Cary's Dante—"L'Inferno," x. II. 90-93.

Farinata degli Uberti was a noble Florentine, and the leader of the Ghibelline faction, when they obtained a signal victory over the Guelfi at Montaperto, near the river Arbia. Machiavelli calls him "a man of exalted soul, and great military talents" (Hist. of Florence, Bk. ii). Subsequently, when it was proposed that, in order to maintain the ascendency of the Ghibelline faction in Tuscany, Florence should be destroyed, Farinata alone of all the Council opposed the measure, declaring that he had endured every hardship with no other view than that of being able to pass his days in his own country. (See Cary's notes to Canto x.)

[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 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 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.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] This letter was written in answer to a request that Mr. Ruskin would come and preside at the distribution of prizes among the students in the Science and Art Department of the Liverpool Institute, on Saturday, Oct. 31, 1863. It was subsequently read on the occasion of distribution, in accordance with the wish expressed towards the end of the letter.

[12] See the preceding and the following letter. This one was, it will be seen, written in the year of the last great struggle of Poland against Russia.

[13] A The expedition of the English and French against China was begun in the August of 1860; the war in Japan in the summer of 1863.