[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 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 the sadness, though not in the triumph, of the words of Farinata—
"Fu' io sol colà, dove sofferto
Fu per ciascun di torre via Fiorenza,
Colui che la difese a viso aperto."[10]
I am, etc., J. Ruskin.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] After a careful and repeated search in the columns of the Witness, I am still unable to certainly explain these allusions. It seems, however, that the two preceding letters had been sent to the Witness, which printed the first and refused to print the second. The Scotsman printed both under the titles of "Mr. Ruskin on the Italian Question," and "Mr. Ruskin on Foreign Politics," whilst it distinguished this third letter by the additional heading of "Letter to the Editor." It may be conjectured, therefore, that the first two letters were reprinted by the Scotsman from another paper, and that, in receiving the number of the Scotsman containing the second, Mr. Ruskin did not know that it had reprinted the first also. As to the "series begun in another journal," it is, I think, clear that it had not been long continued, as the letter dated "June 15," sent to and refused by it, is spoken of as "the second letter," so that that dated "June 6" must have been the first, as this was unquestionably the last of the series.
"But singly there I stood, when, by consent
Of all, Florence had to the ground been razed,
The one who openly forbade the deed."