. 154 and 155 (note);
"Turners" False and True, i. 106;
a Turner gallery, proposals for, i. 91;
Life of, i. 107-8;
light and gas, etc., effect of, on his pictures, i. 83, 90, 98, and note, 100, 103, 105;
the Turner mania, i. 16;
mass of drawings left by, i. 101;
Norton's, Prof., lecture on, i. 86 (note), 97 (note), 105 (note);
pencil outlines of, i. 93;
poetry and philosophy of his pictures, i. 11, 15, 18, 21;
pre-Raphaelitism of, i. 65 (note), 74;
his "Public," i. 15;
scorned in life, i. 8, 11;
[Pg 247]sea subjects, i. 199, 11, 12
(note);
the "Shakespeare" of painting, i. 22, and note;
Shelley compared with, i. 20;
sketch-book of, i. 86 (note);
subtlety of, i. 96;
requisites for enjoyment of his work, i. 21;
unusual vehicles of, i. 82;
Waagen's estimate of, i. 11, 12, and note;
water-painting by, i. 199;
will quoted, i. 46 (note).

Turner, J. W. M., Drawings and Sketches, condition of at death, i. 90, 101 (note);
copies of, 105-6, and note;
distribution of among provincial schools proposed, i. 54, and note, 101;
exhibitions of, at Marlboro' House, see above, at Kensington, i. 98, and note, 101;
a perfect example of a Turner sketch, 95, 96, and note;
Ruskin's, Mr., arrangement of, i. 84, 88, 89;
report on, i. 52 (note), 54, and note, 88;
"Turner Notes," etc. (see Ruskin, Mr.).

---- Pictures and drawings of, referred to: Alnwick Castle, i. 199;
"Dido building Carthage," i. 48;
Edinburgh, i. 101;
Egglestone Abbey, i. 102, and note;
"Fishermen endeavoring to put their fish on board" (Bridgewater House), i. 11, and note;
Fluelen i. 105 (note);
Fort Bard, i. 101;
Harbors of England, i. 82, 101;
Hornby Castle, i. 117;
Ivy Bridge, i. 82, 101;
"Landscape with Cattle," i. 106, and note;
Langharne Castle, i. 102, and note;
Liber Studiorum, i. 82, 86;
sale of, ii. 70;
Plains of Troy, i. 102, and note;
Richmond series, i. 102, and note;
Rivers of England, i. 101;
Rivers of France, i. 82;
River Scenery, ib.;
Rogers' Italy and Poems, i. 82, 101;
Seine series, i. 101;
study of a Cutter, i. 96, and note;
"Sun rising in a mist," i. 46;
Val d'Aosta, i. 82;
Pictures of Venice, i. 199;
Yorkshire series, i. 90.

Tuscan army (1859), ii. 6.

"Twenty Photographs," review of, ii. 172, and note.

Tyre, the citadel of, and St. Mark's, i. 162.

Tyrwhitt's "Sketching Club," ii. 165.


"Uncle Tom's Cabin" referred to, ii. 21.

University Magazine, The (April, 1878), Mr. Ruskin's articles in, ii. 192 (note).

Utopia, the people of, and their streets, ii. 119;
Ruskin's home in, ib.;
Sir T. More's, ii. 191.

Utopianism, Mr. Ruskin's, ii. 74, 106.

Uwins, Thomas, R.A., knowledge of oil pictures, i. 46, and note;
keeper of the National Gallery, ib.


Vallombrosa, i. 184.

Value, intrinsic, a question outside political economy, ii. 39;
and price, ii. 37, 65.

"Vandalism at the National Gallery" (a pamphlet), i. 37, 38 (note).

Van de Velde, i. 12;
water painting, i. 199.

Van Eyck, i. 43, 45, 46, and note, 65.

Vasari quoted, i. 9 (note).

[Pg 248]Vaudois, the character and religion of the, ii. 3, 11, 12.

Velasquez's "Philip IV. hunting the wild boar," i. 40.

Venice, the Cross of the merchants of, i. 165;
market of, ib. (note);
ruin of, ii, 145;
Ruskin, Mr., in, i. 87, 157, ii. 154;
St. James of the Rialto, i. 164;
see St. Mark's.

Venus of Melos, ii. 25.

"Verax," letters on National Gallery, i. 37 (note).

Vernet, Raphael restored by, i. 38.

Vernon, Mr. Robert, gift of, to the National Gallery, i. 50, and note.

Verona, Campanile of, i. 169;
Mr. Ruskin's wish to buy (see "Political Economy of Art," Lect. ii. pp. 70-74, reprinted in "A Joy for Ever," pp. 77, 82), i. 152, and note.

Veronese, i. 75, 96;
in National Gallery, i. 46, and note;
"Marriage in Cana," i. 87;
"Family of Darius," ib. and note;
"Rape of Europa," i. 46 (note);
St. Nicholas, ib.;
at Venice, pictures destroyed, i. 38.

Verrochio, no picture by, in National Gallery, i. 44 (note).

Vice and heroism, ii. 134, 135.

Villas, modern, ii. 104, 105, and notes; i. 156.

"Vindex," letter on Barry from, ii. 175 (note).

Virgil quoted, i. 176 (note); ii. 18, and note.

Votes for Parliament, ii. 141, 154.


Waagen, Dr., i. 11, and note, 12.

Wages and labor, ii. 56, 60;
how determined, ii. 63, and note;
and hardship of work, ii. 59;
a just rate of, ii. 48, 50, 51;
"Standard of" (letter), ii. 65, 66, and see ii. 42.

Wakley, Thomas, M.P., i. 19, and note.

Wales, Princess of, "our future Queen," ii. 19.

Walker, Frederick, letter on, i. 116;
effect of public on, ib.;
elaborateness of, i. 121;
moral of his life, i. 118, 119;
morbid tendency of, i. 117;
method of painting, i. 117;
study of art, i. 118;
special pictures by, i. 119 seqq., and note.

Walpole's "Anecdotes of Painting" referred to, i. 14 (note).

War, American, loss of property, ii. 33;
English feeling as to, ii. 15-17, 19;
"modern warfare," letter on, ii. 29, and see ii. 23.

Ward, Mr. William, copies of Turner, i. 105, and note;
photographs obtainable of, i. 164.

Warwick Castle, burning of, letters on, i. 151 seqq., 152 seqq.;
the kingmaker, i. 153.

Waste land, bringing in of, ii. 138.

Water, use of in labor, ii. 135, 136;
pressure of stones in, i. 177, 186;
reflections in, i. 191 (note), and seqq.;
of rainbows in, i. 201;
surface polished, i. 195, 197 seqq.

Water-colors, effect of light, etc., on, i. 90, 91, 103, and note, 104;
series of British, at Kensington, i. 98 (note);
Society of Painters in, i. 118, 166, 201 (note).

[Pg 249]Waterloo, battle of, ii. 30.

"W. B.," letter in Daily Telegraph, ii. 99 (note).

"W. C. P.," letter in Times on "Neutrality," ii. 26 (note).

Wealth, definition of, letter on the, ii. 71;
Mill challenged to define, ib.

Weapons, ancient and modern, ii. 32.

"Weary-Faulds," ii. 123, and note.

Weblings, recitation of the, ii. 180.

Weekly Chronicle, letter "Modern Painters" in the (September 23, 1843), i. 3.

Weller, Sam, ii. 97;
see Dickens.

West, Benjamin, i. 75.

Western Park, Sheffield, ii. 126 (note).

Westminster, the first Norman Abbey, i. 161;
Mill, J. S., M.P. for, ii. 20 (note).

"Whinny-hills," ii. 123 (note).

Whitaker's "History of Richmondshire," i. 117 (note).

White, Adam, letter on "the Study of Natural History" to, i. 204.

Whitmore, Dr., report of Crawford Place, ii. 105.

"W. H. W.," letter to Daily Telegraph on houses, ii. 104, and note, 105.

Wicklow Hills, i. 181.

Wife, place of a, ii. 153.

Wilkie, Sir David, "The Blind Fiddler," i. 7 (note);
Burns and, compared, i. 20.

Wilkinson, Sir Gardner, ii. 200, and note.

Williams, Mr. (of Southampton), Lecture on "Art-teaching by Correspondence," to, i. 32.

Wind-power, use of, ii. 135.

Windus, Mr. B. J., sale of his pictures, ii. 185;
W. L., "Burd Helen," i. 76, 77, and notes.

Winkelried, Arnold von, ii. 4, and note.

Winsor, Charlotte, ii. 100 (note).

Witness, The, letters in:
(September 16, 1857) "The Castle Rock," i. 145.
(September 30, 1857) "Edinburgh Castle," i. 147.
(March 27, 1858) Generalization and the Scotch Pre-Raphaelites, i. 74.
(August, 1859) Refusal by, of Letters on the Italian Question, ii. 13 (note).

Women, list of letters on their work and dress, ii. 152;
duty and employment of, ii. 153;
modern ideas as to, ii. 153;
place of, ii. 145;
work of, ii. 154 (note), 153 (note).

Woodward, Mr., and the Oxford Museum, i. 125 (note).

Woolner, Mr., and the Oxford Museum, i. 139.

Words, definition of, ii. 56.

Wordsworth, depth of, i. 24 (note);
his "public," i. 14;
quoted, i. 17, 18, 24, and note, 148, 149; ii. 6, 8 (note).

Work, the best unpaid, ii. 60, and note;
[Pg 250]honest always obtainable, ii. 46, 135.

Work and Wages, letters on, in the Pall Mall Gazette, ii. 48-64.

Workmen, turned off, ii. 27;
training of for Gothic architecture, i. 136.

Works of art, manufacture of by poor, ii. 139.

World, The (June 9, 1875), letter on the "Publication of Books," ii. 163;
article, "Ruskin to the Rescue," ib. (note).

Wornum's, R.N., "Life of Holbein," ii. 12 (note);
at the National Gallery, i. 92, 86 (note);
Turner drawings arranged, ib. 88.

Worth, battle of, ii. 31.

"W. R. G.," letters of, to Pall Mall Gazette, ii. 66-70, and notes.


Xenophon's Economist, quoted, ii. 102, and note.


"Y. L. Y.," letter in, on the gentian, i. 204 (note).

Y. M. A. Magazine, letters in:
(September, 1879). "Blindness and Sight," ii. 139.
(October, 1879). "The Eagle's Nest," ii. 140.
(November, 1879). "Politics in York," ii. 141.

Young Men and Politics, ii. 141.


Zedekiah, ii. 177.

Zeus, i. 162.

Zorzi, Count, and St. Mark's, Venice, i. 160 (note).

Zosima, epitaph on, ii. 99.

Zuingli, ii. 4, and note.