Sir—I am scornfully amused at your appeal to me, of all people in the world the precisely least likely to give you a farthing! My first word to all men and boys who care to hear me is—Don’t get into debt. Starve and go to heaven, but don’t borrow.... Don’t buy things you can’t pay for! And of all manner of debtors, pious people building churches they can’t pay for are the most detestable nonsense to me. Can’t you preach and pray behind the hedges, or in a sandpit, or in a coalhole first? And of all manner of churches thus idiotically built, iron churches are the damnablest to me.... Ever, nevertheless, and in all this saying, your faithful servant,
John Ruskin.
Dear me, and when I think of it, how often am I not asked to subscribe to help to pay off debts on churches, mostly, if not all, built by contract, and adorned with bright brass fittings from Birmingham!
The ancient church at Benington, time-worn and gray, looked interesting, and the interior would probably have repaid inspection, but the day was so gloriously fine that our love of the open air and cheerful sunshine quite overpowered our antiquarian tastes that sunny morning. Moreover, we did not set out to see everything on our way unless inclined so to do; ours was purely a pleasure tour, the mood of the moment was alone our guide. By the side of the churchyard we noticed a square space enclosed by a wall; we imagined that this must have been an old cattle-pound, but when we passed by it was full of all kinds of rubbish, as though it were the village dustbin.
Our road now wound through a very pleasant country, past busy windmills, sleepy farmsteads, and pretty cottages, till we came to the hamlet of Leake, where we observed another very fine church, of a size apparently out of all proportion to the needs of the parish. It may often be noted in Lincolnshire and the eastern counties generally how fine many of the remote country churches are, and how often, alas! such fine architectural monuments are in bad repair for want of sufficient funds to properly maintain them, the surrounding population being purely agricultural and poor; it is difficult to imagine that the population could ever have been much greater, though it may have been wealthier. The question arises, How came these grand and large churches to be built, without any probability of their having a congregation at all commensurate with their size?
A MATTER OF SENTIMENT
The country became now more open, and our road wound in and out of the level meadows like the letter S, or rather like a succession of such letters, thereby almost doubling the distance from point to point taken in a straight line. We could only presume that the modern road followed the uncertain route of the original bridle-path, which doubtless wound in and out in this provokingly tortuous manner to avoid bad ground and marshy spots. Were Lincolnshire a county in one of the United States, I “guess” that this road would long ago have been made unpicturesquely straight and convenient,—the practical American considers it a wicked waste of energy to go two miles in place of one. His idea of road-making resembles that of the ancient Romans in so far as the idea of both is to take the nearest line between two places. “That’s the best road,” exclaimed a prominent Yankee engineer, “that goes the most direct between two places; beauty is a matter of seeing and sentiment, and to me a straight line is a beautiful thing, because it best fulfils its purpose.” So speaks the engineer. Both Nature and the artist, as a rule, abhor straight lines.
The next village on our road was Wrangle; since we had left Boston we had hardly been out of sight of a village or a church, but though the villages were numerous they were small. Here at Wrangle again we found a tiny collection of houses, out of which rose another fine and beautiful church, the stones of which had taken upon themselves a lovely soft gray with age. I think there is no country in the world where Time tones and tints the stones of buildings so pleasantly as it does in England. The people in this part of Lincolnshire should be good, if an ample supply of fine churches makes for goodness. Still one can never be certain of anything in this uncertain world, for does not the poet declare that—
Wherever God erects a house of prayer,
The Devil always builds a chapel there:
And ’twill be found upon examination,
The latter has the largest congregation.