[8] I cannot repeat too often (for it seems almost impossible to arouse the public mind in the least to a sense of the fact) that the root of all benevolent and helpful action towards the lower classes consists in the wise direction of purchase; that is to say, in spending money, as far as possible, only for products of healthful and natural labor. All work with fire is more or less harmful and degrading; so also mine, or machine labor. They at present develope more intelligence than rural labor, but this is only because no education, properly so called, being given to the lower classes, those occupations are best for them which compel them to attain some accurate knowledge, discipline them in presence of mind, and bring them within spheres in which they may raise themselves to positions of command. Properly taught, a ploughman ought to be more intelligent, as well as more healthy, than a miner.
Every nation which desires to ennoble itself should endeavor to maintain as large a number of persons as possible by rural and maritime labor (including fishing). I cannot in this place enter into consideration of the relative advantages of different channels of industry. Any one who sincerely desires to act upon such knowledge will find no difficulty in obtaining it.
I have also several series of experiments and inquiries to undertake before I shall be able to speak with security on certain points connected with education; but I have no doubt that every child in a civilized country should be taught the first principles of natural history, physiology, and medicine; also to sing perfectly, so far as it has capacity, and to draw any definite form accurately to any scale.
These things it should be taught by requiring its attendance at school not more than three hours a day, and less if possible (the best part of children’s education being in helping their parents and families). The other elements of its instruction ought to have respect to the trade by which it is to live.
Modern systems of improvement are too apt to confuse the recreation of the workman with his education. He should be educated for his work before he is allowed to undertake it; and refreshed and relieved while he practises it.
Every effort should be made to induce the adoption of a national costume. Cleanliness and neatness in dress ought always to be rewarded by some gratification of personal pride; and it is the peculiar virtue of a national costume that it fosters and gratifies the wish to look well, without inducing the desire to look better than one’s neighbors—or the hope, peculiarly English, of being mistaken for a person in a higher position of life. A costume may indeed become coquettish, but rarely indecent or vulgar; and though a French bonne or Swiss farm-girl may dress so as sufficiently to mortify her equals, neither of them ever desires or expects to be mistaken for her mistress.
[9] This last book should be read carefully by all persons interested in social questions. It is sufficiently dull as a tale, but is characterized throughout by a restrained tragic power of the highest order; and it would be worth reading, were it only for the story of Aenneli, and for the last half page of its close.
[10] “The Cumæan Sibyl, Deiphobe, was, in her youth, beloved by Apollo; who, promising to grant her whatever she would ask, she took up a handful of earth, and asked that she might live as many years as there were grains of dust in her hand. She obtained her petition. Apollo would have granted her perpetual youth in return for her love, but she denied him, and wasted into the long ages—known, at last, only by her voice.”—(See my notes on the Turner Gallery.)
[11] Turner appears never to have desired, from any one, care in favor of his separate works. The only thing he would say sometimes was, “Keep them together.” He seemed not to mind how much they were injured, if only the record of the thought were left in them, and they were kept in the series which would give the key to their meaning. I never saw him, at my father’s house, look for an instant at any of his own drawings: I have watched him sitting at dinner nearly opposite one of his chief pictures—his eyes never turned to it.
But the want of appreciation, nevertheless, touched him sorely; chiefly the not understanding his meaning. He tried hard one day for a quarter of an hour to make me guess what he was doing in the picture of Napoleon, before it had been exhibited, giving me hint after hint in a rough way; but I could not guess, and he would not tell me.