NOTES AND CORRESPONDENCE.
I. Affairs of the Company.
Venice, October 20th.—I have sent for press, to-day, the fourth number of ‘Deucalion,’ in which will be found a statement of the system on which I begin the arrangement of the Sheffield Museum.
There are no new subscriptions to announce. Another donation, of fifty pounds, by Mrs. Talbot, makes me sadly ashamed of the apathy of all my older friends. I believe, in a little while now, it will be well for me to throw them all aside, and refuse to know any one but my own Companions, and the workmen who are willing to listen to me. I have spoken enough to the upper classes, and they mock me;—in the seventh year of Fors I will speak more clearly than hitherto,—but not to them.
Meantime, my Sheffield friends must not think I am neglecting them, because I am at work here in Venice, instead of among them. They will know in a little while the use of my work here. The following portions of letter from the Curator of our Museum, with the piece of biography in it, which I venture to print, in haste, assuming permission, will be of good service to good workers everywhere.
“H. Swan to J. Ruskin.
“Walkley, Sheffield, October 18, 1876.
“Dear Master,—The interest in the Museum seems still increasing. Yesterday (Sunday), in addition to our usual allotment of casual calls at the Museum, we had a visit from a party of working men; two or three of them from Barnsley, but the most Sheffielders, among which last were several of those who came [[362]]to meet thee on the last occasion. Their object was a double one; first, to see what progress we were making with the Museum; and, secondly, to discuss the subject of Usury, the unlawfulness of which, in its ordinary aspects, being (unlike the land question) a perfectly new notion to all except one or two. The objection generally takes this shape: ‘If I have worked hard to earn twenty pounds, and it is an advantage to another to have the use of that twenty pounds, why should he get that advantage without paying me for it?’ To which my reply has been, There may, or may not, be reasons why the lender should be placed in a better position for using his powers of body or mind; but the special question for you, with your twenty pounds, now is, not what right has he to use the money without payment—(he has every right, if you give him leave; and none, if you don’t;)—the question you have to propose to yourself is this, ‘Why should I, as a man and a Christian, after having been paid for what I have earned, expect or desire to make an agreement by which I may get, from the labour of others, money I have not earned?’ Suppose, too, bail for a hundred pounds to be required for a prisoner in whose innocence you believed, would you say ‘I will be bail for the hundred pounds, but I shall expect five pounds from him for the advantage he will thereby get?’ No; the just man would weigh well whether it be right or no to undertake the bail; but, having determined, he would shrink from receiving the unearned money, as I believe the first unwarped instinct of a good man does still in the case of a loan.
“Although, as I have said, all question as to the right of what is called a moderate rate of interest was new to most of our visitors, yet I found a greater degree of openness to the truth than might have been expected. One of the most interesting parts of the discussion was the relation by one of the party of his own experiences, in years past, as a money-lender. ‘In the place where I used to work at that time,’ said he, ‘there was a very many of [[363]]a good sort of fellows who were not so careful of their money as I was, and they used often to run out of cash before the time came for them to take more. Well, knowing I was one that always had a bit by me, they used to come to me to borrow a bit to carry them through to pay-day. When they paid me, some would ask if I wanted aught for the use of it. But I only lent to pleasure them, and I always said, No, I wanted nought. One day, however, Jack —— came to me, and said, “Now, my lad, dost want to get more brass for thyself, and lay by money? because I can put thee in the way of doing it.” I said that was a great object for me. “Well,” said he, “thou must do as I tell thee. I know thou’rt often lending thy brass to them as want a lift. Now thou must make them pay for using thy money, and if thou works as I tell thee, it’ll grow and grow. And by-and-by they’ll be paying and paying for the use of their own money over and over again.” Well, I thought it would be a good thing for me to have the bits of cash come in and in, to help along with what I earned myself. So I told each of the men, as they came, that I couldn’t go on lending for nothing, and they must pay me a bit more when they got their pay. And so they did. After a time, Jack —— came again, and said, “Well, how’rt getting on?” So I told him what I was doing, and that seemed all right. After a time, he came again, and said, “Now thou finds what I said was right. The men can spare thee a bit for thy money, and it makes things a deal more comfortable for thyself. Now I can show thee how a hundred of thy money shall bring another hundred in.” “Nay,” said I, “thou canst not do that. That can’t be done.” “Nay, but it can,” said Jack. And he told me how to manage; and that when I hadn’t the cash, he would find it, and we’d halve the profits. [Say a man wants to borrow twenty pounds, and is to pay back at three shillings a week. The interest is first deducted for the whole time, so that if he agrees to pay only five per cent. he will receive but nineteen pounds; then the interest is more [[364]]than five per cent. on the money actually out during the very first week, while the rate gradually rises as the weekly payments come,—slowly at first, but at the last more and more rapidly, till, during the last month, the money-lender is obtaining two hundred per cent. for the amount (now, however, very small) still unpaid.]
“ ‘Well, it grew and grew. Hundreds and hundreds I paid and received every week, (and we found that among the poorest little shops it worked the best for us). At last it took such hold of me that I became a regular bloodsucker—a bloodsucker of poor folk, and nothing else. I was always reckoning up, night and day, how to get more and more, till I got so thin and ill I had to go to the doctor. It was old Dr. Sike, and he said, “Young man, you must give up your present way of work and life, or I can do nothing for you. You’ll get worse and worse.”
“ ‘So I thought and thought, and at last I made up my mind to give it all up, though I was then getting rich. But there was no blessing on what I’d got, and I lost it every farthing, and had to begin again as poor as I was when I first left the workhouse to learn a trade. And now, I’ve prospered and prospered in my little way till I’ve no cause to worry anyways about money, and I’ve a few men at work with me in my shop.
“ ‘Still, for all that, I don’t see why I shouldn’t have interest on the little capital I’ve saved up honestly; or how am I to live in my old age?’
“Another workman suggested, ‘Wouldn’t he be able to live on his capital?’ ‘Aye, but I want to leave that to somebody else,’ was the answer. [Yes, good friend, and the same excuse might be made for any form of theft.—J. R.]
“I will merely add, that if there were enforced and public account of the amount of monies advanced on loan, and if the true conditions and workings of those loans could be shown, there would be revealed such an amount of cruel stress upon the foolish, weak, and poor of the small tradesmen (a class far more [[365]]numerous than are needed) as would render it very intelligible why so many faces are seamed with lines of suffering and anxiety. I think it possible that the fungus growth and increasing mischief of these loan establishments may reach such a pitch as to necessitate legislative interference, as has been the case with gambling. But there will never fail modes of evading the law, and the sufficient cure will be found only when men shall consider it a dishonour to have it imputed to them that any portion of their income is derived from usury.”
The Union Bank of London (Chancery Lane Branch) in Account with the St. George’s Fund.
| 1876. | Dr. | £ | s. | d. |
| Aug. 16. | To Balance. | 94 | 3 | 4 |
| Oct. 12. | ” Draft at Bridgwater (per Mr. Ruskin) | 50 | 0 | 0 |
| 24. | ” (J. P. Stilwell) | 25 | 0 | 0 |
| £169 | 3 | 4 | ||
| Cr. | £ | s. | d. | |
| Oct. 12. | By Postage of Pass Book | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| 25. | Balance | 169 | 3 | 1 |
| £169 | 3 | 4 |
II. Affairs of the Master.
| £ | s. | d. | £ | s. | d. | ||
| Sept. 15. | Balance[a] | 1221 | 0 | 8 | |||
| 20. | Kate | 100 | 0 | 0 | |||
| 26. | —— at Venice, Antonio[b] | 50 | 0 | 0 | |||
| Oct. 1. | Secretary | 25 | 0 | 0 | |||
| 3. | Downs | 50 | 0 | 0 | |||
| 5. | Gift[c] | 20 | 0 | 0 | |||
| 10. | Loan | 200 | 0 | 0 | |||
| ” | Jackson | 50 | 0 | 0 | |||
| ——— | 495 | 0 | 0 | ||||
| Oct. 15. | Balance | £726 | 0 | 8 | |||
[a] By report from Bank; but the ‘repayments’ named in it should not have been added to the cash account, being on separate account with the Company. I will make all clear in December. [↑]
[b] For Signora Caldara (Venetian botany). [↑]
[c] Nominally loan, to poor relation, but I do not suppose he will ever be able to pay me. The following £200 I do not doubt receiving again. [↑]
[[366]]
III. I print the following letter with little comment, because I have no wish to discuss the question of the uses of Dissent with a Dissenting Minister; nor do I choose at present to enter on the subject at all. St. George, taking cognizance only of the postscript, thanks the Dissenting Minister for his sympathy; but encourages his own servant to persist in believing that the “more excellent way” (of Charity), which St. Paul showed, in the 13th of Corinthians, is quite as truly followed in devoting the funds at his said servant’s disposal to the relief of the poor, as in the maintenance of Ruskinian Preachers for the dissemination of Ruskinian opinions, in a Ruskinian Society, with the especial object of saving Mr. Ruskin’s and the Society’s souls.
“September 14th, 1876.
“Dear Mr. Ruskin,—Mr. Sillar’s ‘valuable letter’ in last month’s Fors, (a) would have been more valuable if he had understood what he was writing about. Mr. Tyerman (in his ‘Life and Times of Wesley,’ p. 431,) gives the trifling differences between the present Rules of the Methodist Societies and the first edition issued in 1743. Instead of ‘interested persons having altered old John Wesley’s rules’ (he was forty years old when he drew them up) ‘to suit modern ideas’—the alterations, whether good or bad, were made by himself.
“The first contributions in the ‘Classes’ were made for the express purpose of discharging a debt on a preaching house. Then they were devoted ‘to the relief of the poor,’ there being at the time no preachers dependent on the Society for support. After 1743, when circuits had been formed and preachers stationed in certain localities, their maintenance gradually became the principal charge upon the Society’s funds. (See Smith’s ‘History of Methodism,’ vol. i., p. 669.) In 1771 Wesley says expressly that the contributions are applied ‘towards the expenses of the Society.’ (b) (‘Journal,’ vol. iii., p. 205.) Certainly Methodism, thus supported, has done far more to benefit the [[367]]poor and raise them, than any amount of mere almsgiving could have done. Methodist preachers have at least one sign of being in the apostolical succession. They can say, with Paul, ‘as poor, yet making many rich.’ (c)
“ ‘Going to law’ was altered by Mr. Wesley to ‘brother going to law with brother,’ in order, no doubt, to bring the rule into verbal agreement with 1 Cor. vi. 6. (d)
“ ‘Usury’ was defined by Mr. Wesley to be ‘unlawful interest,’ (e) in accordance with the ordinary notions of his day. He was greatly in advance of his age, yet he could scarcely have been expected to anticipate the definition of Usury given, as far as I know, (f) for the first time in Fors for August, 1876. I don’t see why we Methodists should be charged with breaking the laws of Moses, David, and Christ (Fors, p. 253), if we consider ‘old John Wesley’s’ definition to be as good as the ‘modern idea.’
“Of course St. George, for whom I have the greatest respect and admiration, will correct Mr. Sillar’s mistake.
“I am, Sir,
“Another Reader of Fors (which I wish you would sell a little cheaper), and
“A Methodist Preacher.
“P.S.—Why should you not copy old John Wesley, and establish your St. George’s Company on a legal basis? In 1784 he drew up a Deed of Declaration, which was duly enrolled in Chancery. It stated the purposes for which his Society was formed, and the mode in which it was to be governed. A Deed of Trust was afterwards drawn up for one of our chapels, reciting at length this Deed of Declaration, and all the purposes for which the property was to be used. All our other property is settled on the same trusts. A single line in each subsequent chapel deed—stating that all the trusts are to be the same as those of the ‘Model Deed,’ as we call the first one—obviates [[368]]the necessity and expense of repeating a very long legal document.
“Success to St. George,—yet there is, I think, ‘a more excellent way.’ ”
a. Mr. Sillar’s letter did not appear in last month’s Fors. A small portion of it appeared, in which I regret that Mr. Sillar so far misunderstood John Wesley as to imagine him incapable of altering his own rules so as to make them useless.
b. I wish the Wesleyans were the only Society whose contributions are applied to no better purpose.
c. I envy my correspondent’s complacency in his own and his Society’s munificence, too sorrowfully to endeavour to dispel it.
d. The ‘verbal’ agreement is indeed secured by the alteration. But as St. Paul, by a ‘brother,’ meant any Christian, I shall be glad to learn from my correspondent whether the Wesleyans understand their rule in that significance.
e. Many thanks to Mr. Wesley. Doubtless his disciples know what rate of interest is lawful, and what not; and also by what law it was made so; and always pause with pious accuracy at the decimal point whereat the excellence of an investment begins to make it criminal. St. George will be grateful to their representative for information on these—not unimportant—particulars.
f. How far that is, my correspondent’s duly dissenting scorn of the wisdom of the Greeks, and legality of the Jews, has doubtless prevented his thinking it necessary to discover. I must not waste the time of other readers in assisting his elementary investigations; but have merely to point out to him that definitions either of theft, adultery, usury, or murder, have only become necessary in modern times; and that Methodists, [[369]]and any other persons, are charged by me with breaking the law of Moses, David, and Christ, in so far only as they do accept Mr. John Wesley’s, or any other person’s, definition instead of their utterly unquestionable meaning. (Would T. S., of North Tyne, reprint his letters for me from the Sunderland paper, to be sent out with December Fors?)
IV. I reprint the following paragraph chiefly as an example of our ineffable British absurdity. It is perfectly right to compel fathers to send their children to school; but, once sent, it is the schoolmaster’s business to keep hold of them. In St. George’s schools, it would have been the little runaway gentleman who would have got sent to prison; and kept, sotto piombi, on bread and water, until he could be trusted with more liberty. The fate of the father, under the present application of British law, leaves the problem, it seems to me, still insoluble but in that manner. But I should like to know more of the previous history of parent and child.
“The story of George Widowson, aged fifty-seven, told at the inquest held on his remains at Mile End Old Town on Wednesday, is worth recording. Widowson was, as appears by the evidence of his daughter, a sober, hard-working man until he was sent to prison for three days in last December in default of paying a fine for not sending his son, a boy eleven years of age, to school. The deceased, as several witnesses deposed, constantly endeavoured to make the child go to school, and had frequently taken him there himself; but it was all in vain. Young Widowson when taken to school invariably ran away, the result being that his father was driven to distraction. His imprisonment in December had preyed on his mind, and he took to drinking. He frequently threatened to destroy himself rather than be imprisoned again. Hearing that another summons was about to be issued against him, he broke up his home, and on [[370]]the night of the 30th ultimo solved the educational problem by throwing himself into the Regent’s Canal. Fear of being again sent to prison by the School Board was, his daughter believed, the cause of his committing this act. The jury returned a verdict in accordance of this opinion; and although George Widowson was wrong to escape from the clutches of the friends of humanity by putting an end to his life, those who blame him should remember that imprisonment to a bonâ fide working man of irreproachable character, is simply torture. He loses all that in his own eyes makes life worth preservation.”—Pall Mall Gazette, July 7th, 1876.
V. The next extract contains some wholesome comments on our more advanced system of modern education.
“Indian Civil Service.—At a meeting of the Indian section of the Society of Arts, under the presidency of Mr. Andrew Cassels, a paper on ‘Competition and its Effects upon Education’ was read by Dr. George Birdwood. In the course of his remarks, he commented at length upon the India Office despatch of Feb. 24, regarding ‘the selection and training of candidates for the Indian Civil Service,’ and feared that it would but serve to confirm and aggravate and rapidly extend the very worst evil of the old system of competition—namely, the degeneration of secondary education throughout England.… The despatch tended to make over all the secondary schooling of the country to the crammers, or to reduce it to the crammers’ system. They were making the entrance examinations year by year more and more difficult—as their first object must necessarily now be, not the moral and intellectual discipline of the boyhood of England, but to show an ever-growing percentage of success at the various competitive examinations always going on for public services. ‘The devil take the hindermost’ [[371]]was fast becoming the ideal of education, even in the public schools. If they seriously took to cramming little fellows from twelve to fourteen for entrance into public schools, the rising generation would be used up before it reached manhood. A well-known physician, of great experience, told him that the competition for all sorts of scholarships and appointments was showing its evil fruits in the increase of insanity, epilepsy, and other nervous diseases amongst young people of the age from seventeen to nineteen, and especially amongst pupil-teachers; and if admission into the public schools of England was for the future to be regulated by competition, St. Vitus’s dance would soon take the place of gout, as the fashionable disease of the upper classes. This was the inevitable result of the ill-digested and ill-regulated system of competition for the public services, and especially the Indian Civil Service, which had prevailed; and he feared that the recent despatch would only be to hasten the threatened revolution in their national secondary schools, and the last state of cramming under the despatch would be worse than the first.… The best of examiners was the examiner of his own pupils; for no man could measure real knowledge like the teacher. What should be aimed at was regular moderate study and sound and continuous discipline to start the growing man in life in the healthiest bodily and moral condition possible. He objected to children striving for prizes, whether in games or in studies. The fewer prizes won at school, the more would probably be won in life. Let their only anxiety be to educate their children well, and suffer no temptation to betray them into cramming, and the whole world was open to them.”—Daily Telegraph.
VI. The development of ‘humanity’ in America is so brilliantly illustrated in the following paragraphs, that I have thought them worth preserving:— [[372]]
From ‘The American Socialist, devoted to the Enlargement and Perfection of Home.’
“THE FUTURE OF SOCIETY.
“An American, visiting Europe, notices how completely there the various functions of the social body are performed. He finds a servant, an officer, a skilled workman, at every place. From the position of the stone-breaker on the highway, up to that of the highest Government official, every post is filled; every personal want of the traveller or the citizen is attended to. Policemen guard him in the streets, lackeys watch for his bidding at the hotels, railroad officials with almost superfluous care forward him on his way. As compared with American railroad management, the great English roads probably have four employés to our one. This plentitude of service results from three things—viz., density of population, which gives an abundant working class; cheapness of labour; and the aristocratic formation of society that tends to fix persons in the caste to which they were born. The effect is to produce a smoothness in the social movement—an absence of jar and friction, and a release in many cases from anxious, personal outlook, that are very agreeable. The difference between English and American life in respect to the supply of service is like that between riding on a highly-finished macadamized way, where every rut is filled and every stone is removed, and picking one’s way over our common country roads.
“Another thing that the traveller observes in Europe is the abundance everywhere of works of art. One’s sense of beauty is continually gratified; now with a finished landscape, now with a noble building, now with statues, monuments, and paintings. This immense accumulation of art springs in part of course from the age of the nations where it is found; but it is also due in a very great degree to the employment given to artists by [[373]]persons of wealth and leisure. Painting, sculpture, and architecture have always had constant, and sometimes munificent, patrons in the nobility and the Established Church.
“Observing these things abroad, the American asks himself whether the institutions of this country are likely to produce in time any similar result here. Shall we have the finished organization, the mutual service, and the wealth of art that characterize European society? Before answering this, let us first ask ourselves whether it is desirable that we should have them in the same manner that they exist abroad? Certainly not. No American would be willing to pay the price which England pays for her system of service. The most painful thing which one sees abroad is the utter absence of ambition in the class of household servants. Men who in this country would be looking to a seat in the legislature,[9] and who would qualify themselves for it, there dawdle away life in the livery of some noble, in smiling, aimless, do-nothing content, and beget children to follow in their steps. On seeing these servile figures, the American thanks heaven that the ocean rolls between his country and such a system. Rather rudeness, discomfort, self-service, and poverty, with freedom and the fire of aspiration, than luxury purchased by the enervation of man!
“Still, cannot we have the good without the bad? Cannot we match Europe in culture and polish without sacrificing for it our manhood? And if so, what are the influences in this country that are working in that direction? In answering this question, we have to say frankly that we see nothing in democracy alone that promises to produce the result under consideration. In a country where every one is taught to disdain a situation [[374]]of dependence, where the hostler and the chambermaid see the way opened for them to stand even with the best in the land, if they will but exercise their privilege of ‘getting on,’ there will be no permanent or perfect service. And so long as every man’s possessions are divided and scattered at his death, there will be no class having the secured leisure and the inducement to form galleries of art. Why should John Smith take pains to decorate his house with works of art, when he knows that within a year after his death it will be administered upon by the Probate Court, and sold with its furniture for the benefit of his ten children?” (Well put,—republican sage.)
“In a word, looking at the æsthetic side of things, our American system must be confessed to be not yet quite perfect.” (You don’t say so!) “Invaluable as it is for schooling men to independence and aspiration, it requires, to complete its usefulness, another element. The Republic has a sequel. That completing element, that sequel, is Communism. Communism supplies exactly the conditions that are wanting in the social life of America, and which it must have if it would compete with foreign lands in the development of those things which give ease and grace to existence.
“For instance, in respect to service: Communism, by extinguishing caste and honouring labour, makes every man at once a servant and lord. It fills up, by its capacity of minute organization, all the social functions as completely as the European system does; while, unlike that, it provides for each individual sufficient leisure, and frequent and improving changes of occupation. The person who serves in the kitchen this hour may be experimenting with a microscope or giving lessons on the piano the next. Applying its combined ingenuity to social needs, Communism will find means to consign all repulsive and injurious labour to machinery. It is continually interested to promote labour-saving improvements. The service that is performed [[375]]by brothers and equals from motives of love will be more perfect than that of hired lackeys, while the constantly varying round of occupation granted to all will form the most perfect school for breadth of culture and true politeness. Thus Communism achieves through friendship and freedom that which the Old World secures only through a system little better than slavery.
“In the interest of art and the cultivation of the beautiful, Communism again supplies the place of a hereditary aristocracy and a wealthy church. A Community family, unlike the ephemeral households of ordinary society, is a permanent thing. Its edifice is not liable to be sold at the end of every generation, but like a cathedral descends by unbroken inheritance. Whatever is committed to it remains, and is the care of the society from century to century. With a home thus established, all the members of a Community are at once interested to gather about it objects of art. It becomes a picture-gallery and a museum, by the natural accretion of time, and by the zeal of persons who know that every embellishment added to their home will not only be a pleasure to them personally, but will remain to associate them with the pleasure of future beholders in all time to come.
“Thus in Communism we have the conditions that are necessary to carry this country to the summit of artistic and social culture. By this route, we may at one bound outstrip the laboured attainments of the aristocracies of the Old World. The New York Central Park shows what can be achieved by combination on the democratic plan, for a public pleasure-ground. No other park is equal to it. Let this principle of combination be extended to the formation of homes as well as to municipal affairs, and we shall simply dot this country over with establishments[10] as much [[376]]better than those of the nobles of England as they are better than those of a day-labourer. We say better, for they will make art and luxury minister to universal education, and they will replace menial service with downright brotherhood. Such must be the future of American society.”
“To the Editor of the ‘American Socialist.’
“In your first issue you raise the question, ‘How large ought a Home to be?’ This is a question of great interest to all; and I trust the accumulated answers you will receive will aid in its solution.
“I have lived in homes varying in numbers from one (the bachelor’s home) to several hundred; and my experience and observation lead me to regard one hundred and twenty-five as about the right number to form a complete home. I would not have less than seventy-five nor more than one hundred and fifty. In my opinion a Home should minister to all the needs of its members, spiritual, intellectual, social, and physical. This ordinary monogamic homes cannot do; hence resort is had to churches, colleges, club-rooms, theatres, etc.; and in sparsely settled regions of country, people are put to great inconvenience and compelled to go great distances to supply cravings as imperative as the hunger for bread. This view alone would not limit the number of persons constituting a Home; but I take the ground that in a perfect Home there will be a perfect blending of all interests and perfect vibration in unison of all hearts; and of course thorough mutual acquaintance. My experience and observation convince me that it is exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to secure these results in a family of over one hundred and fifty members.
“In simply a monetary view it is undoubtedly best to have large Homes of a thousand or more; but money should not have great weight in comparison with a man’s spiritual, intellectual, and social needs.—D. E. S.” [[377]]
[1] The primary form in which the legend shows itself is a Nature myth, in which Ursula is the Bud of flowers, enclosed in its rough or hairy calyx, and her husband, Æther—the air of spring. She opens into lovely life with ‘eleven’ thousand other flowers—their fading is their sudden martyrdom. And—says your modern philosopher—‘That’s all’! [↑]
[2] Correspondence, Article VI. [↑]
[3] Compare the last page of Fors, October 1875. [↑]
[4] I. Servant. II. Master. III. Lord. IV. Duke. [↑]
[5] I want to write a long note on Byzantine empire,—Commanders of the Faithful,—Grand Turks,—and the “Eastern question.” But can’t: and perhaps the reader will be thankful. [↑]
[6] This Life of St. Ursula has been gathered from some of the stories concerning her which were current through Italy in the time of Carpaccio. The northern form of the legend, localized at Cologne, is neither so lovely nor so ancient. [↑]
[8] I could not see this symbol at the height at which the picture hung from the ground, when I described it in 1872. The folds of the drapery in the hand are all but invisible, even when the picture is seen close; and so neutral in their gray-green colour that they pass imperceptibly into violet, as the faint green of evening sky fades into its purple. But the folds are continued under the wrist in the alternate waves which the reader may see on the Etruscan tomb in the first room of the British Museum, with a sculpturesque severity which I could not then understand, and could only account for by supposing that Carpaccio had meant the Princess to “dream out the angel’s dress so particularly”! I mistook the fillet of victory also for a scroll; and could not make out the flowers in the window. They are pinks, the favourite ones in Italian windows to this day, and having a particular relation to St. Ursula in the way they rend their calyx; and I believe also in their peculiar relation to the grasses, (of which more in ‘Proserpina’). St. Ursula is not meant, herself, to recognize the angel. He enters under the door over which she has put her little statue of Venus; and through that door the room is filled with light, so that it will not seem to her strange [[359]]that his own form, as he enters, should be in shade: and she cannot see his dark wings. On the tassel of her pillow, (Etrurian also,) is written “Infantia”; and above her head, the carving of the bed ends in a spiral flame, typical of the finally ascending Spirit. She lies on her bier, in the last picture but one, exactly as here on her bed; only the coverlid is there changed from scarlet to pale violet. See notes on the meaning of these colours in third ‘Deucalion.’ [↑]
[9] May St. George be informed of how many members the American Legislature is finally to be composed; and over whom it is to exercise the proud function of legislation, which is to be the reward of heroic and rightly-minded flunkeys? [↑]
[10] As a painter, no less than a philanthropist, I am curious to see the effect of scenery, in these ‘polite’ terms of description, “dotted over with establishments.” [↑]